Hulda didn’t say anything for a moment. It was the only logical conclusion and yet she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. She’d met the man several times in connection with Unnur’s disappearance and had liked him. He’d come across as a polite, personable lawyer, a concerned father. And yet … there had been something in his manner that had made Hulda uneasy; she had sensed that in certain circumstances he might be capable of anything, that he was unpredictable. Could he in fact have murdered his daughter and then the couple on the farm? But why? It didn’t make sense, didn’t make sense at all …
‘I don’t think we can rule it out,’ she said at last. ‘That he’s responsible for what happened here at Christmas, I mean.’
‘Of course, there’s always a chance…’ Jens said slowly, pondering. Hulda waited impatiently for him to finish the sentence: ‘… a chance he’s at the other house.’
‘The one we drove past earlier?’
‘Yes, no one lives there.’
‘And what … just left his car sitting here all this time?’
‘No, well, I don’t know.’
Although Hulda wasn’t convinced, it would be worth making absolutely sure.
‘Shall we drive over and check it out?’ the inspector asked hesitantly. Hulda was pleased to find him submitting so completely to her authority.
‘Yes, let’s do that,’ she said firmly.
V
The blue paint was weathered on the walls and roof, and even under the quilt of snow it was apparent that the garden around the house had been left to run wild. When Hulda and the inspector tried the front door they found it unlocked, so there was nothing to stop them pushing it open and stepping inside.
There was no sign that anyone had been there recently, though the house was still fully furnished, with a sofa and armchairs in the sitting room, and a table and crockery in the kitchen, as if the last occupant had been intending to come back.
‘There’s only a single storey, but I think there’s a cellar as well,’ said Jens. ‘I’ll take a quick look down there, but it seems pretty clear to me that he can’t have been here.’
Hulda nodded without speaking, and Jens vanished from view.
There was an odd atmosphere in this house, with its mute witnesses to the past, to a life someone had lived there not that long ago, yet not that recently either. A thick layer of dust coated all the surfaces. Hulda wandered from room to room and found that they all told the same story. There was a single bed in the bedroom, but no personal items. It could have been a guesthouse, waiting for visitors. She went back into the kitchen and opened the fridge, but it was empty and unplugged. When she pressed the light switch by the kitchen door, to her surprise, the bulb came on. The radiators turned out to be lukewarm as well, not enough to heat the house so you would notice but enough presumably to stop the pipes from freezing while the place was unoccupied. Clearly, this was a house with a history, perhaps an interesting one, but any curiosity she felt about that would have to wait. For the moment, the priority was to find out what had happened to the couple on the neighbouring farm and, no less important, what had become of Unnur’s father, the lawyer Haukur Leó, known to his friends and family as Leó.
After they had found the abandoned Mitsubishi, Jens had radioed from the police car to get confirmation that it was indeed the vehicle the police had been searching for. The discovery had turned the whole case upside down – both cases, in fact: the tragic events at the farm, on the one hand, and the disappearance of Unnur and her father on the other. It stood to reason that there had to be a link, if only Hulda could work it out.
‘The cellar was locked, but I took the liberty of forcing the door,’ Jens told her. ‘It wasn’t very difficult. I’ll see that it’s repaired later.’
‘Did you find anything?’
The inspector shook his head. ‘Not a thing. Where the hell is this guy?’
‘We’ll have to organize a search,’ Hulda said, aware that time was working against them. The trail had long gone cold and she would have to do everything in her power to blow life back into any faint embers that could possibly light her way. Her primary concern, though, was to find Unnur, the girl she’d been searching for since the autumn. If there was any hope, however faint, that she could still be alive, Hulda had to save her.
Or at least do her level best.
VI
Unnur didn’t make it any further than Kirkjubæjarklaustur that first day.
This was exactly how her journey was meant to be, a mixture of uncertainty and adventure. But she had no particular desire to get stuck in this quiet little south Iceland town, located in the green oasis between the two great icecaps of Mýrdalsjökull and Vatnajökull. She was after a different kind of experience, one which involved seeking out remote places and dramatic scenery, not holing up in a town or village. At present she was sitting in a small café attached to a petrol station.
The driver of the BMW who had picked her up hadn’t been going any further for the moment. He had turned out to be a foreigner, a friendly, middle-aged German office worker who had long dreamt of visiting Iceland. They had chatted all the way. Since she loved meeting new people and gaining an insight into their lives, she was very satisfied with her journey so far.
The question was, where next?
She thought she’d take the bus but didn’t know where to yet, except that it would have to be east. She didn’t want to retrace her route west towards Selfoss and Reykjavík as it would feel too much like a backward step, like throwing in the towel. Instead, she felt compelled to go on,
