‘Goodbye. I’ll keep you posted.’
Hulda lay down in bed, closed her eyes and was immediately presented with the image of Dimma.
She could already tell that she wasn’t going to sleep a wink tonight, and knew that she wasn’t alone. On the other side of the country, Unnur’s mother would also be lying awake through the dark, lonely hours.
XII
As she had feared, Hulda had hardly dropped off at all before she was woken by the phone on the bedside table in the early morning.
‘Hulda.’ It was Jens. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you. The thing is, they’ve found something rather odd behind the farmhouse. The rescue team came across a spade that had been covered by the snow. It looks as though someone had been digging there.’
‘What? Do we have any idea why?’
‘No, we’re working on it. Of course, the ground’s frozen solid. But whoever was trying to dig there hadn’t got very far.’
‘Could someone have been planning to bury the bodies?’ Hulda asked.
‘Either that or trying to dig something up,’ suggested the inspector. He sounded grave. ‘I don’t know if you remember, Hulda, but there was a heap of spades in one corner of the cellar, although the rest of the tools were neatly stowed away. It looked as if someone had grabbed a spade in a hurry and accidentally knocked the rest down.’
Hulda was silent. She couldn’t get her head around this latest development. The full picture still eluded her, but it must become clearer, if only she could piece all this evidence together.
XIII
Unnur was sitting in her room in the attic. It was late and night had fallen outside; the darkness was depressingly quick to return at this time of year after being absent all summer. She was still labouring away on her book and, although she wasn’t entirely sure that it was going in the direction she wanted, she reassured herself that she could always sort it out later. She had no intention of letting anyone read it yet, and anyway, there were only the two of them here. Erla’s husband, Einar, was still away in Reykjavík.
‘Anna,’ Unnur heard Erla call from the sitting room. ‘Anna, the coffee’s ready.’
Unnur was a little disconcerted. Had a visitor arrived without her noticing?
‘Anna?’ Erla called again, a little louder.
Unnur got up from the table to go downstairs, but hesitated. Maybe she should just stay where she was and ignore this, because she could have sworn there was no one else in the house.
Erla called again: ‘Anna, are you coming?’
Unnur left her room and went downstairs. When she reached the bottom step, she came face to face with Erla.
‘What were you doing up there?’ Erla asked with a puzzled smile. ‘Why weren’t you in your room?’ She was holding a cup of coffee and appeared perfectly normal.
Unnur felt a prickle of fear down her spine.
‘Erla … I…’
‘Never mind, come and have some cake. Maybe we could play a game of cards? I’ve got a bottle of Coke in the fridge too. We should finish it up before your father gets home. It’s not good for his waistline.’ Again, that smile.
XIV
Unnur had given up trying to break out of the room, temporarily, at least. She was terrified of Erla: there was a weird, unstable glint in her eyes that suggested she might be capable of anything. For some inexplicable reason, Erla kept calling her Anna and freaked out every time Unnur tried to explain to her that she didn’t know who Anna was; her name was Unnur and she was just a girl from Gardabær doing a trip around Iceland.
And then one morning Unnur had woken up to hear the door of her room being locked from the outside.
‘Anna, I can’t let you leave,’ Erla had said again and again.
Unnur was clinging to the hope that Einar would save her, assuming he actually existed. Until he got back, she reckoned it would be best to placate Erla. She was allowed to eat and go to the toilet, but Erla had taken to carrying a knife in order to force her back to her room before locking her in again.
It would be an understatement to say that this wasn’t what Unnur had planned. Her adventure of a lifetime had turned into a horror film.
But Unnur was naturally resilient and had no intention of letting this break her down. She had to stay strong. She wrote furiously and her novel was really getting somewhere. With innate optimism, she kept telling herself that everything would turn out all right in the end, but underneath, she was terrified. It had occurred to her to make a break for it next time Erla unlocked the door, but she couldn’t be sure of getting away. The only way out of here was the road to the village, but that was too obvious and a tough farmer’s wife like Erla might well be fit enough to catch up with her. It wasn’t as if there were any neighbours within reach to turn to for help. Even though it was only autumn, the weather had turned grey and dismal, bringing day after day of relentless cold rain. She was in the middle of nowhere, and if she struck out into the surrounding wilderness, she was terrified of getting lost and dying of exposure.
She had decided, just to be on the safe side, to write a letter to her parents. She still had plenty of paper in her notebook and several envelopes in her bag, as she’d been intending to write to them regularly during her trip. Once she’d finished it, she put the letter in an envelope and hid it between the books on the shelf where she hoped Erla wouldn’t find it. If her worst fears were realized, perhaps it would reach her parents one day …
XV
Hulda breakfasted at the guesthouse with her colleagues from Forensics, and Jens joined them, sipping black coffee while they ate. They sat
