Then, somehow, the whole thing had spiralled.
Without warning, he had found himself in the same predicament as Unnur, locked up in the very same room as her. Perhaps Einar had known or suspected something and acted to protect his wife. Haukur Leó had tried to break down the door by brute force, but although he was much stronger than his daughter, he had failed. How must she have felt, being held prisoner here by a madwoman? His rage had intensified until Einar had entered the room holding his knife, and then things had turned violent. Haukur Leó had tried to wrestle the knife off him, afraid for his own life, and the tussle had ended in disaster, though he himself had been lucky enough to escape unharmed. He hadn’t felt an ounce of remorse for Einar’s fate. He had killed a man, but it had been in self-defence and, anyway, his own daughter had been killed while staying in this house. The whole thing had seemed so unreal: the blood, the body on the floor. Haukur Leó had stood there for a while, feeling oddly detached, and watched Einar’s life ebbing away as he bled to death.
Then, coming to his senses, he had run downstairs to find Erla, only to discover that she had vanished. It had taken a good deal of trouble to hunt her down but, in the end, he had cornered her and heard her confession; listened as she described how she had senselessly killed his daughter. It had been the act of a deranged person. The girls had looked alike, his daughter and Erla’s. It had been as simple as that. He had seen a photo in the spare room of a girl who presumably was, or had been, Anna. And it was true that there had been a resemblance; in fact, they had been strikingly similar, with that flaming red hair, and even a certain look about the eyes.
He had searched in the cellar for a heavy-duty spade and tried to dig, chipping and scraping at the hard-frozen ground. But to no avail. How long had he been out here?
He was so cold and exhausted he had completely lost track of time and had no thoughts left in his head now but to find Unnur. It was beginning to come home to him, though, that this wasn’t going to work. He would either have to find another way, a more powerful tool, or get assistance. Perhaps simply call the police …
He had killed two people.
The first time it had been an accident, but the second time it had been cold-blooded murder; he had to face the fact. He had deliberately murdered the bloody bitch, squeezing her throat until she stopped breathing. And it had felt good. He had been avenging Unnur. But then, a few seconds later, he had woken up to the full horror of what he had done. There was no going back. Everything had changed. But now that he had lost Unnur, perhaps it didn’t matter. He hadn’t even decided whether to try and hide his crimes. They seemed of little importance in the great scheme of things. His daughter was dead.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.
He kept trying to scratch at the iron-hard ground, it was all he could think of to do, but he could barely even penetrate the snow to expose the soil underneath. It was like being in a nightmare, knowing she was buried under his feet but unable to get to her. He could hardly breathe. And all the while, the storm continued to scream around him. He was so cold and so deathly tired. But again and again, he felt a surge of new adrenaline coursing through his veins when he thought of Unnur lying there under the frozen earth. Even so, he couldn’t go on like this much longer. He would have to rest, then make a decision about whether to seek help. Of course, he could fetch the police, confess to the killings and beg them to find his daughter. He was prepared to take the consequences himself but shuddered when he thought of the effect this would have on his wife. She would be alone, with Unnur dead and him in prison … Maybe he would get off, though; maybe the judge would take the mitigating circumstances into account and decide not to punish him. But even as he thought this he knew how implausible it was.
He stopped scraping with the spade and glanced up a moment. The gale lashed him with icy pellets and he could hardly see more than a few metres in any direction. He was trapped in a maelstrom of snow, alone, no one knew where he was, and he was at the end of his tether, both mentally and physically, crushed by the news of how his daughter had met her fate. And every now and then the thought surfaced that he was a murderer. Him! Though he’d been a perfectly ordinary person until his daughter went missing.
Perhaps he could go inside the house for a bit and recover his strength. But although he urgently needed a rest after more than forty-eight hours without sleep, he dreaded the thought of lying there brooding about Unnur and her fate, about Erla and Einar, the people he had killed. He had to find a way of completely emptying his mind. He just couldn’t cope with it all.
He tried to carry on digging, then, overcome with a wave of exhaustion, he dropped the spade on the ground and set off back towards the house, telling himself he would return later and try again. He wasn’t going to give up on his daughter.
The door was locked, but Erla must have had a key. He hurried down the steps to the cellar and stepped into the gloom. There she lay, just visible in the
