the story of the carpenter’s daughter and responded as she had because she suffered from an overactive imagination?
And if she was more receptive than other people, what on earth was it that had lurked behind the panelling?
11
The woman remembered clearly the period when Maria and Baldvin had started dating. Her name was Thorgerdur and she was tall and big-boned, with a mane of dark hair. She had studied history with Maria at university but had given up after two years and switched to a degree in nursing. She had kept in close touch with Maria ever since their student days and was chatty and not at all shy about talking to a police officer like Erlendur. She even volunteered the information that she had once witnessed a crime; she had been at the chemist’s when a hooded man had burst in with a knife and threatened the sales lady.
‘He was pathetic, really,’ Thorgerdur explained. ‘A druggie. They caught him immediately and we bystanders had to identify him. It was easy. He was still wearing the same shabby clothes. Needn’t have bothered with the hood. A stunning-looking boy.’
Erlendur smiled privately. A member of the underclass, Sigurdur Oli would have said. It was one of those terms he had picked up in America. To Sigurdur Oli’s mind it applied not only to criminals and drug addicts, whom he described as total losers, but also to anyone else he disliked for whatever reason: uneducated employees, shop assistants, labourers, even tradesmen, all of whom drove him up the wall. He had once flown to Paris for a weekend break with Bergthora. They had taken a charter flight and he had been disgusted when most of the other passengers, who were on their annual work outing, became rowdy and drunk and, to cap it all, broke into applause when the plane landed safely in Paris. ‘Plebs,’ he’d sniffed to Bergthora, full of disdain at the behaviour of the underclass.
Erlendur eased the conversation round to Maria and her husband and before Thorgerdur knew it she was telling him all about the history course that she had dropped out of and about her friend Maria who had met the future doctor at a student disco.
‘I’m going to miss Maria,’ she said. ‘I can still hardly believe that she went like that. The poor thing, she can’t have been in a good way.’
‘You got to know one another at the university, you say?’ Erlendur prompted.
‘Yes, Maria was absolutely fascinated by history,’ Thorgerdur said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Fascinated by the past. I was bored out of my skull. She used to sit at home, typing up her notes. I didn’t know anyone else who bothered. And she was a good student, which you certainly couldn’t say about all of us who did history.’
‘Did you know Baldvin?’
‘Well, only after he and Maria got together. Baldvin was a great guy. He was studying drama but had more or less given up by the time they started going out. Didn’t really have what it took to be an actor, apparently.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, or so I heard – that he was better off opting for medicine. They were a terrific gang, the drama students, always having a laugh. People like Orri Fjeldsted, who’s obviously one of the big names today. Lilja and Saebjorn – they got married. Einar Vifill. They all became stars. Anyway, Baldvin switched to medicine and carried on acting alongside his studies for a while, but eventually gave up.’
‘Did he regret it, do you know?’
‘No, not that I’ve heard. Though he’s still very interested in the theatre. They went to a lot of plays and knew loads of people in showbiz, had friends at all the theatres.’
‘Do you know what sort of relationship Baldvin and Leonora had?’
‘Well, of course he moved in with Maria, and Leonora, who was a very strong character, was living there too. Maria sometimes said her mother tried to boss them around and it got on Baldvin’s nerves.’
‘What about Maria, what period of history was she interested in?’
‘She only had eyes for the Middle Ages, the stuff I found deadliest of all. She studied incest and bastardy and the laws and punishments associated with them. Her final dissertation was about drownings at Thingvellir. It was very informative. I got to proofread it for her.’
‘Drownings?’
‘Yes,’ Thorgerdur said. ‘The execution of adulteresses in the Drowning Pool and so on.’
Erlendur was silent. They had found a seat in the lounge at the hospital where Thorgerdur worked. An old lady inched past them on a Zimmer frame. An assistant nurse in white clogs hurried along the corridor. A group of medical students stood nearby, comparing notes.
‘Of course, it fits,’ Thorgerdur remarked.
‘What fits?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Well, I heard she’d… I heard she’d hanged herself. At her holiday cottage at Thingvellir.’
Erlendur looked at her without answering.
‘But of course it has nothing to do with me,’ Thorgerdur said awkwardly on receiving no reaction.
‘Do you know if she had any particular interest in the supernatural?’ Erlendur asked.
‘No, but she was terrified of the dark. Always had been, ever since I first knew her. She could never go home from the cinema alone, for instance. You always had to go with her. Yet she went to see all the scariest horror movies.’
‘Do you know why she was so frightened of the dark? Did she ever talk about it?’
‘I…’
Thorgerdur hesitated. She glanced out into the corridor as if to make sure that no one was listening. The old lady with the Zimmer frame had reached the end of the corridor and was standing there as if she didn’t know what to do next, as if the purpose of her trip had eluded her somewhere during her painfully slow progress up the corridor. In the distance an old favourite was playing on the radio: He loved the sea, did old Thordur…
‘What was that?’ Erlendur asked, leaning forward.
‘I have the feeling she didn’t… there was something about what happened at Lake Thingvallavatn,’ Thorgerdur said. ‘When her father died.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a feeling I had, that I’ve had for a long time about what happened on Lake Thingvallavatn when she was a little girl. Maria could be very subdued at times and in very high spirits at others. She never mentioned that she was taking any medication but her exaggerated mood swings didn’t seem normal to me sometimes. Once, a long time ago when she was very depressed, I was sitting with her at her house in Grafarvogur when she started talking about Lake Thingvallavatn. It was the first I’d heard about it; she’d never raised the subject before in my hearing, and I immediately got the sense that she was crippled with guilt about what had happened.’
‘Why should she have felt guilty?’
‘I tried to discuss it with her later but she never opened up again like she did that first time. I felt she was always on guard because of what had happened but I’m absolutely convinced that there was something gnawing away at her, something she couldn’t tell anyone.’
‘Naturally, it was a terrible thing to happen,’ Erlendur said. ‘She watched her father drown.’
‘Of course.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said that they should never have gone to the holiday cottage.’
‘Was that all?’
‘And…’
‘Yes?’
‘That perhaps he was meant to die.’
‘Her father?’
‘Yes, her father.’
The audience exploded with laughter, Valgerdur among them. Erlendur raised his eyebrows. The husband had
