The fallout, p.36
The Fallout, page 36
‘Don’t be like that. I’m going with you. I’m not leaving you until you’re safely in the car. No arguments.’
Erla grimaced but Huldar couldn’t tell if it was resentment at Freyja’s high-handedness or a new contraction beginning.
Erla clenched her jaw and turned to Huldar. ‘Don’t get too comfy in my chair, Huldar,’ she said, her voice strained. ‘I forgot to tell you earlier but they want you to be my maternity cover. As long as you do it like you did last time, I can be sure of getting my job back.’ She tried to smile but couldn’t. Instead she closed her eyes, clamped her lips shut and bit back a groan. After that, she allowed Freyja to help her out of the department and into the lift without further protest.
Huldar was left standing there with Lína. She gave him a jab with her elbow, but the height difference between them was so great that it hit him on the hip. ‘Wow. Congratulations.’
Huldar groaned like Erla. But inwardly. The last thing he wanted was this position. But he’d take it on. For Erla’s sake. The powers that be would far rather have her back than keep him in the job, whereas all the other potential candidates would do their utmost to brown-nose senior management in the hope of being kept on full time. He looked down at Lína, smiling faintly. ‘Yes. Thanks. Yippee.’
Lína obviously couldn’t understand why he wasn’t celebrating the news. But he couldn’t do it, not even to please an ambitious intern. Puzzled and disappointed, she went back to her desk.
Erla’s announcement hadn’t passed the other members of CID by. He could feel their eyes on him. No doubt some were thinking vengeful thoughts, but it wasn’t Huldar’s fault he’d been chosen. He could look forward to long months of form-filling, meetings and human-resources issues, so he might as well make the most of his last day as an ordinary detective.
Freyja came back into the department. She was carrying Saga, who immediately started straining towards Huldar. Baldur must have arrived while she was downstairs. He noticed that Freyja was looking oddly pale and distracted.
‘Hi Saga!’ Huldar took the little girl in his arms. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Yes. Yes, sure,’ Freyja replied, though evidently it wasn’t.
‘Everything’s OK with Erla, isn’t it?’
Freyja nodded. ‘Yes. She’s fine. She was yelling something about an epidural when I said goodbye. It’ll help with the pain – if it’s not too late.’
It was blindingly obvious that she was holding something back. ‘You didn’t tackle her about that log-in business?’ he asked. It was all he could think of. It had been Freyja’s last chance to get things straight as Erla would be away from work for months now.
Freyja shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t need to. Not when I saw who her lift was.’
‘Oh?’
‘It was Baldur. My brother Baldur. He’s the father of Erla’s baby.’ Freyja closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead. ‘Baldur’s the father of Erla’s baby.’
That explained everything. Erla had used Freyja’s log-in to run a background check on Baldur. She couldn’t have been too happy about what she read, but that was her problem.
If he knew Freyja, she would never bring the subject up again. She’d rather take the blame for having used the database herself. He just hoped Erla would appreciate her sacrifice. Hoped – but he couldn’t be sure. Still, now that he was taking over Erla’s position, he’d do his best to resolve the issue without it impacting too badly on Freyja.
He had difficulty replying as Saga had his neck in a stranglehold. When she loosened her arms, all he could think of was to repeat his suggestion that he pay them a visit that evening. To his surprise, Freyja positively welcomed the idea. He’d been expecting her to be too shocked and preoccupied to hear what he said, let alone answer with enthusiasm.
‘Oh, yes. Do come round. Absolutely. And bring wine, please. Lots of it.’
He wanted to say that everything would be all right. He wanted her to tell him the same thing. But neither of them said anything.
They didn’t need to. They’d get by. Whether apart or together. Together or apart.
This evening, clearly, together. One day at a time.
Huldar smiled. With any luck, he’d get the chance to play off-duty bodyguard. They both deserved a happy ending.
Five months later
Chapter 36
Saturday
Sædís was gripped by an overwhelming urge to push; nothing else could get through to her brain. She couldn’t even tell if she was bellowing or just grimacing. She threw her head back and concentrated on trying to force the child out. While she was straining, she was less aware of the pains that ripped through her at regular intervals, making it feel as if her pelvis was being torn apart, her kidneys were bursting, her abdomen was on fire. She had refused the epidural, although she had known exactly what she was in for. Her sufferings were cathartic.
From the moment she had rung the bell in the maternity ward, bent over and panting with the pain, there had been few surprises. She had been preparing for this moment for months. Much of what she’d read hadn’t been directly relevant to her situation, assuming as it did that the woman wouldn’t be going through this alone but would have someone there to lean on. One sentence in particular that she had read in a booklet on childbirth from the GP’s clinic had stayed in her mind: The prospective father provides support with his presence, love, encouragement and care.
Admittedly, Númi was sitting in the chair beside the delivery bed but his entire demeanour couldn’t be more of a contrast to the rose-tinted images in the childbirth literature. He was deliberately avoiding her eye and they hadn’t exchanged a single word since he’d arrived. She’d noticed that he glanced at her from time to time, but his expression did nothing to encourage her to turn to him for support. He hated and despised her and saw no reason to hide the fact.
The midwife made up for it with her kindness and warmth. Holding Sædís’s hand, smiling and praising her. Various other people kept wandering in and out of the delivery room: doctors, nurses, assistants and a woman who appeared from time to time, asking if she was hungry or thirsty. Having never given birth before, Sædís had no idea if this endless coming and going was normal or whether she was the reason. The latter seemed more likely. After all, she was notorious, so it was only natural if people wanted to see the young woman who was linked to Mía’s disappearance; the daughter of a baby-snatcher and murderer, who was now alone and penniless, and carrying the child of one of Mía’s fathers. The papers had given her a rough ride since the story had hit the news.
‘Nearly there, Sædís. It doesn’t look as if you’ll have to do too many more pushes.’ The midwife was smiling at her from between her splayed legs. ‘You’re doing really well, dear. Quite the opposite of some women I’ve helped. We had one in here a few months ago who swore like a trooper throughout the birth. Still, when her little boy popped out, I could understand why. He had the biggest head I’ve ever seen on a baby. Almost like a pumpkin. Healthy and normal, though. It ran in the family, according to the father. But your little one’s head seems perfectly sized.’
Sædís was too busy catching her breath to reply. The midwife turned to Númi and invited him to come and see the head. When he declined sulkily, the woman snapped: ‘Why are you here, then? Why don’t you just wait outside?’
‘No.’ Númi was affronted. ‘It’s my baby. I’ve got a right to be here.’
The midwife wasn’t having any of it. ‘No one has a right to be here except the mother.’ She turned to Sædís. ‘Do you want him to go outside, dear? Don’t hesitate to say if you do.’
Sædís gasped down some air and managed to answer just before another wave of pain snatched her breath away. ‘He can stay. I don’t care.’
And it was true. She didn’t care. She had learnt a lot over the last few months, including the fact that it was possible to go on living your life even when people hated you. She had come to this realisation after a particularly horrible phone call from a woman named Ellý who had introduced herself as the sister of Droplaug, Mía’s mother. Her contempt for Sædís had been palpable during the mostly one-sided conversation. She had repeatedly asked how Sædís could live with herself after withholding the truth all these years and letting everyone think Droplaug had killed her own baby. The woman had also said she didn’t believe for a minute that Sædís hadn’t known about the baby swap. She had called her all the worst names imaginable, adding further insults in English when the supply of Icelandic ones ran out. But, oddly enough, the excessive hate Ellý had unleashed on her turned out to have a healing effect. Nothing Sædís said or did would ever earn forgiveness from this woman or any of the other people who held her in contempt. This would simply be her reality from now on, and accepting it had helped.
Her desperation to please everyone, to keep the peace, had gone. It was like tilting at windmills. All that really mattered was to live in peace with those you loved and who loved you in return. That group had been greatly reduced, which made it pretty simple. The only people left were her friends. Everyone else had turned their backs on her. Her friends didn’t understand her but stood by her anyway. At first, they had asked her warily about the case and all the stuff that was going on, but when she was reluctant to answer, they had backed off. As good friends should. Her parents had vanished behind bars, where they were awaiting trial. Although they were no longer in solitary confinement, she was forbidden to visit them as she was a party to the crimes. Sædís could count herself lucky that she wasn’t also in prison. But the fact she had escaped custody so far didn’t mean she wouldn’t eventually be charged. She had picked a lawyer at random from a list she’d been shown, and he had explained various things about which she had been ignorant. Firstly, that she had been questioned as a suspect rather than as a witness. That was a bad sign, according to him. He hadn’t liked to predict whether she would be charged or what sort of sentence she was likely to get if she was convicted. But he had gone on to say that the fact she had been cooperative might work in her favour. It would also help that she hadn’t been directly involved in the most serious crimes, that is, in the murders or the abduction of Mía.
Since Sædís had been a child when Mía was stolen and therefore below the age of responsibility, her lawyer said she needn’t worry too much about that. Though, that said, she might conceivably be held accountable for the years after she had reached the age of responsibility, but only if it could be proved beyond a doubt that she had known Selma was Mía, which he considered highly unlikely. He thought it more probable that the prosecution would accept that she had been unaware that the babies had been swapped. All the witnesses agreed that her little sister had spent most of her short life in the darkened bedroom with her sick mother. In addition, both Sædís’s parents were adamant that she hadn’t known anything. According to the reports the lawyer had read, her mother was pleading diminished responsibility as she hardly had any memories from that time. It was possible, then, that her mother would be deemed not to have been responsible for her actions, in which case she would most likely be sent not to prison but to a prison unit at the psychiatric hospital. Sædís didn’t know whether this was good or bad, nor did she ask. The lawyer probably wasn’t the best in town, but then she had only chosen him because he had a nice name.
The murders were another matter. There Sædís would almost certainly be facing criminal charges and a sentence. The lawyer had explained at length how it appeared to the prosecution, but she had understood little of what he said. He’d talked about concealment, assistance, complicity and the ill treatment of a body, or a combination of these. But he had informed her with apparent satisfaction that at least collusion was out of the question. Sædís had smiled and pretended to be pleased as well, rather than asking why that was a good thing.
He must have seen the fear and incomprehension in her eyes because he had quickly turned to the positives. She had been consistent in her statement, which also matched her father’s account of events. But then, she reflected, it was easy to be consistent when you were telling the truth.
She had gone to the workshop to do the cleaning, as she did every Saturday. The girls had come with her but, thank God – since the place had looked like a slaughterhouse – they had stayed outside. There was a large, heavy-duty band saw in the middle of the room and the whole place was awash with blood. She’d found her father crashed out on the sofa in the coffee room, half drunk, half hung-over. On the floor lay a set of blue overalls, the legs dark with stains, and an inside-out waterproof. But the crumpled clothes he was wearing were mostly clean. She had shaken him and asked what on earth had happened. It had taken him a long time to sit up and open his mouth. When he could finally speak, he said there had been an accident. ‘Who got hurt?’ she had asked, and he had mumbled that it was no one she knew and she shouldn’t worry.
At that moment she’d seen no reason to doubt this. Before she could question him any further, she heard the girls screaming outside and discovered just how serious this supposed accident had really been. When she looked inside one of the bags in the boot of the car, her heart had stopped. Then she had got a grip on herself and hurriedly slammed the boot shut. All she could think of was to get the girls away from there and prevent them from telling anyone. She needed time to think.
After buying them ice-creams and driving them home, she had returned. Her father had vanished but the workshop was still covered in blood and the car was still parked outside. Unsure what to do, she started cleaning. It wasn’t a conscious decision, she’d just automatically started following the same routine as she did every Saturday, as if instinct had kicked in, compelling her to purge the workshop of the grisly evidence of what had happened there. The cleaner it became, the better she felt. Once she had finished, she had driven home and tried to pretend to her mother and sister that nothing had happened. When her father didn’t come back that evening, she’d become increasingly worried. She’d been hoping he would know what to do. She couldn’t ring the police without talking to him first, in case there was a reasonable explanation for what had happened. Perhaps the man in the car boot had been dangerous and deserved to die.
She’d simply assumed it was a man – it hadn’t even crossed her mind that it could be a woman, since it’s hard to guess someone’s gender from the amputated stump of a limb. When they said on the news that a woman’s body had been found, it had come as a terrible shock but by then it had been too late. There was no going back. If she were honest, she wasn’t sure she’d have reported her dad to the police even if she had realised straight away. Perhaps she would have convinced herself that it had been some evil woman who had deserved it and wouldn’t be missed.
According to the lawyer, her father had said that he went into town after Sædís left the workshop. He’d headed to a bar, started drinking and ended up in a police cell. He’d returned to the workshop on the Sunday, seen that the car had gone and decided to carry on drinking. All his plans of disposing of Ólína’s dismembered remains in the sea, as he had Bríet’s, had been thwarted, though he had spotted the bag containing her head in the car park and thrown it in the sea by the causeway out to Grótta before hitting town again to drink himself into oblivion.
Sædís had removed Bríet’s car the night before. Too anxious to sleep, she’d got dressed and driven over to the workshop to check if the car was still there. Again, she had acted on an irrational impulse, obeying an urgent need to get rid of it. She had become increasingly worried that Gudda or Rósa would tell their parents about what they had seen in the boot and the parents would contact the police. If there was no car containing body parts outside the workshop when the police turned up, they would probably dismiss it as kids’ nonsense. Discovering the keys in the ignition, she had got behind the wheel and set off. The only question had been, where to? All she had been able to think of was one of her father’s sites, reasoning that he would be able to take over from there once he came back. She had left the car in the neighbouring street to some roadworks his men were engaged in and had headed over to the Portakabin. As she had duplicates of all her father’s work keys on her key ring, she had opened the door, gone inside and sat there, wondering what to do, unable to think of any solution. In the end, she had decided to walk home. Before leaving, she had wiped all the places outside and inside the car that she or her dad might have touched. Just in case he didn’t come back. Then she had embarked on the long trek back to the west of town, abandoning the car as it was. She’d been in such a hurry to get out that she hadn’t had the presence of mind to park it properly or to lock it and remove the keys.
Her dad hadn’t come home that night either, so it wasn’t until Monday that she had finally encountered him. Then it had been the same old silence between them; he said nothing and she said nothing, both waiting for the right time that never transpired. Her chance to tell him about the car expired the day after he returned, when the news about the discovery of a body hit the news. After that, the days had passed, one after another, and still she didn’t tell anyone. This was where she had been guilty of the ‘ill treatment of a body’ that her lawyer kept going on about; the fact she’d moved it across town, from Seltjarnarnes to the housing estate. It seemed extraordinary to her that this constituted ‘ill treatment’, and made her wonder what language they used to describe what her father had done to the women’s bodies.
‘Aha!’ The midwife was beaming at Sædís again. ‘I think we’re there. Now we just need you to push as if your life depended on it during the next set of contractions, and after that we should be home and dry.’
Sædís tried to focus her mind as she waited. She felt a drop of sweat trickling down her forehead and remembered the descriptions of childbirth she had read online. In those, the father or another helper would be on hand with a wet flannel to cool the woman’s brow and wipe away her sweat. Whereas Númi just sat there staring at the bed.
