The fallout, p.6
The Fallout, page 6
For a moment or two it looked as if he was going to make a run for it along Hverfisgata but instead he came towards the car, his shoulders hunched. Sædís felt a pang. He might not be perfect, but he was her dad. And she loved him, in spite of his flaws.
She reached for the handle on the passenger side and opened the door. Large snowflakes blew inside and collected on the seat, only to melt almost instantly as it was heated. There was no point trying to wipe it dry, as her dad was unlikely to be bothered by a little wetness right now. He would be too preoccupied with his headache and his shame.
The police had called her to say that her father was in the cells after being arrested twice in short succession for being drunk and disorderly. The first time had been early on Saturday evening, the second on Monday evening, after he had been released late on Sunday. According to the police officer who rang, he had begged them to let him stay and sleep it off on Sunday, following his first arrest, and he had tried the same ploy again today. Sædís had been asked to come and fetch him to make sure there wouldn’t be a third time. The officer she spoke to had pointed out that the police cells were not a drying-out clinic and recommended that her father seek help from the rehab centre.
Long experience had taught Sædís that her father didn’t need treatment. He had fallen off the wagon before but managed to clean up his act again. She didn’t know much about alcoholism but suspected he wasn’t a typical drunk. He had given up without any help before, when he’d had enough, replacing the bottle with hard work. Instead of spending every evening sitting half pissed in front of the TV, he had kept himself busy.
Now that Sædís was an adult herself, she had a better insight into what caused his lapses. It wasn’t her fault, as she’d believed as a child. The drinking and the long hours at work were simply crutches he used to avoid coming to terms with her mother’s illness. He just couldn’t handle the mood swings, the sadness and depression that accompanied her mental health problems. If he’d only displayed more initiative and resolve, her mother might have been persuaded to take medication for her condition. But he hadn’t. He’d just switched off and seemed to be waiting for everything to get better on its own.
But when one support gives way, the next has to bear more weight to keep the structure from collapsing. And this was Sædís’s fate. While he buried himself in work, she took care of what needed to be done at home.
Her father got into the car, carefully avoiding Sædís’s eye, and stared straight ahead through the windscreen instead. As he did up his seat-belt, she saw that his hands were shaking.
‘God. I’m so sorry. I’m so bloody sorry.’ His voice shook as badly as his hands.
‘We need to talk.’ Her words conveyed her meaning quite precisely. Neither wanted to talk but they needed to, nevertheless.
‘Not now, please. Later. I just can’t.’ Her father’s voice cracked.
It was no use trying to force the issue. ‘Home?’ she asked instead, though anywhere else was out of the question. He needed to recover there: take a shower, have something to eat, talk to her bed-bound mother, then sleep off his hangover. Work would have to wait, although he must be itching to get back to it. Work was his way of hiding from problems. Work and alcohol. The conversation they were both dreading so much would have to wait as well. ‘I’ll fry you some eggs,’ she said. ‘We’ve got fresh bread too. You must be starving.’
He nodded and she moved off. As she turned the wheel to make a right onto Snorrabraut, she twisted her body, which made her belly more conspicuous. Luckily, though, her father was still staring rigidly ahead and didn’t notice anything.
Sædís turned up the windscreen wipers, which were fighting a losing battle with the snow. This was definitely not a good time to tell him her news.
Chapter 6
Tuesday
The children entered the classroom, their cheeks ruddy, their hair ruffled from hats and hoods. Their eagerness had diminished since the beginning of break time, when they’d been jostling each other out of the way in their desire to get outside. It was hardly surprising. Not many of them were really interested in the lesson that was about to start, dealing as it did with the settlement of Iceland. Their interest in the ninth century was limited as it was so far from the world they knew. The original settlers of Iceland couldn’t go online or watch Netflix or play computer games; they knew nothing about football and never took selfies. To Kristbjörg’s disappointment, even their weapons held no attraction for pupils used to computer games. The children were unimpressed by swords and axes. Such primitive weapons wouldn’t stand a chance against the automatic ones they were familiar with from their games. The boys’ drawings, in particular, often featured such guns. She had even started recognising the names of the main ones: Minigun, Uzi, Desert Eagle, Arctic Warfare, Kalashnikov. When the names were written on the drawings they were never spelt wrong. Even boys incapable of spelling the word ‘egg’ could write ‘bazooka’ without any problem.
‘Hurry up and sit down. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be finished.’ This wasn’t actually true. The lesson was supposed to last for forty minutes and the pupils couldn’t speed it up by sitting down any faster. ‘Then turn to page six in your textbooks.’
One by one the pupils took their seats and the majority also obeyed her instruction about the textbooks. She repeated the page number when three pupils stuck up their hands simultaneously to ask about it. Before long they were all sitting with their books open in front of them. The entire class was facing Kristbjörg and waiting in silence for further instructions.
They were all good kids but in combination they were a difficult group. There were twenty-five pupils in the class. A handful of them managed to span almost the entire gamut of diagnoses. In addition to that, there was an immigrant whose Icelandic was limited, another kid who was struggling with gender dysphoria, and a third who was gifted and more demanding than all the rest put together – with the exception of the pupil who was the offspring of a law professor and a doctor of physics. Not a week went by when the couple didn’t kick up some sort of fuss. Sooner or later Kristbjörg would be goaded into responding to an email or phone call from them by saying that they would simply have to accept that their child was very ordinary and didn’t excel in any way. The blame for that did not lie with the school, and no amount of complaining would change it.
There was a squeaking of chair legs on lino, a sure sign that the class was growing restless. As usual, the disturbance started at the rear of the room and spread towards the front. At the round table at the back, a girl leant over to the boy next to her and whispered something in his ear. The boy didn’t seem particularly pleased by what she had said. He made a face, leant away and gave the whisperer a shove.
‘What’s going on?’ Kristbjörg raised her voice. She knew from long experience that it paid to nip this sort of thing in the bud.
Both pupils answered in unison: ‘Nothing.’ Kristbjörg also knew from long experience that children always answered like that when put on the spot, no matter what the circumstances.
‘You know it’s forbidden to whisper. It’s rude to the people around you.’ Kristbjörg glared in the hope of hammering her message into their heads. ‘And you should pay attention in lessons. You can talk during break. Understood?’
‘Don’t blame me. I wasn’t whispering. It was her.’ The owner of the ear was indignant, perhaps not unreasonably. He moved his chair away from the whisperer. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
As the aggrieved child was the son of the two academics, it would be as well to resolve this straight away. ‘I’m not blaming you in particular. I was talking to the whole class. It’s rude to whisper and that applies to all of you.’ Kristbjörg hoped this would be enough to smooth things over.
But her argument cut no ice with the son of the doctor and the professor, who folded his arms, scowling. ‘You did mean me. Anyway, I think it was unfair of you to tell everyone off when she was the only one whispering.’
The chances of the evening news being interrupted by a phone call from his parents had just shot up. Kristbjörg felt like groaning aloud but she fought back the urge. ‘I’m not telling everyone off, I’m teaching you all some manners.’ This came across a bit harshly, so she corrected herself. ‘I mean I’m instructing you. It does us all good, me included, to be regularly reminded of our manners.’
The academics’ son did not look mollified. He was after something more, perhaps an apology.
He wasn’t getting one. ‘Right, kids. That’s enough of that. Let’s turn to the settlement of Iceland. Last time we were talking about Ingólfur Arnarson’s high-seat pillars. Who remembers what role they played in the settlement?’
The gifted child’s hand shot up and waved eagerly. As no one else made any move to answer, Kristbjörg was forced to choose her.
While she was showing off, Kristbjörg noticed that the whispering had started up again. She waited for the gifted child to finish, then asked sternly: ‘What was I just saying about whispering?’
The academics’ son pushed his neighbour away. ‘I can’t help it. She keeps whispering in my ear.’
The boy had a point. Kristbjörg addressed the girl: ‘What is it that the rest of us aren’t allowed to hear? Are you answering the question about the seat pillars, by any chance?’
‘No.’ The girl looked sheepish. She blushed and dropped her eyes to her lap.
‘Right. Then I suggest you stop that and concentrate instead on what’s happening in the lesson.’ Kristbjörg didn’t want to come down on her too heavily. The girl had a difficult time of it and was generally no trouble. She had two friends and as long as she wasn’t sitting with them, she behaved perfectly well but, if left together, the three of them did nothing but giggle. Since Kristbjörg had taken to splitting them up, the girl had been trying to make friends with her neighbour, the academics’ son, who wanted nothing to do with her. No amount of effort on her part had changed his mind about that, as demonstrated by this latest incident. ‘How about I split you two up for now?’
While Kristbjörg was scanning the room in search of children to change seats with them, the boy protested: ‘I shouldn’t have to move. She was saying sick things to me. She should be sent to the head teacher’s office.’
The girl looked hurt. There was no knowing what she’d said to the boy but she obviously hadn’t expected him to find it sick. She had presumably been hoping he’d think it was cool.
Kristbjörg now found herself confronted by the backs of the children’s heads. Even the gifted child had turned round.
One of the pupils asked: ‘What did she say?’ Others chimed in with the same question. It wasn’t every day they got to hear something sick in a lesson.
‘She said—’ The boy was forced to shut up when the girl jumped on him and put her hand over his mouth. He tore it away and carried on speaking, holding her off as well as he could. ‘She said she’d seen a head.’
‘A head?’ The rest of the class looked disappointed. ‘What’s so sick about that?’
Kristbjörg clapped her hands. ‘Turn round!’ She pointed to the table at the back. ‘You two! Stop fighting at once!’ They subsided instantly, the girl returned to her seat and Kristbjörg continued: ‘I don’t know what on earth is going on, but both of you stop it—’
She wasn’t allowed to finish. The academics’ son interrupted. ‘It was sick! It wasn’t just a head. She said she’d seen a chopped-off head. A woman’s head. Like in a horror film.’
The other children’s eyes grew round and several shuddered, including the girl’s two friends.
Kristbjörg gave in and moved the girl.
At the end of the lesson, she asked her to stay behind for a chat. The child walked up to the desk looking sheepish and stood there chewing her lower lip, her hands behind her back. ‘Are you going to tell me off?’
Kristbjörg gestured at the two friends to step away from the door where they were lurking, clearly trying to eavesdrop. Once they had gone, she turned back to the shamefaced child. ‘Yes, but not much.’ Kristbjörg gave her a friendly smile. It was impossible to be angry with the poor kid. She was so vulnerable somehow, so small, thin and sickly. She had problems concentrating and her eyes were forever flickering to and fro behind her glasses, which always seemed to sit crookedly on her nose. She had as many problems socially as she did academically. Apart from her two friends, who both had problems of their own, she seemed incapable of fitting in. But the girl’s situation could change. She had one very important advantage – the support of a loving family. Kristbjörg knew she was adopted and, as is often the case with adoptive parents, they lavished love on her. Her packed lunch was always prepared with great care, although it usually returned home untouched. Her clothes were smart and clean, but they always looked dishevelled by the end of the day. In the mornings, her hair was neatly tied back in a pony-tail and secured with clips. But, like her clothes, her hair soon became a mess; the elastic band slid down her thin pony-tail and the clips became dislodged.
Her friends weren’t nearly as well cared for. One was unusually tall, the other of perfectly average height. The smaller of the two was a noticeably better student, but otherwise they had much in common. They often came to school without a packed lunch, pencil or eraser, were inadequately dressed for the weather and were frequently absent – the taller girl in particular. Kristbjörg’s attempts to get the girls’ parents to keep a closer eye on their attendance hadn’t had an effect. It was as if they didn’t feel any responsibility towards their kids, and she couldn’t detect much interest in how they got on either. It was no wonder that the threesome mostly went round to the third girl’s home after school, as hers was by far the least chaotic.
Kristbjörg put on a serious face. ‘You know I don’t like it when children in my class don’t listen.’
The girl nodded, her head drooping. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’ll forgive you if you promise to listen in future and stop whispering and interrupting during the lesson.’
‘I promise.’
It was so easy to make promises. Harder to keep them. But Kristbjörg left it at that. ‘Good.’ She would have to mention the head, though, before the girl ran out to join her friends and started spouting the same nonsense to them or anyone else. ‘Just one thing before I let you go: don’t make up stories about chopped-off heads. It’s not a nice thing to do. If you go on like that, I’ll have to talk to your parents and tell them they need to be more careful about what you’re allowed to watch on TV. You shouldn’t watch things that are banned for children.’
‘I don’t.’
Of course, the girl resorted to denial. What a surprise. ‘What were you thinking, to say you’d seen a chopped-off head?’
The girl looked shifty and avoided Kristbjörg’s eye. ‘I never said that. He was lying. I never said anything about a head.’
Kristbjörg stared at the girl in silence. This wasn’t the right moment to give her a lecture about the difference between truth and lies. Perhaps she should leave it at that. Where would their conversation lead if she continued it? To an impasse, that’s where. The more the girl denied having said it, the harder it would be for her to back down. And, of course, that bloody boy could have been lying. Or have misheard.
Perhaps that was it. ‘All right. But remember what I said about whispering. It’s not allowed.’
The girl nodded and Kristbjörg watched as she scampered off to join her friends. Shortly afterwards, Kristbjörg left the classroom herself, went up to the staff room and sat down for a coffee with her colleagues.
The story of the head gave way to other, more enjoyable topics. After all, it was absurd.
Chapter 7
Tuesday
The smart clothes had come in useful in the end. The hung-over man in the cells had mistaken her for a lawyer, accepted the police’s offer to ring his family, and agreed to go home. Freyja had then returned to her office and started searching online for material that could help her understand what was going on in the killer’s head. Before she’d got far, her manager rang and asked her to drop by his office. He wanted to talk to her about the murder and her role in the investigation. Afterwards, she wasn’t sure if this had been yet another attempt to find a job to fill up her day or whether her skills were genuinely needed. She was inclined to believe they were, though no doubt there was an element of time-filling involved.
He was specifically concerned about the police’s interaction with the dead woman’s family. The horrific mutilation of her body would make talking to her relatives an extremely delicate matter but they needed to hear the ugly truth, and he felt it would be only right if Freyja was present when the news was broken. Ideally, she should also be present when the police interviewed Bríet’s daughter – assuming the remains were those of her mother. In addition, Freyja was to assist the investigation team in their attempts to assess the perpetrator’s mental state, if required. Finally, the investigators themselves might need trauma counselling. Few members of CID had seen anything like this before.
Freyja had responded enthusiastically to everything her manager said, mainly by vigorous, repeated nodding. Although he didn’t seem to expect any input from her, she did manage to slip in one question at the end: was Erla OK with all this? The answer was vague but gave rise to a question about whether Erla had been causing difficulties. Without a moment’s hesitation, Freyja assured him she hadn’t. She was no telltale.
As she was leaving, her manager had coughed and added that looking people up on the Police Information System without good reason was frowned on. It was irrelevant whether the individuals in question were family, friends or strangers. He went on, awkwardly, to say that maybe this hadn’t been made clear to her, but he was rectifying that now. Baffled, Freyja said she didn’t know how to access the system. At this, her manager looked even more embarrassed and merely repeated his words, then thanked her for dropping by. Since this didn’t exactly invite further discussion, she left it at that.
