2012
This was Helgi Reykdal’s happy place.
The worn but comfy chair in the corner, where he could quite literally breathe in the sweet smell of old books.
Hardbacks, paperbacks, they covered the walls and were stacked in piles on the floor and most other surfaces in the shop.
There were books everywhere, and if things went on like this, with more coming in than out, it wouldn’t be long before the aisles filled up and any visitor would merely be in the way, hardly able to move between the stacks.
In fact, you could say the books had long ago gained primacy in the shop, which seemed to have taken on a life of its own, independent of owners, staff or customers.
Piles of books for books’ sake, not because there was any likelihood of them being sold.
The air was thick with dust, but this didn’t bother Helgi, who found the mess charming rather than oppressive. The shop was closed, he was alone in here and the only hint that it was the twenty-first century outside was the mobile phone lying on top of the pile beside him.
At around the time Helgi split up from his long-term girlfriend, Bergthóra, he’d learnt that the woman who had bought the family’s second-hand bookshop in the little northern town of Akureyri was struggling to make ends meet and wouldn’t be able to honour the final payment.
Things had a way of all happening at once, but instead of being downhearted by these developments, Helgi tried to look on the bright side.
His break-up was a good thing, from any point of view.
He and Bergthóra had no children and their relationship had run its course a long time ago.
The final straw had come when she attacked him with a wine bottle in a drunken rage, smashing it over his head so hard that he had blacked out.
Then there was the shop. His father had spent many hours sitting in this very chair, dipping into books with Helgi at his feet, first as a child, later as an adolescent, being introduced to the magic of stories.
He had so many memories from this little shop, which meant more to him than almost anywhere else in the world.
Sadly, not many other people appreciated the treasures it contained.
They’d had an awful job selling the place after Helgi’s father died, and now, as the majority owner, Helgi found himself back in the lap of his memories.
The middle-aged woman who had attempted to buy the place still held a small share.
She and Helgi had agreed that she could stay on and run the shop on a day-to-day basis, in return for a percentage of the book sales, though these tended to be meagre at best.
Since fate had willed it that the bookshop should end up back in the hands of Helgi’s family, he had no intention of selling it again.
Some of his colleagues dreamt of retiring to the sun, opening a small bar or B for a while she had refused to accept it.
At least here in Akureyri there was less chance of running into her.
He’d been forced to move and make a new start, and had tentatively embarked on a new relationship too.
The girl’s name was Aníta. They’d met briefly earlier that year, just after he had joined the police.
Aníta worked for the Directorate of Health and had helped him with his investigation into the deaths at the old sanatorium outside Akureyri.
A couple of weeks later she’d got in touch to ask how the case had gone and they had met up for coffee.
By then Helgi had broken it to Bergthóra that they had no future together, though it had taken a while longer to close that chapter of his life.
Now the next chapter had begun. He and Aníta had been together for three months, but he hadn’t introduced her to his mother, not yet.
They both wanted to take things slowly. Aníta had stayed behind in Reykjavík to work, though they had discussed the possibility of her coming north to Akureyri with him at Christmas.
At that moment Helgi’s reverie was shattered by the ringing of his phone. He had forgotten to mute it as he usually did when he was reading. When he was off duty, he found that, as a rule, most things could wait.
His heart sank when he saw that the caller was his boss from Reykjavík CID.
Helgi laid the Agatha Christie down as gently as if it were a fragile treasure and took a deep breath before answering.
‘Helgi, Magnús here. How’s it going?’ The greeting was friendly enough but there was an undertone there that Helgi didn’t entirely like.
‘I’m fine, thanks. Still up north.’
‘Yes, right. And your mother, is she improving?’
‘She’s getting there.’ His mother, who had been undergoing rehabilitation following an operation, was making slow but steady progress.
‘I’m very reluctant to bother you during your break, but it occurred to me that you might like… how shall I put it?… the chance to jump on board a case.’
Helgi rolled his eyes and got to his feet. The atmosphere had been ruined. Whatever it was that Magnús wanted, he suspected it would mean returning to Reykjavík sooner than planned.
‘Fire away,’ he said, rather curtly, but then it wasn’t always easy to hide one’s feelings.
‘The thing is, knowing that you’re such a fan of crime fiction…’ Magnús said, no doubt by way of introduction to the real business.
‘That’s right,’ Helgi replied, well aware that his colleagues sometimes made fun of his passion. He invariably carried a book around with him and spent any free time at the station reading instead of chatting to people in the coffee room.
He glanced around him. The shelves were sagging under their tempting load and he felt an almost overwhelming urge to hang up on his boss.
‘Well, it just so happens that an author has gone missing,’ Magnús said.
‘What?’
‘A crime novelist, what’s more. It occurred to me that it would be right up your street.’
At first Helgi thought he must have misheard, then he wondered if Magnús was taking the mickey out of him, for reasons that were obscure.
‘Who’s gone missing? I’m not with you.’
‘Elín S. Jónsdóttir. You’ll know the name.’
‘Of course I do.’ It would be no exaggeration to say that pretty much anyone who read books would know who she was.
Her novels, all ten of them, had sold by the truckload over the last thirty years.
She had set out to write crime fiction in Icelandic long before the genre had become such an unmissable feature of Iceland’s Christmas book flood, and she’d gradually built up a readership until her novels became instant bestsellers on publication, every other year.
And she was no less popular abroad. Then she had abruptly stopped writing on the grounds that her series was complete and she ‘had nothing more to say’, as he remembered her once putting it in an interview.
Naturally, he’d read all her books. There were bound to be copies on the shelves surrounding him at this moment.
‘Has she literally disappeared?’ he asked.
‘Without a trace, I think I can safely say. Her publisher got in touch. No one’s heard from her for several days and she’s not at home.’
Helgi’s imagination instantly took flight.
He didn’t know Elín personally, he’d never met her, but the case fired up his interest to such a degree that he was even prepared to cut short his holiday and return to Reykjavík.
It was the link to literature, the intriguing fact – if he were honest – that a crime novelist should become the subject of a criminal investigation.
What’s more, he had to admit to himself that he was secretly thrilled at the chance to take part in or even run an investigation that would be in the media spotlight.
Missing-persons cases didn’t always attract much attention in Iceland; often they were private tragedies that had no public interest angle, and reporters tended to keep their coverage to a minimum, but there was no way this news would go under the radar, whatever lay behind it.
‘That’s unbelievable,’ he said. ‘Terrible. Are there any clues to what might have happened?’
‘It’s all very recent; the notification has only just landed on my desk. Luckily, the press haven’t got wind of it yet, and I’ve still got to assign the case…’
The offer dangled in the air.
‘I’ll take it,’ Helgi said decisively. ‘I can head back to town today, be with you by this evening.’ Excitement bubbled up inside him. This was what it was all about: the chance to tackle demanding cases, under pressure, and emerge victorious.
‘I’m delighted to hear it. Why don’t you fly? You can fetch your car later. We can’t afford to let the trail go cold, Helgi.’
He considered this for a moment and realized that Magnús was right. At least it would give him an excuse to fly back up north at his employer’s expense to fetch his car and he’d be able to pay his mother another visit at the same time. He could always borrow a police vehicle while in town.
His mother would understand.
‘OK, I’ll be with you this afternoon.’
‘Now you’re talking, Helgi. I doubt anything’s going to happen over the next couple of hours but after that the ball’s in your court.
Mind you, for all we know she may suddenly pop up at lunchtime, back from a holiday or something like that.
If not, we’ll just have to pull out all the stops and be ready with some answers, show that we’re taking it seriously.
I think we should give ourselves a few days to solve it before issuing a press release.
We’ll be under a lot of pressure from the public. But you can handle it, Helgi.’
Helgi had a horrible feeling that this was the explanation for the phone call: Magnús wanted a scapegoat to take the heat if the author didn’t turn up soon. Whereas it went without saying that Magnús would get all the credit if the mystery was solved quickly and successfully.
‘But don’t worry, you have my complete confidence,’ Magnús added, in that smarmy tone of his. ‘Anyway, it may just be a false alarm. Maybe… er… maybe she got lost in one of her own books.’