2012
‘Of course, I don’t think there’s any particular reason to be alarmed,’ Rut, Elín’s publisher, said. ‘No call to be seriously worried.’
Helgi was at this moment seated in her living room.
Like Elín, Rut was around seventy, and looked good for her age.
Helgi noticed a faint smell of stale cigarette smoke in the house, unusual these days, and wondered which of the couple smoked.
Both of them, perhaps. Beside the television were two school-leaving photos, of a boy and a girl, a little faded, but recent enough to suggest they were the couple’s children.
Rut was married to an accountant called Thor.
She was sitting on a maroon sofa by the window, and Helgi, facing her, had a view over the leafy Laugardalur valley.
The house was so neat and clean that he found himself wondering if they’d tidied up specially for this visit from the police.
The only thing that didn’t seem to belong in the room was the manuscript of a book, placed right in the middle of the coffee table like a prop in a drawing-room drama.
Rut had asked Magnús if Helgi could meet her at her house rather than her office, explaining that she didn’t want to prompt unnecessary questions from her staff.
‘There’s no reason to be alarmed, you say,’ Helgi echoed. ‘Rut, could you tell me in more detail what’s happened? I know you’ve spoken to my colleague, Magnús, but I’d like to hear it from you. It goes without saying that we’re hoping for the best.’
‘Well, it’s just that no one’s heard from her for more than a week.
Of course, I don’t talk to her every day – and she doesn’t have a mobile phone, which is infuriating.
’ Rut smiled. ‘But we’ve been close friends for many years, and business associates too, ever since she started writing and decided that I should publish her books. ’
‘I gather that she’s definitely not at home?’
‘No. Oh dear, perhaps I should start from the beginning,’ Rut said apologetically.
‘I tend to get ahead of myself. My husband, Thor, is an old schoolfriend of Elín’s.
They regularly meet for lunch once a month.
It’s all arranged well in advance because it’s so difficult to get hold of Elín.
But she didn’t show up when he was expecting her yesterday.
Naturally, Thor told me, and I gave Lovísa a bell – she’s Elín’s best friend.
They’ve known each other since school as well.
Lovísa’s a lawyer – a judge, actually, or rather she used to be a judge, but she’s retired now.
The two of them are so close they’re pretty much inseparable.
They meet once a week, always on a Tuesday, for coffee at Kaffivagninn down by the harbour. Maybe you know it?’
Helgi said he did, though he wasn’t actually sure. He’d grown up in Akureyri and spent little time in Reykjavík’s cafés, but he made a mental note of the name.
‘It’s a very cosy place, with picturesque views of the fishing boats.
I hear – though I’m sure Lovísa will fill you in better – that the tradition has become even more established since she gave up work.
It’s a fixture in both their lives. But Lovísa tells me that Elín didn’t show up on Tuesday.
She didn’t want to make a fuss about it, though, as anyone can forget things.
’ Rut paused for a moment and Helgi seized the opportunity to scribble down some points, though he didn’t usually need to refer to notes as he’d always been able to rely on his memory.
‘Elín usually tells us or Lovísa if she’s going away for any length of time, to the countryside, for example, or abroad.’
Helgi nodded. ‘I see,’ he said, but privately he was afraid he might have been dragged all the way back to Reykjavík to waste his time on a non-story. A woman in her seventies forgot to go to a lunch and didn’t feel like meeting an old friend…
‘Is it possible she’s deliberately disappeared?’ he asked.
Rut seemed taken aback by this suggestion and hesitated for so long before answering that the silence became awkward. ‘I can’t picture her doing that,’ she said at last. ‘I really can’t. Why would she want to?’
‘Hard to say, though I can imagine a few reasons. Not that I’m an expert in missing-persons cases,’ he said without thinking, then caught the look of displeasure that crossed the publisher’s face. She must be wondering what he was doing here if he wasn’t an expert in this area.
He added hastily: ‘Sometimes people are running away. Trying to escape debts or avoid someone—’
‘Elín had no reason to be afraid of anyone,’ Rut interrupted, ‘and she didn’t have any debts.
At least, not to the best of my knowledge.
She doesn’t have any financial worries as she’s comfortably off.
Her books still sell well, especially abroad.
I work hard to promote them here at home too, and sales picked up again a few years ago when German TV began showing a series based on her novels.
That kind of thing provides a real boost. She’s never had money troubles, she’s always been organized about her finances, and the TV series put quite a bit of cash in her pocket, as you can imagine. ’
‘It was only a theory, just one possibility of many. Maybe she needed some time to herself, for private reasons…’
Rut shook her head vehemently.
‘Or,’ Helgi said, ‘perhaps she wanted her name in the news again, to attract publicity. Revive interest in her books—’
‘What rubbish,’ Rut said, affronted on her author’s behalf.
‘Honestly, I find that a preposterous idea. Why would she go to those sorts of lengths to attract attention to her books? It would never even cross her mind to try to boost her sales with a tasteless stunt like that.’ Rut shook her head.
‘Besides, she’d never do that to us, her friends…
We’re genuinely worried about her. She’s got nobody else in the world: we’re her family. ’
‘Fair enough,’ he said, though he wasn’t convinced that his theory had been as far-fetched as the woman was making out.
Perhaps Elín’s decision had been an unconscious one: a trip to the countryside, to the uninhabited highlands; the feeling of freedom associated with not letting anyone know, the sensation of being missed and simultaneously becoming part of the national conversation.
After all, Elín lived in the shadow of her earlier works, in spite of the TV dramas.
Then again, if she missed the old days so much, why didn’t she simply pick up her pen again?
‘Why did she stop writing?’ he asked.
Rut seemed flustered by his question.
‘What? Why… er… I’m not really the right person to answer that. I mean, she’s said more than once in interviews that the series was always envisioned as being precisely ten books long.’
‘I see. Didn’t she give any other explanation for her decision at the time?’
‘No. It was ten good – no, ten brilliant – books, and it’s generally best to stop while you’re at the top of your game. I respected this approach from a writer like Elín, though I won’t deny that it would have suited me better as a publisher to have more books.’
‘I know my questions probably sound odd to you,’ Helgi said. ‘But I’m simply trying to get a handle on the situation. And the first thing we need to do is make absolutely sure she really is missing and that it’s not all some big misunderstanding—’
Rut interrupted again, raising her voice: ‘There is no misunderstanding. Elín has disappeared: it’s blindingly obvious. I went round to her house this morning – all three of us have keys, you see – and it was clear that—’
‘You, your husband – and Lovísa?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’
‘Yes, and I could see immediately that Elín hadn’t been home for several days. The newspapers and her post had been piling up.’
Helgi observed that the woman appeared to be on the defensive. As if she was afraid of making a mistake.
‘Can you think of any explanation, Rut?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Anything – however far-fetched or seemingly obvious – that might shed light on her disappearance?’
‘No,’ Rut answered, perhaps a little too quickly.
Her hesitation came afterwards. He got the impression that something wasn’t being said.
‘Something’s happened,’ Rut went on. ‘That’s clear to me.
People don’t just vanish for no reason. I’m glad the police are taking this seriously, but then of course Elín’s a public figure and the police can’t afford to mess up a case like this. ’
‘Do you think someone could have harmed her?’
Rut appeared stunned by the question. ‘I just can’t believe that.
No, I’m wondering if she could have gone for a day trip or a weekend away, something like that, to the countryside, maybe to a summer cabin, or that she went for a walk in the mountains, set out to climb Mount Esja – what do I know? – and had a stroke or…’
‘Did she have a pre-existing condition?’
‘No, far from it. That’s the problem.’
Helgi nodded.
Rut continued: ‘In fact, she was one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.’
The choice of words, her use of the past tense, gave Helgi a sudden shiver of misgiving.