1976
‘I’m not happy about this.’
Hulda felt a knot of anxiety tightening in her stomach.
She was sitting facing her boss, Hordur.
Although sparing with his praise, in practice he had been quite good to her.
She preferred having him as a boss to most of the other senior officers in the police, yet she never really knew what he was thinking.
Perhaps it was a deliberate strategy on his part, a way of controlling his underlings, or perhaps he was just a bad manager.
For a horrible moment, she believed he was about to give her the sack on the grounds that her performance hadn’t been up to scratch, although she knew this wasn’t fair.
She worked longer hours than almost anyone else in her position and never overlooked anything of importance.
‘Don’t get lost in the detail,’ Hordur had once told her.
If anything, she had taken this as praise.
‘I’m sorry?’ she said now.
‘Oh, that’s just me, starting in the middle of a thought. Look, they want us to talk to Einar, at the old penitentiary. The lad who robbed the bank.’
Hulda nodded.
Like most people, she was familiar with the bank robbery just over ten years previously – the ‘big robbery’, as it was called – in which a security guard, a man approaching retirement age, had lost his life.
It had been carried out by two masked men, but the police had only succeeded in arresting one of them.
The Einar in question hadn’t quite been caught red-handed, but as good as, and he had confessed to the crime after a long series of interrogations.
But he had never shopped his accomplice, which meant the crime had only ever been half solved.
Einar was currently serving a sixteen-year prison sentence.
‘Why?’ Hulda asked. ‘I thought he’d been interviewed repeatedly over the years?’
‘He’s been a bit under the weather lately.
It seems prison doesn’t agree with him. It’s a sad story, depressing.
A young man, in his prime, with everything to look forward to, taking a disastrous decision like that.
An armed robbery in Reykjavík – need I say more?
Of course, he didn’t mean to hurt anybody – he’s claimed that repeatedly, and I believe him – but you can’t walk into a bank with a loaded shotgun and assume that nothing will go wrong. ’
‘Under the weather, you said?’
‘It’s like he’s wasting away in there, losing the will to live. Not that he’s tried to take his own life or anything. But the upshot is that I’ve been asked to send someone down to Skólavordustígur to talk to him. Who knows? Maybe he’ll be willing to open up at last…’
‘If he’s dying anyway, you mean?’ Hulda asked.
‘Well, you could say that. Though, of course, we can’t be sure.
He may still rally. Anyway, I wanted to ask you to take on the job, Hulda.
Could you be persuaded to go? I have a feeling it’ll be a waste of effort, but it occurred to me that it might surprise him to be confronted by a female officer.
An unexpected, novel experience. After all, he’s been questioned by any number of men over the years without success.
And you’ve got a way with people. I’ve been watching you. ’
‘Thanks.’
‘So you’d be willing to do it?’
‘Yes, of course.’