She nodded but didn’t immediately obey. She couldn’t face pulling on the bulky jacket again, not quite yet.
He took out a stove that he called a sprittprímus in Icelandic, saying he didn’t know how to translate the name, lit it and heated up some baked beans. She wolfed hers down. They were delicious accompanied by cold water from the river, and brought a warm glow to her insides, but the effects didn’t last long. Little by little, the cold began creeping into her bones with the inactivity. They might as well have been sitting outside in the snow as in this unheated hut.
By the time she put on her coat again it was too late, the cold had well and truly got its claws into her. Teeth chattering, she paced to and fro in the small space, doing her best to get the circulation back in her fingers and toes.
‘I’ll boil some water for you,’ he said. ‘Would you like some tea?’
She nodded.
Each mouthful of tea sent a tiny current of warmth through her frozen body, but then the shivering would reassert itself.
Suddenly, he stood up and reached for his backpack.
‘I’ve got …’ he started, hesitantly, almost as if he were embarrassed. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
She wasn’t sure how to react. His voice was friendly; there was nothing to be afraid of, she felt. Had he bought a gift for her? Why? She didn’t have anything for him.
He opened the backpack and started scrabbling around in it, searching for something, almost frantically.
‘Sorry … It’s in here somewhere … Sorry.’
She waited, rather anxiously.
Finally, he presented her with a small box, wrapped in what looked – in the gloom – like gold wrapping paper.
‘Here, it’s for you.’ He almost stammered. ‘It’s just a little something I picked up, nothing much.’
‘Why?’ she wanted to ask, but didn’t.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and accepted the box, unwrapping it clumsily with her cold fingers. Inside was a small black box, obviously something from a jeweller’s.
‘Shall I open it?’ she asked, hoping the answer would be no.
‘Yes, yes, go ahead.’
Inside, she saw a pair of earrings and a small ring.
What on earth was this supposed to mean?
She didn’t say anything, just stared at the gifts. She hoped it wasn’t an engagement ring or anything like that. But no, of course it couldn’t be …
She looked up. He was watching her.
‘Sorry, it was just something I saw at the shopping centre, when I was buying stuff for the trip. I thought you might need something nice, you know. You can take it back to the shop if you like, get something else, a bracelet, shoes, whatever … you know.’
‘Thanks,’ she replied, and an awkward silence ensued.
‘We’ll crack on early tomorrow morning,’ he said, hastily changing the subject. ‘Better get a good night’s sleep.’
VII
‘I hope you learned something useful,’ said ólíver, giving Hulda a patronizing smile. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’ve got other work I need to be getting on with.’
Ignoring his hint, Hulda asked: ‘Do you know anything about a Russian girl who vanished from the asylum-seekers’ hostel last year?’
‘Vanished? Well … yes, now you come to mention it, I remember we did issue an appeal for information about a missing asylum-seeker. A girl. Though I don’t remember where she was from.’
‘Could you look it up?’
ólíver rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Give me your phone number and, when I get a minute, I’ll let you know.’ He bestowed on her the same infuriatingly condescending smile.
‘Could you look it up now?’ Hulda barked, in a tone of such sharp authority that he jumped.
‘Now? Er, all right, I suppose …’
He sat down in front of the computer with a long-suffering air.
After a bit of tapping and clicking, he announced: ‘Yes, she was Russian.’
‘Katja?’ Hulda asked.
He peered at the screen. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘What happened?’
‘Give me a chance to read it,’ he said irritably.
Hulda sighed.
‘Yes, seems we lost her,’ he confirmed at last.
‘You lost her?’ Hulda echoed, scandalized by this choice of word.
‘Yes, she never came back to the hostel. It happens, though not often. Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding, sometimes they try and make a break for it, forgetting we live on an island. They always turn up again.’ After a moment, he qualified this: ‘Almost always.’
‘But not her?’
‘No, actually. Not yet, at any rate. But we’ll find her.’
‘It’s been over a year. Are you still optimistic about that?’
‘Well, I wasn’t handling the case, so I wouldn’t know.’
‘Who is supposed to be handling it, then?’ Hulda asked impatiently.
ólíver shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look like anyone’s handling it, not directly. The file’s still open. She’s bound to turn up eventually.’
Hulda nodded. ‘I see.’
‘Maybe she’s left the country,’ he suggested, looking hopeful. ‘By sea? Who knows? That would take care of the problem, so to speak.’ He grinned.
‘Did they search for her?’
‘Not in any systematic way, as far as I can see. We did ask around, but there were no real leads.’
‘Don’t tell me: no one was particularly bothered about finding her because there were other, more pressing matters to be getting on with?’
‘You could put it like that,’ ólíver replied, not even having the grace to look ashamed. Though, to give him his due, he had at least begun to take her more seriously. Maybe she had been a bit hard on ólíver; she wasn’t usually this rude, but the last couple of days had been extremely trying.
‘You couldn’t possibly give me a lift, could you?’ she asked, more politely than before. She was still tired and aware of a dull throbbing behind her eyes.
‘Where to?’
‘To the cove where Elena’s body was found. What’s it called again? Flekkuvík?’
ólíver looked as if he were about to refuse, but she backed up her request with a ferocious scowl to show that she wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the end, he agreed with bad grace. ‘OK, let’s get a move on, then.’
VIII
He climbed into the bunk directly above hers. Though the proximity made her deeply uncomfortable, there wasn’t much she could do about it.
She had placed one of the candles on the chair beside the bed to give herself a little light. Their head torches were lying on the table where he had put them after switching them off, insisting that they needed to spare the batteries. She struggled into her sleeping bag, no easy task when bundled up in a thick jumper and woollen underwear, and wriggled down as far as she could. Then she blew out the candle, and the blackness closed in, relieved only, after a moment, by the faint grey outlines of the windows.
God, she was so cold, so terribly cold. The chill seemed to spread through her whole body. She tried to close the neck of her sleeping bag, clutching it tightly around her so the heat wouldn’t escape, and finally resorted to tucking her head inside as well, closing the gap until there was only a tiny opening for her nose and mouth. Yet even then she couldn’t get warm.
Normally, she was quick to drop off, but not here, in these alien surroundings. She lay, waiting for sleep to come, trying in vain to conquer her sense of suffocation.
IX
Ten minutes after leaving Keflavík, they took the turn-off to Vatnsleysustr?nd.
‘Just five minutes further along the coast,’ said ólíver, heaving a sigh. ‘And after that you’ll have a bit of a hike down to the sea, if you’re sure you can be bothered.’
‘We’ll have a hike, you mean,’ said Hulda, as if nothing could be more natural. ‘You’re coming with me to show me the spot.’
At this, ólíver gave a resigned nod.
He pulled up beside a track that looked as if it led down to the shore. It had been blocked off with a pile of rocks. ‘This is as far as we can go by car,’ he announced. ‘There’s no way round the barrier.’
The cove was further away than Hulda had expected, and the weather was lousy, too. Was she really going to put herself through this ordeal?