‘Naturally, though I don’t really see how it’s relevant.’
Alexander had ‘forgotten’ to mention the fact in his report.
‘Well, it reduces the likelihood that she’d have taken her own life,’ Hulda pointed out.
‘Not necessarily,’ Albert argued. ‘The whole process puts the applicants under a huge amount of strain.’
‘How did she strike you – in general, I mean? Was she the cheerful type? Or inclined to be depressive?’
‘Hard to say.’ Albert leaned forward over his desk. ‘Hard to say,’ he repeated, ‘since she spoke very little English and I don’t know any Russian.’
‘You used an interpreter, then?’
‘Yes, when required. The process generated quite a bit of paperwork.’
‘Maybe I should talk to the interpreter,’ Hulda muttered, more to herself than to Albert.
‘If you think it’ll help. His name’s Bjartur. He lives in the west of town, works from home. But it’s all in the files. You can borrow them, if you’d like.’
‘Thanks, that would be great.’
‘She was musical,’ Albert added suddenly, as an afterthought.
‘Musical?’
‘Yes, I gather she loved music. My partner keeps a guitar in the office and Elena once picked it up and strummed a couple of tunes for us.’
‘What else did you know about her?’ Hulda asked.
‘What else …? Nothing much,’ Albert replied. ‘We never really learn much about the asylum-seekers we represent, and I try not to get too personal. They usually get sent back, you know.’ He was silent for a moment, then added: ‘It was all very sad. The poor girl. But then, suicide always is.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Yes. Wasn’t that what Alexander’s investigation concluded?’
‘Yes, quite. Alexander’s investigation.’
VIII
‘I thought the case was closed.’ The interpreter, Bjartur, settled himself in an office chair so old and rickety it must have dated back to the eighties. ‘But, if not, I’d be glad to offer any help I can.’
‘Thanks. Did Alexander talk to you at the time? Were you able to provide him with any information?’
‘Alexander?’ Bjartur’s face was blank under his handsome blond mane. He was well named. Bjartur meant ‘bright’. They were sitting in a converted garage, attached to a small detached house in an affluent suburb in the west of town. Surrounded by sea on three sides, the location was pleasant, if windy. When Hulda arrived, she’d rung the bell by the front door and an elderly lady had directed her round to the garage ‘where Bjartur has his office’. There was no chair for visitors, so Hulda made do with perching on the edge of an old bed that was buried under books, many of them in Russian, or so she deduced from the lettering on the spines. Although she had called ahead to warn him she was coming, Bjartur seemed to have made no effort to tidy up. The floor was littered with piles of papers, walking boots and pizza boxes, and there was a heap of dirty clothes in one corner.
‘Alexander’s a colleague of mine from CID,’ she explained, a bad taste in her mouth. ‘He was in charge of the investigation.’
‘Oh, well, I never met him. You’re the first person who’s ever spoken to me about this.’
Hulda felt the bitter resentment flaring up inside her again. If she’d been promoted above Alexander, as she’d deserved, she’d have given him his marching orders long ago.
‘What’s up?’ asked Bjartur, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Has something new come to light?’
Hulda resorted to the same answer she had given the lawyer earlier: ‘Nothing I can comment on at present.’ The truth was that she had nothing to go on apart from a gut feeling, but there was no need to admit the fact. Besides, the conviction had been steadily growing inside her all day that her decision to reopen the inquiry had been the right one: whatever the cause of Elena’s death, it was obvious that the original investigation had been disgracefully slack. ‘Did you meet her often?’
‘Not that often, no. I take on these jobs when they come up. They don’t involve a lot of work and the pay’s pretty good. It’s hard to live off translation alone.’
‘But you manage?’
‘Just about. I do quite a bit of interpreting for Russians, some of it for people in the same situation as … um …’
‘Elena,’ prompted Hulda. Not even Bjartur could remember her name. It was extraordinary how quickly the girl’s presence in Iceland was fading from people’s memories: no one gave a damn about her, it seemed.
‘Elena – of course. Yes, now and then I interpret for people in her situation, but I mainly work as a tour guide for Russians, showing them the sights. Some of them are rolling in it, so the pay’s not bad. Apart from that, I translate the odd short story or book, even do a bit of writing myself –’
‘What was your impression of her?’ Hulda interrupted. ‘Did she seem suicidal at all?’
‘Now you’re asking,’ Bjartur said, thwarted in his desire to talk about himself. ‘Hard to say. Maybe. As you’d expect, she wasn’t exactly happy here. But wasn’t it … I mean, surely it must have been suicide?’
‘Probably not, actually,’ said Hulda, with unwarranted confidence. She had a hunch that the interpreter knew more than he was letting on. The trick was to avoid putting too much pressure on him: all she had to do was be patient and allow him to open up in his own time. ‘Did you study in Russia?’ she asked.
He seemed a little thrown by this abrupt change of subject. ‘What? Oh, yes. At Moscow State University. I fell in love with the city and the language. Ever been there yourself?’
Hulda shook her head.
‘It’s an amazing place. You should visit sometime.’
‘Right,’ said Hulda, knowing she never would.
‘Amazing, but challenging,’ Bjartur went on. ‘A challenging place to be a tourist. Everything’s so alien: the language, the Cyrillic script.’
‘But your Russian’s fluent, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, sure,’ he said airily, ‘but then I got the hang of it years ago.’
‘So you had no problem communicating with Elena?’
‘Problem? No, of course not.’
‘So what did you two talk about?’
‘Not much, really,’ he admitted. ‘Mostly, I just interpreted for her at meetings with her lawyer.’
‘He mentioned that she was keen on music,’ Hulda said, in an effort to keep the conversation moving forward.
‘Oh, yes, that’s right. As a matter of fact, she did talk to me about that. She writes … used to write music. She had no chance of doing it professionally in Russia, but that was the dream: to work as a composer here. She played a tune for us once at the lawyer’s office. She was quite good – well, not bad, you know. But it was totally unrealistic. No one can make a living as a composer in Iceland.’
‘Any more than they can as a translator?’
Bjartur smiled but didn’t rise to this. Instead, after a brief pause, he said: ‘Actually, there was something else …’
‘Something else?’ Hulda asked encouragingly. She could tell from his expression that he was in two minds about whether to go on.
‘You’d better keep it to yourself, though.’
‘Keep what to myself?’
‘Look, I don’t want to get dragged into anything … I can’t …’
‘What happened?’ Hulda asked, employing her friendliest voice.
‘It was just something she said … By the way, this is strictly off the record.’
Hulda forced herself to smile politely, resisting the urge to point out the difference between a police officer and a journalist. Although she had no intention of making any promises, she maintained a diplomatic silence, not wishing to frighten him off.
Her tactic worked. After a moment’s hesitation, Bjartur continued: ‘I think she might have been on the game.’
‘On the game? Working as a prostitute, you mean?’ Hulda asked. ‘What reason do you have for thinking that?’
‘She told me.’
‘This didn’t come out in any of the reports,’ Hulda said angrily, though her anger was directed more at the absent figure of Alexander than at Bjartur.
‘No, it wouldn’t have. She told me the first time we met but insisted she didn’t want anyone else to know. I got the feeling she was scared.’
‘Of what?’