I Remember You

Chapter 16

Freyr had actually never given the house in which he lived much thought. For him it was just a stopping point, not a place he wanted to become tied to. Most of the furniture had come with the house and would remain there when he moved, either back to Reykjavík or to other accommodation in the west. Perhaps he might even end up buying. As a result he lived there as if it were a hotel: folding his clothes and placing them all together on one shelf in the wardrobe, where he also hung his shirts and suit jackets. He used other storage spaces in the house just as sparingly, like a guest who shouldn’t be opening doors or drawers unnecessarily. He even kept his food in one corner of the refrigerator. His only personal effects were the photos of his son, which he could gather into a box in under five minutes. It wasn’t as if there were any limitations on how he might use the house; when the hospital’s personnel director had given him the keys, they were accompanied by the warmest wishes for his stay there; he was to make himself at home. Freyr had thanked him and asked nothing further, having not felt inspired to ask how the hospital came to own the house.

Now that he had some idea of the identity of its former owner, he looked at it in a new light, indoors and out. He’d gone from room to room and examined the books and other items on the shelves, the furnishings and everything else that had awaited him when he first set foot inside the house. Until now he hadn’t paid any attention to any of it, let alone wondered where the things had come from. But at the end of his investigation of the house he felt sure that very little of it had belonged to the woman who’d died in the garden. There was no consistency to anything, either in period or style. The photos on the wall were colour reproductions, the furniture shabby and poor quality. The lavishly patterned curtains were the only thing he thought might have belonged to Védís, as they looked like they had been chosen with thought and care, though they weren’t to his taste. Considering that Védís must have been born around 1940, like Halla and the others in the class, the furnishings should mainly have been from the seventies, not a mishmash of various time periods during the past century. The dinner service, glasses and tableware, pots and pans all looked as if they’d come from a show kitchen at Ikea. It was inconceivable that an elderly woman during all her years as a householder hadn’t acquired so much as one spoon that would remain in her home. The hospital must have found itself with an empty residence and furnished it, buying most of the items from the charity shops or Kolaport Flea Market and the rest from Ikea. The furnishings told him nothing about Védís, in other words. Dagný had called him at his office and told him the entire story of the circumstances leading to the hospital’s purchase of the house. He’d avoided contacting her; she must already think he was strange enough after his behaviour of the previous few days. According to the information Dagný had obtained, the former owner had left the hospital her possessions in her will. The woman she spoke to had made a point of saying that the bequest had taken people completely by surprise, since Védís had had absolutely no ties to the hospital. She had never been admitted for long-term patient care or needed the hospital’s services beyond the usual sort of requirements. Still, something had inspired her to do this, because approximately a week before her death she’d drawn up her will and made these arrangements for her one significant asset. Although it was unclear what had motivated her, her charitable gesture had certainly come in handy; quite a lot of the staff moved to Ísafjörður from out of town and needed a place to stay.

And this is how Freyr came to be living in this house. A single, elderly woman had decided to bequeath her home to his future workplace. Shortly afterwards, she had fallen onto a pair of sharp garden shears. Freyr found this almost too explicable a coincidence compared to the conspiracy theories that had run through his head when Dagný first told him about it. He was ashamed at how quick he’d been to over-interpret something that was nothing, thereby falling into the same mindset as his patients, which had lately become a disturbingly common occurrence. He let the heavy curtain fall and watched the pale pink material swing slowly back and forth a few times. There was no reason to stare any longer at the garden and the scrubby undergrowth that no doubt missed the care of its former owner. Freyr thought he knew where the accident must have occurred, though this wasn’t due to any kind of epiphany, but to a hunch based on a few things he’d been thinking about.

There was a little spot at the edge of the garden, directly across from the large living room window, where a concrete wall separated the garden from the pavement. Next to it was a handsome bush that had dropped its leaves before Freyr moved in. He had no idea what type it was. If pressed, he would guess that it was a rosebush, based on the thorns hidden in the dark mess of branches. They couldn’t be seen from where Freyr stood at the living room window, but he remembered them from when he’d fetched a ball there for some neighbourhood children. For some reason they hadn’t wanted to get the ball themselves, but had instead knocked on Freyr’s door and asked him if he would. When he thought about it, only one boy had stood on his doorstep. The others had hung back on the pavement and watched from a safe distance. At the time, Freyr had thought that they didn’t want to walk on the pale yellow grass without permission, or were afraid the house owner would give them an earful, but now he had the sneaking suspicion that the garden’s sinister history had been the reason. They were old enough to remember the accident and probably little else had been discussed in the area in the months after Védis’s sudden death. Freyr couldn’t be sure he wasn’t making things up to fill in the gaps, but now he recalled that when he’d gone over to the bush to reach for the colourful plastic ball, he’d experienced an uneasiness he couldn’t explain. In retrospect, he’d felt as if silence and darkness dwelt at the roots of the bush, and that a jaunty, colourful plastic ball had no business being there.

No doubt this memory had got scrambled in his mind, but that was irrelevant. In front of the bush was a dark spot, a dark brown area of bare earth in an otherwise tidy patch of grass that the winter had treated relatively mildly. Nothing had been there that could explain the absence of grass, and although Freyr had had little interest in the garden, he would probably have noticed if a rock or some other large thing had disappeared from the spot, not least because it was visible from the living room window. No, he was convinced that it was there the woman had bled to death, and that if he looked into it, a sensible explanation would be found for the absence of grass there. Maybe the saltiness of Védís’s blood had affected the soil, or neighbours or the clean-up team had unwittingly spilt toxic cleaning solution over the area. The woman must have bled copiously.

Freyr fidgeted irritably. He’d already eaten, and packed the few things that he wanted to take with him to Reykjavík the next morning, and although the late news was about to start he couldn’t bring himself to turn on the television. He felt ill at ease enough already without the state of the nation making things worse. Without consciously deciding to do so, he put on his tracksuit. At the front door he stopped and stared at his key ring, stamped with the emblem of the town of Ísafjörður. On it were four keys: two identical ones to the house, one to the garage and the fourth to a storage room in the basement, which he’d had no use for. He remembered feeling that the once-over he’d given it when he moved in was all he needed. He gnawed thoughtfully at the inside of his cheek before sticking the key in his pocket and strolling out into the cool winter evening. He would jog his usual circuit and no doubt feel better afterwards; at least he would be physically tired, which should make it easier for him to fall asleep. Then he resolved not to think of anything other than what he saw on his run.

When he got outside, however, he couldn’t resist the temptation to look at the spot where he now thought Védís had died. On this mild winter evening there was no particular smell of plants or flowers, yet Freyr could detect a faint scent of drowsing nature as he breathed deeply through his nose. However, when he stood over the dark spot, that scent gave way to a heavier, more powerful odour. Freyr felt a burning sensation in his nose and mouth as he inhaled the rank air, and he covered them with his hand. He bent down and picked up a thin branch from beneath the bush and poked a bit at the dark brown earth. It was moist and seemed warmer than it should have been, although Freyr couldn’t bring himself to place his palm on the spot. If it was a toxic material that prevented anything from growing there, he had no interest in getting it on his hands. He stood up halfway before stiffening as a grating metallic sound came from under the shrub.

At the same moment, an image of garden shears appeared in his mind.

Freyr took a deep breath and again smelled the powerful odour that emerged when he poked at the soil. He felt nauseous but forced himself to bend back down and peer beneath the overgrown, ragged bush. Of course there were no shears, and in fact it was remarkable how little he could see. It was dark outside now, certainly, but beneath the bush it was as if the darkness were even blacker, not even allowing a glimpse of the wall two metres behind it. Even without leaves the branches were dense enough to prevent the dull glow of nearby streetlights from penetrating them. Freyr shook his head, annoyed at himself for letting his imagination mess with his mind like that. He stood back up and walked determinedly towards the gate, acting as if he couldn’t hear the grating sound that followed him. He felt very relieved when he emerged from the garden and started running down the street.

Although he ran quickly, he hadn’t gone far before he heard another jogger approaching from behind at even greater speed. The jogger ran rhythmically, much lighter on his or her feet than Freyr. When the footsteps sounded as if the jogger were on the verge of catching him, he slowed down slightly to let this keen athlete go past. He felt a clumsy grip on his shoulder and Dagný asked him breathlessly to relax a bit. ‘Are you in a hurry?’ She stood with her hands on her thighs and exhaled. ‘I saw you start off just as I was finishing and I was going to say hello to you, but you ran off so fast that I started to think you were trying to get away from me.’

Jogging on the spot so as not to lose his pace, Freyr smiled at Dagný. It felt great to see her; she was the opposite of everything that he’d been mulling over and imagining in the past few hours. Her red cheeks and rapid breathing were a connection to life and everything the future had to offer, while the horrible furnishings and unkempt garden belonged to the past and a history that nothing could change. ‘Sorry. I would have stopped if I’d seen you.’

Dagný straightened up. ‘I’d be happy to jog a bit more with you if you promise to go just a bit slower.’

Freyr would have agreed to run backwards if she’d asked. ‘Absolutely. You have no idea how starved I am for some company.’ In fact, he would have been happy just to continue jogging on the spot there on the pavement, staring into Dagný’s grey-blue eyes. They weren’t entirely identical; one was set at a tiny bit more of an angle than the other, which was precisely what made her face irresistible.

‘I followed you because I was thinking of looking in on you,’ said Dagný after they’d set off again. ‘I figured you were probably wondering about all of this and I thought maybe I could help. I remember Védís well, which maybe isn’t saying much.’

‘Were you living round here when she died?’

‘No, I bought my house two years ago, after she’d already passed away. But she was certainly enough of a character to attract attention, even if you weren’t her next-door neighbour.’ Dagný stopped to catch her breath before continuing. ‘Is there anything in the house that could conceivably provide clues about her connection to the other cases? I must confess that I don’t understand what it’s all about.’

‘It doesn’t look to me as if any of her belongings are still there. They might have gone to her relatives, though the hospital inherited the house itself.’ Freyr lessened his speed slightly; he mustn’t forget that she’d already done her share of jogging for the day.

Dagný seemed happy to be able to slow down a bit. ‘The hospital got everything, naturally, but after the assessor went over the household inventory it turned out that it had some value, since a lot of it came from her parents’ estate, including some antiques. I was told that the bulk of it was sold in Reykjavík, but that her most personal effects were kept back in case a relative came looking for them later. And of course a lot of stuff was thrown out.’

‘I still haven’t had a proper look at the storage room in the basement. Maybe the stuff they kept is there. At least I know it’s not anywhere else in the house, or in the garage. I’ve never given much thought to the house’s former residents until now; I don’t even know much about the guy who lived there before I moved in. I just know he was a doctor from Reykjavík, like me.’

‘Yes, he moved out a few months before you arrived.’

Freyr knew nothing more about the man than what he’d heard at the hospital, which was that he hadn’t completed his contract and that he didn’t seem to have been very popular – possibly as a result, although it might also have been down to his personality. ‘But if the things are in the storeroom now, is it okay to look through them, or open boxes? Obviously I don’t own the stuff, though it is in the house I live in.’

Dagný slowed down even more. ‘I can promise you that no one here in Ísafjörður is going to start snooping around to find out what you’ve been up to in your house. You were given a key and if it opens the storeroom containing some of the deceased owner’s things, then it’s entirely up to you if you take a look at it.’

They jogged in silence for another short stretch before Freyr noticed that Dagný was really starting to tire and suggested they turn back. He could have carried on running for a good while longer but preferred to jog back with her rather than continue on alone. When they got to the house he decided to invite her in for a glass of red wine, soft drink, tea, beer, coffee, or whatever she wanted. She looked down, exhaled, and then accepted his offer, on the condition that she first be allowed to go home and shower; she would come back in half an hour or so. Four minutes later he had finished showering himself, having invented a quick method of doing so during his student years, when he was always in a rush and it felt as though every minute could make a difference. He dried himself and dressed with the same speed, and in order to shorten his wait for Dagný he decided to go and have a look in the storeroom. The evening was so tranquil and the neighbourhood so still that he would no doubt hear her when she opened the old steel gate.

It was darker in the back garden than the front. He was very careful to support himself with his hand on the wall as he went down the basement stairs. Visibility was poor and he didn’t want to fall or trip up, especially not when he was expecting a visitor. The hinges creaked loudly as he opened the door. He reached for the light switch inside and looked around at the nearly empty basement.

There was as little to see as there had been last time. Dust danced in the beam of light. Freyr decided to look behind the little partition towards the back of the basement, something he hadn’t done before when he’d merely peeked in. There he found a cardboard box, upon which was written in large letters, with a black marker: Védís Arngrímsdóttir. Without thinking about it too much, he lifted the box, worrying that he might not hear Dagný.

He was going to wait to open it until Dagný was gone, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity and looked inside. The box contained mainly books, and on top was an old, worn-out notebook with a handwritten title: Dream Diary 2001–