‘I agree with you there,’ replied Leifur. ‘Unfortunately I didn’t know Alda at all well. Of course I knew who she was, and there was quite a lot of contact between our parents in those days; but as I told you, she was younger than me, so 1 didn’t pay much attention to her. After we went to the mainland the friendship between our parents pretty much fizzled out. They moved to the Westfjords, if I remember correctly, while my father kept on fishing in the South.’
‘But doesn’t her mother live here in the Islands?’ asked Thóra. ‘That was my understanding from Kjartan at the harbour-master’s office, and he also said her father died recently.’ She added in explanation: ‘I met Kjartan yesterday at Markus’ suggestion.’
Leifur nodded. ‘As I said, I know that Jóhanna, Alda’s sister, still lives here, but I’m not certain about their mother. To tell the truth, there was no love lost between me and my father’s old friends. Especially not after I took over the business.’
‘Oh?’ responded Thóra.‘What happened?’
Leifur rolled his eyes, exasperated. ‘I thought Dad was much too sentimental about them. It was as if he felt he owed them something, particularly Geiri, Alda’s father, even though all of the negotiations were perfectly above board.’
‘Now I don’t understand,’she said. ‘What negotiations are you talking about?’
‘The purchase of the first ship,’replied Leifur. ‘They bought it in partnership, Dad and Geiri, Alda’s father. That’s how the company worked at first, it was co-owned by the two of them.’ He pointed out a painting of a ship hanging on the wall behind her. ‘That’s the boat, Strokkur VE, a hundred-ton motor trawler. The painting was in Dad’s office. I removed it when I took over, since to me it was so closely connected to him, and I wanted to make it clear to everyone that a new skipper was at the helm. I still wanted to be able to see it, just not at work.’ Leifur smiled. ‘It wouldn’t be considered an enormous ship today, but in its time people thought it was quite something.’ His expression was oddly proud and affectionate, although the painting couldn’t exactly be called a masterpiece.‘They hadn’t owned the ship for more than a year before the eruption, and Dad disagreed completely with Geiri over further operations. He wanted to keep the fishing company going after the eruption, but Geiri simply gave up and let Dad buy him out.’
‘I saw an old news report from the period about a trawler that had been sunk to collect insurance money,’said Thóra. ‘That suggests the industry hadn’t exactly been easy for everyone.’
‘Very true,’ said Leifur.‘It was terribly hard for a while. Luckily we never had to resort to the desperate measures you describe, but we were no doubt not far from it when things were at their worst.’
‘Was your father a wealthy man before he started the fishing operation?’ asked Thóra, turning from the painting to Leifur. ‘I know less than nothing about ships, but I expect they cost quite a bit.’
Leifur smiled. ‘No, he really wasn’t wealthy at all. He put everything he had into financing his half, and even that came nowhere near the total cost of the boat. He and Geiri took out a large loan to make the purchase, and mortgaged everything they owned. The ship also had a huge mortgage, of course. Because of that, Dad only needed to pay Geiri back what he’d contributed originally, but there was no profit foreseeable in the operation during those first few years and it was unclear whether it could keep going after the eruption. Part of the collateral disappeared with our house and that complicated the family’s finances a great deal.’ Leifur took a sip of wine. ‘But Dad didn’t give up even when things were going really badly; if anything, he became more enthusiastic. He managed to keep the ship, and trumped that by buying the only processing plant here at the harbour for peanuts, while the eruption was still happening. It had been written off by its former owners when he took the chance on it, but he got it going again, even before the eruption stopped. No one would have believed it when the deal was made, because at the time people thought all the property in the Westmann Islands would be worthless.’
‘How did your father actually pay his debts?’ asked Thóra. ‘Was it possible to fish, despite the disaster?’
‘The Westmann Islands fleet had a record catch that winter. Dad caught more fish than he ever had before, but he didn’t land his catches in the Islands until after he’d purchased the plant. Dad was hard-working, but he was also lucky. Good catches and inflation that ate up the loan over time helped him start raking it in. When the processing operation got off the ground, slowly but surely he was able to build up his own fleet of ships, and over time he added a trawler, then another and so forth. He also laid the foundations of the company as it exists today during the eruption. His boldness when everything appeared hopeless worked to make him wealthy, while his friend, who lost his courage during the hard times, was left behind with nothing to show for it.’
‘I saw a photograph of your father, this Geiri and others at Kjartan’s office,’ said Thóra.‘One of them was the police inspector Gudni Leifsson, whom I understand was one of your father’s friends. As I understand it, their friendship was severed at some point.’
Leifur shook his head. ‘No, father and Gudni have been friends their whole life. But Kjartan took offence when he was connected to a case of liquor smuggling. He thought that Gudni should have turned a blind eye to his part in it, in the light of their being friends. Dad wasn’t involved in that, luckily. I don’t understand why Kjartan is still going on about it, since the case was dismissed and he never suffered at all because of it.’
Leifur cleared his throat and fiddled with a button on his shirt. Thóra got the impression that he wasn’t telling her the whole truth, but didn’t think he was lying, exactly. He looked quizzically at her. ‘Is Gudni making life hard for you?’
‘No,’ said Thóra half-heartedly. ‘At least, not yet. Hopefully this investigation will be over before he can.’
Leifur’s jaw clenched and he seemed on the verge of saying something, but at that moment Maria and Bella reappeared, trailing smoke behind them, so he stopped. Much to Thóra’s relief, the main course was leg of lamb. She was sure Leifur hadn’t told her everything. Those who are not used to hiding the truth always give themselves away.
Chapter Twelve
Thóra put down her mobile phone and heaved a sigh. ‘No answer,’ she said regretfully to Bella.‘That was the last one.’ They were sitting in the hotel lobby, where Thóra had gone online to look for the telephone numbers of women Markus thought had been friends with Alda when she was young. Thóra had called him shortly after she got up to tell him that she was making no progress in the search for anyone who could back up his story about the box. Markus had told her some names, and judging by the list Thóra had scribbled down Alda had been extremely popular. Unfortunately Markus had difficulty remembering surnames, so after a long search Thóra ended up with only five names. Three had answered and they all told the same story. They had been great friends with Alda in the old days but hadn’t kept in touch, since unlike them Alda had moved to the Westfjords after the eruption and hadn’t returned to the Islands with her parents after a year.
According to the women, the majority of the refugees had lived in and around Reykjavik, but for some reason Alda’s family ended up out in the countryside. They didn’t know whether this had happened because of relatives or work, since they never spoke to Alda at the time, although they had all tried to find her. She hadn’t been in the‘Eruption Class’ that was put together in the Bustadur School for teenagers from the Islands, nor on the trip to Norway the summer after the eruption, to which all of the children from the Westmann Islands between six and sixteen had been invited. One of the women thought this was odd, saying that Alda had often spoken of how much she wanted to go abroad. None of them recalled Alda having entrusted a secret to them right before the eruption, nor had any of them been on board the same boat to the mainland as Alda on the night of the evacuation. So they could not bear witness to any conversation between Alda and Markus, although they all remembered Markus very well, and they all even mentioned how much of a crush he had had on her. The only thing that came out of these conversations was that one of the women professed herself amazed that Alda hadn’t accompanied her parents back to the Islands when they finally returned, instead choosing to move to Reykjavik and attend junior college there under the protective wing of her father’s family. The woman even thought it likely that Alda had never again set foot in the Islands after the eruption.