Thirty-Seven
After the police had left her, Dísa sat on her bed and cried.
She cried for Kata. She cried for her mother. She cried for herself.
She knew that she was responsible for Kata’s death, but she couldn’t bring herself to face that fact. Not now. Not quite yet.
She told herself she hadn’t received any threats from Krakatoa. She hadn’t ignored them. Grandma was an expert at denial; maybe Dísa had inherited some of it. She would try.
Instead, she focused on Kata. On how they had become firm friends within weeks of Dísa moving up to Dalvík from Reykjavík when they were both nine. They just clicked. On Kata’s sweet little puppy who had grown up and then died, run over on the road outside Kata’s house the year before. On the hours spent talking in Kata’s bedroom or her own. About Kata’s first boyfriend. Kata’s second boyfriend. Dísa smiled to herself. There were quite a lot of them and they all needed lengthy discussion, until Matti.
Kata had been going out with Matti for three years. It was serious.
Poor Matti. Dísa knew why Kata had broken up with him: Kata had spent her whole life within the confines of Dalvík where everyone knew everyone else. Now she had escaped to the big city, she realized she wanted to turn over a new leaf, reinvent herself at uni. It wasn’t his fault, but Matti was part of the Dalvík Kata was trying to escape. Dísa and Kata had thrashed it out on the drive back to Reykjavík after Mum’s funeral.
But Kata had never had a chance to explain it to Matti. That was what she had been planning to do the previous evening.
What had seemed to Dísa reasonable, sensible even, now appeared callous and cruel. She should see Matti.
She knew she had to talk to Kata’s parents. She didn’t know how long she could bury her own responsibility for Kata’s death. Best to ring them now. Get it over with.
They had already heard. She spoke to Kata’s mum, a woman she knew really well. An assistant to one of the top managers at the fish-processing plant, Kata’s mum was calm, well organized, reliable.
But not now. Símon, the oldest and kindliest of the three local policemen, had just left, leaving a crater of emotional destruction behind him. Kata’s mum was the wreckage. She wanted all the details Dísa could give her about what had happened. She was absurdly, illogically grateful to Dísa for reporting Kata missing so soon, as if it made any difference.
A voice was whispering in Dísa’s ear, telling her that she was responsible for Kata’s death, that she should tell Kata’s mum, beg for her forgiveness.
Dísa tried to silence that voice, tried to ignore it. She succeeded, but only barely.
She was exhausted when she hung up.
She texted Jói: Call me. Something terrible has happened. Kata has been murdered.
He called a minute later. It was good to talk to him; he promised to come by later that afternoon.
The doorbell rang. It was three girls from Dísa’s economics class. They had heard the news.
Dísa had only known them for a few weeks, but they were kind, they were sympathetic, and they took Dísa’s mind off that insistent whisper: You are responsible for Kata’s death. You as good as killed your best friend.
They went for lunch to a local café. On the way back, Dísa spoke to a couple of journalists who were staking out her flat, Kata’s flat. She mumbled bland, factual responses to their questions.
Then she told the girls she wanted to be alone for a bit.
The time had come to face up to what she had done. What she would do next.
She made herself a mug of mint tea, sat at the kitchen table and looked around Kata’s flat.
She was under no illusions that Kata’s death was the result of a random, anonymous attack. It was Krakatoa.
She had to accept the fact that if she had given Krakatoa his bitcoin back as he had demanded, Kata would still be alive.
For some reason the idea that Kata would turn out to be the ‘someone else’ who might be killed hadn’t occurred to Dísa until she was lying in bed, eyes open, at eleven-thirty the night before and she hadn’t heard Kata return. Maybe she and Matti had made up?
Or maybe Kata was the ‘someone else’ Krakatoa had mentioned.
Dísa had waited, her fears growing, her imagination running amok. Midnight. Twelve-fifteen. She had called Matti. When he said Kata hadn’t shown up that evening, she called the police. She had been frantic. The police officer who took her call was polite at first, then sympathetic, then irritated.
By that stage, it didn’t matter how the police responded: Kata was already dead.
Krakatoa had killed her. Or had had her killed.
Dísa was pretty sure that Sharp was Krakatoa. If Sharp wasn’t in Iceland, he could still have had Kata murdered by an accomplice or a hired killer.
An accomplice. Dad?
No. No way. She couldn’t believe that.
She hadn’t been in touch with him since she had taken his bitcoin, and he hadn’t been in touch with her. She had been expecting a phone call or a visit, a demand that she return his coin, but nothing.
At first, she had hoped he hadn’t realized that it was she who had broken into his trove. But if Krakatoa had figured out it was Dísa, then Dad must have too.
Did Dad know about Krakatoa’s threats?
Dad knew Krakatoa really well. They must trust each other completely — why else would Krakatoa have left the key to his wealth at Dad’s summer house?
Did that mean Dad knew Krakatoa had killed Kata?
The police had asked whether there was a connection between Mum’s murder and Kata’s. Was Dad that connection? Had he somehow murdered Mum? Or got Gunni to do it?’
The thought was unbearable. It was also ridiculous. Dad would never do something like that.
The whole thing was ridiculous.
But it was also real. Kata’s death was real.
So what should Dísa do now?
She fetched her laptop and opened it up. Her phone had been overloaded with messages of sympathy and curiosity, and she expected a few backed up in her computer too.
But there was one that immediately caught her attention. An email.
From: Krakatoa
To: Dísa Ómarsdóttir
Subject: Your theft
Dísa,
I told you what would happen. You ignored me. It happened.
You have until 5 p.m. tomorrow to transfer my 1,962 bitcoin back to my wallet. You have the details.
If you don’t transfer the bitcoin, you will die. If you tell the police anything about me, you will die.
Is that clear?
You are a sensible woman. Do the right thing.
That was clear.
Oh, God!
She thought of the twenty million dollars’ worth of bitcoin she held in her wallet. Twenty million! An unimaginable amount of money. A scary amount of money.
Too much.
Mum had died. Kata had died. Dísa was terrified that if she didn’t do what Krakatoa had demanded, she would die soon too.
There was only one answer.
She hit ‘Reply’. She typed: OK. You win.
Her mouse hovered over ‘Send’.
And hovered.
No. No.
No!
Krakatoa had killed her best friend and probably killed her mother. Krakatoa had ruined dozens of her neighbours in Dalvík, including Gunni. Krakatoa had taken Blábrekka away from her family after five hundred years.
Who knew how many people all over the world Krakatoa had ruined? The eager Chinese, the smiling Ugandans, the smug Dutch in the videos she had seen.