It took Thóra a little while to find on Google what Jósteinn seemed to be referring to. The first entry was an old news story about how a section of Vesturlandsvegur Road had been closed due to a traffic accident, and the police were unsure when it would be reopened. Further details about the accident weren’t available when the story was written, but a short time later a much more detailed article appeared. The article stated that a young girl had been hit by a car and had died. The driver had fled the scene and was being sought, and witnesses were asked to come forward. Thóra vaguely remembered this story as she continued perusing the articles. A huge investigation and a search for witnesses had yielded no result; the only thing that was known was that the girl had been hit by the car as she was crossing the road and had died of her injuries a short time afterwards. The driver had sped off but it seemed inconceivable that he hadn’t been aware of the accident. The investigation appeared to have been extensive; among other things, all garages and car repair workshops had come under scrutiny. Police had hoped it would be possible to determine the make of the vehicle based on evidence at the scene and analysis of the girl’s injuries, but this did not turn out to be the case. They discovered that the vehicle in question had been a medium-sized family car, but they found no further details. The driver failed to respond to repeated requests to turn himself in and no one had witnessed the accident. Gradually the story faded from the media. The girl’s identity had been published: her name was Margrét Svandís Pétursdóttir, but that meant nothing to Thóra. She was sure she’d never seen this name mentioned in connection with Jakob’s case.
Thóra was mainly interested in the next entry concerning the accident. Someone had blogged about a news item that appeared at first to be completely unrelated to this tragedy and had not shown up in the results of Thóra’s Google search. In a short autobiographical description, the blogger said that he was a self-appointed specialist on all things spiritual and supernatural. The story that had inspired him to communicate with the outside world was brief, and described how the Icelandic Church had for the first time in more than a century undertaken to exorcise a ghost. Thóra had missed this tiny story completely at the time; it had probably slipped under the radar among the swarm of breaking stories about the bank collapse, much like the story about the fire. In fact the story had only appeared in one media outlet, and the blog entry was more detailed than the news article itself; it mentioned Vesturlandsvegur Road and the date given in the text message, which is why the search engine had listed it. In the text the blogger said that he knew the exorcism was related to the accident in question, and that when he had been called upon he had clearly sensed that the house was haunted. The girl had been on her way to this house to babysit a young boy when she was run over; since her death was unresolved, her soul had ended up in limbo between this world and eternity. As long as her death remained unresolved, the girl was unable to leave the here and now and she had anchored herself to the child she was due to babysit. Thóra couldn’t make head or tail of most of the entry, which went on to describe the nature of limbo and to discuss other issues related to mediums.
Thóra saw that the names of those who lived in the house were given in the blog entry: Berglind and Haraldur; and although she only had their first names, it would be easy enough to find them in the town of Mosfellsbær. Thóra had to stop and think for a moment. It was undeniably important to find out how this tragedy was connected to Jakob’s case, and she was sure it would help if she could do that before she next met up with that nutter Jósteinn, which she planned to do very soon. The danger was that although Thóra had decoded most of his text messages, and thus might have something of an upper hand in their relationship, the advantage might shift to him if she didn’t stay on the alert. Given the chance, he would avoid her questions and instead continue to drip-feed her snippets of information. Of course she could contact the parents of the girl who’d died, but the thought of calling people who were very likely to still be consumed by grief, even though three years had passed since the accident, was less than appealing. No matter how she imagined starting such a conversation, she always came out sounding mad. Yes, hello, my name is Thóra and I received a text message from a sociopath incarcerated at Sogn, suggesting that a multiple homicide by arson is related to the accidental death of your daughter. Would you be willing to meet up? People who thought they were being haunted, however, were much less likely to hang up on her in mid-sentence. Without further ado, she looked up the number and called.
The conversation turned out to be much easier than Thóra had dared to hope. Berglind didn’t seem remotely shocked when she explained why she was calling, with as much sensitivity as she could muster. It was easy to hear from her gloomy voice and monotone replies that the woman had been having a tough time. When Thóra asked cautiously whether Berglind might be able to meet her, her reply was succinct. Yes, just come now – my husband is at work and I’m not doing anything special.
‘This doesn’t look much like a haunted house.’ Thóra leaned forward to get a better view of the outside. The rectangular house was made of concrete and had two storeys, but it was unimposing. Even a quick lick of paint on the roof and window frames would have improved its appearance enormously. The front door was cheap plywood and looked almost temporary, and unlike the other gardens on the street the front garden was overgrown. But although the house appeared to have been built more cheaply and maintained less well than its neighbours, it was only superficially different to the others on the street. In fact it looked as if improvements were imminent, and it would only be a short time before the cracks in the concrete were repaired, the outside painted, and a new front door put on. A string of unlit Christmas lights lay along the edge of the roof, a reminder of the recent holiday.
‘How do you imagine a haunted house looks?’ asked Matthew, as he tried to decide where to park the car. Both spaces on the driveway were free but he didn’t want to use either of them, since the husband was probably due home any moment and the chances were they would choose his place. Matthew was very concerned about these things. ‘Were you expecting an American wooden house with high gables and broken windows? Maybe a bat hanging upside down from the guttering?’ Matthew parked the car next to the kerb in front of the house.
‘Maybe not that exactly, but this is still different from what I expected.’ Thóra stepped out onto the pavement and the new-fallen snow crunched beneath her feet. ‘Damn, it’s cold.’ She waited while Matthew locked the car. She took a deep breath of the still winter air and noticed a faint but revolting odour that she couldn’t place. ‘Oh, yuck.’ The metallic tang lingered in her mouth and nostrils and grew stronger with every breath. Immediately she felt a chill; she looked again at the house and suddenly it didn’t seem as harmless as it had at first. The dark garden running alongside it seemed sinister somehow, and the building appeared to cast longer and darker shadows than the other houses on the block. She shook off the unpleasant feeling and headed towards the shabby-looking door. Lights were on in most of the windows; upstairs there was a flicker as if a bulb were about to go out, or was it just a television? It wasn’t easy to tell, since all the curtains were drawn. Behind the ones drawn in the kitchen she caught a hazy glimpse of the outline of a person. Thóra couldn’t see whether the person’s face was turned towards them, but she was fairly certain that they were watching her and Matthew walk up the path. The silhouette disappeared just as they reached the house. If it was Berglind, then she’d gone straight to the door, because it opened as soon as Matthew rang the doorbell. The noise of the bell didn’t carry outside, making it seem as if the house had swallowed the sound.