‘Do you know if your father was badly affected by Jakob’s death?’
Ásta shrugged. ‘The fishermen here often used to go out in bad weather. Some of them didn’t come back. That’s life in a fishing village. I don’t think my father allowed himself to get sentimental — it wasn’t done in those days. Is it my father you’re interested in?’
‘No, not particularly,’ said Erlendur. ‘But do you remember him mentioning any unusual details about the incident?’
‘I can’t say I do.’
‘Nothing about the funeral?’
‘No, I don’t know. What are you getting at?’
‘I was discussing all this with some people from Eskifjördur, including a woman who dimly remembered your father saying he’d heard — or thought he’d heard — a noise coming from the coffin as it was being lowered into the ground.’
The woman studied Erlendur. ‘Nobody’s ever told me that,’ she said eventually.
‘No, I’m not surprised. It sounds like an old wives’ tale that got going after what happened to Jakob. He lost his wife, you see, and there were rumours that she haunted him. So that’s probably how the story started.’
‘Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I knew Jakob’s wife had died but Dad never said a word about this. Not as far as I know, anyway. Are you sure it was Dad?’
‘I expect the story’s got a bit garbled. It could have been somebody else, or more likely pure invention.’
‘But you don’t think so?’
‘Oh, of course I do,’ said Erlendur quickly. ‘It’s just a minor detail of the incident. I thought I’d ask you in case it sounded familiar.’
‘Well, it doesn’t.’
‘Did he ever talk about Jakob and his wife Matthildur?’
‘Not really.’
‘Are any of your father’s friends still alive?’
‘Not these days. Well, apart from old Thórdur.’
Thórdur lived with his son and daughter-in-law about two minutes’ walk from Ásta’s house. After obtaining his address, Erlendur rose to his feet and said a hasty goodbye, adding, in a belated attempt at courtesy, that he didn’t want to keep her. He was keen to avoid sowing any unnecessary seeds of suspicion. Her husband was still sitting in front of the TV. There was a noise of gunshots and shouting. Unfortunately, Erlendur’s clumsy departure only served to make Ásta more curious about the purpose of his odd visit and request, and he was forced to answer or else dodge a barrage of questions about her father, Jakob and his wife Matthildur, about the shipwreck and exactly why Erlendur was so concerned about the incident and those involved. He sensed she was having misgivings about talking to him and before he knew it her suspicions were being directed specifically at the connection between Matthildur and her father. He couldn’t work out where this development had come from and tried unsuccessfully to clear up the misunderstanding as he paused in the doorway. But he left the woman standing at the entrance to her house, wearing a baffled expression.
Thórdur was eighty-five years old and existed in a world of silence. He was deaf as a post and no hearing aid could help him now. All he could hear was his own internal monologue, which he did not hesitate to share. In fact, he wasn’t in the least shy about talking and had a tendency to shout, as if he wanted to be sure no one would miss what he said, even if he couldn’t hear it himself. He lived in a small basement flat that his son had converted for him in his house. The son showed Erlendur downstairs and left them alone together. Erlendur had explained about his research into shipwrecks and repeated this to Thórdur who seemed pleased by the unexpected visit. His flat was nothing more than a large room containing a decent-sized bed, a TV, a desk and a washbasin. Books were piled wherever there was space.
Communicating with the deaf old man turned out to be perfectly simple. On his desk were paper and pencils, and anything Erlendur wanted to say or ask had to be written down and passed to Thórdur who answered instantly.
‘I see you’re a reader,’ was the first comment Erlendur wrote once he had established who he was and the reason for his presence.
Thórdur smiled. Apart from his deafness, he gave the appearance of being fighting fit and sharp as a tack. His head was totally bald, his nostrils were black with snuff and he pronounced his ‘r’s in a strangely throaty manner.
‘Quite right,’ he boomed. ‘I’ve collected them for years. But I doubt anyone’ll care to keep them after I’m gone. Most of them will probably end up at the dump.’
‘Pity,’ wrote Erlendur.
Thórdur agreed. ‘I remember the accident clear as day,’ he added. ‘And I remember other much worse ones more recently.’
‘Do you remember the funeral in ’49?’ wrote Erlendur, keen to keep Thórdur on track.
‘No,’ said Thórdur. ‘I wasn’t around. I was crewing a boat out of Höfn, where I lived at the time. But of course I heard all about it. The weather must have been appalling — a northerly gale and bitter frost. They were sailing so close to land that people could see the terror on their faces. If I remember right the engine of that rust bucket cut out at the worst possible moment and the boat was smashed to smithereens. The two men were thrown overboard. I doubt they could even swim — not that it would have helped them. People must have been able to hear their cries for help from the shore. Of course they did everything in their power to save them but conditions were so bad they had to give up. In the end, the cries stopped.’
Thórdur picked up a tin of snuff and offered it to Erlendur, who pinched a few grains between his fingers and sniffed them up his nose. Thórdur sprinkled a thick line on the back of his hand and snorted it up both nostrils.
‘It must have been ghastly to watch,’ he said, fiddling with the tin as if he liked to keep it nearby. ‘Utterly horrible. I mean, not being able to help in any way.’
Erlendur nodded encouragingly.
‘Anyway, the bodies were washed up on the beach, as you’d expect when a boat goes down, and they were taken to the ice house in the village. They were laid out on planks like stretchers, I believe. The idea was to keep the bodies straight when rigor mortis set in. At least, I think that was why.’
‘And they were certified dead?’ wrote Erlendur.
‘Oh yes. I gather there was some locum in the village at the time. He only had to look at their eyes to confirm they were dead. Then they were put in coffins and one of them was buried in the churchyard.’
‘Where did you learn all these details?’
‘Fellow named Ármann. Used to live here in Djúpivogur. Good friend of mine. Died years ago. Lung cancer. We both knew one of the men — Jakob — though Ármann knew him much better than me.’
‘How did you know Jakob?’ wrote Erlendur.
‘Used to bump into him out on the town when we were young. Though I never got to know him well. Never had much time for that sort, frankly. He was born in Reykjavík. Thought a lot of himself too. Quite the womaniser, and used to brag about it like young men do. Got into trouble over some of the girls he seduced. Didn’t want anything to do with them once he’d had his wicked way. But woe betide them if they dared look elsewhere. Then he could turn very nasty.’
‘Ármann was one of his pall-bearers,’ wrote Erlendur.
‘Yes, that’s right. They clubbed together for a gravestone later on. One of his friends, Pétur I think his name was, organised a whip-round among the fishermen and boat owners in the village.’
‘Ármann’s supposed to have heard a noise,’ wrote Erlendur, ‘from the coffin.’
‘Ah, so you’ve heard about that, have you?’ said Thórdur, suddenly lowering his voice. ‘It wasn’t widely known. People found it embarrassing. Ármann stopped talking about it after a while, but it gave rise to all sorts of ghost stories linked to Jakob’s late wife. That she’d got into his coffin with him and so on.’