‘Did you regard her as a subject for your research?’ asked Thorson.
‘A subject for my research? No.’
‘Well, she told you her ideas about the huldufólk, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Which were?’
‘All the usual stuff about enchanted mounds and elf rocks. She knew lots of stories too. Nothing out of the ordinary, though.’
‘Had she had any encounters with supernatural beings herself?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘She didn’t discuss it with you?’
‘She never mentioned it, no.’
‘She’d never been molested in any way by a supernatural being?’ asked Flóvent.
‘You asked me that before. I’ve no idea.’
‘She didn’t tell you?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes. Anyway, I don’t believe in that sort of thing. If she had, it would have been a figment of her imagination.’
‘Oh, that’s right, you don’t believe in the existence of such creatures. They belong purely to the world of fairy stories.’
‘Yes. Of course. Not that I’m familiar with the type of malevolence you’re referring to in tales of the huldufólk. After all, they’re mostly told by women, passed down from mother to daughter. That’s essentially how they’ve survived. And because they’ve been kept alive by women, they reflect a female view of the world, feature concerns close to their hearts. They tend to be stories about faithless lovers, childbearing, the exposure of infants.’
‘Exposure of infants?’ queried Flóvent.
‘Some things don’t change much.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Thorson.
Jónatan looked from one of them to the other, seeking to make himself understood. ‘The stories often describe the harsh lot of women. Such as giving birth to a child out of wedlock and being forced to dispose of it. Exposure of infants was the abortion of its day. Naturally it would have been a harrowing experience and the huldufólk stories were a way of glossing over the harsh reality and easing the mental anguish. They offered an alternative world in which women have children with handsome, gentle men of the hidden race, who are the antithesis of their brutish human counterparts. The infants are left out in the open for their fathers to find, and grow up, cherished, among their father’s people, and may even return one day to the human world. In other words, the stories serve to alleviate a distressing experience.’
‘Handsome, gentle men?’ repeated Thorson.
‘Like the Yanks,’ said Jónatan.
‘Are they the new huldufólk?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ asked Thorson.
‘Me? I don’t have an opinion.’
‘Are you involved with any women yourself?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything? Why are you asking me that?’
‘Maybe everything we’re asking is relevant; maybe none of it is,’ said Flóvent. ‘We’d appreciate it if you simply gave a straight answer to the question.’
‘I’ve never had a girlfriend,’ said Jónatan.
‘What about Hrund?’
‘What about her?’
‘Did you have a crush on her?’
‘No,’ said Jónatan. ‘I hardly knew her.’
‘Did she go running after the soldiers up north?’
‘Not that I could see.’
‘Did you assault Hrund?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Did she turn you down?’
‘Turn me down?’
‘We mentioned Rósamunda yesterday,’ said Thorson.
‘Yes.’
‘You claim you didn’t know her.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘And you had no idea where she worked?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me, what do you do if your clothes need mending?’
Jónatan was confused by the question. ‘I... what do I do?’
‘If you tore a hole in your trousers, for example. Or needed to get the elbows of your jumpers patched. Are you good with a needle and thread yourself?’
Jónatan looked wonderingly from Flóvent to Thorson and back. ‘Why... why are you asking me that?’
‘You’re not much cop at sewing, are you?’ said Flóvent.
‘No.’
‘Rósamunda worked for a dressmaker’s in Reykjavík. The shop also offers a mending service. It’s called The Stitch. Does that jog your memory?’
‘I took my trousers to be mended once,’ Jónatan faltered.
‘Did you take them to that company, to The Stitch?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Possible?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps this will refresh your memory.’
Flóvent took out the invoice they had found in Jónatan’s digs and placed it on the table in front of him. It bore the stamp of The Stitch and listed a fee for repairs made to one pair of trousers. Jónatan reached for the invoice, but Thorson was quicker off the mark and, snatching the piece of paper, held it up to him.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Were you aware that Rósamunda worked for this company?’
‘I don’t know any Rósamunda. I don’t understand why you’re holding me here. I’ve done nothing wrong. All I want is for this to be over.’
‘It might be advisable for you to get yourself a lawyer at this stage,’ said Flóvent.
‘I don’t want a lawyer. I don’t know any lawyers. I want to go home. I haven’t got time for this. You have to understand — I’m innocent. I haven’t done anything. You’ve got to believe me.’ Jónatan stood up. ‘You can’t keep me here. You’ve no right to hold me. I’m leaving.’
By now Flóvent and Thorson were also on their feet. Jónatan walked to the door, which was unlocked. He opened it and was about to step out into the corridor when Thorson grabbed his arm.
‘Let me go.’
‘I’m afraid you can’t leave yet,’ said Flóvent.
For an instant it looked as if Jónatan was going to try to make a break for it. Then, conscious that he was outnumbered, he seemed to wilt.
‘Don’t do this to me,’ he begged. ‘Let me go.’
‘I’m sorry, son,’ said Flóvent. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering Rósamunda. We have no alternative. I advise you to cooperate and also strongly recommend that you get yourself a lawyer.’
An hour later Flóvent was back in his office on Fríkirkjuvegur, poring over the notes he had found in Jónatan’s room. They consisted of an account the student had scribbled down over five sides of paper. The handwriting was barely legible yet Flóvent thought he could make out the gist. Pulling over the desk lamp, he shone it on the pages. They were unnumbered, so it took him a while to figure out what order to read them in. The style was familiar from the old court records he had occasionally consulted, and before long he had worked out that the pages described a nineteenth-century rape case. The more Flóvent was able to decipher, the more convinced he became that he had the right man in custody.
36
Konrád pushed one drawer of the filing cabinet shut and opened the next. He hadn’t entirely given up hope of finding a police report on Rósamunda’s death. The fragment of the witness statement, from which he’d learnt Ingiborg’s name, had turned up in an otherwise empty folder, marked only with a case number and filed under 1944. After sifting through everything he could find in the archives for that year without success, he tried widening his search to include files from the years immediately preceding and following 1944, in case any documents had been misplaced. The police must have written reports about such a major crime; he was convinced of it. It was simply a matter of finding them.
His thoughts kept returning to Petra’s description of the elderly Thorson’s agitation on learning that Rósamunda had been afraid of entering a certain house in Reykjavík. According to Petra’s mother, it had been the home of a prominent family: a member of parliament and his wife, pillars of society, important customers, in whose patronage the dressmaker had taken a snobbish pride. Oddfellows, and he might have been a Freemason, Petra had said. Since she had also passed on their names to Thorson, it was a fairly safe assumption that he must have attempted to approach the family, seventy years after the event.