The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jonasson (ap literature book list .txt) 📕

‘Was Patrekur searching for you?’ she asked.

‘Yes, well … actually, it was Hjördís he was looking for. Those men have kept up the hunt for me all these years. They wanted to finish the job. And somehow they finally got wind of the fact I had a half-sister living on Langanes. I don’t think Patrekur knew I was hiding out here, but he may have had his suspicions.’

‘Salka rang and warned me,’ Hjördís chipped in, suddenly finding her tongue.

Una, remembering that phone call, saw it in a completely new light. Salka hadn’t been ringing just to let Hjördís know about the visitor. She had been warning her. And this begged another question:

‘Does Salka know?’ she asked Hjördís. Then she raised her eyes to Thór, who was still standing with his hands on his sister’s shoulders: ‘Does she know who you are?’

It was Hjördís who answered: ‘Everyone in the village knows … everyone except you, that is. There was no way of hiding it and we sometimes needed their help in protecting my brother, like when the TV film crew turned up here. You see, Una, they grew up together, the four friends: our dad, Guffi, Gunnar and Kolbeinn’s dad. It was their village, as you might say, and people take care of their own here. We stick together. Salka stood by us too because her grandparents were from Skálar, and they say the villagers covered for her grandmother back when her daughter died.’ She paused: ‘That’s why Guffi … all of us … were against you coming here. It was Salka who forced it through. She wanted the kids to have a proper teacher and felt it was worth taking the risk. She didn’t see why you should ever find out the truth about Thór … My main hope was that you two would never meet but, of course, that was unrealistic of me, and anyway, that hope was dashed the very first evening, wasn’t it? When you ran into each other …’

Una nodded. She took a mouthful of coffee, feeling in need of fortification. It was almost cold.

‘I … I can still hardly believe it,’ she said, with a catch in her voice. ‘None of you wanted me here and … and now it turns out you were all lying to me the whole time.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Hjördís replied grimly, ‘but we didn’t trust you.’

‘It would have been better if you hadn’t put two and two together in connection with Patrekur, Una,’ Thór said, and although his tone didn’t change, she shivered. She found herself wondering if she was safe there with these two. They had revealed a terrible secret to her, and if she kept quiet about it she would be complicit in keeping innocent people behind bars. Could she live with that? No wonder Thór and Hjördís weren’t confident that they could trust her.

‘Yes, that bloody picture in Morgunbladid,’ Hjördís said.

‘I almost didn’t see it,’ Una said in a small voice. ‘The papers didn’t come.’

Hjördís’s expression betrayed all that needed to be said and Una realized that her suspicions had been correct; it hadn’t been a coincidence at all. ‘Morgunbladid …’ she said slowly. ‘The paper that never arrived …’

Hjördís and Thór exchanged glances and, in the end, it was Hjördís who answered: ‘Gunna got rid of the papers for us. You’d told her your suspicion and she warned us and Guffi too. We hoped you’d leave it at that.’

‘Then Salka lied,’ Una said, more to herself than them. ‘She lied to the police that the visitor hadn’t been Patrekur.’

‘Naturally,’ Hjördís said coldly.

‘I don’t understand how you’ve got away with it all these years. Somebody must know he’s here. In a village of only ten people …’

And then it struck her – the fact that had completely passed her by. She counted them up in her head: Salka and Edda, Guffi and Erika, Gunni and Gunna, Kolbeinn, Inga and Kolbrún … then Hjördís and Thór. Eleven people. There were eleven people living in the village, not the official ten. Damn it, how could she have missed that?

‘Quite easily,’ Hjördís said. ‘Or at least it was quite easy, until that murdering bastard turned up here, searching for my brother to kill him.’

Patrekur.

The question hung in the air. Una hesitated, drew a deep breath, listened to the silence for a moment, then asked: ‘So where is he? Where is Patrekur?’

XXXVII

Una’s only answer was more silence.

‘Where’s Patrekur? I know you two know what happened to him. If you don’t want me to report you, you’ll have to tell me the whole truth.’ In her heart of hearts, Una already knew she wasn’t going to betray Thór. Her best course of action would be to throw in her lot with him and the villagers. She liked him, maybe she was even a little in love with him. The brother and sister had entrusted her with a potentially deadly secret. If she informed on him, she could be putting his life in danger. If he was murdered as a result, how would she be able to live with herself?

‘He had an accident,’ Hjördís said at last.

‘He’s dead?’

Hjördís nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘I was going to deal with him myself,’ Hjördís said. ‘When Salka rang, we couldn’t be sure it was him, of course, but Thór took the precaution of going into hiding. But the moment he turned up at the door I guessed who he was. He asked if he could stay and I said I could give him supper and a room for the night. His manner wasn’t at all threatening at first; I expect he wanted to scope out the place before he did anything.’ Hjördís paused to take a deep breath, then continued: ‘I decided it would be best to get rid of him permanently and just hope that no one outside the village knew he’d come here. But my plan went wrong, and that night he