The Girl Who Died, Ragnar Jonasson [small books to read .TXT] 📗

problem was that she had been telling the truth all along, right from the beginning; the truth as it had appeared to her, and it was a long time before she had come round to seeing things through their eyes.

In spite of their assurances, she kept asking herself again and again: why would she have wanted to kill Hannes? And his friend too? The police couldn’t give her any satisfactory explanation for that. They just said that the two men had been caught betraying their associates in a drug-smuggling ring. Since she had known that Hannes was no angel, it wasn’t that much of a stretch to believe that he had been involved in something dodgy.

But that she could have had anything to do with killing him …? She would never have believed that – not until the police insisted she had.

VIII

‘Have you seen her?’ Thór asked.

They were still sitting on the sofa, on their second bottle now, and Una could feel the alcohol going to her head.

‘Her who?’ she asked, though she knew perfectly well what he meant.

‘The girl in the attic, the girl who died?’

‘Yes,’ Una said. ‘Or, I don’t know, I feel as if I have … I’ve dreamt about her. And …’

He waited, not saying a word.

‘She seemed so real and yet I can’t really remember what she looked like. And it’s possible … it’s possible I saw her standing at the window on my first evening here. I assumed it was Edda, but I wasn’t quite sure, and then Edda flatly denied that she’d been awake at the time.’ It was an effort to talk about it, but Una didn’t want to stop. There was a relief in being able to tell someone, to share the story with Thór and try to work out what had been her imagination and what hadn’t; to establish what was within the bounds of possibility.

‘And then I heard the piano playing in the middle of the night, after Edda … you know, after they’d gone and I was left alone in the house. It was uncanny – terrifying, really,’ she said, feeling again the shiver down her spine, the horrifying certainty that she wasn’t alone in the house. She couldn’t bear the thought of being on her own there tonight. But with Thór at her side, it wouldn’t be nearly so bad.

‘Did she speak to you?’ he asked, and from the way he said it Una sensed that he might be starting to believe; that he had temporarily muted the doubting voices in his head.

‘She sang me a lullaby,’ Una said. ‘But the first time I sensed her presence the feeling was vaguer, more as if she was summoning me.’ She immediately regretted saying this, knowing that Thór would ask her about it and that she might be tempted to tell him the whole story. She wasn’t used to talking about it – the subject was too private and painful.

Perhaps it was the alcohol that had taken over and made the decision to let him come so close, or perhaps she had always intended to tell him about it this evening – of course this evening – because she knew it might just save her life.

IX

‘Did you … did you know it was my birthday?’ Una asked, letting the words filter in, then dissolve in the silence.

‘Your birthday? What, today? Are you serious?’

She nodded.

‘No, you’re joking! On Christmas Eve?’

‘Uhuh,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘A Christmas baby.’

‘Seriously? Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I don’t celebrate it,’ she said.

‘Shouldn’t you have been given some sort of Christmas-related name, like Natalía? Isn’t that what usually happens when babies are born at this time of year?’

‘No, I’m just Una.’ She explained: ‘It means “the happy one”,’ and didn’t even try to hide the mockery in her voice.

‘The happy one.’ He smiled. ‘Well, happy birthday, Una.’

‘Thanks.’

Her mother had rung earlier that day from abroad to wish her a combined happy birthday and Christmas. Their conversation had been brief, due to the cost of international phone calls – as a rule, her mother could hardly bring herself to make calls to other parts of Iceland – and the connection had been terrible too. But it wasn’t as if they needed to say much; it had all been said before, in one way or another.

‘Don’t you do anything at all to mark the occasion?’

She shook her head, then said: ‘Well, I did get a nice visit.’

‘I’d have brought you a present if I’d known.’

‘I don’t want any presents, thanks. Like I said, I never celebrate my birthday. I don’t really go in for Christmas either.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘It’s not exactly my favourite day, not any more.’

‘Any more?’

He had picked up on it, and now she knew she would have to tell him.

After a weighty silence, she said: ‘It’s linked to my dad.’

Thór nodded without speaking, as if he didn’t want to interrupt her story.

‘He was a doctor. Not in a hospital, though … not that kind of doctor. He wasn’t interested in people, in patients, just in research. His friends from medical school all became specialists and bought themselves big houses and four-wheel drives, but Dad always lived in the same house; he wasn’t interested in money. He was brilliant, absolutely brilliant at what he did, but all he wanted was to teach … Well, not even to teach, he couldn’t be bothered with that. Like I said, he wasn’t really interested in people.’

Again Thór nodded, but when Una showed no immediate signs of breaking the silence, he remarked: ‘You never wanted to study medicine yourself?’

‘Sure, I started a medical degree. Spent far too long on it. I waded through a ton of textbooks and put in a huge amount of effort but eventually I realized that I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps, I didn’t want to be a doctor. The other students couldn’t believe it when I dropped out. I haven’t stayed in touch with any of them.’

‘Oh, so