The Fox Read online

  There was something that jarred – both the place and the man. He had an intuition that something was wrong. Ísak obviously hadn’t looked after himself for some time, but still had a clean towel covering the window of this down-at-heel barn. The grey farmhouse had a shabby look to it, contrasting against the smart 4x4 parked outside. On top of this, there was the fox that Ísak said himself was a wild animal, now muzzled and tethered to a length of chain. All these things taken together added up to something that thirty years of police experience told him had to be suspicious. Besides, Ísak acted as if Guðgeir was a peeping Tom looking through bedroom windows, rather than being curious about an old barn being used to fix a car. There was a chance that the root of this feeling was the man’s hostile attitude, which seemed to have become increasingly unfriendly with the passing years. He might well have been through childhood traumas, leading to fear and suspicion having a formative effect on his nature, Guðgeir thought, recalling Linda’s recollections of her old schoolmate.

  Ísak’s expression changed suddenly and a friendly look appeared on his face.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me and say hello to mother?’ he asked, a new eagerness in his tone. ‘We see so few visitors at this time of year.’ He placed a hand on Guðgeir’s back, and set off towards the farmhouse. ‘Come on in, coffee and fresh doughnuts.’

  ‘I was going to be on my way…’ Guðgeir protested weakly. ‘I just came out here to stretch my legs and enjoy the view.’

  ‘You’d best come and have a cup with us. The old lady wouldn’t forgive you if you didn’t,’ Ísak said in a loud voice.

  ‘All right. Thanks,’ Guðgeir agreed, grudgingly. He cursed himself, and hurried after Ísak. Then he heard the sound again, a long, drawn out sob. He stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he called out. ‘That’s the sound I meant.’

  ‘What?’ Ísak asked without showing any interest and without turning. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘It sounds like someone crying,’ Guðgeir said, slowing his pace.

  ‘That’s just the fox howling. Come on.’

  ‘But the fox is muzzled.’

  ‘Then it must have been a swan calling. You city types don’t know anything,’ Ísak said dismissively.

  ‘No. It came from somewhere there,’ Guðgeir said, looking back. He listened. The fox seemed quiet, lying on the ground. It was the only sign of life to be seen other than the fulmars high above in their endless flight.

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ Ísak said. ‘It must have been the poor old fox, or the birds up there on the cliffs. The gulls are ready to start nesting,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Unless you’re hearing the exposed infant that’s supposed to be around here somewhere.’

  ‘Exposure?’

  ‘That’s right. Haven’t you read the old tales?’ Ísak asked. ‘Unwanted newborn infants that were left outside to die?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Guðgeir replied. ‘Of course. For a moment I thought you were serious.’

  The door of the farmhouse swung open and he saw a woman standing in the doorway, an older woman with grey hair. She stood still for a moment, and then disappeared back inside.

  ‘Mother’s seen you now. So now there’s no way you’ll get away without coffee and doughnuts,’ Ísak said, affable once again. ‘She loves having guests and doesn’t like to let them go,’ he said, accompanying his words with a heavy pat on the visitor’s back.

  They went along a dim corridor and Guðgeir sensed a familiar smell that put him in mind of his daughter Ólöf. But as Ísak opened the kitchen door, the aroma was overpowered by the smell of freshly made doughnuts.

  He looked around curiously, and it occurred to him that so much had changed since his own childhood in the west as he took in the sparkling appliances in the shabby kitchen. A pair of yellow washing-up gloves that would have been just the right size for Inga lay on the draining board. Guðgeir noticed Selma’s swollen hands, and that Ísak’s hands were even bigger.

  The gloves would fit neither of them, so maybe they had someone who came in to help. He would have to tell Linda about this, and also about the smart 4x4. She had been convinced that they had to be struggling badly, but that certainly didn’t appear to be the case judging by what he could see around him, although there was also things that looked down-at-heel and poorly looked after. Then he noticed one more stark contrast. A smart coffee machine occupied part of the kitchen worktop, while Selma boiled water in a kettle and brewed coffee the old-fashioned way. She looked to be a powerful woman, who had all the hallmarks of having toiled hard for much of her life. She was dressed in grey, and with a blue apron tied around her middle.

  ‘Thanks,’ Guðgeir said as Ísak pulled a chair for him from under the table. The place wasn’t sparkling clean, with the table top sticky and dust in the corners. Selma greeted him shortly, handed him a cup and placed a couple of doughnuts on a plate. Then she leaned back against the stove and a string of questions flooded out of her, wanting to know who he was and what brought him to Bröttuskriður, and how long he had been wandering around outside without coming indoors for a cup of coffee?

  ‘He’d been out there so long he thought the fox whining was an exposed infant’s ghost,’ Ísak said with cold delight. ‘I saw him peering through the barn window and asked if it was the custom where he comes from to sneak a look through strangers’ windows.’

  Selma echoed her son’s laughter. She was as heavily built as her son, but it was obvious that one hip was causing her pain.

  ‘Well, no. Not at all,’ Guðgeir said, unsure how he should react. These people seemed decidedly odd.

  ‘I was just taking a walk, enjoying the landscape,’ he said.

  ‘That’s fine. Just as well foxy didn’t give you a nip. He’s not fond of snoopers. Here you go, have another doughnut.’ She held out the plate, and waited until he had taken a large bite. Ísak sat and drummed the table with his fingertips.

  ‘It’s not often you see these home-made,’ Guðgeir said, taking another bite. He could feel the fat ooze out of it. ‘They’re good.’

  ‘They are,’ Selma and Ísak replied, practically in unison. They stared at him, almost as if they were waiting for something. Maybe they were waiting for him to leave. At intervals Ísak’s finger tapping the table could be heard. Guðgeir chewed his doughnut and drank his coffee unhurriedly. It tasted fine, but there was something uncomfortable about the place. He decided to let fly and ask about Sajee.

  ‘Did you happen to see a young foreign woman around these parts last winter? She could have been travelling through around the end of February. The twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, to be exact,’ he said as Selma and Ísak looked at him blankly. ‘Her name’s Sajee, originally from Sri Lanka. She has long black hair and a cleft palate,’ he said, drawing a finger along his own upper lip for emphasis, but there was no reaction.

  ‘No,’ Selma said after a long pause. ‘We haven’t seen this person. You’re the first stranger to call at Bröttuskriður this winter.

  ’Really? I hadn’t realised that so few people came this way. The main highway passes right along here below the slopes,’ Guðgeir said. ‘Have you seen Thormóður who runs the Hostel by the Sea in Höfn drive past with a dark-skinned woman? The weather was pretty bad that day.’

  Selma and Ísak exchanged glances.

  ‘Thormóður? No,’ Selma said at last. She reached for the coffee pot and refilled Guðgeir’s cup. Then she pushed another doughnut towards him. ‘Help yourself,’ she insisted. ‘They’re freshly made.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m full. It would have been the twenty-eighth, or so I reckon.’

  ‘Don’t you like the doughnuts?’ Selma asked plaintively.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Guðgeir said. ‘Everything in moderation.’

  He tried to give the woman standing tight against the table with a look of accusation on her face a polite smile.

  ‘You don’t think they’re good enough,’ Selma wailed, the hurt
plain in her voice. ‘My great-grandmother’s recipe and nobody has ever turned up their nose at our doughnuts before.’

  ‘Maybe one more,’ Guðgeir said, reaching for the plate. ‘They’re wonderful. Crisp on the outside and soft inside.’ He took a bite and sipped his coffee while Selma and Ísak watched his every movement. ‘So you haven’t seen Thormóður or a foreign woman passing by?’

  ‘We’re not that far from the beaten track here that we remember every car that goes past. What we said was that nobody had come up here to the farm,’ Ísak said. ‘Who’s this woman you’re looking for, and what does she have to do with you?’

  ‘Nothing at all. She’s just a young woman who came here thinking she had a job to go to, but that turned out to be a misunderstanding. I’ve been wondering if she went back south, and if so, how,’ Guðgeir said, taking another bite of his doughnut. Now he felt there was a rancid taste to it and he wanted to spit it out, but the woman’s steel-grey eyes stared at him unwaveringly. Her gaze was as cold as ice.

  ‘Well, she would have taken a flight, of course,’ Ísak said, raising an eyebrow at Guðgeir’s ridiculous curiosity.

  ‘Or by car,’ Selma said. ‘You’re a strange one, asking about strangers who are none of your business, and imagining you can hear an exposed infant crying.’

  ‘Those are your words, not mine,’ Guðgeir said.

  ‘All the same, you seem to be thinking along old-fashioned lines. Times have changed and people travel fast these days so there’s no keeping up with them,’ Selma said, pushing the dish of doughnuts at him again. ‘Go on, help yourself,’ she said with an intensity that was almost discourteous.

  ‘Thank you, but no, I’m stuffed,’ Guðgeir said getting to his feet.

  They followed him like a pair of shadows along the corridor. A patterned scarf hung on a hook by the door and its bright colours were in stark contrast to the grey of the walls. He took a deep breath and realised that the smell was of nail polish remover, something that had put him in mind of his teenaged daughter who spent so much time on her nails. The smell triggered darker thoughts and he tried to linger as long as he could in the corridor, but there was nothing more to be seen. Selma and Ísak went out into the yard with him and he deliberately took his time before going on his way. Black plastic had been taped over all of the basement windows, and Ísak could see where he was looking.

  ‘We’re doing up the cellar,’ he volunteered. ‘Painting and whatnot.’

  ‘Well, so I see. So you’re not giving up living out here?’ Guðgeir said.

  ‘No,’ Ísak replied. ‘Why on earth would we want to do that?’

  ‘True. Why would you?’ Guðgeir said, looking around at the harshness of the surroundings. There wasn’t much evidence of any farming activity going on. ‘Yeah, why would you want to do that?’ he muttered to himself as he sat behind the wheel.

  As he drove past the barn he could see the fox running futilely back and forth, as far as the chain would allow.

  21

  She knew that she would feel more pain. Her hair was coming out and before long her scalp would give way as well. Now her eyes opened by themselves… Her body refused to obey, but she snatched at the thoughts that swirled around her. She was aware of the Hidden Lady there, somewhere down in the dark depths. She was back. The blue-grey woman was beside her. Sajee felt her heart hammer in her chest, but sensed it as no more than a distant, weak beat. She knew she was afraid, but felt no fear. The Hidden Lady let go and Sajee fell to the soft grass and her eyes closed again. She could hear the woman speaking and tried to open her eyes again, so see, hear and understand. She saw grey-blue fabric and something held between two fingers glittered. The chill settled on her lips and she could feel the touch of rough fingers.

  ‘You silly little thing. There was me letting you get away with sneaking down to the cellar, but I can’t be having that,’ the hoarse voice said. It seemed both distant and familiar. ‘You had no business touching my bone with your filthy fingers. So now I’ll see that you don’t go anywhere. My boys don’t need to have anything to be worried about.’

  The glittering flashed again in front of her eyes and she felt her mouth fill with hot fluid.

  22

  In the cold light of morning Sajee huddled on the bench in the kitchen and stared into the distance with dazed eyes. Selma sponged her back and shoulders.

  ‘There, my dear. Isn’t that better?’ she asked gently, laying the flannel aside to help her into a clean shirt.

  Ísak was away and there had been only the two of them there since the second accident. This was the second time Sajee had fallen so badly on the stairs. She had been terrified after yet another nightmare. This time she seemed to have practically thrown herself into the darkness, as this fall had been harder and the consequences much more serious. As before, she had landed on her face, leaving it damaged and bruised. The old injuries had torn themselves open, and new ones had been added to them. The only explanation for her dangerous sleepwalking were nightmare memories of something glittering and the woman in blue who loomed over her. Then there was a vague recollection of a red flood, and that had to be the steps.

  Selma pulled up a chair and sat in front of her. A towel, a blood-spotted nightdress and a hairbrush lay on the table.

  She inspected Sajee’s face, placing a broad thumb under her chin and pulling her forward.

  ‘Let me see how it looks today,’ she said. ‘The stitches look fine. The swelling has increased, but that’s only to be expected. I’ll put some antiseptic cream on there.’

  She hummed a tune as she took a tube of ointment from the pocket of her apron, unscrewed the lid and squeezed some of the contents onto two fingers.

  ‘There, there. I’ll be as gentle as I can so it doesn’t hurt,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll have to be strong.’

  A shudder of pain crossed Sajee’s face.

  ‘It hurts and I feel terrible,’ she groaned. Her words were unclear and she struggled to move her swollen lips.

  ‘Stop that moaning. It’ll all be over soon,’ Selma said as she screwed the top back on the tube. ‘Now I just have to made sure there’s no infection in those cuts. I’ll make you a healthy drink every day and before you know it, you’ll be as good as new. If you behave, the Hidden Lady will leave you in peace.’

  ‘But you said the Hidden Lady was nonsense I had dreamed up,’ Sajee whispered, shivering. She was chilled after being washed and didn’t know what to believe. Selma’s words and deeds could change direction as easily as the wind in this cold place.

  ‘Nonsense, and not nonsense,’ Selma said seriously. Frown lines formed around her grey eyes, her lips pursed and her breathing came more heavily. ‘There’s nothing we can be sure of in these matters and I’ve often noticed things that seem unearthly here at Bröttuskriður, without saying too much about it. I just know that it’s best not to pry into things that aren’t your business, and to leave the dead in peace.’

  ‘But I…’ she began, before Selma quickly cut her short.

  ‘To think that you disobeyed me by sneaking down into the basement, snooping into what’s no business of yours.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘With my bone in your grubby fingers. That’s like going up to our family plot and putting your feet all over one resting place after another. That was a dreadful thing you did. Haven’t you heard that ill fortune follows those who disrespect the graves of the dead? I don’t doubt you know the anger of the spirits back in your own country? Well?’

  Selma’s breath was coming in fast, deep gasps.

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘You know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sajee whispered.

  ‘You should have left our little girl be, because my Hulda was angry. She talks to me all the time these days…’

  23

  The sound of a car could be heard outside and Selma shut her mouth with a snap and hurried over to the kitchen window.

  ‘They’re here. I th
ought we’d have more time, just the two of us,’ she said quickly. ‘Come on. Upstairs and behave. That’s the best thing.’

  Selma took hold of her arms and tried to pull her to her feet. The front door banged.

  ‘I don’t want to be alone up there,’ Sajee moaned, sinking back onto the bench.

  ‘Yes. You need to lie down and rest. Come on!’

  ‘Fucking hell… What have you done?’

  With Ísak behind him, Thormóður stood in the doorway, glaring at them. Selma stepped back from Sajee and looked up at the two men.

  ‘She fell again. Tumbled down the stairs like a bale of hay,’ Selma said and began clearing crockery from the table with fast, troubled movements.

  ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’ Thormóður snarled. His agitation was obvious and he ran a hand repeatedly through the thick, fair fringe that repeatedly fell back over his forehead. ‘No broken teeth this time?’

  ‘No, but of course I had to put in some stitches myself. I couldn’t be taking her to town, and we’re used to dealing with things for ourselves.’

  ‘If mother says she fell down the stairs, then she fell down the stairs,’ Ísak said heavily, fidgeting nervously as he stood behind his companion.

  ‘I told you, Ísak,’ Selma said defensively. ‘She had another nightmare.’

  ‘Let me take a look,’ Thormóður said, taking a seat in front of Sajee. He took hold of her chin and inspected her injuries carefully. There was no mistaking his distaste as he scowled and swore.

  ‘Sajee, it looks like you cut yourself on something. Now, open your eyes properly,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘Sajee, tell me, did you have something in your hands when you fell?’

  ‘No,’ she groaned.

  ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘The Hidden Lady,’ Sajee mumbled.

  ‘What did you say?’ Thormóður demanded.

  ‘The Hidden Lady cut my face,’ she sighed and looked directly into his eyes. ‘She’s an evil spirit.’