Strange Shores Read Online Free

post by the window and when he greeted her, she didn’t answer, merely continued to contemplate the view.
    He moved closer and said good day again, at which she turned her head and glared up at him, looking outraged.
    ‘I didn’t invite you in.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have rung beforehand to let you know I was coming.’
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘I’m sorry, I’ll leave.’
    The woman perching on the cushion was tiny and grey-haired; around eighty, he guessed, with piercing eyes that were now fixed sharply on him. She was holding a pair of binoculars. He thought he had gone too far; he shouldn’t have barged in like that. He had no business intruding on people’s private lives. When she didn’t answer the door he should have left her to her own devices.
    ‘I have no intention of selling this house,’ she announced. ‘I’ve told you people a thousand times. A thousand times. I’m not going to be packed off to a nursing home and I’m utterly opposed to these developments. You lot can just clear off back to Reykjavík and take all your rubbish with you! I want nothing to do with aluminium barons!’
    He paused in the doorway. ‘But I don’t want to buy your house. I’m not involved with the smelter.’
    ‘Oh. Who are you then?’
    ‘I wanted to talk to you about your sister, Matthildur – the one who died.’
    The woman studied him. She obviously hadn’t heard the name for years and couldn’t hide her astonishment that a complete stranger should have entered her house and asked about Matthildur.
    ‘We get no peace from Reykjavík hotshots wanting to buy everything up around here,’ she said at last. ‘I thought you were one of them.’
    ‘Well, I’m not.’
    ‘There’s no end to the strange goings-on these days.’
    ‘I can imagine.’
    ‘Who did you say you were?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m a police officer from Reykjavík. I’m on holiday and –’
    ‘How do you know about my sister?’ the old woman interrupted.
    ‘I heard about her.’
    ‘How?’ she asked sharply.
    ‘When I was a child,’ said Erlendur, ‘and I was talking about her the other day with a fox-hunter I met on the moors. His name’s Bóas. I don’t know if you’re acquainted with him.’
    ‘I ought to be – I taught him when he was a lad. The naughtiest boy at the village school. But what’s Matthildur to you?’
    ‘As I said, I was told her story when I was young, so I asked Bóas about her and . . .’
    Erlendur didn’t know how to explain his long-standing fascination with the fate of this woman who had once lived near his home but had no other connection to him. After all, he was an outsider, no relation, and only ever came out east on flying visits, years apart. Although he had grown up here until his early teens, he didn’t know any of the locals, hadn’t kept in touch with anyone or come back until he was an adult. Whether he liked it or not, his life was in Reykjavík now.
    Yet part of him would forever belong to this place, a witness to the helplessness of the individual when confronted by the pitiless forces of nature.
    ‘. . . I’m interested in stories about ordeals in the wilderness,’ he finished bluntly.

5
    THE WOMAN’S DEMEANOUR changed. She asked his name and he told her, saying he was just passing through, only stopping in the East Fjords for a few days. She shook his hand and introduced herself as Hrund. As he took in the view from the window, he realised that far from watching, let alone waiting for him, she had been spying on the progress of the enormous pylons that were being erected above the town to connect with the smelter further down the fjord. At her invitation, he sat down on an old sofa that creaked in protest, while she took a chair facing him, neat and, now that some kind of understanding had been established between them, inquisitive. He elaborated on his interest in accidents in the mountains, easing the conversation round to Matthildur’s