Strange Shores Read Online Free Page B

talking about the local developments that she simply could not come to terms with: the aluminium smelter, the huge dam at Kárahnjúkar, the destruction of a majestic canyon in order to build a reservoir that was to become the largest man-made lake in Iceland. Erlendur understood that she welcomed none of it. He automatically thought of Bóas and his hostility to the transformation. During their descent from the moors, the farmer had told him of the suspicions that had arisen at the time of Matthildur’s disappearance and lingered on in the memories of the locals. Though most of them were pushing up the daisies by now, according to Bóas, or had grown old and peculiar.
    ‘Jakob Ragnarsson didn’t have an easy time of it,’ Hrund said, taking up the subject again after her digression.
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘Well, as the months went by, various rumours started to do the rounds. People even claimed she haunted him – persecuted him until he died. Such a pack of nonsense. As if my sister would come back as a ghost.’
    ‘What did your family think? Was there any reason to doubt his story?’
    ‘There was never any investigation,’ said Hrund. ‘But when Matthildur’s body failed to turn up, people became suspicious that Jakob was hiding something, as you might expect. There were dark mutterings that she’d been running away from him when she went out in that storm – that she’d never meant to go to Reydarfjördur. That he’d driven her out of the house. I expect Bóas probably laid it on a bit thick to you.’
    Erlendur shook his head. ‘He didn’t mention that. What happened to Jakob? He was killed in an accident, wasn’t he?’
    ‘He drowned and was buried in Djúpivogur. That was several years after Matthildur vanished. His boat capsized in Eskifjördur Fjord during a storm and both men on board died.’
    ‘So that was the end of that.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Hrund. ‘Matthildur was never found. And years later a young boy went missing on the moor. He was never found either. It’s an unforgiving country.’
    ‘Yes,’ Erlendur said. ‘That’s true.’
    ‘Are you looking into that case as well?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘People said she haunted Jakob and dragged him to his death – they even blamed her for his accident. Utterly absurd. But Icelanders love making up ghost stories. Things went so far that one of the pall-bearers at Jakob’s funeral claimed to have heard him moaning as he was lowered into the grave. Complete codswallop, of course. And that wasn’t all.’
    ‘I once heard some talk about the British,’ Erlendur prompted.
    ‘Yes, there were rumours that she’d been involved with them. That she was pregnant – she’d been having an affair with a soldier and secretly fled the country with him. She was supposedly so ashamed that she never even wrote home.’
    ‘And died abroad?’
    ‘Yes, or died shortly after leaving the country. They questioned the troops stationed in the area but no one had heard a thing. Because it was rubbish, of course – preposterous.’
    ‘Are there any surviving friends or relatives of Jakob that I could talk to?’
    ‘They’re pretty thin on the ground. He came from Reykjavík, you know; lived with his mother’s brother in Djúpivogur to begin with, but the uncle died years ago of course. Maybe you should have a word with Ezra. He was a friend of Jakob’s.’

6
    HE IS ENVELOPED by cold and darkness, assailed by a flood of images of people and past events that he cannot hold back. There is no distinguishing time and place – he is everywhere and nowhere at once.
    He lies in his room, a strange sense of serenity easing through his body after the injection. Although he tries to resist, it is futile; his blood has ceased to flow and a mist has shrouded his thoughts.
    The doctor tells him what he is going to do but he can’t take it in, and continues to writhe and thrash his limbs until hands seize him and subdue him. The doctor consults his mother and she