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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

February 7, 2019

The front door of ása’s building is locked. Agnes leans against the side of the recessed entrance, grateful at least for the shelter from the wind. She supposes she’ll have to ring for Nora, except she doesn’t know what the apartment number is and her phone is on airplane mode. She should feel panicked, out in the cold, alone, but for now, all she can feel is a general sense of relief.

Two people in uniform pass her by. A man and a woman, both shrouded in their official police costuming—stab-proof vests, hats, utility belts. Agnes wonders if they’ll recognize her, but they keep moving past, distracted by their own conversation.

In their wake, she hears a woman’s laugh. She tracks the sound to the opposite end of the street. Another pair. Again a man and a woman, but in the costumes of winter, not police. The man, so much larger than the woman. The woman, unknown to Agnes, anonymous in her wool coat and tight pants, runs a hand through her hair. She uses the movement to tilt into the man’s personal space, laughing harder. Agnes recognizes the man’s black hair, his sloping shoulders.

Ingvar.

He’s everywhere.

Agnes jolts. Ingvar’s lifted a hand to her. A mute wave.

She nods back, unwilling to expose more bare skin to the cold, and turns away, embarrassed to be caught spying. She moves in time to find Nora and Hildur descending the stairs to the lobby. Nora seems energized, bouncing ahead to open the door.

“Everything okay?” she asks Agnes, giving her a once-over that lets her know that she, in fact, does not look okay.

“Fine,” she says. “Chilly.”

“You should be careful.” It’s Hildur. “The cold eats girls here.”

“What’s that?” Agnes asks.

“We don’t need two girls missing,” Hildur says, unrepentant. For all her talk about the town’s collective trauma, she doesn’t appear traumatized.

Nora cuts in before Agnes can bite Hildur’s head off. “Truly,” she says, “thank you for setting this up. I’ll get in touch with you later today about the next round, yes?”

“Of course,” Hildur says. Her gaze snaps to something high above Agnes’s head. “Ingvar,” she says, followed by a question in Icelandic.

Ingvar steps into their makeshift circle and says, “Yesterday. It’s my fault.” He shows them all his right hand. The fingers, white stained pink from the cold, wiggle out from a massive cast. The plaster extends beyond his jacket sleeve.

Nora hisses through her teeth. “What happened?”

He gives her a rueful smile. “I slipped on the ice. I was looking for ása and my legs were suddenly up here.” He raises his injured hand to his eyeline.

“You’ve spent too long in the city,” Hildur admonishes him. “You’ve gone soft.”

“Where’d you fall?” Agnes asks. She’s been so careful of the ice, but this is a reminder for her to go even slower. She can’t afford to hurt herself again.

Nora’s hands are on Agnes’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says, “but the timing is exquisite.” She introduces the two of them. The bright blue eyes meet Agnes’s. Sparkling, it seems, at their private joke. They’ve danced this dance already.

“Nice to meet you,” Agnes says. The lie slips out of her before she can decide what to do. She had already resolved not to tell Nora about her meeting with Júlía, but she hadn’t thought about Ingvar. At this point, to explain how she knows Ingvar would require so much effort and so many carefully worded lies. It’s just easier this way.

“You, too,” Ingvar says, playing along.

“So where did you fall?” Agnes asks, aware of their audience.

“Out in the fields,” is the vague reply. Then a sigh. “It aches in this weather. I will have to go home.”

“Are you going now?” Nora asks.

“To my mother, yes,” Ingvar says. He gives Agnes a significant look. “You should come by. I am sure it would make my mother very happy to meet Magnús’s daughter.”

Agnes does her best to conceal her surprise. She’s lying to Nora because this is her own business. She has no idea why Ingvar’s lying to Nora, though.

“Whenever works for you,” Nora says, inordinately pleased. “So long as it is before the fifteenth. That’s when Agnes has to leave us.”

Another lie. Agnes hasn’t felt like telling Nora she didn’t buy her return ticket. Nora had suggested ten days, and Agnes had pretended to agree. But ten days in Iceland hadn’t felt long enough. She’d rather decide when it gets closer to the date. She supposes she’ll have to tell Nora this eventually. When the time is right.

“Come with me now,” Ingvar suggests. “My mother should be awake from her nap. She is usually happy when she wakes.”

Nora coordinates with Ingvar, whose truck is parked farther down the street. They’ll follow him down the road, just as Agnes did yesterday. Hildur, watching the entire conversation with interest, seems ready to join them, but Nora heads her off with a friendly “We’ll talk soon.”

Hildur accepts the dismissal. She waits for Nora and Agnes to pile back into the enormous truck, and she’s still standing there, watching, when Nora pulls out. It’s only as they’re turning out of sight that the woman moves. Back into the apartment building, back to ása’s friends? Agnes can’t tell.

“Hildur bothers you,” Nora says, with no preamble. She looks comically small in the driver’s seat, with it pressed as far forward as it can possibly go so her feet can reach the pedals. It’s a miracle she can drive this truck.

Agnes doesn’t know how to describe the visceral repulsion without sounding petulant. “I don’t like the way she talks,” she says, finally. The cold eats girls here.

“To be fair,” Nora says, accelerating on the highway, “there is a linguistic barrier.”

“She outed me to óskar and Lilja,” Agnes counters. “You have to admit, that was rude.”

“Again,” Nora says, “to be fair, she did it in your defense. But I know what you mean. She rubs people the wrong way.”

“Why didn’t she tell you about the party?”

Nora’s smile disappears. “That is a very good question. It doesn’t matter, really, though, does it? I made it there.” To Agnes’s silence: “I’m going to ask her about that. One of these days. She’s a tremendous resource, for all her faults. She got me in the room with those kids.”

“Why didn’t you ask them about the phone?” Agnes asks. She shouldn’t care about any of this. It has nothing to do with her grandfather. But still, she’s drawn in, in spite of herself.

“It’s too soon,” Nora tells her. “They both stormed out of the room today, and I wasn’t even pressing them that hard. I have to build a little bit of trust, or at the very least, familiarity, first, before I pounce on them. I’m not the police. I can’t detain them, and they don’t have to talk to me. It’s a delicate process.”

Agnes concedes the point. Again, though, there’s that paranoid voice whispering in her head. What if Nora’s handling you, too?

But of course Nora’s handling her. She’s interviewing Agnes along with everyone else.

Agnes knows this. She just doesn’t know why this disappoints her.

“They’ll talk to you again,” she says to Nora. She stares out the window blindly. “Or óskar will. He has to, if he’s going to get you to promote his band.”

“How do you know about his band? Did he ask you to promote his show, too?”

She’s been caught. Agnes tells Nora about running into Lilja outside. “She said he’s still going to do the show, even though his friend’s probably dead.”

Nora isn’t surprised. “Yeah. Isn’t he delightful? He gave me a flyer on my way out. Are you interested in a little field trip? Want to see Maidenhead play in Reykjavík?”

“Maidenhead? What, are they an Iron Maiden cover band?”

“Or he’s just a creep. It’s ye olde slang for a woman’s virginity.”

Agnes grimaces. “Doesn’t it frustrate you? How he’s using you?”

“Everyone uses me,” Nora tells her, unbothered. “That’s why I don’t get attached to anyone or any one theory. Everyone has a motive. Everyone wants something when they tell a story. My job is to sift through it all, figure out what they want, and see what that reveals. Often the truth is hiding in a lie. And… I would have to say… I’m using them right back.”

They’re already turning off the highway, climbing into the snow in pursuit of Ingvar’s truck.

Agnes rubs her forehead, as though that could ease her headache. How can Nora stand this? She pictures óskar and Lilja, their awkward friendship. She tries to fit ása in there. She can see óskar hurting ása. He never appeared overly violent—hostile, sure, but not violent. But he’s an aggressive, possessive man. It’s easy to sketch him into a scenario. It’s standard. Man hurts woman. Agnes tries to imagine Lilja hurting ása, and she balks at the thought. Lilja seems to worship ása and their friendship. But when she spoke of ása, she, too, was possessive. A love like that, it’s unwieldy. Everything that doesn’t conform to the person’s image of the other is a betrayal. And there had been a betrayal, hadn’t there? ása had been spending time with someone else, someone she wouldn’t share with Lilja.

As they trace the long line of Ingvar’s driveway, Agnes tries to peel herself away from the sudden certainty that both Lilja and óskar are somehow responsible for ása’s disappearance. This is the trap, the same one that damned her grandfather. That a lie, that a suspicion, is enough to accuse. To condemn.