Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason Read Free Book Online Page A

had never disappeared without trace before. No need to worry too much, the parents were told; their daughter hadn’t even been missing twenty-four hours and there was every likelihood that she would turn up safe and sound before long.
    But Dagbjört didn’t turn up. Twenty-four hours passed, then forty-eight, then seventy-two, and still there was no sign of her. Nothing she had said or done in the preceding days had given any clue to her possible movements that morning. She had been her usual self, bright and breezy, bursting with plans as always. She had informed her parents of her wish to continue her education, preferably in medicine, though there were few female doctors in the country at the time. She had told her mother that in the past decade only seven women had completed their medical training in Iceland.
    ‘So, as I’m sure you can imagine, it was an unspeakably awful time,’ Svava told Erlendur. ‘They said – my brother and his wife Helga – that it was out of the question that she could have taken her own life.’
    ‘What did they think had happened?’ asked Erlendur.
    ‘They couldn’t begin to understand it. They thought she must have been injured in some way. Maybe she’d walked along the shore, fallen in the sea and couldn’t save herself. Got swept out by the current. It was so bloody dark, of course – it was the end of November – and for reasons we don’t know she either decided not to go to school and went somewhere else instead or was intercepted on the way. Accepted a lift perhaps. Had some sort of run-in with somebody. We pictured all kinds of situations she could have got into but of course we hadn’t really the faintest idea what happened.’
    ‘If she had gone somewhere other than school, where might it have been?’
    ‘I suppose it’s just possible she walked out to Nauthólsvík cove. Went for a swim in the hot water. But that’s clutching at straws. She was young, she loved life and had never shown any hint of depression or anxiety – quite the reverse – she had a very positive outlook, was doing well at school, had a good gang of friends. Her parents said she looked forward to school every day.’
    ‘There was nothing wrong with the weather that morning, was there?’ asked Erlendur. ‘No chance she’d have had to urgently seek shelter?’
    ‘No, it was frosty and still,’ said Svava. ‘They combed all the shores here, all the way south to the Reykjanes Peninsula. Never found a thing.’
    Svava poured them both more coffee. Erlendur still hadn’t touched his freshly baked doughnut.
    ‘There was talk of a diary,’ said Erlendur, remembering this detail from the police files. It had not helped the inquiry as it had turned out to contain nothing but the musings and dreams of a growing girl, incidents from school life, books she was reading for her studies and her opinions of the various subjects. The occasional comment about her teachers and fellow pupils, all very innocent. She had also stuck in cuttings from the papers, pictures of actors and so on.
    ‘Yes, that’s right. I saw it among my brother’s papers. It didn’t help us at all, as you probably know.’
    ‘You didn’t notice if there were any pages missing, any she’d torn out?’
    ‘There could well have been. The diary’s a sort of file with loose pages, so it’s impossible to say. You can take them out or add them in as you like. If she removed any, they must have been lost long ago.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
    ‘Of course, the biggest puzzle was that boy from Camp Knox,’ Svava added after a brief pause.
    ‘The one her friend mentioned?’
    ‘Yes. Dagbjört was in the habit of taking a detour, to avoid the old army barracks – she wasn’t the only one. There was often bad feeling between the kids from the camp and the ones living in the houses nearby. As far as her parents were aware, she didn’t know any boys from Camp Knox. So it would’ve had to have been a recent development.