Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridason

for Kjartan Halldórsson. He was directed to speak to one of the attendants, who escorted him to a small TV lounge where a man of about seventy sat watching cartoons. The girl bent to his ear.
    ‘You’ve got a visitor, Kjartan,’ she announced in a loud, sing-song voice, as if addressing a small child.
    The man straightened up in his chair, mumbling.
    ‘’E wants a word with you,’ the girl bellowed.
    Erlendur thanked her and greeted the man, who had thick grey hair and bony, work-worn hands. He seemed surprisingly frail and arthritic for his age. In the ensuing small talk Erlendur discovered that the man had a degenerative disease which had cost him the sight in one eye.
    ‘Yes, I’m almost blind on this side,’ Kjartan explained.
    ‘That’s too bad,’ said Erlendur, unsure how to react.
    ‘Yes, it’s a bit of a nuisance,’ agreed Kjartan, ‘especially since the other eye is going too. They thought it would be best to stick me in here in case I had an accident. I can hardly even make out the screen any more.’
    Erlendur assumed he was referring to the television. They talked about visual impairment for a while, before he was finally able to get to his purpose, saying that he was researching cases of people going missing in the mountains, and had heard that Kjartan’s aunt Matthildur had vanished when walking from Eskifjördur to Reydarfjördur in January of 1942 .
    A radio was playing somewhere, and the poignant strains of a 1960 s pop song – ‘Spring in Vaglaskógur’ – carried to where they were sitting.
    ‘Yes. Yes, that’s quite right,’ Kjartan said, apparently pleased to be of assistance, in however minor a way. ‘She was my mother’s sister, you know, though I never met her.’
    ‘Do you have any memory of the incident?’
    ‘No, I can’t say I do. I was very young when it happened and we were living in Reykjavík. But I clearly remember hearing about it. I must have been seven. My mother was the eldest sister. She moved to Reykjavík as a young woman and I was born there.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘I left home early myself, you know. Started a family. Went to sea. We used to be able to catch what we liked in those days. Now it’s a rich man’s game, thanks to all these quotas.’
    ‘So you moved out east?’
    ‘Yes, my wife was from these parts. But I’ve never really been in touch with my relatives here. Hardly know them.’
    ‘Matthildur went missing the same night some British soldiers got into difficulties,’ said Erlendur.
    ‘That’s right,’ said Kjartan. ‘There was a terrible storm on the moors – hurricane-force winds, they said. People couldn’t stand upright. Incredibly dangerous conditions.’
    ‘Did the search last long?’
    ‘Several days, from what I heard. But it was hopeless, of course.’
    ‘Do you remember if your mother talked much about the accident? Was there any aspect that struck you as out of the ordinary?’
    ‘Not that I recall.’
    ‘What about Matthildur? Did your mother mention her at all? How she was? Or whether they got on?’
    ‘They didn’t have much contact. My mother was in Reykjavík, and the roads were dire in those days.’
    ‘I was wondering if you had any papers connected to Matthildur that belonged to your mother or aunts,’ said Erlendur. He had put the same question to Hrund, who said she had nothing herself but that Matthildur might have corresponded with her other sisters, though if she did Hrund couldn’t remember hearing about it.
    ‘A few bits and bobs,’ Kjartan said, after wrinkling his brow.
    ‘Did she and your mother write to each other in those days – that you know of?’
    ‘My sister sent me a trunk after our mother died, saying I could chuck it out if I liked. There was all sorts of rubbish in there: rental contracts, old bills, tax returns. As far as I can remember, she’d kept a whole pile of newspapers as well. Our mother never threw anything out. I don’t know why my sister sent it to me. I didn’t