Sigurdís had never been to the States before, but she had landed in Minneapolis, had hired a car and was now trying to find her way through the traffic jams on her way out of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. Despite the dressing-down she knew awaited her back in Iceland, this felt absolutely the right thing to have done.
She punched the name of the town where Carla lived, Biwabik, into the navigation system. A google search had told her that around a thousand people lived in this place, and that it was one of Minnesota’s natural beauty spots. She got the impression it was a popular place for outdoorsy people to visit, and Sigurdís was more excited about visiting it than experiencing the bustle and noise of Manhattan. Maybe one day she would drag Dóra on a road trip that was about more than just bars and pink cocktails. They were so different that she sometimes failed to understand why Dóra bothered with her. High-life Dóra and straight-and-narrow, low-key Sigurdís. They were a strange pair.
Four hours behind the wheel brought her finally to Biwabik. The main street looked as if it had been pulled directly from a movie about small-town America. Few people were about. The houses were low, built of timber or brick, with a couple of stores, and one restaurant. She looked around for a place to relax for a moment. She had driven the whole distance without a break, and now she needed to stretch her legs before knocking on Carla’s door. The unfortunate Carla, who had not woken up this morning expecting a visit from an Icelandic police officer gone rogue. For a moment her confidence of earlier left her, and it occurred to Sigurdís that she was in fact nothing more than a stalker in an Icelandic police uniform, someone who couldn’t let go once an idea had taken hold in her head. What on earth was she thinking, travelling all this way to dig into the past of a woman who had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with this investigation?
She parked in front of a shop that had a sign proclaiming that it was a hardware store, but in fact seemed to stock, not just tools, but every possible item – a wigless mannequin in a green dress had been arranged in the window next to an armchair. Sigurdís smiled, finding it quaint. She walked on further, past an ice-cream place where a young man with two small children were picking their flavours, before coming to a small park that could well be a meeting point for the people of Biwabik.
There were plenty of well-cared-for conifers and a bandstand where Sigurdís imagined a brass band playing on special occasions and a mayor in his regalia making a speech for the townspeople. Not far away stood a large statue of an elk. She went over to it, wondering what an elk had done to deserve such a position of honour. She guessed that there were hunting grounds around here, and the affection for the elk was because they had kept people alive through the centuries. She was considering the relationship between elks and people when she heard a man’s voice behind her.
‘That’s Honk – a real elk. He made himself at home here one winter around a hundred years ago and caused some trouble. People had noticed his tracks in the snow and they could hear him calling in the night. Some boys found him in a stable and gave him something to eat. He was no fool, this old guy. After that he became part of the town, until he moved on in the spring. People were pretty fond of him and there have been stories about Honk ever since. Not much happens around here, you see – then or now. So Honk’s visit was a dash of excitement – broke up the monotony. A teacher around here wrote a children’s book about him a few decades ago. Phil Stong was his name. Won an award for it. Went on to become pretty famous, I understand.’
‘Wow. Interesting story,’ Sigurdís said, turning to look at him.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce myself. Hank Finkelman. I sit on the town council here in Biwabik, and I run the diner along the street.’ He gestured behind him.
Sigurdís smiled and introduced herself with the story she’d concocted while on the road. He was a tourist on a road trip who wanted to see a pretty US small town, she picked this one from the map and had known as soon as she had driven into town that she had made the right choice. She carefully made no mention of Carla, cautious not to say anything that would set the local rumour mill going and cause her problems. She knew nothing about Carla or her situation, and in the town as small as this, Hank could easily turn out to be her neighbour. At any rate, there had to be a good chance that they knew each other.
Hank appeared to be delighted at her interest in his town, and told her she was in just the right place if small-town life was what she was looking for.
‘Are you from Sweden?’ he asked confidently, certain that he had hit the nail on the head.
She replied with a smile that he was close, but not quite, and told him she was from Iceland.
‘Then you must know all about small-town life. Plenty of them there, surely? I’ve always wanted to visit Iceland, right up until that volcano of yours messed things up,’ he said, and made a valiant attempt to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull.
Sigurdís couldn’t help laughing And decided not to go into any details about how Eyjafjallajökull was actually a glacier that sat on top of the volcano.
‘You know that immigrants from Scandinavia, especially Finland, played a big part in this town’s history?’ Hank said. ‘They came and settled here, and you can see the Scandinavian influence in the style of buildings.’
This was something Sigurdís hadn’t been aware of. It was an interesting connection – one she banked for consideration later. She thanked Hank, and they didn’t part until he’d extracted a promise from her to call in on him at the diner while she was in town.