Why Did You Lie? Read Online Free PDF

paying much attention but as far as she could remember the handle of the door leading to the corridor had felt cold to the touch.
    She was met by a smell of dust and old paper. Mindful of what had happened before, Nína took care to switch on the light before entering. As she’d suspected, it was crammed with files, the rows of shelves packed in so tightly that there was barely space to squeeze between them.
    She decided to take a better look around before embarking on the sorting and throwing away. The idea was to scan in anything important, then destroy the hard copy, so the task mainly consisted of assessing what should go straight into the bin and what should be digitised. If this job wasn’t the most exciting, the scanning would be absolute hell. Nína wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it was her next assignment once she had finished clearing the basement.
    She wandered around, reading the labels on folders and boxes at eye level. Traffic Offences: January 1979 , Burglaries: May – September 1980 . Her movements were stirring up dust and again she rubbed her nose to stop herself sneezing. The further inside she went, the dimmer the light, thanks to the high shelves, and she resolved to bring a floor lamp down with her next time.
    Nína was about to worm her way out again when her gaze fell on an open file lying on top of a row of upright folders at the back of the room. She blew on it carefully, then noticed there was no dust. Turning it over, leaving it open at the same page, she read the spine: Suicides: February 1982 – October 1985. Her blood ran cold and her heart beat with slow, heavy strokes, so insistently she could almost hear it in the silence. She gave herself a moment to recover. Of course she had known suicide was a police matter; she had been on both sides of the desk herself.
    Before Thröstur decided his life was meaningless, Nína had been involved in the investigation of such incidents. And lately her thoughts had kept returning to a widow she had spoken to more than two years ago. The woman had gazed at Nína with wide eyes, muttering repeatedly that there had been nothing wrong, her husband would never have done anything thing like that; he had no reason to take his own life. Nína had been filled with sympathy mingled with doubts about the woman’s sanity. It had never entered her head that she herself might one day gaze, face puffy with weeping, into the eyes of a police officer and make an almost identical speech. The only difference was that Thröstur had survived his suicide attempt. He was still alive, if you could call it living.
    The folder weighed heavier and heavier in her hands. Nína tried to see where it belonged but there were no gaps in the neighbouring shelves. She found one completely empty shelf in another row but the square, dust-free patch on it indicated that it had contained a box or some other object much larger than a folder. She wondered whether to leave the file open on top of the others but thought no, chucking it straight into the bin bag would be a good start. Reports of suicides from thirty years ago could hardly be considered relevant now, as she knew from personal experience. It was only eight weeks since Thröstur had tried to kill himself, yet few shared her interest in finding out why. Apart from his father and sister, no one wanted to know. She could read in the eyes of her close friends that they wished Thröstur could be allowed to go so they wouldn’t have to keep pussyfooting around the question of how he was doing or why it had happened. In thirty years’ time they would barely remember the incident. She hoped the same would be true of her.
    Nevertheless, once she had moved back into the light, Nína couldn’t resist the temptation to take a closer look at the contents of the folder. Without wanting or intending to, she began reading the text from the point where she had found it open. There would be no going back.
    It turned out to be the