RVK’s Trapped
Episode 3
Directed by Baldvin Z
Written by Clive Bradley & Sigurjón Kjartansson

* For a recap & review of Episode 2, click here.
* For a recap & review of Episode 4, click here.
The streets of town are filled with snow. Perla and Þórhildur wander lost, as does little Maggi, for whom they’re searching. At the same time, from a distance, Hjörtur (Baltasar Breki Samper) takes the boy’s picture. A creepy moment.
Andri Ólafsson (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) is out looking, as is his ex-wife Agnes (Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir) and the rest of the family. She eventually comes upon her children happily. All the while, the man in the wheelchair, Rögnvaldur (Sigurður Skúlason), watches everybody in town through his telescope. Lots of voyeurism in this Icelandic town. That’s what happens when people are bored and isolated. Not to mention “everything is going upside down because of the weather.”
Hinrika (Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir) and her partner Bárður (Guðjón Pedersen) house Joy (Grace Achieng) and Nishadi (Marta Quental) in their home for the time being. Everyone else is in town at the school gym. Well, mostly. Later, when Hinrika goes to the station with Andri they find Ásgeir (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) locked in the cell, beaten up and freezing. This starts a manhunt for the Lithuanian trafficker Jonas Malakauskas (Vytautas Narbutas). But a manhunt in this town, cut off from Reykjavík and the outside world, is meagre, to say the least.
At the same time, things in town haven’t come to a halt. Mayor Hrafn Eysteinsson (Pálmi Gestsson) is fed up with people “hindering the future of this town.” He’s pressing harbormaster Sigurður Gudmundsson (Þorsteinn Bachmann) to convince his father, fisherman Guðmundur (Sigurður Karlsson) – who hauled in the torso – to play along. Hrafn is a greasy bastard. He’s got a wife, Kolbrún, yet he’s clearly creeping on Maggi’s mother, María. What an absolute fucking mess of a man.
On the side of the road, Andri and Hinrika find Jonas. He stole a cop car and went off the road, breaking his neck. He didn’t “steal the body,” though. The chief of police is feeling the heat now with the corpse gone, his prime suspect dead. He’s hoping they’ll find “more body parts,” even if that’s a grim wish. They’ve got to be out there someplace, right? They’re also not supposed to be investigating without Reykjavík, meaning they’ll have to be discrete.
Is there a possibility the ferry’s chef, Ayanike, knows the Nigerian girls? He sees them playing in the snow with Bárður while out shopping for food. I wonder if, perhaps, he has a part in the trafficking operation.
“Armitagetrail” is discovered as the Twitter account which leaked the photo of the corpse. It’s the name of “the novelist who wrote Scarface.” This makes Ásgeir curious about someone in their town with a scar on their face, thinking it’s an alias they used to do the deed. This takes them directly back to Hjörtur. And when they go to speak to him, he tries running. They put a stop to that. They discover he has a camera, stolen from people on the ferry, and it contains pictures of the corpse— hard evidence. Not good for ole Hjörtur. Unless there’s somehow an explanation? Well, it really pisses Andri off after he looks through the rest of the pictures, finding the ones of the kids out in the snow, as well.
So, what does Hjörtur have to say? He doesn’t know where the body’s gone, for one thing. He seems to find it amusing it’s disappeared, likely because he believes the police incompetent. He claims to have taken the pictures of the corpse simply out of interest in the macabre. Andri wants to know why there’s photos of his kids.
Chief of the Reykjavik Bureau of Investigation Trausti Einarssson (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) calls Andri in the midst of the questioning, pissed off about the body turning up on Twitter. Especially after hearing about it from a “cunt reporter” and not Andri. These two have a history, Andri and Trausti, which plays into the former’s unwillingness to tell the whole truth about what’s been going on. He does admit to Jonas being dead. He doesn’t mention the body’s gone.

“Death isn’t beautiful”

At his shed, Guðmundur is confronted by Sigurður. He insists to his son all the “important jobs” will go to foreign interests, such as the Chinese, once the new port is complete. His boy doesn’t believe that, he’s willing to go along with corporate interests for economic promises. Dad says until he dies, the land remains with him and not some big company.
Eiríkur (Þorsteinn Gunnarson) has been affected deeply by all the news lately. He consistently blames Hjörtur for the death of his daughter years before. He now believes the young man is responsible for the headless body. Even if most of his family believes his talk is “nothing but poison.”
At the station, Andri and Hinrik continue interrogating Hjörtur, who admits to having an obsession with death. He thinks about it all the time, consumed by it. This is the stain which Dagný’s death left behind. Could it just be Hjörtur’s totally innocent and traumatised? He’s a bit obsessed with Jóhanna, Agnes’s niece, who looks a lot like his dead girlfriend. That’s why he was out taking those pictures.
The search is still on for Bjorn, the missing passenger from the manifest, though Andri doubts he’s the corpse that turned up. Out on a boat, more human parts are discovered wrapped in garbage bags by Bárður and his mates. The picture becomes more grim as the days pass. Although maybe this will give the cops another lead.
Unless there’s more mystery, like the owner of the latest arm having bought refreshments at the hotel “three days ago.” He wasn’t on the ferry. Neither is the killer.
Fantastic mystery, I really can’t get enough of Trapped. Pacing is a big thing for me, and this series has it down to a science. Episode 4 is next time.