Reykjavik Nights

11

Erlendur was about to take a nap before going on duty when the silence was shattered by his phone.

Home for him was a small basement flat in Hlídar. When he’d joined the police he was told he could be called out any time, day or night, so he would need to install a telephone. He hadn’t felt the need for one before, but he acquired a clunky black model with a metal dial. In the end, the phone rarely rang in connection with work, unless it was the duty sergeant calling to arrange his shifts, but from time to time some of the other officers would call to invite him along to a film or a night out. Neither really appealed to him, but he sometimes let himself be talked into joining them. He took no pleasure in drinking; at most he might sip at a small glass of green Chartreuse. Occasionally they would stop by his place on their way to a nightclub and try to drag him along, but he was usually reluctant. Staying in to read, listen to the radio or play records was more to his taste. He had purchased a decent hi-fi and built up quite a collection of albums, mostly European and American jazz. He also enjoyed Icelandic folk songs and works by his favourite poets, Tómas Guðmundsson, Davíð Stefánsson and Steinn Steinarr, set to music.

Similarly, when it came to eating, his preference was for plain, traditional fare: boiled fish — haddock or cod — with potatoes. Or roast lamb on special occasions. In the evenings he usually dined at Skúlakaffi, a cafeteria popular with workmen and lorry drivers, which served Icelandic home cooking. Lamb chops in breadcrumbs had been a staple of the menu ever since the place opened.

From Erlendur’s flat one could enter the garden via the communal laundry, and there, just outside the door, he preserved traditional delicacies — brisket, liver sausage and whale blubber, supplied by a local shopkeeper — in a small bucket of sour whey. Erlendur topped up the bucket on a regular basis. He often got into arguments about eating habits with Gardar, who was a big fan of American fast food. To Erlendur, all Gardar’s impassioned talk of pizzas and hamburgers was gibberish.

He answered the phone and was taken aback to hear Rebekka’s voice. Given that she had said a rather curt goodbye before walking off, he had not been expecting to hear from her again.

‘I got your number from the police station,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, of course not,’ Erlendur replied. ‘I’m ex-directory.’

‘So they told me. They were a bit reluctant to pass it on.’

‘Thanks for ringing, anyway.’

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said.’

‘Oh?’

‘Why did you ask if I knew of anyone who might have wanted to harm my brother? What did you mean by that?’

‘Just wondering if he had any enemies that you were aware of.’

‘Well, I know his life wasn’t easy,’ said Rebekka, ‘but my brother wasn’t one to make trouble. That would have been out of character. Were you implying that it wasn’t an accident? His death, I mean?’

‘Oh, no, it seems more than likely that it was, but the world he was living in can be pretty unforgiving. He may not have made trouble, as you put it, but I get the feeling he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind to people. And I know he never wanted to be beholden to anyone.’

‘No, he was always like that. He could be incredibly bloody-minded.’

‘Yes.’

‘I hadn’t had any contact with him over the last few years,’ she said, ‘so I don’t know exactly what he was doing with himself or who he was mixing with. You’d probably know more about that.’

‘Not really. He kept himself to himself. Hung out with a few other people in similar circumstances, but I don’t think he saw anyone else. He didn’t stay in touch with his family, then?’

‘He just disappeared from our lives,’ said Rebekka. ‘I don’t know how else to describe it. It happened so suddenly. Vanished from our lives and lost himself in some kind of no-man’s-land.’

She fell silent.

‘We tried to help, but he wasn’t having any of it. My other brother, the older one, quickly gave up on him. Said he was a lost cause. I... Hannibal didn’t want to hear from us. We belonged to a world he’d turned his back on — that he was doing his best to avoid.’

‘That sort of thing can be hard to cope with,’ said Erlendur.

‘Well, I refuse to feel guilty about it,’ she said. ‘I tried everything I could think of to help him get his act together. But he said he wasn’t interested. Said I didn’t understand. The last time I managed to get through to him he sobered up for two or three months. That was eight, nine years ago. Then he hit the bottle again and after that he really was a lost cause.’

‘So your other brother wasn’t in contact with him either?’

‘No.’

‘They didn’t have any unfinished business?’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘No, I simply—’

‘Are you insinuating that he might have attacked Hannibal?’

‘No, of course not. I’m simply trying to work out what happened.’

‘My brother lives up north. In Akureyri. He wasn’t even in Reykjavík when Hannibal died.’

‘I see. Look, I really didn’t mean to insinuate anything.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘You’re the only person who’s ever asked about Hannibal,’ Rebekka said at last. ‘Ever shown the slightest interest in him. I should have been more polite, but you took me by surprise. I was a bit thrown, to be honest. If you like, I could meet you one day after work.’

‘That would be great.’

They said goodbye and a few minutes later the phone rang again. This time it was Halldóra.

‘I just wanted to hear your voice,’ she said.

‘Yes, sorry, I’ve been meaning to get in touch.’

‘Busy?’

‘Yes, you lose track of time on night duty. How are you?’

‘Fine. I wanted to tell you... I’ve applied for a new job.’

‘Oh?’

‘At the telephone company.’

‘That’d be good, wouldn’t it?’

‘I think so. As an operator on the international switchboard.’

‘Think you’ll get it?’

‘I reckon I’m in with a chance,’ said Halldóra. ‘Why don’t we meet up? Go into town?’

‘Yes, let’s.’

‘I’ll give you a call.’

‘All right.’

After they had rung off, Erlendur took a book from the shelf and, hoping to manage a quick snooze before work, settled himself on the sofa. When he was in his teens, and bored with life in the city, he had taken to browsing in antiquarian bookshops. One day he had chanced upon a series of volumes recently acquired from a house clearance, a collection of true stories about people going missing or getting lost on their travels in Iceland. Some had survived to tell of their own ordeals, but there were also second-hand accounts of incredible feats of endurance or of tragic surrender to the forces of nature. Erlendur had not realised that such tales existed in print. He devoured the entire series and ever since then he had been collecting books, and anything else he could find, about human suffering in shipwrecks, avalanches or on the old roads that crossed the Icelandic wilderness. He either tracked these works down in bookshops or was tipped off by dealers when they received books, papers, even private correspondence, reports or eyewitness accounts on the subject. He bought them all without haggling and had built up an impressive library of material from around the country, though he still kept an eye out for new publications. The sheer amount published on the subject surprised him. The stories belonged to an older way of life, before the city began its sprawl and the villages grew at the expense of isolated farming communities; yet clearly they still resonated with Icelanders. The traditional farming society had not vanished entirely, merely found a new home.

Many of the accounts were of people who lost their way in violent storms and whose remains were not found for months, years, decades even. Some were never found. Rebekka’s words about her brother still echoed in Erlendur’s ears: he just disappeared from our lives. Erlendur understood what she meant. As he thought about Hannibal he reflected that people could just as easily lose themselves on Reykjavík’s busy streets as on remote mountain paths in winter storms.

Feeling drowsy, he laid aside the book. His thoughts shifted to the Reykjavík nights, so strangely sunny and bright, yet in another sense so dark and desperate. Night after night he and his fellow officers patrolled the city in the lumbering police van, witnessing human dramas that were hidden from others. Some the night provoked and seduced; others it wounded and terrified. As he was far from nocturnal himself, it had been an adjustment to leave the world of day and enter that of night, but once he was there, he found he did not mind it. In those hours, more than at any other time, he became reconciled to the city, when its streets were finally empty and quiet, with no sound but the wind and the low chugging of the engine.