Reykjavik Nights

46

They finished their shift and said goodbye in the station yard, still badly shaken from the last call-out of the night. Marteinn had his car and offered to give the others a lift home, but Erlendur said he would walk. He watched them drive out of the gate. The three of them had sat in the coffee lounge for a long time after they came off duty, talking about the woman, her husband and their two sons. About the violence that had gone on in their home, as it did in so many others. About the helplessness of the victims. The shame that must be associated with such incidents. The dirty family secrets.

It looked as if the husband would live. He had lost a great deal of blood but the stab wounds had not proved fatal, and he had been taken straight to the operating theatre where he was now undergoing emergency surgery. The woman’s injuries had been treated in Casualty and she was being kept in hospital for further tests.

‘Can I get a bed?’ Erlendur heard a voice ask behind him, and turning, he saw that Vilhelm had stolen into the yard.

‘It’s not a hotel, you know.’

‘You don’t say,’ said Vilhelm.

‘I suppose you’d like breakfast in bed too?’

‘Wouldn’t mind.’ Vilhelm rolled his eyes behind the thick glasses. ‘Coffee and toast? I wouldn’t turn my nose up at that.’

‘Come on then,’ said Erlendur. ‘The cells are all empty apart from one where a prize moron’s sleeping it off. Tried to take a pop at us last night.’

‘Didn’t have much luck then.’

‘No.’

He escorted Vilhelm down to the detention unit and showed him into one of the cells. The brothers, Ellert and Vignir, had both been transferred to Sídumúli. There was no sound from the idiot who’d ruined the party last night. Roaring drunk, he had kept swearing at them until finally he went for Gardar. Right now he was sleeping like a lamb but presently he would have to contend with an almighty hangover.

Vilhelm thanked Erlendur for the favour and got himself ready for bed. He seemed utterly exhausted and grateful for a rest. As he carefully laid aside his broken glasses, Erlendur enquired what had happened to them.

‘That was Bergmundur.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Trod on them. Deliberately.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s a dickhead.’

‘Did he do it for a laugh?’

‘I said something about Thurí that got his goat.’

‘So he broke your glasses?’

‘He knows I’m blind as a bat without them,’ said Vilhelm. ‘He’s clever that way.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Attacking people’s weak points. He’s a mean bugger. I’ve often said so. In his hearing too. I’m not scared of him. Not scared of anyone.’

Vilhelm lay down, and, leaving him to his rest, Erlendur went out the back of the police station into the morning sunshine. He decided to walk down to the seafront before heading home. It felt good to purge himself of the night’s sordid experiences, to breathe in the clean salty air and lift his eyes to the faraway horizon as he used to as a boy out east. He had grown up between the highlands, with their moors and mountains that could exact such a cruel price for the slightest mistake, and the fjord. He remembered the heavily laden boats coming in to land at the little fishing village near his home, the swarm of gulls that attended them, the bustle on the quay, the shouts of the sailors. His mother had worked in the fish factory and he recalled the long shifts, the razor-sharp knives and the big women in their white aprons admonishing him not to get underfoot. He looked back with nostalgia, regretting that he no longer lived beside the sea.

He had been standing for some time gazing at the sunbeams glittering on Faxaflói Bay, when his thoughts snagged on something Vilhelm had said, both on his last stay in the cells and again just now. He had referred to his stint in the heating conduit and to Bergmundur’s visit. Erlendur began to think about Thurí and why on earth Bergmundur would have broken Vilhelm’s glasses.

‘Wanted to help me...’ Erlendur whispered to himself.

After brooding for a long while, eyes staring, unseeing, over the bay, he turned and walked back up to the police station.

When he opened the door to the cell, Vilhelm was fast asleep. Erlendur prodded him, but the tramp was dead to the world. Erlendur had to grab hold of him and shake him before he finally began to surface. It took his sleep-fuddled brain some time to work out where he was and who was so insistent on rousing him.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, sitting up.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Erlendur, ‘but I have to ask you about something you told me yesterday.’

‘What... what’s that? Yesterday?’

‘Why didn’t Bergmundur want you to stay in the pipeline?’

‘Come again?’

‘You told me yesterday that Bergmundur had been to see you. Around the time I ran into you there.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You said he wanted to help you get a place at the Fever Hospital. That he didn’t want you to go on sleeping in the pipeline.’

‘So?’

‘Wasn’t that rather strange?’

‘What?’

‘Bergmundur being concerned about you like that. Being so considerate. Wasn’t that unusual for him?’

Still bemused, Vilhelm now looked irritated as well.

‘Did you wake me up for that?’ He put on his glasses.

‘Please try to remember. Then I won’t disturb you any more and you can go back to sleep. We had a chat yesterday. You told me Bergmundur had come to see you by the hot-water pipeline shortly after I left. Remember?’

Vilhelm nodded.

‘Why was that? What did he want?’

‘He was talking about Thurí,’ said Vilhelm, making an effort to recall what he had or hadn’t said to Erlendur the day before. ‘Then he asked if I had any booze and if I wouldn’t rather go to the Fever Hospital.’

‘What exactly did he say?’

‘How on earth would I remember that?’

‘Please try.’

‘He said I couldn’t possibly doss down in the pipeline. Said it was crazy. He’d help me find somewhere else. If I was sober, I stood a fair chance of getting a bed at the Fever Hospital. That sort of thing. At least, that was the gist of it.’

‘Wasn’t that unusual? Unlike him, I mean?’

‘It was the first time he’d behaved like that,’ agreed Vilhelm. ‘The stupid git was almost friendly.’

‘Did you go with him?’

‘He wouldn’t let up till I agreed to go into town with him. Wouldn’t stop hassling me. Let me sleep at his place. You could have knocked me down with a feather.’

‘So he was determined to get you out of the pipeline?’

‘Yes, said it wasn’t good for my health.’

‘But, as far as you’re aware, he’d never bothered about your welfare before?’

‘Never. Took me aback, I can tell you. I thought it was nice of him to care what happened to me. Because he’s not the type. Normally he only cares about number one.’

‘But then he broke your glasses?’

‘Well, I called Thurí a bloody whore. He went mad. I shouldn’t have slagged her off like that. At least, not to him.’

‘What sort of relationship did he have with Thurí?’ asked Erlendur. ‘They weren’t always a couple, were they?’

‘No, no one can put up with Bergmundur for long.’

‘Did she start seeing someone else?’

‘Er, yes. Didn’t you know?’

‘It was Hannibal, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, your friend Hannibal. They were inseparable.’

‘I presume Bergmundur wasn’t too happy about that.’

‘He couldn’t stand Hannibal. Couldn’t stand him. And Bergmundur never gives up. He’s a hell of a stubborn bugger. Only the other day I heard they’d taken up with each other again.’

‘Do you reckon he was jealous of Hannibal?’

‘Not half,’ said Vilhelm, stretching. ‘That’s what he’s like. Are you asking if he could have hurt him?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Never occurred to me. It was an accident, wasn’t it? Hannibal drowning?’

Erlendur shrugged.

‘You know he...?’

Vilhelm broke off. He was wide awake now.

‘What?’

‘Of course, Bergmundur was much stronger than Hannibal — bigger, younger and stronger.’

‘You mean he could have overpowered him?’

‘Easily. Hannibal would have been no match for him. It was probably him who...’

‘What?’

‘You know about Bergmundur? About what he did?’

‘No, what do you mean? What did he do?’

‘Óli claimed to have seen him.’

‘Óli, who’s Óli? What did he see?’

‘Ólafur! He dropped dead in Nauthólsvík,’ said Vilhelm. ‘You must remember him. His name was Ólafur. Heart attack, wasn’t it? Lying by the road to Nauthólsvík. Gave up the ghost halfway.’

‘Oh, yes. What about him?’ Erlendur finally called Ólafur to mind; the tramp who had been found dead recently. ‘What about him? What did he see?’

‘Bergmundur, of course,’ said Vilhelm. ‘The night Hannibal’s place caught fire. Óli told me he’d spotted Bergmundur loitering near the house that evening. Óli was sure he’d started it. In fact he was certain.’

Erlendur sank down on the bench beside him.

‘He saw Bergmundur?’

‘He was certain about it. Quite certain.’

Erlendur remembered the comment Vilhelm had made at their last meeting about living in the pipeline.

‘Like sleeping in a coffin,’ he murmured absently.

‘What?’

‘You said the pipeline was like a coffin.’

Vilhelm stared at him owlishly.

‘Too right. It was like lying in a coffin, sleeping there. Like lying in a bloody coffin.’