Tainted Blood

25

Erlendur was eventually woken up by the phone ringing. It resounded in his head until he opened his eyes and looked around everywhere. He’d slept in the armchair in the sitting room. His coat and hat were lying on the sofa. It was dark in the flat. Erlendur got to his feet slowly and wondered whether he could wear the same clothes for yet another day. He couldn’t remember the last time he had undressed. He looked into the bedroom before answering the phone and saw that the two girls were lying in his bed where he’d put them the night before. He pulled the door to.

“The fingerprints on the camera match the ones on the photograph,” Sigurdur Oli said when Erlendur eventually answered. He had to repeat the sentence twice more before Erlendur realised what he was talking about.

“Do you mean Gretar’s fingerprints?”

“Yes, Gretar’s.”

“And Holberg’s prints were on the photo too?” Erlendur said. “What the hell were they up to?”

“Beats my balls off,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. So Gretar took the photo then. We can assume that. He showed it to Holberg or Holberg found it. We’ll go on looking for the Husavik woman today, won’t we?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “You don’t have any new leads?”

“Yes,” Erlendur said. “And no.”

“I’m on my way up to Grafarvogur. We’ve almost finished the women in Reykjavik. Are we going to send someone up to Husavik when we’ve finished here?”

“Yes,” Erlendur said and put down the phone. Eva Lind was in the kitchen. She’d been woken up by the phone ringing. She was still dressed, as was the girl from Gardabaer. Erlendur had gone back into the hovel, carried her out and driven them both to his flat.

Eva Lind went into the toilet without saying a word and Erlendur heard her retching violently. He went into the kitchen and made some strong coffee, the only solution he knew in that situation, sat down at the kitchen table and waited for his daughter to come back out. Quite a while passed, he filled two cups. Eva Lind came out at last. She had wiped her face. Erlendur thought she looked terrible. Her body was so scrawny it barely hung together.

“I knew she did dope sometimes,” Eva Lind said in a hoarse voice when she sat down with Erlendur, “but I met her by pure chance.”

“What happened to you?” Erlendur asked.

She looked at her father.

“I’m trying,” she said, “but it’s difficult.”

“Two lads came here asking for you. Filthy-mouthed. I gave some Eddi character some money you owed him. It was him who told me where that the hovel was.”

“Eddi’s okay.”

“Are you going to keep trying?”

“Should I get rid of it?” Eva Lind stared down at the floor.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m so scared I’ve damaged it.”

“Maybe you’re trying on purpose.”

Eva Lind looked up at her father.

“You’re fucking pathetic,” she said.

“Me!”

“Yes, you.”

“What am I supposed to think? Tell me that!” Erlendur shouted. “Can you possibly handle this endless self-pity? What a bloody loser you can be sometimes. Do you really feel so good in that company you keep that you can’t think there’s anything better for you? What right do you have to treat your life like that? What right do you have to treat the life inside you like that? Do you really think things are so horrible for you? Do you really think no-one in the world feels as bad as you? I’m investigating the death of a girl who didn’t even reach the age of five. She fell ill and died. Something no-one understands destroyed her and killed her. Her coffin was three feet long. Can you hear what I’m saying? What right have you got to live? Tell me that!”

Erlendur was shouting. He stood up and hammered on the kitchen table with such a force that the cups started jumping around and when he saw that he picked one up and threw it at the wall behind Eva Lind. His rage flared up and for a moment he lost control of himself. He overturned the table, swept everything off the kitchen surfaces, pots and glasses slammed into the walls and floor. Eva Lind sat still in her chair, watched her father go berserk and her eyes filled with tears.

Finally Erlendur’s rage abated, he turned to Eva Lind and saw her shoulders were shaking and she was hiding her face in her hands. He looked at his daughter, her dirty hair, thin arms, wrists hardly thicker than his fingers, her skinny, trembling body. She was barefoot and there was dirt under all her nails. He went over to her and tried to pull her hands away from her face, but she wouldn’t let him. He wanted to apologise to her. Wanted to take her in his arms. He did neither.

Instead, he sat down on the floor beside her. The phone rang but he didn’t answer it. There was no sign of the other girl from the bedroom. The phone stopped ringing and the flat fell silent again. The only sound was Eva Lind sobbing. Erlendur knew he was no model father and the speech he’d delivered could just as easily have been directed at himself. Probably he was talking just as much to himself and was as angry with himself as with Eva Lind. A psychologist would say he’d been venting his anger on the girl. But maybe what he said did have some effect. He hadn’t seen Eva Lind cry before. Not since she was a small child. He left her when she was two.

At last Eva Lind took her hands away from her face, sniffed and wiped her face.

“It was her dad,” she said.

“Her dad?” Erlendur said.

“Who was a monster,” Eva Lind said. ” ’He’s a monster. What have I done?’ It was her dad. He started touching her up when she started growing breasts and he kept going further and further. Couldn’t even keep his hands off her at her own wedding. Took her off to some empty part of the house. Told her she looked so sexy in her wedding dress he couldn’t control himself. Couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving him. Started goosing her. She freaked out.”

“What a crowd!” Erlendur groaned.

“I knew she did dope sometimes. She’s asked me to score for her before. She totally flipped and went to see Eddi. She’s been lying in that dump ever since.”

Eva Lind stopped. “I think her mother knew about it,” she said afterwards. “All the time. She didn’t do anything. The house was too flash. Too many cars.”

“Doesn’t the girl want to go to the police?”

“Wow!”

“What?”

“Go through all that crap for a three-month suspended sentence if anyone believes her? Come on!”

“What’s she going to do?”

“She’ll go back to the bloke. Her husband. I think she likes him.”

“She blamed herself then, did she?”

“She doesn’t know what to think.”

“Because she wrote ’What have I done?’ She took the blame on herself.”

“It’s not surprising she’s a bit screwed up.”

“It always seems to be the bloody perverts who seem happiest of all. Smile at the world as if there’s never anything gnawing away at their bloody consciences.”

“Don’t talk to me like that again,” Eva Lind said. “Never talk to me like that again.”

“Do you owe more people than Eddi?” Erlendur asked.

“A few. But Eddi’s the main problem.”

The phone rang yet again. The girl in the bedroom stirred and sat up, looked all around and got out of bed. Erlendur wondered whether to bother answering. Whether to bother going to work. Whether he ought to spend the day with Eva Lind. Keep her company, maybe get her to go to the doctor with him and have the embryo looked at, if you could call it an embryo. Find out if everything was all right. Stand by her.

But the phone refused to stop ringing. The girl had come out into the corridor and looked all around in confusion. She called out to ask if anyone was in the flat. Eva Lind called back that they were in the kitchen. Erlendur stood up, met the girl in the kitchen doorway and said hello. He received no reply. They’d both slept in their clothes just like Erlendur. The girl looked around the kitchen that Erlendur had smashed up and cast a sideways glance at him.

Erlendur answered the phone at last.

“What was the smell in Holberg’s flat like?” Erlendur took a while to realise it was Marion Briem’s voice.

“The smell?” Erlendur repeated.

“What was the smell in his flat like?” Marion Briem repeated.

“It was a sort of nasty basement smell,” Erlendur said. “A smell of damp. A stench. I don’t know. Like horses?”

“No, it’s not horses,” Marion Briem said. “I was reading about Nordurmyri. I talked to a plumber friend of mine and he referred me to another plumber. I’ve talked to a lot of plumbers.”

“Why plumbers?”

“Very interesting, the whole business. You didn’t tell me about the fingerprints on the photo.” There was a hint of accusation in Marion’s voice.

“No,” Erlendur said. “I didn’t get round to it.”

“I heard about Gretar and Holberg. Gretar knew the girl was Holberg’s daughter. Maybe he knew something else.”

Erlendur remained silent.

“What do you mean?” he said eventually.

“Do you know the most important thing about Nordurmyri?” Marion Briem asked.

“No,” Erlendur said, finding it difficult to follow Marion’s train of thought.

“It’s so obvious that I missed it at the time.”

“What is it?”

Marion paused for a moment as if to give extra weight to the words.

“Nordurmyri. North Mire.”

“And?”

“The houses were built on marsh land.”