Tainted Blood

21

The bodies lay side by side on the cold slabs in the morgue on Baronsstigur. Erlendur tried not to think about how he had brought the father and daughter together in death. An autopsy and tests had already been performed on Holberg's body, but it was awaiting further studies which would focus on genetic diseases and whether he was related to Audur. Erlendur noticed that the body's fingers were black. He'd been fingerprinted after his death. Audur's body lay wrapped in a white canvas sheet on a table beside Holberg. She was still untouched.

Erlendur didn't know the pathologist and saw little of him. He was tall, with large hands. He wore thin plastic gloves, wearing a white apron over a green gown, tied at the back, and wearing green trousers of the same material. He had a gauze over his mouth and a blue plastic cap on his head and white trainers.

Erlendur had been to the morgue often enough before and always felt equally bad there. The smell of death filled his senses and settled in his clothes, the smell of formalin and sterilising agents and the horrifying stench of dead bodies that had been opened. Bright fluorescent lamps were suspended from the ceiling, casting a pure white light around the windowless room. There were large white tiles on the floor and the walls were partly tiled, the upper half painted with white plastic paint. Standing up against them were tables with microscopes and other research equipment. On the walls were many cupboards, some with glass doors, revealing instruments and jars that were beyond Erlendur's comprehension. However, he did understand the function of the scalpels, tongs and saws that were spread out in a neat row on a long instrument table.

Erlendur noticed a scent card hanging down from a fluorescent lamp above one of the two operating tables. It showed a girl in a red bikini running along a white sandy beach. There was a tape recorder on one of the tables and several cassettes beside it. It was playing classical music. Mahler, Erlendur thought. The pathologist's lunch box was on a table beside one of the microscopes.

"She stopped giving off any scent long ago, but her body's still in good shape," the pathologist said and looked over to Erlendur, who was standing by the door as if hesitant about entering the brightly lit chamber of death and decay.

"Eh?" Erlendur said, unable to take his eyes off the white heap. There was a tone of gleeful anticipation in the pathologist's voice that he could not fathom.

"The girl in the bikini, I mean," the pathologist said with a nod at the scent card. "I need to get a new card. You probably never get used to the smell. Do come in. Don't be afraid. It's just meat. He waved the knife over Holberg's body. No soul, no life, just a carcass of meat. Do you believe in ghosts?"

"Eh?" Erlendur said again.

"Do you think their souls are watching us? Do you think they're hovering around the room here or do you think they've taken up residence in another body? Been reincarnated. Do you believe in life after death?"

"No, I don't," Erlendur replied.

"This man died after a heavy blow to the head that punctured his scalp, smashed his skull and forced its way through to the brain. It looks to me as if the person who delivered the blow was standing facing him. It's not unlikely that they looked each other in the eye. The attacker is probably right-handed, the wound's on the left side. And he's in good physical shape, a young man or middle-aged at most, hardly a woman unless she's done manual labour. The blow would have killed him almost instantaneously. He would have seen the tunnel and the bright lights."

"It's quite probable he took the other route," Erlendur said.

"Well. The intestine is almost empty, remains of eggs and coffee, the rectum is full. He suffered, if that isn't too strong a word, from constipation. Not uncommon at that age. No-one has claimed the body, I understand, so we've applied for permission to use it for teaching purposes. How does that grab you?"

"So he's more use dead than alive."

The pathologist looked at Erlendur, walked up to a table, took a red slice of meat from a metal tray and held it up with one hand.

"I can't tell whether people were good or bad," he said. "This could just as easily be the heart of a saint. What we need to find out, if I understand you correctly, is whether it pumped bad blood."

Erlendur looked in astonishment at the pathologist holding Holberg's heart and examining it. Watched him handling the dead muscle as if nothing could be more natural in the world.

"It's a strong heart," the pathologist went on. "It could have gone on pumping for a good few years, could have taken its owner past a hundred."

The pathologist put the heart back on the metal tray.

"There's something quite interesting about this Holberg, though I haven't examined him particularly in that respect. You probably want me to. He has various mild symptoms of a specific disease. I found a small tumour in his brain, a benign tumour which would have troubled him a little, and there's cafe au lait on his skin, especially here under his arms."

"Cafe au lait?" Erlendur said.

"Cafe au lait is what it's called in the textbooks. It looks like coffee stains. Do you know anything about it?"

"Nothing at all."

"I'll undoubtedly find more symptoms when I look at him more closely."

"There was talk of cafe au lait on the girl. She developed a brain tumour. Malignant. Do you know what the disease is?"

"I can't say anything about it yet."

"Are we talking about a genetic disease?"

"I don't know."

The pathologist went over to the table where Audur lay.

"Have you heard the story about Einstein?" he asked.

"Einstein?" Erlendur said.

"Albert Einstein."

"What story?"

"A weird story. True. Thomas Harvey? Never heard of him? A pathologist."

"No."

"He was on duty when Einstein died," the pathologist continued. "A curious chap. Performed the autopsy, but because it was Einstein he couldn't resist and opened up his head and looked at the brain. And he did more than that. He stole Einstein's brain."

Erlendur said nothing. He couldn't make head or tail of what the pathologist was talking about.

"He took it home. That strange urge to collect things that some people have, especially when famous people are involved. Harvey lost his job when the theft was discovered and over the years he became a mysterious figure, a legend really. All kinds of stories circulated about him. He always kept the brain in his house. I don't know how he got away with it. Einstein's relatives were always trying to recover the brain from him, but in vain. Eventually in his old age he made his peace with the relatives and decided to return the brain to them. Put it in the boot of his car and drove right across America to Einstein's grandchild in California."

"Is this true?"

"True as daylight."

"Why are you telling me this?" Erlendur asked.

The pathologist lifted up the sheet from the child's body and looked underneath it.

"Her brain's missing," he said, and the look of nonchalance vanished from his face.

"What?"

"The brain," the pathologist said, "isn't where it belongs."