Tainted Blood

33

"Why did you stop there?" Elinborg said when they left the house and went into the street.

She'd had trouble concealing her surprise when Erlendur suddenly thanked Katrin for being so cooperative. He said he knew how difficult it was for her to talk about these things and he'd make sure that nothing they had talked about would go any further. Elinborg gaped. They were only just starting to talk.

"She'd started lying," Erlendur said. "It's too much of an ordeal for her. We'll meet her later. Her phone needs tapping and we should have a car outside the house to check on her movements and any visitors. We need to find out what her sons do, get recent photos of them if we can, but without drawing attention to ourselves, and we need to locate people who knew Katrin in Husavik and could even remember that evening, although that might be a bit of a long shot. I asked Sigurdur Oli to contact the Harbour and Lighthouse Authority to see if they can tell us when Holberg worked for them in Husavik. Maybe he's done that by now. Get a copy of Katrin and Albert's marriage certificate to find out the year they were married."

Erlendur had got into his car.

"And Elinborg, you can come along the next time we talk to her."

"Is anyone capable of doing what she described?" Elinborg asked, her mind still on Katrin's story.

"With Holberg it seems anything's possible," Erlendur replied.

He drove down into Nordurmyri. Sigurdur Oli was still there. He'd contacted the phone company about the calls made to Holberg the weekend he was murdered. Two were from the Iceland Transport yard where he worked and another three were from public telephones: two from a phone box on Laekjargata and one from a payphone at Hlemmur Bus Station.

"Anything else?"

"Yes, the porn on his computer. Forensics have looked at quite a lot of it and it's appalling. Downright sick. All the worst stuff you can find on the Internet, including animals and children. That guy was a total pervert. I think they gave up looking at it."

"Maybe there's no need to subject them to it any more," said Erlendur.

"It does give us a small picture of what a filthy, disgusting creep he was," Sigurdur Oli said

"Do you mean he deserved to be smashed over the head and killed?" Erlendur said.

"What do you think?"

"Have you asked the Harbour and Lighthouse Authority about Holberg?"

"No."

"Get a move on then."

"Is he waving to us?" Sigurdur Oli asked. They were standing in front of Holberg's house. One of the forensic team had come out of the basement and was standing there in his white overalls waving to them to come over. He seemed quite excited. They got out of the car, went down into the basement and the forensic technician gestured to them to come over to one of the screens. He was holding a remote control which he told them operated the camera that had been inserted into one of the holes in the corner of the sitting room.

They watched the screen, but they couldn't see anything on it that they could at all identify. The image was speckled, poorly lit, blurred and dull. They could see gravel and the underside of the flooring, but otherwise nothing unusual. Some time passed until the technician couldn't hold back any longer.

"It's this thing here," he said, pointing to the top centre of the screen. "Right up underneath the flooring."

"What?" said Erlendur, who couldn't see a thing.

"Can't you see it?" the forensics technician said.

"What?" Sigurdur Oli said.

"The ring."

"The ring?" Erlendur said.

"That's clearly a ring we've found under the floor. Can't you see it?"

They squinted at the screen until they thought they could make out an object that could well be a ring. It was unclear, as if something was blocking the view. They couldn't see anything else.

"It's as if there's something in the way," Sigurdur Oli said.

"It could be insulating plastic like they use in building," the technician said. More people had gathered around the screen to watch what was happening. "Look at this thing here," he continued, "This line by the ring. It could easily be a finger. There's something lying out in the corner that I think we ought to take a closer look at."

"Break up the floor," Erlendur ordered. "Let's see what it is."

The forensic team went to work at once. They marked out the spot on the sitting-room floor and began breaking it up with the pneumatic drill. A fine concrete dust swirled around the basement and Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli put gauze masks over their mouths. They stood behind the technicians, watching the hole widening in the floor. The base plate was seven or eight inches thick and it took the drill some time to get through it.

Once they'd broken through, the hole quickly widened. The men swept the concrete fragments away as fast as they were chipped loose and they could soon see the plastic that had been revealed by the camera. Erlendur looked at Sigurdur Oli, who nodded at him.

The plastic came increasingly into view. Erlendur thought it was thick building insulation plastic. It was impossible to see through. He'd forgotten the noise in the basement, the revolting stench and the dust swirling up. Sigurdur Oli had taken his mask off to see better. He bent down and called over the forensic team which was breaking up the floor.

"Is this how they open the Pharaohs' tombs in Egypt?" he asked and the tension eased a little.

"Except I'm afraid there's no Pharaoh under here," Erlendur said.

"Could it actually be that we've found Gretar under Holberg's floor?" Sigurdur Oli said in eager anticipation. "After twenty-fucking-five years! Bloody brilliant!"

"His mother was right," Erlendur said.

"Gretar's mother?"

"'It was like he'd been stolen,' she said."

"Wrapped up in plastic and stashed away under the floor."

"Marion Briem," Erlendur muttered to himself and shook his head.

The forensic team bored away with their electric drills, the floor split open under the pressure and the hole widened until the entire plastic package could be seen. It was the length of an average man. The forensic team discussed how they ought to go about opening it. They decided to remove it from the floor cavity in one piece and not touch it until they'd taken it to the morgue on Baronsstigur where it could be handled without the loss of any potential evidence.

They fetched a stretcher they had taken into the basement the night before and put it next to the hole in the floor. Two of them tried to lift the plastic package, but it turned out to be too heavy, so another two went down to help them. Soon it began to budge and they worked it free from its surroundings, lifted it out and placed it on the stretcher.

Erlendur went up to the package, bent over it and tried to see through the plastic. He thought he could make out a face, shrivelled and rotten, teeth and part of a nose. He straightened up again.

"He doesn't look so bad, considering," he said.

"What's that?" Sigurdur Oli asked, leaning down into the hole.

"What?" Erlendur said.

"Are those rolls of film?" Sigurdur Oli said.

Erlendur went up closer, knelt down and saw rolls of photographic film half buried in the gravel. Yards of film spread all around. He was hoping that some of it had been used.