Tainted Blood

36

Hanna had warned the doctor so he wasn't surprised to see Erlendur that evening. He lived in an elegant house in the old part of Hafnarfjordur and welcomed Erlendur at the door, the very picture of gentility and courteousness, a short man, bald as a billiard ball and portly beneath his thick dressing gown. A bon viveur, Erlendur thought, with a perpetual and slightly feminine redness in his cheeks. He was of an indeterminate age, could be around 60. Greeted Erlendur with a hand as dry as paper and invited him into the lounge.

Erlendur sat on a large wine-red leather sofa and declined the offer of a drink. The doctor sat facing him and waited for him to begin. Erlendur looked around the lounge, which was spacious and lavishly adorned with paintings and objets d'art, and wondered whether the doctor lived alone. He asked him.

"Always lived alone," the doctor said. "I'm extremely happy with that and always have been. It's said that men who reach my age regret not having had a family and children. My colleagues go around waving pictures of their grandchildren at conferences all around the world, but I've never had any interest in starting a family. Never had any interest in children."

He was convivial, talkative and chummy as if Erlendur was a bosom pal, as if implicitly recognising him on equal terms. Erlendur was not impressed.

"But you're interested in organs in jars," he said.

The doctor refused to let Erlendur throw him off balance.

"Hanna told me you were angry," he said. "I don't know why you should be angry. I'm not doing anything illegal. Yes, I do have a little collection of organs. Most of them are preserved in formalin in glass jars. I keep them in the house here. They were due to be destroyed, but I took them and kept them a little longer. I also keep another type of bio-sample, tissue samples.

"Why, you're probably wondering," he continued, but Erlendur shook his head.

"How many organs have you stolen? was actually the question I was going to ask," he said, "but we can get to that later."

"I haven't stolen any organs," the doctor said, slowly stroking his bald head. "I can't understand this antagonism. Do you mind if I have a drop of sherry?" he asked and stood up. Erlendur waited while he went over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a glass. He offered one to Erlendur, who declined, and sipped at the sherry with his thick lips. It was clear from his round face how he relished the taste.

"People don't normally wonder about this," he said then, "and there's no reason to either. Everything dead is useless in our world, and so is a dead human body. No need to get sentimental about it. The soul's gone. Only the dross left and dross is nothing. You have to look at it from a medical perspective. The body's nothing, you understand?"

"It clearly is something to you. You collect body parts."

"In other countries, university hospitals buy organs for teaching purposes," the doctor continued. "But that hasn't been the custom in Iceland. Here we ask for permission to perform an autopsy on a case-by-case basis and sometimes we request to remove an organ even though it might not necessarily have anything to do with the death. People agree or refuse, the way things go. It's mainly older people whose bodies are involved. Nobody steals organs."

"But it wasn't always like that," Erlendur said.

"I don't know how things were in the old days. Of course, they didn't keep such a close watch on what went on then. I simply don't know. I don't know why you're shocked at me. Do you remember that news report from France? The car factory that used real human bodies in their crash tests, children too. You ought to be shocked at them instead. Organs are bought and sold all over the world. People are even killed for their organs. My collection can hardly be called criminal."

"But why?" Erlendur said. "What do you do with them?"

"Research, of course," the doctor said, sipping his sherry. "Examine them through a microscope. What won't a collector do? Stamp collectors look at postmarks. Book collectors look at years of publication. Astronomers have the whole world in front of their eyes and look at things of mind-boggling proportions. I'm continually looking at my microscopic world."

"So your hobby's research, you have facilities for studying the samples or organs that you own?"

"Yes."

"Here in the house?"

"Yes. If the samples are well preserved they can always be studied. When you get new medical information or want to look at something in particular they're perfectly usable for research purposes. Perfectly."

The doctor stopped talking.

"You're asking about Audur," he said then.

"Do you know of her?" Erlendur said in surprise.

"You know if she hadn't had an autopsy and had her brain removed you might never have found out what killed her. You know that. She's been lying in the ground too long. It wouldn't have been possible to study the brain effectively after 30 years in the soil. So, what you are so disgusted at has actually helped you. Presumably you realise that."

The doctor thought for a moment.

"Have you heard about Louis XVII? He was the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, imprisoned during the French Revolution, executed at the age of 10. It was on the news a year ago or more. French scientists had found out he died in prison and did not escape as some people claimed. Do you know how they found that out?"

"I don't remember the story," Erlendur said.

"His heart was removed and kept in formalin. When they could do DNA and other tests they found out that the alleged relatives based their kinship with the French royal family on lies. They weren't related to the prince. Do you know when Louis died in childhood?"

"No."

"More than two hundred years ago. In 1795. Formalin is a unique fluid."

Erlendur became thoughtful.

"What do you know about Audur?"

"Various things."

"How did the sample come into your hands?"

"Via a third party. I don't think I'd care to go into that."

"From Jar City?"

"Yes."

"Did they give you Jar City?"

"Part of it. There's no need to talk to me as though I'm a criminal."

"Did you ever establish the cause of death?"

The doctor looked at Erlendur and took another sip of his sherry.

"Actually, I did," he said. "I've always been more inclined towards research than medical practice. With this obsession of mine for collecting things, I've been able to combine the two, although only on a small scale of course."

"The coroner's report from Keflavik only mentions a brain tumour, without any further explanation."

"I saw that. The report is incomplete, it was never more than preliminary. As I say, I've looked into this more closely and I think I have the answer to some of your questions."

Erlendur leaned forward in his chair. "And?"

"A genetic disease. It occurs in several families in Iceland. It was an extremely complex case and even after examining it in depth I wasn't sure for a long time. Eventually I thought the tumour was most probably linked to a genetic disease, neurofibromatosis. I don't expect you've heard of it before. In some cases there aren't any symptoms. In some cases people can die without the illness ever surfacing. There are symptom-free carriers. It's much more common for the symptoms to emerge at an early stage, though, mainly in the form of marks on the skin and of tumours."

The doctor sipped his sherry again.

"The Keflavik people didn't describe anything of that sort in their report, but I'm not sure they knew what they were looking for either."

"They told the relatives about the skin."

"Did they, really? Diagnosis isn't always certain."

"Is this disease passed on from father to daughter?"

"It can be. But genetic transmission isn't confined to that. Both sexes can carry and contract the disease. It's said that one strain of it came out in the Elephant Man. Did you see the film?"

"No," Erlendur said.

"Certain people contract extreme bone growth which causes deformity, as in that particular case. In fact there are other people who claim that neurofibromatosis has nothing to do with the Elephant Man. But that's a different story."

"Why did you start looking for it?" Erlendur interrupted the doctor.

"Brain diseases are my specialist field," he said. "This girl is one of my most interesting cases. I read all the reports about her. They weren't very precise. The doctor who looked after her was a poor GP, he was drinking at the time, so I'm told. But be that as it may, he wrote about acute tubercular infection of the head in one place, which was the term that was sometimes used when the disease appeared. That was my starting point. The coroner's report from Keflavik wasn't very precise either, as we talked about before. They found the tumour and left it at that."

The doctor stood up and went over to a large bookcase in the lounge. He took out a journal and handed it to Erlendur.

"I'm not sure you'll understand all this, but I wrote a short scientific article about my research in a highly respected American medical journal."

"Have you written a scientific article about Audur?" Erlendur asked.

"Audur has helped us on our way towards understanding the disease. She's been very important both to me and to medical science. I hope I'm not disappointing you."

"The girl's father could be a genetic carrier," Erlendur said, still trying to grasp what the doctor had told him. "And he passed the disease on to his daughter. If he'd had a son, wouldn't he also have inherited the disease?"

"It wouldn't necessarily have to come out in him," the doctor said, "but he could be a genetic carrier, like his father."

"So?"

"Yes. If he had a child, the child could also have the disease."

Erlendur thought about what the doctor had said.

"But you really ought to talk to the scientists at the Genetic Research Centre," the doctor said. "They've got the answers to the genetic questions."

"What?"

"Talk to the Genetic Research Centre. That's our new Jar City. They've got the answers. What's wrong? Why are you so shocked? Do you know anyone there?"

"No," Erlendur said, "but I soon will."

"Do you want to see Audur?" the doctor asked.

At first Erlendur didn't take the doctor's hint.

"Do you mean. .?"

"I've got a small laboratory down here. You're welcome to take a look."

Erlendur hesitated.

"All right," he said.

They stood up and Erlendur followed the doctor down the narrow stairs. The doctor switched on a light and a pristine laboratory appeared, with microscopes, computers, test tubes and equipment for purposes that Erlendur couldn't even begin to imagine. He remembered a remark that he happened to read somewhere about collectors. Collectors make a world for themselves. They make a little world all around them, select certain icons from reality and turn them into the chief characters in that artificial world. Holberg was a collector too. His obsession with collecting things was connected with pornography. It was from that he made his private world, just as the doctor did from organs.

"She's here," the doctor said.

He went over to a large, old, wooden cabinet, the only article of furniture in the room and out of place in the sterilised environment, he opened it and took down a thick glass jar with a lid. He put it carefully on the table and Erlendur could see in the strong fluorescent light a little child's brain floating in formalin.

When he left the doctor, Erlendur took with him a leather case containing Audur's earthly remains. He thought about Jar City as he drove home through the empty streets, hoping that no part of him would ever be kept in a laboratory. It was still raining when he pulled up outside the block of flats where he lived. He switched off the engine, lit a cigarette and stared out into the night.

Erlendur looked at the black bag on the front seat. He was going to put Audur back where she belonged.