Voices

5

The reception manager had not yet arrived for work when Erlendur went down to the lobby and asked for him. He had given no explanation for his absence, nor phoned in sick or to say he needed the day off to run some errands. A lady in her thirties who worked at reception told Erlendur that it was certainly unusual for the reception manager not to turn up on time, always such a punctual man, and incomprehensible of him not to get in touch if he needed time off.

She told Erlendur this in between pauses while a bio-technician from the National Hospital took a swab of her saliva. Three biotechnicians were collecting samples from the hotel staff. Another group went to the homes of the employees who were not at work. Soon the biotechnicians would have DNA from the hotel’s entire staff to compare with the saliva on Santa’s condom.

Detectives interrogated the staff about their acquaintanceship with Gudlaugur and the whereabouts of each and every one of them the previous afternoon. The entire Reykjavik CID took part in the murder investigation while information and evidence were being collected.

“What about people who’ve recently left or worked here a year ago or whatever, and knew Santa?” Sigurdur Oli asked. He sat down beside Erlendur in the dining room and watched him partake of herring and ryebread, cold ham, toast and piping hot coffee.

“Let’s see what we discover from this for starters,” Erlendur said, slurping his coffee. “Have you found out anything about this Gudlaugur?”

“Not much. There doesn’t seem to be a lot to say about him. He was forty-eight, single, no children. He’d been working here for the past twenty years or so. I understand he lived in that little room down in the basement for years. It was only supposed to be a temporary solution at the time, that fat manager implied. But he says he’s not familiar with the matter. Told us to talk to the previous manager. He was the one who made the deal with Santa. Fatso reckoned Gudlaugur had lost the place he was renting and was allowed to keep his stuff in the room, and he just never left.”

Sigurdur Oli paused, then said: “Elinborg told me you stayed at the hotel last night.”

“I can hardly recommend it. The room’s cold and the staff never give you a moment’s peace. But the food’s good. Where is Elinborg?”

The dining room was busy and the hotel guests made a din as they indulged in the breakfast spread. Most of them were tourists wearing traditional Icelandic sweaters, hiking boots and thick winter clothing, even though they were going no further than the city centre, ten minutes” walk away. The waiters made sure their coffee cups were refilled and their used plates taken away. Christmas songs were playing softly over the sound system.

“The main hearing starts today. You knew that, didn’t you?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“Yes.”

“Elinborg’s down there. How do you think it will turn out?”

“I suppose it will be a couple of months, suspended. Always the same with those bloody judges.”

“Surely he won’t be allowed to keep the boy.”

“I don’t know,” Erlendur said.

“The bastard,” Sigurdur Oli said. “They ought to put him in the stocks in the town square.”

Elinborg had been in charge of the investigation. An eight-year-old boy had been committed to hospital after being seriously assaulted. No one had been able to get a word out of him about the attack. The initial theory was that older children had set on him outside the school and beaten him up so badly that he suffered a broken arm, fractured cheekbone and two loose upper teeth. He crawled home in a terrible state. His father notified the police when he got back from work shortly afterwards. An ambulance took the boy to hospital.

The boy was an only child. His mother was in the Kleppur mental hospital when the incident took place. He lived with his father, who owned and ran an internet company, in a big and beautiful two-storey house with a commanding view of the city in Breidholt suburb. Naturally, the father was distressed after the assault and talked about taking vengeance on the boys who had hurt his son so horrifically. He insisted that Elinborg bring them to justice.

Elinborg might never have found out the truth had they not lived in a two-storey house with the boy’s room upstairs.

“She identifies with it in a bad way,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Elinborg has a boy the same age.”

“You shouldn’t let that influence you too much,” Erlendur said vacantly.

“Says who?”

The peaceful atmosphere of the breakfast buffet was disturbed by a noise from the kitchen. All the guests looked up, then at each other. A loud-voiced man was ranting about something or other. Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli stood up and went into the kitchen. The voice belonged to the head chef who had caught Erlendur when he nibbled at the ox tongue. He was raging at a biotechnician who wanted to take a saliva sample from him.

“… and bugger off out of here with your bloody swabs!” the chef shouted at a woman of fifty who had a little sampling box open on the table. She went on insisting politely in spite of his fury, which did not soothe his temper. When he saw Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli his rage was redoubled.

“Are you mad?” he shouted. “Do you think I was down there with Gulli putting a condom on his dick? Are you lot mental? Fucking idiots! No way. No bloody way. I don’t give a monkey’s what you say! You can stick me in jail and throw away the key but I’m not taking part in this bloody fiasco! Just get that straight! Fucking idiots!”

The chef strode out of the kitchen, swollen with righteous male indignation which was rather undermined, however, by his chimney-like white hat, and Erlendur began to smile. He looked at the biotechnician who smiled back and started to laugh. The tension in the kitchen eased. The cooks and waiters who had gathered round roared with laughter.

“You having trouble?” Erlendur asked the biotechnician.

“No, not at all,” she said. “Everyone’s very understanding really. He’s the first one to make a scene about it”

She smiled, and Erlendur thought her smile was pretty. She was roughly the same height as him, with thick, blond hair, cut short, and was wearing a colourful knitted cardigan buttoned down the front. Under the cardigan was a white blouse. She was wearing jeans and elegant black leather shoes.

“My name’s Erlendur,” he said, almost instinctively, and held out his hand.

She became a little flustered.

“Yes,” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m Valgerdur.”

“Valgerdur?” he repeated. He did not see a wedding ring.

Erlendur’s mobile phone rang in his pocket.

“Excuse me,” he said, answering the phone. He heard an old, familiar voice asking for him.

“Is that you?” the voice asked.

“Yes, it’s me,” Erlendur said.

“I’ll never get the hang of these mobile phones,” the voice said. “Where are you? Are you at the hotel? Maybe you’re rushing off somewhere. Or in a lift.”

“I’m at the hotel.” Erlendur put his hand over the mouthpiece and asked Valgerdur to wait a moment, then went back into the dining room and out to the lobby. It was Marion Briem on the phone.

“Are you sleeping at the hotel?” Marion asked. “Is something wrong? Why don’t you go home?”

Marion Briem had worked for the old Police Investigation Department when that institution was still around, and had been Erlendur’s mentor. Was already there when Erlendur joined and had taught him the detective’s craft. Marion sometimes phoned Erlendur and complained that he never visited. Erlendur had never really liked his former boss and felt no particular urge to reappraise his feelings in Marion’s old age. Perhaps because they were too similar. Perhaps because in Marion he saw his own future and wanted to avoid it. Marion lived a lonely life and hated being old.

“Why are you phoning?” Erlendur asked.

“Some people still keep me in the picture, even if you don’t,” Marion said.

Erlendur was about to put a swift end to the conversation, but stopped himself. Marion had assisted him before, without being asked. He mustn’t be rude.

“Can I help you with anything?” Erlendur asked.

“Give me the man’s name. I might find something you’ve overlooked.”

“You never give up.”

I’m bored,” Marion said. “You can’t imagine how bored I am. I retired almost ten years ago and I can tell you, every day in this hell is like an eternity. Like a thousand years, every single day.”

“There are plenty of things for senior citizens to do,” Erlendur said. “Have you tried bingo?”

“Bingo!” Marion roared.

Erlendur passed on Gudlaugur’s name. He briefed Marion on the case and then said goodbye. His phone rang almost immediately afterwards.

“Yes,” Erlendur said.

“We found a note in the man’s room,” a voice said over the phone. It was the head of forensics.

“A note?”

“It says: Henry 18.30.”

“Henry? Wait a minute, when did the girl find Santa?”

“It was about seven.”

“So this Henry could have been in his room when he was killed?”

“I don’t know. And there’s another thing.”

“Go on.”

“Santa could have owned the condom himself. There was a packet of them in the pocket of his doorman’s uniform. It’s a packet of ten and three are missing.”

“Anything else?”

“No, just a wallet with a five-hundred-krona note, an old ID card and a supermarket receipt dated the day before yesterday. Oh yes, and a key ring with two keys on it.”

“What sort of keys?”

“One looks like a house key, but the other could be to a locker or something like that. It looks much smaller.”

They said goodbye and Erlendur looked around for the biotechnician, but she was gone.

Two guests at the hotel were named Henry. Henry Bartlet, American, and Henry Wapshott, British. The latter did not answer when his room was dialled, but Bartlet was in and showed surprise when it emerged that the Icelandic police wanted to talk to him. The hotel manager’s story about the old man’s heart attack had clearly got around.

Erlendur took Sigurdur Oli with him to meet Henry Bartlet; Sigurdur Oli had studied criminology in the US and was rather proud of the fact. He spoke the language like a native and although Erlendur had a particular dislike for the American drawl, he put up with it.

On the way up to Bartlet’s floor, Sigurdur Oli told Erlendur that they had talked to most of the hotel employees who were on duty when Gudlaugur was attacked. All had alibis and named people to corroborate their stories.

Bartlet was about thirty, a stockbroker from Colorado. He and his wife had seen a programme about Iceland on American breakfast television some years before and were enchanted by the dramatic scenery and the Blue Lagoon — they had since been there three times. They had decided to make a dream come true and spend Christmas and the New Year in the distant land of winter. The beautiful landscape enthralled them, but they found the prices exorbitant at the restaurants and bars in the city.

Sigurdur Oli nodded. To him, America was paradise on earth. He was impressed on meeting the couple and discussing baseball and American Christmas preparations with them, until Erlendur had had enough and gave him a prod.

Sigurdur Oli explained the death of the doorman and told them about the note in his room. Mr and Mrs Henry Bartlet stared at the detectives as if they had suddenly been transported to a different planet.

“You didn’t know the doorman, did you?” Sigurdur Oli said when he saw their expressions of astonishment.

“A murder?” Henry groaned. At this hotel?”

“Oh my God,” his wife said and sat down on the double bed.

Sigurdur Oli decided not to mention the condom. He explained how the note implied that Gudlaugur had arranged to meet a man called Henry, but they did not know what day, whether the meeting had taken place or whether it was supposed to be after two days, a week, ten days.

Henry Bartlet and his wife flatly denied all knowledge of the doorman. They hadn’t even noticed him when they arrived at the hotel four days before. Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli’s questions had clearly upset them.

“Jesus,” Henry said. “A murder!”

“You have murders in Iceland?” his wife — Cindy, she had told Sigurdur Oli her name when they greeted each other — asked, glancing over at the Icelandair brochure on the bedside table.

“Rarely? he said, trying to smile.

“This Henry character is not necessarily a guest at the hotel,” Sigurdur Oli said while they waited for the lift back down. “He doesn’t even have to be a foreigner. There are Icelanders by the name of Henry.”

6

Sigurdur Oli had located the former hotel manager, so he said goodbye to Erlendur when they got to the lobby and went off to meet him. Erlendur asked for the head of reception but he had still not turned up for work and had not phoned in. Henry Wapshott had left the key card to his room at reception early that morning without anyone noticing him. He had spent almost a week at the hotel and was expected to stay for two more days. Erlendur asked to be notified as soon as Wapshott reappeared.

The hotel manager plodded past Erlendur.

“I hope you’re not disturbing my guests,” he said.

Erlendur took him to one side.

“What are the rules about prostitution at this hotel?” Erlendur asked straight out as they stood next to the Christmas tree in the lobby.

“Prostitution? What are you talking about?” The hotel manager heaved a deep sigh and wiped his neck with a scruffy handkerchief.

Erlendur looked at him in anticipation.

“Don’t you go mixing up any bloody nonsense in all this,” the manager said.

“Was the doorman involved with tarts?”

“Come off it,” the manager said. “There are no tar-no prostitutes at this hotel.”

“There are prostitutes at all hotels.”

“Really?” the manager said. “Are you talking from experience?”

Erlendur didn’t answer him.

“Are you saying that the doorman was a pimp?” the manager said in a shocked tone. “I’ve never heard such rubbish in my life. This isn’t a strip joint. This is one of the largest hotels in Reykjavik!”

“No women in the bars or lobby who stalk the men? Go up to their rooms with them?”

The manager hesitated. He acted as though he wanted to avoid antagonising Erlendur.

“This is a big hotel,” he said eventually. “We can’t keep an eye on everything that goes on. If it’s straightforward prostitution and there’s no question about it, we try to prevent it, but it’s a difficult matter to deal with. Otherwise the guests are free to do what they like in their rooms.”

“Tourists and businessmen, regional people, isn’t that how you described the guests?”

“Yes, and much more besides, of course. But this isn’t a doss-house. It’s a quality establishment and as a rule the guests can easily afford the accommodation. Nothing smutty goes on here and for God’s sake don’t go spreading that kind of rumour around. The competition is tough enough as it is; it’s terrible to shake off a murder.”

The hotel manager paused.

“Are you going to continue sleeping at this hotel?” he asked. “Isn’t that highly irregular?”

“The only thing that’s irregular is the dead Santa Claus in your basement” Erlendur smiled.

He saw the biotechnician from the kitchen leaving the bar on the ground floor with her sampling kit in her hand. With a nod to the manager he walked over to her. She had her back to him and was walking towards the cloakroom by the side door.

“How’s it going?” Erlendur asked.

She turned and recognised him at once, but kept walking.

“Is it you who’s in charge of the investigation?” she asked, going into the cloakroom where she took a coat from a hanger. She asked Erlendur to hold her sampling kit.

“They let me tag along,” Erlendur said.

“Not everyone was pleased with the idea of saliva samples,” she said, “and I don’t just mean the chef?

“Above all we were eliminating the staff from our enquiries, I thought you were told to give that explanation.”

“Didn’t work. Got any others?”

“That’s an old Icelandic name, Valgerdur, isn’t it?” Erlendur said, without answering her question. She smiled.

“So you’re not allowed to talk about the investigation?”

“No.”

“Do you mind? Valgerdur being an old name, I mean?”

“Me? No, I…” Erlendur stammered.

“Was there anything in particular?” Valgerdur said, reaching out for her bag. She smiled at this man standing in front of her in a cardigan buttoned up under a tattered jacket with worn elbows, looking at her with sorrowful eyes. They were of a similar age, but she looked ten years younger.

Without completely realising it, Erlendur blurted it out. There was something about this woman.

And he saw no wedding ring.

“I was wondering if I could invite you to the buffet here tonight, it’s delicious.”

He said this without knowing a thing about her, as if he had no chance of a reply in the affirmative, but he said it all the same and now he waited, thinking to himself that she would probably start laughing, was probably married with four children, a big house and a summer chalet, confirmation parties and graduation parties and had married off her oldest child and was waiting to grow old in peace with her beloved husband.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s nice of you to ask. But … unfortunately. I can’t. Thanks all the same.”

She took her sampling kit from him, hesitated for a moment and looked at him, then walked away and out of the hotel. Erlendur was left behind in the cloakroom, half stunned. He hadn’t asked a woman out for years. His mobile starting ringing in his jacket pocket and he eventually took it out, absent-mindedly, and answered. It was Elinborg.

“He’s entering the courtroom,” she almost whispered into the telephone.

“Pardon?” Erlendur said.

“The father, he’s coming in with his two lawyers. That’s the minimum it will take to whitewash him.”

“Is anyone there?” Erlendur asked.

“Very few. It looks like the boy’s mother’s family, and the press are here too.”

“How’s he looking?”

“Unruffled as usual, in a suit and tie like he’s going out to dinner. He doesn’t have a shred of conscience.”

“Not true,” Erlendur said. “He definitely has a conscience.”

Erlendur had gone to the hospital with Elinborg to talk to the boy as soon as the doctors gave permission. By then he had undergone surgery and was in a ward with other children. There were children’s drawings around the walls, toys in their beds, parents by their bedsides, tired after sleepless nights, endlessly worried about their children.

Elinborg sat down beside him. The bandaging around the boy’s head left little of his face visible apart from his mouth and his eyes, which looked full of suspicion at the police officers. His arm was in a plaster cast, suspended by a small hook. The dressings after his operation were hidden by his quilt. They had managed to save his spleen. The doctor said they could talk to the boy, but whether the boy would talk to them was a different matter.

Elinborg started by talking about herself, who she was and what she did in the police, and how she wanted to catch the people who did this to him. Erlendur stood at a distance, watching. The boy stared at Elinborg. She knew that she was only supposed to talk to him in the presence of one of his parents. Elinborg and Erlendur had arranged to meet the father at the hospital but half an hour had gone by and he hadn’t turned up.

“Who was it?” Elinborg said at last when she thought it was time to get to the point.

The boy looked at her but said nothing.

“Who did this to you? It’s all right to tell me. They won’t attack you again. I promise.”

The boy cast a glance at Erlendur.

“Was it the boys from your school?” Elinborg asked. “The big boys. We’ve found out that two of the suspects are known troublemakers. They’ve beaten up boys like you before, but not so violently. They say they didn’t do anything to you but we know they were at the school at the time you were attacked.”

Silently, the boy watched Elinborg tell her story. She had gone to the school and talked to the headmaster and teachers, then gone to the homes of the two boys to find out about their backgrounds, where she heard them deny doing anything to him. The father of one of them was in prison.

The paediatrician entered the room. He told them that the boy needed to rest and they would have to come back later. Elinborg nodded and they took their leave.

Erlendur also accompanied Elinborg to meet the boys father at his house later the same day. The father’s explanation for not being able to go to the hospital was that he had to take part in an important conference call with his colleagues in Germany and the US. “It came up unexpectedly,” he told them. When he finally managed to get away they had left the hospital.

While he was saying this the winter sun started to shine in through the lounge window, illuminating the marble floor and the carpet on the stairs. Elinborg was standing and listening when she noticed the stain on the stair carpet and another on the stair above it.

Little stains, almost invisible had it not been for the winter sun pouring in.

Stains that had been almost cleansed from the carpet and on first impression seemed to be part of the texture of the material.

Stains that turned out to be little footprints.

“Are you there?” Elinborg said over the telephone. “Erlendur? Are you there?”

Erlendur came back to his senses.

“Let me know when he leaves,” he said, and they rang off.

The head waiter at the hotel was aged about forty, thin as a rake, wearing a black suit and shiny black patent leather shoes. He was in an alcove off the dining room, checking the reservations for that evening. When Erlendur introduced himself and asked whether he might disturb him for a moment, the head waiter looked up from his dogeared reservations book to reveal a thin black moustache, dark stubble that he obviously needed to shave twice a day, a brownish complexion and brown eyes.

“I didn’t know Gulli in the slightest,” said the man, whose name was Rosant. “Terrible what happened to him. Are you getting anywhere?”

“Nowhere at all,” Erlendur said curtly. His mind was on the biotechnician and the father who beat up his son, and he was thinking about his daughter, Eva Lind, who said she could not hold out any longer. Although he knew what that meant, he hoped he was wrong. “Busy around Christmas,” Erlendur said, “aren’t you?”

“We’re trying to make the most of the season. Trying to fill the dining room three times for each buffet, which can be very difficult because some people think that when they’ve paid it’s like a take-away. The murder in the basement doesn’t help.”

“No,” Erlendur said without any interest. “So you haven’t been working here long if you didn’t know Gudlaugur.”

“Two years. But I didn’t have much contact with him.”

“Who do you think knew him best among the hotel staff?”

“I just don’t know,” the head waiter said, stroking his black moustache with his index finger. “I don’t know anything about the man. The cleaners, maybe. When do we hear about the saliva tests?”

“Hear what?”

“Who was with him. Isn’t it a DNA test?”

“Yes,” Erlendur said.

“Do you have to send it abroad?”

Erlendur nodded.

“Do you know whether anyone visited him in the basement? People from outside the hotel?”

“There’s so much traffic here. Hotels are like that. People are like ants, in and out, up and down, never a moment’s peace. At catering college we were told that a hotel isn’t a building or rooms or service, but people. A hotel’s just people. Nothing else. Our job is to make them feel good. Feel at home. Hotels are like that.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Erlendur said, and thanked him.

He checked whether Henry Wapshott had returned to the hotel, but he was still out. However, the head of reception was back at work and he greeted Erlendur. Yet another coach had pulled up outside, full of tourists, who swarmed into the lobby, and he gave Erlendur an awkward smile and shrugged, as if it was not his fault they couldn’t talk and their business would have to wait.

7

Gudlaugur Egilsson joined the hotel in 1982, at the age of twenty-eight. He had held various jobs before, most recently as a nightwatchman at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. When it was decided to employ a full-time doorman at the hotel, he got the job. Tourism was booming then. The hotel had expanded and was taking on more staff. The previous hotel manager couldn’t remember exactly why Gudlaugur was selected, but he didn’t recall there having been many applicants.

He made a good impression on the hotel manager. With his gentlemanly manner, polite and service-minded, he turned out to be a fine employee. He had no family, neither a wife nor children, which caused the manager some concern, because family men often proved to be more loyal. In other respects Gudlaugur did not say much about himself and his past.

Shortly after joining the staff he went to see the manager and asked if there was a room at the hotel for him to use while he was finding himself a new place to live. After losing his room at short notice he was on the street. He pointed out that there was a little room at the far end of the basement corridor where he could stay until he found a place of his own. They went down to inspect the room. All kinds of rubbish had been stored away in it and Gudlaugur said he knew of a place where it could all be kept, although most of it deserved to be thrown out anyway.

So in the end Gudlaugur, then a doorman and later a Santa Claus, moved into the little room where he would stay for the rest of his life. The hotel manager thought he would be there for a couple of weeks at the very most. Gudlaugur spoke in those terms and the room was not the sort of place anyone would want to live permanently. But Gudlaugur demurred about finding himself proper living quarters and soon it was taken for granted that he lived at the hotel, especially after his job developed more towards caretaking than being a straightforward doorman. As time wore on it was seen as a convenient arrangement to have him on call round the clock, lest something went wrong and a handyman was needed.

“Shortly after Gudlaugur moved into the room, the old manager left,” said Sigurdur Oli, who was up in Erlendur’s room describing his meeting. It was well into the afternoon and beginning to get dark.

“Do you know why?” Erlendur asked. He was stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “The hotel had just been expanded, loads of new staff recruited and he leaves shortly afterwards. Don’t you find that strange?”

“I didn’t go into that. I’ll find out what he says if you think it’s of the slightest importance. He didn’t know Gudlaugur had played Santa Claus. That started after his day and he was really shocked to hear that he was found murdered in the basement.”

Sigurdur Oli looked around the bare room.

“Are you going to spend Christmas here?”

Erlendur didn’t answer.

“Why don’t you get yourself off home?”

Silence.

“The invitation still stands”

“Thank you, and give my regards to Bergthora,” Erlendur said, deep in thought.

“What’s the name of the game anyway?”

“It’s none of your business, if the game … actually has a name.”

“I’m off home, anyway,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“How’s it going with starting a family?”

“Not too well.”

“Is it your problem or just a coincidence between the two of you?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t had ourselves checked. But Bergthora’s started talking about it”

“Do you want children anyway?”

“Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want”

“What’s the time?”

“Just gone half past six.”

“Go home,” Erlendur said. “I’m going to check out our other Henry”

Henry Wapshott had returned to the hotel but was not in his room. Erlendur had reception call him, went up to the floor he was staying on and knocked on his door, but met no response. He wondered whether to get the manager to open the room for him, but first he would need a search warrant from a magistrate, which could take well into the night, besides which it was altogether uncertain whether Henry Wapshott was in fact the Henry whom Gudlaugur was supposed to meet at 18.30.

Erlendur was standing in the corridor weighing up the options when a man probably in his early sixties came around the corner and walked in his direction. He was wearing a shabby tweed jacket, khaki trousers and a blue shirt with a bright red tie; he was balding, with his dark hair fondly combed right across the patch.

“Is it you?” he asked in English when he reached Erlendur. “I was told someone was asking after me. An Icelander. Are you a collector? Did you want to see me?”

“Is your name Wapshott?” Erlendur asked. “Henry Wapshott?” His English was not good. These days he could understand the language reasonably well, but spoke it badly. Global crime had forced the police force to organise special English courses, which Erlendur had attended and enjoyed. He was beginning to read books in English.

“My name’s Henry Wapshott,” the man said. “What do you want to see me about?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t stand out here in the corridor,” Erlendur said. “Can we go in your room? Or…?”

Wapshott looked at the door, then back at Erlendur.

“Maybe we should go down to the lobby,” he said. “What is it you want to see me about? Who are you?”

“Let’s go downstairs,” Erlendur said.

Hesitantly, Henry Wapshott followed him to the lift. When they were down in the lobby Erlendur went to the smokers” table and seats to one side of the dining room, and they sat down. A waitress appeared at once. Guests were beginning to sit down to the buffet, which Erlendur found no less tempting than the day before. They ordered coffee.

“It’s very odd,” Wapshott said. “I was supposed to meet someone at precisely this spot half an hour ago, but the man never came. I didn’t get any message from him, and then you’re standing right outside my door and you bring me down here.”

“What man were you going to meet?”

“He’s an Icelander. Works at this held. His name’s Gudlaugur.”

“And you were going to meet him here at half past six today?”

“Right,” Wapshott said. “What…? Who are you?”

Erlendur told him he was from the police, described Gudlaugur’s death and how they had found a note in his room referring to a meeting with a man called Henry, who was clearly him. The police wanted to know why they were going to meet. Erlendur did not mention his suspicion that Wapshott may well have been in the room when Santa was murdered. He just mentioned that Gudlaugur had worked at the hotel for twenty years.

Wapshott stared at Erlendur while he gave this account, shaking his head in disbelief as if he failed to grasp the full implications of what he was being told.

“Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

“Murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God,” Wapshott groaned.

“How did you know Gudlaugur?” Erlendur asked.

Wapshott seemed rather remote, so he repeated the question.

“I’ve known him for years,” Wapshott said eventually, smiling to reveal small, tobacco-stained teeth, some of the lower ones with black crests. Erlendur thought he must be a pipe smoker.

“When did you first meet?” Erlendur asked.

“We’ve never met,” Wapshott said. “I’ve never seen him. I was going to meet him for the first time today. That’s why I came to Iceland.”

“You came to Iceland to meet him?”

“Yes, among other things.”

“So how did you know him? If you never met, what kind of relationship did you have?”

“There was no relationship,” Wapshott said.

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s never been any “relationship”,” Wapshott repeated, putting the final word in quotation marks with his fingers.

“What then?” Erlendur asked.

“Only one-sided worship,” Wapshott said. “On my part.”

Erlendur asked him to repeat the last words. He could not understand how this man, who had come all the way from England and had never met Gudlaugur, could worship him. A hotel doorman. A man who lived in a dingy little room in a hotel basement and was found dead with his trousers round his ankles and a knife wound through his heart. One-sided worship of a man who played Father Christmas at children’s parties.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Erlendur said. Then he remembered that, in the corridor upstairs, Wapshott had asked him if he was a collector. “Why did you want to know if I was a collector?” he asked. “What did you mean?”

“I thought you were a record collector,” Wapshott said. “Like me.”

“What kind of record collector? Records? You mean …?”

“I collect old records,” Wapshott said. “Old gramophone records. LPs, EPs, singles. That’s how I know Gudlaugur. I was going to meet him here just now and was looking forward to it, so you must understand it’s quite a shock for me to hear that he’s dead. Murdered! Who could have wanted to murder him?”

His surprise seemed genuine.

“Did you meet him last night maybe?” Erlendur asked.

At first, Wapshott didn’t realise what Erlendur meant, until it dawned on him and he stared at the detective.

“Are you implying… do you think I’m lying to you? Am I …? Are you saying I’m a suspect? Do you think I had something to do with his death?”

Erlendur watched him, saying nothing.

“How absurd!” Wapshott raised his voice. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting that man for a long time. For years. You can’t be serious.”

“Where were you around this time last night?” Erlendur asked.

“In town,” Wapshott said. “I was in town. I was at a collectors” shop on the high street, then I had dinner at an Indian restaurant not far away.”

“You’ve been at the hotel for a few days. Why didn’t you meet Gudlaugur before?”

“But… weren’t you just saying that he’s dead? What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you want to meet him as soon as you checked in? You looked forward to meeting him, you said. Why did you wait so long?”

“He decided the time and venue. Oh my God, what have I got myself into?”

“How did you contact him? And what did you mean by “one-sided worship”?”

Henry Wapshott looked at him.

“I mean—” Wapshott began, but Erlendur didn’t allow him to complete the sentence.

“Did you know he worked at this hotel?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I’d found out. I make a point of researching my subjects. For collection purposes”

“And that’s why you stayed at this hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Were you buying records from him?” Erlendur continued. “Is that how you knew each other? Two collectors, the same interest?”

“As I said, I didn’t know him, but I was going to meet him in person.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t got the faintest idea who he was, have you?” Wapshott said, surprised that Erlendur had never heard of Gudlaugur Egilsson.

“He was a caretaker or a doorman and a Father Christmas,” Erlendur said. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Do you know my specialist field?” Wapshott replied. “I’m not sure how much you know about collecting in general or record collecting in particular, but most collectors specialise in a certain field. People can be rather eccentric about it. It’s incredible what people can be bothered to collect. I’ve heard of a man who has sick bags from every airline in the world. I also know a woman who collects hair from Barbie dolls”

Wapshott looked at Erlendur.

“Do you know what I specialise in?”

Erlendur shook his head. He was not completely convinced that he had understood the part about airline sick bags. And what was all that about Barbie dolls?

“I specialise in boys” choirs.”

“Boys” choirs?”

“Not only boys” choirs. My special interest is choirboys.”

Erlendur hesitated, unsure whether he had misunderstood.

“Choirboys?”

“Yes.”

“You collect records of choirboys?”

“I do. Of course I collect other records, but choirboys are — how should I put it? — my passion.”

“How does Gudlaugur fit in with all this?”

Henry Wapshott smiled. He stretched out for a black leather briefcase that he had with him. Opening it, he took out the sleeve of a 45 single.

He took his glasses out of his breast pocket and Erlendur noticed that he dropped a white piece of paper onto the floor. Erlendur reached for it and saw the name Brenner’s printed on it in green.

“Thank you. A serviette from a hotel in Germany? Wapshott said. “Collecting is an obsession,” he added apologetically.

Erlendur nodded.

“I was going to ask him to autograph this sleeve for me,” Wapshott said, handing it to Erlendur.

On the front of the sleeve was the name’GUDLAUGUR EGILSSON” in a little arc of golden letters, with a black-and-white photograph of a young boy, hardly more than twelve years old, slightly freckled, his hair carefully smoothed down, who smiled at Erlendur.

“He had a marvellously sensitive voice,” Wapshott said. “Then along comes puberty and …” He shrugged in resignation. There was a hint of sadness and regret in his tone. “I’m astonished you haven’t heard of him or don’t know who he was, if you’re investigating his death. He must have been a household name in his day. According to my sources, he could be described as a well-known child star.”

Erlendur looked up from the album sleeve, at Wapshott.

A child star?”

“He performed on two records, singing solo and with church choirs. He must have been quite a name in this country. In his day.”

“A child star,” Erlendur repeated. “You mean like Shirley Temple? That kind of child star?”

“Probably, by your standards, I mean here in Iceland, a small country off the beaten track. He must have been pretty famous even if everyone seems to have forgotten him now. Shirley Temple was of course …”

“The Little Princess,” Erlendur muttered to himself.

“Pardon?”

“I didn’t know he was a child star.”

“It was ages ago.”

“And? He made records?”

“Yes.”

“That you collect?”

“I’m trying to acquire copies. I specialise in choirboys like him. He was a unique boy soprano.”

“Choirboy?” Erlendur said almost to himself. He recalled the poster of The Little Princess and was about to ask Wapshott in more detail about the child star Gudlaugur, when someone disturbed him.

“So here you are,” Erlendur heard someone say above him. Valgerdur was standing behind him, smiling. She no longer carried her sampling kit. She was wearing a thin, black, knee-length leather coat with a beautiful red sweater underneath, and she had put on her make-up so carefully that it hardly showed. “Does the invitation still stand?” she asked.

Erlendur leaped to his feet. But Wapshott had already stood up.

“Sorry,” Erlendur said, “I didn’t realise … Of course.” He smiled. “Of course.”

8

They moved to the bar next to the dining room when they had eaten their fill of the buffet and drunk coffee afterwards. Erlendur bought them drinks and they sat down at a booth well inside the bar. She said she couldn’t stay long, from which Erlendur read polite caution. Not that he was planning to invite her up to his room — the thought didn’t even cross his mind and she knew that — but he felt a sense of insecurity about her and the same kind of barriers he encountered from people who were sent to him for interrogation. Perhaps she didn’t know herself what she was doing.

Talking to a detective intrigued her and she wanted to know everything about his job, the crimes and how he went about catching criminals. Erlendur told her that it was mostly boring administrative work.

“But crimes have become more vicious,” she said. “You read it in the papers. Nastier crimes”

“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “Crimes are always nasty”

“You’re always hearing stories about the drug world; debt collectors attacking kids who owe money for their dope, and if the kids can’t pay, their families are attacked instead.”

“Yes,” said Erlendur, who sometimes worried about Eva Lind for precisely that reason. “It’s quite a changed world. More brutal.”

They fell silent.

Erlendur tried to find a topic of conversation but he had no idea how to approach women. The ones he associated with could not prepare him for what might be called a romantic evening like this. He and Elinborg were good friends and colleagues, and there was a fondness between them that had been formed by years of collaboration and shared experience. Eva Lind was his child and a constant source of worry. Halldora was the woman he married a whole generation before, then divorced and whose hatred he earned for doing so. These were the only women in his life apart from the occasional one-night stands that never brought anything more than disappointment and awkwardness.

“What about you?” he asked. “Why did you change your mind?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t had an invitation like that for ages. What made you think to ask me out?”

“No idea. It slipped out over the buffet. I haven’t done this for a long time either.”

They both smiled.

He told her about Eva Lind and his son, Sindri Snaer, and she told him she had two sons, also both grown up. He had the feeling that she didn’t want to talk too much about herself and her circumstances, and he liked that. He didn’t want to poke his nose into her life.

“Are you getting anywhere with the man who was murdered?”

“No, not really. The man I was talking to in the lobby…”

“Did I interrupt you? I didn’t know he was connected with the investigation.”

“That’s all right,” Erlendur said. “He collects records, vinyl that is, and it turns out that the man in the basement was a child star. Years ago.”

“A child star?”

“He made records.”

“I can imagine that’s difficult, being a child star,” Valgerdur said. “Just a kid with all kinds of dreams and expectations that rarely come to anything. What do you think happens after that?”

“You shut yourself up in a basement room and hope no one remembers you.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know. Someone might remember him.”

“Do you think that’s connected with his murder?”

“What?”

“Being a child star.”

Erlendur tried to say as little as possible about the investigation without appearing standoffish. He hadn’t had time to ponder this question and didn’t know whether it made any difference.

“We don’t know yet,” he said. “But we’ll find out”

They stopped talking.

“So you weren’t a child star,” Valgerdur then said.

“No,” Erlendur said. “Devoid of talent in all fields.”

“Same here,” Valgerdur said. “I still draw like a three-year-old.”

“What do you do when you’re not at work?” she asked after a short silence.

Unprepared for this question, Erlendur dithered until she began to smile.

“I didn’t mean to invade your privacy,” she said when he gave no answer.

“No, it’s… I’m not accustomed to talking about myself? Erlendur said.

He could not claim to play golf or any other sport. At one time he had been interested in boxing, but that had waned. He never went to the cinema and rarely watched television. Travelled alone around Iceland in the summer, but had done less of that in recent years. What did he do when he wasn’t at work? He didn’t know the answer himself. Most of the time he was just on his own.

“I read a lot,” he said suddenly.

“And what do you read?” she asked.

Once more he hesitated, and she smiled again.

“Is it that difficult?” she said.

“About deaths and ordeals,” he said. “Death in the mountains. People who freeze to death outdoors. There are whole series of books about that. Used to be popular, once.”

“Deaths and ordeals?” she said.

“And plenty of other things, of course. I read a lot. History. Local history. Chronicles.”

“Everything that’s old and gone,” she said.

He nodded.

“But why deaths? People who freeze to death? Isn’t that awful to read?”

Erlendur smiled to himself.

“You ought to be in the police force,” he said.

In that short part of an evening she had penetrated a place in his mind that was carefully fenced off, even to himself. He did not want to talk about it. Eva Lind knew about it but was not entirely familiar with it and did not link it in particular with his interest in accounts of deaths. He sat in silence for a long time.

“It comes with age,” he said finally, regretting the lie immediately. “What about you? What do you do when you’ve finished sticking cotton wool buds in people’s mouths?”

He tried to rewind and make a joke but the bond between them had been tarnished and it was his fault.

“I really haven’t had time for anything other than work,” she said, realising that she had unwittingly struck a nerve. She became awkward and he sensed that.

“I think we ought to do this again soon,” he said to wind things up. The lie was too much for him.

“Definitely,” she said. “To tell you the truth I was very hesitant but I don’t regret it. I want you to know that.”

“Nor do I,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Thank you for everything. Thanks for the Drambuie,” she added as she finished her liqueur. He had also ordered a Drambuie for himself to keep her company, but hadn’t touched it.

Erlendur lay stretched out on the bed in his hotel room looking up at the ceiling. It was still cold in the room and he was wearing his clothes. Outside, it was snowing. It was a soft, warm and pretty snow that fell gently to the ground and melted instantaneously. Not cold, hard and merciless like the snow that caused death and destruction.

“What are those stains?” Elinborg asked the father.

“Stains?” he said. “What stains?”

“On the carpet,” Erlendur said. He and Elinborg had just returned from seeing the boy in hospital. The winter sun lit up the stair carpet that led to the floor where the boy’s room was.

“I don’t see any stains,” the father said, bending down to scrutinise the carpet.

“They’re quite clear in this light,” Elinborg said as she looked at the sun through the lounge window. The sun was low and pierced the eyes. To her, the creamy marble tiles on the floor looked as if they were aflame. Close by the stairway stood a beautiful drinks cabinet. It contained spirits, expensive liqueurs, red and white wines rested forward onto their necks in racks. There were two glass windows in the cabinet and Erlendur noticed a smudge on one of them. On the side of the cabinet facing the staircase, a little drip had been spilt, measuring roughly a centimetre and a half. Elinborg put her finger on the drip and it was sticky.

“Did anything happen by this cabinet?” Erlendur asked.

The father looked at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s like something’s been splashed on it. You’ve cleaned it recently.”

“No,” the father said. “Not recently.”

“Those marks on the staircase,” Elinborg said. “They look like a child’s footprints to me.”

“I can’t see any footprints on the staircase,” the father said. “Just now you were talking about stains. Now they’re footprints. What are you implying?”

“Were you at home when your son was assaulted?”

The father said nothing.

“The attack took place at the school,” Elinborg went on. “School was over for the day but he was playing football and when he set off home they attacked him. That’s what we think happened. He hasn’t been able to talk to you, nor to us. I don’t think he wants to. Doesn’t dare. Maybe because the boys said they would kill him if he told the police. Maybe because someone else said they would kill him if he talked to us.”

“Where’s all this leading?”

“Why did you come home early from work that day? You came home around noon. He crawled home and up to his room, and shortly afterwards you arrived and called the police and an ambulance.”

Elinborg had already been wondering what the father was doing at home in the middle of a weekday, but had not asked him until now.

“No one saw him on his way home from school,” Erlendur said.

“You’re not implying that I attacked … that I attacked my own boy like that? Surely you’re not implying that?”

“Do you mind if we take a sample from the carpet?”

“I think you ought to get out of here,” the father said.

“I’m not implying anything,” Erlendur said. “Eventually the boy will say what happened. Maybe not now and maybe not after a week or a month, maybe not after one year, but he will in the end.”

“Out,” the father said, enraged and indignant by now. “Don’t you dare … don’t you dare start… You leave. Get out. Out!”

Elinborg went straight to the hospital and into the children’s ward. The boy was asleep in his bed with his arm suspended from the hook. She sat down beside him and waited for him to wake up. After she had stayed by the bedside for fifteen minutes the boy stirred and noticed the tired-looking policewoman, but the sad-eyed man in the woollen cardigan who had been with her earlier that day was nowhere to be seen now. Their eyes met and Elinborg did her utmost to smile.

“Was it your dad?”

She went back to the father’s house when night had fallen, with a search warrant and forensics experts. They examined the marks on the carpet. They examined the marble floor and the drinks cabinet. They took samples. They swept up tiny grains from the marble. They plucked at the spilt drop on the cabinet. They went upstairs to the boy’s room and took samples from the head of his bed. They went to the laundry room and looked at the cloths and towels. They examined the dirty laundry. They opened the vacuum cleaner. They took samples from the broom. They went out to the dustbin and rummaged around in the rubbish. They found a pair of the boy’s socks in the bin.

The father was standing in the kitchen. He dialled a lawyer, his friend, as soon as the forensics team appeared. The lawyer came round promptly and looked at the warrant from the magistrate. He advised his client not to talk to the police.

Erlendur and Elinborg watched the forensics team at work. Elinborg glared at the father, who shook his head and looked away.

“I don’t understand what you want,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

The boy had not said it was his father. When Elinborg asked him, his only response was that his eyes filled with tears.

The head of forensics phoned two days later.

“It’s about the stains on the stair carpet,” he said.

“Yes,” Elinborg said.

“Drambuie.”

“Drambuie? The liqueur?”

“There are traces of it all over the sitting room and a trail on the carpet up to the boy’s room.

Erlendur was still staring at the ceiling when he heard a knock on the door. He got to his feet, opened the door and Eva Lind darted into his room. Erlendur looked along the corridor, then closed the door behind her.

“No one saw me,” Eva said. “It would make things easier if you could be arsed to go home. I can’t suss out what you’re playing at.”

“I’ll get myself home,” Erlendur said. “Don’t worry about that. What are you doing here? Do you need anything?”

“Do I need a special reason to want to see you?” Eva said. She sat down at the desk and took out a packet of cigarettes. She threw a plastic bag onto the floor and nodded towards it. “I brought you some clothes,” she said. “If you plan to hang around at this hotel you’ll need to change.”

“Thank you,” Erlendur said. He sat down on the bed facing her and borrowed a cigarette from her. Eva lit them both.

“It’s nice to see you,” he said, exhaling.

“How’s it going with Santa?”

“Bit by bit. What’s new with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you seen your mother?”

“Yes. Same as usual. Nothing happens in her life. Work and television and sleep. Work, television, sleep. Work, television, sleep. Is that it? All that awaits you? Am I staying clean so I can slave away until I croak? And just look at you! Hanging round in a hotel room like a dickhead instead of getting your arse back home!”

Erlendur inhaled the smoke and blew it out through his nose.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“No, I know,” Eva interrupted him.

“Are you giving in?” he said. “When you came yesterday …”

“I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“Stand what?”

“This fucking life!”

They sat smoking, and the minutes passed.

“Do you sometimes think about the baby?” Erlendur asked at last. Eva was seven months” pregnant when she miscarried, and sank into a deep depression when she moved in with him after leaving hospital. Erlendur knew that she had nowhere near shaken it off. She blamed herself for the baby’s death. The night that it happened she called him for help and he found her lying in her own blood outside the National Hospital after collapsing on her way to the maternity ward. She came within a hair’s breadth of losing her life.

“This fucking life!” she said again, and stubbed out her cigarette on the desktop.

The telephone on the bedside table rang when Eva Lind had left and Erlendur had gone to bed. It was Marion Briem.

“Do you know what time it is?” Erlendur asked, looking at his watch. It was past midnight.

“No,” Marion said. “I was thinking about the saliva.”

“The saliva on the condom?” Erlendur said, too lethargic to lose his temper.

“Of course they’ll find it out for themselves, but it might not do any harm to mention Cortisol.”

“I’ve still got to talk to forensics, they’ll surely tell us something about the Cortisol.”

“You can work a few things out from that. See what was going on in that basement room.”

“I know, Marion. Anything else?”

“I just wanted to remind you about the Cortisol.”

“Goodnight, Marion.”

“Goodnight.”