Voices

22

It was late when the noise woke Erlendur up the following morning. It took him a long time to stir after a dreamless night, and at first he did not realise what the awful din was that resounded in his little room. He had stayed up all night watching a succession of tapes, but only saw Gudlaugur’s sister that one day. Erlendur couldn’t believe it was purely coincidence that she went to the hotel — that she had business there other than to meet her brother, with whom she claimed to have had no contact for decades.

Erlendur had unearthed a lie and he knew there was nothing more valuable for a criminal investigation.

The noise refused to stop, and gradually Erlendur realised that it was his telephone. He answered and heard the hotel manager’s voice.

“You must come down to the kitchen,” the manager said. “There’s someone here you should talk to.”

“Who is it?” Erlendur asked.

“A lad who went home sick the day we found Gudlaugur,” the manager said. “You ought to come.”

Erlendur got out of bed. He was still in his clothes. He went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and perused the several days” stubble, which made a noise like sandpaper being rubbed over rough timber when he stroked it. His beard was dense and coarse like his father’s.

Before going downstairs he telephoned Sigurdur Oli and told him to go to with Elinborg to Hafnarfjordur to take Gudlaugur’s sister in for questioning. He would meet them later that day. He did not explain why he wanted to talk to her. He did not want them to blurt it out. Wanted to see her expression when she realised that he knew she had been lying.

When Erlendur went into the kitchen he saw the hotel manager standing with an exceptionally skinny man in his twenties. Erlendur wondered whether the contrast with the manager was playing tricks on his vision; beside him, everyone looked skinny.

“There you are,” the manager said. “Anyone would think I’m taking over this investigation of yours, locating witnesses and whatever.”

He looked at his employee.

“Tell him what you know.”

The young man began his account. He was fairly precise about details and explained that he had started to feel ill around noon on the day Gudlaugur was found in his room. In the end he vomited and just managed to grab a rubbish sack in the kitchen.

The man gave the manager a sheepish look.

He was allowed to go home and went to bed with a bad fever, a temperature and aches. Since he lived alone and did not watch the news he hadn’t mentioned to anyone what he knew until this morning when he came back to work and heard about Gudlaugur’s death. And he was certainly surprised to hear what had happened, and even though he didn’t know the man well — he had only been working in the hotel for just over a year — he did sometimes talk to him and even went down to his room and-

“Yes, yes, yes,” the manager said impatiently. “We’re not interested in that, Denni. Just get on with it.”

“Before I went home that morning Gulli came into the kitchen and asked if I could get him a knife.”

“He asked to borrow a knife from the kitchen?” Erlendur said.

“Yes. At first he wanted scissors, but I couldn’t find any so then he asked for a knife.”

“Why did he need scissors or a knife, did he tell you?”

“It was something to do with the Santa suit.”

“The Santa suit?”

“He didn’t go into detail, just some stitches he needed to unpick.”

“Did he return the knife?”

“No, not while I was here, then I left at noon and that’s all I know.”

“What sort of a knife was it?”

“He said it had to be a sharp one,” Denni said.

“It was the same kind as this,” the manager said, reaching into a drawer to take out a small steak knife with a wooden handle and fine-serated blade. “We lay these for people who order our T-bone steak. Have you tried one? Delicious. The knives go through them like butter.”

Erlendur took the knife, examined it and thought to himself that Gudlaugur may have provided his murderer with the weapon that was used to kill him. Wondered whether that business about the stitching of his Santa suit was just a ploy. Whether Gudlaugur had expected someone in his room and wanted to have the knife at hand; or had the knife been lying on his desk because he needed to mend his Santa suit and the attack was sudden, unpremeditated and sparked by something that happened in the little room? In that case, the attacker had not gone to Gudlaugur’s room armed, not gone there with the purpose of killing him.

“I need to take that knife,” he said. “We need to know if the size and type of blade match the wounds. Is that all right?”

The hotel manager nodded.

“Isn’t it that British chap?” he said. “Have you got anyone else?”

“I’d like to have a quick word with Denni here,” Erlendur said without answering him.

The manager nodded again and stayed where he was, until the penny dropped and he gave Erlendur an offended look. He was accustomed to being the centre of attention. When he did get the message he noisily invented some business to attend to in his office and disappeared. Dennis relief when his boss was no longer present proved shortlived.

“Did you go down to the basement and stab him?” Erlendur asked.

Denni looked at him like a doomed man.

“No,” he said hesitantly, as if not quite sure himself. The next question left him even more in doubt.

“Do you chew tobacco?” Erlendur asked.

“No,” he said. “Chew tobacco? What…?”

“Have you had a sample taken?”

“Eh?”

“Do you use condoms?”

“Condoms?” said Denni, still at a total loss.

“No girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend?”

“That you have to make sure you don’t get pregnant?”

Denni said nothing.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said in the end; Erlendur sensed a note of regret. “What are you asking me all this for?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Erlendur said. “You knew Gudlaugur. What kind of a man was he?”

“He was cool.”

Denni told Erlendur that Gudlaugur had felt comfortable at the hotel, did not want to leave and in fact feared moving out after he was sacked. He used all the hotel services and was the only member of staff who got away with that for years. He ate cheaply at the hotel, put his clothes in with the hotel laundry and didn’t pay a penny for his Utile room in the basement. Redundancy came as a shock to him, but he said he could manage if he lived frugally and might not even have to earn himself a living any more.

“What did he mean by that?” Erlendur asked.

Denni shrugged.

“I don’t know. He was quite mysterious sometimes. Said lots of things I couldn’t suss out.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, something about music. Sometimes. When he drank. Most of the time he was just normal.”

“Did he drink a lot?”

“No, not at all. Sometimes at weekends. He never missed a day’s work. Never. He was proud of that although it’s not such a remarkable job. Being a doorman and stuff

“What did he say to you about music?”

“He liked beautiful music. I don’t remember exactly what he said.”

“Why do you think he said he didn’t need to earn himself a living any more?”

“He seemed to have money. And he never paid for anything so he could save up for ever. I guess that’s what he meant. That he’d saved enough.”

Erlendur remembered asking Sigurdur Oli to check Gudlaugur’s bank accounts and resolved to remind him. He left Denni in the kitchen in a state of confusion, wondering about chewing tobacco and condoms and girlfriends. As he walked past the lobby he caught sight of a young woman arguing noisily with the head of reception. He seemed to want her out of the hotel, but she refused to leave. It crossed Erlendur’s mind that the woman who wanted to invoice this man for his night of fun had shown up, and he was about to go away when the young woman noticed him and stared.

“Are you the cop?” she called out.

“Get out of here!” the head of reception said in an unusually harsh tone.

“You look exactly like Eva Lind described you,” she said, sizing up Erlendur. “I’m Stina. She told me to talk to you.”

They sat down in the bar. Erlendur bought them coffee. He tried to ignore her breasts but had his work cut out doing so. Never in his life had he seen such a huge bosom on such a slim and delicate body. She was wearing an ankle-length beige coat with a fur collar, and she draped it over the chair at their table to reveal a skintight red top that hardly covered her stomach and black flared trousers that barely stretched above the crease between her buttocks. She was heavily painted, wore thick, dark lipstick and smiled to reveal a beautiful set of teeth.

“Three hundred thousand,” she said, carefully rubbing under her right breast as if it itched. “Were you wondering about the tits?”

“Are you all right?”

“It’s the stitches” She winced “I mustn’t scratch them too much. Have to be careful.”

“What-?”

“New silicon,” Stina interrupted him. “I had a boob job the other day.”

Erlendur took care not to stare at her new breasts.

“How do you know Eva Lind?” he asked.

“She said you’d ask that and told me to tell you that you don’t want to know. She’s right. Trust me. And she also told me you’d help me with a Utile business and then I could help you, know what I mean?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Eva said you would.”

“Eva was lying. What are you talking about? A little business, what does that involve?”

Stina sighed.

“My friend was busted with some hash at Keflavik airport. Not much, but enough for them to put him away for maybe three years. They sentence them like murderers, those fuckers. A bit of hash. And a few tabs, right! He says he’ll get three years. Three! Paedophiles get three months, suspended. Fucking wankers!”

Erlendur didn’t see how he could help her. She was like a child, unaware of how big and complicated and difficult it is to deal with the world.

“Was he caught at the terminal?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t do anything,” Erlendur said. “And I don’t feel inclined to. You don’t keep particularly good company. Dope smuggling and prostitution. What about a straightforward office job?”

“Won’t you just try?” Stina said. “Talk to someone. He mustn’t get three years!”

“To get this perfectly straight,” Erlendur said with a nod, “you’re a prostitute?”

“Prostitute, prostitute,” Stina said, producing a cigarette from a little black handbag over her shoulder. “I dance at The Marquis. She leaned forwards and whispered con-spiratorially to Erlendur: “But there’s more money in the other business.”

“And you’ve had customers at this hotel?”

“A few,” Stina said.

“And you’ve been working at this hotel?”

“I’ve never worked here.”

“I mean do you pick up the customers here or bring them over from town?”

“Whatever I please. They used to let me be here until Fatso threw me out”

“Why?”

Stina started itching under her breasts again and gave the spot a cautious rub. She winced and forced a smile at Erlendur, but clearly didn’t feel particularly well.

“A girl I know went for a boob job that went wrong,” she said. “Her tits are like empty bin liners”

“Do you really need all that breast?” Erlendur couldn’t refrain from asking.

“Don’t you like them?” she said, thrusting them forward but grimacing as she did. “These stitches are killing me,” she groaned.

“Well, they are … big,” Erlendur admitted.

“And straight off the shelf? Stina boasted.

Erlendur saw the hotel manager enter the bar with the head of reception and stride over to them in all his majesty. Looking around to make sure no one else was in the bar, he hissed at Stina when he was still a few metres away from her.

“Out! Get out, girl! This minute! Out of here!”

Stina looked over her shoulder at the hotel manager, then back at Erlendur and rolled her eyes.

“Christ,” she said.

“We don’t want whores like you at this hotel!” the manager shouted.

He grabbed her as if to throw her out

“Leave me alone,” Stina said. “I’m talking to this man here.”

“Watch her tits!” Erlendur shouted, not knowing what else to say. The hotel manager looked at him, dumbfounded. “They’re new,” Erlendur added by way of explanation.

He stood up, blocked the hotel manager’s path and tried to push him away, but with little success. Stina did her utmost to protect her breasts, while the head of reception stood at a distance, watching the goings-on. Eventually he came to Erlendur’s aid and they managed to shuffle the furious hotel manager out of reach of Stina.

“Everything … she … says about … me is … fucking lies!” he wheezed. The effort was almost too much for him; his face poured with sweat and he was panting for breath after the struggle.

“She hasn’t said anything about you,” Erlendur said to calm him down.

“I want … her … to … get out … of here.” The hotel manager slumped down in a chair, took out his handkerchief and started mopping his face.

“Cool it, Fatso,” Stina said. “He’s a meat merchant, you know that?”

“A meat merchant?” Erlendur didn’t immediately grasp the meaning.

“He takes a slice from all of us who work at this hotel,” Stina said.

“A slice?” Erlendur said.

“A slice. His commission! He takes a cut from us.”

“It’s a lie!” the hotel manager shouted. “Get out, you fucking whore!”

“He wanted more than half a share for himself and the head waiter,” Stina said as she carefully rearranged her breasts, “and when I refused he told me to fuck off and never come back.”

“She’s lying,” the hotel manager said, slightly calmer. “I’ve always thrown those girls out, and her too. We don’t want whores at this hotel.”

“The head waiter?” Erlendur said, visualising the thin moustache. Rosant, he thought the name was.

“Always thrown them out,” Stina snorted as she turned to Erlendur. “He’s the one who phones us. If he knows one of the guests is up for it or has money he phones to let us know and plants us in the bar. Says it makes the hotel more popular. They’re conference guests and the like. Foreigners. Lonely old men. If there’s a big conference on, he phones”

“Are there many of you?” Erlendur asked.

“A few of us run an escort service,” Stina said. “Really high class.”

Stina gave the impression that she was not as proud of anything as being a prostitute, apart perhaps from her new breasts.

“They don’t run a bloody escort service,” the manager said, breathing normally again. “They hang around the hotel and try to hook guests and take them up to the rooms, and she’s lying about me phoning them. You fucking bitch of a whore!”

Thinking it inadvisable to continue the conversation with Stina at the bar, Erlendur said he needed to borrow the head of receptions office for a moment — otherwise they could all go down to the police station and resume there. The hotel manager let out a groan and gave Stina the evil eye. Erlendur followed her out of the bar and into the office. The hotel manager stayed behind. All the wind seemed to have been knocked out of him, and he shooed the head of reception away when he went over to attend to him.

“She’s lying, Erlendur,” he shouted after them. “It’s all a pack of lies!”

Erlendur sat down at the manager’s desk while Stina stood and lit a cigarette, as if immune to the fact that smoking was prohibited throughout the hotel except conceivably at the bar.

“Did you know the doorman at this hotel?” Erlendur asked. “Gudlaugur?”

“He was really nice. He collected Fatso’s cut from us. And then he got killed.”

“He was—”

“Do you reckon Fatso killed him?” Stina interrupted. “He’s the biggest creep I know. Do you know why I’m not allowed at this shitty hotel of his any more?”

“No.”

“He didn’t only want a cut from us girls, but, you know…”

“What?”

“Wanted us to do stuff for him too. Personal. You know…”

“And?”

“I refused. Put my foot down. Those rolls of fat on the bastard. He’s gross. He could have killed Gudlaugur. I could see him doing that. I bet he sat on him.”

“But what was your relationship with Gudlaugur? Did you do things for him?”

“Never. He wasn’t interested.”

“He certainly was,” Erlendur said, imagining Gudlaugur’s corpse in his little room with his trousers round his ankles. “I’m afraid he wasn’t entirely uninterested.”

“He never took an interest in me anyway,” Stina said, carefully hitching up her breasts. “And none of us girls”

“Is the head waiter in on this with the manager?”

“Rosant? Yeah.”

“What about the man from reception?”

“He doesn’t want us. He doesn’t want any tarts but the other two decide. The man from reception wants to get rid of Rosant, but Fatso makes too much money out of him.”

“Tell me something else. Do you ever chew tobacco? In a kind of gauze, like miniature teabags. People keep it under their lip. Pressed against the gums”

“Yuk, no,” Stina said. “Are you crazy? I take really good care of my teeth.”

“Does anyone you know chew tobacco?”

“No.”

They said nothing more until Erlendur felt compelled to do a spot of moralising. He had Eva Lind in mind. How she had been caught up in drugs and surely went in for prostitution to pay for her habit, although it probably didn’t take place at any of the finer hotels in the city. He thought what a terrible lot it was for a woman to sell her favours to any dirty old man whatever, wherever and whenever.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, trying to conceal the tone of accusation in his voice. “The silicon implants in your breasts. Sleeping with conference guests in hotel rooms. Why?”

“Eva Lind said you’d ask that too. Don’t try to understand it,” Stina said, and stubbed her cigarette out on the floor, “Don’t even try.”

She happened to glance through the open door to the office and into the lobby, and saw Osp walking by.

“Is Osp still working here?” she said.

“Osp? Do you know her?” Erlendur’s mobile began ringing in his pocket.

“I thought she’d quit. I used to talk to her sometimes when I was here.”

“How did you know her?”

“We were just together in—”

“She wasn’t whoring with you, was she?” Erlendur took out his mobile and was about to answer.

“No,” Stina said. “She’s not like her little brother.”

“Her brother?” Erlendur said. “Has she got a brother?”

“He’s a bigger tart than I am.”

23

Erlendur stared at Stina while he tried to puzzle out her comment about Osp’s brother. Stina dithered in front of him.

“What?” she said. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to answer the phone?”

“Why did you think Osp had quit?”

“It’s just a shitty job.”

Erlendur answered his phone almost absent-mindedly.

“About time too,” Elinborg said down the line.

She and Sigurdur Oli had gone to Hafnarfjordur to bring Gudlaugur’s sister in for questioning at the police station in Reykjavik, but she refused to go with them. When she asked for an explanation they refused to give one, and then she said she could not abandon her father in his wheelchair. They offered to provide a carer for him and also invited her to talk to a lawyer, who could be present, but she didn’t seem to realise the seriousness of the matter. She would not entertain the notion of going to the police station, so Elinborg suggested a compromise, flatly against Sigurdur Oli’s wishes. They would take her to Erlendur at the hotel and after he had talked to her they would decide the next move. She thought about it. On the verge of losing his patience, Sigurdur Oli was about to drag her off forcibly when she agreed. She phoned a neighbour who came round immediately, clearly accustomed to looking after the old man when needed. Then she began resisting again, which infuriated Sigurdur Oli.

“He’s on his way to you with her,” Elinborg said over the telephone. “He would have much preferred to have had her locked up. She kept asking us why we wanted to talk to her and wouldn’t believe us when we said we didn’t know. Why do you want to talk to her anyway?”

“She came to the hotel a few days before her brother was murdered but told us she hadn’t seen him for decades. I want to know why she didn’t tell us that, why she’s lying. See the look on her face.”

“She might be rather peeved,” Elinborg said. “Sigurdur Oli wasn’t exactly pleased at the way she behaved.”

“What happened?”

“He’ll tell you.”

Erlendur rang off.

“What do you mean, he’s a bigger tart than you?” he said to Stina, who was peering into her bag and wondering whether she could be bothered to light another cigarette. “Osp’s brother. What are you talking about?”

“Eh?”

“Osp’s brother. You said he was a bigger tart than you.”

“Ask her,” Stina said.

“I will, but I mean, what… he’s her little brother, didn’t you say?”

“Yes, and he’s a… bye-bye, baby.”

“A bye-bye baby. You mean a…?”

“Bisexual.”

“And, does he prostitute himself?” Erlendur asked. “Like you?”

“You bet. A junkie. There’s always someone wanting to beat him up because he owes them money”

“And what about Osp? How do you know her?”

“We were at school together. So was he. He’s only a year younger than her. We’re the same age. We were in the same class. She isn’t that bright.” Stina pointed at her head. “Not up there,” she said. “Left school at fifteen. Failed the lot. I passed them all. Finished secondary school.”

Stina gave a broad smile.

Erlendur sized her up.

“I know you’re my daughter’s friend and you’ve been helpful,” he said, “but you shouldn’t go comparing yourself with Osp. For a start, she doesn’t have itchy stitches.”

Stina looked at him, still smiling out of one corner of her mouth, then walked out of the office without a word and through the lobby. On the way she swung her fur-collared coat over her, but now her motions lacked all dignity. She came face to face with Sigurdur Oli and Gudlaugur’s sister as they entered the lobby, and Erlendur saw Sigurdur Oli goggle at Stina’s breasts. He thought to himself that she must have got her money’s worth after all.

The hotel manager stood nearby as if he had been waiting for Erlendur’s meeting to finish. Osp was standing by the lift and watched Stina leave the hotel. It was obvious that Osp recognised her. When Stina walked past the head of reception who was sitting at his desk, he looked up and watched her go out through the door. He glanced over at the hotel manager who waddled off in the direction of the kitchen, and Osp entered the lift, which closed behind her.

“What’s behind all this tomfoolery, may I ask?” Erlendur heard Gudlaugur’s sister say as she approached him. “What’s the meaning of such effrontery and rudeness?”

“Effrontery and rudeness?” Erlendur said in a quizzical voice. “That doesn’t sound familiar.”

“This man here,” the sister said, clearly unaware of Sigurdur Oli’s name, “this man has been rude to me and I demand an apology.”

“Out of the question,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“He pushed me and led me out of my home like a common criminal.”

“I handcuffed her,” Sigurdur Oli said. “And I won’t apologise. She can forget that. She called me plenty of names and Elinborg too, and she resisted. I want to lock her up. She was impeding a police officer in the execution of his duty.”

Stefania Egilsdottir looked at Erlendur and said nothing.

“I’m not accustomed to such treatment,” she said at last.

“Take her down the station,” Erlendur said to Sigurdur Oli. “Put her in the cell next to Henry Wapshott. We’ll talk to her tomorrow.” He looked at the woman. “Or the day after.”

“You can’t do this,” Stefania said, and Erlendur could tell that she was severely taken aback. “You have no reason to treat me like this. Why do you think you can throw me in prison? What have I done?”

“You’ve been lying,” Erlendur said. “Goodbye.” And then to Sigurdur Oli, “We’ll be in touch.”

He turned away from them and set off in the direction the hotel manager had gone. Sigurdur Oli took Stefania by the arm and was about to lead her away, but she stood rooted to the spot and stared at Erlendur’s retreating back.

“All right,” she called after him. She tried to shake off Sigurdur Oli. “This is not necessary,” she said. “We can sit down and talk this over like human beings”

Erlendur stopped and turned around.

“My brother,” she said. “Let’s talk about my brother if you want. But I don’t know what you’ll gain by it”

They sat down in Gudlaugur’s little room. She said she wanted to go there. Erlendur asked whether she had been there before and she denied it. When he asked whether she had not met her brother in all those years, she repeated what she had said before, that she had not been in contact with her brother. Erlendur was convinced that she was lying. That her business at the hotel five days before Gudlaugur’s murder was in some way connected with him, not mere coincidence.

She looked at the poster of Shirley Temple in the role of the Little Princess without the slightest change of expression or word of comment. Opening the wardrobe, she saw his doorman’s uniform. Finally she sat down on the only chair in the room, while Erlendur propped himself up against the wardrobe. Sigurdur Oli had meetings scheduled in Hafnarfjordur with more of Gudlaugur’s old classmates and left when they went down to the basement.

“He died here,” the sister said without a hint of regret in her voice, and Erlendur wondered, just as he had at their first meeting, why this woman apparently lacked all feeling towards her brother.

“Stabbed through the heart,” Erlendur said. “Probably with a knife from the kitchen,” he added. “There is blood on the bed.”

“How sparse,” she said, looking around the room. “That he should have lived here all those years. What was the man thinking of?”

“I was hoping you could help me with that one.”

She looked at him and said nothing.

“I don’t know” Erlendur went on. He regarded it as ample. Some people can only live in a villa five hundred metres square. I understand that he benefited from living and working at the hotel. There were plenty of perks.”

“Have you found the murder weapon?” she asked.

“No, but perhaps something resembling it,” Erlendur said. Then he stopped and waited for her to speak, but she did not utter a word and a good while elapsed until she broke the silence.

“Why do you claim I’m lying to you?”

“I don’t know how much of it is a lie but I do know that you’re not telling me everything. You’re not telling me the truth. But of course above all you’re not telling me anything and I’m astonished at your and your father’s reaction to Gudlaugur’s death. It’s as if he was nothing to do with you.”

She took a good long look at Erlendur, then seemed to make a decision.

“There were three years between us,” she said suddenly, “and, young as I was, I still remember the first time they brought him home. One of my first memories in life, I expect. He was the apple of his father’s eye from day one. Dad was always devoted to him and I think he had great things in mind for him from the very start. It didn’t come of its own accord, as it should have done perhaps — our father always had something big planned for when Gudlaugur grew up.”

“What about you?” Erlendur asked. “Didn’t he see you as a genius?”

“He was always kind to me,” she said, “but he worshipped Gudlaugur.”

“And drove him on until he broke down.”

“You want to have things simple,” she said “Things rarely are. I would have thought that a man like you, a policeman, realised that.”

“I don’t think this revolves around me,” Erlendur said.

“No,” she said. “Of course not.”

“How did Gudlaugur end up alone and abandoned in this little room? Why did you hate him so much? I could conceivably understand your father’s attitude if Gudlaugur cost him his health but I don’t understand why you take such a harsh stand against him.”

“Cost him his health?” she said, looking at Erlendur in surprise.

“When he pushed him down the stairs,” Erlendur said. “I’ve heard that story.”

“From whom?”

“That’s not important. Is it true? Did he cripple your father?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Definitely not,” Erlendur said. “Unless it concerns the investigation. Then I’m afraid it’s more people’s business than just you two.”

Saying nothing, Stefania looked at the blood on the bed, while Erlendur pondered why she wanted to talk to him in the room where her brother had been murdered. He thought of asking her, but could not bring himself to.

“It can’t always have been that way,” he said instead. “The choirmaster told me you came to your brother’s rescue when he lost his voice on stage. At some point you were friends. At some point he was your brother.”

“How do you know what happened? How did you dig that up? Who have you been talking to?”

“We’re gathering information. People from Hafnarfjordur remember it well. You weren’t totally indifferent to him then. When you were children.”

Stefania remained silent.

“The whole thing was a nightmare,” she said at last. “A terrible nightmare.”

In their house in Hafnarfjordur they spent the whole day excitedly looking forward to when he would sing at the cinema. She woke up early, made breakfast and thought about her mother, feeling that she had assumed that role in the household and was proud of it. Her father mentioned how helpful she was at looking after the two of them after her mother died. How grown-up and responsible she was in everything she did. Normally he never said anything about her. Ignored her. Always had.

She missed her mother. One of the last things her mother said to her in hospital was that now she would need to look after her father and brother. She must not let them down. “Promise me that,” her mother said. “It won’t always be easy. It hasn’t always been easy. Your father can be so stubborn and strict and I don’t know whether Gudlaugur can take it. But if it ever comes to that you must stand with him, Gudlaugur, promise me that too,” her mother said, and she nodded and promised that too. And they held hands until her mother fell asleep, and then she stroked her hair and kissed her on the forehead.

Two days later she was dead.

“We’ll let Gudlaugur sleep a little bit longer,” her father said when he came down into the kitchen. “It’s an important day for him.”

An important day for him.

She did not recall any day being important for her. Everything revolved around him. His singing. The recording sessions. The two records that had been released. The invitation to tour Scandinavia. The concerts in Hafnarfjordur. The concert tonight. His voice. His singing practice when she had to sneak around the house so as not to disturb them as he stood by the piano and his father played the accompaniment, instructing and encouraging him and showing him love and understanding if he felt he did well, but being strict and firm if he did not think he concentrated enough. Sometimes he lost his temper and scolded him. Sometimes he hugged him and said he was wonderful.

If only she had received a fraction of the attention lavished on him and the encouragement that he was given every day for having that beautiful voice. She felt unimportant, devoid of any talent that could attract her father’s attention. He sometimes said it was a shame that she did not have a voice. He regarded teaching her to sing as a hopeless task, but she knew that wasn’t the case. She knew that he could not be bothered to expend his energy on her, because she did not have a special voice. She lacked her brother’s gift. She could sing in a choir and hammer out a tune on the piano, but both her father, and the piano teacher he sent her to because he did not have the time to attend to her himself, talked about her lack of musical talent

Her brother, on the other hand, had a wonderful voice and a profound feeling for music, but was still just a normal boy like she was a normal girl. She did not know what it was that distinguished them from each other. He was no different from her. To some extent she was in charge of his upbringing, especially after their mother fell ill. He obeyed her, did what she told him and respected her. Similarly, she loved him, but also felt jealous of the praise he earned. She was afraid of that feeling and mentioned it to no one.

She heard Gudlaugur coming down the stairs, and then he appeared in the kitchen and sat down beside their father.

“Just like Mum,” he said as he watched his sister pour coffee into their father’s cup.

He often talked about their mother and she knew he missed her terribly. He had turned to her when something went wrong, when the boys bullied him or their father lost his temper, or simply when he needed someone to hold him without it being a special reward for a good performance.

Expectation and excitement reigned in the house all day and had reached an almost unbearable pitch when towards evening they put on their best clothes and set off for the cinema. The two of them accompanied Gudlaugur backstage, their father greeted the choirmaster, and then they crept out into the auditorium as it began to fill up. The lights in the auditorium dimmed. The curtain rose. Quite big for his age, handsome and peculiarly determined as he stood on stage, Gudlaugur finally began to sing in his melancholy boy soprano.

She held her breath and closed her eyes.

The next thing she knew was her father grabbing her by the arm so tightly that it hurt, and hearing him moan: “Oh my God!”

She opened her eyes and saw her father’s face, pale as death, and when she looked up at the stage she saw Gudlaugur trying to sing, but something had happened to his voice. It was like yodelling. She rose to her feet, looked all around the auditorium behind her and saw that people had started to smile and some were laughing. She ran up onto the stage to her brother and tried to lead him away. The choirmaster came to her assistance and eventually they managed to take him backstage. She saw her father standing rigid in the front row, staring up at her like the god of thunder.

When she lay in bed that evening and thought back to that terrible moment her heart missed a beat, not from fear or horror at what had happened or how her brother must have felt, but from a mysterious glee for which she had no explanation and which she repressed like an evil crime.

“Did you have a guilty conscience about those thoughts?” Erlendur asked.

“They were completely alien to me,” Stefania said. “I’d never thought anything like that before.”

“I don’t suppose there’s anything abnormal about gloating over other people’s misfortunes,” Erlendur said. “Even people close to us. It may be an instinct, a kind of defence mechanism for dealing with shock.”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this in such detail,” Stefania said. “It doesn’t paint a very appealing picture of me. And you may be right. We all suffered shock. An enormous shock, as you can imagine.”

“What was their relationship like after this happened?” Erlendur asked. “Gudlaugur and his father.”

Stefania ignored his question.

“Do you know what it’s like not to be the favourite?” she asked instead. “What it’s like just being ordinary and never earning any particular attention. It’s like you don’t exist. You’re taken for granted, not favoured or shown any special care. And all the time someone you consider your equal is championed like the chosen one, born to bring infinite joy to his parents and the whole world. You watch it day after day, week after week and year after year and it never ceases, if anything it increases over the years, almost … almost worship.”

She looked up at Erlendur.

“It can only spawn jealousy,” she said. “Anything else would not be human. And instead of suppressing it the next thing you know is that you’re nourished by it, because in some odd way it makes you feel better.”

“Is that the explanation for gloating over your brother’s misfortune?”

“I don’t know,” Stefania said. “I couldn’t control that feeling. It hit me like a slap in the face and I trembled and shivered and tried to get rid of it, but it wouldn’t go. I didn’t think that could happen.”

They fell silent.

“You envied your brother,” Erlendur said then.

“Maybe I did, for a while. Later I began to pity him.”

“And eventually hate him.”

She looked at Erlendur.

“What do you know about hate?” she said.

“Not much,” Erlendur said. “But I do know that it can be dangerous. Why did you tell us that you hadn’t been in contact with your brother for almost three decades?”

“Because it’s true,” Stefania said.

“It’s not true,” Erlendur said. “You’re lying. Why are you lying about that?”

“Are you going to send me to prison for lying?”

“If I need to I will,” Erlendur said. “We know that you came to this hotel five days before he was murdered. You told us you hadn’t seen or been in contact with your brother for decades. Then we discover that you came to the hotel a few days before his death. On what business? And why did you lie to us?”

“I could have come to the hotel without meeting him. It’s a big hotel. Did that ever occur to you?”

“I doubt that. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you came to the hotel just before he died.”

He saw that she was prevaricating. Saw that she was mulling over whether to take the next step. She had patently prepared herself to give a more detailed account than at their first meeting, and now was the moment to decide whether to take the plunge.

“He had a key? she said in such a low voice that Erlendur could barely hear it. “The one you showed to me and my father.”

Erlendur remembered the key ring that was found in Gudlaugur’s room and the little pink penknife with a picture of a pirate on it. There were two keys on the ring, one that he thought was a door key and the other that could well fit a chest, cupboard or box.

“What about that key?” Erlendur asked. “Did you recognise it? Do you know what it fits?”

Stefania smiled.

“I have an identical key,” she said.

“What key is it?”

“It’s the key to our house in Hafnarfjordur.”

“You mean your home?”

“Yes,” Stefania said. “Where my father and I live. The key fits the basement door at the back of the house. Some narrow steps lead up from the basement to the hall and from there you can get into the living room and kitchen.”

“Do you mean …?” Erlendur tried to work out the implications of what she was saying. “Do you mean he went in the house?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought you weren’t in contact. You said you and your father hadn’t had anything to do with him for decades. That you didn’t want to have any contact with him. Why were you lying?”

“Because Dad didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“That he came. Gudlaugur must have missed us. I didn’t ask him, but he must have done. For him to do that.”

“What was it precisely that your father didn’t know?”

“That Gudlaugur sometimes came to our house at night without us being aware, sat in the living room without making a sound and left before we woke up. He did it for years and we never knew.”

She looked at the bloodstains on the bed.

“Until I woke up in the middle of the night once and saw him.”

24

Erlendur watched Stefania, her words racing through his mind. She was not as haughty as at their first meeting when Erlendur had been outraged at her lack of feeling for her brother, and he thought he may have judged her too quickly. He knew neither her nor her story well enough to be able to sit on his high horse, and suddenly he regretted his remark on her lack of conscience. It was not up to him to judge others, though he was always falling into that trap. To all intents and purposes he knew nothing about this woman who had suddenly turned so pitiful and terribly lonely in front of him. He realised that her life had been no bed of roses, first as a child living in her brother’s shadow, then a motherless teenager and finally a woman who never left her father’s side and probably sacrificed her life for him.

A good while passed in this way, each of them engrossed in their respective thoughts. The door to the little room was open and Erlendur went out into the corridor. All of a sudden he wanted to reassure himself that no one was outside, no one was eavesdropping. He looked along the poorly lit corridor but saw nobody. Turning round, he looked down to the end, but it was pitch dark. He thought to himself that anyone who went down there would have had to walk past the door and that he would have noticed. The corridor was empty. All the same, he had a strong feeling that they were not alone in the basement when he went back into the room. The smell in the corridor was the same as the first time he went there: something burning that he could not place. He did not feel comfortable. His first sight of the body was etched in his mind and the more he found out about the man in the Santa suit, the more wretched was the mental image he preserved and knew he could never shake off.

“Is everything all right?” Stefania asked, still sitting on the chair.

“Yes, fine,” Erlendur said. “A silly idea of mine. I had a feeling someone was in the corridor. Shouldn’t we go somewhere else? For coffee maybe?”

She looked across the room, nodded and stood up. They walked along the corridor in silence, up the stairs and across the lobby to the dining room where Erlendur ordered two coffees. They sat down to one side and tried not to let all the tourists disturb them.

“My father wouldn’t be pleased with me now,” Stefania said. “He’s always forbidden me to talk about the family. He can’t stand any invasion of his privacy”

“Is he in good health?”

“He’s in quite good health for his age. But I don’t know …” Her words trailed off.

“There’s no such thing as privacy when the police are involved,” Erlendur said. “Not to mention when murder has been committed.”

I’m starting to realise that. We were going to shake this off like it was none of our business, but I don’t expect anyone can claim immunity in these dreadful circumstances. I don’t suppose that’s part of the deal.”

“If I understand you correctly? Erlendur said, “you and your father had broken off all contact with Gudlaugur but he sneaked into the house at night without being noticed. What was his motive? What did he do? Why did he do this?”

“I never got a satisfactory answer out of him. He just sat still in the living room for an hour or two. Otherwise I’d have noticed him much earlier. He’d been doing it several times a year for years on end. Then one night about two years ago I couldn’t sleep and was lying in bed in a drowsy state at about four in the morning, when I heard a creaking noise in the sitting room downstairs, which of course startled me. My father’s room is downstairs and his door is always open at night, and I thought he was trying to get my attention. I heard another creak and wondered if it was a burglar, so I crept downstairs. I saw that the door to my father’s room was just as I’d left it, but when I entered the hall I saw someone dart down the stairs, and I called out to him. To my horror he stopped on the stairs, turned round and came back up.”

Stefania paused and stared ahead as if transported away from time and place.

“I thought he would attack me,” she began again. “I stood in the kitchen doorway and turned on the light, and there he was in front of me. I hadn’t seen him face to face for years, ever since he was a young man, and it took me a little while to realise that it was my brother.”

“How did you react to it?” Erlendur asked.

“It threw me completely. I was terrified too, because if it had been a burglar I should have rung the police instead of making all that fuss. I was trembling with fright and let out a scream when I switched on the light and saw his face. It must have been funny to see me so scared and nervous, because he started laughing.”

“Don’t wake Dad,” he said, putting a finger to his lips to hush her.

She couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Is that you?” she gasped.

He wasn’t like the image she retained of him from his youth, and she saw how badly he had aged. He had bags under his eyes and his thin lips were pale; wisps of hair stood out in all directions and he regarded her with infinitely sad eyes. She automatically began working out how old he really was. He looked so much older.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m not doing anything. Sometimes I just want to come home.”

“That was the only explanation he gave for why he sometimes sneaked into the living room at night without letting anyone know,” Stefania said. “Sometimes he wanted to go home. I don’t know what he meant by that. Whether he associated it with childhood, when Mum was still alive, or whether he meant the years before he pushed Dad down the stairs. I don’t know. Maybe the house itself held some meaning for him, because he never had another home. Just a dirty little room in the basement of this hotel.”

“You ought to leave,” she said. “He might wake up.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “How is he? Is he all right?”

“He’s doing fine. But he needs constant care. He has to be fed and washed and dressed and taken out and put down in front of the television. He likes films.”

“You don’t know how bad I’ve felt about this,” he said. “All these years. I didn’t want it to turn out like this. It was all a huge mistake.”

“Yes, it was,” she said.

“I never wanted to be famous. That was his dream. My part was just to make it come true.”

They fell silent.

“Does he ever ask about me?”

“No,” she said. “Never. I’ve tried to get him to talk about you but he won’t even hear your name mentioned.”

“He still hates me.”

“I don’t think he’ll ever get that out of his system.”

“Because of the way I am. He can’t stand me because Im…”

“That’s something between the two of you that…”

“I would have done anything for him, you know that.”

“Yes.”

“Always.”

“Yes.”

“All those demands he made on me. Endless practising. Concerts. Recordings. It was all his dream, not mine. He was happy and then everything was fine.”

“I know.”

“So why can’t he forgive me? Why can’t he make up with me? I miss him. Will you tell him that? I miss when we were together. When I used to sing for him. You are my family.”

“I’ll try to talk to him.”

“Will you? Will you tell him I miss him?”

“I’ll do that.”

“He can’t stand me because of the way I am.”

Stefania said nothing.

“Maybe it was a rebellion against him. I don’t know. I tried to hide it but I can’t be anything else than what I am.”

“You ought to go now,” she said.

“Yes.”

He hesitated.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you hate me too?”

“You ought to go. He might wake up.”

“Because it’s all my fault. The situation you’re in, having to look after him all the time. You must…”

“Go,” she said.

“Sorry:

“After he left home, after the accident, what happened then?” Erlendur asked. “Was he just erased as if he’d never existed?”

“More or less. I know Dad listened to his records now and again. He didn’t want me to know, but I saw it sometimes when I got home from work. He’d forget to put the sleeve away or take the record off. Occasionally we heard something about him and years ago we read an interview with him in a magazine. It was an article about former child stars. “Where are they now?” was the headline or something equally appalling. The magazine had dug him up and he seemed willing to talk about his old fame. I don’t know why he opened up like that. He didn’t say anything in the interview except that it was fun being the main attraction.”

“So someone remembered him. He wasn’t completely forgotten.”

“There’s always someone who remembers.”

“In the magazine he didn’t mention being bullied at school or your father’s demands, losing his mother and how his hopes, which I expect your father kindled, were dashed and he was forced to leave home?”

“What do you know about the bullying at school?”

“We know that he was bullied for being different. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t think my father kindled any expectations. He’s a very down-to-earth and realistic man. I don’t know why you talk like that. For a while it looked as if my brother would go a long way as a singer, performing abroad and commanding attention on a scale unknown in our little community. My father explained that to him but I also think he told him that even though it would take a lot of work, dedication and talent, he still shouldn’t set his hopes too high. My father isn’t stupid. Don’t you go thinking that.”

“I don’t think anything of the sort.”

“Good.”

“Did Gudlaugur never try to contact you two? Or you him? All that time?”

“No. I think I’ve already answered your question. Apart from sneaking in sometimes without us noticing. He told me he’d been doing it for years.”

“You didn’t try to track him down?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Were he and his mother close?” Erlendur asked.

“She meant the world to him,” Stefania said.

“So her death was a tragedy to him.”

“Her death was a tragedy to us all.”

Stefania heaved a deep sigh.

“I suppose something died inside us when she passed away. Something that made us a family. I don’t think I realised until long afterwards that it was her who tied us together, created a balance. She and Dad never agreed about Gudlaugur, and they quarrelled about his upbringing, if you could call it quarrelling. She wanted to let him be the way he was, and even if he did sing beautifully not to make too much of it.”

She looked at Erlendur.

“I don’t think our father ever regarded him as a child, more of a task. Something for him alone to shape and create.”

“And you? What was your standpoint?”

“Me? I was never asked.”

They stopped talking, listened to the murmuring in the dining room and watched the tourists chatting together and laughing. Erlendur looked at Stefania, who seemed to have withdrawn inside her shell and the memories of her fragile family life.

“Did you have any part in your brother’s murder?” Erlendur asked cautiously.

It was as if she did not hear what he said, so he repeated the question. She looked up.

“Not in the slightest,” she said. “I wish he was still alive so that I could…”

Stefania did not finish.

“So you could what?” Erlendur asked.

“I don’t know, maybe make up for …”

She stopped again.

“It was all so terrible. All of it. It started with trivial things and then escalated beyond control. I’m not making light of him pushing our father down the stairs. But you take sides and don’t do much to change it. Because you don’t want to, I suppose. And time goes by and the years pass until you’ve really forgotten the feeling, the reason that set it all in motion, and you’ve forgotten, on purpose or accidentally, the opportunities you had to make up for what went wrong, and then suddenly it’s too late to set things straight. All those years have gone by and …” She groaned.

“What did you do after you caught him in the kitchen?”

“I talked to Dad. He didn’t want to know about Gulli, and that was that. I didn’t tell him about the night-time visits. A few times I tried to talk to him about a reconciliation. Said I’d bumped into Gulli in the street and he wanted to see his father, but Dad was absolutely immovable.”

“Did your brother never go back to the house after that?”

“Not as far as I know.”

She looked at Erlendur.

“That was two years ago and that was the last I saw of him.”

25

Stefania stood up, about to leave. It was as if she’d said all she had to say. Erlendur still had an inkling that she had been selective about what she wanted to go on record, and was keeping the rest to herself. He stood up as well, wondering whether to let that suffice for the time being or press her further. He decided to leave the choice to her. She was much more cooperative than before and that suited him for now. But he could not refrain from asking her about an enigma that she had left unexplained.

“I could understand your father’s lifelong anger at him because of the accident,” Erlendur said. “If he blamed him for the paralysis that has confined him to a wheelchair ever since. But you I can’t quite figure out. Why you reacted the same way. Why you took your father’s side. Why you turned against your brother and had no contact with him for all those years.”

“I think I’ve helped you enough,” Stefania said. “His death is nothing to do with my father and me. It’s connected with some other life that my brother led and neither I nor my father know. I hope you appreciate the fact that I’ve tried to be honest and helpful, and you won’t disturb us any more. You won’t handcuff me in my own home.”

She held out her hand as if wanting to seal some kind of pact that she and her father would be left undisturbed in future. Erlendur shook her hand and tried to smile. He knew the pact would be broken sooner or later. Too many questions, he thought to himself. Too few real answers. He wasn’t ready to let her off the hook just yet and thought he could tell that she was still lying to him, or at least circumventing the truth.

“You didn’t come to the hotel to meet your brother a few days before his death?” he said.

“No, I met a friend in this dining room. We had coffee together. You ask her if you think it’s not true. I’d forgotten that he worked here and I didn’t see him while I was here.”

“I might check that,” Erlendur said, and wrote down the woman’s name. “Then there’s something else: do you know a man called Henry Wapshott? He’s British and he was in contact with your brother.”

“Wapshott?”

“He’s a record collector. Interested in your brother’s recordings. It just so happens that he collects records of choral music and specialises in choirboys”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Stefania said. “Specialises in choirboys?”

“Actually there are stranger collectors than him,” Erlendur said, but did not venture into an account of airline sick bags. “He says your brother’s records are very valuable today, do you know anything about that?”

“No, not a thing,” Stefania said. “What was he suggesting? What does it mean?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Erlendur said. “But they’re valuable enough for Wapshott to want to come up here to Iceland to meet him. Did Gudlaugur have any of his own records?”

“Not that I know of?

“Do you know what happened to the copies that were released?”

“I think they just sold out,” Stefania said. “Would they be worth anything if they were still around?”

Erlendur sensed a note of eagerness in her voice and wondered whether she was masquerading, whether she was much better informed about all this than he was and was trying to establish just what he knew.

“Could well be,” Erlendur said.

“Is this British man still in the country?” she asked.

“He’s in police custody,” Erlendur said. “He may know more about your brother and his death than he wants to tell us.”

“Do you think he killed him?”

“You haven’t heard the news?”

“No.”

“He’s a candidate, no more than that.”

“Who is this man?”

Erlendur was about to tell her about the information from Scotland Yard and the child pornography that was found in Wapshott’s room. Instead, he repeated that Wapshott was a record collector who was interested in choirboys and had stayed at the hotel and been in contact with Gudlaugur, and was suspicious enough to be remanded in custody.

They exchanged cordial farewells and Erlendur watched her leave the dining room for the lobby. His mobile rang in his pocket. He fumbled for it and answered. To his surprise, Valgerdur was on the other end.

“Could I meet you tonight?” she asked without preamble. “Will you be at the hotel?”

“I can be,” Erlendur said, not bothering to conceal the surprise in his voice. “I thought…”

“Shall we say eight? In the bar?”

“All right,” Erlendur said. “Let’s say that What-?”

He was going to ask Valgerdur what was bothering her when she rang off and all he could hear was silence. Putting away his mobile, he wondered what she wanted. He had written off any chance of getting to know her and concluded he was probably a total loser as far as women were concerned. Then this telephone call came out of the blue and he didn’t know what to read into it.

It was well past noon and Erlendur was starving, but instead of eating in the dining room he went upstairs and had room service send up some lunch. He still had several tapes to go through, so he put one in the player and let it roll while he waited for his food.

He soon lost his concentration, his mind wandered from the screen and he started mulling over Stefania’s words. Why had Gudlaugur crept into their house at night? He had told his sister that he wanted to go home. Sometimes I just want to come home. What did those words imply? Did his sister know? What was home in Gudlaugur’s mind? What did he miss? He was no longer part of the family and the person who had been closest to him, his mother, had died long before. He did not disturb his father and sister when he visited them. He did not come by day as normal people would do — if there was such a thing as normal people — to settle scores, to tackle differences and the anger and even hatred that had formed between him and his family. He came by cover of night, taking care not to disturb anyone, and sneaked back out unnoticed. Instead of reconciliation or forgiveness, he seemed to be looking for something perhaps more important to him, something that only he could understand and which was beyond explanation, enshrined in that single word.

Home.

What was that?

Perhaps a feeling for the childhood he spent in his parents” house before life’s incomprehensible complexities and destinies descended upon him. When he had run around that house in the knowledge that his father, mother and sister were his companions and loved ones. He must have gone to the house to gather memories that he did not want to lose and from which he drew nourishment when life weighed him down.

Perhaps he went to the house to come to terms with what fate had meted out to him. The unyielding demands that his father made, the bullying that went with being considered different, the motherly love that was more precious to him than all other things, and the big sister who protected him too; the shock when he returned home after the concert at Hafnarfjordur cinema, his world in ruins and his father’s hopes dashed. What could be worse for a boy like him than to fail to live up to his father’s expectations? After all the effort he had expended, all the effort his father had made, all the effort his family had made. He had sacrificed his childhood for something too large for him then to comprehend or control — and which then failed to materialise. His father had played a game with his childhood, and in effect deprived him of it.

Erlendur sighed.

Who doesn’t want to come home sometimes?

He was flat out on his bed when suddenly he heard a noise in the room. At first he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He thought the turntable had started up and the needle had missed the record.

Sitting up, he looked at the record player and saw that it was switched off. He heard the same noise again and looked all around. It was dark and he couldn’t see very clearly. A vague light emanated from the lamp post on the other side of the road. He was about to switch on the bedside lamp when he heard the noise again, louder than before. He didn’t dare move. Then he remembered where he had heard the noise before.

He sat up in bed and looked towards the door. In the weak glow he saw a small figure, blue with cold, huddled up in the alcove by the door, staring at him, shaking and shivering so that its head bobbed, sniffling.

The sniffling was the noise that Erlendur recognised.

He stared at the figure and it stared back at him, trying to smile but unable to do so for the cold.

“Is that you?” Erlendur gasped.

In that instant the figure disappeared from the alcove and Erlendur started from his sleep, half out of bed, and stared at the door.

“Was that you?” he groaned, seeing snatches of the dream, the woollen mittens, the cap, the winter jacket and scarf. The clothing they were wearing when they left their house.

The clothing of his brother.

Who sat shivering in the cold room.

26

For a long time he stood in silence at the window, watching the snow fall.

Eventually he sat down to continue watching the tapes. Gudlaugur’s sister didn’t reappear, nor anyone he knew apart from some employees he recognised from the hotel, hurrying to or from work.

The hotel telephone rang and Erlendur answered.

“I reckon Wapshott’s telling the truth,” Elinborg said. “They know him well at the collectors” shops and the flea market.”

“Was he down there at the time he claimed?”

“I showed them photos of him and asked about the times, and they were pretty close. Close enough to stop us putting him at the hotel when Gudlaugur was attacked.”

“He doesn’t give the impression of being a murderer either.”

“He’s a paedophile, but maybe not a murderer. What are you going to do with him?”

“I suppose we’ll send him to the UK.”

The conversation ended and Erlendur sat pondering Gudlaugur’s murder, without reaching any conclusion. He thought about Elinborg and his mind soon returned to the case of the boy whose father abused him and whom Elinborg hated for it.

“You’re not the only one,” Elinborg had said to the father. She wasn’t trying to console him. Her tone was accusatory, as if she wanted him to know he was only one of many sadists who maltreated their children. She wanted to let him hear what he was a part of. The statistics that applied to him.

She had studied the statistics. Well over three hundred children had been examined at the Children’s Hospital in connection with suspected maltreatment over the period 1980-99. Of these, 232 cases involved suspected sexual abuse and 43 suspected physical abuse or violence. Including toxic poisoning. Elinborg repeated the words for emphasis. Including toxic poisoning and wilful neglect. She read from a sheet of paper, calm and collected: head injuries, broken bones, burns, cuts, bites. She reread the list and stared into the father’s eyes.

“It is suspected that two children died from physical violence over that twenty-year period,” she said. “Neither case went to court.”

The experts, she told him, considered that this was an underlying problem, which in plain language meant there were probably many more cases.

“In the UK,” she said, “four children die every week from maltreatment. Four children,” she reiterated. “Every week.

“Do you want to know what reasons are given?” she continued. Erlendur sat in the interrogation room but kept a low profile. He was only there to help Elinborg if necessary, but she did not appear to need any assistance.

The father stared into his lap. He looked at the tape recorder. It wasn’t switched on. It wasn’t a proper interrogation. His lawyer had not been notified but the father had not objected nor complained, yet.

“I shall name some,” Elinborg said, and began listing the reasons that parents are violent to their children: “Stress,” she said. “Financial problems, sickness, unemployment, isolation, poor partner support and momentary insanity.”

Elinborg looked at the father.

“Do you think any of this applies to you? Momentary insanity?”

He didn’t answer.

“Some people lose control of themselves, and there are documented cases of parents who are so disturbed by a guilty conscience that they want to be caught. Does that sound familiar?”

He said nothing.

“They take the child to the doctor, maybe their GP, because it has, let’s say, a persistent cold. But it’s not the cold that motivates them; they want the doctor to notice the wounds on the child, the bruises. They want to get caught. You know why?”

He still sat in silence.

“Because they want to put an end to it. Want someone to intervene. Intervene in a process they have no control over. They are incapable of doing so themselves and hope the doctor will see that something’s wrong.”

She looked at the father. Erlendur watched in silence. He was worried that Elinborg was going too far. She seemed to draw on every ounce of strength to act professionally, to show that she was not upset by the case. It seemed to be a hopeless struggle and he thought she realised. She was too emotional.

“I spoke to your GP ,Elinborg said. “He said he had twice reported the boy’s injuries to the child welfare agency. The agency investigated both times but found no conclusive evidence. It didn’t help that the boy said nothing and you admitted nothing. It’s two different things, wanting to be found out for the violence and confessing to it. I read the reports. In the second one, your son is asked about his relationship with you, but he does not seem to understand the question. They repeat the question: “Who do you trust most of all?” And he replies: “My Dad. I trust my Dad most of all.””

Elinborg paused.

“Don’t you think that’s appalling?” she said.

She looked over towards Erlendur and back to the father.

“Don’t you think that’s just appalling?”

Erlendur thought to himself that there was a time when he would have given the same answer. He would have named his father.

When spring came and the snow thawed his father went up to the mountains to look for his lost son, trying to calculate his route in the storm from where Erlendur had been found. He seemed to have made a partial recovery, but was nevertheless tormented by guilt.

He roamed the moors and the mountains, beyond where there was any chance of his son reaching, but never found anything. He stayed in a tent up there, Erlendur went with him and his mother took part in the search, and sometimes local folk came to help them, but the boy was never discovered. It was crucial to find the body. Until then, he was not dead in the proper sense, only lost to them. The wound remained open and immeasurable sorrow seeped from it.

Erlendur fought that sorrow alone. He felt bad, and not only about losing his brother. His own rescue he attributed to luck, but a strange sense of guilt preyed on him because it was him and not his younger brother who was saved. Not only had he lost his grip on his brother in the storm, he was also haunted by the thought that he should rather have died himself. He was older and was responsible for his sibling. It had always been that way. He had taken care of him. In all their games. When they were home alone. When they were sent off on errands. He had lived up to those expectations. On this occasion he had failed, and perhaps he did not deserve to be saved since his brother had died. He didn’t know why he survived. But he sometimes thought it would have been better if he were the one lying lost on the moor.

He never mentioned these thoughts to his parents and in his loneliness he sometimes felt that they must think the same about him. His father had sunk down into his own guilt and wanted to be left alone. His mother was overwhelmed with grief. They both blamed themselves in part for what happened. Between them reigned a curious silence that drowned out the loudest of shouts, while Erlendur fought his own battle in solitude, reflecting on responsibility, blame and luck.

If they had not found him, would they have found his brother instead?

Standing by the hotel window, he wondered what mark his brothers death had left on his life, and whether it was more than he realised. He had pondered those events when Eva Lind began asking him questions. Although he had no simple answers, he knew deep down where they were to be found. He had often asked himself the same questions as Eva Lind did when she quizzed him about his past.

Erlendur heard a knock on his door and turned away from the window.

“Come in!” he called out. “It’s not locked”

Sigurdur Oli opened the door and entered.

He had spent the whole day in Hafnarfjordur, talking to people who knew Gudlaugur.

“Anything new?” Erlendur asked.

“I found out the name he was called. You remember, the one after everything had collapsed around him.”

“Yes, who told you?”

Sigurdur Oli sighed and sat down on the bed. His wife Bergthora had been complaining how much he had been away from home recently when Christmas was drawing near; she had to handle all the preparations by herself. He intended to go home and take her to buy a Christmas tree, but first he needed to see Erlendur. Over the telephone on his way to the hotel, he explained this to her and said he would hurry, but she had heard that story too often to believe it and was in a huff by the time they finished speaking.

“Are you going to spend the whole of Christmas in this room?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“No,” Erlendur said. “What did you find out in Hafnarfjordur.”

“Why’s it so cold in here?”

“The radiator,” Erlendur said. “It won’t heat up. Won’t you get to the point?”

Sigurdur Oli smiled.

“Do you buy a Christmas tree? For Christmas?”

“If I did buy a Christmas tree, I’d do it at Christmas”

“I located a man who, after waffling a bit, told me he knew Gudlaugur in the old days,” Sigurdur Oli said. He knew he had information that could change the course of the investigation and enjoyed keeping Erlendur in suspense.

Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg had set themselves the goal of talking to everyone who had been at school with Gudlaugur or knew him as a boy. Most of them remembered him and vaguely recalled his promising career as a singer and the bullying that accompanied his celebrity. The occasional person remembered him well and knew what happened when he left his father paralysed. One had a closer relationship with him than Sigurdur Oli could ever have imagined.

An old female schoolmate of Gudlaugur’s pointed him out to Sigurdur Oli. She lived in a big house in the newest quarter of Hafnarfjordur. He had telephoned her that morning, so she was expecting him when he arrived. They shook hands and she invited him inside. A pilot’s wife, she worked part time in a book shop; her children were grown up and had left home.

She told him all the details of her acquaintance with Gudlaugur, even though it was only slight, and also had a dim recollection of his sister, who she knew was older. She thought she remembered him losing his voice, but didn’t know what had happened to him after they left school, and was shocked to see the reports that he was the man who was found murdered in the little basement room at the hotel.

Sigurdur Oli listened to all this distractedly. He had heard most of it from Gudlaugur’s other classmates. When she finished, he asked whether she knew any name that Gudlaugur was called as a child and teased with. She didn’t remember any, but added, when she saw Sigurdur Oli was about to leave, that she had heard something about him a long time ago that the police might be interested in, if they didn’t know it already.

“What’s that?” Sigurdur Oli asked, standing up to leave.

She told him, and was pleased to see that she had managed to arouse the detective’s interest.

“And is this man still alive?” Sigurdur Oli asked the woman, who said that for all she knew he was, and gave his name. She stood up to fetch the telephone directory and Sigurdur Oli found the man’s name and address. He lived in Reykjavik. His name was Baldur.

“Are you sure this is the guy?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“As far as I know,” the woman said, smiling in the hope that she had provided some assistance. “It was the talk of the town,” she added.

Sigurdur Oli decided to go there immediately on the off-chance that the man would be at home. It was late in the day. The traffic to Reykjavik was heavy and on the way Sigurdur Oli called Bergthora who-

“Please stop beating about the bush,” Erlendur impatiently interrupted Sigurdur Oil’s account.

“No, this part involves you,” Sigurdur Oli said with a teasing grin. “Bergthora wanted to know if I’d invited you round for Christmas Eve. I told her I had, but you hadn’t given an answer.”

“I’m spending Christmas Eve with Eva Lind,” Erlendur said. “That’s the answer. Will you please get to the point.”

“Right on,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“And stop staying “right on”.”

“Right on.”

Baldur lived in a neat wooden house in the Thingholt district near the city centre and had just got home; he was an architect. Sigurdur Oli rang his doorbell and introduced himself as a detective investigating the murder of Gudlaugur Egilsson. The man showed no surprise. He looked Sigurdur Oli up and down and invited him inside.

“To tell the truth I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “Or one of you. I was wondering about getting in touch, but I’ve been putting it off. It’s never nice talking to the police.” Smiling again, he offered to hang up Sigurdur Oli’s coat.

Everything in the house was spick and span. There were lit candles in the sitting room and a decorated Christmas tree. The man offered Sigurdur Oli a glass of liqueur, which he declined. He was of average height, slim, jolly and balding, but what hair was left had clearly been tinted to enhance its ginger colour. Sigurdur Oli thought he recognised Frank Sinatra crooning from speakers.

“Why were you expecting me, or us?” Sigurdur Oli asked as he sat down on a large red sofa.

“Because of Gulli,” the man said, sitting opposite him. “I knew you’d dig this up.”

“This what?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“That I was with Gulli in the old days,” the man said.

“What do you mean, he was with Gudlaugur in the old days?” Erlendur butted in again. “What could he mean by that?”

“That’s the way he phrased it,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“That he was with Gudlaugur?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“That they were together.”

“You mean Gudlaugur was …?” Countless thoughts rushed through Erlendur’s mind, all screeching to a halt at the stern expressions on the faces of Gudlaugur’s sister and his father in the wheelchair.

“That’s what this Baldur guy says,” Sigurdur Oli said. “But Gudlaugur didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Didn’t want anyone to know about their relationship?”

“He wanted to hide the fact that he was gay.”

27

The man from Thingholt told Sigurdur Oli that his relationship with Gudlaugur began when they were about twenty-five. It was during the disco era when Baldur rented a basement flat in the Vogar district. Neither of them had come out of the closet. “Attitudes to being gay were different then,” he said with a smile. “But it was starting to change.”

“And we didn’t really live together,” Baldur added. “Men didn’t live together then like they do today, without anyone giving it a second thought. Gays could hardly survive in Iceland in those days. Most of us felt compelled to go abroad, as you may know. He often used to visit me, shall we say. Stayed the night with me. He had a room of his own in the west of town and I went there a couple of times, but he was maybe not quite houseproud enough for my taste so I stopped going there. We were mainly at my place.”

“How did you meet?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“There were places where gays used to meet then. One was just off the city centre, in fact not far from here in Thingholt. Not a club, but a sort of meeting place we had in someone’s house. You never knew what to expect at the clubs and you sometimes got thrown out for dancing with other men. This home was a hotchpotch of everything, a coffee bar, guesthouse, night club, advice centre and shelter. He came there one evening with some friends. That was the first time I saw him. Sorry, silly me, can I offer you coffee?”

Sigurdur Oli looked at his watch.

“Maybe you’re in a terrible hurry,” the man said, carefully smoothing down his thin, dyed hair.

“No, it’s not that, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea if you have any,” Sigurdur Oli said, his thoughts on Bergthora. She sometimes got angry when his time-keeping failed. She was very petty about punctuality and would nag him long afterwards if he turned up late.

The man went into the kitchen to make the tea.

“He was awfully repressed,” he said from the kitchen, raising his voice so that Sigurdur Oli could hear him better. “I sometimes thought he hated his own sexuality. As if he still hadn’t fully admitted it. I think he was partly using his relationship with me to help find his way along. He was still searching even at that age. But of course that’s nothing new. People come out in their forties, maybe having been married with four kids.”

“Yes, there are all sorts of permutations,” said Sigurdur Oli, who had no idea what he was talking about.

“Oh yes there are, my dear. Do you like it well brewed?”

“Were you together for long?” Sigurdur Oli asked, adding that he did like his tea strong.

“Three years or so, but it was very on and off towards the end.”

“And you haven’t been in touch with him since?”

“No. I knew about him, sort of,” the man said, returning to the sitting room. “The gay community isn’t that big.”

“In what way was he repressed?” Sigurdur Oli asked while the man put two cups on the table. He had brought in a bowl of cookies, which he recognised as the sort Bergthora baked every Christmas. He tried in vain to remember what they were called.

“He was very mysterious and rarely opened up, or only if we got drunk. It was something to do with his father though, I think. He had no contact with him or with his older sister, who had turned against him, but he missed them terribly. His mother had been dead for years when I met him, but he talked more about her than the rest of his family. He could go on for ever about his mother and it could be very tiring, to tell the truth.”

“How did she turn against him? His sister?”

“This was a long time ago and he never described it exactly. All I know is that he fought what he was. You know what I mean? As if he should have been something else.”

Sigurdur Oli shook his head.

“He thought it was dirty. Something unnatural about it. Being gay.”

“And fought it?”

“Yes and no. He wavered about it. I don’t think he knew which foot to stand on. Poor thing. He didn’t have much self-confidence. Sometimes I think he hated himself?

“Did you know about his past? As a child star?”

“Yes,” the man said, then he stood up to go to the kitchen and returned with a pot of piping-hot tea which he poured into the cups. He took the pot back to the kitchen and they sipped their tea.

“Can’t you speed this up a bit?” Erlendur said to Sigurdur Oli, making no attempt to conceal his impatience as he sat at his hotel room desk listening to the account.

“I’m trying to make it as detailed as possible,” Sigurdur Oli said with a glance at his watch. He was already three-quarters of an hour late for Bergthora.

“Yes, yes, get on with it…”

“Did he ever talk about it?” Sigurdur Oli asked, putting down his teacup and helping himself to a cookie. “His childhood brush with fame?”

“He said he lost his voice,” Baldur said.

“And was he bitter about that?”

“Terribly. It happened at an awful time for him. But he would never tell me about it. He said he was bullied at school for being famous, and that got him down. But he didn’t call it being famous. He didn’t regard himself as ever having been famous. His father wanted him to be, and apparently he came very close to it. But he felt unhappy, and on top of that these feelings started to come out, his gay side. He was reluctant to talk about it. Preferred to say as little as possible about his family. Do have another cookie.”

“No, thanks,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Do you know of anyone who may have wanted to kill him? Someone who wanted to hurt him?”

“Good Lord, no! He was such a pussy cat, he would never have harmed a fly. I don’t know who could have done it. The poor man, going like that. Are you getting anywhere in your enquiries?”

“No,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Did you ever listen to his records, or do you have them?”

“You bet,” the man said. “He was absolutely brilliant. It’s wonderful the way he sang. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a child sing so well.”

“Was he proud of his singing when he was older? When you knew him?”

“He never listened to himself Didn’t want to hear his records. Never. No matter how I tried.”

“Why not?”

“It was just impossible to get him to. He never gave any explanation, he just didn’t listen to his own records.”

Baldur stood up, went to a cupboard in the sitting room, fetched Gudlaugur’s two records and put them on the table in front of Sigurdur Oli.

“He gave them to me after I helped him move.”

“Move?”

“He lost his room on the west side of town and asked me to help him move. He got himself another room and put all his stuff in there. He never really owned anything apart from records.”

“Did he have a lot?”

“Tons of them.”

“Was there anything special that he listened to?”

“No, you see,” Baldur said, “they were all the same records. These ones here,” he said, pointing to Gudlaugur’s two records. “He had loads of these. He said he’d acquired all the copies.”

“So, he had boxes full of these?” Sigurdur Oli said, unable to conceal his eagerness.

“Yes, at least two.”

“Do you know where they might be?”

“Me? No, I haven’t the foggiest. Are they a hot number these days?”

“I know of someone who might be prepared to kill for them,” Sigurdur Oli said.

Baldur’s face was now a huge question mark.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Sigurdur Oli said, looking at his watch. “I must be going. I might need to contact you again to fill in a few details. It would also be helpful if you phoned me if you remember anything, no matter how trivial it may seem.”

“To tell the truth we didn’t have much choice in those days,” the man said. “Not like today when half the population is gay and the other half pretends it is.”

He smiled at Sigurdur Oli, who choked on his tea.

“Excuse me,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“It is a little strong.”

Sigurdur Oli stood up and so did Baldur, who followed him to the door.

“We know that Gudlaugur was bullied at school,” Sigurdur Oli said when he was about to leave, “and they called him names. Do you remember if he ever mentioned that to you?”

“It was quite obvious that he’d been bullied for being in a choir and having a beautiful voice and not playing football, and being a bit girlish. He gave the impression of being a little unsure of himself with other people. He talked to me as if he understood why they teased him. But I don’t remember him mentioning any names …”

Baldur hesitated.

“Yes,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“When we were together, you know…”

Sigurdur Oli shook his head vacantly.

“In bed…”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes he wanted me to call him “my Little Princess”,” Baldur said, a smile playing across his lips.

Erlendur stared at Sigurdur Oli.

“My Little Princess?”

“That’s what he said.” Sigurdur Oli stood up from Erlendur’s bed “And now I really must be going. Bergthora will be going bananas. So you’ll be home for Christmas?”

“And what about the boxes of records?” Erlendur said. “Where could they be?”

“The guy didn’t have any idea.”

“The Little Princess? As in the Shirley Temple film? How does that all fit together? Did that man explain it?”

“No, he didn’t know what it meant.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything in particular,” Erlendur said, as if thinking out loud. “Some gay patois no one else understands. Maybe no stranger than a lot of other things. So, he hated himself then?”

“Not much self-confidence, his friend said. He was indecisive.”

“About his homosexual feelings or something else?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“We can always talk to him again, but he didn’t really seem to know that much about Gudlaugur.”

“And nor do we,” Erlendur said languidly. “If he wanted to hide the fact that he was gay twenty or thirty years ago, do we assume he went on hiding it?”

“That’s the question.”

“I haven’t met anyone else who mentioned that he was gay.”

“Yes, well, I’m off anyway” Sigurdur Oli said, moving to the door. “Was there anything else for today?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “That’s fine. Thanks for the invitation. Give my regards to Bergthora, and try to treat her decently.”

“I always do,” Sigurdur Oli said and hurried out. Erlendur looked at his watch and saw that it was time to meet Valgerdur. He took the last tape from the bank out of the video player and put it on the top of the stack. Immediately his mobile began to ring.

It was Elinborg. She told him she had spoken to the State Prosecutor’s office about the father who assaulted his son.

“What do they reckon he’ll get?” Erlendur asked.

“They think he might even get off, Elinborg said. “He won’t be convicted if he stands firm. If he just denies it. Won’t spend a minute inside.”

“What about the evidence? The footprints on the stairs? The bottle of Drambuie? Everything suggests that—”

“I don’t know why we bother. A case of assault came up for sentence yesterday. A man was repeatedly stabbed with a knife. The attacker got eight months in prison, four of them suspended, which means that he goes to jail for two months. Where’s the justice in that?”

“Will he get the boy back?”

“He’s bound to. The only positive thing, if it can be called positive, is that the boy seriously seems to miss his father. That’s what I don’t understand. How can he feel attached to his father if the man beats the shit out of him? I just can’t figure this case out. Something must be missing. Something we’ve overlooked. It just doesn’t add up.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Erlendur said and looked at his watch. He was late for his meeting with Valgerdur. “Can you do one thing for me? Stefania Egilsdottir said she was with a friend at the hotel the other day. Would you talk to the woman and confirm it?” Erlendur gave her the woman’s name.

“Aren’t you going to get yourself back home from that hotel?” Elinborg asked.

“Stop nagging me,” Erlendur said and rang off.

28

When Erlendur went down to the lobby he saw Rosant, the head waiter. He hesitated, uncertain whether to make a move. Valgerdur was bound to be waiting for him. Erlendur looked at his watch, pulled a face and went up to the head waiter. This shouldn’t take long.

“Tell me about the whores,” he said without preamble. Rosant was talking courteously to two hotel guests. They were clearly Icelandic, because they looked at him in astonishment.

Rosant smiled, raising his little moustache. He apologised politely to the guests, bowed and took Erlendur aside.

“A hotel is just people and our job is to make them feel good, wasn’t it some kind of crap like that?” Erlendur said.

“It’s not crap. They taught us that at catering college.”

“Did they also teach head waiters to be pimps?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll tell you then. You run a little knocking shop at this hotel”

Rosant smiled.

“A knocking shop?”

“Has it got anything to do with Gudlaugur, your pimping?”

Rosant shook his head.

“Who was with Gudlaugur when he was murdered?”

They fixed each other’s gaze until Rosant backed off and stared down at the floor.

“There was no one I know of,” he finally said.

“Not you?”

“One of your people took a statement from me. I have an alibi.”

“Was Gudlaugur involved with the whores?”

“No. And there are no whores under my charge. I don’t know where you get these stories from about pilfering from the kitchen and whores. They’re nonsense. I’m not a pimp.”

“But—”

“We have certain information for people, for visitors. Foreigners at conferences. Icelanders too. They ask for company and we try to assist. If they meet pretty women at the bars here and feel good about it—”

“Then everyone’s happy. Aren’t they grateful customers?”

“Extremely.”

“So you’re an escort provider, so to speak,” Erlendur said.

“I…”

And how romantic you make it all sound. The hotel manager’s in it with you. What about the head of reception?”

Rosant hesitated.

“What about the head of reception?” Erlendur repeated.

“He doesn’t share our desire to fulfil the customers” diverse needs”

“The customers” diverse needs,” Erlendur mimicked. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

“At catering college.”

“And how do the head of reception’s views fit in with yours?”

“There are occasional conflicts”

Erlendur remembered the man from reception denying that there were prostitutes at the hotel, and thought to himself that he was probably the only member of the management who tried to safeguard the hotel’s reputation.

“But you’re trying to eliminate these conflicts, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Does he get in your way?”

Rosant did not answer.

“It was you who set that whore on him, wasn’t it? A little warning in case he was planning to say anything. You were out on the town, saw him and set one of your whores on him.”

Rosant stalled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeated.

“No, I bet you don’t.”

“He’s just so awfully honest,” Rosant said, his moustache lifting alarmingly. “He refuses to understand that it’s better for us to run this ourselves.”

Valgerdur was waiting for Erlendur at the bar. As at their previous meeting, she was wearing light make-up that accentuated her features, with a white silk blouse under a leather coat. They shook hands and she gave a faltering smile. He wondered whether this meeting would be like a fresh start to their acquaintance. He couldn’t work out what she wanted from him, after apparently saying the final word about their friendship the time they met in the lobby. With a smile, she asked him if she could buy him a drink from the bar, or was he perhaps on duty?

“In films, cops aren’t supposed to drink if they’re on duty,” she said.

“I don’t watch films” Erlendur smiled.

“No,” she said. “You read books about pain and death.”

They took a seat in one corner of the bar and sat in silence, watching the people milling around. As Christmas drew closer, Erlendur felt that the guests were growing noisier, there were endless carols playing over the sound system, the tourists brought in gaudy parcels and drank beer as if unaware that it was the most expensive in Europe, if not the world.

“You managed to get a sample from Wapshott,” he said.

“What kind of guy is he anyway? They had to knock him to the floor and force his mouth open. It was awesome to see the way he acted, the way he fought them off inside his cell.”

“I can’t work him out really,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know exactly what he’s doing here and I don’t know exactly what he’s hiding.”

He didn’t want to go into details about Wapshott, nor talk about the child pornography and the sentences he had received in the UK for sex crimes. He didn’t feel that was an appropriate topic of conversation with Valgerdur, besides which Wapshott had the right, in spite of everything, that Erlendur did not go blathering about his private life to everyone he met.

“I expect you’re much more accustomed to this than I am,” Valgerdur said.

“I’ve never taken a saliva sample from a man who has been knocked to the floor and lies there screaming and shouting.”

Valgerdur laughed.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t sat down by myself with a man other than my husband for — I guess it must be thirty years. So you have to excuse me if I act … sheepish.”

“I’m just as clumsy,” Erlendur said. “I don’t have much experience either. It’s almost a quarter of a century since I divorced my wife. You can count the women in my life on three fingers”

“I think I’m divorcing him,” Valgerdur said gloomily, looking at Erlendur.

“What do you mean? Divorcing your husband?”

“I think it’s over between us and I wanted to apologise to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, you,” Valgerdur said. “I’m such an idiot,” she groaned. “I was going to use you to take revenge.”

“I don’t follow,” Erlendur said.

“I hardly know myself. It’s been awful ever since I found out.”

“What?”

“He’s having an affair.”

She said this just like any other fact she had to live with and Erlendur couldn’t discern how she felt, sensed only the emptiness behind her words.

“I don’t know when it started or why,” she went on.

Then she stopped talking and Erlendur, at a loss for something to say, kept silent as well.

“Did you cheat on your wife?” she suddenly asked.

“No,” Erlendur said. “It wasn’t like that. We were young and we weren’t compatible.”

“Compatible,” Valgerdur repeated after him, vacantly. “What’s that?”

“And you’re going to divorce him?”

“I’m trying to get my bearings,” she said. “It may depend on what he does.”

“What kind of an affair is it?”

“What kind? Is there any difference between affairs?”

“Has it been going on for years or has he just started? Has he had more than one maybe?”

“He says he’s been with the same woman for two years. I haven’t had the guts to ask him about the past, whether there were any others. That I never knew about. You never know anything. You trust your people, your husband, and the next thing you know is one day he starts talking about the marriage, then that he knows this woman and he’s known her for two years, and you’re like a total idiot. Don’t realise what he’s talking about. Then it turns out they’ve been meeting at hotels like this one …”

Valgerdur stopped.

“Is she married, this woman?”

“Divorced. She’s five years younger than him.”

“Has he given any explanation for the affair? Why he-?”

“Do you mean whether it’s my fault?” Valgerdur interjected.

“No, I didn’t mean …”

“Maybe it is my fault,” she said. “I don’t know. There have been no explanations. Just anger and incomprehension, I think.”

“And your two sons?”

“We haven’t told them. They’ve both left home. Not enough time for ourselves while they were there, too much time when they’d moved out. Maybe we didn’t know each other any longer. Two strangers after all those years.”

They fell silent.

“You don’t have to apologise to me for anything,” Erlendur said eventually, looking at her. “Far from it. I’m the one who should apologise for not being straight with you. For lying to you.”

“Lying to me?”

“You asked why I was interested in deaths in the mountains, in storms and up on the moors, and I didn’t tell you the truth. It’s because I’ve hardly ever talked about it and find it difficult, I suppose. I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business. Not my children’s business either. My daughter had a near-fatal experience and I thought she was going to die — it was only then that I felt the need to talk about it to her. To tell her about it”

“Talk about what?” Valgerdur asked. “Was it something that happened?”

“My brother froze to death,” Erlendur said. “When he was eight. He was never found and still hasn’t been found.”

He had told a complete stranger, a woman at a hotel bar, what had been weighing down his heart for almost as long as he could remember. Maybe it was a long-awaited dream. Maybe he did not want to wage that war any longer.

“There’s a story about us in one of those books on. tragedies that I’m always reading,” he said. “The story of what happened when my brother died, the search and the gloom and grief that engulfed our home. A remarkably accurate account actually, related by one of the leaders of the search party, which a friend of my father’s wrote down. All our names are given, it describes our household and my father’s reaction, which was considered strange because he was overwhelmed by total hopelessness and self-recrimination, and sat in his room rigid and staring into space while everyone else was searching for all they were worth. We weren’t asked permission when the account was published and my parents were extremely upset by it. I can show it to you some time if you want.”

Valgerdur nodded.

Erlendur began to tell her, she sat and listened, and when he had finished she leaned back in her seat and sighed.

“So you never found him?” she said.

Erlendur shook his head.

“Long after this happened, even sometimes today, I imagine he’s not dead. That he got down from the moor, weatherbeaten and having lost his memory, and that I’ll meet him some time later. I look for him in crowds and try to imagine what he looks like. Apparently this is not an uncommon reaction when no bodily remains are found. I know that from being in the police. Hope lives on when nothing else is left.”

“You must have been close,” Valgerdur said. “You and your brother.”

“We were good friends” Erlendur said.

They sat in deep silence, watching the hustle and bustle at the hotel from their respective worlds. Their glasses were empty and neither thought of ordering more. A good while passed until Erlendur cleared his throat, leaned over to her and asked her in a hesitant voice a question that had been preying on his mind ever since she started talking about her husband’s infidelities.

“Do you still want to take revenge on him?”

Valgerdur looked at him and nodded.

“But not yet,” she said. “I can’t…”

“No,” Erlendur said. “You’re right. Of course.”

“Why don’t you tell me about one of those missing persons you’re so interested in? That you’re always reading about.”

Erlendur smiled, thought for a moment and then started telling her about a man who disappeared right in front of everyone’s eyes: Jon Bergthdrsson, a thief from Skagafjordur.

He went out onto the sea ice off the Skagi coast to fetch a shark that had been hauled up through a hole in the ice the previous day. Suddenly a southerly wind set in, it began to rain and the ice split and drifted out to sea with Jon on it. Rescuing him by boat was ruled out because of the storm, and the ice drifted northwards out of the fjord, driven by the southerly wind.

The last time Jon was seen was through a pair of binoculars as he scurried back and forth across the iceberg on the distant northern horizon.

29

The soft bar music had a soporific effect and they sat in silence until Valgerdur reached over and took hold of his hand.

“I’d better be going now” she said.

Erlendur nodded and they both stood up. She kissed him on the cheek and stood pressed up against him for a moment.

Neither of them noticed when Eva Lind walked into the bar and saw them from a distance. Saw them stand up, saw her kiss him and apparently snuggle up against him. Eva Lind shuddered and marched over.

“Who’s this old cow?” Eva said, staring at them.

“Eva,” Erlendur reproached her, startled at suddenly seeing his daughter in the bar. “Be polite.”

Valgerdur held out her hand and Eva Lind looked at it, looked Valgerdur in the face and then back at the outstretched hand. Erlendur watched them both in turn and ended up glaring at Eva.

“Her name’s Valgerdur and she’s a good friend of mine,” he said.

Eva Lind looked at her father and at Valgerdur again but did not shake her hand. With an embarrassed smile, Valgerdur turned round. Erlendur followed her out of the bar and watched her cross the lobby. Eva Lind went over to him.

“What was that?” she said. “Have you started buying the tarts at the bar here?”

“How could you be so rude?” Erlendur said. “How could you think of behaving like that? It’s none of your business. Leave me in bloody peace!”

“Right! You can go poking your nose into my business 24-fucking-7 but I’m not allowed to know who you’re shagging at this hotel!”

“Stop talking such filth! What makes you think you can talk to me like that?”

Eva Lind stopped but glared angrily at her father. He stared at her, furious.

“What the hell do you want from me, child?” he shouted in her face, then ran after Valgerdur. She had left the hotel and through the revolving doors he saw her stepping into a taxi. When he came out onto the pavement in front of the hotel he saw the taxi’s red rear lights fading in the distance and finally vanish around the corner.

Erlendur cursed as he watched the tail lights disappear. Not in any mood to go back to the bar where Eva Lind was waiting for him, he went back inside absent-mindedly and down the stairs to the basement, and before he realised he was in the corridor where Gudlaugur’s room was. He found a switch and turned it on, and the few remaining working bulbs cast a gloomy light onto the corridor. He fumbled his way along until he reached the little room, opened the door and turned on the light. The Shirley Temple poster greeted his eyes.

The Little Princess.

He heard light footsteps along the corridor and Eva Lind appeared in the doorway.

“The girl upstairs said she saw you go down to the basement,” Eva said, looking into the room. Her gaze stopped at the bloodstains on the bed. “Was it here that it happened?” she asked.

“Yes,” Erlendur said.

“What’s that poster?”

“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I don’t understand the way you act sometimes. You shouldn’t go calling her an old cow and refuse to shake her hand. She hasn’t done you any harm.”

Eva Lind said nothing.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself? Erlendur said.

“Sorry,” Eva said.

Erlendur didn’t reply. He stood staring at the poster. Shirley Temple in a pretty summer frock with a ribbon in her hair, smiling in Technicolor. The Little Princess. Made in 1939, based on the story by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Temple played a lively girl who was sent to a London boarding school when her father went abroad: he left her in the care of a harsh headmistress.

Sigurdur Oli had found an entry about the film on the Internet It left them none the wiser about why Gudlaugur had hung up the poster in his room.

The Little Princess, Erlendur thought to himself.

“I couldn’t help thinking about Mum,” Eva Lind said behind him. “When I saw her with you at the bar. And about me and Sindri, who you’ve never shown any interest in. Started thinking about all of us. Us as a family, because however you look at it we are still a family. In my mind anyway.”

She stopped.

Erlendur turned to face her.

“I don’t understand that neglectfulness,” she went on. “Especially towards me and Sindri. I don’t get it. And you’re not exactly helpful. Never want to talk about anything that involves you. Never talk about anything. Never say anything. It’s like talking to a brick wall.”

“Why do you need explanations for everything?” Erlendur said. “Some things can’t be explained. And some things don’t need to be explained.”

“Says the cop!”

“People talk too much,” Erlendur said. “People should shut up more often. Then they wouldn’t give themselves away so much.”

“You’re talking about criminals. You’re always thinking about criminals. We’re your family!”

They fell silent.

“I’ve probably made mistakes,” Erlendur said at last. “Not with your mother, I think. Though I might have. I don’t know. People get divorced all the time and I found living with her unbearable. But I definitely did wrong by you and Sindri. And perhaps I didn’t even appreciate it until you found me and started visiting me, and sometimes dragged your brother along with you. Didn’t realise that I had two children I hadn’t been in touch with for the whole of their childhood, who’d gone astray so early in life, and I started wondering whether my lack of action played any part in it. I’ve thought a lot about why that was. Just like you. Why I didn’t go to court and secure my parental rights, fight tooth and nail to have you with me. Or try harder to persuade your mother and reach an agreement. Or just hang around outside your school to kidnap you.”

“You just weren’t interested in us,” Eva Lind said. Isn’t that the point?”

Erlendur said nothing.

“Isn’t that the point?” Eva repeated.

Erlendur shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I wish it were that simple.”

“Simple? What do you mean?”

“I think…”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to put this. I think…”

“Yes.”

“I think I lost my life up on the moors too.”

“When your brother died?”

“It’s hard to explain and maybe I can’t. Maybe you can’t explain everything and some things may be better left unexplained.”

“What do you mean, lost your life?”

“I’m not… a part of me died.”

“Please…”

“I was found and rescued, but I died too. Something inside me. Something I had before. I don’t know exactly what it was. My brother died and I think something inside me died too. I always felt he was my responsibility, and I failed him. That’s the way I’ve felt ever since. I’ve been guilty that it was me and not him who survived. I’ve avoided looking anything in the face ever since. And even if I wasn’t directly neglected, the way I neglected you and Sindri, it was as if I no longer mattered. I don’t know if I’m right and I never will know, but I felt it as soon as I came down from the moor and I’ve felt it ever since.”

“All these years?”

“You can’t measure time in feelings.”

“Because it was you and not him who survived.”

“Instead of trying to rebuild something from the ruins, which I think I was trying to do when I met your mother, I dug myself down deeper into it because it’s comfortable there and it looks like sanctuary. Like when you take drugs. It’s more comfortable that way. That’s your sanctuary. And as you know, even if you are aware that you’re doing other people wrong, your own self matters most. That’s why you go on taking drugs. That’s why I dig myself down over and again into the snowdrift.”

Eva Lind stared at her father, and although she did not fully comprehend him, she realised that he was making an absolutely candid attempt to explain what had puzzled her all the time and had prompted her to track him down when she did. She understood that she had penetrated a place within him that no one else had ever been to, not even him, except to make sure that everything there remained undisturbed.

“And that woman? Where does she come into the picture?”

Erlendur shrugged, and started to close the door that had come ajar.

“I don’t know,” he said.

They stayed silent for a while until Eva Lind made her excuses and left. Unsure which direction to take, she peered into the darkness at the end of the corridor, and Erlendur suddenly noticed she was sniffing at the air like a dog.

“Can you smell that?” she said, sticking her nose up into the air.

“Smell what?” Erlendur said. “What are you talking about?”

“Hash,” Eva Lind said. “Dope. Do you mean to tell me you’ve never smelted hash?”

“Hash?”

“Can’t you smell it?”

Erlendur went out into the corridor and started sniffing into the air as well.

“Is that what it is?” he said.

“You’re asking the expert,” she said.

She was still sniffing at the air.

“Someone’s been smoking hash down here, and not very long ago,” she said.

Erlendur knew that forensics had lit up the end of the corridor when the body was taken away, but was uncertain whether it had been fine-combed.

He looked at Eva Lind.

“Hash?”

“You’re on the scent,” she said.

He went back into the room, took a chair and placed it in the corridor underneath one of the functional light bulbs, which he unscrewed. The bulb was scorching and he had to use the sleeve of his jacket to grip it. He found a blown bulb at the dark end of the corridor and swapped them. Suddenly it was illuminated and Erlendur jumped down from the chair.

At first they could see nothing of note, until Eva Lind pointed out to her father how spotlessly clean the alcove at the end seemed to be compared with the rest of the corridor. Erlendur nodded. It was as if every single spot on the floor had been cleaned and the walls wiped down.

Erlendur got down on all fours and scanned the floor. Heating pipes ran along all the walls at floor level and he looked under the pipes and crawled alongside them.

Eva Lind saw him stop and fish under the pipe to fetch something that had caught his attention. He got to his feet, walked over to her and showed her what he had found.

“At first I thought it was rat droppings,” he said, holding up a little brown lump between his fingers.

“What is it?” Eva Lind asked.

“It’s a gauze,” Erlendur said.

“A gauze?”

“Yes, containing chewing tobacco that you put under your lip. Someone has thrown away or spat out his chewing tobacco here in this corridor.”

“But who? Who could have been in this corridor?”

Erlendur looked at Eva Lind.

“Someone who’s a bigger tart than I am,” he said.