Reykjavik Nights

2

A report came over the radio about a disturbance at a house in the Bústadir district and they accelerated onto Miklabraut eastbound, then crossed Háaleiti and took Grensásvegur south. It was long gone three in the morning and there was little traffic on the roads, though they passed two taxis heading for the suburbs, before almost colliding with another vehicle which crept up from Fossvogur and into their path at the Bústadavegur junction. The middle-aged man at the wheel had apparently failed to notice how fast the police van was travelling and had judged it safe to pull out.

‘Is he crazy?’ shouted Erlendur as he swerved violently round the vehicle before continuing along the road.

‘Should we pull him over?’ asked Marteinn from the back seat.

‘Leave him,’ said Gardar.

Glancing in the rear-view mirror, Erlendur saw that the car was now crawling west along Bústadavegur.

Gardar and Marteinn were law students temping for the summer. Erlendur quite enjoyed working with them. Both had Beatles haircuts, fringes flopping over their eyes, and large sideburns. At present the three of them were riding in a lumbering police van, a black-and-white Chevrolet, slow but reliable, equipped with a small holding cage for prisoners in the back. They hadn’t bothered to turn on the siren or the flashing lights, which was probably why they’d nearly collided with the car, but they didn’t need to for a domestic incident in the early hours. Sometimes Gardar liked to activate the whole system and drive like a maniac, though, just for the hell of it.

They parked outside the house, put on their white caps and climbed out into the light summer night. Though overcast and drizzling, it was mild. There had been a fair amount of drunkenness in town, but nothing serious until now. Earlier they had stopped a motorist on suspicion of drink-driving and taken him for a blood test. After that they had been summoned to a brawl outside a crowded nightclub, followed by another at a rundown house in the west end, where five men of assorted ages, a ship’s crew from out of town, rented a couple of rooms. A shouting match with their neighbours had ended in blows, in the course of which one of them had pulled a knife and managed to stab another man in the arm before being overpowered. When Erlendur and company arrived to put an end to the fight the man was so enraged he was foaming at the mouth, so they cuffed him and took him to cool off in the detention cells at Hverfisgata. The others had sobered up with the arrival of the police and gave conflicting accounts of how it had all started.

They rang the doorbell of the terraced house. There was no sign of any disturbance, yet according to the police radio a neighbour had rung in to report a noisy row at this address. They knocked on the door, tried the bell again, then conferred. Erlendur wanted to force an entry but was overruled by the two law students. The neighbour was nowhere to be seen.

While they were arguing, the door abruptly opened and a man in his early forties appeared. He was in his shirtsleeves, his flies were undone and his braces were dangling from his waistband. He had his hands in his pockets.

‘What’s all this about?’ he asked, surveying them each in turn, apparently surprised to receive a visit from the police. They couldn’t smell alcohol on his breath, but neither, it seemed, had they got him out of bed.

‘We’ve received a complaint about noise at this address,’ said Gardar.

‘Noise?’ repeated the man, squinting at them. ‘There’s no noise here. What... who’s been complaining? You mean someone called the police?’

‘Do you mind if we come in a minute?’ asked Erlendur.

‘In?’ echoed the man. ‘In here? Someone’s been having you on, boys. You shouldn’t fall for prank calls.’

‘Is your wife up?’ asked Erlendur.

‘My wife? She’s out of town. Staying at a summer cottage with friends. I don’t see... There must be some mistake.’

‘Perhaps we were given the wrong address,’ suggested Gardar, glancing at Erlendur and Marteinn. ‘We’d better check with the station.’

‘Excuse us,’ said Marteinn.

‘No problem, boys. Sorry there’s been a mix-up but I’m alone in the house. Have a good night.’

Gardar and Marteinn headed back to the van with Erlendur following in their wake. They climbed in and Marteinn radioed the station, only to receive confirmation that they had the right address.

‘But there’s nothing going on here,’ said Gardar.

‘Hang on a minute.’ Erlendur got out of the van. ‘There’s something odd about this.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Marteinn.

Erlendur retraced his steps and knocked on the door. After a short interval the man opened it again.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Could I use your toilet?’ asked Erlendur.

‘Toilet?’

‘Just quickly,’ said Erlendur. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s... I can’t...’

‘Can I see your hands?’

‘What? My hands?’

‘Yes, your hands.’ Erlendur gave the door a determined shove, forcing the man to retreat before him into the house.

Barging in after him, Erlendur threw a quick glance into the kitchen, opened the door to the toilet opposite it, then dashed into the passage, opening more doors and calling out. After a brief protest at this extraordinary behaviour, the man stood, passive, in the hall. Erlendur strode back past him into the sitting room, and there he found a woman lying motionless on the floor. The room was a shambles — overturned chairs, fallen lamps, an ashtray stand on its side, curtains ripped from their rails. He ran to the woman and stooped over her. She was unconscious, one eye had sunk into her face, her lips were split and blood was oozing from a cut on her head. She appeared to have knocked herself out on the stand as she fell. Her dress was rucked up over her hips and from the old bruise on her thigh he deduced that the violence had not begun this evening.

‘Call an ambulance,’ he bellowed to Gardar and Marteinn, who had materialised in the doorway. ‘How long has she been lying here?’ he demanded of the man, who was still standing, immobile, in the hall.

‘Is she dead?’

‘She could well be.’ Erlendur did not dare touch the woman. She had a serious head wound and the ambulance men would know what to do before moving her. He grabbed the torn-down curtains and spread them over her, before ordering Marteinn to handcuff the husband and take him out to the van. The man no longer saw any reason to keep his hands in his pockets. His knuckles were bleeding from the assault.

‘Do you have any children?’ asked Erlendur.

‘Two boys. They’re in the country.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘I didn’t do it deliberately,’ the man said as he was cuffed and led out. ‘I don’t know... I didn’t mean to go for her like that. She... I didn’t mean to... She... I was going to ring you. She fell against the ashtray stand and didn’t answer and I thought maybe...’

His words dried up. The woman emitted a faint moan.

‘Can you hear me?’ Erlendur whispered, but she did not respond.

The neighbour who had called the police, a man in his early thirties, was now outside talking to Gardar. Erlendur joined them. The neighbour was saying that he and his wife had heard rows from time to time but nothing as bad as tonight.

‘Has it been going on long?’

‘I really couldn’t say. We’ve only lived here just over a year and it... like I said, you sometimes hear shouting and stuff being thrown around. It makes us very uncomfortable because we don’t know what to do. It’s not as though we really know them, even though we’re neighbours.’

The wailing of sirens grew louder and they saw an ambulance turn into the road and approach the house. It was followed by a second patrol car. The other neighbours, woken by the commotion, now appeared at their windows or doors, and watched as the woman was carried out on a stretcher and the police van pulled away slowly with her husband locked in the back. Soon peace was restored and the residents returned to their beds, curious about the disturbance in the middle of the night.

Apart from this, the night shift was uneventful. As Erlendur was leaving work, he saw the wife-beater waiting for a taxi outside the police station. He had been released after questioning, free to go, as the incident was considered closed. His wife’s condition was not critical; in a few days she would be discharged from hospital and no doubt return home to him. She probably had little alternative. There was no support network for women who suffered domestic abuse.

Before leaving, Erlendur had flicked through the incident report and noted that a middle-aged man had driven into a lamppost in the Vogar district and written off his car. He had been alone and highly intoxicated at the time. Erlendur guessed from the description of the vehicle that it was the one which had nearly crashed into them on Bústadavegur.

For a moment he stood looking up at the ultramodern building of the police headquarters on Hverfisgata, then strolled down to the seafront on Skúlagata, gazing first north to the flat-topped mass of Mount Esja, then over at the mountains to the east. The sun shone high above their peaks. It was early Sunday morning and the tranquillity that had descended over the city did much to exorcise the ugly tumult of the night.

As he walked, his thoughts returned once again to the tramp who last year had been found floating in one of the flooded workings on Kringlumýri. For some reason the case continued to haunt him. Perhaps because the man had not been a complete stranger. Erlendur had been on patrol nearby when the report came in, so he had been first on the scene. In his mind’s eye he saw the green anorak in the water and the three boys who had gone out on the raft.

Erlendur knew that in the year that had elapsed since the man drowned Reykjavík CID had uncovered no evidence of suspicious circumstances. Yet he was also aware that the death of a homeless man had not been given high priority. They had other fish to fry and, besides, it looked like an open-and-shut case; the assumption was that the tramp had stumbled in and drowned by accident. No one seemed interested. Erlendur wondered if that was because the man had not mattered to anyone. All his death meant was one less vagrant on the streets of Reykjavík. And perhaps his death was that straightforward. But, then again, perhaps not. Shortly before the man died, Erlendur had heard him allege that someone had tried to set fire to the cellar in which he lived. Nobody had believed him, Erlendur included, and now it troubled him that he had not listened to the man, merely brushed him off with the same indifference as everyone else.