Reykjavik Nights

3

One evening not long afterwards, on his night off, Erlendur walked over to Kringlumýri. It was not the first time his feet had led him in that direction. With little to occupy him outside work, he took pleasure in wandering the streets on fine summer evenings, round Tjörnin, the small lake in the centre of town; through the west end and out to the Seltjarnarnes peninsula, or south along the shores of Skerjafjördur to the cove at Nauthólsvík. Occasionally he would drive out of town in his old beaten-up car, park somewhere remote and go hiking in the mountains. If the forecast was good, he would take along a tent and provisions. Although he didn’t think of himself as a serious outdoorsman, he had joined the Icelandic Touring Club. He received their annual publications but didn’t take part in any of their organised trips. The experience of trekking to the hot springs at Landmannalaugar had taught him that travelling with a bunch of relentlessly hearty people was not for him. Such forced jollity could quickly become oppressive.

He hadn’t met that many women either, but then that wasn’t really a priority. On his rare forays into the Reykjavík nightlife he had been put off by the noise and rowdiness. Then one evening at Glaumbær, back before the place burnt down, he had met a young woman called Halldóra. She was chatty, knew her own mind, and took a frank interest in him. Sometime later, on a night out at Silfurtunglid with the boys from the force, he ran into her again and she asked him to come home with her. Afterwards she phoned him, they met up, and now they were in a relationship of sorts.

As Erlendur walked through his own neighbourhood of Hlídar, past Hamrahlíd College, where they offered adult education courses, he wondered yet again whether he should go back to school. He had completed his compulsory education but left before the sixth form. When his family moved to Reykjavík he had been put in the lowest class at his new school. His ability was never even tested; it had simply been assumed that since he came from a poor background, was recalcitrant and uncooperative, he must belong with the slow kids. Unhappy about the move, unhappy with city life, all he had really learned was to hold his tongue. The upshot was that he lost interest in formal education, defied his teachers and any kind of authority, and quit at sixteen. He had already been working during the summers, and after that last winter at school he moved out of the home he shared with his mother and into a rented flat. His mother, Áslaug, earned a pittance, and he himself did little better when he took a job at the fishery.

Erlendur glanced up at the college building, tempted by the new opportunities for adult education. Twenty-eight was not too old to resume his studies, and anyway he would need to pass his final school exams if he wanted to go to university. He was interested in history, particularly the history of Iceland, and could envisage giving up police work at some point to dedicate himself to research.

He broke into a jog across busy Kringlumýrarbraut. Every now and then over the past year he had found himself drawn back to the diggings, though he hardly knew why. The water that had collected in the hollows was shallow, brown and devoid of life; ‘ponds’ was too good a name for them. Today there were a couple of rafts out and the place was alive with kids riding bikes up and down the hills. Two small motorcycles tore up the dirt track at the furthest point, the roaring and backfiring of their engines carrying to Erlendur through the quiet evening air.

The tramp had been found where the water was deepest. They calculated that his body must have been there for two days before it was noticed. Since the pathologist concluded that he had died on the spot, the police inquiry had focused on determining whether there could have been any foul play. The level of alcohol in his bloodstream indicated death by natural causes. There were no signs of a struggle, and no witnesses had come forward. Nor were there any traces of suspicious activity at the scene, such as tyre tracks or footprints, though there had been a delay between his drowning and the start of the investigation, and in the interim the ground had been trampled by children playing. In the absence of new evidence, the inquiry soon ran out of steam and the case was closed.

During his first months in Traffic, Erlendur had encountered the victim on several occasions. His name was Hannibal and he was a homeless man whom the police had picked up for a variety of reasons, though mainly for being drunk and disorderly. The first time he crossed Erlendur’s path was in the depths of winter. Hannibal had been sitting, hunched forward, on a bench in Austurvöllur Square, his numb fingers cramped around the neck of an empty brennivín bottle. It was bitterly cold. Convinced the man would die of exposure if they left him where he was, Erlendur had said he wasn’t having that on his conscience, and after a bit of dithering the officers had decided to take him back to the cells for the night. They helped him into the police van, where he came to his senses. It took him a while to work out what was going on, though the situation was familiar to both parties, but when he did he began to thank them profusely, the dear boys, for taking such good care of him. He asked for his bottle but was informed that he had emptied it. Could they spare him a drop of booze, then? The question was directed at the rookie, Erlendur, whom Hannibal had not seen before and guessed was more likely to be a soft touch. To begin with, Erlendur ignored him, but when Hannibal kept repeating his question, he told him to shut up. The tramp’s gratitude swiftly evaporated.

‘You bloody arseholes, you’re all the same.’

On the second occasion, Erlendur had come across him lying at the foot of ‘the Tin’, as they called the corrugated-iron fence around the Swedish fish factory on the northern side of Arnarhóll. Tramps used to seek refuge there from life’s hardships and from the bone-piercing frost that accompanied the northerly gales. Hannibal was blue with cold; he sat propped against the corrugated iron, legs outstretched, wearing the usual tattered green anorak, completely dead to the world. Erlendur was on his way home from the centre of town when he caught sight of him. He hadn’t intended to interfere at first, but on closer inspection he grew worried. The frost was tightening its grip and the north wind swept ribbons of snow along the ground to collect at the tramp’s feet. Although well kitted out in a down jacket, hat and scarf, Erlendur was finding it hard enough to keep out the bitter chill himself. He tried calling the man by name but there was no reaction. He called again, louder, but Hannibal might as well have been a statue. Erlendur went right up and poked him with his foot.

‘You all right, Hannibal?’

No response.

Erlendur knelt down and shook the man until his eyes opened a crack, but Hannibal did not recognise him or know where he was.

‘Leave me alone, you bastard,’ he mumbled, trying to beat him off.

‘Come on,’ said Erlendur. ‘You can’t lie here in this cold.’

He hauled the man to his feet, which was no easy task since he was quite a weight and far from cooperative. It took all Erlendur’s strength just to heave him upright before he could help him down the slope. But the movement cleared Hannibal’s head a little and he was able to direct Erlendur through the centre of town to a small building round the back of a house on Vesturgata. There he gestured to a narrow flight of steps leading to the cellar. He could hardly stand, so Erlendur gave him a hand down the stairs. The door was secured only by a simple wooden latch, like on a cowshed. Erlendur lifted this and Hannibal pushed the door open, reached in a hand and, finding the light switch, turned on a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.

‘This is my refuge from a cruel world,’ he said and tripped headlong over the threshold.

Erlendur restored him to his feet. The refuge was less a flat than a small storeroom for a variety of junk so unremarkable that no one was expected to steal it, judging by the ineffectual latch on the door. Lengths of piping and bald tyres mingled with rusty tubs, plastic containers and tangles of useless netting, while on the floor was the filthiest mattress Erlendur had ever seen. A threadbare blanket lay rumpled on top of it, and strewn all around was an assortment of empty bottles which had once contained alcohol, medicine or cardamom baking extract, along with the kind of small plastic methylated spirits containers you could buy from the chemist’s. There was a throat-catching stench of decaying rubber and urine.

Once Erlendur had helped the man to bed, he was eager to get out as quickly as possible, but Hannibal rose up on one elbow.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Take care now,’ Erlendur replied, backing out through the storeroom.

‘Who are you?’ Hannibal demanded again. ‘Do we know each other?’

Erlendur hesitated in the doorway. He had no desire to get involved in a conversation but neither did he wish to appear disrespectful.

‘The name’s Erlendur. We’ve met before. I’m a policeman.’

‘Erlendur,’ repeated Hannibal. ‘Mind’s a blank, mate. Got anything for me?’

‘Like what?’

‘Could you spare a bit of loose change? Doesn’t have to be much, you know. A few coins would do. I’m sure you could spare some, a flush bloke like you, who gives a helping hand to the likes of me.’

‘Won’t it just go on booze?’ Erlendur asked.

Hannibal twisted his mouth into a smile of sorts.

‘I won’t lie to you, Erlendur, my friend,’ he said, very humble now. ‘You may find it hard to believe but it’s not in my nature to lie to people. I just need a tot of gin. That’s all I ask for in this godforsaken world. I know it won’t sound like much to you, and I wouldn’t pester you, my friend, if it wasn’t such a little thing.’

‘I’m not giving you money for gin.’

‘How about a drop of meths, then?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, well then,’ said Hannibal, lying back on the mattress. ‘In that case you can bugger off.’

The roar of the motorbikes receded as they vanished in the direction of Hvassaleiti. The kids poled their rafts to shore and dragged them onto dry land. Erlendur looked south towards the pipeline. It had emerged during the inquiry that Hannibal’s presence in Kringlumýri was due to his having found a new home, if you could call it that. The summer he died, he had been evicted from his cellar after being accused of starting a fire, though he had stubbornly protested his innocence. Forced onto the streets, he had sought refuge in the casing around the heating pipeline. A slab of concrete had broken off in one place, leaving an opening large enough for him to crawl inside and warm himself against the hot-water pipes.

It was to be Hannibal’s last home before his body was discovered in the flooded pit. He had slept there in the company of a few feral cats that were drawn to him much as the birds had once flocked to St Francis of Assisi.