Reykjavik Nights

37

Erlendur was not personally acquainted with any of the detectives at CID, though he had visited their offices on Borgartún now and then on various errands, as well as encountering them at the scene of burglaries or cases of serious assault. Uniformed officers were sometimes called as witnesses in investigations but, as a junior officer on the beat, Erlendur had not yet been in that position.

The detective in charge of the inquiry was called Hrólfur; he was around thirty, easygoing, and with little apparent interest in his job. He was busy — Erlendur didn’t know with what exactly — and hardly had a minute to spare, though Erlendur had dressed up in his full uniform in the hope of making an impression. Eventually he managed to corner Hrólfur by the department’s new Xerox machine, which was as noisy as a tractor and shot out brilliant flashes of light in the dark copying room. He enquired if there had been any progress in the case of Oddný’s disappearance.

‘No, nothing new,’ said Hrólfur, as he frantically copied a file. ‘Why do you ask?’

The file seemed to relate to real estate: either Hrólfur was buying or selling a property himself or investigating a scam; Erlendur was unsure which. He had gone to CID with half a mind to report his discovery, since in spite of Rebekka’s plea that he should keep it quiet a little longer, he was feeling guilty about failing to disclose what he knew. It was an awkward predicament, and he was keen to resolve it.

‘Just curious,’ he said. ‘Do you still get tip-offs from the public?’

‘Not many. What happened seems fairly clear.’

‘Which was what?’

‘Well, obviously the poor woman took her own life. Threw herself in the sea or something. It’s the only explanation we can come up with.’

‘Hadn’t she been cheating on her husband?’

‘Well, she’d had a brief fling several years ago.’

‘And you’ve checked out the man in question?’

‘Yes. He was at home with his girlfriend at the time.’

‘So they weren’t lying?’

‘Lying? No, why would you think that?’

‘What about the man she’s supposed to have met at the nightclub?’

‘Never traced him,’ said Hrólfur, the flashes from the copier playing over his face. ‘What did you say your interest in this case was?’

‘So presumably you focused on the husband?’

‘We don’t have a shred of evidence against him.’ Hrólfur lifted the lid of the copier. ‘He may have knocked her about a bit but that doesn’t prove anything.’

‘Knocked her about?’

‘There was a domestic issue. He used to give her the odd slap, nothing major, but enough to ensure that we grilled him about it. Interviewed the couple’s closest friends too. But we never really got anywhere.’

‘Were you tipped off?’

‘Yes.’

‘And her husband confessed?’

‘He admitted it, yes. Who did you say you were?’

‘I’m just interested in this case,’ said Erlendur.

‘Been in the police long?’

‘No.’

‘Acquainted with the people involved, then?’

‘No, not at all. So, what now? Impasse?’

‘We don’t have a body,’ said Hrólfur. ‘Or a murder weapon. Or any real motive. Which makes suicide the most plausible explanation. Their marriage was on the rocks. She probably wanted to leave him. Maybe she found her own way of doing so.’

‘Her husband was alone at home when she vanished?’

‘It’s not a crime, you know,’ said Hrólfur. ‘He’d been to a Lions Club meeting that evening. Look, I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t concern you. What did you say your name was?’

‘Erlendur.’

‘Well, Erlendur, why the curiosity? Seems like you know quite a bit about this case.’

‘Only what I’ve read in the papers and heard the boys discussing down at the station.’

‘We searched the husband’s house,’ Hrólfur said. ‘And put him through a long, rigorous interrogation. Really got under his skin. Talked to the neighbours too. No one saw him coming or going that night. In the end we had nothing the prosecution could work with. He didn’t even hire a solicitor. The inquiry never got that far.’

‘But he was a suspect?’

‘Was. Still is, in fact. The ex-lover too. The case is unsolved, still open. We go over the file at regular intervals, make phone calls and try to come up with new angles. Follow up any new leads. But the fact remains... Her husband’s sticking to his statement that she never came home from Thórskaffi; he never saw her the night she went missing. And that’s how the matter stands.’

‘So no new evidence has emerged?’

‘No.’

‘A man drowned in Kringlumýri the same weekend she vanished,’ said Erlendur.

‘So?’

‘Are you familiar with the incident?’

‘Yes, what was his name... oh, what was it again?’

‘Hannibal.’

‘Yes, that’s it. A tramp.’

‘You saw no reason to look into his death?’

‘He drowned,’ said Hrólfur. ‘What were we supposed to look into? They did a post-mortem. There were no unexplained injuries, at least nothing related to his death. Does that sort of case interest you?’

‘No, not particularly.’

‘We concentrated all our resources on the woman.’ Hrólfur gathered the copies together and switched off the Xerox machine. ‘The tramp’s death got sidelined. You know how it is.’

‘What?’

‘The first forty-eight hours are crucial in missing-persons cases,’ said Hrólfur in an official tone.

‘What about the fire in Hannibal’s cellar? Were you aware of that?’

‘Certainly. Our understanding was that he’d started it himself.’

‘Or was it just that a bum like him didn’t matter as much as a woman like Oddný?’

‘What are you insinuating?’ Hrólfur was angry now. ‘We don’t make that kind of distinction. The point is that Oddný could have been alive. We didn’t know what had happened to her. There was a possibility we could still save her, so of course that took priority. The tramp fell in a pond and drowned. It was too late to help him. He was drunk. They found alcohol in his bloodstream. Why... what are you...? Did you by any chance know him?’

‘Sort of,’ said Erlendur. ‘I used to run into him on night duty. He was a good bloke. Had a miserable life.’

‘Yes, sleeping rough up at the pipeline, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Anyway, was that all?’ Hrólfur tucked the papers under his arm. ‘I’m going to be late for a meeting.’

‘Yes. Thanks for your help.’

Erlendur watched the detective hurry out of the room. He decided there was no particular urgency in reporting the discovery of the earring.