Reykjavik Nights

5

Erlendur nearly jumped out of his skin. Panicking for an instant, he backed out of the opening and stumbled away. A moment later a head popped up, followed by the rest of a man who crawled out of the hole and hunkered down on the grass in front of him. He wore a ragged, dark coat, fingerless gloves, a woolly hat and large rubber galoshes. Erlendur had seen him before in the company of other Reykjavík drinkers, but didn’t know his name.

The man said good evening as if he were accustomed to receiving visitors there. From his manner, you would think they had met in the street rather than crawling around in a concrete pipeline. Erlendur introduced himself and the man replied that his name was Vilhelm. His age was hard to guess. Possibly not much over forty, though given the missing front teeth and the thick beard that covered his face, he might have been ten years older.

‘Do I know you?’ asked the tramp, regarding Erlendur through horn-rimmed glasses. The thick lenses rendered his eyes unnaturally large, giving him a slightly comical look. He had an ugly, hacking cough.

‘No,’ said Erlendur, his attention drawn to the glasses. ‘I don’t believe so.’

‘Were you looking for me?’ asked Vilhelm, coughing again. ‘Did you want to talk to me?’

‘No,’ said Erlendur, ‘I just happened to be passing. To tell the truth, I didn’t expect to find anyone here.’

‘Don’t get many passers-by,’ said Vilhelm. ‘It’s nice and quiet. You don’t have a smoke, do you?’

‘Sorry, no. Have you... May I ask how long you’ve been living here?’

‘Two or three days,’ said Vilhelm, without explaining his choice of camp. ‘Or... What is it today?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Oh.’ Vilhelm’s cough rattled out again. ‘Tuesday. Then maybe I’ve been here a bit longer. It’s not bad for the odd night, though it can get a bit nippy. Still, I’ve known worse.’

‘Do you think your health can cope with it?’

‘What the hell’s that got to do with you?’ asked Vilhelm, his body racked by another spasm.

‘Actually, I’m not here completely by chance,’ Erlendur continued, once the man had recovered. ‘I used to know a bloke who dossed down here like you. His name was Hannibal.’

‘Hannibal? Oh, yes, I knew him.’

‘He drowned down there in one of the ponds.’ Erlendur waved towards Kringlumýri. ‘Ring any bells?’

‘I remember hearing about it. Why?’

‘No reason,’ said Erlendur. ‘I suppose it was just an unlucky accident.’

‘Yes, unlucky all right.’

‘Where did you know him from?’ Erlendur took a seat on the concrete casing.

‘Oh, just around and about, you know. Used to bump into him on my travels. A really good bloke.’

‘You weren’t enemies, then?’

‘Enemies? No. I haven’t got any enemies.’

‘Do you know if he had, or if there was anyone who might have wanted to harm him?’

Vilhelm stared at Erlendur through the thick lenses.

‘What do you want to know for?’ His shoulders shook with another coughing fit.

‘No particular reason.’

‘Come on.’

‘No, honest.’

‘You reckon maybe he didn’t drown all on his own?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest.’ Vilhelm rose to his feet and flexed his back, then came and sat down next to Erlendur on the casing. ‘You couldn’t spare a little change?’

‘What do you want it for?’

‘Tobacco. That’s all.’

Erlendur took out two fifty-króna pieces. ‘That’s all I have on me.’

‘Thanks.’ Vilhelm was quick to palm them. ‘That’ll do for one packet. Did you know a bottle of vodka’s getting on for two thousand krónur these days? I reckon the lot who run this country have lost the plot. Totally lost the plot.’

‘The pools down there aren’t very deep,’ Erlendur remarked, returning to his theme.

Vilhelm coughed into his gloves. ‘Deep enough.’

‘You’d have to be pretty determined to drown in one, though.’

‘I couldn’t say.’

‘Or drunk,’ Erlendur persisted. ‘They found a fair amount of alcohol in his blood.’

‘Oh, Hannibal could drink all right. Christ!’

‘Do you remember who he was hanging around with most before he died?’

‘Not with me, at any rate,’ Vilhelm replied. ‘Hardly knew him. But I spotted him a couple of times at the Fever Hospital. In fact, that’s the last place I saw him; he was trying to get a bed but they said he was drunk.’

No more information was forthcoming. He said he was planning to spend at least one more night by the pipes, then he would see. Erlendur tried to dissuade him, asking if it was really his only option. At this hint of interference, Vilhelm told him to bloody well leave him alone. Erlendur left after that. He was pursued by the sound of coughing as he stepped up onto the conduit and followed it west through the light arctic night as far as Öskjuhlíd, before jumping down and heading home to Hlídar.

Hannibal had no doubt tested the limits of the shelter’s ban on alcohol more than once. Perhaps that was why he had taken refuge in the pipeline at last, an outcast, free from all interference, removed from human society.