Tainted Blood

23

Elinborg located Klara, Gretar's sister. Her search for Holberg's other victim, the Husavik woman as Erlendur called her, had produced no results. All the women she had approached showed the same reaction: enormous and genuine surprise followed by such a zealous interest that Elinborg had to use every trick in the book to avoid giving away any details of the case. She knew that no matter how much she and the other policemen who were looking for the woman emphasised that it was a sensitive case and not to be discussed with anyone, that wouldn't prevent the gossip lines from glowing red hot when evening came around.

Klara greeted Elinborg at the door of her neat flat in the Seljahverfi district of Breidholt suburb. She was a slender woman in her fifties, dark-haired, wearing jeans and a blue sweater. She was smoking a cigarette.

"Did you talk to Mum?" she said when Elinborg had introduced herself and Klara had invited her inside, friendly and interested.

"That was Erlendur," Elinborg said, "who works with me."

"She said he wasn't feeling very well," Klara said, walking in front of Elinborg into the sitting room and offering her a seat. "She's always making remarks you can't figure out."

Elinborg didn't answer her.

"I'm off work today," she said as if to explain why she was hanging around at home in the middle of the day, smoking cigarettes. She said she worked at a travel agency. Her husband was at work, the two children had flown the nest; the daughter studying medicine, she said, proudly. She'd hardly put out one cigarette before she took out another and lit it. Elinborg gave a polite cough, but Klara didn't take the hint.

"I read about Holberg in the papers," Klara said as if she wanted to stop herself rambling on. "Mum said the man asked about Gretar. We were half-brother and — sister. Mum forgot to tell him that. We had the same mother. Our fathers are both long since dead."

"We didn't know that," Elinborg said.

"Do you want to see the stuff I cleared out of Gretar's flat?"

"If you don't mind," Elinborg said.

"A filthy hole he lived in. Have you found him?"

Klara looked at Elinborg and hungrily sucked the smoke down into her lungs.

"We haven't found him," Elinborg said, "and I don't think we're looking for him especially." She gave another polite cough. "It's more than a quarter of a century since he disappeared, so. ."

"I have no idea what happened," Klara interrupted, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. "We weren't often in touch. He was quite a bit older than me, selfish, a real pain actually. You could never get a word out of him, he swore at Mum and stole from both of us if he got the chance. Then he left home."

"So you didn't know Holberg?" Elinborg asked.

"No."

"Or Ellidi?" she added.

"Who's Ellidi?"

"Never mind."

"I didn't know who Gretar went around with. When he went missing someone called Marion contacted me and took me to where he'd been living. It was a filthy hole. A disgusting smell in the room and the floor covered with rubbish, and the half-eaten sheep heads and mouldy mashed turnips that he used to live on."

"Marion?" Elinborg asked. She hadn't been working for the CID long enough to recognise the name.

"Yes, that was the name."

"Do you remember a camera among your brother's belongings?"

"That was the only thing in the room in one piece. I took it but I've never used it. The police thought it was stolen and I don't approve of that sort of thing. I keep it down in the storeroom in the basement. Do you want to see it? Did you come about the camera?"

"Could I have a look at it?" Elinborg asked.

Klara stood up. She asked Elinborg to wait a moment and went into the kitchen to fetch a key ring. They walked out into the corridor and down to the basement. Klara opened the door that led to the storerooms, switched on the light, went up to one of the doors and opened it. Inside, old rubbish was piled everywhere, deckchairs and sleeping bags, skiing equipment and camping gear. Elinborg noticed a blue foot-massage device and a Soda-stream drinks maker.

"I had it in a box here," Klara said after squeezing her way, past the rubbish, halfway into the storeroom. She bent down and picked up a little brown cardboard box. "I put all Gretar's stuff in this. He didn't own anything except that camera." She opened the box and was about to empty it when Elinborg stopped her.

"Don't take anything out of the box," she said and put out her hands to take it. "You never know what significance the contents might have for us," she added by way of explanation.

Klara handed her the box with a half-insulted expression and Elinborg opened it. It contained three tattered paperback thrillers, a penknife, a few coins and a camera — a pocket-size Kodak Instamatic that Elinborg recalled had been a popular Christmas and confirmation present years before. Not a remarkable possession for someone with a burning interest in photography, but it undoubtedly served its purpose. She couldn't see any films in the box. Erlendur had asked her to check specifically whether Gretar had left behind any films. She took out a handkerchief and turned the camera round and saw there was no film in it. There were no photos in the box either.

"Then there are all kinds of trays and liquids here," Klara said and pointed inside the storeroom. "I think he developed the photos himself. There's some photographic paper too. It must be useless by now, mustn't it?"

"I should take that too," Elinborg said and Klara dived back into the rubbish.

"Do you know if he kept his rolls of film, or did you see any at his place?" Elinborg asked.

"No, none," Klara said as she bent over for the trays.

"Do you know where he might have kept them?"

"No."

"So do you know what this photography was all about?"

"Well, he enjoyed it, I expect," Klara said.

"I mean the subjects: did you see any of his photos?"

"No, he never showed me anything. As I said, we didn't have much contact. I don't know where his photos are. Gretar was a damn layabout," she said, uncertain whether she was repeating herself, then shrugged as if deciding you can't say a good thing too often.

"I'd like to take this box away with me," Elinborg said. "I hope that's okay. It'll be returned shortly."

"What's going on?" Klara asked, for the first time showing an interest in the police inquiry and the questions about her brother. "Do you know where Gretar is?"

"No," Elinborg stressed, trying to dispel all doubt. "Nothing new has emerged. Nothing."

The two women who were with Kolbrun the night Holberg attacked her were named in the police investigation documents. Erlendur had launched a search for them and it turned out that both were from Keflavik, but neither lived there any more.

One of them had married an American from the NATO base shortly after the incident and now lived in the USA, while the other had moved from Keflavik to Stykkisholmur five years later. She was still registered as living there. Erlendur wondered whether he should spend the whole day on a trip out west to Stykkisholmur or phone her and hope that would be enough.

Erlendur's English was poor so he asked Sigurdur Oli to locate the woman in America. He spoke to her husband. She had died 15 years earlier. From cancer. The woman was buried in America.

Erlendur phoned Stykkisholmur and had no difficulty making contact with the second woman. First he phoned her home and was told that she was at work. She was a nurse at the hospital there.

The woman listened to Erlendur's questions but said unfortunately she couldn't help him. She hadn't been able to help the police at the time and nothing had changed.

"Holberg has been murdered", Erlendur said, "and we think it might even be connected with this incident."

"I saw that on the news," the voice on the phone said. The woman's name was Agnes and Erlendur tried to visualise her from the sound of her voice. At first he imagined an efficient, firm woman in her sixties, overweight because she was short of breath. Then he noticed her smoker's cough and Agnes assumed a different image in his mind, turned thin as a rake, her skin yellow and wrinkled. She coughed with a nasty, gravelly sound at regular intervals.

"Do you remember that night in Keflavik?" Erlendur asked.

"I went home before them," Agnes said.

"There were three men with you."

"I went home with a man called Gretar. I told the police at the time. I find it rather uncomfortable to talk about."

"It's news to me that you went home with Gretar," Erlendur said, riffling through the reports in front of him.

"I told them when they asked me the same question all those years ago." She coughed again but tried to spare Erlendur the throaty noises. "Sorry. I've never been able to give up those damn cigarettes. He was a bit of a loser. That Gretar. I never saw him after that."

"How did you and Kolbrun know each other?"

"We used to work together. That was before I studied nursing. We were working in a shop in Keflavik which closed down long ago. That was the first and only time we went out anywhere together. Understandably."

"Did you believe Kolbrun when she talked about a rape?"

"I didn't hear about it until the police suddenly turned up at my house and started asking me about that night. I can't imagine she'd have lied about something like that. Kolbrun was very respectable. Thoroughly honest about everything she did, although a bit feeble perhaps. Delicate and sickly. Not a strong character. Maybe it's an awful thing to say, but she wasn't the fun type, if you know what I mean. Not a lot of action going on around her."

Agnes stopped talking and Erlendur waited for her to start again.

"She wasn't fond of going out and I really had to cajole her to come out with me and my friend Helga that evening. She moved to America but passed away many years ago, maybe you know that. Kolbrun was so reserved and sort of lonely and I wanted to do something for her. She agreed to go to the dance, then came back with us to Helga's afterwards, but she wanted to go home soon after that. I left before her so I don't really know what happened there. She didn't turn up for work on the Monday and I remember phoning her, but she didn't answer. A few days later the police came to ask about Kolbrun. I didn't know what to think. I didn't notice anything about Holberg that was abnormal in any way. He was quite a charmer if I remember right. I was very surprised when the police started talking about rape."

"He apparently made a good impression," Erlendur said. "A ladies' man, I think he was described as."

"I remember him coming into the shop."

"Him? Holberg?"

"Yes, Holberg. I think that was why they sat down with us that night. He said he was an accountant from Reykjavik, but that was just a lie, wasn't it?"

"They all worked at the Harbour and Lighthouse Authority. What kind of a shop was it?"

"A boutique. We sold ladieswear. Lingerie too."

"And he came to the shop?"

"Yes. The day before. On the Friday. I had to go back through all this at the time and I still remember it well. He said he was looking for something for his wife. I served him and when we met at the dance he behaved as though we knew each other."

"Did you have any contact with Kolbrun after the incident? Did you talk to her about what happened?"

"She never came back to the shop and, as I say, I didn't know what happened until the police started questioning me. I didn't know her that well. I tried to phone her a few times when she didn't turn up for work and I went to where she lived once, but didn't catch her in. I didn't want to interfere too much. She was like that. Mysterious. Then her sister came in and said Kolbrun had quit her job. I heard she died a few years afterwards. By then I'd moved up here to Stykkisholmur. Was it suicide? That's what I heard."

"She died," Erlendur said, and thanked Agnes politely for talking to him.

His thoughts turned to a man called Sveinn he'd been reading about. He survived a storm on Mos-fellsheidi. His companions' suffering and deaths seemed to have little effect on Sveinn. He was the best equipped of the travellers and the only one who reached civilisation safe and sound, and the first thing he did after they'd tended to him on the closest farm to the heath was to put on ice skates and amuse himself by skating on a nearby lake.

At the same time his companions were still freezing to death on the heath.

After that he was never called anything but Sveinn the Soulless.