Voices

by Arnaldur Indridason

  'I've been dealing with two or three Icelandic collectors for some time now. That goes back long before I became interested in Gudlaugur. Unfortunately, virtually none of his records are around any more. The Icelandic collectors couldn't locate any. I might have a copy on the way through the Internet from Germany. I came here to meet those collectors, to meet Gudlaugur because I adore his singing, and to go to record shops here and look at the market.'

  'Do you make a living from this?'

  'Hardly,' Wapshott said, chugging on his Chesterfield, his fingers yellow after decades of smoking. 'I came into an inheritance. Properties in Liverpool. I manage them, but most of my time goes on collecting records. You could call it a passion.'

  'And you collect choirboys'

  'Yes.'

  'Have you found anything interesting on this trip?'

  'No. Nothing. There doesn't seem to be much interest in preserving anything here. It all has to be modern. Old stuff is rubbish. Nothing is worth keeping. People seem to treat records badly here. They're just thrown away. From dead people's estates, for example. No one is called in to examine them. They're just driven off to the dump. For a long time I used to think that a company in Reykjavik called Sorpa was a collectors' society. It was always being mentioned in correspondence. It turned out to be a recycling plant that runs a second-hand outlet on the side. Collectors here find all kinds of valuables among the rubbish and sell them over the Internet for good money.'

  'Is Iceland of special interest to collectors?' Erlendur asked. 'On its own.'

  'The big plus about Iceland for collectors is the small size of the market. Only a few copies of each record are released and it doesn't take long for them to disappear and become lost. Like Gudlaugur's records.'

  'It must be exciting to be a collector in a world where people hate everything old and useless. It must make you happy to think you're rescuing things of cultural value.'

  'We're a few nutters who resist destruction,' Wapshott said.

  'And you profit from it.'

  'You can.'

  'What happened to Gudlaugur Egilsson? What happened to the child star?'

  'What happens to all child stars,' Wapshott said. 'He grew up. I don't know exactly what became of him, but he never sang as a teenager or adult. His career was short but beautiful, then he vanished into the crowd and stopped being unique. Nobody championed him any more and he surely missed it. You need strong nerves to withstand admiration and fame at such a young age, and even stronger nerves when people turn their backs on you.'

  Wapshott looked at the clock that hung above the bar, then at his watch, and cleared his throat.

  'I'm taking the evening flight to London and need to run a few errands before I set off. Was there anything else you wanted to know?'

  Erlendur looked at him.

  'No, I think that's all. I thought you were going to leave tomorrow.'

  'If there's anything further I can help you with, here's my card,' Wapshott said as he took a card out of his breast pocket and handed it to Erlendur.

  'It's changed,' Erlendur said. "Your flight.'

  'Because I didn't meet Gudlaugur,' Wapshott said. 'I've finished most of what I planned to do on this trip and I'll save myself the price of a night at the hotel.'

  "There's just one thing,' Erlendur said.

  'OK.'

  'A biotechnician is coming here to take a saliva sample from you, if that's all right.'

  'A saliva sample?'

  'For the murder investigation.'

  'Why saliva?'

  'I can't tell you at the moment.'

  'Am I a suspect?'

  'We're taking samples from everyone who knew Gudlaugur. For the investigation. That says nothing about you.'

  'I understand,' Wapshott said. 'Saliva! How queer.'

  He smiled, and Erlendur stared at the teeth in his lower jaw, stained black from nicotine.

  11

  They entered the hotel through the revolving doors: he was old and frail and in a wheelchair; and she followed behind, short and slim, with a thin, hooked nose and tough, piercing eyes that scoured the lobby. The woman was in her fifties, dressed in a thick, brown winter coat and long leather boots, pushing him along in front of her. The man looked about eighty, white straggles of hair stood out from under the brim of his hat and his skinny face was deathly pale. He sat hunched up, white bony hands protruding from the sleeves of a black coat. He had a scarf around his neck and thick black horn-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes like a fish's.

  The woman pushed him to the check-in desk. The head of reception, who was leaving his office, watched them approach.

  'Can I help you?' he asked when they reached the desk.

  The man in the wheelchair ignored him, but the woman asked for a detective named Erlendur who she had been told was at work at the hotel. Leaving the bar with Wapshott, Erlendur had seen them enter. They caught his attention immediately. There was something reminiscent of death about them.

  He wondered whether to ground Wapshott and stop him from going back to the UK for the time being, but could not think of a good enough reason to detain him. He was pondering who those people could be, the man with haddock eyes and the woman with the eagle's beak, when the head of reception saw him and waved to him. Erlendur was about to say goodbye to Wapshott, but suddenly he was gone.

  'They're asking for you,' the head of reception said as Erlendur approached the check-in desk.

  Erlendur walked behind the desk. The haddock's eyes stared at him from beneath the hat.

  'Are you Erlendur?' the man in the wheelchair asked in an old and slurred voice.

  'Do you want to talk to me?' Erlendur asked. The eagle's beak pointed up in the air.

  'Are you in charge of the investigation into the death of Gudlaugur Egilsson at this hotel?' the woman asked.

  Erlendur said he was.

  'I'm his sister,' she said. 'And this is our father. Can we talk somewhere quiet?'

  'Do you want me to help you with him?' Erlendur offered. She looked insulted and pushed the wheelchair along. They followed Erlendur into the bar and over to the table where he had been sitting with Wapshott. They were the only people inside. Even the waiter had disappeared. Erlendur did not know whether the bar was open before noon as a rule. Since the door was unlocked he assumed that it must be, but few people seemed to know about it.

  The woman steered the wheelchair up to the table and locked the wheels. Then she sat down facing Erlendur.

  'I was just on my way to see you,' Erlendur lied; he had intended to let Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg talk to Gudlaugur's family. He could not remember whether he had actually asked them to do so.

  'We'd prefer not to have the police inside our house,' the woman said. "That has never happened. A lady phoned us, presumably your colleague, I think she said her name was Elínborg. I asked who was in charge of the investigation and she told me you were one of them. I was hoping we could get this over with and that you would then leave us in peace.'

  There was no hint of sorrow in their demeanour. No mourning for a loved one. Only cold nastiness. They felt they had certain duties to dispatch, felt obliged to give a report to the police, but clearly had a repulsion against doing so and did not mind showing it. It didn't seem as if the corpse found in the hotel basement was any concern of theirs in the slightest. As if they were above that.

  'You know the circumstances in which Gudlaugur was found,' Erlendur said.

  'We know he was killed,' the old man said. 'We know he was stabbed.'

  'Do you know who could have done it?'

  'We don't have the faintest idea,' the woman said. 'We had no contact with him. We don't know who he associated with. Don't know his friends, nor his enemies if he had any'

  'When was the last time you saw him?'

  Elínborg walked into the bar. She approached them and sat down beside Erlendur. He introduced her to them but they showed no reaction, both equally determined to allow none of this to ruffle t
hem.

  'I suppose he must have been about twenty then,' the woman said. 'The last time we saw him.'

  'Twenty?' Erlendur thought he must have misheard.

  'As I said, there was no contact.'

  'Why not?' Elínborg asked.

  The woman did not even look at her.

  'Isn't it enough for us to talk to you?' she asked Erlendur. 'Does this woman have to be here too?'

  Erlendur looked at Elínborg. He seemed to cheer up slightly.

  'You don't seem to be mourning his fate very much,' he said without answering her. 'Gudlaugur. Your brother' he said, and looked at the woman again. 'Your son,' he said, and looked at the old man. 'Why? Why haven't you seen him for thirty years? And as I told you, her name is Elínborg,' he added. 'If you have any more comments to make we'll take you down to the police station and continue there, and you can lodge a formal complaint. We've got a police car outside.'

  The eagle's beak rose, offended. The haddock's eyes narrowed.

  'He lived his own life,' she said. 'We lived ours. There's not much more to say about it. There was no contact. That's the way it was. We were happy with that. So was he.'

  'Are you telling me that you last saw him in the mid-seventies?' Erlendur said.

  'There was no contact,' she repeated.

  'Not once in all that time? Not one phone call? Nothing?'

  'No,' she said.

  'Why not?'

  'That's a family matter,' the old man said. 'Nothing to do with this. Not a bit. Over and done with. What more do you want to know?'

  'Did you know he was working at this hotel?'

  'We heard about him every so often,' the woman said. 'We knew he was a doorman here. Put on some stupid uniform and held the door open for the hotel guests. And I understand he used to play Santa Claus at Christmas parties.'

  Erlendur's eyes were riveted to her. She said this as if Gudlaugur could not have humiliated his family more, except by being found murdered, half naked, in a hotel basement

  'We don't know much about him,' Erlendur said. 'He doesn't seem to have had many friends. He lived in a little room at this hotel. He seems to have been liked. People thought he was good with children. As you say, he played Santa at the hotel's Christmas parties. However, we've just heard that he was a promising singer. A young boy who made gramophone recordings, two of them I think, but of course you know more about that. I saw on a record sleeve that he was going to tour Scandinavia, and it sounded as if he had the world at his feet. Then somehow that came to an end, apparently. No one knows that boy today apart from a few nutters who collect old records. What happened?'

  The eagle's beak had lowered and the haddock's eyes dimmed while Erlendur was talking. The old man looked away from him and down at the table, and the woman, who still tried to retain her air of authority and pride, no longer appeared quite so self-assured.

  "What happened?' Erlendur repeated, suddenly remembering that he had Gudlaugur's singles up in his room.

  'Nothing happened,' the old man said. 'He lost his voice. He matured early and lost his voice at the age of twelve and that was the end of that'

  'Couldn't he sing afterwards?' Elínborg asked.

  'His voice turned bad,' the old man said irritatedly. 'You couldn't teach him anything. And you couldn't do anything for him. He turned against singing. Rebellion and anger took hold of him and he opposed everything. Opposed me. Opposed his sister who tried to do her best for him. He attacked me and blamed me for it all.'

  'If there isn't anything else,' the woman said with a look at Erlendur. 'Haven't we said enough? Haven't you had enough?'

  'We didn't find much in Gudlaugur's room,' Erlendur said, pretending not to have heard her. 'We found some of his records and we found two keys.'

  He had asked forensics to return the keys when they had been examined. Taking them out of his pocket, he placed them on the table. They dangled from a key ring with a miniature penknife. It was set in pink plastic and on one side was a picture of a pirate with a wooden leg, cutlass and patch over one eye, with the word PIRATE written in English underneath it.

  After a quick glance at the keys the woman said she did not recognise them. The old man adjusted his glasses on his nose and looked at the keys, then shook his head.

  'One is probably a front door key,' Erlendur said. 'The other looks like the key to a cupboard or locker of some kind.' He watched them but received no response, so he put the keys back in his pocket.

  'Did you find his records?' the woman asked.

  'Two,' Erlendur said. 'Did he make any more?'

  'No, there weren't any more,' the old man said, glaring at Erlendur for an instant but quickly averting his gaze.

  'Could we have the records?' the woman asked.

  'I assume you'll inherit everything he left,' Erlendur replied. 'When we consider the investigation to be over you'll get everything he owned. He had no other family, did he? No children? We haven't been able to locate anything of that kind.'

  'The last time I knew he was single,' the woman said. 'Can we help you any further?' she then asked, as if they had made a major contribution to the investigation by taking the trouble to call at the hotel.

  'It wasn't his fault that he matured and lost his voice,' Erlendur said. He could stand their indifference and haughtiness no longer. A son had lost his life. A brother had been murdered. Yet it was as if nothing had happened. As if it was nothing to do with them. As if his life had long ago ceased to be part of their lives, because of something that was being kept from Erlendur.

  The woman looked at Erlendur.

  'If there wasn't anything else,' she said again, and released the brake on the wheelchair.

  'We'll see,' Erlendur said.

  'You don't think we show enough sympathy, do you?' she suddenly said.

  'I don't think you show any sympathy,' Erlendur said. 'But that's no business of mine.'

  'No,' the woman said. 'It's no business of yours.'

  'But all the same, what I want to know is whether you had any feelings towards the man. He was your brother.' Erlendur turned to the old man in the wheelchair. 'Your son.'

  'He was a stranger to us,' the woman said, and stood up. The old man grimaced.

  'Because he didn't live up to your expectations?' Erlendur rose to his feet as well. 'Because he failed you at the age of twelve. When he was a child. What did you do? Did you throw him out? Did you throw him out on the street?'

  'How dare you talk to my father and me in that tone?' the woman said through clenched teeth. 'How dare you? Who appointed you the conscience of the world?'

  'Who took your conscience away?' Erlendur snarled back.

  She looked daggers at him. Then she seemed to give up. She jerked the wheelchair towards her, swung it away from the table and pushed it in front of her out of the bar. She strode across the lobby towards the revolving door. Over the sound system an Icelandic soprano was singing melancholically... O touch my harp, you heaven-born goddess ... Erlendur and Elínborg set off after them and watched them leave the hotel, the woman holding her head high but the old man sunk even deeper into his wheelchair, nothing of him visible apart from his head nodding above the back.