Voices

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Gabriel stood up, put on his cap, buttoned his coat and wrapped his scarf around his neck. Neither of them said anything. Erlendur opened the door and walked out into the corridor with him.

  'Thank you for coming to see me,' he said, offering his hand to shake.

  'It was nothing,' Gabriel said. 'It was the least I could do for you. And for the dear boy.'

  He dithered as if about to add something else, unsure exactly how to phrase it.

  'He was terribly innocent,' he said eventually. 'A totally harmless boy. He'd been convinced that he was unique and he'd become famous, he could have had the world at his feet. The Vienna Boys' Choir. They make such an awful fuss about small things here in Iceland, even more now than they used to; it's a national trait in a country of under-achievers. He was bullied at school for being different; he suffered because of it. Then it turned out he was just an ordinary boy and his world fell apart in a single evening. He needed to be strong to put up with that.'

  They exchanged farewells and Gabriel turned round and walked down the corridor. Erlendur watched him leaving with the feeling that telling the tale of Gudlaugur Egilsson had drained the old choirmasters strength completely.

  Erlendur shut the door. He sat down on the bed and thought about the choirboy and how he found him in a Santa suit with his trousers round his ankles. He wondered how his path had led to that little room and to death, at the end of a life paved with disappointment. He thought about Gudlaugur's father, paralysed in a wheelchair, with his thick horn-rimmed glasses, and about his sister with her hooked eagle's nose and her antipathy towards her brother. He thought about the fat hotel manager who had sacked him, and the man from reception who pretended not to know him. He thought about the hotel staff, who did not know who Gudlaugur was. He thought about Henry Wapshott who had travelled all that way to seek out the choirboy because the child Gudlaugur with his lovely voice still existed and always would.

  Before he knew it he had started thinking about his brother.

  Erlendur put the same record back on the turntable, stretched out, closed his eyes and let the song take him back home.

  Maybe it was his song as well.

  15

  When Elínborg came back from Hafnarfjördur towards evening she went straight to the hotel to meet Erlendur.

  She went up to his floor and knocked on the door, and again when she got no response, then a third time. She was turning away when the door opened at last and Erlendur let her in. He had been lying down thinking and had dozed off, and was rather vague when Elínborg began telling him what she had unearthed in Hafnarfjördur. She had spoken to the ex-headmaster of the primary school, an ancient man who remembered Gudlaugur well; his wife, who had died ten years before, had also been close to the boy. With the headmaster's help Elínborg tracked down three of Gudlaugur's classmates who were still living in Hafnarfjördur. One had been at the fateful concert. She talked to the family's old neighbours and people who were in touch with them in those days.

  'No one is ever allowed to excel in this dwarf state,' Elínborg said, sitting down on the bed. 'No one's allowed to be different.'

  Everyone knew that Gudlaugur's life was supposed to be something special. He never talked about it himself, never talked about himself at all really, but everyone knew. He was sent for piano lessons and learned to sing, first from his father and then with the choirmaster who was appointed to conduct the children's choir, and finally with a well-known singer who once lived in Germany but had come back to Iceland. People praised him to the skies, applauded him, and he would take a bow in his white shirt and black trousers, gentlemanly and sophisticated. Such a beautiful child, Gudlaugur, people said. And he made recordings of his singing. Soon he would be famous in other countries.

  He was not from Hafnarfjördur. The family was from the north and had lived in Reykjavik for a while. His father was said to be the son of an organist who had studied singing abroad when he was younger. Rumour had it that he bought the house in Hafnarfjördur with what he inherited from his father, who had made money by trading with the American military after the war. It was said that he inherited enough to live comfortably afterwards. But he was never showy about his wealth. He kept a low profile in the community. Doffed his hat when he went out for walks with his wife and greeted people politely. She was said to be the daughter of a trawler owner. No one knew where. They made few friends in the town. Most of their friends were in Reykjavik, if they had any at all. They did not seem to have many visitors.

  When the local boys and Gudlaugur's classmates called round for him the usual answer was that he had to stay in and do his homework, either for school or for singing and piano practice. Sometimes he was allowed to go out with them and they noticed that he was not as coarse as they were, and strangely sensitive. His clothes never got dirty, he never jumped in puddles, he was rather a wimp at football and spoke very properly. Sometimes he talked about people with foreign names. Some Schubert bloke. And when they told him about the latest action comics they were reading or what they had seen at the cinema, he told them he read poetry. Maybe not necessarily because he really wanted to, but because his father said it was good for him to read poetry. They had a hunch that his father set him lessons to learn and was very strict about it. One poem every evening.

  His sister was different. Tougher. More like her father. The father did not seem to make such great demands on her as on the boy. She was learning the piano and like her brother, had joined the children's choir when it was set up. Her friends described how she was sometimes jealous of her brother when their father praised him; their mother appeared to favour the son as well. People thought Gudlaugur and his mother were close. She was like his guardian angel.

  One of Gudlaugur's classmates was shown into the drawing room once while the family debated whether he could go out to play. The father stood on the stairs wearing his thick glasses, Gudlaugur on the landing and his mother by the door to the drawing room, and she said it did not matter if the boy went out to play. He did not have so many friends and they did not call for him very often. He could go on practising later.

  'Get on with your exercises!' the father shouted. 'Do you think it's something you can pick up and put down as you please? You don't understand the dedication it involves, do you? You'll never understand that!'

  'He's just a child,' his mother said. 'And he doesn't have many friends. You can't keep him shut up indoors all day. He must be allowed to be a child too.'

  'It's all right,' Gudlaugur said, and walked over to the boy visiting him. 'I might come out later. Go home and I'll come afterwards.'

  As the boy left, before the door closed behind him, he heard Gudlaugur's father shout down the stairs: 'You shall never do that again, argue with me in front of strangers.'

  Over time Gudlaugur became isolated at school and the boys in the top form started to tease him. It was very innocent at first. They all teased each other and there were fights in the playground and pranks just as in all schools, but by the age of eleven Gudlaugur had clearly become the butt of the bullying and practical jokes. It was not a large school by modern standards and everyone knew that Gudlaugur was different. He was wan and sickly. A stay-at-home. The boys where he lived stopped calling for him and started teasing him at school. His satchel would go missing or be empty when he picked it up. Boys pushed him over. They ripped his clothes. He was beaten up. He was called names. No one invited him to birthday parties.

  Gudlaugur did not know how to fight back. He did not understand what was going on. His father complained to the headmaster, who promised to put an end to it, but it proved to be beyond his control and Gudlaugur would go home from school as before covered in bruises and clutching his empty satchel. His father contemplated removing him from the school, even moving out of the town, but he was obstinate and refused to give in, having taken part in founding the children's choir. He was pleased with the young conductor, and, knowing that choir was a place for Gudlaugur to practise and draw attention
to himself eventually, felt that the bullying – for which there was no word in the Icelandic language in those days, Elínborg interjected – was something Gudlaugur simply had to put up with.

  The boy responded with total surrender and became a dreamy loner. He concentrated on singing and the piano and appeared to derive some peace of mind from them. In that field everything went in his favour. He could see what he was capable of. But most of the time he felt bad and when his mother died it was as if he turned to nothing.

  He was always seen alone and tried to smile if he met children from the school. He made a record that was reported in the newspapers. It was as if his father had been right all the time. Gudlaugur would be something special in life.

  And soon, because of a closely guarded secret, he earned a new name in the neighbourhood.

  'What was he called?' Erlendur asked.

  'The headmaster didn't know,' Elínborg said, 'and his classmates either pretended not to remember or refused to tell. But it had a profound effect on the boy. They all agreed on that.'

  'What time is it anyway?' Erlendur suddenly asked, as if in panic.

  'I suppose it must be past seven,' Elínborg said. 'Is something wrong?'

  'Bugger it, I've slept all day,' Erlendur said, leaping to his feet. 'I have to find Henry Wapshott. They were supposed to take a sample from him at lunchtime and he wasn't here.'

  Elínborg looked at the record player, loudspeakers and records.

  'Is he any good?' she asked.

  'He's brilliant,' Erlendur said. 'You ought to listen to him.'

  'I'm going home,' Elínborg said, standing up now too.

  'Are you going to stay at the hotel over Christmas? Aren't you going to get yourself home?'

  'I don't know,' Erlendur said. 'I'll see.'

  'You're welcome to join us. You know that. I'll be having cold leg of pork. And ox tongue.'

  'Don't worry so much,' Erlendur said as he opened the door. 'You get off home, I'm going to check on Wapshott.'

  'Where's Sigurdur Óli been all day?' Elínborg asked.

  'He was going to see if he could find out anything about Wapshott from Scotland Yard. He's probably home by now.'

  'Why's it so cold in your room?'

  'The radiator's broken,' Erlendur said, closing the door behind them.

  When they went down to the lobby he said goodbye to Elínborg and found the head of reception in his office. Henry Wapshott had not been seen at the hotel all day. His key card was not in the pigeon hole and he had not checked out. He still had to pay the bill. Erlendur knew that he was catching the evening flight to London and he had nothing concrete to prevent him from leaving the country. He had not heard from Sigurdur Óli. He dithered in the lobby.

  'Could you let me into his room?' he asked the reception manager.

  The manager shook his head.

  'He could have fled,' Erlendur said. 'Do you know when the plane for London leaves tonight? What time?'

  'The afternoon flight was badly delayed,' the man said. Knowing all about the flights was part of his job. 'It will take off around nine, they think.'

  Erlendur made a couple of telephone calls. He found out that Henry Wapshott had a flight booked to London. He had not checked in yet. Erlendur took measures for passport control to apprehend him at the airport and have him sent back to Reykjavík. Needing to find a reason for the Keflavík police to detain him, he hesitated for a moment and wondered whether to invent something. He knew that the press would have a field day if he told the truth, but he couldn't think of a plausible lie on the spot, and in the end he said, which was true, that Wapshott was under suspicion in a murder inquiry.

  'Can't you let me into his room?' Erlendur asked the manager again. 'I won't touch anything. I just need to know if he's done a runner. It would take me ages to get a warrant. I just need to put my head round the door.'

  'He may yet check out,' the manager said stiffly. "There's a good while before the flight yet and he has plenty of time to come back here, pack, pay his bill, check out and take the shuttle to Keflavík airport. Won't you hang on a while?'

  Erlendur pondered.

  'Can't you send someone up to tidy his room and I can walk past the door when it's open? Is that any problem?'

  'You must understand the position I'm in,' the manager said. 'Above all we safeguard the interests of our guests. They're entitled to privacy, just like being at home. If I break that rule and word gets out or it's reported in the trial documents, our guests won't be able to trust us any longer. It couldn't be simpler. You must understand.'

  'We're investigating a murder that was committed at this hotel,' Erlendur said. 'Isn't your reputation gone to buggery anyway?'

  'Bring a warrant and there won't be any problem.'

  Erlendur walked away from reception with a sigh. He took out his mobile and called Sigurdur Óli. The phone rang for a long while before he answered. Erlendur could hear voices in the background.

  'Where on earth are you?' Erlendur asked.

  'I'm doing the bread,' Sigurdur Óli said.

  'Doing the bread?'

  'Carving patterns in the wafer bread. For Christmas. With Bergthóra's family. It's a regular feature on our Christmas agenda. Have you gone home?'

  'What did you find out from Scotland Yard about Henry Wapshott?'

  'I'm waiting to hear. I'll find out tomorrow morning. Is anything happening with him?'

  'I think he's trying to dodge the saliva sample,' Erlendur said, noticing the head of reception walking up with a sheet of paper in his hand. 'I think he's trying to leave the country without saying goodbye to us. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Don't cut your fingers'

  Erlendur put his mobile in his pocket. The manager was standing in front of him.

  'I decided to check out about Henry Wapshott,' he said, handing Erlendur the piece of paper. 'To help you a bit. I shouldn't be doing this but...'

  'What is it?' Erlendur said as he looked at the paper. He saw Henry Wapshott's name and some dates.

  'He's spent Christmas at this hotel for the past three years,' the manager said. 'If that helps at all.'

  Erlendur stared at the dates.

  'He said he's never been to Iceland before.'

  'I don't know anything about that,' the man said. 'But he's been at this hotel before.'

  'Do you remember him? Is he a regular?'

  'I don't remember ever checking him in. There are more than two hundred rooms at this hotel and Christmas is always busy, so he can easily disappear into the crowd, besides which, he only makes short stops. Just a couple of days. I haven't noticed him this time around but the penny dropped when I looked at the printout. He's just like you in one respect. He has the same special needs.'

  'What do you mean, like me? Special needs?' Erlendur could not imagine what he had in common with Henry Wapshott.

  'He appears to be interested in music'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'You can see here,' the manager said, pointing at the sheet of paper. 'We make a note of our guests' special requirements. In most cases.'

  Erlendur read down the list.

  'He wanted a player in his room,' the manager said. 'Not a smart CD player, but some old heap. Just like you.'

  'Bloody liar,' Erlendur hissed, and took out his mobile again.

  16

  A warrant for Henry Wapshott's arrest was issued that evening. He was apprehended when he went to catch the plane for London. Wapshott was taken to the cells in the police station on Hverfisgata and Erlendur obtained a warrant to search his room. The forensics team arrived at the hotel around midnight. They combed the room in search of the murder weapon, but found nothing. All they found was a suitcase that Wapshott clearly intended to leave behind, his shaving kit in the bathroom, an old record player similar to the one Erlendur had borrowed from the hotel, a television and video player, and several British newspapers and magazines. Including Record Collector.