Voices

by Arnaldur Indridason

  'Does he ever ask about me?'

  'No,' she said. 'Never. I've tried to get him to talk about you but he won't even hear your name mentioned.'

  'He still hates me.'

  'I don't think he'll ever get that out of his system.'

  'Because of the way I am. He can't stand me because Im...'

  'That's something between the two of you that...'

  'I would have done anything for him, you know that.'

  'Yes.'

  'Always.'

  'Yes.'

  'All those demands he made on me. Endless practising. Concerts. Recordings. It was all his dream, not mine. He was happy and then everything was fine.'

  'I know.'

  'So why can't he forgive me? Why can't he make up with me? I miss him. Will you tell him that? I miss when we were together. When I used to sing for him. You are my family.'

  'I'll try to talk to him.'

  'Will you? Will you tell him I miss him?'

  'I'll do that.'

  'He can't stand me because of the way I am.'

  Stefanía said nothing.

  'Maybe it was a rebellion against him. I don't know. I tried to hide it but I can't be anything else than what I am.'

  'You ought to go now,' she said.

  'Yes.'

  He hesitated.

  'What about you?'

  'What about me?"

  'Do you hate me too?'

  'You ought to go. He might wake up.'

  'Because it's all my fault. The situation you're in, having to look after him all the time. You must...'

  'Go,' she said.

  'Sorry:

  *

  'After he left home, after the accident, what happened then?' Erlendur asked. 'Was he just erased as if he'd never existed?'

  'More or less. I know Dad listened to his records now and again. He didn't want me to know, but I saw it sometimes when I got home from work. He'd forget to put the sleeve away or take the record off. Occasionally we heard something about him and years ago we read an interview with him in a magazine. It was an article about former child stars. "Where are they now?" was the headline or something equally appalling. The magazine had dug him up and he seemed willing to talk about his old fame. I don't know why he opened up like that. He didn't say anything in the interview except that it was fun being the main attraction.'

  'So someone remembered him. He wasn't completely forgotten.'

  'There's always someone who remembers.'

  'In the magazine he didn't mention being bullied at school or your father's demands, losing his mother and how his hopes, which I expect your father kindled, were dashed and he was forced to leave home?'

  'What do you know about the bullying at school?'

  'We know that he was bullied for being different. Isn't that right?'

  'I don't think my father kindled any expectations. He's a very down-to-earth and realistic man. I don't know why you talk like that. For a while it looked as if my brother would go a long way as a singer, performing abroad and commanding attention on a scale unknown in our little community. My father explained that to him but I also think he told him that even though it would take a lot of work, dedication and talent, he still shouldn't set his hopes too high. My father isn't stupid. Don't you go thinking that.'

  'I don't think anything of the sort.'

  'Good.'

  'Did Gudlaugur never try to contact you two? Or you him? All that time?'

  'No. I think I've already answered your question. Apart from sneaking in sometimes without us noticing. He told me he'd been doing it for years.'

  'You didn't try to track him down?'

  'No, we didn't.'

  'Were he and his mother close?' Erlendur asked.

  'She meant the world to him,' Stefanía said.

  'So her death was a tragedy to him.'

  'Her death was a tragedy to us all.'

  Stefanía heaved a deep sigh.

  'I suppose something died inside us when she passed away. Something that made us a family. I don't think I realised until long afterwards that it was her who tied us together, created a balance. She and Dad never agreed about Gudlaugur, and they quarrelled about his upbringing, if you could call it quarrelling. She wanted to let him be the way he was, and even if he did sing beautifully not to make too much of it.'

  She looked at Erlendur.

  'I don't think our father ever regarded him as a child, more of a task. Something for him alone to shape and create.'

  'And you? What was your standpoint?'

  'Me? I was never asked.'

  They stopped talking, listened to the murmuring in the dining room and watched the tourists chatting together and laughing. Erlendur looked at Stefanía, who seemed to have withdrawn inside her shell and the memories of her fragile family life.

  'Did you have any part in your brother's murder?' Erlendur asked cautiously.

  It was as if she did not hear what he said, so he repeated the question. She looked up.

  'Not in the slightest,' she said. 'I wish he was still alive so that I could...'

  Stefanía did not finish.

  'So you could what?' Erlendur asked.

  'I don't know, maybe make up for ...'

  She stopped again.

  'It was all so terrible. All of it. It started with trivial things and then escalated beyond control. I'm not making light of him pushing our father down the stairs. But you take sides and don't do much to change it. Because you don't want to, I suppose. And time goes by and the years pass until you've really forgotten the feeling, the reason that set it all in motion, and you've forgotten, on purpose or accidentally, the opportunities you had to make up for what went wrong, and then suddenly it's too late to set things straight. All those years have gone by and ...' She groaned.

  'What did you do after you caught him in the kitchen?'

  'I talked to Dad. He didn't want to know about Gulli, and that was that. I didn't tell him about the night-time visits. A few times I tried to talk to him about a reconciliation. Said I'd bumped into Gulli in the street and he wanted to see his father, but Dad was absolutely immovable.'

  'Did your brother never go back to the house after that?'

  'Not as far as I know.'

  She looked at Erlendur.

  'That was two years ago and that was the last I saw of him.'

  25

  Stefanía stood up, about to leave. It was as if she'd said all she had to say. Erlendur still had an inkling that she had been selective about what she wanted to go on record, and was keeping the rest to herself. He stood up as well, wondering whether to let that suffice for the time being or press her further. He decided to leave the choice to her. She was much more cooperative than before and that suited him for now. But he could not refrain from asking her about an enigma that she had left unexplained.

  'I could understand your father's lifelong anger at him because of the accident,' Erlendur said. 'If he blamed him for the paralysis that has confined him to a wheelchair ever since. But you I can't quite figure out. Why you reacted the same way. Why you took your father's side. Why you turned against your brother and had no contact with him for all those years.'

  'I think I've helped you enough,' Stefanía said. 'His death is nothing to do with my father and me. It's connected with some other life that my brother led and neither I nor my father know. I hope you appreciate the fact that I've tried to be honest and helpful, and you won't disturb us any more. You won't handcuff me in my own home.'

  She held out her hand as if wanting to seal some kind of pact that she and her father would be left undisturbed in future. Erlendur shook her hand and tried to smile. He knew the pact would be broken sooner or later. Too many questions, he thought to himself. Too few real answers. He wasn't ready to let her off the hook just yet and thought he could tell that she was still lying to him, or at least circumventing the truth.

  'You didn't come to the hotel to meet your brother a few days before his death?' he said.


  'No, I met a friend in this dining room. We had coffee together. You ask her if you think it's not true. I'd forgotten that he worked here and I didn't see him while I was here.'

  'I might check that,' Erlendur said, and wrote down the woman's name. 'Then there's something else: do you know a man called Henry Wapshott? He's British and he was in contact with your brother.'

  'Wapshott?'

  'He's a record collector. Interested in your brother's recordings. It just so happens that he collects records of choral music and specialises in choirboys'

  'I've never heard of him,' Stefanía said. 'Specialises in choirboys?'

  'Actually there are stranger collectors than him,' Erlendur said, but did not venture into an account of airline sick bags. 'He says your brother's records are very valuable today, do you know anything about that?'

  'No, not a thing,' Stefanía said. 'What was he suggesting? What does it mean?'

  'I don't know for sure,' Erlendur said. 'But they're valuable enough for Wapshott to want to come up here to Iceland to meet him. Did Gudlaugur have any of his own records?'

  'Not that I know of?

  'Do you know what happened to the copies that were released?'

  'I think they just sold out,' Stefanía said. 'Would they be worth anything if they were still around?'

  Erlendur sensed a note of eagerness in her voice and wondered whether she was masquerading, whether she was much better informed about all this than he was and was trying to establish just what he knew.

  'Could well be,' Erlendur said.

  'Is this British man still in the country?' she asked.

  'He's in police custody,' Erlendur said. 'He may know more about your brother and his death than he wants to tell us.'

  'Do you think he killed him?'

  'You haven't heard the news?'

  'No.'

  'He's a candidate, no more than that.'

  'Who is this man?'

  Erlendur was about to tell her about the information from Scotland Yard and the child pornography that was found in Wapshott's room. Instead, he repeated that Wapshott was a record collector who was interested in choirboys and had stayed at the hotel and been in contact with Gudlaugur, and was suspicious enough to be remanded in custody.

  They exchanged cordial farewells and Erlendur watched her leave the dining room for the lobby. His mobile rang in his pocket. He fumbled for it and answered. To his surprise, Valgerdur was on the other end.

  'Could I meet you tonight?' she asked without preamble. 'Will you be at the hotel?'

  'I can be,' Erlendur said, not bothering to conceal the surprise in his voice. 'I thought...'

  'Shall we say eight? In the bar?'

  'All right,' Erlendur said. 'Let's say that What—?'

  He was going to ask Valgerdur what was bothering her when she rang off and all he could hear was silence. Putting away his mobile, he wondered what she wanted. He had written off any chance of getting to know her and concluded he was probably a total loser as far as women were concerned. Then this telephone call came out of the blue and he didn't know what to read into it.

  It was well past noon and Erlendur was starving, but instead of eating in the dining room he went upstairs and had room service send up some lunch. He still had several tapes to go through, so he put one in the player and let it roll while he waited for his food.

  He soon lost his concentration, his mind wandered from the screen and he started mulling over Stefanía's words. Why had Gudlaugur crept into their house at night? He had told his sister that he wanted to go home. Sometimes I just want to come home. What did those words imply? Did his sister know? What was home in Gudlaugur's mind? What did he miss? He was no longer part of the family and the person who had been closest to him, his mother, had died long before. He did not disturb his father and sister when he visited them. He did not come by day as normal people would do – if there was such a thing as normal people – to settle scores, to tackle differences and the anger and even hatred that had formed between him and his family. He came by cover of night, taking care not to disturb anyone, and sneaked back out unnoticed. Instead of reconciliation or forgiveness, he seemed to be looking for something perhaps more important to him, something that only he could understand and which was beyond explanation, enshrined in that single word.

  Home.

  What was that?

  Perhaps a feeling for the childhood he spent in his parents' house before life's incomprehensible complexities and destinies descended upon him. When he had run around that house in the knowledge that his father, mother and sister were his companions and loved ones. He must have gone to the house to gather memories that he did not want to lose and from which he drew nourishment when life weighed him down.

  Perhaps he went to the house to come to terms with what fate had meted out to him. The unyielding demands that his father made, the bullying that went with being considered different, the motherly love that was more precious to him than all other things, and the big sister who protected him too; the shock when he returned home after the concert at Hafnarfjördur cinema, his world in ruins and his father's hopes dashed. What could be worse for a boy like him than to fail to live up to his father's expectations? After all the effort he had expended, all the effort his father had made, all the effort his family had made. He had sacrificed his childhood for something too large for him then to comprehend or control – and which then failed to materialise. His father had played a game with his childhood, and in effect deprived him of it.

  Erlendur sighed.

  Who doesn't want to come home sometimes?

  He was flat out on his bed when suddenly he heard a noise in the room. At first he couldn't tell where it was coming from. He thought the turntable had started up and the needle had missed the record.

  Sitting up, he looked at the record player and saw that it was switched off. He heard the same noise again and looked all around. It was dark and he couldn't see very clearly. A vague light emanated from the lamp post on the other side of the road. He was about to switch on the bedside lamp when he heard the noise again, louder than before. He didn't dare move. Then he remembered where he had heard the noise before.

  He sat up in bed and looked towards the door. In the weak glow he saw a small figure, blue with cold, huddled up in the alcove by the door, staring at him, shaking and shivering so that its head bobbed, sniffling.

  The sniffling was the noise that Erlendur recognised.

  He stared at the figure and it stared back at him, trying to smile but unable to do so for the cold.

  'Is that you?' Erlendur gasped.

  In that instant the figure disappeared from the alcove and Erlendur started from his sleep, half out of bed, and stared at the door.

  'Was that you?' he groaned, seeing snatches of the dream, the woollen mittens, the cap, the winter jacket and scarf. The clothing they were wearing when they left their house.