Voices

Voices Page 29

by Arnaldur Indridason

  'And my Christmas is being ruined,' Elínborg said. 'I've never done so little baking. And all the in-laws are coming tonight and—'

  'Tell me what happened,' Erlendur said.

  'What a cock-up,' Elínborg said. 'I don't understand him. I simply don't understand him.'

  'Who?'

  'The boy!' Elínborg said. 'I don't understand what he means'

  She told Erlendur that, instead of going home and baking cookies the previous evening, she had dropped in at Kleppur mental hospital. Exactly why she did not know, but she couldn't get the case of the boy and his father out of her mind. When Erlendur chipped in that she may just have had enough of baking for her in-laws, she didn't even smile.

  She had been to the mental hospital once before to try to talk to the boy's mother, but the woman was so ill then that she hardly uttered a word of sense. The same happened again on this second visit. His mother sat rocking back and forth, in a world of her own. Elínborg wasn't quite sure what she wanted to hear her say, but thought she might know something about the relationship between the father and the son that had not yet come to light.

  She knew that his mother would only be in hospital temporarily. She was admitted intermittently, when she went through a phase of flushing her psychiatric medication down the toilet. When she took her pills she was generally in reasonable condition. She took good care of their home. When Elínborg mentioned the boy's mother to his teachers, they also said she seemed to look after him well.

  Elínborg sat in the hospital lounge where the nurse had brought the boy's mother, and watched her twiddling her hair around her index finger, muttering something Elínborg could not make out. She tried to talk to her but the mother seemed to be miles away. Offered no response to her questions. It was as though she was sleepwalking.

  After sitting with her for a while, Elínborg started thinking about all the assortments of cookies that she still had to bake. She stood up to fetch someone to take the woman back to the ward and found a warder in the corridor. He was about thirty and looked like a bodybuilder. He was wearing white trousers and a white T-shirt, and his strong biceps rippled with every movement of his body. His hair was crewcut and he had a round, chubby face with little eyes sunk deep into his head. Elínborg didn't ask his name.

  He followed her into the lounge.

  'Oh, it's old Dora,' the warder said, walking over and taking the woman by the arm. 'You're pretty quiet tonight'

  The woman stood up, just as confused as ever.

  'Stoned out of your tree again, are you, old girl,' the warder said in a tone that Elínborg disliked. It was like he was talking to a five-year-old. And what did he mean by saying she was pretty quiet tonight? Elínborg couldn't hold herself back.

  'Will you stop talking to her like a little kid,' she said, more brashly than she had intended.

  The warder looked at her.

  'Is that any of your business?' he said.

  'She's entitled to be treated with respect just like everyone else,' Elínborg said, but desisted from saying she was from the police.

  'Maybe she is,' the warder said. 'And I don't think I'm treating her disrespectfully. Come on, Dóra,' he went on, leading her out into the corridor.

  Elínborg followed close behind.

  'What did you mean when you said she's pretty quiet tonight?'

  'Quiet tonight?' the warder repeated, turning his head towards Elínborg.

  'You said she was pretty quiet tonight,' Elínborg said. 'Wasn't she supposed to be?'

  'I sometimes call her the Fugitive,' the warder said. 'She's always on the run.'

  Elínborg didn't follow.

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Haven't you seen the movie?' the warder asked.

  'Does she escape?' Elínborg said. 'From this hospital?'

  'Or when we take them on trips into town,' the warder said. 'She ran away the last time we went. We were shitting bricks when you found her at the bus station and brought her back here to the ward. You didn't treat her with much respect then.'

  'I found her?'

  'I know you're from the cops. The cops literally threw her at us.'

  'What day was this?'

  He thought about it. He had been accompanying her and two other patients when she slipped away. They were on Laekjartorg square at the time. He remembered the date well, it was the same day that he set his personal best on the bench press.

  The date matched that of the attack on the boy.

  'Wasn't her husband informed when she ran away from you?' Elínborg asked.

  'We were about to phone him when you found her. We always give them a few hours to come back. Otherwise we'd spend all our time on the phone.'

  'Does her husband know that you call her that? The Fugitive.'

  'We don't call her that. It's only me. He doesn't know.'

  'Does he know that she runs away?'

  'I haven't told him. She always comes back.'

  'I don't believe this,' Elínborg said.

  'When she comes in here she has to be drugged right up to stop her running off,' the warder said.

  'This changes everything!'

  'Come on, Dora old girl,' the warder said, and the door to the ward closed behind him.

  Elínborg stared at Erlendur.

  'I was positive it was him. The father. Now she could have run away, gone home, assaulted the boy and hopped back out. If only the boy would open his mouth!'

  'Why should she assault her son?'

  'I've no idea,' Elínborg said. 'Maybe she hears voices'

  'And the broken fingers and bruises? All that over the years? Is it always her then?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Have you spoken to the father?'

  'I've just come from seeing him.'

  'And?'

  'Naturally, we're not the best of friends. He hasn't been allowed to see the boy since we burst into their home and turned everything upside-down. He showered me with abuse and—'

  'Did he say anything about his wife, the boy's mother?' Erlendur butted in impatiently. 'He must have suspected her.'

  'And the boy hasn't said a thing,' Elínborg continued.

  'Except that he misses his father,' Erlendur said.

  'Yes, apart from that. So his father finds him in his room upstairs and thinks he's crawled home from school in that state.'

  'You visited the boy in hospital and asked if it was his father who assaulted him, and he made some reaction that convinced you it was.'

  'I must have misunderstood him,' Elínborg said, her head bowed. 'I read something into his manner...'

  'But we have nothing to prove it was the mother. We have nothing to prove it wasn't the father.'

  'I told him, the boy's father, that I'd been to the hospital to talk to his wife and that we know nothing about her whereabouts on the day of the assault. He was surprised. As if it never occurred to him that she could escape from the hospital. He's still convinced it was the boys in the school playground. He said the boy would tell us if his mother had assaulted him. He's convinced of that.'

  'So why doesn't the boy name her?'

  'He's in a state of shock, poor thing. I don't know.'

  'Love?' Erlendur said. 'In spite of everything she's done to him.'

  'Or fear,' Elínborg said. 'Maybe a huge fear that she'll do it again. Either way he might be keeping quiet to protect his mother. It's impossible to say'

  'What do you want us to do? Should we drop the charges against the father?'

  'I'm going to talk to the State Prosecutor's office and find out what they say'

  'Start with that. Tell me another thing, did you phone the woman who was with Stefanía Egilsdóttir at this hotel a few days before Gudlaugur was stabbed?'

  'Yes,' Elínborg said vacantly. 'She asked her friend to vouch for her but when it came to the crunch she couldn't go through with the lie.'

  'You mean lie for Stefanía?'

  'She began by saying that they'd been sitting here,
but she was very hesitant about it, and she was such a bad liar that when I said I had to bring her down to the station to make a statement she started crying over the phone. She told me how Stefanía phoned her, they're old friends from a music society, and asked her to say they were together at this hotel if she was asked. She said she refused, but Stefanía appears to have some hold over her and she won't tell me what it is.'

  'It was a poor lie from the start,' Erlendur said. 'We both knew she let it slip out. I don't know why she's holding up the investigation like this unless she knows it's her fault'

  'You mean that she killed her brother?'

  'Or she knows who did.'

  They lingered at their table for a while and talked about the boy, his father and mother and the difficult family circumstances, which prompted Elínborg to ask Erlendur once again what he was going to do for Christmas. He said he was going to be with Eva Lind.

  He told Elínborg about his discovery in the basement corridor and his suspicions that Ösp's brother was somehow involved, a delinquent with endless money problems. He thanked Elínborg for the invitation and told her to take off the rest of the time until Christmas.

  'There isn't any time until Christmas' Elínborg smiled, and shrugged as if Christmas no longer mattered, what with all the cleaning and cookies and in-laws.

  'Will you get any Christmas presents?' she asked.

  'Maybe some socks,' Erlendur said. 'Hopefully.'

  He hesitated before saying: 'Don't upset yourself about the boy's father. These things always happen. We feel certain, convinced even, then something always comes along that erodes it.'

  Elínborg nodded.

  Erlendur followed her through the lobby and they exchanged farewells. He planned to go up to his room to pack. He'd had enough of the hotel. He was seriously beginning to miss his 'hole with nothing in it', his books, his armchair and even Eva Lind lying on the sofa.

  He was standing waiting for the lift when Ösp surprised him.

  'I've found him,' she said.

  'Who?' Erlendur said. 'Your brother?'

  'Come with me,' Ösp said, heading for the stairs to the basement. Erlendur hesitated. The lift doors opened and he looked inside. He was on the trail of the murderer. Perhaps Ösp's brother had come to turn himself in at her urging: the lad with the chewing tobacco. Erlendur felt no excitement about it. None of the expectation or sense of triumph that accompanied solving a case. All he felt was fatigue and sadness because the case had stirred up all manner of associations with his own childhood, and he knew he had so much left to come to terms with in his own life that he had no idea where to begin. Most of all he wanted to forget about work and go home. Be with Eva Lind. Help her to get over the troubles she was dealing with. He wanted to stop thinking about others and start thinking about himself and his own people.

  'Are you coming?' Ösp said in a low voice, standing on the stairs and waiting.

  'I'm coming,' Erlendur said.

  He followed her down the stairs and into the staff coffee room where he had first spoken to her. It was as squalid as ever. She locked the door behind them. Her brother was sitting at one of the tables and leaped to his feet when Erlendur walked in.

  'I didn't do anything,' he said in a high-pitched voice. 'Ösp says you think I did it, but I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything to him!'

  He was wearing a dirty blue anorak with a rip on one shoulder that revealed the white lining. His jeans were black with grime and he was wearing scruffy black boots that could be laced up to the calves, but Erlendur saw no laces in them. His fingers were long and filthy, clutching a cigarette. He inhaled the smoke and blew it back out. His voice was agitated and he paced back and forth in the corner of the kitchen like a caged animal, cornered by a policeman who was poised to arrest him.

  Erlendur looked over his shoulder at Ösp, who was standing by the door, then back at her brother.

  'You must trust your sister to come here like this.'

  'I didn't do anything,' he said. 'She told me you were cool and just wanted some information.'

  'I need to know about your relationship with Gudlaugur,' Erlendur said.

  'I didn't stab him,' he said.

  Erlendur sized him up. He was halfway between adolescence and adulthood, peculiarly childlike but with a hardened expression that displayed anger and bitterness towards something that Erlendur could not even begin to imagine.

  'No one is suggesting you did,' Erlendur said reassuringly, trying to calm him down. 'How did you know Gudlaugur? What relationship did you have?'

  He looked at his sister but Ösp just stood by the door and said nothing.

  'I did him favours sometimes and he paid me for it,' he said.

  'And how did you know each other? Have you known him for a long time?'

  'He knew I was Ösp's brother. He thought it was funny that we're brother and sister, like everyone does.'

  'Why?'

  'My name's Reynir.'

  'So? What's funny about that?'

  'Ösp and Reynir. Aspen and Rowan. Brother and sister. Mum and Dad's little joke. Like they're into forestry'

  'What about Gudlaugur?'

  'I first saw him here when I came to meet Ösp. About half a year ago.'

  'And?'

  'He knew who I was. Ösp had told him a bit about me. She sometimes let me sleep at the hotel. On his corridor.'

  Erlendur turned to Ösp.

  'You cleaned that alcove very carefully,' he said.

  Ösp gave him a blank look and did not reply. He turned back to Reynir.

  'He knew who you were. You slept on the corridor in front of his room. What then?'

  'He owed me money. Said he would pay.'

  'Why did he owe you money?'

  'Because I did him favours sometimes and—'

  'Did you know he was gay?'

  'Isn't that obvious?'

  And the condom?'

  'We always used condoms. He was paranoid. He said he didn't take chances. Said he didn't know if I was infected or not. I'm not infected,' he said emphatically and looked at his sister.

  And you chew tobacco.'

  He looked at Erlendur in surprise.

  'What's that got to do with it?'

  'That's not the point. Do you chew tobacco?'

  'Yes.'

  'Were you with him the day he was stabbed?'

 

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