Voices

by Arnaldur Indridason

  'Yes. He asked me to see him because he was going to pay me.'

  'How did he get hold of you?'

  Reynir took a mobile phone out of his pocket and showed it to Erlendur.

  'When I arrived he was putting on his Santa suit,' he said. 'He said he had to rush off to the Christmas party, paid me what he owed, looked at his watch and saw he had time for a quickie.'

  'Did he have a lot of money in his room?'

  'Not that I knew of. I just saw what he paid me. But he said he was expecting a load of money.'

  'Where from?'

  'I don't know. He said he was sitting on a goldmine.'

  'What did he mean by that?'

  'It was something he was going to sell. I don't know what it was. He didn't tell me. Just said he was expecting loads of money, or a lot of money, he never said loads. He never talked like that. Always spoke polite and used classy words. He was always really courteous. A good bloke. Never did me any harm. Always paid. I know loads of worse people than him. Sometimes he just wanted to talk to me. He was lonely, or at least he said he was. Told me I was his only friend.'

  'Did he tell you anything about his past?'

  'No.'

  'Nothing about being a child star once?'

  'No. A child star? At what?'

  'Did you see a knife in his room that could have come from the hotel kitchen?'

  'Yes, I saw a knife in there but I don't know where it came from. When I went to see him he was picking away at his Santa suit. He said he had to get a new one for next Christmas'

  'And he didn't have any money besides what he paid you?'

  'No, I don't think so.'

  'Did you rob him?'

  'No.'

  'Did you take half a million that was in his room?'

  'Haifa million? Did he have half a million?!'

  'I'm told you always need money. It's obvious how you get it. There are people you owe money. They've threatened your family...'

  Reynir glared at his sister.

  'Don't look at her, look at me. Gudlaugur had money in his room. More than he owed you. Maybe he'd sold part of his goldmine. You saw the money. You wanted more. You did things for him that you thought you ought to be paid more for. He refused, you argued, you grabbed the knife and tried to stab him, but he held you off until you managed to sink the knife into his chest and kill him. You took the money...'

  'You tosser,' Reynir hissed. 'What fucking bollocks!'

  ' ... and since then you've been smoking hash and shooting up or whatever it is you—'

  'You fucking creep!' Reynir shouted.

  'Go on with the story,' Ösp called out. 'Tell him what you told me. Tell him everything!'

  'Everything about what?' Erlendur said.

  'He asked me if I'd give him one before he went up to the Christmas party,' Reynir said. 'He said he didn't have much time but had money and he'd pay me well. But when we were starting that woman burst in on us.'

  'That woman?'

  'Yes.'

  'What woman?'

  'The one who caught us.'

  'Tell him,' Erlendur heard Ösp say behind his back 'Tell him who it was!'

  'What woman are you talking about?'

  'We forgot to lock the door and suddenly the door opened and she burst in on us.'

  'Who?'

  'I don't know who it was. Some woman.'

  'And what happened?'

  'I don't know. I buggered off. She shouted something at him and I legged it.'

  'Why didn't you give us this information straight away?'

  'I avoid the cops. There's all kinds of people after me and if they know I'm talking to the cops they'll think I'm grassing and they'll get me for it'

  'Who was this woman who caught you? What did she look like?'

  'I didn't really notice. I buggered off. He was mortified. Pushed me away and shouted and totally lost it. He seemed to be terrified of her. Scared shitless.'

  'What did he shout?' Erlendur asked.

  'Steffí.'

  'What?'

  'Steffi. That was all I heard. Steffi. He called her Steffi and he was scared shitless of her.'

  32

  She was standing outside the door to his room with her back to him. Erlendur stopped and watched her for a moment, and saw how she had changed since the first time he saw her, storming into the hotel with her father. Now she was just a tired and weary middle-aged woman who still lived with her crippled father in the house that had always been her home. For reasons unknown to him, this woman had come to the hotel and murdered her brother.

  It was as if she sensed his presence in the corridor, because suddenly she turned round and looked at him. He could not decipher her thoughts from the expression on her face. All he knew was that she was the person he had been looking for since he first went to the hotel and saw Santa sitting in a pool of his own blood.

  She stood still by the door and said nothing until he was standing right next to her.

  'There's something I have to tell you,' she said. 'If it makes any difference.'

  Erlendur thought she had come to see him concerning the lie about her friend and felt the time had come to tell him the truth. He opened the door and she walked in ahead of him, went to the window and watched the snow.

  'They forecast it wouldn't snow this Christmas,' she said

  'Are you ever called Steffi for short?' he asked.

  'When I was small,' she said, still looking out of the window.

  'Did you brother call you Steffi?'

  'Yes, he did,' she said. 'Always. And I always called him Gulli. Why do you ask?'

  'Why were you at this hotel five days before your brother's death?'

  Stefanía gave a deep sigh.

  'I know I shouldn't have lied to you.'

  'Why did you come?'

  'It was to do with his records. We thought we were entitled to some of them. We knew he had quite a few copies, probably all the ones that didn't sell when they came out, and we wanted a share if he was planning to sell.'

  'How did he acquire the copies?'

  'Dad had them and kept them at home in Hafnarfjördur, and when Gudlaugur moved out he took the boxes with him. He said they belonged to him. To him alone.'

  'How did you know he was planning to sell them?'

  Stefanía hesitated.

  'I also lied about Henry Wapshott,' she said. 'I do know him. Not very well, but I should have told you about him. Didn't he tell you he met us?'

  'No,' Erlendur said. 'He has a number of problems. Is anything true that you've told me up to now?'

  She did not answer him.

  'Why should I believe what you're telling me now?'

  Stefanía watched the snow falling to earth and was remote, as if she had vanished back into a life she led long ago when she knew no lies and everything was the truth, fresh and pure.

  'Stefanía?' Erlendur said.

  'They didn't argue about his singing,' she said suddenly. 'When Dad fell down the stairs. It wasn't about singing. Hurt's the last and the biggest lie.'

  'You mean when they had a fight on the landing?'

  'Do you know what the kids called him at school?'

  'I believe I do,' Erlendur said.

  'They called him The Little Princess.'

  'Because he sang in the choir and was a sissy and—'

  'Because they caught him wearing one of Mum's dresses,' Stefanía interrupted him.

  She turned away from the window.

  'It was after she died. He missed her terribly, especially when he wasn't a choirboy any more but just a normal boy with a normal voice. Dad didn't know, but I did. When Dad was out he sometimes put on Mum's jewellery and sometimes he tried on her dresses, stood in front of the mirror, even put on make-up. And once, it was in the summer, some boys walked past the house and saw him. Some were in his class. They peeped in through the living-room window. They used to do that sometimes because we were considered odd. They started to laugh and jeer, mercilessly. Af
ter that he was considered an absolute freak at school. The kids started calling him The Little Princess.'

  Stefanía paused.

  'I thought he just missed Mum,' she continued. 'That it was his way of getting close to her, wearing her clothes and putting on her jewellery. I didn't think he had unnatural urges. But it turned out otherwise.'

  'Unnatural urges?' Erlendur said. 'Is that how you regard it? Your brother was a homosexual. Haven't you been able to forgive him for that? Is that why you had no contact with him for all those years?'

  'He was very young when our father caught him with a boy. I knew he had his friend in his room, I thought they were doing their homework together. Dad came home unexpectedly to look for something and when he walked into Gudlaugur's room he saw them doing something abominable. He wouldn't tell me what it was. When I came out the other boy was running down the stairs, Dad and Gulli were on the landing shouting at each other, and I saw Gulli give him a shove. He lost his balance, fell down the stairs and never stood up again.'

  Stefanía turned back to the window and watched the Christmas snow gliding to earth. Erlendur said nothing, wondering what she thought about when she disappeared within herself like now, but he could not imagine it. He thought he gained some kind of answer when she broke the silence.

  'I never mattered,' she said. 'Everything I did was a secondary consideration. I'm not saying that from self-pity, I think I stopped that ages ago. More to try to understand and explain why I never had any contact with him after that awful day. Sometimes I think I gloated over the way everything turned out. Can you imagine that?'

  Erlendur shook his head.

  'When he left, I was the one who mattered. Not him. Never again him. And in some strange way I was pleased, pleased that he never became the great child star he was supposed to become. I expect I envied him the whole time, much more than I realised, for all the attention he got and the voice he had. It was divine. It was as if he'd been blessed with all those talents but I had none; I thumped away at the piano like a horse. That was what Dad called it when he tried to teach me. Said I was totally devoid of talent. Yet I worshipped him because I thought he was always right. Usually he was kind to me and when he became unable to look after himself my talent became looking after him. I was indispensable to him then. And the years went by without anything changing. Gulli left home, Dad was in a wheelchair and I took care of him. Never thought about myself at all, what it was that I wanted. The years can pass like that without you doing anything except living in the rut you create for yourself. Year after year after year.'

  She paused and watched the snow.

  'When you begin to perceive that that is all you have, you start to hate it and try to find the culprit, and I felt my brother was to blame for everything. Over time I began to despise him and the perversion that ruined our lives'

  Erlendur was about to add something, but she went on.

  'I don't know if I can describe this better. How you lock yourself up inside your own monotonous life because of something that, decades later, turns out to be so unimportant. Actually turns out to be unimportant and harmless.'

  'We understand that he thought he had been robbed of his childhood,' Erlendur said. 'That he wasn't allowed to be what he wanted to be, but was forced to be something completely different, a singer, a child star, and he paid the price when he was bullied at school. Then it all came to nothing and those "unnatural urges", as you call them, compound the picture. I don't think he can have been very happy. Maybe he didn't want all that attention you clearly longed for.'

  'Robbed of his childhood,' Stefanía said. 'Could well be.'

  'Did your brother ever try to discuss his homosexuality with your father or you?' Erlendur asked.

  'No, but we might have seen it coming. I don't know if he even realised what was happening to him. I have no idea about it. I don't think he knew why he wore Mum's dresses. I don't know how or when those people discover they're different.'

  'But he was fond of the nickname in some perverse way,' Erlendur said. 'He's got this poster and we know that...' Erlendur stopped mid-sentence. He didn't know whether to tell her that Gudlaugur had asked his lover to call him Little Princess.

  'I don't know anything about that,' Stefanía said. 'He could have been tormenting himself with the memory of what happened. Maybe there was something inside him that we'll never understand.'

  'How did you get to know Henry Wapshott?'

  'He came to our house one day and wanted to talk about Gudlaugur's records. He wanted to know whether we had any copies. It was last Christmas. He had obtained information about Gudlaugur and his family through some collector and told me that his records were incredibly valuable abroad. He had talked to my brother, who refused to sell him any, but that changed somehow and he was prepared to let Wapshott have what he wanted.'

  'And you wanted your share of the profits.'

  'We didn't think that was unreasonable. It didn't belong to him any more or less than to my father. At least, that was how we saw it. Our father paid for the recordings out of his own pocket.'

  'Was a substantial sum involved? That Wapshott offered for the records?'

  Stefanía nodded. 'Millions.'

  "That corresponds with what we know.'

  'He has plenty of money, that Wapshott man. I believe he wanted to avoid the records going into the collectors' market. If I understood him correctly, he wanted to acquire all the existing copies of the records and prevent them from flooding the market. He was very straightforward about it and was prepared to pay an incredible sum. I think he finally talked Gudlaugur round just before this Christmas. Something must have changed for him to attack him like that.'

  'Attack him like that? What do you mean?'

  'Well, haven't you got him in custody?'

  'Yes,' Erlendur said, 'but we have no proof that he attacked your brother. What do you mean by "something must have changed"?'

  'Wapshott visited us in Hafnarfjördur and said he had persuaded Gudlaugur to sell him all the copies, and I expect he was making sure that there were no others around. We told him there weren't, Gudlaugur had taken them all when he left home.'

  'That's why you went to the hotel to meet him,' Erlendur said. 'To get your cut of the sale.'

  'He was wearing his doorman's uniform,' Stefanía said. 'He was in the lobby carrying suitcases out to a car for some tourists. I watched him for a while and then he saw me. I said I had to talk to him about the records. He asked about Dad...'

  'Did your father send you to see Gudlaugur?'

  'No, he would never have done that. After the accident he never wanted to hear his name mentioned.'

  'But he was the first thing Gudlaugur asked about when he saw you at the hotel.'

  'Yes. We went down to his room and I asked where the records were.'