Jar City

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli watched Erlendur asking these questions. They noticed how his voice turned into a half-whisper and saw that he wasn’t talking to them any more, but had disappeared inside himself, vacant and remote. He put his hand on his chest and instinctually rubbed it, apparently without realising what he was doing. They looked at one another but didn’t dare to ask.

  “What sort of person takes pictures of children’s graves?” Erlendur said again.

  Later that evening Erlendur found the man who had sent the debt collectors for Eva Lind. He received information from the narcotics squad, who had a fairly thick file on him, and found out he frequented a pub by the name of Napoleon, in the city centre. Erlendur went there and sat down facing the man. His name was Eddi and he looked about 40, chubby and bald. His few remaining teeth were stained yellow.

  “Did you expect Eva to get special treatment because you’re a cop?” Eddi said when Erlendur sat down with him. He seemed to know at once who Erlendur was even though they’d never met before. Erlendur had the feeling he’d been expecting him.

  “Have you found her?” Erlendur asked and looked all around the darkened room at the handful of unfortunates who were sitting at tables and making tough-guy gestures and expressions. Suddenly the name of the pub assumed significance in his mind.

  “You understand that I’m her friend,” Eddi said. “I give her what she wants. Sometimes she pays me. Sometimes she takes too long about it. The guy with the knee sends his regards.”

  “He grassed on you.”

  “It’s difficult to find decent people,” Eddi said, pointing around the room.

  “How much is it?”

  “Eva? Two hundred thousand. And she doesn’t just owe me.”

  “Can we make a deal?”

  “As you please.”

  Erlendur took out 20,000 crowns, which he’d taken out of a cash machine on his way there, and put it on the table. Eddi took the money, counted it carefully and put it in his pocket.

  “I can let you have some more after a week or so.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Eddi gave Erlendur a probing look.

  “I thought you were going to give me some lip,” he said.

  “For what?” Erlendur said.

  “I know where she is,” Eddi said, “but you’ll never be able to save Eva.”

  Erlendur located the house. He’d been in that kind of house before on the same business. Eva Lind lay on a mattress in the hovel surrounded by other people. Some were her age, others much older. The house was open and the only obstacle was a man, whom Erlendur took to be about 20, who met him in the doorway waving his arms. Erlendur slammed him against the wall and threw him out. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling of one of the rooms. He bent down to Eva and tried to wake her. Her breathing was regular and normal, her heartbeat a little fast. He shook her and slapped her lightly across the cheek and soon Eva opened her eyes.

  “Grandad,” she said, and her eyes closed again. He lifted Eva up and carried her out of the room, taking care not to tread on the other motionless bodies lying on the floor. He couldn’t tell whether they were awake or asleep. She opened her eyes again.

  “She’s here,” she whispered, but Erlendur didn’t know what she was talking about and kept on walking with Eva out to his car. The sooner he got her out of there the better. He put her down on her feet to open the car door and she leaned up against him.

  “Did you find her?” she asked

  “Find who? What are you talking about?” He lay her down on the front seat, fastened her seatbelt, sat in the driver’s seat and was about to drive away.

  “Is she with you?” Eva Lind asked without opening her eyes.

  “Who, dammit?” Erlendur shouted.

  “The bride,” Eva Lind said. “The babe from Gardabaer. I was lying next to her.”

  25

  Erlendur was eventually woken up by the phone ringing. It resounded in his head until he opened his eyes and looked around everywhere. He’d slept in the armchair in the sitting room. His coat and hat were lying on the sofa. It was dark in the flat. Erlendur got to his feet slowly and wondered whether he could wear the same clothes for yet another day. He couldn’t remember the last time he had undressed. He looked into the bedroom before answering the phone and saw that the two girls were lying in his bed where he’d put them the night before. He pulled the door to.

  “The fingerprints on the camera match the ones on the photograph,” Sigurdur Óli said when Erlendur eventually answered. He had to repeat the sentence twice more before Erlendur realised what he was talking about.

  “Do you mean Grétar’s fingerprints?”

  “Yes, Grétar’s.”

  “And Holberg’s prints were on the photo too?” Erlendur said. “What the hell were they up to?”

  “Beats my balls off,” Sigurdur Óli said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. So Grétar took the photo then. We can assume that. He showed it to Holberg or Holberg found it. We’ll go on looking for the Húsavík woman today, won’t we?” Sigurdur Óli asked. “You don’t have any new leads?”

  “Yes,” Erlendur said. “And no.”

  “I’m on my way up to Grafarvogur. We’ve almost finished the women in Reykjavík. Are we going to send someone up to Húsavík when we’ve finished here?”

  “Yes,” Erlendur said and put down the phone. Eva Lind was in the kitchen. She’d been woken up by the phone ringing. She was still dressed, as was the girl from Gardabaer. Erlendur had gone back into the hovel, carried her out and driven them both to his flat.

  Eva Lind went into the toilet without saying a word and Erlendur heard her retching violently. He went into the kitchen and made some strong coffee, the only solution he knew in that situation, sat down at the kitchen table and waited for his daughter to come back out. Quite a while passed, he filled two cups. Eva Lind came out at last. She had wiped her face. Erlendur thought she looked terrible. Her body was so scrawny it barely hung together.

  “I knew she did dope sometimes,” Eva Lind said in a hoarse voice when she sat down with Erlendur, “but I met her by pure chance.”

  “What happened to you?” Erlendur asked.

  She looked at her father.

  “I’m trying,” she said, “but it’s difficult.”

  “Two lads came here asking for you. Filthy-mouthed. I gave some Eddi character some money you owed him. It was him who told me where that the hovel was.”

  “Eddi’s okay.”

  “Are you going to keep trying?”

  “Should I get rid of it?” Eva Lind stared down at the floor.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m so scared I’ve damaged it.”

  “Maybe you’re trying on purpose.”

  Eva Lind looked up at her father.

  “You’re fucking pathetic,” she said.

  “Me!”

  “Yes, you.”

  “What am I supposed to think? Tell me that!” Erlendur shouted. “Can you possibly handle this endless self-pity? What a bloody loser you can be sometimes. Do you really feel so good in that company you keep that you can’t think there’s anything better for you? What right do you have to treat your life like that? What right do you have to treat the life inside you like that? Do you really think things are so horrible for you? Do you really think no-one in the world feels as bad as you? I’m investigating the death of a girl who didn’t even reach the age of five. She fell ill and died. Something no-one understands destroyed her and killed her. Her coffin was three feet long. Can you hear what I’m saying? What right have you got to live? Tell me that!”

  Erlendur was shouting. He stood up and hammered on the kitchen table with such a force that the cups started jumping around and when he saw that he picked one up and threw it at the wall behind Eva Lind. His rage flared up and for a moment he lost control of himself. He overturned the table, swept everything off the kitchen surfaces, pots and glasses slammed into the walls
and floor. Eva Lind sat still in her chair, watched her father go berserk and her eyes filled with tears.

  Finally Erlendur’s rage abated, he turned to Eva Lind and saw her shoulders were shaking and she was hiding her face in her hands. He looked at his daughter, her dirty hair, thin arms, wrists hardly thicker than his fingers, her skinny, trembling body. She was barefoot and there was dirt under all her nails. He went over to her and tried to pull her hands away from her face, but she wouldn’t let him. He wanted to apologise to her. Wanted to take her in his arms. He did neither.

  Instead, he sat down on the floor beside her. The phone rang but he didn’t answer it. There was no sign of the other girl from the bedroom. The phone stopped ringing and the flat fell silent again. The only sound was Eva Lind sobbing. Erlendur knew he was no model father and the speech he’d delivered could just as easily have been directed at himself. Probably he was talking just as much to himself and was as angry with himself as with Eva Lind. A psychologist would say he’d been venting his anger on the girl. But maybe what he said did have some effect. He hadn’t seen Eva Lind cry before. Not since she was a small child. He left her when she was two.

  At last Eva Lind took her hands away from her face, sniffed and wiped her face.

  “It was her dad,” she said.

  “Her dad?” Erlendur said.

  “Who was a monster,” Eva Lind said. “ ‘He’s a monster. What have I done?’ It was her dad. He started touching her up when she started growing breasts and he kept going further and further. Couldn’t even keep his hands off her at her own wedding. Took her off to some empty part of the house. Told her she looked so sexy in her wedding dress he couldn’t control himself. Couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving him. Started goosing her. She freaked out.”

  “What a crowd!” Erlendur groaned.

  “I knew she did dope sometimes. She’s asked me to score for her before. She totally flipped and went to see Eddi. She’s been lying in that dump ever since.”

  Eva Lind stopped. “I think her mother knew about it,” she said afterwards. “All the time. She didn’t do anything. The house was too flash. Too many cars.”

  “Doesn’t the girl want to go to the police?”

  “Wow!”

  “What?”

  “Go through all that crap for a three-month suspended sentence if anyone believes her? Come on!”

  “What’s she going to do?”

  “She’ll go back to the bloke. Her husband. I think she likes him.”

  “She blamed herself then, did she?”

  “She doesn’t know what to think.”

  “Because she wrote ‘What have I done?’ She took the blame on herself.”

  “It’s not surprising she’s a bit screwed up.”

  “It always seems to be the bloody perverts who seem happiest of all. Smile at the world as if there’s never anything gnawing away at their bloody consciences.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that again,” Eva Lind said. “Never talk to me like that again.”

  “Do you owe more people than Eddi?” Erlendur asked.

  “A few. But Eddi’s the main problem.”

  The phone rang yet again. The girl in the bedroom stirred and sat up, looked all around and got out of bed. Erlendur wondered whether to bother answering. Whether to bother going to work. Whether he ought to spend the day with Eva Lind. Keep her company, maybe get her to go to the doctor with him and have the embryo looked at, if you could call it an embryo. Find out if everything was all right. Stand by her.

  But the phone refused to stop ringing. The girl had come out into the corridor and looked all around in confusion. She called out to ask if anyone was in the flat. Eva Lind called back that they were in the kitchen. Erlendur stood up, met the girl in the kitchen doorway and said hello. He received no reply. They’d both slept in their clothes just like Erlendur. The girl looked around the kitchen that Erlendur had smashed up and cast a sideways glance at him.

  Erlendur answered the phone at last.

  “What was the smell in Holberg’s flat like?” Erlendur took a while to realise it was Marion Briem’s voice.

  “The smell?” Erlendur repeated.

  “What was the smell in his flat like?” Marion Briem repeated.

  “It was a sort of nasty basement smell,” Erlendur said. “A smell of damp. A stench. I don’t know. Like horses?”

  “No, it’s not horses,” Marion Briem said. “I was reading about Nordurmýri. I talked to a plumber friend of mine and he referred me to another plumber. I’ve talked to a lot of plumbers.”

  “Why plumbers?”

  “Very interesting, the whole business. You didn’t tell me about the fingerprints on the photo.” There was a hint of accusation in Marion’s voice.

  “No,” Erlendur said. “I didn’t get round to it.”

  “I heard about Grétar and Holberg. Grétar knew the girl was Holberg’s daughter. Maybe he knew something else.”

  Erlendur remained silent.

  “What do you mean?” he said eventually.

  “Do you know the most important thing about Nordurmýri?” Marion Briem asked.

  “No,” Erlendur said, finding it difficult to follow Marion’s train of thought.

  “It’s so obvious that I missed it at the time.”

  “What is it?”

  Marion paused for a moment as if to give extra weight to the words.

  “Nordurmýri. North Mire.

  “And?”

  “The houses were built on marsh land.”

  26

  Sigurdur Óli was surprised that the woman who answered the door knew what his business was before he explained it. He was standing on yet another staircase, this time in a three-storey block of flats in Grafarvogur. He had barely introduced himself and was halfway through explaining his presence there when the woman invited him to come inside, adding that she’d been expecting him.

  It was early morning. Outside it was overcast with fine drizzle and the autumn gloom spread over the city as if in confirmation that it would very soon be winter, get darker and colder. On the radio, people had described it as the worst rainy spell for decades.

  The woman offered to take his coat. Sigurdur Óli handed it to her and she hung it in a wardrobe. A man of a similar age to the woman came out of their kitchenette and greeted him with a handshake. They were both around 70, wearing some kind of tracksuit and white socks as if they were on their way for a jog. He had interrupted them in the middle of morning coffee.

  The flat was very small but efficiently furnished, with a small bathroom, kitchenette and sitting room and a spacious bedroom. It was boiling hot inside the flat. Sigurdur Óli accepted the offer of coffee and asked for a glass of water as well. His throat had immediately become parched. They exchanged a few words about the weather until Sigurdur Óli couldn’t wait any longer.

  “It looks as if you were expecting me,” he said, sipping at the coffee. It was watery and tasted foul.

  “Well, no-one’s talking about anything except that poor woman you’re looking for,” she said.

  Sigurdur Óli gave her a blank look.

  “Everyone from Húsavík,” the woman said, as if she shouldn’t need to explain something so obvious. “We haven’t talked about anything else since you started looking for her. We’ve got a very big club for people from Húsavík here in the city. I’m sure everyone knows you’re looking for that woman.”

  “So it’s the talk of the town?” Sigurdur Óli asked.

  “Three of my friends from the north who now live here have phoned me since last night and this morning I had a call from Húsavík. They’re gossiping about it all the time.”

  “And have you come to any conclusions?”

  “Not really,” she said and looked at her husband. “What was this man supposed to have done to her?”

  She didn’t try to conceal her curiosity. Didn’t try to hide her nosiness. Sigurdur Óli was disgusted by how eager she was to find out the details and
instinctively tried to guard his words.

  “It’s a question of an act of violence,” he said. “We’re looking for the victim, but you probably know that already.”

  “Oh yes. But why? What did he do to her? And why now? I think, or we think,” she said, looking at her husband, who was sitting silently following the conversation, “it’s so strange how it matters after all these years. I heard she was raped. Was that it?”

  “Unfortunately I can’t divulge any details about the inquiry,” Sigurdur Óli said. “And maybe it doesn’t matter. I don’t think you should make too much fuss about it. When you’re talking to other people, I mean. Is there anything you could tell me that might be useful?”

  The couple looked at each other.

  “Make too much fuss about it?” she said, surprised. “We’re not making any fuss about it. Do you think we’re making any fuss about it, Eyvi?” She looked at her husband, who seemed unaware how to answer. “Go on, answer me!” she said sharply and he gave a start.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that, that’s not right.”

  Sigurdur Óli’s mobile phone rang. He didn’t keep it loose in his pocket like Erlendur, but in a smart holder attached to the belt around his stiffly pressed trousers. Sigurdur Óli asked the couple to excuse him, stood up and answered the phone. It was Erlendur.

  “Can you meet me at Holberg’s flat?” he asked.

  “What’s going on?” Sigurdur Óli said.

  “More digging,” Erlendur said and rang off.

  When Sigurdur Óli drove into Nordurmýri, Erlendur and Elínborg were already there. Erlendur was standing in the doorway to the basement smoking a cigarette. Elínborg was inside the flat. As far as Sigurdur Óli could see she was having a good sniff around, she stuck her head out and sniffed, exhaled and then tried somewhere else. He looked at Erlendur who shrugged and threw his cigarette into the garden and they went inside the flat together.

  “What kind of smell do you think there is in here?” Erlendur asked Sigurdur Óli, and Sigurdur Óli started sniffing at the air like Elínborg. They walked from room to room with their noses in the air, except Erlendur who had a particularly poor sense of smell after so many years of smoking.