“Don’t say I’m getting anything mixed up. Don’t say that! I know exactly what I’m saying.”
“Which man who attacked Kolbrún?”
“Well, HOLBERG!” Instead of raising her voice, Elín hissed down the phone. “He’s standing outside my house!”
Erlendur said nothing.
“Are you there?” Elín whispered. “What are you going to do?”
“Elín,” Erlendur said emphatically. “It can’t be Holberg. Holberg’s dead. It must be someone else.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby. He’s standing out here in the rain, staring at me. That beast.”
28
The connection broke off and Erlendur started the engine. Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg watched him reverse through the crowd and disappear off down the street. They looked at each other and shrugged as if they’d given up trying to figure him out ages ago.
Before he was even out of the street he had already contacted the Keflavík police and sent them off to Elín’s house to apprehend a man in the vicinity who was wearing a blue anorak, jeans and white trainers. Elín had described the man. He told the sergeant not to switch on the sirens or flashing lights, but to approach as quietly as possible so as not to scare him off.
“Stupid old bag,” Erlendur said to himself and hung up his phone.
He drove out of Reykjavík as fast as he could, through Hafnarfjördur and onto the Keflavík road. The traffic was heavy and visibility was poor, but he zig-zagged between the cars and even onto a traffic island to overtake. He disregarded all the traffic lights and made it to Keflavík in half an hour. It helped him that the CID had recently been issued with blue police lights that they could put on the roofs of their unmarked cars in emergencies. He’d laughed at the time. Recalled the apparatus on a detective programme on television and thought it was ridiculous to go around using thriller props in Reykjavík.
Two police cars were parked outside Elín’s house when he pulled up. Elín was waiting for him inside with three policemen. She said the man had vanished into the dark just before the police cars pulled up at the house. She pointed out where he’d been standing and the direction he ran, but the police could not find any trace of him. The police were baffled about how to deal with Elín, who refused to tell them who the man was and why he was dangerous; his only crime, apparently, was that he had been standing outside her house in the rain. When they put their questions to Erlendur, he told them the man was connected with a murder inquiry in Reykjavík. He told them to inform the Reykjavík police if they came across anyone matching the man’s description.
Elín was fairly agitated and Erlendur decided the wisest move would be to get the police out of her house as quickly as possible. He managed without much effort. They said they had better things to do than chase around after figments of an old woman’s imagination, though they made sure Elín didn’t hear them say it.
“I swear it was him outside,” she said to Erlendur when they were alone in the house. “I don’t know how, but it was him!”
Erlendur looked at her and heard what she was saying and could see that she meant it in all seriousness. He knew she’d been under great strain recently.
“It just doesn’t make sense, Elín. Holberg’s dead. I saw him in the morgue.” He paused to think, then added, “I saw his heart.”
Elín looked at him.
“You think I’m nuts. You think I’m imagining it all. That it’s a way of getting attention because…”
“Holberg’s dead,” Erlendur interrupted her. “What am I supposed to think?”
“Then it was the spitting image of him,” Elín said.
“Describe this man to me in more detail.”
Elín stood up, went to the sitting-room window and pointed out at the rain.
“He was standing there, by the path that leads out to the street between the houses. Stood completely still and looked in at me. I don’t know if he saw me. I tried to hide from him. I was reading and I got up when it started to get dark in the sitting room and I was going to switch on the light when I happened to look out of the window. His head was bare and it was like he couldn’t care less if he got soaked through. Even though he was standing just there, somehow he still seemed miles away.”
Elín thought for a moment. “He had black hair and looked around 40. Average height.”
“Elín,” Erlendur said. “It’s dark outside. Pouring rain. You can hardly see out of the window. The path isn’t lit. You wear glasses. Are you telling me that…”
“It was only just starting to get dark then and I didn’t run for the phone straightaway. I had a good look at the man out of this window and the kitchen window. It took me quite a while to realise it was Holberg, or someone like him. The path isn’t lit, but there’s a fair amount of traffic in the street and every time a car went past it lit him up so I could see his face clearly.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He was the image of Holberg when he was younger,” Elín said. “Not the old bloke in the photo in the papers.”
“Did you see Holberg when he was younger?”
“Yes, I saw him. Kolbrún was called down to the CID once, out of the blue. They told her they needed a more detailed explanation about some part of her statement. All bloody lies. Someone called Marion Briem was handling the case. What kind of a name is that anyway? Marion Briem? They told Kolbrún to go to Reykjavík. She asked me to go with her and I did. She had an appointment, I think it was in the morning. We went in there and that Marion met us and showed us into a room. We’d been sitting there a while when the door suddenly opened and Holberg walked in. That Marion was standing behind him by the door.”
Elín paused.
“And what happened?” Erlendur asked.
“My sister had a breakdown. Holberg was grinning and he made some obscene gesture with his tongue and Kolbrún grabbed me like she was drowning. She couldn’t breathe. Holberg started laughing and Kolbrún had a fit. She rolled her eyes, started foaming at the mouth and fell on the floor. Marion took Holberg back out but I saw that beast there for the first and only time and I’ll never forget that ugly mug of his.”
“And you saw that same face outside your window tonight?”
Elín nodded.
“I was shocked, I admit that, and of course it can’t have been Holberg in person, but the man looked exactly like him.”
Erlendur wondered whether he should tell Elín about his recent train of thought. He weighed up how much he could tell her and whether there was any certainty that what he would say had any foundation in reality. They sat in silence while he thought it over. It was late evening and Erlendur’s thoughts turned to Eva Lind. He felt the pain in his chest again and stroked it as if that would make it go away.
“Are you all right?” Elín asked.
“We’ve been working on something recently, but I haven’t got a clue if there’s anything behind it,” Erlendur said. “But what happened here supports the theory. If Holberg had another victim, if he raped another woman, there’s a chance she had his child just like Kolbrún did. I’ve been wondering about that possibility because of the note we found with Holberg’s body. It’s possible he had a son. If the rape took place before 1964 that son would be close to 40 today. And it could have been him standing outside your house here tonight.”
Elín looked at Erlendur, thunderstruck.
“Holberg’s son? Could that be?”
“You said he was the spitting image of him.”
“Yes, but…”
“I’m sort of turning it over in my mind. Somewhere in this case there’s a missing link and I think this man could well be it.”
“But why? What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t you think that’s obvious?”
“What’s obvious?”
“You’re his sister’s aunt,” Erlendur said and watched the expression on Elín’s face change as it gradually dawned on her what Erlendur meant.
“Audu
r was his sister,” she said. “But how could he know about me? How could he know where I live? How could he link Holberg with me? There’s been nothing about his past in the papers, nothing about his rapes or him having a daughter. No-one knew about Audur. How does that man know who I am?”
“Maybe he’ll tell us that when we find him.”
“Is he Holberg’s killer, do you reckon?”
“Now you’re asking me if he murdered his own father,” Erlendur said.
Elín thought. “My God,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “If you see him outside again, call me.”
Elín had stood up and gone to the window facing the path as if expecting to see him there again.
“I know I was a bit hysterical when I phoned you and said Holberg was here because I felt for a moment that it could be him. It was such a terrible shock seeing him. But I didn’t feel scared. I was angry more than anything, but there was something about the man, the way he was standing, the way he bowed his head. There was something sad about him, in his face, some kind of sorrow. I thought to myself that he couldn’t be feeling well. He can’t feel well. Was he in touch with his father? Do you know?”
“I don’t know for sure that he actually exists,” Erlendur said. “What you saw supports one theory. We have no leads on that man. There aren’t any photos of him at Holberg’s flat if that’s what you mean. But someone did phone Holberg several times shortly before he was murdered and he was nervous about those calls. We don’t know any more than that.”
Erlendur took out his mobile phone and asked Elín to excuse him for a moment.
“What the bloody hell have you got us into now?” Sigurdur Óli shouted in a clearly furious voice. “They hit the shit pipe and it was swarming with filthy bugs, millions of disgusting little bugs under the sodding floor. It’s disgusting. Where the hell are you?”
“Keflavík. Any sign of Grétar?”
“No, there’s no sodding sign of any fucking Grétar,” Sigurdur Óli said and rang off.
“There’s one more thing, Inspector,” Elín said, “I just realised it when you talked about him being related to Audur. I can see now that I was right. I didn’t understand it then, but there was another look on his face that I thought I’d never see again. It was a face from the past that I’ve never forgotten.”
“What was it?” Erlendur said.
“That was why I didn’t feel scared of him. I didn’t realise at first. He reminded me of Audur too. There was something about him that reminded me of Audur.”
29
Sigurdur Óli returned his mobile phone to the holder on his belt and walked back to the house. He’d been inside with several other policemen when the pneumatic drill penetrated the base plate and the stench that came out was so overpowering that he retched. He rushed for the door like everyone else inside and thought he would vomit before he made it out into the fresh air. When they went back in they wore goggles and masks over their mouths, but the horrendous smell still penetrated them.
The drill operator widened the hole over the broken sewage pipe. It was easy going once he was through the floor. Sigurdur Óli dreaded to think how long ago the pipe had been broken. It looked as if waste had been collecting in a large area under the floor. There was a faintly discernable steam rising up from the hole. He shone a torch down at the patch of filth and from what he could see the ground had subsided by at least half a yard from the base plate.
The patch of filth was like a thick, swarming trunk of little black bugs. He jumped back when he saw some kind of creature dart past the beam of light.
“Watch out!” he shouted and strode out of the basement. “There are rats under that bloody thing. Close up the hole and call in pest control. Let’s stop here. Stop everything this minute!”
No-one objected. One of the forensic team spread a plastic sheet over the hole in the floor and the basement was empty in a flash. Sigurdur Óli tore off his mask when he came out of the basement and voraciously gulped down the fresh air. They all did.
On his way home from Keflavík, Erlendur heard about the progress of the investigation in Nordurmýri. A pest-control officer had been called out, but the police would take no further action until the following morning when everything that was living in the foundations had been exterminated. Sigurdur Óli had gone home and was getting out of the shower when Erlendur called him for an update. Elínborg had gone home too. A guard was mounted outside Holberg’s flat while the pest-control officer did his work. Two police cars stood outside the house all night.
Eva Lind met her father at the door when he got home. It was past 9 p.m. The bride had left. Before she went she had told Eva Lind she was going to talk to her husband and find out how he was feeling. She wasn’t sure whether she would tell him the real reason for running out of their wedding. Eva Lind urged her to, said she shouldn’t cover up for that bastard of a father of hers. The last thing she should do was cover up for him.
They sat down in the sitting room. Erlendur told Eva Lind all about the murder investigation, where it had led him and what was going through his mind. He did so not least to gain some kind of understanding of the case for his own benefit, a clearer picture of what had been happening over the past few days. He told her almost everything, from the moment they found Holberg’s body in the basement, the smell in his flat, the note, the old photograph in the drawer, the pornography on his computer, the epitaph on the gravestone, Kolbrún and her sister, Elín, Audur and her unexplained death, the dreams that haunted him, Ellidi in prison and Grétar’s disappearance, Marion Briem, the search for Holberg’s other victim and the man in front of Elín’s house, conceivably Holberg’s son. He tried to give a systematic account and discussed with himself various theories and questions, until he reached a dead end and stopped talking.
He didn’t tell Eva Lind the brain was missing from the child’s body. He hadn’t yet begun to understand how that could have happened.
Eva Lind listened to him without interrupting and she noticed how Erlendur rubbed his chest while he talked. She could feel how the Holberg case was affecting him. She could sense an air of resignation about him that she’d never noticed before. She could sense his weariness when he talked about the little girl. It was as if he withdrew inside himself, his voice went quieter and he became increasingly remote.
“Is Audur the girl you told me about when you were shouting at me this morning?” Eva Lind asked.
“She was, I don’t know, maybe some kind of godsend to her mother,” Erlendur said. “She loved the girl beyond death and the grave. Sorry if I’ve been nasty to you. I didn’t intend to, but when I see the way you live, when I see your careless attitude and your lack of self-respect, when I see the destruction, everything you do to yourself and then I watch the little coffin coming up out of the ground, then I can’t understand anything any more. I can’t understand what’s happening and I want to…”
Erlendur fell silent.
“Beat the shit out of me,” Eva Lind finished the sentence for him.
Erlendur shrugged.
“I don’t know what I want to do. Maybe the best thing is to do nothing. Maybe it’s best to let life run its course. Forget the whole business. Start doing something sensible. Why should I want to get involved in all this? All this filth. Talking to people like Ellidi. Doing deals with shits like Eddi. Seeing how people like Holberg get their kicks. Reading rape reports. Digging up the foundations of a house full of bugs and shit. Digging up little coffins.”
Erlendur stroked his chest even harder.
“You think it won’t affect you. You reckon you’re strong enough to withstand that sort of thing. You think you can put on armour against it over the years and can watch all the filth from a distance as if it’s none of your business, and try to keep your senses. But there isn’t any distance. And there’s no armour. No-one’s strong enough. The repulsion haunts you like an evil spirit that burrows into your mind and doesn’t leave you in peace until
you believe that the filth is life itself because you’ve forgotten how ordinary people live. This case is like that. Like an evil spirit that’s been unleashed to run riot in your mind and ends up leaving you crippled.”
Erlendur heaved a deep sigh. “It’s all one great big bloody mire.”
He stopped talking and Eva Lind sat silently with him.
Some time passed like this until she got up, sat down beside her father, put her arm round him and sidled up against him. She could hear his heart beating rhythmically, like a soothing clock, and eventually fell asleep with a contented smile on her face.
30
Around 9 a.m. the following day the forensic and CID teams gathered at Holberg’s house. There was hardly a glimpse of daylight even at that time in the morning. The sky was gloomy and it was still raining. The radio had said the rain in Reykjavík was approaching the record of October 1926.
The sewage pipe had been cleaned and there was nothing left alive in the foundations. The hole in the base plate had been widened so that two men could go down through it at once. The owners of the flats above were standing in a group outside the basement door. They had ordered a plumber to mend the pipe and were waiting to call him in as soon as the police gave permission.
It soon emerged that the hollow area around the sewage pipe was relatively small. It measured about three square yards and was contained because the ground hadn’t sunk away from the base plate everywhere. The pipe had broken in the same place as before. The old repair was visible and there was a different kind of gravel underneath the pipe from that around it. The forensic technicians discussed whether to widen the hole even further, dig up the gravel from the foundations and empty it out until they could see everywhere under the base plate. After some argument they decided that the plate might break if what was under it was removed completely, so they opted for a safer and more technically advanced method, drilling holes through the floor here and there and putting a miniature camera down into the foundations.
Jar City Page 16