Jar City

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Sigurdur Óli watched when they started drilling holes into the floor and then set up two monitors that were connected to the two cameras that forensics were using. The cameras were little more than pipes with a light on the front which were slipped into the holes and could be moved by remote control. Holes were drilled in the floor where it was thought to be hollow underneath, they slipped the cameras inside and switched on the two monitors. The picture came out in black-and-white and seemed of very poor quality to Sigurdur Óli, who owned a German television set costing half a million crowns.

  Erlendur arrived at the basement just as they were starting to probe with the cameras and shortly afterwards Elínborg turned up. Sigurdur Óli noticed Erlendur had shaved and was wearing clean clothes which looked almost as though they’d been ironed.

  “Anything happening?” Erlendur asked and lit a cigarette, to Sigurdur Óli’s chagrin.

  “They’re going to do a camera probe,” Sigurdur Óli said. “We can watch it on the screen.”

  “Nothing in the sewage?” Erlendur said, sucking down the smoke.

  “Bugs and rats, nothing else.”

  “Filthy stench down here,” Elínborg said and took out a perfumed handkerchief that she carried in her handbag. Erlendur offered her a cigarette, but she declined.

  “Holberg could have used the hole the plumber made to put Grétar under the floor,” Erlendur said. “He would have seen it was hollow under the base plate and could have moved the gravel around once he’d put Grétar wherever he wanted.”

  They gathered around the screen but couldn’t make out very much of what they saw. A little glow of light moved back and forth, up and down and to the sides. Sometimes they thought they could see the outline of the base plate and sometimes they appeared to see gravel. The ground had subsided to varying degrees. In some places it was right up to the plate, but elsewhere there was a gap of up to three feet.

  They stood for a good while watching the cameras. It was noisy in the basement because the forensic team was continually drilling new holes and Erlendur soon lost his patience and walked out. Elínborg quickly followed him and then Sigurdur Óli. They all got into Erlendur’s car. He had told them the previous evening why he suddenly left for Keflavík, but they hadn’t had the opportunity to discuss it any further.

  “Of course it fits in with the message that was left behind in Nordurmýri. And if the man Elín saw in Keflavík looks so much like Holberg, that fits in with the theory about his second child.”

  “Holberg may not have had a son after the rape,” Sigurdur Óli said. “We’ve got no evidence as such to support that, except that Ellidi knew about another woman. That’s all there is. Besides which, Ellidi’s a moron.”

  “No-one we’ve talked to who knew Holberg has mentioned he had a son,” Elínborg said.

  “No-one we’ve talked to knew Holberg in the first place,” Sigurdur Óli said. “That’s the point. He was a loner, socialised with a few workmates, downloaded porn from the Internet, went around with jerks like Ellidi and Grétar. No-one knows anything about the guy.”

  “What I’m wondering is this,” Erlendur said. “If Holberg’s son does exist, how does he know about Elín, Audur’s aunt? Doesn’t that mean he must also know about Audur, his sister? If he knows about Elín, I presume he knows about Kolbrún and the rape as well, and I can’t work out how. There haven’t been any details about the investigation in the media. Where would he get his information from?”

  “Couldn’t he have got this out of Holberg before he bumped him off?” Sigurdur Óli said. “Isn’t that likely?”

  “Maybe he tortured him to make him confess,” Elínborg said.

  “First of all, we don’t know whether this man even exists,” Erlendur said. “Elín was very emotional when she saw him. Even assuming he is real, we don’t have any idea if he killed Holberg. Nor whether he even knew of his father’s existence, having been born under those circumstances, after a rape. Ellidi said there was a woman before Kolbrún who got the same treatment, maybe worse. If she got pregnant by it, I doubt that the mother would have been too eager to name the father. She didn’t notify the police about what happened. We don’t have anything about Holberg’s other rapes in our files. We still have to find this woman, if she exists…”

  “And we’re smashing up the foundations of a house to look for a man who probably has nothing to do with the case,” Sigurdur Óli said.

  “Maybe Grétar isn’t under the foundations here,” Elínborg said.

  “How come?” Erlendur said.

  “Maybe he’s still alive, you mean?” Sigurdur Óli said.

  “He knew all about Holberg, I’d imagine,” Elínborg said. “He knew about the daughter, otherwise he wouldn’t have taken a photograph of her grave. He definitely knew how she came into the world. If Holberg had another child, a son, he would have known about him too.”

  Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli looked at her with growing interest.

  “Maybe Grétar’s still with us,” she continued, “and in touch with the son. That’s one explanation for how the son could know about Elín and Audur.”

  “But Grétar went missing a good 25 years ago and hasn’t been heard of since,” Sigurdur Óli said.

  “Just because he went missing doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead,” Elínborg said.

  “So that…” Erlendur began, but Elínborg interrupted him.

  “I don’t think we can rule him out. Why not allow for the possibility that Grétar is still alive? No body was ever found. He could have left the country. It could have been enough for him to move to the countryside. No-one gave a damn. No-one missed him.”

  “I don’t remember any instance of that,” Erlendur said.

  “Of what?” Sigurdur Óli asked.

  “A missing person returning a whole generation later. When people disappear in Iceland it’s always for good. No-one ever comes back after an absence of more than 25 years. Never.”

  31

  Erlendur left his colleagues in Nordurmýri and went up to Barónsstígur to meet the pathologist. The pathologist was completing his autopsy on Holberg and was covering up the body when Erlendur went up to him. Audur’s body was nowhere to be seen.

  “Have you found the girl’s brain?” the pathologist asked straight out when Erlendur walked in on him.

  “No,” Erlendur said.

  “I talked to a professor, an old girlfriend of mine from the university, and explained it to her, I hope that was all right, and she wasn’t surprised about our little discovery. That short story by Halldór Laxness, have you read it?”

  “The one about Nebuchadnezzar? It has crossed my mind in the past couple of days,” Erlendur said.

  “Isn’t it called ‘Lily’, that story? It’s a long time since I read it, but it’s about some medical students who snatch a body and put rocks in the coffin, and basically that’s what happens. No-one kept any real tabs on that in the old days, just as the story describes. People who died in hospital had autopsies unless it was forbidden and of course the autopsy was used for teaching purposes. Sometimes samples were removed and they could be anything really, from whole organs to minor tissue samples. Then everything was wrapped up and the person in question was given a decent burial. These days it’s rather different. An autopsy is performed only if the relatives give their consent and organs are removed for research and teaching purposes only if certain conditions are met. I don’t think anything is stolen nowadays.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  The pathologist shrugged.

  “We’re not talking about organ transplants, are we?” Erlendur said.

  “A completely different matter. People are generally prepared to help others if it’s a question of life and death.”

  “And where’s the organ bank?”

  “There are thousands of samples in this building alone,” the pathologist said. “Here on Barónsstígur. The largest part of it is the Dungal collection, which is the largest bio-samp
le bank in Iceland.”

  “Could you show it to me?” Erlendur asked. “Is there a register of where the samples come from?”

  “It’s all carefully documented. I took the liberty of checking for our sample but I couldn’t find it.”

  “Where is it then?”

  “You ought to talk to the professor and hear what she has to say. I think there are some registers up at the university.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this straightaway?” Erlendur asked. “When you discovered the brain had been removed? You knew about it?”

  “Talk to her and come back. I’ve probably told you far too much already.”

  “Are the registers for the collection in the university?”

  “As far as I know,” the pathologist said, gave him the professor’s name and told him to let him get on with his work.

  “So you know about Jar City then,” Erlendur said.

  “They used to call one room here Jar City,” the pathologist said. “It’s closed now. Don’t ask me what happened to the jars, I haven’t got the faintest idea.”

  “Do you find this uncomfortable to talk about?”

  “Will you stop this.”

  “What?”

  “Stop it.”

  The professor, Hanna, who was head of the University of Iceland’s Faculty of Medicine, stared across the desk at Erlendur as if he were a cancerous growth that needed to be removed from her office at the earliest possible opportunity. She was somewhat younger than Erlendur but extremely firm, spoke fast and was quick to reply, and gave the impression that she couldn’t stand any nonsense or unnecessary digressions. She asked Erlendur quite brashly to get to the point when he embarked upon a long speech about his reasons for being in her office. Erlendur smiled to himself. He took an immediate liking to her and knew they’d be at each other’s throats before their meeting was over. She was wearing a dark suit, plump, no make-up, short, blond hair, her hands practical, her expression serious and profound. Erlendur would have liked to see her smile. His wish was not granted.

  He had disturbed her during a lecture. Knocked on the door to ask for her as if he’d lost his way. She came to the door and asked him kindly to wait until the lecture was over. Erlendur stood in the corridor, as if he had been caught playing truant, for a quarter of an hour before the door opened. Hanna strode out into the corridor and past Erlendur and told him to follow her. He had trouble doing so. She seemed to take two steps for every one of his.

  “I can’t understand what the CID wants of me,” she said as she breezed along, turning her head slightly as if to reassure herself that Erlendur was keeping up with her.

  “You’ll find out,” Erlendur panted.

  “I certainly hope so,” Hanna said and showed him into her office.

  When Erlendur told her his business she sat and thought about it for a long time. Erlendur managed to slow her down a little with the account of Audur and her mother and the autopsy, the diagnosis and the brain that had been removed.

  “Which hospital did you say the girl was admitted to?” she asked eventually.

  “Keflavík. How do you obtain organs for teaching?”

  Hanna stared at Erlendur.

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “You use human organs for teaching purposes,” Erlendur said. “Bio-samples, I think they’re called, I’m no expert, but the question is very simple. Where do you get them from?”

  “I don’t think I need to tell you anything about that,” she said and started to fiddle with some papers lying on her desk as if she was too busy to pay proper attention to Erlendur.

  “It’s quite important to us,” Erlendur said, “to us at the police, to find out if the brain still exists. Conceivably it’s in your records. It was studied at the time but not returned to its rightful place. There may be a perfectly straightforward explanation. The tumour took time to examine and the body had to be buried. The university and hospitals are the most likely places for storing organs. You can sit there with your poker face, but I can do a couple of things to cause a bit of aggro for you, the university and the hospitals. Just think what a pain the media can be sometimes, and I just happen to have a couple of friends on the papers.”

  Hanna took a long look at Erlendur, who stared back.

  “A crow starves sitting,” she said eventually.

  “But finds flying,” Erlendur completed the proverb.

  “That was really the only rule in this respect, but I can’t tell you anything, as you can possibly imagine. These are fairly sensitive issues.”

  “I’m not investigating it as a criminal act,” Erlendur said. “I don’t even know whether an organ theft was involved. What you do to dead people is none of my business, if it’s kept within reasonable limits.”

  Hanna’s expression turned even more ferocious.

  “If this is what the medical profession needs, I’m sure it can be justified to some people. I need to locate a specific organ from a specific individual to study it again and if we can trace its history from the time it was removed until the present day I’d be extremely grateful. This is private information for my own purposes.”

  “What kind of private information?”

  “I’m not interested in letting this go any further. We need to get the organ back if possible. What I was wondering is whether it wouldn’t have sufficed to take a sample, whether the whole organ needed to be removed.”

  “Of course I don’t know the specific case to which you’re referring but there are stricter rules in force about autopsies now than in the old days,” Hanna said after some thought. “If this case was in the ’60s it could have happened, I wouldn’t rule that out. You say the girl was given an autopsy against her mother’s will. It’s hardly the first instance of that. Today, the relatives are asked immediately after a death if an autopsy can be performed. I think I can say that their wishes are honoured apart from absolutely exceptional cases. That would have applied in this case. Child mortality is the most terrible of all things to deal with. There’s no way to describe the tragedy that strikes people who lose a child and the question of an autopsy can be uncomfortable in such cases.”

  Hanna paused.

  “We have some of this on record on our computers,” she continued, “and the rest is in the archive stored in this building. They keep fairly detailed records. The hospitals’ largest collection of organs is on Barónsstígur. You realise that little medical teaching takes place here on campus. It’s done in the hospitals. That’s where the knowledge comes from.”

  “The pathologist didn’t want to show me the organ bank,” Erlendur said. “He wanted me to talk to you first. Does the university have any say in the matter?”

  “Come on,” Hanna said, without answering his question. “Let’s see what’s in the computers.”

  She stood up and Erlendur followed her. She used a key to unlock a spacious room and entered a password in a security device on the wall by the door. She went over to a desk and switched on a computer while Erlendur took a look around. There were no windows in the room and rows of filing cabinets stood against the walls. Hanna asked for Audur’s name and date of death and entered it in the computer.

  “It’s not here,” she said thoughtfully, glaring at the monitor. “Computer records only go back to 1984. We’re digitising all the data from the time the medical faculty was established, but we haven’t got any further than that with our records yet.”

  “So it’s the filing cabinets then,” Erlendur said.

  “I really don’t have the time for all this,” Hanna said, looking at the clock. “I’m supposed to be in the lecture theatre again.”

  She went over to Erlendur and took a quick look around, walked between the cabinets and read their labels. She pulled out a drawer here and there and browsed through the documents, but quickly closed them again. Erlendur had no idea what the files contained.

  “Have you got medical records in here?” he asked.

  Hanna g
roaned. “Don’t tell me you’re here for the data privacy committee,” she said and slammed yet another drawer shut.

  “Only asked,” Erlendur said.

  Hanna took out a report and read from it.

  “Here’s something about bio-samples,” she said. “1968. There are several names here. Nothing you’re interested in.” She put the report back in the cabinet, shoved the drawer closed and pulled out another one. “Here are some more,” she said. “Wait a minute. Here’s the girl’s name, Audur, and her mother’s name. Here it is.”

  Hanna read quickly through the report.

  “One organ removed,” she said, as if to herself. “Taken at Keflavík hospital. Permission of next of kin…nothing there. There’s nothing here about the organ being destroyed.”

  Hanna closed the file. “It’s not around any more.”

  “May I see that?” Erlendur asked, not attempting to conceal his eagerness.

  “You won’t learn anything from it,” Hanna said, put the file back in the drawer and closed it. “I’ve told you what you need to know.”

  “What does it say? What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing,” Hanna said, “and now I have to get back to my teaching.”

  “Then I’ll get a warrant and come back later today and that report had better be where it belongs,” Erlendur said and walked in the direction of the door.

  “Do you promise that the information from here won’t go any further?” she said when Erlendur had opened the door and was about to leave.

  “I’ve told you that. This is private information, for me.”

  “Take a look at it then,” Hanna said, reopened the cabinet and handed him the file.

  Erlendur closed the door, took the file and immersed himself in it. Hanna took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one while she waited for Erlendur to finish reading. She ignored the no smoking sign and soon the room was filled with smoke.

  “Who’s Eydal?”

  “One of our most accomplished medical scientists.”

  “What was it here that you didn’t want me to see? Can’t I talk to this man?”