“I don’t remember anyone by that name. Do you have a photograph of him?”
“I need to get one. Find out if any of the staff recognise him. It might ring a bell somewhere. Even the tiniest detail could be important.”
“Hopefully you’ll get it all sorted,” the manager grunted. “We’ve had cancellations because of the murder. Icelanders mostly The tourists haven’t heard so much about it. But the buffet’s not so busy and our bookings are down. I should never have allowed him to live down there in the basement. Bloody kindness will be the death of me.”
“You positively ooze with it,” Erlendur said.
The manager looked at Erlendur, unsure whether he was mocking him. The head of forensics came out into the corridor to them, greeted the manager and drew Erlendur to one side.
“It all looks like a typical tourist in a double room in a Reykjavik hotel,” he said. “The murder weapon isn’t lying on his bedside table, if that’s what you were hoping for, and there are no bloodstained clothes in his suitcase — nothing to connect him with the man in the basement really. The room’s covered with fingerprints. But he’s obviously done a runner. He left his room as if he was on his way down to the bar. His electric shaver is still plugged in. Spare pairs of shoes on the floor. And some slippers he’d brought with him. That’s really all we can say at this stage. The man was in a hurry. He was fleeing.”
The head of forensics went back into the room and Erlendur walked over to the manager.
“Who does the cleaning on this corridor?” he asked. “Who goes into the rooms? Don’t the cleaners share the floors out between them?”
“I know which women do this floor,” the manager said. “There are no men. For some reason.”
He said this sarcastically, as if cleaning was obviously not a man’s job.
“And who are they then?” Erlendur asked.
“Well, the girl you talked to, for example.”
“Which girl I talked to?”
* * *
“The one in the basement,” the manager said. “Who found the body. The girl who found the dead Santa. This is her floor.”
When Erlendur went back to his room two storeys above, Eva Lind was waiting for him in the corridor. She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, with her knees up under her chin, and appeared to be asleep. When he walked over she looked up and smoothed out her clothes.
“It’s fantastic coming to this hotel,” she said. “When are you going to get your arse back home?”
“The plan was soon,” Erlendur said. “I’m growing tired of this place too.”
He slid his card into the slot on the door. Eva Lind got to her feet and followed him inside. Erlendur closed the door and Eva threw herself flat out onto his bed. He sat down at the desk.
“Getting anywhere with the bizz?” Eva asked, lying on her stomach with her eyes closed as if trying to fall asleep.
“Very slowly,” Erlendur said. “And stop calling it “bizz”. What’s wrong with “business”, or even “case”?”
“Aw, shut your face,” Eva Lind said, her eyes still closed. Erlendur smiled. He looked at his daughter on the bed and wondered what kind of parent he would have been. Would he have made great demands on her? Signed her up for ballet classes? Hoped she was a little genius? Would he have hit her if she had knocked his chartreuse onto the floor?
“Are you there?” she asked, eyes still closed.
“Yes, I’m here,” Erlendur said wearily.
“Why don’t you say anything?”
“What am I supposed to say? What are people ever supposed to say?”
“Well, what you’re doing at this hotel, for instance. Seriously.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to go back to the flat. It’s a bit of a change.”
“Change! What’s the difference between hanging around by yourself in this room and hanging around by yourself at home?”
“Do you want to hear some music?” Erlendur asked, trying to steer the conversation away from himself. He began outlining the case to his daughter, point by point, to gain some kind of a picture of it himself. He told her about the girl who found a stabbed Santa, once an exceptionally gifted choirboy who had made two records that were sought-after by collectors. His voice was unique.
He reached for the record he had yet to listen to. It contained two hymns and was clearly designed for Christmas. On the sleeve was Gudlaugur wearing a Santa hat, with a wide smile showing his adult teeth, and Erlendur thought about the irony of fate. He put the record on and the choirboy’s voice resounded around the room in beautiful, bitter-sweet song. Eva Lind opened her eyes and sat up on the bed.
“Are you joking?” she said.
“Don’t you think it’s magnificent?”
“I’ve never heard a kid sing like that,” Eva said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone sing so beautifully” They sat in silence and listened to the end of the song. Erlendur reached over to the record player, turned the record over and played the hymn on the other side. They listened to it, and when it was over Eva Lind asked him to play it again.
Erlendur told her about Gudlaugur’s family, the concert in Hafnarfjordur, his father and sister who had not been in touch with him for more than thirty years, and the British collector who tried to leave the country and was only interested in choirboys. Told her that Gudlaugur’s records might be valuable today.
“Do you think that’s why he got done?” Eva Lind asked. “Because of the records? Because they’re valuable now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are there any still around?”
“I don’t think so,” Erlendur said, “and that’s probably what makes them collectors” items. Elinborg says collectors look for something that’s unique. But that might not be important. Maybe someone at the hotel attacked him. Someone who didn’t know about the choirboy at all.”
Erlendur decided not to tell his daughter about the way Gudlaugur was found. He knew that when she was taking drugs she had prostituted herself and knew how it operated in Reykjavik. Yet he flinched from broaching that subject with her. She lived her own life and had her own way without him ever having any say in the matter. But since he thought there was a possibility that Gudlaugur had paid for sex at the hotel, he asked her if she knew of any prostitution there.
Eva Lind looked at her father.
“Poor bloke,” she said without answering him. Her mind was still on the choirboy. “There was a girl like that at my school. Primary school. She made a few records. Her name was Vala Dogg. You remember anything by her? She was really hyped. Sang Christmas carols. A pretty little blonde girl.”
Erlendur shook his head.
“She was a child star. Sang on children’s hour and TV shows and sang really well, a little sweetie-pie sort of type. Her dad was some obscure pop singer but it was her mum who was a bit of a nutter and wanted to make a pop star out of her. She got teased big time. She was really nice, not a show-off or pretentious in the least, but people were always bugging her. Icelanders get jealous and annoyed so easily. She was bullied, so she left school and got a job. I met her a lot when I was doing dope and she’d turned into a total creep. Worse than me. Burned-out and forgotten. She told me it was the worst thing that ever happened to her.”
“Being a child star?”
“It ruined her. She never escaped from it. Was never allowed to be herself. Her mum was really bossy. Never asked her if it was what she wanted. She liked singing and being in the spotlight and all that, but she had no idea what was going on. She could never be anything more than the little cutie on children’s hour. She was only allowed to have one dimension. She was pretty little Vala Dogg. And then she got teased about it, and couldn’t understand why until she got older and realised that she’d never be anything but a pretty little dolly singing in her frock. That she’d never be a world-famous pop star like her mum always told her.”
Eva Lind stopped talking and looked at her father.
“Gudlaugur probably went through the same,” Erlendur said. “He left home young. It must be a strain for kids having to go through all that.”
They fell silent.
“Of course there are tarts at this hotel,” Eva Lind suddenly said, throwing herself back on the bed. “Obviously.”
“What do you know about it? Is there anything you could help me with?”
“There are tarts everywhere. You can dial a number and they wait for you at the hotel. Classy tarts. They don’t call themselves tarts, they provide “escort services”.”
“Do you know of any who work this hotel? Girls or women who do that?”
“They don’t have to be Icelandic. They’re imported too. They can come over as tourists for a couple of weeks, then they don’t need any papers. Then come back a few months later.”
Eva Lind looked at her father.
“You could talk to Stina. She’s my friend. She knows the game. Do you think it was a tart who killed him?”
“I have no idea.”
They fell silent. Outside in the darkness snowflakes glittered as they fell to the ground. Erlendur vaguely recalled a reference to snow in the Bible, sins and snow, and tried to remember it: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
“I’m freaking out,” Eva Lind said. There was no excitement in her voice. No eagerness.
“Maybe you can’t handle it by yourself,” Erlendur said; he had urged his daughter to seek counselling. “Maybe you need someone other than me to help you.”
“Don’t give me that psychology bollocks,” Eva said.
“You haven’t got over it and you don’t look well, and soon you’ll go and take the pain away the old way, then you’re back in exactly the same mess as before.”
Erlendur was on the verge of saying the sentence he still had not dared to say out loud to his daughter.
“Preaching all the time,” Eva Lind said, instantly on edge, and she stood up.
He decided to fire away.
“You’d be failing the baby that died.”
Eva Lind stared at her father, her eyes black with rage.
“The other option you have is to come to terms with this fucking life, as you call it, and put up with the suffering it involves. Put up with the suffering we all have to endure, always, to get through that and find and enjoy the happiness and joy that it brings us as well, in spite of our being alive.”
“Speak for yourself! You can’t even go home at Christmas because there’s nothing there! Not a fucking thing and you can’t go there because you know it’s just a hole with nothing in it which you can’t be bothered to crawl back into any more.”
“I’m always at home at Christmas,” Erlendur said.
Eva Lind looked confused.
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s the worst thing about Christmas,” Erlendur said. “I always go home.”
“I don’t understand you,” Eva Lind said, opening the door. I’ll never understand you.”
She slammed the door behind her. Erlendur stood up to run after her, but stopped. He knew that she would come back. He walked over to the window and watched his reflection in the glass until he could see through it into the darkness and the glittering snowflakes.
He had forgotten his decision to go home to the hole with nothing in it, as Eva Lind put it. He turned from the window and set Gudlaugur’s hymns playing again, stretched out on his bed and listened to the boy who, much later, would be found murdered in a little room at a hotel, and thought about sins as white as snow.
FOURTH DAY
17
He woke up early in the morning, still in his clothes and lying on top of the quilt. It took him a long time to shake off the sleep. A dream about his father followed him into the dark morning and he struggled to remember it but caught only snatches: his father, younger in some way, fitter, smiled at him in a deserted forest.
His hotel room was dark and cold. The sun would not be up for a few hours yet. He lay thinking about the dream, his father and the loss of his brother. How the unbearable loss had made a hole in his world. And how the hole was continually growing and he stepped back from its edge to look down into the void that was ready to swallow him when finally he let go.
He shook off these waking fantasies and thought about his tasks for the day. What was Henry Wapshott hiding? Why did he tell lies and make a forlorn attempt to flee, drunk and without luggage? His behaviour puzzled Erlendur. And before long his thoughts stopped at the boy in the hospital bed and his father: Elinborgs case, which she had explained to him in detail.
Elinborg suspected that the boy had been maltreated before and there were strong indications that it happened at home. The father was under suspicion. She insisted on having him remanded in custody for the duration of the investigation. A week’s custody was granted, against vociferous protests from both the father and his lawyer. When the warrant was issued Elinborg went to fetch him with four uniformed police officers and accompanied him down to Hverfisgata. She led him along the prison corridor and locked the door to his cell herself. She pulled back the hatch on the door and looked in at the man who was standing on the same spot with his back turned to her, hunched up and somehow helpless, like everyone who is removed from human society and kept like an animal in a cage.
He slowly turned round and looked her in the eye from the other side of the steel door, and she slid the hatch shut on him.
Early the next morning she began questioning him. Erlendur took part but Elinborg was in charge of the interrogation. The two of them sat facing him in the interrogation room. On the table between them was an ashtray screwed down to the table. The father was unshaven, wearing a crumpled suit and a scruffy white shirt buttoned at the neck with a tie knotted impeccably, as if it represented the last vestiges of his self-respect.
Elinborg switched on the tape recorder and recorded the interview, the names of those present and the number assigned to the case. She had prepared herself well. She had met the boy’s supervisor from school who talked about dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and poor school performance; a psychologist, a friend of hers, who talked about disappointment, stress and denial; and talked to the boy’s friends, neighbours, relatives, everyone whom it occurred to her to ask about the boy and his father.
The man would not yield He accused them of persecution, announced that he would sue them, and refused to answer their questions. Elinborg looked at Erlendur. A warden appeared who pushed the man to his cell again.
Two days later he was brought back for questioning. His lawyer had brought him more comfortable clothes from home and he was now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a designer label on one of the breast pockets, which he wore like a medal rewarding him for absurdly expensive shopping. He was in a different frame of mind now. Three days in custody had dampened his arrogance, as it tends to do, and he saw that it depended on him alone whether he would stay confined in the cells or not.
Elinborg made sure that he came in for interrogation barefoot. His shoes and socks were taken away without explanation. When he sat down in front of them he tried to pull his feet under his chair.
Elinborg and Erlendur sat facing him, intractable. The tape recorder whirred softly.
“I talked to your son’s teacher,” Elinborg said. “And although what happens and passes between parent and teacher is confidential and she was very firm about that, she wanted to help the boy, help in the criminal case. She told me you assaulted him once in front of her.”
Assaulted him! I gave him a little rap on the jaw. That’s hardly what you call assault. He was being naughty, that’s all. Fidgeting all over the place. He’s difficult. You don’t know about that sort of thing. The strain.”
“So it’s right to punish him?”
&n
bsp; “We’re good friends, my boy and I,” the father said. “I love him. I’m responsible for him all by myself. His mother…”
“I know about his mother,” Elinborg said. And of course it can be difficult bringing up a child by yourself. But what you did to him and do to him is … it’s indescribable.”
The father sat and said nothing.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said eventually.
Elinborg crossed her legs and caught her foot on the father’s shin as she did so.
“Sorry? Elinborg said.
He winced, unsure whether she had done it on purpose.
“The teacher said you make unrealistic demands on your son,” she said, unruffled. “Is that true?”
“What’s unrealistic? I want him to get an education and make something of himself.”
“Understandably,” Elinborg said. “But he’s eight years old, dyslexic and borderline hyperactive. You didn’t finish school yourself?
“I own and run my own business.”
“Which is bankrupt. You’re losing your house, your fancy car, the wealth that’s brought you a certain social status. People look up to you. When the old classmates have a reunion you’re sure to be the big shot. Those golfing trips with your mates. You’re losing everything. How infuriating, especially when you bear in mind that your wife is in a psychiatric ward and your son’s behind at school. It all mounts up, and in the end you explode when Addi, who’s surely spilled milk and dropped plates on the floor all his life, knocks a bottle of Drambuie onto the marble floor of your lounge.”
The father looked at her. His expression did not change.
Elinborg had visited his wife at Kleppur mental hospital. She suffered from schizophrenia and sometimes had to be admitted when she began hallucinating and the voices overwhelmed her. When Elinborg met her she was on such strong medication that she could hardly speak. Sat rocking backwards and forwards and asked Elinborg for a cigarette. Had no idea why she was visiting her.
“I’m trying to bring him up as best I can,” the father said in the interrogation room.
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