Voices de-5

by Arnaldur Indridason

  “We talked to Steffi,” he called into the room. “Her proper name’s Stefania and she was Gudlaugur’s sister.”

  Osp came out of the bathroom.

  “And what, does she deny everything, or…?”

  “No, she doesn’t deny anything,” Erlendur said. “She knows where her fault lies and she’s wondering what went wrong, when it happened and why. She’s feeling bad but is beginning to come to terms with it. It’s tough for her because it’s too late for her to make amends.”

  “Did she confess?”

  “Yes,” Erlendur said. “Most of it. In effect. She didn’t confess in so many words but she knows the part she played.”

  “Most of it? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Osp walked through the doorway past him to fetch detergent and a cloth, then went back into the bathroom. Erlendur walked inside and watched her cleaning as he had done before when the case was still open and she was a kind of friend of his.

  “Everything, really,” he said. “Except the murder. That’s the only thing she’s not going to own up to.”

  Osp sprayed cleaner onto the bathroom mirror, unmoved.

  “But my brother saw her,” she said. “He saw her stab her brother. She can’t deny that. She can’t deny being there.”

  “No,” Erlendur said. “She was down in the basement when he died. It just wasn’t her who stabbed him.”

  “Yes, Reynir saw it,” she said. “She can’t deny it”

  “How much do you owe them?”

  “Owe them?”

  “How much is it?”

  “Owe who? What are you talking about?”

  Osp rubbed the mirror like her life depended on it, like it would all be over if she stopped, the mask would drop and she would have to give up. She went on spraying and polishing, and avoided looking herself in the eye,.

  Erlendur watched her and a phrase from a book he once read about paupers in times of old crossed his mind: she was a bastard child of the world.

  “Elinborg is a colleague of mine who just checked your record at the crisis centre. The rape crisis centre. It was about six months ago. There were three of them. It took place in a hut by Lake Raudavatn. That was all you said. You claimed not to know who they were. They snatched you one Friday night when you were in town, took you to that hut and raped you one after the other.”

  Osp went on polishing the mirror and Erlendur couldn’t see whether what he said had the slightest effect on her.

  “In the end you refused to identify them and refused to press charges”

  Osp did not say a word.

  “You work at this hotel but you don’t earn enough to clear your debts and you don’t earn enough to cover your habit. You’ve managed to keep them at bay with small payments and they give you more stuff, but they’ve been threatening you and you know they follow through with their threats”

  Osp did not look at him.

  “There’s no pilfering at this hotel, is there?” Erlendur said. “You said that to hoodwink us, lead us on a wild goose chase.”

  Erlendur heard a noise it he corridor and saw Elinborg and four police officers in front of the door. He gestured to her to wait.

  “Your brother is in the same position as you. Maybe you have the same account with them, I don’t know. He’s been beaten up. He’s been threatened. Your parents have been threatened. You don’t dare to name these people. The police can’t act because they are only threats, and when these people do do something, seize you and rape you in a hut, you don’t give their names. Nor does your brother.”

  Erlendur paused and watched her.

  “A man phoned me just now. He works for the police, the drug squad. He sometimes gets calls from informants who tell him what they hear on the streets and on the drug scene. He received a call late last night, this morning really, from a man who said he had heard a story about a young girl who was raped six months ago and had trouble paying her dealers, until she settled her debt a couple of days ago. Both for herself and for her brother. Does that sound familiar?”

  Osp shook her head.

  “It doesn’t sound familiar?” Erlendur asked again. “The informant knew the girl’s name and that she worked at the hotel where Santa Claus was killed.”

  Osp went on shaking her head.

  “We know that Gudlaugur had half a million in his room,” Erlendur said.

  She stopped wiping the mirror, dropped her hands to her sides and stared at herself.

  “I’ve been trying to stop.” “Drugs?”

  “It’s pointless. They’re merciless if you owe them.” “Will you tell me who they are?” “I didn’t mean to kill him. He was always nice to me. And then …” “You saw the money?” “I needed the money.”

  “Was it because of the money? That you attacked him?” She didn’t answer.

  “Was it the money? Or was it because of your brother?” “A bit of both,” Osp said in a low voice. “You wanted the money” “Yes.”

  “And he was taking advantage of your brother.” “Yes.”

  * * *

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw her brother on his knees, a pile of money on the bed and the knife, and without a moment’s thought she grabbed the knife and tried to stab Gudlauger. He parried her with his arms but she lurched at him again and again until he stopped thrashing around and slumped against the wall. Blood spurted out of a wound in his chest, his heart.

  The knife was bloodstained, her hands were bloody and blood had spilled onto her coat. Her brother had got up from the floor and run out into the corridor, heading for the stairs.

  Gudlaugur gave a heavy groan.

  A deathly silence descended in the little room. She stared at Gudlaugur and at the knife in her hands. Suddenly Reynir reappeared.

  “Someone’s coming down the stairs,” he whispered.

  He took the money, grabbed his sister who was glued to the spot, and dragged her out of the room and into the alcove at the end of the corridor. They hardly dared to breathe as the woman approached. She peered into the darkness but did not see them.

  When she reached Gudlaugur’s door she let out a muffled scream and they could hear Gudlaugur.

  “Steffi,” he groaned.

  Then they heard nothing more.

  The woman went into the room but they saw her come straight back out. She backed away all the way up against the corridor wall, then suddenly turned away from the room and walked off quickly without so much as a backward glance.

  * * *

  “I threw the coat away and found another one. Reynir got out. I had to go on working. Otherwise you’d have sussed it all out at once, or I thought so anyway. Then I was asked to fetch him for the Christmas party. I couldn’t refuse. I couldn’t do anything that would draw attention to myself. I went down and waited in the corridor. His door was still open but I didn’t go inside. I went back up and said I found him in his room and I thought he was dead.”

  Osp looked down at the floor.

  “The worst thing is he was never anything but kind to me. Maybe that’s why I got so mad. Because he was one of the few people who treated me decently here, and then my brother… I went mental. After everything that…”

  “After everything they did to you?” Erlendur said.

  “There’s no point in bringing charges against those bastards. For the most brutal and bloodiest rapes they maybe get a year, a year and a half inside. Then they come back out. You lot can’t do anything. There’s nowhere to go for help. You just have to pay up. No matter how you go about it. I took the money and I paid. Maybe I killed him for the money. Maybe because of Reynir. I don’t know. I don’t know…”

  She paused.

  “I went mental,” she repeated. “I’ve never felt like that before. Never flown into such a rage. I relived every second in that hut. Saw them. Saw it all happening again. I took the knife and tried to stab him everywhere I could. Tried to slash him and he tried to defend himself but I just stabbed and stabbed and stabbe
d until he stopped moving.”

  She looked at Erlendur.

  “I didn’t realise it was that hard. That hard to kill someone.”

  Elinborg appeared in the doorway and gestured to Erlendur that she couldn’t understand why they didn’t arrest the girl.

  “Where’s the knife?” Erlendur asked.

  “The knife?” Osp said, walking over to him.

  “The one you used.”

  She paused for a moment.

  “I put it back where it belongs,” she said eventually. “I cleaned it as well as I could in the staff coffee room, then got rid of it before you came.”

  “And where is it?”

  “I put it back where it belongs.”

  “In the kitchen, where the cutlery’s kept?”

  “Yes.”

  “The hotel must own five hundred knives like that,” Erlendur said in desperation. “How are we supposed to find it?”

  “You could start in the buffet”

  “The buffet?”

  “Someone’s sure to be using it”

  34

  Erlendur handed over Osp to Elinborg and the officers and hurried up to his room where Eva Lind was waiting for him. He put his card in the slot and threw the door open to find that she had opened the big window completely and was sitting on the windowsill, looking down at the snow falling to the ground several floors below.

  “Eva,” he said calmly.

  Eva said something he couldn’t make out.

  “Come on, dear,” he said, approaching her cautiously.

  “It looks so easy,” Eva Lind said.

  “Eva, come on,” Erlendur said in a low voice. “Home.”

  She turned around. She took a long look at him, and then nodded.

  “Let’s go,” she said quietly, stepped down onto the floor and closed the window.

  He walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Did I rob you of your childhood, Eva?” he said in a low voice.

  “Eh?” she said.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Erlendur took a long look into her eyes. Sometimes he could see white swans in them.

  Now they were black.

  * * *

  Erlendur’s mobile rang in the lift on the way down to the lobby. He recognised the voice at once.

  “I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas,” Valgerdur said, and she seemed to be whispering down the phone.

  “You too,” Erlendur said. “Merry Christmas.”

  In the lobby, Erlendur glanced into the dining room packed with tourists gorging themselves on the Christmas Eve buffet and chattering away in all imaginable languages, their joyful murmuring spreading all over the ground floor. He couldn’t help thinking that one of them was holding a murder weapon in his hands.

  He told the head of reception that Rosant may well have been responsible for sending the woman who slept with him that night and who demanded payment afterwards. The man replied that he was beginning to suspect something of the sort. He had already informed the owners of the hotel about what manager and head waiter were up to, but did not know how they would tackle the matter.

  Erlendur caught a glimpse of the hotel manager looking in astonishment at Eva Lind. He was going to pretend he hadn’t noticed him, but the manager darted into his path.

  “I” just wanted to thank you, and of course you don’t need to pay for your stay!”

  “I’ve already settled,” Erlendur said. “Goodbye.”

  “What about Henry Wapshott?” the manager asked, blocking Erlendur’s way. “What are you going to do with him?”

  Erlendur stopped. He was holding Eva Lind by the hand and she looked at the manager with drowsy eyes.

  “We’re sending him home. Was there anything else?”

  The manager dithered.

  “Are you going to do anything about those lies the girl told you about the conference guests?”

  Erlendur smiled to himself.

  “Are you worried about that?”

  “It’s all lies.”

  Erlendur put his arm around Eva Lind and they set off towards the front door.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  When they crossed the lobby Erlendur noticed people stopping all about and looking around. The sentimental Christmas songs were no longer jingling through the speakers, and Erlendur smiled to himself when he heard that the reception manager had agreed to his request and changed the music on the sound system. He thought about the records. He had asked Stefania where she thought they might be, but she didn’t know. Had no idea where her brother kept them, and was uncertain whether they would ever be found.

  Gradually the murmuring in the dining room died down. The guests exchanged astonished looks and peered up at the ceiling in search of the wondrously beautiful song that reached their ears. The staff stopped in their tracks to listen. Time seemed to stand still.

  They left the hotel and in his mind Erlendur sang the beautiful hymn in chorus with the young Gudlaugur, and sensed once again the deep yearning in the boy’s voice.

  O Father, turn me into a light for all my life’s short stay…

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