His mother had a degree in business studies and worked as an accountant at a large firm with an impressive-sounding foreign name. She held a position of some responsibility, took home a good salary and had recently embarked on a relationship with another accountant, a widower called Saemundur, whom Sigurdur Óli had encountered several times at her house. Sigurdur Óli had been at primary school when his parents divorced and had grown up with his mother. She had been restless during those years and kept moving to new neighbourhoods, which made it difficult for him to settle and make friends at school. She had also struck up short-term relationships with a number of men, some no more than one-night stands. His father, on the other hand, was a plumber with fixed political views; a staunch socialist who loathed the conservatives and the vested interests they defended tooth and nail — the party his son always voted for, in spite of him.
‘No one has stronger or more legitimate political convictions than the far left,’ his father would claim. Sigurdur Óli had long ago given up trying to discuss politics with him. When he refused to change his views, the old man used to say that he had inherited his right-wing snobbery from his mother.
His concentration ruined by the phone call, Sigurdur Óli gradually lost interest in the game until at last he switched off the television, retired to bed and went to sleep.
Now he heaved a sigh and pressed Lína’s doorbell again.
The accountant and the plumber.
He had never managed to find out what had brought his parents together. Why they had parted seemed far more obvious, though neither father nor son had ever received a proper account. It was hard to imagine a more mismatched couple than his parents. And he, an only child, was their offspring. Sigurdur Óli understood that his outlook must have been coloured by the upbringing he had received from his mother; his attitude to his father for example. His sole wish had long been to be as different from him as possible.
His father never tired of bringing up another snobbery-related trait that Sigurdur Óli had inherited from ‘that woman’, and that was his arrogance, his tendency to look down on people. Especially the unfortunates at the bottom of the social heap.
Since no one was answering the bell, he tried knocking on the door. He still hadn’t a clue how he was supposed to persuade Lína and Ebbi to give up their absurd attempt at blackmail, but at least he could start by hearing what they had to say. Perhaps the whole thing was a misunderstanding on Hermann’s part. If not, perhaps he could scare them into abandoning their plans; Sigurdur Óli could be quite intimidating when the situation required it.
In the event he did not have much time to wonder. The door gave way under his knock, opening inwards. After hesitating, he called out to see if anyone was at home. There was no answer. He could have turned round and left but something drew him into the house; innate curiosity, perhaps, or innate lack of consideration.
‘Hello!’ he called, entering the short hallway that led from the front door, past the kitchen to the sitting room. A small framed watercolour hung askew on the wall by the kitchen door and he automatically straightened it.
Inside, the house was dark, lit only by the faint glow of the street lights, but this was enough to show Sigurdur Óli that the sitting room had been trashed. Lamps and vases lay smashed on the floor, the ceiling lights were broken and pictures had been knocked off the walls.
Amid all the chaos and destruction, Sigurdur Óli caught sight of a woman lying on the floor in a pool of blood, with a large gash in her head.
This, he assumed, must be Lína.
6
He checked for signs of life and could find none, but being no expert, he rang for an ambulance before it occurred to him that he would have to explain his presence in the house. He considered some plausible lie; an anonymous tip-off, perhaps, but then decided to tell the truth; that friends had asked him to go round in connection with a foolish attempt at blackmail. He was anxious to keep Patrekur and Súsanna out of the matter, as well as Súsanna’s politically ambitious sister, but knew it would be tricky. Their connection to Lína and Ebbi would come to light as soon as the investigation got off the ground, and another thing was certain: the moment Sigurdur Óli explained why he had been at the house, he would be taken off the case.
The thoughts chased each other in quick succession through his mind as he was waiting for the ambulance and police to arrive. At first glance he could see no sign of a break-in. The assailant appeared to have entered and left by the front door, not bothering to close it properly behind him. It was possible that the occupants of the neighbouring houses might have noticed something; a car, for instance, or a man who looked capable of attacking Lína and smashing up her home.
He was just bending down to her again when he heard a noise and sensed movement out of the corner of his eye in the dark sitting room. In a flash he glimpsed what looked like a baseball bat swinging towards his head and instinctively dodged, with the result that the blow landed on his shoulder instead, knocking him to the floor. By the time he had clambered to his feet again his assailant had disappeared out of the open front door.
Sigurdur Óli shot out of the house and into the street where he saw a man sprinting away in an easterly direction. Taking out his phone, he called for assistance as he ran. The distance between them widened. The suspect, showing an amazing turn of speed, flung himself into a garden and vanished from sight. Sigurdur Óli dashed after him, leapt over the fence, rounded the corner of the house, bounded over another fence and across the next street and into another garden where he tripped over a wheelbarrow that suddenly blocked his way, hurtled into a currant bush and rolled along the ground in his new summer coat. It took him precious seconds to get his bearings when he stood up again, but then he resumed the chase. He saw that the man had gained a considerable lead as he ran hell for leather across Kleppsvegur and the coast road, before descending into the Vatnagardar district near the container docks, heading in the direction of the mental hospital at Kleppur.
Summoning up his last reserves, Sigurdur Óli plunged into the traffic on the coast road and the drivers slammed on their brakes and honked their horns violently. The phone started ringing in his hand but he did not slow down to answer. He saw the man turn towards the hospital and disappear behind a hill. The hospital itself was floodlit but the area around it was hidden in darkness. He could see no sign of the police cars that he had called out before the chase began and slowed his pace as he approached the hospital, taking the time to answer his phone. It was an officer from one of the patrol cars who had been given the wrong directions and was searching for him around the Hrafnista retirement home. Sigurdur Óli directed him down to the mental hospital and requested further backup, including a dog team. He jogged down to the sea at Kleppsvík where the darkness was total, then halted, peering south towards Holtagardar and the Ellidavogur inlet. He stood quite still, listening, but could not hear or see anything. The man had vanished into the night.
Sigurdur Óli ran back to the hospital where two police cars were just pulling up and directed the officers to the area around the retail centre at Holtagardar, and the Ellidavogur inlet. He gave them a brief description of the man: medium height, leather jacket, jeans, baseball bat. Sigurdur Óli had been keeping a close eye on the weapon and as far as he could tell the attacker had still been holding it when the darkness swallowed him.
Under his orders the police fanned out over the area. He summoned more officers and before long the firearms unit had also joined the hunt, the extra manpower enabling them to expand the search area until it extended all the way from the coast road to the nature reserve at the head of Ellidavogur.
Having commandeered one of the patrol cars by the hospital, Sigurdur Óli drove back up to Lína’s house. It was some time now since the ambulance had taken the woman to hospital and he was told that she was still clinging on to life. The street outside the house was filled with marked and unmarked police cars, and the CID forensic team was already busy inside.
‘How do you know these people?’ asked his colleague Finnur, who was standing outside the house. He had heard all about Sigurdur Óli’s emergency call.
‘Do you know anything about her husband?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, no longer sure if he should tell the whole truth.
‘His name’s Ebeneser,’ Finnur answered.
‘Yeah, right. What kind of weird name is that?’
‘We don’t know where he is. Who were you chasing?’
‘Almost certainly the woman’s assailant,’ Sigurdur Óli replied. ‘I imagine he bludgeoned her over the head with a baseball bat. He got me as well, the bastard. Knocked me off balance.’
‘Were you in the house?’
‘I’d come to have a word with her and found her lying on the floor. Next thing I know this bastard jumps on me.’
‘You think he was a burglar then? We can’t find any sign of a break-in. He must have entered by the front door. She must have opened it to him.’
‘Yes, the door was open when I arrived. The bastard must have rung the bell, then jumped her. This is more than a burglary — I don’t think he was here to steal. He trashed the house, hit the woman over the head — no doubt we’ll find out soon if he hit her anywhere else.’
‘So …’
‘I think he was a debt collector. We should round some of them up. I didn’t recognise this guy, but then I didn’t get a good look at him. I’ve never seen anyone run so fast.’
‘It sounds plausible, given his description — the baseball bat and so on,’ Finnur said. ‘He was probably here to call in a debt.’
Sigurdur Óli accompanied him into the house.
‘Do you think he was working alone?’ Finnur asked.
‘As far as I can tell.’
‘What were you doing here? How do you know these people?’
Sigurdur Óli lost his nerve. Of course, in the long run he would not, even if he wanted to, be able to conceal that the attack on Lína was probably connected to her and Ebbi’s ludicrous attempts to extort money. For all he knew, Hermann could have sent the thug round, but he could hardly believe that his friend Patrekur was capable of such a thing. Deciding to leave names out of it for the time being, he explained that he had been following up a lead that implicated Lína and Ebbi in a trade in dubious photographs.
‘Pornography?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Child porn?’
‘Conceivably.’
‘I wasn’t aware of any lead,’ Finnur said.
‘No,’ Sigurdur Óli replied, ‘it only came in today. It may be a case of blackmail, which would explain the presence of a debt collector, if that’s what he was.’
Finnur eyed him, as if not fully convinced.
‘So you just went round to hear what they had to say for themselves? I’m not sure I quite follow this, Siggi.’
‘No, it’s very early days.’
‘Yes, but — ’
‘Anyway, we’d better track him down,’ Sigurdur Óli said firmly, dismissing the subject. ‘Scrooge, I mean.’
‘Scrooge?’
‘Or whatever his name is. Her husband. And don’t call me Siggi.’
7
Sigurdur Óli dropped into the police station on his way home to Framnesvegur and discovered that Elínborg had gone home some time earlier. There was a young man sitting on a bench out in the corridor. Forever in and out of trouble for violent behaviour and a variety of minor offences, he was the product of an abysmal home life; his father in prison, his mother a serious alcoholic. Reykjavík was full of such stories. The boy had been eighteen when he first came to Sigurdur Óli’s notice for a break-in at an electrical goods store. By then he already had a string of convictions to his name, and that had been several years ago now.
Still angry with himself for letting the debt collector slip through his fingers, Sigurdur Óli paused on the way into his office, his eyes on the youth, then went over and sat down beside him on the bench.
‘What is it this time?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ the youth said.
‘Breaking and entering?’
‘None of your business.’
‘Did you beat someone up?’
‘Where’s the twat who’s supposed to be interviewing me?’
‘You’re such a fucking idiot.’
‘Shut your face.’
‘You know what you are.’
‘Shut up.’
‘It’s not exactly complicated,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘Not even for a moron like you.’
The youth ignored him.
‘You’re nothing but a pathetic loser.’
‘Loser yourself.’
‘You’ll never amount to anything,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘And you know it.’
The boy sat there, handcuffed to the bench, shoulders hunched, head hanging, eyes on the floor, hoping to get the interview over with as soon as possible so that he could go. As police officers like Sigurdur Óli were all too aware, he was not alone in exploiting a system that specialised in releasing offenders as soon as their case had been solved, which meant he had only to admit to the crime in order to be released to go out and break the law again. Later, he would get a suspended sentence, or if he managed to tot up enough convictions during the period, he would be sent down for a few months, never any more, and even then he would only serve half his sentence because the prison authorities connived in the pampering, as Sigurdur Óli called it. The boy and his mates could tell any number of jokes about judges, probation officers and a life of leisure, courtesy of the Prison and Probation Administration.
‘I bet no one’s ever told you that before,’ Sigurdur Óli continued. ‘That you’re a loser, I mean. No one’s ever told you that to your face, have they?’
The youth did not react.
‘Even you’ve got to realise sometimes what a contemptible specimen you are,’ Sigurdur Óli went on. ‘I know you probably blame other people — you lot all do, you all feel sorry for yourselves and blame other people. Your mother must be high on the list; your father too, both benefits scroungers like you. And your mates and the school system and all the committees that have ever taken on your case. You’ve got a million excuses and I bet you’ve used them all one time or another. You never think about all the boys who’ve had a much tougher time than you, whose lives are total shit but who don’t waste time pitying themselves like you do, because they’ve got something inside them that helps them to rise above their circumstances and turn into decent members of society, not pathetic losers like you. But then they’ve actually got a grain of intelligence; they’re not complete morons.’
The youth remained impassive, as if he had not heard a word of Sigurdur Óli’s speech, keeping his eyes trained down the corridor in the hope that his interview would begin soon. Then he would be released from custody; yet another crime cleared up.
Sigurdur Óli rose to his feet.
‘I just wanted to make sure that for once in your life you heard the truth from someone who doesn’t need to dirty his hands with scum like you. Even if it’s only this once.’
The youth’s gaze followed him into his office.
‘Cunt,’ he whispered, looking down at the floor again.
Sigurdur Óli rang Patrekur. The attack on Lína had been the main item on the late-news bulletin and on all the online news sites. Patrekur had been watching TV but Sigurdur Óli had to tell him three times before he could grasp who was involved.
‘You mean it was her?’
‘It’s Lína,’ Sigurdur Óli confirmed.
‘But what … was she … is she dead?’
‘She’s still alive but it’s touch and go. I haven’t mentioned you or Hermann by name yet, or Súsanna and her sister, but I don’t know how much longer I can get away with it. I was outside the house when the attack took place. I was on my way to have a word with the woman on your behalf, so I’ve had to explain my presence and now I’m in the same shit as you, Patrekur.’
On the other end o
f the phone his friend was silent.
‘I shouldn’t have dragged you into this,’ he said at last. ‘I thought maybe you could sort something out, but I don’t really know what I was thinking of.’
‘What kind of guy is Hermann?’
‘What do you mean what kind of guy?’
‘Has he got any links to debt collectors — would he set someone like that on Lína and Ebbi?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Patrekur said thoughtfully. ‘I find it hard to imagine. I’m not aware that he knows any debt collectors.’
‘I know you wouldn’t do anything stupid like that.’
‘Me?’
‘Or the two of you together.’
‘I introduced you to him, that’s all I’ve done. You have to believe me. In fact, it’s probably best if you keep me out of the whole affair. Talk directly to Hermann if you need to speak to him again. I don’t want to go anywhere near this. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Is there any particular reason to protect Hermann?’
‘You do as you think fit. I’m not going to try and influence your actions.’
‘Fine,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘Do you know any more about this than Hermann has told us? Do you know anything I don’t?’
‘No, nothing. It was my idea to come to you. I’m just the middleman. Was he a debt collector? The man who attacked her?’
‘We don’t know,’ Sigurdur Óli replied, being carefully non-committal, as he wanted to reveal as little as possible about the investigation. ‘What were they after? Kinky sex with strangers? What’s it all about?’
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