Elínborg was picky about certain foods and was a constant source of disappointment to her mother, who was a firm believer in the virtues of boiling: she believed that food was inedible unless reduced to a mush, and she would boil slices of haddock for twenty-five to thirty minutes. Elínborg was always terrified of choking on a fish bone at the kitchen table. She did not like the fatty breadcrumb coating of the cutlets, found the meat bland and flavourless, and the caramelised potatoes were disgusting. Lamb’s liver in onion sauce, served on Tuesdays except when her mother plumped for hearts and kidneys, she simply could not get down. Nor did she think heart or kidney could be considered proper food. Her culinary blacklist was endless.
It came as no surprise to Elínborg when her father suffered a heart attack in his early sixties. He survived, and her parents were still living in the same place, Elínborg’s childhood home. Both were now retired, but remained alert and self-sufficient. Her mother still boiled her air-cured fish until the windows misted over.
When it had become clear that Elínborg’s fussiness about food was incurable, and as she grew old enough to find her way around the kitchen, her parents allowed her to start cooking for herself, using whatever her mother had bought. She would take some of the haddock or cutlets, or the fish loaf served on Thursdays after the pasta experiment came to an end, and prepare something that she really wanted to eat. And she developed an interest in cookery: she always asked for cookbooks for Christmas and birthday presents, subscribed to recipe clubs, and read cookery columns in the papers. Yet she did not necessarily want to be a chef; she just wanted to prepare food that was not inedible.
By the time Elínborg left home she had had some impact on the family’s eating habits, while other aspects of their life had changed of their own accord. Her father, for instance, no longer came home to eat lunch and lie down to listen to the news. Her mother went out to work and came home exhausted in the evening, relieved that Elínborg was willing to cook. She worked in a grocery shop where she was run off her feet all day long, and every evening she soaked in a hot bath, her feet red and sore. But she was more cheerful than before, as she had always been a sociable person.
Elínborg graduated from high school, left home and rented a small basement flat. During the summer vacations she worked as a police officer, having secured the job through an uncle. She decided to study geology at university. In her teens she had enjoyed travelling around the country with friends, one of whom, who was keen on geology, urged Elínborg to enrol with her. Although she was initially fascinated by the subject Elínborg knew before she graduated that a career in geology was not for her.
She watched Theodóra at her homework and wondered what her daughter would do when she grew up. She was interested in science – physics and chemistry – and talked about doing it at university. She also wanted to study abroad.
‘Do you have a blog, Theodóra?’ asked Elínborg.
‘No.’
‘Perhaps you’re too young.’
‘No, I think it’s silly. I think it’s ridiculous to go talking about everything I do and say and think. It’s nobody’s business but mine. I have no interest in putting it on the net.’
‘It’s surprising how far people go.’
Theodóra looked up. ‘Have you been reading Valthór’s blog?’
‘I didn’t even know he blogged. I only found out by chance.’
‘He writes total nonsense,’ said Theodóra. ‘I’ve told him I don’t want him mentioning me.’
‘And?’
‘He says I’m an idiot.’
‘Do you know these girls he writes about at all?’
‘No. He never tells me anything. He tells everyone everything about himself, but he never tells me anything. I gave up trying to talk to him ages ago.’
‘Do you think I should let him know I’ve been reading his blog?’
‘Get him to stop writing about us, at least. He writes about you too, you know. And Dad. I meant to say, but I didn’t want to be a telltale.’
‘How does it work … if I read his blog, am I snooping?’
‘Are you going to talk to him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then maybe you are snooping. I’d been reading it for months before I lost my temper over something he’d written about us, and told him. He wrote that I was a lame swot. I don’t know why he puts it on the net if we’re not allowed to read it without being accused of spying on him.’
‘Months, you say? How long has he been doing it?’
‘Over a year.’
Elínborg did not feel that she was spying on her son by reading a public blog. She did not want to interfere, because she felt he must take responsibility himself, but she was concerned that he was writing too openly about his family and friends.
‘He never tells me anything,’ she said. ‘Maybe I should talk to him. Or your Dad could.’
‘Let him be.’
‘Of course, he’s almost a grown man, he’s at college … I feel I’ve lost touch with him. We used to be able to talk but now we hardly ever do. All I can do these days is read his blog.’
‘Valthór has already moved out – up here,’ said Theodóra, tapping at her forehead with a finger. Then she went back to her homework.
‘Did he have any friends?’ asked Theodóra after a little while, without taking her eyes off her books.
‘He? Valthór?’
‘The man who was killed.’
‘I assume so.’
‘Have you spoken to them?’
‘No, not me. Other people are tracing them. Why do you ask?’ Her daughter sometimes spoke in riddles.
‘What did he do?’
‘He was a telecoms engineer.’
Theodóra looked at her pensively. ‘They meet people.’
‘Yes, they go to people’s homes.’
‘They go to people’s homes,’ Theodóra repeated, and returned to her easy maths assignment.
Elínborg’s mobile rang from the pocket of her coat in the hall closet. It was her work phone. She went into the hall to answer it.
‘We’ve just had the preliminary autopsy results for Runólfur,’ said Sigurdur Óli without so much as a hello.
‘Yes?’ said Elínborg. She was annoyed by people who did not identify themselves on the phone, even if they were close colleagues. She glanced at her watch. ‘Couldn’t this have waited until tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘Do you want to know what they found or don’t you?’
‘Sigurdur …’
‘They found Rohypnol,’ said Sigurdur Óli.
‘Yes, I know. I was there with you when they told us.’
‘No, I mean they found Rohypnol in Runólfur. Inside him. There was a load of it in his mouth and throat.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He was up to his eyeballs in the stuff himself!’
8
The manager of the Customer Support Division at the phone company met Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli after lunch. Sigurdur Óli was distracted – he was working on another demanding case and had only half his mind on the Thingholt murder. In addition, his relationship with Bergthóra was not improving. He had moved out and their attempts to resolve their differences had failed. She had invited him over one evening recently but they had finished up quarrelling. He did not tell Elínborg. He wanted to keep his personal life private. They had hardly spoken on the way to the phone company except for Elínborg asking if he had heard anything from Erlendur since he left for the East Fjords.
‘Nothing,’ said Sigurdur Óli.
Elínborg had gone to bed late and had not managed to get to sleep until the middle of the night. Her mind had been racing with thoughts of Runólfur and the date-rape drug. She had not yet spoken to Valthór about his blog. He had been out of the house when she intended to tell him to stop writing about his family on the net.
Teddi snored quietly next to her. She never remembered him having any trouble sleeping, or having a restless
night – no doubt a sign that he was at peace with himself and with the world. He did not complain, and was not much of a talker. He did not take the initiative, preferring to live in peace and quiet. His job was not particularly stressful and he never brought it home with him. Sometimes, when Elínborg felt oppressed by her work, she considered whether she should have stuck to geology and imagined what she might be doing now if she had not joined the police. She might be a teacher; she had taught a few courses at the Police Training College and she enjoyed the role of instructor. She might have pursued postgraduate studies and become a scientist, researching glacial floods and earthquakes. Sometimes, when she observed the work of the police forensics officers, she thought that it might have suited her. She was not especially unhappy in her work, but from time to time she was overcome by the degradation and horrors she had to witness. She could not fathom how human beings could behave like savage beasts.
‘What is it exactly that a telecoms engineer does?’ Elínborg asked the manager. ‘What does the job involve?’
‘Well, it can involve various things,’ the manager – Lárus – said. ‘They’re responsible for the telephone system, and they handle maintenance and installation. I checked up on Runólfur in our records. He’d been with us for several years – joined us straight from technical college. An excellent worker. The company was very happy with him.’
‘Was he liked?’
‘Yes, so far as I know. I didn’t have much direct contact with him but I’m told he was sober, punctual and pleasant. Nobody here understands this. We can’t grasp what really happened.’
‘No,’ Elínborg replied. ‘Do they go to people’s houses, these engineers?’
‘Runólfur did. He handled Internet connections, broadband, in-house phone systems, digital tuners, fibre optics. We offer an outstanding service. People have no idea about computers and technology. Someone who had been stamping on his mouse all day rang recently. He thought it was a foot pedal.’
‘Can you give us a list of customers that Runólfur visited in recent months?’ asked Elínborg. ‘He covered the Reykjavík area, didn’t he?’
‘You’ll need a warrant. I’m sure we’ve got a list, but I should think it’s confidential, so …’
‘No problem,’ said Elínborg. ‘You’ll have one by close of business today.’
‘Are you going to interview everyone he visited?’
‘If necessary,’ said Elínborg. ‘Do you know of any friends of Runólfur we could speak to? Either here at the company, or anyone at all?’
‘I don’t, but I’ll ask around.’
On the weekend when he was murdered Runólfur had not been picked up by any CCTV camera in the downtown area where his landlord assumed he had gone on the last evening of his life. There were eight cameras monitoring the busiest locations in the city centre. Perhaps it meant nothing: there were many other routes to and from his home. Perhaps Runólfur knew where the cameras were and had deliberately avoided them. Taxi drivers were questioned: had they seen him, or even picked him up? But this yielded no result. The same applied to the drivers of night buses in the area. Runólfur’s credit- and debit-card transactions were checked, but he seemed to use the cards only for grocery shopping and instalment payments on his computer and iPod, and regular outgoings like phone, heating, electricity and TV bills.
The police had been provided with data that tracked Runólfur’s mobile-phone signal so they could tell whether he had moved from one transmission zone to another on the night in question. Even if he had not used his phone his movements could still be tracked, but as a telecoms engineer he must have known that his position still could not be pinpointed since the whole of the downtown area was covered by a single transmitter with a radius of three kilometres. Had Runólfur wanted to go farther afield without his movements being traceable he might have left his mobile at home: it turned out that the phone had not left the downtown area that night.
A hair sample from the young woman who had been found in distress in Kópavogur was sent abroad for DNA analysis, so that it could be compared with samples from Runólfur’s home and car. It would take some time to establish whether she had been his victim a few weeks before he was killed. But she was not a suspect and had a reliable alibi. The T-shirt that Runólfur had been wearing when he’d died and the shawl found in his flat were also sent for analysis, to reveal whether both had belonged to the same woman. Nothing had been found on his computer that would help the police to determine who had been with him on the night of the murder. In fact the computer contained very little history of Internet usage at all. It appeared that he had been intending to buy a second-hand car since websites selling used cars were listed prominently on the day of his death, along with Icelandic and foreign sports sites, and subjects relevant to his job. All his e-mails related to his work.
‘He didn’t use e-mail as most of us tend to,’ said the forensics officer. ‘And it looks to me as if that’s deliberate.’
‘What do you mean, deliberate?’
‘He leaves no trail,’ he explained.
Elínborg was standing in the doorway of an office at police headquarters. The space was so tiny and constricted that she could not actually enter the room. The officer, who was both tall and proportionately broad, seemed almost to be trapped in his miniature office, unable to move.
‘But is there anything unusual about that? Some people write whatever comes into their heads, while others are more cautious. After all, how do we know who will read our e-mails?’
‘You can get access to anything, and steal it,’ he observed. ‘As we’ve seen in practice – suddenly people’s private affairs appear on the front pages of the papers. Speaking for myself, I would never put anything important in an e-mail. But I have a feeling that this man is rather more than just cautious – he seems to be almost obsessive. It’s as if he did his utmost not to leave anything personal whatsoever on the hard drive. There are no links, other than those relating to his work. No chat rooms. No documents. No personal thoughts. No calendar. Nothing. We know he was interested in films and football. That’s all we got.’
‘Nothing about girlfriends?’
‘Nope.’
‘Because he wanted it that way?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because he had something to hide?’
‘That could be one reason,’ the forensics man replied, reaching for his own computer. ‘He seems to have made a habit of deleting the day’s web-page history before turning off his computer at night.’
‘Not surprising, perhaps, since he was carrying roofies.’
‘No, perhaps not.’
‘So no one knows what he was up to online?’
‘I’m going to see if I can dig anything up. Not everything necessarily goes when the delete button is pressed. His Internet service provider may be able to help us. Actually, it looks as if it’s hosted abroad, so it may take for ever to find out,’ he sighed, shifting in his chair, which creaked in response.
The post-mortem revealed that Runólfur had been in excellent health, with no physical ailments. He was short, slim and well-proportioned. There were no scars or blemishes on his body and his organs had functioned normally.
‘In short, a healthy young man,’ said the pathologist as he finished his recital.
He was standing opposite Elínborg, across from Rúnólfur’s body, in the city mortuary. The autopsy had been completed and the body had been transferred to a lateral cold chamber. The pathologist had pulled out the drawer and now Elínborg looked down at the corpse.
‘It wasn’t an easy death,’ the pathologist went on. ‘He sustained a number of cuts before he was killed. There are several small cuts on the neck, near to the main wound, and a bruise to the throat, as if someone had held him fast. There’s no indication that he made any real attempt to defend himself.
‘It’s not particularly complicated, but interesting in its way. It’s been done cleanly. The throat has been slit with a razor-sharp blade, almost
as sharp as a surgical scalpel. The actual cut was one continuous stroke with absolutely no hesitation marks. It’s rather like an expert surgical incision. I would think that his assailant overpowered him and held him helpless for a time – that’s the inference of the small cuts – before slitting his throat and dropping him to the floor. He survived for a little while. Not long, but perhaps up to a minute. You didn’t find any signs of a struggle, did you?’
‘No.’
‘He had intercourse shortly before he died, as you no doubt know. As to whether the sex was non-consensual, I couldn’t say. There’s no indication that it was. Except the fact that’s he’s dead, of course.’
‘No marks on the body? No scratches, no bites?’
‘No, but then you wouldn’t expect any if the woman concerned was sedated.’
The team investigating the case had repeatedly discussed the condition in which Runólfur’s body had been found in his home, and what clues it might provide. He’d been wearing a T-shirt which was far too small for him and probably belonged to a woman. With the exception of the shawl, no other female garments were found in his flat. They deduced that the T-shirt had probably belonged to a woman who had accompanied him home: if a rape had taken place, Runólfur must have undressed the woman, then raped her, apparently getting some kick out of wearing her own shirt. It looked as if he had tried to create a romantic ambience: no electric lights had been on, except in the living room, and burnt-out tea-light candles were found in both the living room and the bedroom.
Some of the detectives were not convinced that there had even been a rape. They were reluctant to infer too much from the evidence found: although Runólfur had Rohypnol in his home, that told them nothing of what had happened there, and no trace of the drug had been found in glasses, for instance. Perhaps he had sex with the woman, putting on her T-shirt during their lovemaking, and for some reason she picked up the knife and cut his throat. Other members of the team, Sigurdur Óli among them, were of the view that a third person must have intruded on the couple: Runólfur, flustered, had put on the T-shirt but had not managed to finish dressing before he was killed. It was possible that his companion had attacked him, but an alternative had also to be considered: that another person had committed the crime. Elínborg tended to favour that view, although she had no particular arguments to support her hunch. The murder weapon, a razor-sharp knife, might have belonged to the victim. Four kitchen knives were arranged on a magnetic strip on the wall. Perhaps there had originally been a set of five. The killer could have used the fifth, then taken it away when he or she left. It was not clear from the knives whether one was missing, and an exhaustive search of Thingholt and further afield had so far yielded no result.
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