Still bemused, Vilhelm now looked irritated as well.
‘Did you wake me up for that?’ He put on his glasses.
‘Please try to remember. Then I won’t disturb you any more and you can go back to sleep. We had a chat yesterday. You told me Bergmundur had come to see you by the hot-water pipeline shortly after I left. Remember?’
Vilhelm nodded.
‘Why was that? What did he want?’
‘He was talking about Thurí,’ said Vilhelm, making an effort to recall what he had or hadn’t said to Erlendur the day before. ‘Then he asked if I had any booze and if I wouldn’t rather go to the Fever Hospital.’
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘How on earth would I remember that?’
‘Please try.’
‘He said I couldn’t possibly doss down in the pipeline. Said it was crazy. He’d help me find somewhere else. If I was sober, I stood a fair chance of getting a bed at the Fever Hospital. That sort of thing. At least, that was the gist of it.’
‘Wasn’t that unusual? Unlike him, I mean?’
‘It was the first time he’d behaved like that,’ agreed Vilhelm. ‘The stupid git was almost friendly.’
‘Did you go with him?’
‘He wouldn’t let up till I agreed to go into town with him. Wouldn’t stop hassling me. Let me sleep at his place. You could have knocked me down with a feather.’
‘So he was determined to get you out of the pipeline?’
‘Yes, said it wasn’t good for my health.’
‘But, as far as you’re aware, he’d never bothered about your welfare before?’
‘Never. Took me aback, I can tell you. I thought it was nice of him to care what happened to me. Because he’s not the type. Normally he only cares about number one.’
‘But then he broke your glasses?’
‘Well, I called Thurí a bloody whore. He went mad. I shouldn’t have slagged her off like that. At least, not to him.’
‘What sort of relationship did he have with Thurí?’ asked Erlendur. ‘They weren’t always a couple, were they?’
‘No, no one can put up with Bergmundur for long.’
‘Did she start seeing someone else?’
‘Er, yes. Didn’t you know?’
‘It was Hannibal, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, your friend Hannibal. They were inseparable.’
‘I presume Bergmundur wasn’t too happy about that.’
‘He couldn’t stand Hannibal. Couldn’t stand him. And Bergmundur never gives up. He’s a hell of a stubborn bugger. Only the other day I heard they’d taken up with each other again.’
‘Do you reckon he was jealous of Hannibal?’
‘Not half,’ said Vilhelm, stretching. ‘That’s what he’s like. Are you asking if he could have hurt him?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Never occurred to me. It was an accident, wasn’t it? Hannibal drowning?’
Erlendur shrugged.
‘You know he…?’
Vilhelm broke off. He was wide awake now.
‘What?’
‘Of course, Bergmundur was much stronger than Hannibal – bigger, younger and stronger.’
‘You mean he could have overpowered him?’
‘Easily. Hannibal would have been no match for him. It was probably him who…’
‘What?’
‘You know about Bergmundur? About what he did?’
‘No, what do you mean? What did he do?’
‘Óli claimed to have seen him.’
‘Óli, who’s Óli? What did he see?’
‘Ólafur! He dropped dead in Nauthólsvík,’ said Vilhelm. ‘You must remember him. His name was Ólafur. Heart attack, wasn’t it? Lying by the road to Nauthólsvík. Gave up the ghost halfway.’
‘Oh, yes. What about him?’ Erlendur finally called Ólafur to mind; the tramp who had been found dead recently. ‘What about him? What did he see?’
‘Bergmundur, of course,’ said Vilhelm. ‘The night Hannibal’s place caught fire. Óli told me he’d spotted Bergmundur loitering near the house that evening. Óli was sure he’d started it. In fact he was certain.’
Erlendur sank down on the bench beside him.
‘He saw Bergmundur?’
‘He was certain about it. Quite certain.’
Erlendur remembered the comment Vilhelm had made at their last meeting about living in the pipeline.
‘Like sleeping in a coffin,’ he murmured absently.
‘What?’
‘You said the pipeline was like a coffin.’
Vilhelm stared at him owlishly.
‘Too right. It was like lying in a coffin, sleeping there. Like lying in a bloody coffin.’
47
Thurí was not in her room in the west of town; Svana at Póllinn said she hadn’t been in recently; none of the usual suspects in Austurvöllur Square had seen her either, and she hadn’t shown her face at the hostel on Amtmannsstígur. Erlendur was running out of places to look. He climbed up the green mound of Arnarhóll, another popular gathering place for drinkers. There were three of them sunning themselves at the top, smoking and sharing round a bottle of brennivín. Erlendur noticed two more sea-green bottles of this favourite tipple lined up on the ground between them. They must have got their hands on some cash. One had taken his top off, revealing a torso so emaciated that you could count his ribs. Another man, small and skinny, with a flat cap on his head, was singing a snatch of Steinn Steinarr’s verse about Cadet Jón Kristófer of the Sally Army. They couldn’t have been enjoying themselves more in the balmy weather.
‘Any of you spotted Thurí from up here?’ asked Erlendur, squatting down beside them. His feet were sore from trekking all the way to the west of town and back again. He had banged on Thurí’s door and then her window, but no one was home.
‘Thurí?’ said the bony man, scratching his armpit. ‘Haven’t seen her.’
‘Bergmundur, then? Run into him lately?’
‘No, not seen him either,’ said the small man, lifting his cap and clawing at his head.
The others agreed that they hadn’t seen them.
‘Are they back together?’ asked Erlendur, stretching out his legs.
‘Wouldn’t know,’ said the third man, morosely. He was fat and bearded, and evidently worried that Erlendur was trying to cadge a drink. ‘Why the hell do you care, anyway?’
‘I hear he’s as crazy about her as ever,’ said Erlendur.
‘He’s an arsehole,’ said the bony man, still scratching his armpit.
‘He once beat the crap out of Tommi here,’ commented the surly man, looking slightly mollified at the memory of another’s misfortunes. ‘So he doesn’t have a good word to say about him.’
‘Nobody has a good word for that jerk,’ retorted the man they had referred to as Tommi.
‘What have you got against him?’ asked Erlendur. ‘What happened?’
Tommi ignored him.
‘Thurí always used to oblige in return for gifts,’ explained the surly man. ‘Always had done. Didn’t have to be much.’
‘Like a bottle of meths?’ prompted Erlendur.
‘Not even that. So long as Bergmundur didn’t get wind of it. Once Tommi here went to see her with … what was it you gave her, Tommi? Something ridiculous, wasn’t it?’
‘Bus tickets,’ said Tommi.
‘Bus tickets?’ Erlendur echoed.
‘A ten-trip card I nicked.’
‘Tommi’s never had much luck with the ladies,’ said the fat man, beginning to enjoy himself.
‘What would you know?’ countered Tommi. ‘Who’d want to screw an ugly git like you?’
‘When Bergmundur heard about it he tracked Tommi down and made him eat the tickets before kicking the shit out of him. Said if he ever went near Thurí again he’d murder him.’
‘When was this?’
‘About five years ago.’ Tommi stopped scratching and squinted up at the sun. ‘Knocked my to
oth out,’ he added, tugging at the side of his mouth to show the gap.
Since he was missing at least four teeth, Erlendur had no idea which one had fallen victim to Bergmundur’s fist.
48
This time he took a small spade and a powerful torch with him to the pipeline. He had borrowed the spade from his upstairs neighbours who took care of the garden; the torch was police property.
Bergmundur’s name cropped up in a number of police files. He had a long criminal record for a variety of minor offences, as well as affray and theft. Erlendur thought back to their chat on Arnarhóll, when he had been suckered into buying meths for him, and recalled that Bergmundur was convinced Ellert and Vignir had set fire to Hannibal’s cellar. It was Bergmundur who had claimed Hannibal had dangerous information about the brothers; Bergmundur who had implied that they had finally caught up with Hannibal and silenced him for ever in Kringlumýri. It looked as if Bergmundur had been deliberately trying to mislead him.
It was late evening when Erlendur set off for the pipeline, after failing to trace either Thurí or Bergmundur. Perhaps it no longer mattered. He had resolved to take the earring and the results of all his detective work to CID in the morning and let them handle the rest. He would explain to Rebekka. He would like to have spoken to Thurí too before handing over the case but it was as if the ground had swallowed her up. He wanted to question her about her relationship with Hannibal towards the end and about Bergmundur’s reaction to it. About whether or not the two men had got on. About exactly what she knew about the events on Kringlumýri and when she had figured it out. Was it coincidence, for example, that she had visited the conduit after Hannibal’s death and come across the earring? And had she known about the fire? Known that Bergmundur had been spotted near Hannibal’s cellar that evening? According to the drinkers on Arnarhóll, she could twist Bergmundur round her little finger. It was strange that he remained so infatuated with her, even after she went off with Hannibal. Clearly he felt an urge to protect her, an urge that could make him violent. And he believed in vengeance, not forgiveness.
Erlendur approached the hole in the pipeline casing, Hannibal’s last refuge. The spade had a short handle and a good-sized blade, which was just what he needed inside the tunnel; the torch was more like a large lantern, really, with powerful batteries that would last all night if required. It was overcast but still. Veils of rain were drifting across the Bláfjöll range. There was nobody else around.
He switched on the torch, then squeezed in through the opening. According to Thurí, she had found the earring a little to the left of the entrance, so that is where he began his search. The soil was a combination of earth and gravel, which the small spade sliced through easily enough. He thrust the spade into the ground several times until he had broken up the surface, then continued until he’d dug a hole at least half a metre deep. After that, he wormed his way a little further into the tunnel and repeated the process.
He kept at it, kneeling, back hunched, working his way metre by metre along the tunnel, the light balanced on top of the pipes. As he moved on, he banged the blade on the pipes to clean off the dirt, then broke up the soil and drove in the spade, making one hole after another, finding nothing.
Eventually, glancing behind him and calculating that he was about ten metres from the opening, he decided it was time to turn round and start his search in the other direction. In spite of this, he carried on for another two metres before concluding that he had dug enough holes on the left-hand side. There was sufficient room to turn and crawl back on all fours to the entrance. Nevertheless, the cramped space was getting to him, so he decided to take a break. Once outside he stretched, then sat down with his back to the pipeline, facing Mount Esja to the north. This is how Hannibal must have sat during his stay in this odd choice of home, in a sort of exile within the city. The idea was somehow attractive: Hannibal’s situation had been far from enviable, yet in his own way he had been free.
After a short break, Erlendur climbed back inside the conduit and started driving the spade into the ground on the other side. He pushed the torch along in front of him, crawled a bit further, scraped out a hole, moved on, dug out another hole, progressing deeper into the tunnel little by little. Before long he observed that the soil was looser and the spade was sliding in more easily. About seven metres from the entrance, he encountered some resistance.
Shining his light into the hole revealed nothing, so he began to scrape away more earth, and felt further resistance. It couldn’t be a rock, he knew, because there was no recoil from the spade, no clink of metal on stone. He illuminated the ground around his hole, yet could not detect any signs that the soil had been disturbed.
Propping the lantern on the pipes again, he carefully began to remove earth from a wider area. He made small incisions with the spade, approaching the task with extreme caution so as not to destroy any evidence. There was no sound apart from the booming of the pipes and the metallic scraping of the spade. He took a short break and peered further into the tunnel. The glow from the torch rendered the darkness even blacker, and he felt as if it were pressing in on all sides. The spoil was now heaped up along the pipes, so he began to pile the loose dirt against the concrete wall to his right instead.
Back bent, still on his knees, he continued to scrape away until suddenly the blade stuck fast. He jerked back his hand. Then, nervously, he picked up the torch; it revealed a piece of cloth sticking out of the earth. Leaving the spade where it was, he began to clear away the soil with one hand. It looked to him like the collar of a jacket. Next he saw what appeared to be tufts of hair, and then he caught sight of an object he recognised.
Erlendur picked it up gingerly, wiped off the dirt and held it up to the torch beam. It was an earring, consisting of two linked hoops. Suspended from the lower, slightly smaller, hoop was a tiny white pearl.
He had found Oddný.
Once he uncovered more of the body, he could see that nature had done its work. He glimpsed a shoulder bone and a hand, picked clean, before he abandoned the task. An overpowering sensation of horror and nausea assailed him and he knew he could not stay there a moment longer. He had to get out of this ghastly place, out of the pipeline, out of the darkness closing in on him from every side.
As he was turning away, Erlendur’s gaze fell on the hand again, and he noticed that it seemed to be concealing something, as if the fist had closed over it at the moment of death. Moving nearer, he lifted the bony fingers with extreme care and managed to prise the object from their grasp. He cleaned off the soil, examined it and was instantly lanced by the realisation that his decision to search the pipeline for Oddný’s grave had been based on entirely the wrong suspect.
He held the tiny object up to the light. Oddný was not the only person who had lost something that fatal night.
49
Early next morning Erlendur left home and walked down to the CID offices on Borgartún. He had not slept a wink. After leaving the pipeline, he had showered, changed his clothes and eaten a quick breakfast. He could, of course, have called to report the body as soon as he got home, but he believed there was no urgency. A few hours would make no difference, and besides he wanted to beg a favour of the detectives.
When he asked to speak to Hrólfur, he learned that he was on holiday, but he could see Marion Briem instead. He knew the name well; Marion was the driving force in CID. They had crossed paths two or three times since Erlendur joined the force. He learned that Marion had recently returned from a long sabbatical in Denmark and so had not been involved in Oddný’s case.
Marion, who was taking off a coat when Erlendur knocked on the door, recognised him immediately.
‘Erlendur, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not in uniform?’
‘I’m off duty,’ Erlendur explained.
‘I see. What brings you here?’
‘I want to report a murder.’
Marion put down the coat, trying to conceal any sign of
astonishment.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In fact, I believe it’s a case of double murder,’ Erlendur said. ‘One of the victims was a woman called Oddný. The other was a vagrant I knew, called Hannibal. He was unlucky. It looks as if he was the wrong man in the wrong place. The woman was the main target. They both died at around the same time in Kringlumýri. And I’m fairly confident that the murderer was the same in both cases.’
‘Oddný, isn’t that the woman who went missing last year?’ asked Marion.
‘Yes. And Hannibal’s the man –’
‘Who drowned in the flooded pit.’
‘Correct.’
‘Hrólfur told me a junior officer had come in and asked a lot of strange questions about those two,’ said Marion. ‘I take it you’ve found the woman.’
‘She’s buried in the hot-water pipeline not far from the diggings. The pipeline was Hannibal’s last refuge. Oddný probably tried to hide there, which is how Hannibal got mixed up in the whole thing. It cost him his life.’
‘Have you been conducting a private investigation?’ asked Marion.
‘I knew Hannibal,’ Erlendur explained. ‘His sister asked me to find out how her brother drowned. I’ve been meaning to report my discoveries. Then this morning I found Oddný. I’ve worked out who the killer is too. But I wanted to ask you a favour.’
‘Which is?’
‘I’d like to be granted a few minutes with him before you take him away.’
* * *
The house in Fossvogur stood at the bottom of the valley, a boxy, modern structure, its immaculately tended garden now in full bloom. The verdant lawn was freshly mown and neatly edged; pansies and peonies flowered in tidy rows along the walls of the house. The red garage door was closed. It was still early and the morning breeze held the scent of summer and the promise of a glorious day.
Erlendur approached the front door and rang the bell. There was a lengthy wait before Gústaf opened it.
‘You again,’ he said. ‘What do you want? And what … why are they here?’
‘I asked them to come with me,’ Erlendur replied.
Reykjavik Nights Page 21