Reykjavik Nights (15 page)

‘Erlendur.'

‘A mate of Hannibal's?'

‘That's right. You picked up an earring under the hot-water pipe. A gold one. You offered to show it to me.'

Thurí raised the bottle to her lips again. She seemed in low spirits.

‘I lapsed,' she said, full of self-hatred. ‘Was dry for months but now I've lapsed. I'm pathetic. Totally bloody pathetic. That's the worst thing. That I'm such a pathetic piece of shit. Back in the day, I didn't drink with just anyone, you know. Used to associate with nice people. With a good crowd. Used to have fun, drank classy stuff. Now I'm like a dog drinking out of a ditch.'

She brandished the bottle for emphasis.

‘Nothing but sodding piss.'

Erlendur didn't know what to say so thought it best to keep his mouth shut. He surveyed the dingy little room. Her situation was grim. She had tried to claw her way out of the mire but kept falling back into it.

‘Do you remember the earring?' he asked, eager to cut short his visit. There was an unpleasant smell that he associated inescapably with the image of Thurí and Bergmundur on the bed.

‘'Course I do,' said Thurí. ‘I found it, didn't I? Think I'd forget? No way. It's my lucky charm.'

‘Could I possibly see it?' asked Erlendur. ‘Do you have it here?'

‘What's it to you?'

‘You do still have it?'

‘I lent … pawned it.'

‘You what?'

Thurí waved the bottle again.

‘Got to drink something.'

‘You sold it for booze?'

‘Home-made spirits,' she clarified. ‘Anyway, I didn't sell it. I pawned it. I'll get it back when I have the cash. Then you can see it. Why the hell do you want to see it anyhow? It's none of your business. I'm the one who found it. It's mine. If I want to sell it, I will and I don't need your permission.'

Erlendur could tell she wanted to pick a fight, so he tried the conciliatory approach. It took him a while to win her over, but in the end, he persuaded her to reveal the address of her supplier.

‘Did you know Hannibal was married once?' he asked when she had calmed down.

‘Yeah.'

‘Did he ever tell you about the accident that happened when he was young?'

‘I know how he lost Helena,' Thurí said. ‘Though he didn't like to talk about it. Not to just anyone. He did tell me, but it wasn't easy for him. He wasn't one to open up about himself.'

‘No, I don't suppose he was,' said Erlendur. ‘Did he ever mention his elder brother? Or his sister-in-law?'

‘No. Were they in contact? Hannibal never mentioned them.'

‘So you don't know if his brother was in town when Hannibal died?'

‘How would I know that? What the hell are you on about?'

‘It doesn't matter,' Erlendur said. ‘I heard from him, that's all. He wasn't exactly friendly.'

‘Well, I don't know a bloody thing about him.'

Thurí slouched on the bed, bottle in hand, fumbling with a crumpled cigarette packet. She was not having much luck. Erlendur took the packet, extracted one and lit it for her.

‘Maybe you should go down to Amtmannsstígur,' he said in parting.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,' she said. ‘Just leave me alone.'

*   *   *

Thurí's supplier had a place in Skerjafjördur, near the domestic airport. If Thurí was to be believed, he had an illegal still in a small garage, from which he was emerging when Erlendur arrived. They exchanged greetings, the man a little warily. He was short, with an impressive gut.

‘What can I do for you?' he asked, locking the garage door.

‘Thurí sent me,' Erlendur explained, working on the assumption that she was one of his regulars.

‘Thurí, eh? How's she doing?'

‘Bad. Your poison's put her in a foul mood. Have you got the earring she sold you?'

‘Earring?'

‘The gold earring she gave you in exchange for booze. She told me you had it.'

‘So what if I do?'

‘I'd like to buy it off you,' Erlendur said. ‘For the same price you paid for it. What does a bottle of your home-made spirits cost?'

‘Hey, I'm not –'

‘Cut the crap.' Erlendur didn't want to waste time arguing. He was tired; he had been traipsing round all day, and the people he'd met and the things he'd seen had only exacerbated his fatigue. ‘I'm with the police,' he continued. ‘I'm confident that if we entered your garage we'd find distilling apparatus and a store of illegal alcohol. And I'm sure you do a tidy line in smuggled booze – expensive stuff from abroad.'

‘The police?' the man repeated.

‘Look, all I want is the earring,' said Erlendur. ‘I know you've got it. Give it to me and I'll leave you alone.'

The man hesitated.

‘There's no point in hanging on to one earring,' he said at last.

‘Exactly,' Erlendur agreed.

‘And it's not gold. No way. It's a piece of crap. I had it valued. It's plate.'

‘You mean you gave Thurí too much for it?'

‘No. Not really. It's just not worth much so … you … you can have it if you like.'

The man's eyes strayed to the garage door. Erlendur understood that he was trying to make the best of a bad situation.

26

The jeweller inspected the earring intently, thought for a while, then finally announced that he had never stocked it or anything like it.

‘Not a bad piece,' he added. ‘The gold plate's fairly thick and it's a nice bit of work.'

‘What about the pearl?' asked Erlendur.

‘That's genuine. But I didn't make this and I didn't sell it either.'

In his professional opinion, the earring was unlikely to be very old as the style was still in fashion. It was fairly large, made of two quite substantial linked hoops. Suspended from the lower, slightly smaller, hoop was a tiny, white pearl. Altogether it was an attractive piece, possibly bespoke; good quality, though the jeweller did not recognise the handiwork. It could have been purchased in Reykjavík or elsewhere in Iceland, but just as easily from somewhere abroad.

The earring looked none the worse for its spell under the hot-water pipe. It couldn't have been lying there for long before Thurí spotted it glinting in the darkness of the tunnel. Her lucky charm, she had called it. It hadn't brought her much luck so far.

Two days had passed since Erlendur acquired the earring from Thurí's supplier. He had been carrying it around with him ever since. He had studied it minutely under his office lamp but had no idea what secrets it might hold, nor if it had any bearing on Hannibal's story. He'd most likely come across it by chance. But it was the only piece of the jigsaw that didn't fit; the only piece that had arrived there without explanation. The only gleam of light in Hannibal's squalid shelter.

The jeweller handed the earring back. He was the second expert Erlendur had consulted in the hope of tracing its owner. Erlendur was employing the only strategy he could think of: to take the earring to every jeweller in Reykjavík.

‘Nice Christmas present,' commented the man. He was wearing a white coat and had a powerful magnifying glass hanging from a cord round his neck. ‘Not too expensive, but pretty. Or the sort of thing you might give your wife for a wedding anniversary. Or a birthday. I could make another to match it, if you like.'

‘Thanks, but there's no need,' said Erlendur. ‘I just happened to find it and was hoping I might be able to return it to its owner.'

‘Very conscientious of you,' the man said with surprise.

‘No harm in trying.'

‘The clip's all right,' the jeweller continued, inspecting it carefully. ‘Nothing wrong with it. Though clip-ons like these can easily come off. Real earrings are less likely to get lost, but lots of women don't like the idea of having their ears pierced.'

‘How do they come loose? Would they have to be knocked in some way? Or do they just slip off?'

‘They slip off,' said the jeweller, confirming what Thurí had told him. ‘The clips vary in quality. What did you mean by knocked?'

‘If the owner was involved in a tussle, say.'

‘Well, yes, of course. It goes without saying.'

In the third shop a young woman examined the earring carefully before announcing that she did not recognise it. But she added that she had worked there less than two years – she was training to be a silversmith – so it might have been sold before her time. The manager had popped out for a minute but Erlendur was welcome to wait. She too was impressed by his attempt to trace the owner; she had never heard of anyone being so considerate. She wasn't busy, so seemed keen to chat, but soon realised she was wasting her time.

Erlendur was weighing up his options – whether to come back later, or wait and see if the manager turned up soon – when the door opened. A tall man marched in, ignoring both of them, and closed the door of the workshop smartly behind him.

‘That's him,' the young woman whispered to Erlendur. ‘He's getting a divorce,' she added, as if embarrassed by the man's behaviour.

‘Oh,' said Erlendur discouragingly, finding this information quite unnecessary.

The assistant pursued the manager and a minute or two later he emerged from his workshop, having put on a white coat. It struck Erlendur as odd that jewellers dressed like doctors or scientists, but then again perhaps their work required the same precision as an operation or an experiment.

‘Can I see it?' the man asked without preamble.

Erlendur handed it over. The jeweller recognised it immediately.

‘It's one of mine,' he said. ‘I made two pairs, if I remember rightly. A couple of years back. They sold almost at once. I gather you've lost the other one. Want me to make a replacement?'

‘No, he didn't lose it,' put in the young woman. ‘He found this one and wants to return it to the owner, if he can.'

‘That's right,' Erlendur said. ‘I was wondering if you could help me trace her.'

‘I don't keep a record of small sales like this,' the man said. He really was unusually tall and towered over the counter. ‘I didn't charge much for them.'

‘But could you –?'

‘Though, now I come to think of it, I do remember one of them being sent back for repairs. They come with a warranty. Everything I sell comes with a warranty.'

He clamped a loupe in his eye and took a closer look.

‘I can't tell if it was this one. There's no sign of the pearl having worked loose. But I do remember the job. It wasn't very complicated, so it's hardly surprising if the repair's invisible.'

‘You couldn't find the owner's name for me, could you?'

The man laid the earring on the counter.

‘Hang on a tick,' he said.

The young woman gave Erlendur an encouraging smile. The jeweller reappeared from his office carrying a large file and began to leaf through it.

‘I make a record of repairs,' he said, flicking through invoices, receipts, sums and notes, until he found what he was looking for.

‘Here we are.' He removed a receipt from the file. ‘Repair under warranty. That rings a bell.'

‘What was the woman's name?' asked Erlendur.

‘It's not on the invoice,' the jeweller said. ‘It's coming back to me now. It was a man who bought this set. I took down his name because of the repair. It's here on the receipt. You should be able to track him down. I never met his wife, so I don't know if they suited her. I have a feeling he said something about a birthday present, though I may be wrong.'

He passed over the receipt.

Erlendur committed the name to memory. Then, picking up the earring, he returned it to his pocket and thanked them both.

‘Very thoughtful of you,' said the tall jeweller in parting.

‘I do my best.'

*   *   *

That evening, having unobtrusively obtained the necessary information from police records, he headed over to Fossvogur. It was only about half an hour's walk, and before long he was standing by a small flat-roofed house, located on a quiet street. The husband now lived here alone. No movement was visible inside and the curtains were drawn. Perhaps he was out.

It had been his name on the jeweller's receipt. None other than the man who had reported his wife missing the previous year. She had gone for a night out with colleagues at Thórskaffi and never come home. The police file had described her as mad about jewellery. Her husband had bought her a beautiful pair of earrings a year or so before she went missing, and now Erlendur knew beyond a doubt that Thurí had found one of them in Hannibal's old camp.

27

The night was unusually hectic. They were called out to an altercation at a residential address, followed by another in front of a bar; then they stopped three motorists for speeding. One turned out to be a teenager without a licence, who was driving a stolen car and drunk into the bargain. They had noticed the car's erratic progress along Miklabraut and sped off after him, lights flashing. The teenager had tried to make a break for it, skidding onto the Breidholt road, where he floored the accelerator. The car, however, was an ageing Cortina with a tiny engine, so they had no trouble overtaking and forcing him to pull over. The boy leapt out and raced south towards Kópavogur. Marteinn was the fastest. With a resigned sigh, he set off after the boy and eventually caught up with him. The boy swore at them as they drove him to the City Hospital for a blood test. With that, the incident was considered closed. As it was a first offence, there were no grounds for keeping him in custody overnight. The owner of the car had been informed but did not wish to press charges against the ‘young fool'. After all, his vehicle wasn't damaged and he hadn't even been aware it was missing until the police woke him with the news.