Reykjavik Nights (21 page)

‘Left side,' said Thúri, ‘under one of the pipes. It was dark and I'd never have spotted it if I hadn't banged my head on the bloody roof when I was crawling in. I saw something shiny and it turned out to be an earring. Have you discovered who it belonged to?'

‘I'm working on it.'

‘Or what it was doing there?'

‘I'm not sure,' said Erlendur. ‘If it fell off someone's ear, would it really have rolled all the way under the pipe? I had a look round the other day and no one could squeeze under there – it's too close to the ground. Do you have any idea how else it could have got there?'

‘Maybe it was kicked under there,' suggested Thurí.

‘It's possible.'

‘Or…'

‘What?'

‘Or somebody put it there.'

‘How do you mean? Who could have done that?'

‘How the hell should I know?' Thurí was angry now, fed up with Erlendur's questions. ‘I haven't given it any thought. That's your job. I haven't a clue how it ended up there. I just found it. I don't give a toss who put it there or how it got there or whose it was. I don't know why you're asking me. Who the hell are you, anyway?'

‘All right, all right,' said Erlendur. ‘I'm only trying to work out how Hannibal died.'

‘Well, I can't help you there.'

‘You've been helpful up to now.'

Thurí took out her tin of roll-ups, fished one out, lit it and inhaled.

‘Has the earring got something to do with it?' she asked. ‘With how Hannibal died?'

‘Good question,' said Erlendur. ‘The earring's the only piece that doesn't fit. The only piece you wouldn't expect to find among Hannibal's belongings.'

‘Poor Hannibal,' said Thurí. ‘They don't make many like him.'

Erlendur nodded.

‘Did he ever mention his sister to you?'

‘The one he pulled out of the sea?'

‘Yes. Her name's Rebekka. She's devastated about what happened to her brother and feels partly responsible, which is absurd, obviously. I've got to know her a little and she told me about the accident. She wants to know what happened to Hannibal.'

‘Is that why you're always pestering me?'

Erlendur smiled.

‘Her name's Rebekka,' Thuri said. ‘I didn't know. He didn't talk about her much. Or the rest of his family.'

‘He couldn't save them both.'

‘But why should she feel responsible?'

‘She only joined them at the last minute,' explained Erlendur. ‘It should have been just Hannibal and his wife in the car. She can't get over that. Even now it's still … hard for her to accept.'

Thurí took another drag on her cigarette. She had recovered from the confrontation on the bus; talking about Hannibal and the accident seemed to have calmed her down.

‘Where were you going?' asked Erlendur, hoping this wouldn't wind her up again.

‘Going?'

‘Where were you taking the bus to?'

‘Nowhere in particular. I just like riding the bus around the city, seeing the houses and streets, the new areas like Breidholt. Feels almost like I'm travelling. But I'm not going anywhere. Never do. Always end up back in the same place.'

She dropped the cigarette on the pavement and ground it underfoot. She had smoked it down until it burnt her fingertips.

‘All I know is he missed his wife.'

‘Helena?'

‘Hannibal told me she'd waved him away.' Thurí gazed, unseeing, at the puddles on the tarmac. ‘He went to save her but she pointed to the girl. He told me she'd sacrificed herself for his sister. She'd realised he couldn't save them both: it would take too much time and effort to free her, then rescue the girl. So she wanted him to concentrate on his sister. She pushed him away. That was the last time he saw her alive. She smiled at him, or so he claimed. But I get the feeling he invented that. It's what he said once when he was being gentle, but he never mentioned it again.'

*   *   *

After a while a bus arrived and Thurí stood up, saying a curt goodbye as if she wanted nothing more to do with Erlendur. The sky was leaden and it was raining again. He watched her climb aboard and select a window seat, ready to carry on circling the city with no destination, never leaving the vehicle, not caring where it went: her life a journey without purpose. As Erlendur followed the departing bus with his eyes, he pictured himself in her shoes, forever circling around life, alone, with no destination.

37

Erlendur was not personally acquainted with any of the detectives at CID, though he had visited their offices on Borgartún now and then on various errands, as well as encountering them at the scene of burglaries or cases of serious assault. Uniformed officers were sometimes called as witnesses in investigations but, as a junior officer on the beat, Erlendur had not yet been in that position.

The detective in charge of the inquiry was called Hrólfur; he was around thirty, easygoing, and with little apparent interest in his job. He was busy – Erlendur didn't know with what exactly – and hardly had a minute to spare, though Erlendur had dressed up in his full uniform in the hope of making an impression. Eventually he managed to corner Hrólfur by the department's new Xerox machine, which was as noisy as a tractor and shot out brilliant flashes of light in the dark copying room. He enquired if there had been any progress in the case of Oddný's disappearance.

‘No, nothing new,' said Hrólfur, as he frantically copied a file. ‘Why do you ask?'

The file seemed to relate to real estate: either Hrólfur was buying or selling a property himself or investigating a scam; Erlendur was unsure which. He had gone to CID with half a mind to report his discovery, since in spite of Rebekka's plea that he should keep it quiet a little longer, he was feeling guilty about failing to disclose what he knew. It was an awkward predicament, and he was keen to resolve it.

‘Just curious,' he said. ‘Do you still get tip-offs from the public?'

‘Not many. What happened seems fairly clear.'

‘Which was what?'

‘Well, obviously the poor woman took her own life. Threw herself in the sea or something. It's the only explanation we can come up with.'

‘Hadn't she been cheating on her husband?'

‘Well, she'd had a brief fling several years ago.'

‘And you've checked out the man in question?'

‘Yes. He was at home with his girlfriend at the time.'

‘So they weren't lying?'

‘Lying? No, why would you think that?'

‘What about the man she's supposed to have met at the nightclub?'

‘Never traced him,' said Hrólfur, the flashes from the copier playing over his face. ‘What did you say your interest in this case was?'

‘So presumably you focused on the husband?'

‘We don't have a shred of evidence against him.' Hrólfur lifted the lid of the copier. ‘He may have knocked her about a bit but that doesn't prove anything.'

‘Knocked her about?'

‘There was a domestic issue. He used to give her the odd slap, nothing major, but enough to ensure that we grilled him about it. Interviewed the couple's closest friends too. But we never really got anywhere.'

‘Were you tipped off?'

‘Yes.'

‘And her husband confessed?'

‘He admitted it, yes. Who did you say you were?'

‘I'm just interested in this case,' said Erlendur.

‘Been in the police long?'

‘No.'

‘Acquainted with the people involved, then?'

‘No, not at all. So, what now? Impasse?'

‘We don't have a body,' said Hrólfur. ‘Or a murder weapon. Or any real motive. Which makes suicide the most plausible explanation. Their marriage was on the rocks. She probably wanted to leave him. Maybe she found her own way of doing so.'

‘Her husband was alone at home when she vanished?'

‘It's not a crime, you know,' said Hrólfur. ‘He'd been to a Lions Club meeting that evening. Look, I don't even know why I'm telling you this. It doesn't concern you. What did you say your name was?'

‘Erlendur.'

‘Well, Erlendur, why the curiosity? Seems like you know quite a bit about this case.'

‘Only what I've read in the papers and heard the boys discussing down at the station.'

‘We searched the husband's house,' Hrólfur said. ‘And put him through a long, rigorous interrogation. Really got under his skin. Talked to the neighbours too. No one saw him coming or going that night. In the end we had nothing the prosecution could work with. He didn't even hire a solicitor. The inquiry never got that far.'

‘But he was a suspect?'

‘Was. Still is, in fact. The ex-lover too. The case is unsolved, still open. We go over the file at regular intervals, make phone calls and try to come up with new angles. Follow up any new leads. But the fact remains … Her husband's sticking to his statement that she never came home from Thórskaffi; he never saw her the night she went missing. And that's how the matter stands.'

‘So no new evidence has emerged?'

‘No.'

‘A man drowned in Kringlumýri the same weekend she vanished,' said Erlendur.

‘So?'

‘Are you familiar with the incident?'

‘Yes, what was his name … oh, what was it again?'

‘Hannibal.'

‘Yes, that's it. A tramp.'

‘You saw no reason to look into his death?'

‘He drowned,' said Hrólfur. ‘What were we supposed to look into? They did a post-mortem. There were no unexplained injuries, at least nothing related to his death. Does that sort of case interest you?'

‘No, not particularly.'

‘We concentrated all our resources on the woman.' Hrólfur gathered the copies together and switched off the Xerox machine. ‘The tramp's death got sidelined. You know how it is.'

‘What?'

‘The first forty-eight hours are crucial in missing-persons cases,' said Hrólfur in an official tone.

‘What about the fire in Hannibal's cellar? Were you aware of that?'

‘Certainly. Our understanding was that he'd started it himself.'

‘Or was it just that a bum like him didn't matter as much as a woman like Oddný?'

‘What are you insinuating?' Hrólfur was angry now. ‘We don't make that kind of distinction. The point is that Oddný could have been alive. We didn't know what had happened to her. There was a possibility we could still save her, so of course that took priority. The tramp fell in a pond and drowned. It was too late to help him. He was drunk. They found alcohol in his bloodstream. Why … what are you…? Did you by any chance know him?'

‘Sort of,' said Erlendur. ‘I used to run into him on night duty. He was a good bloke. Had a miserable life.'

‘Yes, sleeping rough up at the pipeline, wasn't he?'

‘That's right.'

‘Anyway, was that all?' Hrólfur tucked the papers under his arm. ‘I'm going to be late for a meeting.'

‘Yes. Thanks for your help.'

Erlendur watched the detective hurry out of the room. He decided there was no particular urgency in reporting the discovery of the earring.

38

The man was busy in his garage when Erlendur arrived. The large door was drawn up and a new-looking car – a classy American model – was parked in the drive outside; its gleaming black paintwork was freshly polished. Inside the garage everything was neatly stowed away on shelves, in cupboards and in small boxes. The floor was so shiny you might have felt compelled to take off your shoes before entering. Gardening implements and other tools hung from nails on the walls, including two shovels, suspended by spotless blades.

As the owner of the house did not immediately notice his presence, Erlendur remained outside, studying him. He was not unlike Ísidór in appearance: dark hair and complexion, slim, neat, some years older than Erlendur himself, wearing a checked shirt and jeans. He was putting away a rag and a can of polish in their appointed places, ensuring that everything was just so. From the damp ground outside, Erlendur guessed the man had washed his car before polishing the paintwork. The hose had been painstakingly rolled up. He evidently took as much care of his vehicle as he did his garage.

The man was a manager at a large pension company. Erlendur had known he would have to speak to him eventually – there was no getting round it – but he had delayed the interview for as long as possible. He was nervous, unsure how to broach such a sensitive subject or predict how the man would react. One evening his wife had vanished into thin air, here in their home town, turning his whole life upside down; he had been a suspect ever since, and now Erlendur, a complete stranger, was about to stir it all up again.

Erlendur vacillated until the man, glancing up from his task, caught sight of him. He came out of the garage and said good evening. Erlendur returned his greeting.

‘What … who … can I do something for you?' asked the man after an awkward pause.

‘You're Gústaf, aren't you?'

‘Yes, that's right.'

‘My name's Erlendur. I'm a policeman.'

‘A policeman?'

‘A traffic officer, actually. I was hoping for a word with you – about your wife Oddný.'

‘Oddný?'

‘I'm aware that –'

‘Why do you want to talk about Oddný?' asked the man. ‘What concern is she of yours? Who did you say you were?'

‘The name's Erlendur. I've been looking into your wife's case in my own time, in connection with a man who died the same weekend she went missing.'

‘In your own time?'

‘Yes. In connection with this man I knew. On his sister's behalf.'

‘Who was the man?'

‘His name was Hannibal. He was a tramp.'