Voices (22 page)

Erlendur looked out of the window in silence. It had started snowing again.

'Are you drawing a parallel?' he said eventually.

'I've never been given an explanation. It crossed my mind...'

'That it was something to do with my brother. The way he died. You want to associate the two?'

'I don't know,' Eva said. 'I don't know you in the slightest. It's a couple of years since I first met you and I was the one who located you. That business with your brother is all I know about you apart from the fact you're a cop. I've never been able to understand how you could leave Sindri and me. Your children.'

'I left it to your mother to decide. Maybe I should have been firmer about gaining access but...'

'You weren't interested,' Eva finished the sentence for him.

'That's not true.'

'Sure it is. Why didn't you take care of your children like you were supposed to?'

Erlendur said nothing and stared down at the floor. Eva stubbed out her third cigarette. Then she stood up, went to the door and opened it.

'Stína's going to meet you here at the hotel tomorrow,' she said. 'At lunchtime. You can't miss her with those new tits of hers.'

'Thanks for talking to her.'

'It was nothing,' Eva said.

She hesitated in the doorway.

'What do you want?' Erlendur asked.

'I don't know.'

'No, I mean for Christmas'

Eva looked at her father.

'I wish I could have my baby back,' she said, and quietly closed the door behind her.

Erlendur heaved a deep sigh and sat on the edge of his bed for a long while before he resumed watching the tapes. People going about their Christmas errands rushed across the screen, many of them carrying bags and parcels of Christmas shopping.

He had reached the fifth day before Gudlaugur was murdered when he saw her. Initially he overlooked it but a flash went off somewhere in his mind and he stopped the recorder, rewound the tape and went back over the scene. It was not her face that caught Erlendur's attention, but her bearing; her walk and haughtiness. He pressed 'Play' again and saw her clearly, walking into the hotel. He fast-forwarded again. About half an hour later she reappeared on the screen when she left the hotel and strode past the bank and souvenir shops looking neither left nor right.

He stood up from the bed and stared at the screen.

It was Gudlaugur's sister.

Who had not set eyes on her brother for decades.

FIFTH DAY

22

It was late when the noise woke Erlendur up the following morning. It took him a long time to stir after a dreamless night, and at first he did not realise what the awful din was that resounded in his little room. He had stayed up all night watching a succession of tapes, but only saw Gudlaugur's sister that one day. Erlendur couldn't believe it was purely coincidence that she went to the hotel – that she had business there other than to meet her brother, with whom she claimed to have had no contact for decades.

Erlendur had unearthed a lie and he knew there was nothing more valuable for a criminal investigation.

The noise refused to stop, and gradually Erlendur realised that it was his telephone. He answered and heard the hotel manager's voice.

'You must come down to the kitchen,' the manager said. 'There's someone here you should talk to.'

'Who is it?' Erlendur asked.

'A lad who went home sick the day we found Gudlaugur,' the manager said. 'You ought to come.'

Erlendur got out of bed. He was still in his clothes. He went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and perused the several days' stubble, which made a noise like sandpaper being rubbed over rough timber when he stroked it. His beard was dense and coarse like his father's.

Before going downstairs he telephoned Sigurdur Óli and told him to go to with Elínborg to Hafnarfjördur to take Gudlaugur's sister in for questioning. He would meet them later that day. He did not explain why he wanted to talk to her. He did not want them to blurt it out. Wanted to see her expression when she realised that he knew she had been lying.

When Erlendur went into the kitchen he saw the hotel manager standing with an exceptionally skinny man in his twenties. Erlendur wondered whether the contrast with the manager was playing tricks on his vision; beside him, everyone looked skinny.

"There you are,' the manager said. 'Anyone would think I'm taking over this investigation of yours, locating witnesses and whatever.'

He looked at his employee.

'Tell him what you know.'

The young man began his account. He was fairly precise about details and explained that he had started to feel ill around noon on the day Gudlaugur was found in his room. In the end he vomited and just managed to grab a rubbish sack in the kitchen.

The man gave the manager a sheepish look.

He was allowed to go home and went to bed with a bad fever, a temperature and aches. Since he lived alone and did not watch the news he hadn't mentioned to anyone what he knew until this morning when he came back to work and heard about Gudlaugur's death. And he was certainly surprised to hear what had happened, and even though he didn't know the man well – he had only been working in the hotel for just over a year – he did sometimes talk to him and even went down to his room and—

'Yes, yes, yes,' the manager said impatiently. 'We're not interested in that, Denni. Just get on with it.'

'Before I went home that morning Gulli came into the kitchen and asked if I could get him a knife.'

'He asked to borrow a knife from the kitchen?' Erlendur said.

'Yes. At first he wanted scissors, but I couldn't find any so then he asked for a knife.'

'Why did he need scissors or a knife, did he tell you?'

'It was something to do with the Santa suit.'

'The Santa suit?'

'He didn't go into detail, just some stitches he needed to unpick.'

'Did he return the knife?'

'No, not while I was here, then I left at noon and that's all I know.'

'What sort of a knife was it?'

'He said it had to be a sharp one,' Denni said.

'It was the same kind as this,' the manager said, reaching into a drawer to take out a small steak knife with a wooden handle and fine-serated blade. 'We lay these for people who order our T-bone steak. Have you tried one? Delicious. The knives go through them like butter.'

Erlendur took the knife, examined it and thought to himself that Gudlaugur may have provided his murderer with the weapon that was used to kill him. Wondered whether that business about the stitching of his Santa suit was just a ploy. Whether Gudlaugur had expected someone in his room and wanted to have the knife at hand; or had the knife been lying on his desk because he needed to mend his Santa suit and the attack was sudden, unpremeditated and sparked by something that happened in the little room? In that case, the attacker had not gone to Gudlaugur's room armed, not gone there with the purpose of killing him.

'I need to take that knife,' he said. 'We need to know if the size and type of blade match the wounds. Is that all right?'

The hotel manager nodded.

'Isn't it that British chap?' he said. 'Have you got anyone else?'

'I'd like to have a quick word with Denni here,' Erlendur said without answering him.

The manager nodded again and stayed where he was, until the penny dropped and he gave Erlendur an offended look. He was accustomed to being the centre of attention. When he did get the message he noisily invented some business to attend to in his office and disappeared. Dennis relief when his boss was no longer present proved shortlived.

'Did you go down to the basement and stab him?' Erlendur asked.

Denni looked at him like a doomed man.

'No,' he said hesitantly, as if not quite sure himself. The next question left him even more in doubt.

'Do you chew tobacco?' Erlendur asked.

'No,' he said. 'Chew tobacco? What...?'

'Have you had a sample taken?'

'Eh?'

'Do you use condoms?'

'Condoms?' said Denni, still at a total loss.

'No girlfriend?'

'Girlfriend?'

'That you have to make sure you don't get pregnant?'

Denni said nothing.

'I don't have a girlfriend,' he said in the end; Erlendur sensed a note of regret. 'What are you asking me all this for?'

'Don't worry about it,' Erlendur said. 'You knew Gudlaugur. What kind of a man was he?'

'He was cool.'

Denni told Erlendur that Gudlaugur had felt comfortable at the hotel, did not want to leave and in fact feared moving out after he was sacked. He used all the hotel services and was the only member of staff who got away with that for years. He ate cheaply at the hotel, put his clothes in with the hotel laundry and didn't pay a penny for his Utile room in the basement. Redundancy came as a shock to him, but he said he could manage if he lived frugally and might not even have to earn himself a living any more.

'What did he mean by that?' Erlendur asked.

Denni shrugged.

'I don't know. He was quite mysterious sometimes. Said lots of things I couldn't suss out.'

'Like what?'

'I don't know, something about music. Sometimes. When he drank. Most of the time he was just normal.'

'Did he drink a lot?'

'No, not at all. Sometimes at weekends. He never missed a day's work. Never. He was proud of that although it's not such a remarkable job. Being a doorman and stuff

'What did he say to you about music?'

'He liked beautiful music. I don't remember exactly what he said.'

'Why do you think he said he didn't need to earn himself a living any more?'

'He seemed to have money. And he never paid for anything so he could save up for ever. I guess that's what he meant. That he'd saved enough.'

Erlendur remembered asking Sigurdur Óli to check Gudlaugur's bank accounts and resolved to remind him. He left Denni in the kitchen in a state of confusion, wondering about chewing tobacco and condoms and girlfriends. As he walked past the lobby he caught sight of a young woman arguing noisily with the head of reception. He seemed to want her out of the hotel, but she refused to leave. It crossed Erlendur's mind that the woman who wanted to invoice this man for his night of fun had shown up, and he was about to go away when the young woman noticed him and stared.

'Are you the cop?' she called out.

'Get out of here!' the head of reception said in an unusually harsh tone.

'You look exactly like Eva Lind described you,' she said, sizing up Erlendur. 'I'm Stína. She told me to talk to you.'

*

They sat down in the bar. Erlendur bought them coffee. He tried to ignore her breasts but had his work cut out doing so. Never in his life had he seen such a huge bosom on such a slim and delicate body. She was wearing an ankle-length beige coat with a fur collar, and she draped it over the chair at their table to reveal a skintight red top that hardly covered her stomach and black flared trousers that barely stretched above the crease between her buttocks. She was heavily painted, wore thick, dark lipstick and smiled to reveal a beautiful set of teeth.

'Three hundred thousand,' she said, carefully rubbing under her right breast as if it itched. 'Were you wondering about the tits?'

'Are you all right?'

'It's the stitches' She winced 'I mustn't scratch them too much. Have to be careful.'

'What—?'

'New silicon,' Stína interrupted him. 'I had a boob job the other day.'

Erlendur took care not to stare at her new breasts.

'How do you know Eva Lind?' he asked.

'She said you'd ask that and told me to tell you that you don't want to know. She's right. Trust me. And she also told me you'd help me with a Utile business and then I could help you, know what I mean?'

'No,' Erlendur said. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Eva said you would.'

'Eva was lying. What are you talking about? A little business, what does that involve?'

Stína sighed.

'My friend was busted with some hash at Keflavík airport. Not much, but enough for them to put him away for maybe three years. They sentence them like murderers, those fuckers. A bit of hash. And a few tabs, right! He says he'll get three years. Three! Paedophiles get three months, suspended. Fucking wankers!'

Erlendur didn't see how he could help her. She was like a child, unaware of how big and complicated and difficult it is to deal with the world.

'Was he caught at the terminal?'

'Yeah.'

'I can't do anything,' Erlendur said. 'And I don't feel inclined to. You don't keep particularly good company. Dope smuggling and prostitution. What about a straightforward office job?'

'Won't you just try?' Stína said. 'Talk to someone. He mustn't get three years!'

'To get this perfectly straight,' Erlendur said with a nod, 'you're a prostitute?'

'Prostitute, prostitute,' Stína said, producing a cigarette from a little black handbag over her shoulder. 'I dance at The Marquis. She leaned forwards and whispered con-spiratorially to Erlendur: 'But there's more money in the other business.'