Voices (8 page)

'As I said, I didn't know him, but I was going to meet him in person.'

'What do you mean?'

'You haven't got the faintest idea who he was, have you?' Wapshott said, surprised that Erlendur had never heard of Gudlaugur Egilsson.

'He was a caretaker or a doorman and a Father Christmas,' Erlendur said. 'Is there anything else I need to know?'

'Do you know my specialist field?' Wapshott replied. 'I'm not sure how much you know about collecting in general or record collecting in particular, but most collectors specialise in a certain field. People can be rather eccentric about it. It's incredible what people can be bothered to collect. I've heard of a man who has sick bags from every airline in the world. I also know a woman who collects hair from Barbie dolls'

Wapshott looked at Erlendur.

'Do you know what I specialise in?'

Erlendur shook his head. He was not completely convinced that he had understood the part about airline sick bags. And what was all that about Barbie dolls?

'I specialise in boys' choirs.'

'Boys' choirs?'

'Not only boys' choirs. My special interest is choirboys.'

Erlendur hesitated, unsure whether he had misunderstood.

'Choirboys?'

'Yes.'

'You collect records of choirboys?'

'I do. Of course I collect other records, but choirboys are – how should I put it? – my passion.'

'How does Gudlaugur fit in with all this?'

Henry Wapshott smiled. He stretched out for a black leather briefcase that he had with him. Opening it, he took out the sleeve of a 45 single.

He took his glasses out of his breast pocket and Erlendur noticed that he dropped a white piece of paper onto the floor. Erlendur reached for it and saw the name
Brenner's
printed on it in green.

'Thank you. A serviette from a hotel in Germany? Wapshott said. 'Collecting is an obsession,' he added apologetically.

Erlendur nodded.

'I was going to ask him to autograph this sleeve for me,' Wapshott said, handing it to Erlendur.

On the front of the sleeve was the name
'GUDLAUGUR EGILSSON'
in a little arc of golden letters, with a black-and-white photograph of a young boy, hardly more than twelve years old, slightly freckled, his hair carefully smoothed down, who smiled at Erlendur.

'He had a marvellously sensitive voice,' Wapshott said. "Then along comes puberty and ...' He shrugged in resignation. There was a hint of sadness and regret in his tone. 'I'm astonished you haven't heard of him or don't know who he was, if you're investigating his death. He must have been a household name in his day. According to my sources, he could be described as a well-known child star.'

Erlendur looked up from the album sleeve, at Wapshott.

A child star?'

'He performed on two records, singing solo and with church choirs. He must have been quite a name in this country. In his day.'

'A child star,' Erlendur repeated. 'You mean like Shirley Temple? That kind of child star?'

'Probably, by your standards, I mean here in Iceland, a small country off the beaten track. He must have been pretty famous even if everyone seems to have forgotten him now. Shirley Temple was of course ...'

'The Little Princess,' Erlendur muttered to himself.

'Pardon?'

'I didn't know he was a child star.'

'It was ages ago.'

'And? He made records?'

'Yes.'

'That you collect?'

'I'm trying to acquire copies. I specialise in choirboys like him. He was a unique boy soprano.'

'Choirboy?' Erlendur said almost to himself. He recalled the poster of
The Little Princess
and was about to ask Wapshott in more detail about the child star Gudlaugur, when someone disturbed him.

'So here you are,' Erlendur heard someone say above him. Valgerdur was standing behind him, smiling. She no longer carried her sampling kit. She was wearing a thin, black, knee-length leather coat with a beautiful red sweater underneath, and she had put on her make-up so carefully that it hardly showed. 'Does the invitation still stand?' she asked.

Erlendur leaped to his feet. But Wapshott had already stood up.

'Sorry,' Erlendur said, 'I didn't realise ... Of course.' He smiled. 'Of course.'

8

They moved to the bar next to the dining room when they had eaten their fill of the buffet and drunk coffee afterwards. Erlendur bought them drinks and they sat down at a booth well inside the bar. She said she couldn't stay long, from which Erlendur read polite caution. Not that he was planning to invite her up to his room – the thought didn't even cross his mind and she knew that – but he felt a sense of insecurity about her and the same kind of barriers he encountered from people who were sent to him for interrogation. Perhaps she didn't know herself what she was doing.

Talking to a detective intrigued her and she wanted to know everything about his job, the crimes and how he went about catching criminals. Erlendur told her that it was mostly boring administrative work.

'But crimes have become more vicious,' she said. 'You read it in the papers. Nastier crimes'

'I don't know,' Erlendur said. 'Crimes are always nasty'

'You're always hearing stories about the drug world; debt collectors attacking kids who owe money for their dope, and if the kids can't pay, their families are attacked instead.'

'Yes,' said Erlendur, who sometimes worried about Eva Lind for precisely that reason. 'It's quite a changed world. More brutal.'

They fell silent.

Erlendur tried to find a topic of conversation but he had no idea how to approach women. The ones he associated with could not prepare him for what might be called a romantic evening like this. He and Elínborg were good friends and colleagues, and there was a fondness between them that had been formed by years of collaboration and shared experience. Eva Lind was his child and a constant source of worry. Halldora was the woman he married a whole generation before, then divorced and whose hatred he earned for doing so. These were the only women in his life apart from the occasional one-night stands that never brought anything more than disappointment and awkwardness.

'What about you?' he asked. 'Why did you change your mind?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'I haven't had an invitation like that for ages. What made you think to ask me out?'

'No idea. It slipped out over the buffet. I haven't done this for a long time either.'

They both smiled.

He told her about Eva Lind and his son, Sindri Snaer, and she told him she had two sons, also both grown up. He had the feeling that she didn't want to talk too much about herself and her circumstances, and he liked that. He didn't want to poke his nose into her life.

'Are you getting anywhere with the man who was murdered?'

'No, not really. The man I was talking to in the lobby...'

'Did I interrupt you? I didn't know he was connected with the investigation.'

'That's all right,' Erlendur said. 'He collects records, vinyl that is, and it turns out that the man in the basement was a child star. Years ago.'

'A child star?'

'He made records.'

'I can imagine that's difficult, being a child star,' Valgerdur said. 'Just a kid with all kinds of dreams and expectations that rarely come to anything. What do you think happens after that?'

'You shut yourself up in a basement room and hope no one remembers you.'

'You think so?'

'I don't know. Someone might remember him.'

'Do you think that's connected with his murder?'

'What?'

'Being a child star.'

Erlendur tried to say as little as possible about the investigation without appearing standoffish. He hadn't had time to ponder this question and didn't know whether it made any difference.

'We don't know yet,' he said. 'But we'll find out'

They stopped talking.

'So you weren't a child star,' Valgerdur then said.

'No,' Erlendur said. 'Devoid of talent in all fields.'

'Same here,' Valgerdur said. 'I still draw like a three-year-old.'

'What do you do when you're not at work?' she asked after a short silence.

Unprepared for this question, Erlendur dithered until she began to smile.

'I didn't mean to invade your privacy,' she said when he gave no answer.

'No, it's... I'm not accustomed to talking about myself? Erlendur said.

He could not claim to play golf or any other sport. At one time he had been interested in boxing, but that had waned. He never went to the cinema and rarely watched television. Travelled alone around Iceland in the summer, but had done less of that in recent years. What did he do when he wasn't at work? He didn't know the answer himself. Most of the time he was just on his own.

'I read a lot,' he said suddenly.

'And what do you read?' she asked.

Once more he hesitated, and she smiled again.

'Is it that difficult?' she said.

'About deaths and ordeals,' he said. 'Death in the mountains. People who freeze to death outdoors. There are whole series of books about that. Used to be popular, once.'

'Deaths and ordeals?' she said.

'And plenty of other things, of course. I read a lot. History. Local history. Chronicles.'

'Everything that's old and gone,' she said.

He nodded.

'But why deaths? People who freeze to death? Isn't that awful to read?'

Erlendur smiled to himself.

'You ought to be in the police force,' he said.

In that short part of an evening she had penetrated a place in his mind that was carefully fenced off, even to himself. He did not want to talk about it. Eva Lind knew about it but was not entirely familiar with it and did not link it in particular with his interest in accounts of deaths. He sat in silence for a long time.

'It comes with age,' he said finally, regretting the lie immediately. 'What about you? What do you do when you've finished sticking cotton wool buds in people's mouths?'

He tried to rewind and make a joke but the bond between them had been tarnished and it was his fault.

'I really haven't had time for anything other than work,' she said, realising that she had unwittingly struck a nerve. She became awkward and he sensed that.

'I think we ought to do this again soon,' he said to wind things up. The lie was too much for him.

'Definitely,' she said. 'To tell you the truth I was very hesitant but I don't regret it. I want you to know that.'

'Nor do I,' he said.

'Good,' she said. 'Thank you for everything. Thanks for the Drambuie,' she added as she finished her liqueur. He had also ordered a Drambuie for himself to keep her company, but hadn't touched it.

Erlendur lay stretched out on the bed in his hotel room looking up at the ceiling. It was still cold in the room and he was wearing his clothes. Outside, it was snowing. It was a soft, warm and pretty snow that fell gently to the ground and melted instantaneously. Not cold, hard and merciless like the snow that caused death and destruction.

'What are those stains?' Elínborg asked the father.

'Stains?' he said. 'What stains?'

'On the carpet,' Erlendur said. He and Elínborg had just returned from seeing the boy in hospital. The winter sun lit up the stair carpet that led to the floor where the boy's room was.

'I don't see any stains,' the father said, bending down to scrutinise the carpet.

'They're quite clear in this light,' Elínborg said as she looked at the sun through the lounge window. The sun was low and pierced the eyes. To her, the creamy marble tiles on the floor looked as if they were aflame. Close by the stairway stood a beautiful drinks cabinet. It contained spirits, expensive liqueurs, red and white wines rested forward onto their necks in racks. There were two glass windows in the cabinet and Erlendur noticed a smudge on one of them. On the side of the cabinet facing the staircase, a little drip had been spilt, measuring roughly a centimetre and a half. Elínborg put her finger on the drip and it was sticky.

'Did anything happen by this cabinet?' Erlendur asked.

The father looked at him.

'What are you talking about?'

'It's like something's been splashed on it. You've cleaned it recently.'

'No,' the father said. 'Not recently.'

'Those marks on the staircase,' Elínborg said. 'They look like a child's footprints to me.'

'I can't see any footprints on the staircase,' the father said. 'Just now you were talking about stains. Now they're footprints. What are you implying?'

'Were you at home when your son was assaulted?'

The father said nothing.

'The attack took place at the school,' Elínborg went on. 'School was over for the day but he was playing football and when he set off home they attacked him. That's what we think happened. He hasn't been able to talk to you, nor to us. I don't think he wants to. Doesn't dare. Maybe because the boys said they would kill him if he told the police. Maybe because someone else said they would kill him if he talked to us.'

'Where's all this leading?'

'Why did you come home early from work that day? You came home around noon. He crawled home and up to his room, and shortly afterwards you arrived and called the police and an ambulance.'

Elínborg had already been wondering what the father was doing at home in the middle of a weekday, but had not asked him until now.

'No one saw him on his way home from school,' Erlendur said.

'You're not implying that I attacked ... that I attacked my own boy like that? Surely you're not implying that?'

'Do you mind if we take a sample from the carpet?'

'I think you ought to get out of here,' the father said.

'I'm not implying anything,' Erlendur said. 'Eventually the boy will say what happened. Maybe not now and maybe not after a week or a month, maybe not after one year, but he will in the end.'

'Out,' the father said, enraged and indignant by now. 'Don't you dare ... don't you dare start... You leave. Get out. Out!'

Elínborg went straight to the hospital and into the children's ward. The boy was asleep in his bed with his arm suspended from the hook. She sat down beside him and waited for him to wake up. After she had stayed by the bedside for fifteen minutes the boy stirred and noticed the tired-looking policewoman, but the sad-eyed man in the woollen cardigan who had been with her earlier that day was nowhere to be seen now. Their eyes met and Elínborg did her utmost to smile.

'Was it your dad?'

She went back to the father's house when night had fallen, with a search warrant and forensics experts. They examined the marks on the carpet. They examined the marble floor and the drinks cabinet. They took samples. They swept up tiny grains from the marble. They plucked at the spilt drop on the cabinet. They went upstairs to the boy's room and took samples from the head of his bed. They went to the laundry room and looked at the cloths and towels. They examined the dirty laundry. They opened the vacuum cleaner. They took samples from the broom. They went out to the dustbin and rummaged around in the rubbish. They found a pair of the boy's socks in the bin.