Tainted Blood (12 page)

The search for the woman from Húsavík had still not led anywhere when towards evening Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg sat down at Erlendur's office to talk things over before going home. Sigurdur Óli said he wasn't surprised, they'd never find the woman this way. When Erlendur asked peevishly if he knew a better method, he shook his head.

"I don't feel as if we're looking for Holberg's murderer," Elínborg said, staring at Erlendur. "It's as if we're looking for something completely different and I'm unclear what it is. You've exhumed a little girl's body and I, for one, have no idea why. You've started looking for a man who went missing a generation ago and who I can't see has anything to do with the case. I don't think we're asking ourselves the obvious question: either the murderer was someone close to Holberg or a total stranger, someone who broke in intending to burgle him. Personally I think that's the most likely explanation. I think we ought to step up the search for that person. Some dopehead. The green army jacket. We haven't really done anything about that."

"Maybe it's someone Holberg paid for his services," Sigurdur Óli said. "With all that porn on his computer there's a good chance he paid for sex."

Erlendur sat through the criticism in silence and stared into his lap. He knew that most of what Elínborg had said was true. Maybe his judgment had been distorted by worrying about Eva Lind. He didn't know where she was, he didn't know what state she was in, she was being chased by people who wanted to harm her and he was helpless to protect her. He told neither Sigurdur Óli nor Elínborg of what he had discovered from the pathologist.

"We have the note," he said. "It's no coincidence we found it with the body."

The door suddenly opened and the head of forensics peeped inside.

"I'm leaving," he said. "I just wanted to let you know they're still examining the camera and they'll call you as soon as they find anything worth reporting."

He closed the door behind him without saying goodbye.

"Maybe we can't see the wood for the trees," Erlendur said. "Maybe there's a terribly simple solution to the whole thing. Maybe it was some nutcase. But maybe, and this is what I think to be the case, the murder has much deeper roots than we realise. Maybe there's nothing simple about it. Maybe the explanation lies in Holberg's character and what he did in his past."

Erlendur paused.

"And the note," he said. " 'I am him.' What do you want to do with that?"

"It could be from some 'friend'," Sigurdur Óli said, making quotation marks with his fingers. "Or a workmate. We haven't applied ourselves much in those areas. To tell the truth I don't know where all this searching for an old woman is supposed to lead us. I don't have a clue how to ask them if they've been raped without getting hit over the head with a rolling pin."

"And hasn't Ellidi told that sort of lie before in his life?" Elínborg said. "Isn't that precisely what he wants, to make fools of us? Have you considered that?"

"Oh, come on," Erlendur said as if he couldn't be bothered to listen to this nagging any more. "The inquiry has led us onto this path. It would be wrong for us not to investigate the clues we get, wherever they come from. I know Icelandic murders aren't complicated, but there's something about this one that doesn't fit if you just want to put it down to coincidence. I don't think it's a mindless act of brutality."

The telephone on Erlendur's desk rang. He answered, listened for a short while and then nodded and said thank you before putting the phone down. His suspicion had been confirmed.

"Forensics," he said, looking at Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli. "Grétar's camera was used to take the photo of Audur's grave in the cemetery. We took a photograph using his camera and the same kind of scratches came out. So now we know there's at least a strong probability that Grétar took the picture. Possibly someone else used his camera, but the alternative is much more likely."

"And what does that tell us?" Sigurdur Óli asked, looking at the clock. He had invited Bergthóra out for a meal that evening and intended to make up for his clumsiness on his birthday.

"For example, it tells us that Grétar knew Audur was Holberg's daughter. Not many people were aware of that. And it also tells us that Grétar saw particular reason, a) to locate the grave, and b) to take a photo of it. Did he do it because Holberg asked him to? Did he do it to spite him? Is Grétar's disappearance connected with the photograph? If so, how? What did Grétar want with the photo? Why did we find it hidden in Holberg's desk? What sort of person takes pictures of children's graves?"

Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli watched Erlendur asking these questions. They noticed how his voice turned into a half-whisper and saw that he wasn't talking to them any more, but had disappeared inside himself, vacant and remote. He put his hand on his chest and instinctually rubbed it, apparently without realising what he was doing. They looked at one another but didn't dare to ask.

"What sort of person takes pictures of children's graves?" Erlendur said again.

Later that evening Erlendur found the man who had sent the debt collectors for Eva Lind. He received information from the narcotics squad, who had a fairly thick file on him, and found out he frequented a pub by the name of Napoleon, in the city centre. Erlendur went there and sat down facing the man. His name was Eddi and he looked about 40, chubby and bald. His few remaining teeth were stained yellow.

"Did you expect Eva to get special treatment because you're a cop?" Eddi said when Erlendur sat down with him. He seemed to know at once who Erlendur was even though they'd never met before. Erlendur had the feeling he'd been expecting him.

"Have you found her?" Erlendur asked and looked all around the darkened room at the handful of unfortunates who were sitting at tables and making tough-guy gestures and expressions. Suddenly the name of the pub assumed significance in his mind.

"You understand that I'm her friend," Eddi said. "I give her what she wants. Sometimes she pays me. Sometimes she takes too long about it. The guy with the knee sends his regards."

"He grassed on you."

"It's difficult to find decent people," Eddi said, pointing around the room.

"How much is it?"

"Eva? Two hundred thousand. And she doesn't just owe me."

"Can we make a deal?"

"As you please."

Erlendur took out 20,000 crowns, which he'd taken out of a cash machine on his way there, and put it on the table. Eddi took the money, counted it carefully and put it in his pocket.

"I can let you have some more after a week or so."

"That's cool."

Eddi gave Erlendur a probing look.

"I thought you were going to give me some lip," he said.

"For what?" Erlendur said.

"I know where she is," Eddi said, "but you'll never be able to save Eva."

Erlendur located the house. He'd been in that kind of house before on the same business. Eva Lind lay on a mattress in the hovel surrounded by other people. Some were her age, others much older. The house was open and the only obstacle was a man, whom Erlendur took to be about 20, who met him in the doorway waving his arms. Erlendur slammed him against the wall and threw him out. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling of one of the rooms. He bent down to Eva and tried to wake her. Her breathing was regular and normal, her heartbeat a little fast. He shook her and slapped her lightly across the cheek and soon Eva opened her eyes.

"Grandad," she said, and her eyes closed again. He lifted Eva up and carried her out of the room, taking care not to tread on the other motionless bodies lying on the floor. He couldn't tell whether they were awake or asleep. She opened her eyes again.

"She's here," she whispered, but Erlendur didn't know what she was talking about and kept on walking with Eva out to his car. The sooner he got her out of there the better. He put her down on her feet to open the car door and she leaned up against him.

"Did you find her?" she asked

"Find who? What are you talking about?" He lay her down on the front seat, fastened her seatbelt, sat in the driver's seat and was about to drive away.

"Is she with you?" Eva Lind asked without opening her eyes.

"Who, dammit?" Erlendur shouted.

"The bride," Eva Lind said. "The babe from Gardabaer. I was lying next to her."

Erlendur was eventually woken up by the phone ringing. It resounded in his head until he opened his eyes and looked around everywhere. He'd slept in the armchair in the sitting room. His coat and hat were lying on the sofa. It was dark in the flat. Erlendur got to his feet slowly and wondered whether he could wear the same clothes for yet another day. He couldn't remember the last time he had undressed. He looked into the bedroom before answering the phone and saw that the two girls were lying in his bed where he'd put them the night before. He pulled the door to.

"The fingerprints on the camera match the ones on the photograph," Sigurdur Óli said when Erlendur eventually answered. He had to repeat the sentence twice more before Erlendur realised what he was talking about.

"Do you mean Grétar's fingerprints?"

"Yes, Grétar's."

"And Holberg's prints were on the photo too?" Erlendur said. "What the hell were they up to?"

"Beats my balls off," Sigurdur Óli said.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing. So Grétar took the photo then. We can assume that. He showed it to Holberg or Holberg found it. We'll go on looking for the Húsavík woman today, won't we?" Sigurdur Óli asked. "You don't have any new leads?"

"Yes," Erlendur said. "And no."

"I'm on my way up to Grafarvogur. We've almost finished the women in Reykjavik. Are we going to send someone up to Húsavík when we've finished here?"

"Yes," Erlendur said and put down the phone. Eva Lind was in the kitchen. She'd been woken up by the phone ringing. She was still dressed, as was the girl from Gardabaer. Erlendur had gone back into the hovel, carried her out and driven them both to his flat.

Eva Lind went into the toilet without saying a word and Erlendur heard her retching violently. He went into the kitchen and made some strong coffee, the only solution he knew in that situation, sat down at the kitchen table and waited for his daughter to come back out. Quite a while passed, he filled two cups. Eva Lind came out at last. She had wiped her face. Erlendur thought she looked terrible. Her body was so scrawny it barely hung together.

"I knew she did dope sometimes," Eva Lind said in a hoarse voice when she sat down with Erlendur, "but I met her by pure chance."

"What happened to you?" Erlendur asked.

She looked at her father.

"I'm trying," she said, "but it's difficult."

"Two lads came here asking for you. Filthy-mouthed. I gave some Eddi character some money you owed him. It was him who told me where that the hovel was."

"Eddi's okay."

"Are you going to keep trying?"

"Should I get rid of it?" Eva Lind stared down at the floor.

"I don't know."

"I'm so scared I've damaged it."

"Maybe you're trying on purpose."

Eva Lind looked up at her father.

"You're fucking pathetic," she said.

"Me!"

"Yes, you."

"What am I supposed to think? Tell me that!" Erlendur shouted. "Can you possibly handle this endless self-pity? What a bloody loser you can be sometimes. Do you really feel so good in that company you keep that you can't think there's anything better for you? What right do you have to treat your life like that? What right do you have to treat the life inside you like that? Do you really think things are so horrible for you? Do you really think no-one in the world feels as bad as you? I'm investigating the death of a girl who didn't even reach the age of five. She fell ill and died. Something no-one understands destroyed her and killed her. Her coffin was three feet long. Can you hear what I'm saying? What right have you got to live? Tell me that!"

Erlendur was shouting. He stood up and hammered on the kitchen table with such a force that the cups started jumping around and when he saw that he picked one up and threw it at the wall behind Eva Lind. His rage flared up and for a moment he lost control of himself. He overturned the table, swept everything off the kitchen surfaces, pots and glasses slammed into the walls and floor. Eva Lind sat still in her chair, watched her father go berserk and her eyes filled with tears.

Finally Erlendur's rage abated, he turned to Eva Lind and saw her shoulders were shaking and she was hiding her face in her hands. He looked at his daughter, her dirty hair, thin arms, wrists hardly thicker than his fingers, her skinny, trembling body. She was barefoot and there was dirt under all her nails. He went over to her and tried to pull her hands away from her face, but she wouldn't let him. He wanted to apologise to her. Wanted to take her in his arms. He did neither.

Instead, he sat down on the floor beside her. The phone rang but he didn't answer it. There was no sign of the other girl from the bedroom. The phone stopped ringing and the flat fell silent again. The only sound was Eva Lind sobbing. Erlendur knew he was no model father and the speech he'd delivered could just as easily have been directed at himself. Probably he was talking just as much to himself and was as angry with himself as with Eva Lind. A psychologist would say he'd been venting his anger on the girl. But maybe what he said did have some effect. He hadn't seen Eva Lind cry before. Not since she was a small child. He left her when she was two.

At last Eva Lind took her hands away from her face, sniffed and wiped her face.

"It was her dad," she said.

"Her dad?" Erlendur said.

"Who was a monster," Eva Lind said. " 'He's a monster. What have I done?' It was her dad. He started touching her up when she started growing breasts and he kept going further and further. Couldn't even keep his hands off her at her own wedding. Took her off to some empty part of the house. Told her she looked so sexy in her wedding dress he couldn't control himself. Couldn't stand the thought of her leaving him. Started goosing her. She freaked out."

"What a crowd!" Erlendur groaned.

"I knew she did dope sometimes. She's asked me to score for her before. She totally flipped and went to see Eddi. She's been lying in that dump ever since."

Eva Lind stopped. "I think her mother knew about it," she said afterwards. "All the time. She didn't do anything. The house was too flash. Too many cars."

"Doesn't the girl want to go to the police?"

"Wow!"

"What?"

"Go through all that crap for a three-month suspended sentence if anyone believes her? Come on!"

"What's she going to do?"

"She'll go back to the bloke. Her husband. I think she likes him."

"She blamed herself then, did she?"

"She doesn't know what to think."

"Because she wrote 'What have I done?' She took the blame on herself."

"It's not surprising she's a bit screwed up."

"It always seems to be the bloody perverts who seem happiest of all. Smile at the world as if there's never anything gnawing away at their bloody consciences."

"Don't talk to me like that again," Eva Lind said. "Never talk to me like that again."

"Do you owe more people than Eddi?" Erlendur asked.

"A few. But Eddi's the main problem."

The phone rang yet again. The girl in the bedroom stirred and sat up, looked all around and got out of bed. Erlendur wondered whether to bother answering. Whether to bother going to work. Whether he ought to spend the day with Eva Lind. Keep her company, maybe get her to go to the doctor with him and have the embryo looked at, if you could call it an embryo. Find out if everything was all right. Stand by her.

But the phone refused to stop ringing. The girl had come out into the corridor and looked all around in confusion. She called out to ask if anyone was in the flat. Eva Lind called back that they were in the kitchen. Erlendur stood up, met the girl in the kitchen doorway and said hello. He received no reply. They'd both slept in their clothes just like Erlendur. The girl looked around the kitchen that Erlendur had smashed up and cast a sideways glance at him.

Erlendur answered the phone at last.

"What was the smell in Holberg's flat like?" Erlendur took a while to realise it was Marion Briem's voice.

"The smell?" Erlendur repeated.

"What was the smell in his flat like?" Marion Briem repeated.

"It was a sort of nasty basement smell," Erlendur said. "A smell of damp. A stench. I don't know. Like horses?"

"No, it's not horses," Marion Briem said. "I was reading about Nordurmýri. I talked to a plumber friend of mine and he referred me to another plumber. I've talked to a lot of plumbers."

"Why plumbers?"

"Very interesting, the whole business. You didn't tell me about the fingerprints on the photo." There was a hint of accusation in Marion's voice.

"No," Erlendur said. "I didn't get round to it."

"I heard about Grétar and Holberg. Grétar knew the girl was Holberg's daughter. Maybe he knew something else."

Erlendur remained silent.

"What do you mean?" he said eventually.

"Do you know the most important thing about Nordurmýri?" Marion Briem asked.

"No," Erlendur said, finding it difficult to follow Marion's train of thought.

"It's so obvious that I missed it at the time."

"What is it?"

Marion paused for a moment as if to give extra weight to the words.

"Nordurmýri. North Mire."

"And?"

"The houses were built on marsh land."