Reykjavik Nights Page 18

  Erlendur’s attempts to follow this advice had not been particularly successful. He had dutifully stayed awake for twenty-four hours but the following night he tossed and turned, falling into a fitful doze only to wake again restless, sweating and confused. At two in the morning, sleep still eluding him, he went into the kitchen and sat at the table, alone in the silence, not knowing what to do. He stared into space, conscious that whatever ploys he used to try to switch off his churning thoughts, the problem of Oddný and Hannibal would prevent him from sleeping. And if not that, then Halldóra’s announcement. And if not that, something else …

  ‘What do you want to do, Erlendur?’ she had asked, and he had suggested she move in with him for now; later they would find somewhere more suitable. She was not convinced. She wanted to be persuaded that he genuinely meant it and asked if he was serious about their relationship. He tried to reassure her, and even believed it himself. It was time to settle down, time to stop living a life that revolved entirely around himself, time to make changes and do something new, something different.

  By now Halldóra was looking rather more cheerful and before long she was agreeing with him about finding more suitable accommodation. She had already been scanning the property ads in the papers and concluded that it would be better to buy a place than rent. Of course, they would need a second bedroom. One, for now. Her face broke into a smile and he realised she was happy again.

  From there his thoughts roved on to Gústaf’s reaction: had it been right to visit him and, if so, could he have handled the situation better? He felt a pang of regret now at how aggressive he had been, at the harsh accusations implicit in his questions. For all he knew, Gústaf might regard this as grounds for a formal complaint.

  It seemed a reasonable assumption that Oddný was dead. Erlendur pondered the possibility he had put to Gústaf: that the same person had murdered Hannibal as well. Jealousy and revenge were the motives that sprang to mind, but he told himself he must not be too quick to point the finger. It was hard to work out the sequence of events at the pipeline and later at the diggings, but he thought perhaps Oddný had been assaulted and, in trying to come to her aid, Hannibal had been overpowered and killed. The perpetrator had then hidden Oddný’s body but left Hannibal in the pool to make it look as if he’d drowned, gambling on the fact that no one would bother much about the death of a tramp.

  He had assured Gústaf that Hannibal wouldn’t have laid a finger on Oddný, and it was true: he simply couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t picture him killing her, hiding her body, then drowning himself. That didn’t add up. There must have been a third person, who was responsible for both their deaths. That was the conclusion staring Erlendur in the face.

  His mind wandered back over the events of recent days and weeks, pausing at his meeting with Thurí at the bus station. At what she had said about the accident; how Helena had waved Hannibal away so that he would save his sister. Hannibal had confided in Thurí when his guard was down. When he was ‘gentle’, she had said. Hannibal had never been able to escape the memories of what had happened when they crashed into the harbour.

  He pictured Thurí in the bus shelter, waiting for her next round trip, dreaming of travel. Remembered his first meeting with her when she had been perfectly sober, so different from the three alcoholics playing Ludo, who had been so coarse, cackling at them like three witches in a fairy tale. He tried to erase the image of Thurí and Bergmundur in her grotty little room in the west of town.

  The west of town … where he sometimes took a detour past a certain house, when haunted by the story of the girl from the women’s college who had vanished without trace. This fixation of his with disappearances – with the phenomenon itself, the fates of those who were never heard of again and the sufferings of those left behind to mourn. He knew his obsession had its roots in the tragedy he himself had endured on the moors out east, and that it had been intensified by all the books he had read on disappearances or terrible ordeals in this harsh land.

  Perhaps that was the true origin of his insomnia. The compulsion that repeatedly interrupted his sleep, that kept him lying awake. An inexplicable tension in his body. A sense of anticipation he had not experienced before. A spark of life ignited by the investigation he had begun, on his own initiative, into a disappearance in the city.

  Sooner or later he really would have to present his discoveries to CID. He would tell them all he knew, detail his conversations with everyone – from the brothers whom Hannibal had accused of trying to set fire to him, to Thurí who had found the earring.

  The object in question was lying on the table in front of him. Erlendur picked it up and twiddled it between his fingers. According to Thurí it had been lying right under the pipe near the opening. If her account was correct, Oddný could not have lost the earring where it was found. Nobody could fit in such a narrow space. There was no telling how it had ended up there but presumably somebody had kicked it aside without realising. On the other hand, it might have been hidden under the pipes, and there was no getting away from the fact that Hannibal himself could have done that.

  One further possibility occurred to him, but Erlendur could hardly bear to think it through. Oddný herself might have secreted the earring there in the faint hope that it would one day come to light and the world would learn that she had met her death in that dark tunnel.

  41

  As was their custom, Erlendur met Rebekka after work, in front of the surgery on Lækjargata. While they were walking towards the lake, he told her about meeting Oddný’s friends and about his conversations with Ísidór and Gústaf.

  ‘Gústaf’s reaction was the strangest,’ he said. ‘He used to hit Oddný, and it’s obvious she was looking for a way out. He did confirm that the earring was hers but when I pressed him further, he refused to talk to me and kicked me out. Though that doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. Maybe I went too far and made him angry. After all, he had a perfect right ask me to leave.’

  Erlendur went on to describe his visit to CID and his discussion with the detective in charge of Oddný’s case. How they’d had her husband in their sights but had been unable to find any evidence against him. For that they required a body, a murder weapon and a clear motive. Her former lover Ísidór had also been a suspect, but they had concluded that suicide was by far the most likely explanation.

  They sat down on a bench on Tjarnargata, facing east across the lake to the church and school. The weather was warm, as it had been for most of the summer, one sunny day succeeding another. Rebekka listened without comment. She wore a pair of fashionably large sunglasses and was tastefully dressed, as always, in a pale summer jacket and fetching silk blouse.

  ‘What about Hannibal?’ she asked finally.

  ‘They’re not interested in him,’ said Erlendur. ‘They’re treating them as two completely separate incidents.’

  ‘Did you tell them about the earring?’

  ‘I decided it wouldn’t do any harm to wait a bit longer. A few days, no more. It’s going to be increasingly difficult for me to come up with an excuse for not alerting CID straight away.’

  ‘So they haven’t linked Oddný and Hannibal at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they will do the moment you show them the earring.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rebekka gave a quiet sigh.

  ‘And Hannibal will be seen as the monster who murdered her.’

  ‘They might well think that, but they’ll still have to explain how and why he died. They’ll have to realise that there’s a chance he got mixed up in events that had nothing to do with him and lost his life as a result.’

  They sat for a long while, warmed by the sun, listening to the rumble of the city and the honking of the birds on the water. People strolled along Tjarnargata in the sunshine. They could hear car horns in the distance above the roar of the traffic, and, further away, a police siren wailed. A crash, Erlendur thought, and hoped it was not serious.

  ‘
Tell me, how did Hannibal himself describe the accident in Hafnarfjördur?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s just that I heard something he’d said to someone else. You said he didn’t like to talk about it?’

  ‘No,’ said Rebekka. ‘That’s an understatement. He wouldn’t discuss it at all. Not with anyone, as far as I know. What did you hear?’

  ‘Stands to reason, with an experience that traumatic, that he wouldn’t have talked about it to just anyone, only those closest to him.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at,’ said Rebekka.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a woman called Thurí?’

  ‘Thurí? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘She was a friend of Hannibal’s, another alcoholic.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She’s the woman I told you about, who found Oddný’s earring in the conduit. After he died she went to pay a last visit to his camp and discovered the earring by chance under one of the pipes, but didn’t tell anyone. Not until I met her. She hadn’t stopped to wonder why it was there. It didn’t bother her. She just kept it and later traded it for booze.’

  ‘And she was a friend of Hannibal’s?’

  Nodding, Erlendur explained how he had tracked Thurí down to the hostel on Amtmannsstígur. He didn’t know the precise nature of their relationship but it must have been intimate because Hannibal had apparently confided in her to some degree. Nor did he know how their friendship had developed in the first place. Thurí had quite a temper on her and spent time with other drinkers. It was possible she used them to procure booze, pills or whatever she needed. But her heart seemed to be in the right place and she was clever. Beyond this, all Erlendur knew was that she dreamt of travelling and had devised a rather novel method of making her dream come true.

  ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of her,’ said Rebekka.

  ‘Once, when Hannibal was “gentle”, as she put it, he started talking about the accident.’

  ‘Gentle?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘If he was prepared to open up like that, they must have been close.’

  ‘I get the impression they were good friends. It might help you to meet her, if she feels like talking to you.’

  ‘But do you know what … what he told her? About the accident?’

  Erlendur sensed she was apprehensive, unsure that she wanted to dwell any further on an event that had dogged her all her life and had shattered her family, her brother most of all. Erlendur phrased his answer with care, stressing his ignorance of what Thurí meant when she described Hannibal as gentle. Possibly he had been a little drunk, but the word might also have meant that he was in a tender mood. That he had opened up to Thurí when his guard was down. Whatever the circumstances, he had told her that he had intended to save them both. He had gone to free Helena but she had known they couldn’t both survive and waved him away, gesturing to him to put his little sister first. So Helena had in all likelihood sacrificed herself for Rebekka.

  ‘Apparently he claimed that Helena smiled at him, but for some reason Thurí didn’t set much store by that. She had the impression it was a detail Hannibal had invented for himself. She also stressed that this was the only time he spoke to her about the accident.’

  Rebekka sat quietly beside him as he repeated Thurí’s words.

  ‘Did you know?’ Erlendur asked, turning to her.

  She sat deathly still on the bench. Observing her puckered lips and the tears pouring from under the outsize sunglasses, he realised he needn’t have asked. It was the first time she had heard it. He was furious with himself for opening old wounds. He, of all people, should have understood.

  ‘I expect he did,’ Rebekka said at last, very quietly.

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Invent it. The bit about her smiling.’

  Erlendur could sense her pain.

  ‘He loved his Helena,’ she said. ‘More than anything else in the world.’

  42

  The thief ran smack into him, realised his mistake, spun round, fled into Skólavördustígur, across the road and vanished down Smidjustígur. Reacting a split second too late, Erlendur charged after him and kept running even when his white police cap flew off into the road. The man sprinted straight down to Laugavegur with Erlendur hot on his heels. But the man was so fast Erlendur didn’t think he’d be able to catch him.

  It was after five in the morning when a passer-by had noticed suspicious movements in a jeweller’s shop on Skólavördustígur. Since he was nearly home, the witness had run the last stretch to his house and phoned the police. There were two patrol cars in the area, one of which contained Erlendur, Gardar and Marteinn, and they were first on the scene. The thief had broken in through a window at the rear of the shop and was carrying a black sports bag over his shoulder. He didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry, no doubt assuming he had plenty of time, and certainly hadn’t thought the police would arrive that quickly. He escaped from the shop by the same route, only to find himself trapped in a courtyard. He took cover as Marteinn and Gardar came round the back and entered the shop by the broken window; then he darted out of his hiding place and into the street. He hadn’t been expecting Erlendur to block his path, then chase him down to Laugavegur and down the hill to Hverfisgata.

  The man suddenly swerved to the east, heading into Skuggahverfi with Erlendur close on his tail. He was still clutching the holdall, refusing to let go even if it slowed him down. He had planned the break-in carefully, as his black trousers, black jacket, black woollen hat and light plimsolls revealed, and had managed to disconnect the primitive burglar alarm, but he had not bargained for inquisitive passers-by that early in the morning.

  Marteinn and Gardar were nowhere to be seen. They had missed their quarry in the shop and hadn’t noticed Erlendur running after him. They stood outside the building, scanning the horizon. Marteinn called his name but there was no answer. Then they noticed the police cap lying in the road nearby and picked it up.

  ‘Where the hell has he got to?’ asked Gardar, as a second patrol car drew up noiselessly beside them.

  The burglar showed no signs of flagging as he pounded rhythmically along Lindargata. Erlendur, beginning to fall behind, was afraid of losing sight of him. In spite of his aching legs and shortness of breath, he refused to give up and kept pushing himself on. His heavy boots might have been fine for forming a guard of honour but they were clearly not designed for marathons.

  His heart skipped a beat when he saw the thief skid on a pile of sand and fall headlong into the road. Erlendur managed to cut down the man’s lead before he leapt to his feet again and fled, limping slightly, in the direction of the abattoir buildings. By now Erlendur could hear his gasping breaths and the rattling of the jewellery in his holdall. It looked as if he was planning to jettison the bag after all. As the man glanced from side to side, Erlendur managed to tackle him in front of the abattoir gates.

  They rolled over and over in the street until Erlendur got the upper hand. Straddling the thief’s back, he pushed the man’s face down on the paving stones while he tried to catch his breath. Then, with something of a struggle, he handcuffed the thief, dragged him to his feet and shoved him against a wall. An appetising aroma of dung-smoked meat wafted from the smoking ovens of the abattoir, reminding Erlendur how hungry he was. The night shift had been so busy he hadn’t eaten a thing since coming on duty.

  Erlendur had begun to hustle his prisoner back up the hill towards Skólavördustígur when it dawned on him that it would be quicker to take him straight down to the station on Hverfisgata and throw him in a cell. As he didn’t have a walkie-talkie on him he couldn’t pass on a message to Gardar and Marteinn but he didn’t think it really mattered. He’d caught the culprit: their work was done.

  He pushed the man ahead of him along Hverfisgata, the burglar objecting all the way, refusing to be hurried and complaining that this treatment was unreasonable since he was cooperating. Erlendur tol
d him to shut up. He had never seen the man before. He was around twenty, slim, with long legs, built for running; his hands and face were covered in grazes from the fall. His hat had come off, revealing a thick mop of hair.

  The sports bag, which Erlendur had slung over his own shoulder, clinked at every step with watches and jewellery.

  ‘How did you lot know I was doing the shop?’ asked the burglar.

  ‘Keep walking,’ snapped Erlendur.

  ‘Did someone see me?’

  Erlendur didn’t answer.

  ‘I nearly got away,’ remarked the thief.

  ‘If only you hadn’t fallen flat on your face,’ said Erlendur.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d chase me that far. Thought you’d give up. I’ve never run that fast in my life.’

  Erlendur gave him a shove.

  ‘Do you train?’ asked the prisoner.

  ‘Why don’t you just shut up?’ Erlendur pushed him on.

  ‘Been a cop long?’ continued the thief after a brief pause.

  Again Erlendur ignored him.

  ‘Or are you a summer temp?’

  ‘Look, will you just shut it?’ said Erlendur. ‘I have no desire to talk to you. Why did you break into that shop, anyway? Can’t you be bothered to work for a living? Think you’re too good for that? Stop asking questions and get a move on.’

  The thief took a few more steps, then baulked again.

  ‘I need the money.’

  ‘Who doesn’t? Try working for it.’

  ‘No, I need it right away. Lots of it. In a hurry. I can’t go to prison.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t steal.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Take it up with someone else,’ Erlendur interrupted him wearily. ‘I’m not interested in your bullshit.’

  They walked on, but the silence didn’t last long.

  ‘Just take it,’ said the thief.

  ‘Take what?’