Jar City Page 23

  “The morgue on Barónsstígur,” Sigurdur Óli repeated when he received no response from Erlendur.

  “Oh Christ,” Erlendur groaned. “And?”

  “I don’t know,” Sigurdur Óli said. “The report just came in. They called me and I said I’d contact you. They don’t know anything about the motive. Is there anything except dead bodies down there?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Erlendur said. “Get the pathologist down there too,” he added and put the phone down.

  Eva Lind was asleep in the sitting room when he put on his coat and hat and looked at the clock. It was past midnight. He closed the door carefully behind him so as not to wake his daughter, then hurried down the stairs and into his car.

  When he reached the morgue three police cars with flashing lights were parked outside. He recognised Sigurdur Óli’s car and just as Erlendur was entering the building he saw the pathologist turn the corner, his tyres screeching on the wet tarmac. The pathologist had a ferocious look on his face. Erlendur hurried down the long corridor lined with policemen and Sigurdur Óli came out of the operating theatre.

  “Nothing seems to be missing,” Sigurdur Óli said when he saw Erlendur storming down the corridor.

  “Tell me what happened,” Erlendur said and went into the operating theatre with him. The operating tables were empty, all the cupboards were closed and there was no evidence of a break-in there.

  “There were footprints all over the floor in here but they’ve mostly dried up now,” Sigurdur Óli said. “The building’s connected to an alarm system that calls the security company’s headquarters and they contacted us about 15 minutes ago. It looks as though the burglar smashed a window at the back and put his hand through to undo the lock. Not very complicated. As soon as he entered the building the alarm went off. He wouldn’t have had much time to do anything.”

  “Definitely enough time,” Erlendur said. The pathologist had joined them and was visibly disturbed.

  “Who the hell breaks into a morgue?” he said.

  “Where are Holberg and Audur?” Erlendur asked.

  The pathologist looked at Erlendur.

  “Is this anything to do with Holberg’s murder?” he asked.

  “It could be,” Erlendur said. “Quick, quick, quick.”

  “They keep the bodies in this side room here,” the pathologist said and showed them to a door which he opened.

  “Are these doors always unlocked?” Sigurdur Óli asked.

  “Who steals bodies?” the pathologist snapped, but he stopped in his tracks when he looked inside the room.

  “What now?” Erlendur asked.

  “The girl’s gone,” the pathologist said as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He hurried through the storage room, opened another door inside it and switched on the light.

  “What?” Erlendur asked.

  “Her coffin’s gone too,” the pathologist said. He looked at Sigurdur Óli and Erlendur in turn. “We’d got a new coffin for her. Who does that sort of thing? Who would ever think of such a perversion?”

  “His name’s Einar,” Erlendur said, “and it’s not a perversion.”

  He turned round. Sigurdur Óli followed fast behind and they hurried out of the morgue.

  43

  There wasn’t much traffic on the Keflavík road that night and Erlendur drove as fast as his little ten-year-old Japanese car could manage. The rain pounded on the windscreen too hard for the wipers to clear and Erlendur thought back to the first time he went to see Elín a few days before. It was like it would never stop raining.

  He had ordered Sigurdur Óli to put the Keflavík police on alert and make sure that a back-up force from Reykjavík was available. Also to contact Einar’s mother and warn her about the recent turn of events. He wanted to drive directly to the cemetery himself in the hope that Einar would be there with Audur’s body. He could only imagine that Einar intended to return his sister to her grave.

  When Erlendur pulled up by Hvalsnes cemetery gate he could see Einar’s car there with the driver’s door and one of the rear doors open. Erlendur switched off the engine, stepped out into the rain and looked at Einar’s car. He strained to listen but could only hear the rain dropping vertically to the ground. There was no wind and he looked up into the black sky. In the distance he could see a light above the entrance to the church and when he looked across the cemetery he saw a gleam where Audur’s grave was. He thought he could make out something moving at the graveside.

  And the miniature white coffin.

  He set off cautiously and crept up to the man he took to be Einar. The light came from a powerful lantern that the man had brought with him and put down on the ground by the coffin. Erlendur stepped slowly into the light. He looked up from what he was doing and stared into Erlendur’s eyes. Erlendur had seen photographs of Holberg as a young man and there was no question about the resemblance. His forehead was low and a little rounded, his eyebrows thick, eyes close together, prominent cheekbones on a thin face and slightly protruding teeth. His nose was narrow and so were his lips, but his chin was large and his neck long. They looked each other in the eye for an instant.

  “Who are you?” Einar asked.

  “I’m Erlendur. Holberg’s my case.”

  “Are you surprised how much I look like him?” Einar said.

  “There is a certain resemblance,” Erlendur said.

  “You know he raped my mother,” Einar said.

  “That’s not your fault,” Erlendur said.

  “He was my father.”

  “That’s not your fault either.”

  “You shouldn’t have done this,” Einar said, pointing to the coffin.

  “I felt I had to,” Erlendur said. “I found out that she died from the same disease as your daughter.”

  “I’m going to put her back where she belongs,” Einar said.

  “That’s all right,” Erlendur said, inching his way over to the coffin. “You’ll surely want to put this in the grave too.” Erlendur held out the black leather case that he’d kept in his car ever since he left the collector.

  “What’s that?” Einar asked.

  “The disease,” Erlendur said.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “It’s Audur’s bio-sample. I think we ought to return it to her.”

  Einar looked at the bag and at Erlendur in turn, unsure of what to do. Erlendur moved even closer until he was beside the coffin, which separated them, and he put the bag down on it and calmly backed away again to where he had been standing before.

  “I want to be cremated,” Einar suddenly said.

  “You’ve got your whole life to arrange that,” Erlendur said.

  “Oh yes, a whole life,” Einar said, raising his voice. “What’s that? What’s a life when it’s seven years? Can you tell me that? What kind of life is that?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Erlendur said. “Do you have the gun on you?”

  “I talked to Elín,” Einar said, ignoring his question. “You probably know. We talked about Audur. My sister. I knew about her but I didn’t know she was my sister until later. I saw you taking her out of the grave. I could understand Elín when she tried to attack you.”

  “How did you know about Audur?”

  “From the database. I found all the people who died of this particular strain of the disease. I didn’t know then that I was Holberg’s son and Audur was my sister. I found that out later. How I was conceived. When I asked my mother.”

  He looked at Erlendur.

  “After I discovered I was a carrier.”

  “How did you link Holberg and Audur?”

  “Through the disease. The strain of it. The brain tumour is that rare.”

  Einar fell silent for a moment and then began giving, methodically and without any digressions or sentimentality, an exact account of his doings, as if he’d been preparing to do so. He never raised his voice but always spoke in the same low tone which sometimes dropped to a whisper. The rain fell
to the ground and onto the coffin and the hollow echo from it could be heard in the still of the night. He described how his daughter fell ill out of the blue when she was four years old. The disease proved difficult to diagnose and months went by until the doctors concluded it was a rare neural disease. It was thought to be genetically transmitted and was confined to certain families but the peculiar thing was that it didn’t occur on either his mother’s or his father’s side of the family. It was a kind of deviation or variant strain, which the doctors had difficulty explaining, unless some kind of mutation had taken place.

  They said the disease was in the child’s brain and could kill her in the space of a couple of years. What followed was a period that Einar said he couldn’t begin to describe to Erlendur.

  “Have you got any children?” he asked.

  “Two,” Erlendur said. “A boy and a girl.”

  “We just had her,” he said, “and we split up when she died. Somehow there was nothing to keep us together except the sorrow and memories and the struggles at the hospital. When that was over it was like our lives were over too. There was nothing left.”

  Einar stopped talking and closed his eyes as if he was about to fall asleep. The rain dripped down his face.

  “I was one of the first employees at the new company,” he said then. “When the database was set up I seemed to come back to life. I couldn’t accept the doctors’ answers. I had to find explanations. I regained my interest in finding out how the disease had been transmitted to my daughter, if that was possible. The health database is linked to a genealogy database and the two can be processed together and if you know what you’re looking for and have the key to the encryption you can see where the disease lies and you can trace it back along the family tree. You can even see the deviations. Deviations like me. And Audur.”

  “I talked to Karítas at the Genetic Research Centre,” Erlendur said, wondering how he could get through to Einar. “She described to me the trick you played. This is all so new for us. People don’t understand exactly what can be done with all the information that’s been collected. What it contains and what you can read into it.”

  “I was beginning to suspect something. My daughter’s doctors had a theory it was genetically transmitted. At first I thought I was simply adopted and it would certainly have been better that way. If they’d adopted me. Then I started suspecting my mother. I tricked her into giving me a blood sample. My father too. I couldn’t find anything in them. Neither of them. But I found it in me.”

  “You don’t have any symptoms?”

  “Very few,” Einar said, “I’ve lost most of my hearing in one ear. There’s a tumour by the aural nerve. Benign. And I’ve got marks on my skin.”

  “Café au lait?”

  “You’ve done your homework. I could have contracted the disease through a genetic change. A mutation. But I thought the other explanation was more plausible. In the end I went to the database and got the names of several carriers my mother could have had a relationship with. Holberg was one of them. She told me the whole story straightaway when I challenged her with my suspicions. How she’d kept quiet about the rape and that I’d never suffered for my origins. On the contrary. I’m the youngest son,” he said by way of explanation. “The little baby boy.”

  “I know,” Erlendur said.

  “What a thing to hear!” Einar shouted out into the still of the night. “I wasn’t my father’s son; my real father raped my mother; I was the son of a rapist; he’d given me corrupt genes that hardly touched me but killed my daughter; I had a half-sister who died of the same disease. I still haven’t taken it all in. Still haven’t managed to grasp it. When my mother told me about Holberg the rage swelled up in me and I just snapped. He was a repulsive character.”

  “You started by phoning him.”

  “I wanted to hear his voice. Don’t all bastards want to meet their father?” Einar said, a smile playing across his lips. “Even if it is just the once.”

  44

  The rain had been gradually letting up and now it stopped. The lantern cast a yellow glow onto the ground and the rain, which ran in little streams down the path by the graves. They stood motionless, facing one another, with the coffin between them, looking each other in the eye.

  “He must have been shocked to see you,” Erlendur said eventually. He knew the police were on their way to the cemetery and he wanted to make the most of this time he had with Einar before the fuss began. He also knew Einar was almost certainly armed. There was no sign of the shotgun but he couldn’t rule out that Einar had it with him. Einar had one hand inside his coat.

  “You should have seen his face,” Einar said. “It was like he’d seen a ghost from the past, and that ghost was his own self.”

  Holberg stood in the doorway looking at the man who rang the bell. He had never seen him before but still he recognised the face immediately.

  “Hello, Dad,” Einar said sarcastically. He couldn’t hide his rage.

  “Who are you?” Holberg said, astonished.

  “I’m your son,” Einar said.

  “What is all this…are you the one who’s been phoning me? I want to ask you to leave me in peace. I don’t know you in the slightest. You’re not in your right mind.”

  They were similar in height and appearance but what Einar found most surprising was how elderly and feeble Holberg looked. When he spoke it was with a wheeze from deep within his lungs after decades of smoking. His face was drawn, sharp-featured, with dark rings under the eyes. His dirty, grey hair stuck down firmly against his head. His skin withered, his fingertips yellow, a slight stoop, his eyes colourless and dull.

  Holberg was about to close the door but Einar was stronger and pushed his way into the flat. He sensed the smell immediately. Like the smell of horses, but worse.

  “What are you keeping in here?” Einar said.

  “Will you get out this minute.” Holberg’s voice was squeaky when he shouted at Einar and he backed away into the sitting room.

  “I’ve got every right to be here,” Einar said, looking around at the bookcase and the computer in the corner. “I’m your son. The prodigal son. Can I ask you one thing, Dad? Did you rape more women besides my mother?”

  “I’ll call the police!” The wheezing became more noticeable as he got worked up.

  “Someone should have done that long ago,” Einar said.

  Holberg hesitated.

  “What do you want from me?” he said.

  “You haven’t got a clue about what’s happened and it’s none of your business. You couldn’t care less about it. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “That face,” Holberg said but didn’t finish the sentence. He looked at Einar with his colourless eyes and watched him for a long while until it dawned on him what Einar had been saying, that he was his son. Einar noticed him hesitate, saw how he puzzled over what he’d said.

  “I’ve never raped anyone in my life,” Holberg said eventually. “It’s all a bloody lie. They said I had a daughter in Keflavík and her mother accused me of rape but she could never prove it. I was never convicted.”

  “Do you know what happened to that daughter of yours?”

  “I think the girl died young. I never had any contact with her or the mother. Surely you understand that. She accused me of rape, dammit!”

  “Maybe you’re aware of child mortality in your family?” Einar asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Have any children died in your family?”

  “What’s all this about?”

  “I know of several cases this century. One of them was your sister.”

  Holberg stared at Einar.

  “What do you know about my family? How…?”

  “Your brother, 20 years older than you, died 15 years ago. Lost his young daughter in 1941. You were 11. There were just you two brothers and you were born so far apart.”

  Holberg said nothing and Einar continued.

  “The disease sho
uld have died with you. You should have been the last carrier. You’re the last in line. Unmarried. Childless. No family. But you were a rapist. A hopeless fucking rapist!”

  Einar stopped talking and stared at Holberg with hateful eyes.

  “And now I’m the last carrier.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Audur got the disease from you. My daughter got it from me. It’s as simple as that. I’ve looked at this in the database. There hadn’t been any new cases of the disease in this family since Audur died, apart from my daughter. We’re the last ones.”

  Einar moved a step closer, picked up a heavy glass ashtray and rolled it in his hands.

  “And now it’s over.”

  “I didn’t go there to kill him. He must have thought he was in big danger. I don’t know why I picked up the ashtray. Maybe I was going to throw it at him. Maybe I wanted to attack him. He moved first. Attacked me and grabbed me by the throat but I hit him over the head and he fell to the floor. I did it without thinking. I was angry and could just as easily have attacked him. I’d wondered how our meeting would end, but I never foresaw that. Never. He hit his head on the table when he fell and then he hit the floor and started bleeding. I knew he was dead when I bent down to him. I looked around, saw a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote that I was him. It was the only thing I could think of after I saw him at the door. That I was him. That I was that man. And that man was my father.”

  Einar looked down at the open grave.

  “There’s water in it,” he said.

  “We’ll fix that,” Erlendur said. “If you’ve got the gun on you, let me have it.” Erlendur inched closer to him but Einar didn’t seem to care.

  “Children are philosophers. My daughter asked me once at the hospital, Why have we got eyes?’ I said it was so we could see.”

  Einar paused. “She corrected me,” he said as if to himself. He looked at Erlendur. “She said it was so we could cry.”