Jar City (2 page)

Erlendur got back to the block of flats where he lived at around 10 p.m. and put a ready meal in the microwave to heat through. He stood and watched the meal revolving behind the glass. Better than television, he thought. Outside, the autumn winds howled, nothing but rain and darkness.

He thought about people who left messages and vanished. In such a situation, what would he possibly write? Who would he leave a message for? His daughter, Eva Lind, entered his mind. She had a drug addiction and would probably want to know if he had any money. She had become increasingly pushy in that respect. His son, Sindri Snaer, had recently completed a third period in rehab. The message to him would be simple: No more Hiroshima.

Erlendur smiled to himself as the microwave made three beeps. Not that he had ever thought of vanishing at all.

Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli had talked to the neighbour who found the body. His wife was home by then and talked about taking the boys away from the house and to her mother's. The neighbour, whose name was Ólafur, had said that he and all his family, his wife and two sons, went to school and work every day at 8 a.m. and no-one came home until, at the earliest, 4 p.m. It was his job to fetch the boys from school. They hadn't noticed anything unusual when they had left home that morning. The door to the man's flat had been closed. They'd slept soundly the previous night. Heard nothing. They didn't have much to do with their neighbour. To all intents and purposes he was a stranger, even though they had lived on the floor above him for several years.

The pathologist had yet to ascertain a precise time of death, but Erlendur imagined the murder had been committed around noon. In the busiest time of day as it was called. How could anyone even have the time for that these days? he thought to himself. A statement had been issued to the media that a man named Holberg aged about 70 had been found dead in his flat in Nordurmýri, probably murdered. Anyone who had noticed suspicious movements over the previous 24 hours in the area where Holberg lived was requested to contact the Reykjavík police.

Erlendur was roughly 50, divorced many years earlier, a father of two. He never let anyone sense that he couldn't stand his children's names. His ex-wife, with whom he had hardly spoken for more than two decades, thought they sounded sweet at the time. The divorce was a messy one and Erlendur had more or less lost touch with his children when they were young. They sought him out when they were older and he welcomed them, but regretted how they had turned out. He was particularly grieved by Eva Lind's fate. Sindri Snaer had fared better. But only just.

He took his meal out of the microwave and sat at the kitchen table. It was a one-bedroom flat filled with books wherever there was any room to arrange them. Old family photographs hung on the walls showing his relatives in the East Fjords, where he was born. He had no photographs of himself or of his children. A battered old Nordmende television stood against one wall with an even more battered armchair in front of it. Erlendur kept the flat reasonably tidy with a minimum of cleaning.

He didn't know exactly what it was that he ate. The ornate packaging promised something about oriental delights but the meal itself, concealed within some kind of pastry roll, tasted like hair oil. Erlendur pushed it away. He wondered whether he still had the rye bread he'd bought several days before. And the lamb pâté. Then the doorbell rang. Eva Lind had decided to drop in.

“How's it hanging?” she asked as she darted in through the door and flopped onto the sofa in the sitting room. The way she talked irritated him.

“Aiyee,” Erlendur said, and closed the door. “Don't talk that nonsense to me.”

“I thought you wanted me to choose my words carefully,” said Eva Lind, who had repeatedly been lectured about language by her father.

“Say something sensible then.”

It was difficult to tell which personality she was sporting this evening. Eva Lind was the best actress he'd ever known, although this didn't say much as he never went to the theatre or cinema and mostly watched educational programmes on television. Eva Lind's play was generally a family drama in one to three acts and dealt with the best way to get money out of her father. This didn't happen very often because Eva Lind had her own ways of getting hold of money, which Erlendur preferred to know as little about as possible. But occasionally, when she didn't have “a goddamn cent”, as she put it, she would turn to him.

Sometimes she was his little girl, snuggling up to him and purring like a cat. Sometimes she was on the brink of despair, stomping around the flat completely out of her mind, laying into him with accusations that he was a bad father for leaving her and Sindri Snaer when they were so young. She could also be coarse, and malicious and evil. But sometimes he thought she was her true self, almost normal, if indeed there is such a thing, and Erlendur felt he could talk to her like a human being.

She wore tattered jeans and a black leather bomber jacket. Her hair was short and jet black, she had two silver rings in her right eyebrow and a silver cross hanging from one ear. She'd had beautiful white teeth once but they were starting to show the signs: when she gave a wide smile it transpired that two upper ones were missing. She was very thin, and her face was drawn, with dark rings under the eyes. Erlendur sometimes felt he could see his own mother's likeness in her. He cursed Eva Lind's fate and blamed his own neglect for the way she had turned out.

“I talked to Mum today. Or rather, she talked to me and asked if I would talk to you. Great having divorced parents.”

“Does your mother want something from me?” Erlendur asked in surprise. After 20 years she still hated him. He'd caught just one glimpse of her in all that time and there had been no mistaking the loathing on her face. She'd spoken to him once about Sindri Snaer, but that was a conversation he preferred to forget.

“She's such a snobby bitch.”

“Don't talk about your mother like that.”

“It's about some filthy rich friends of hers from Gardabaer. Married their daughter off at the weekend and she just did a runner from the wedding. Really embarrassing. That was on Saturday and she hasn't been in touch since. Mum was at the wedding and she's knocked out by the scandal of it. I'm supposed to ask if you'll talk to the parents. They don't want to put an announcement in the papers, bloody snobs, but they know you're in the CID and reckon they can do it all really hush-hush. I'm the one who's supposed to ask you to talk to that crowd. Not Mum. You get it? Never!”

“Do you know these people?”

“Well, I wasn't invited to the wedding party the little bimbo fucked up.”

“Did you know the girl then?”

“Hardly.”

“And where could she have run off to?”

“How should I know?”

Erlendur shrugged.

“I was thinking about you just a minute ago,” he said.

“Nice,” Eva Lind said. “I just happened to be wondering if…”

“I haven't got any money,” Erlendur said, sitting down in his armchair to face her. “Are you hungry?”

Eva Lind arched her back.

“Why can't I ever talk to you without you going on about money?” she said and Erlendur felt as though she'd stolen his line.

“And why can't I ever talk to you, period?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“What are you speaking like that for? What's wrong? ‘Fuck you!' ‘How's it hanging?' What kind of language is that?”

“Jesus,” Eva Lind groaned.

“Who are you this time? Which one am I talking to now? Where's the real you in all this pile of dope?”

“Don't start that crap again. ‘Who are you?' ” she mimicked him. “Where's the real you? I'm here. I'm sitting in front of you. I'm me!”

“Eva.”

“Ten thousand crowns!” she said. “What's that to you? Can't you come up with ten thousand? You're rolling in cash.”

Erlendur looked at his daughter. There was something about her that he'd noticed the moment she'd arrived. She was short of breath, there were beads of sweat on her forehead and she constantly wriggled in her seat. As if she were ill.

“Are you ill?” he asked.

“I'm fine. I just need a bit of money. Please, don't be difficult.”

“Are you ill?”

“Please.”

Erlendur went on looking at his daughter.

“Are you trying to quit?” he said.

“Please, ten thousand. That's nothing. Nothing for you. I'll never come back and ask you for money again.”

“Yes, quite. How long is it since you…” Erlendur hesitated, unsure how to phrase it, “…used that stuff?”

“Doesn't matter. I've given up. Given up giving up giving up giving up giving up giving up giving up!” Eva Lind was on her feet. “Let me have ten thousand. Please. Five. Let me have five thousand. Haven't you got that in your pocket? Five! That's peanuts.”

“Why are you trying to stop now?”

Eva Lind looked at her father. “No stupid questions. I'm not giving up. Giving up what? What should I give up? You give up talking such crap!”

“What's going on? What are you so worked up about? Are you ill?”

“Yeah, I'm sick as a pig. Can you lend me ten thousand? It's a loan, I'll pay you back, eh? Avaricious bastard.”

“Avaricious is a good word. Are you ill, Eva?”

“What do you keep asking that for?” she said and grew still more agitated.

“Are you running a temperature?”

“Let me have the money. Two thousand! That's nothing! You don't understand. Stupid old git!”

Erlendur was now on his feet too and she went up to him as if she was going to attack.

He couldn't fathom this sudden aggressiveness. He looked her up and down.

“What are you looking at?” she shouted in his face. “Fancy a bit? Eh? Does dirty old Daddy fancy a bit?”

Erlendur slapped her face, but not very hard.

“Did you enjoy that?” she said.

He slapped her again, harder this time.

“Getting a hard-on?” she said, and Erlendur leapt back from her. She'd never talked to him like this. In an instant she'd become a monster. He'd never seen her in this mood before. He felt helpless towards her and his anger gradually gave way to pity.

“Why are you trying to give up now?” he repeated.

“I'm not trying to give up now!” she shouted. “What's wrong with you? Can't you understand what I'm saying? Who's talking about giving up?”

“What's wrong, Eva?”

“You stop that ‘what's wrong, Eva'! Can't you let me have five thousand? Can you answer me?” She appeared to be calming down. Maybe she realised she'd gone too far, she couldn't talk to her father that way.

“Why now?” Erlendur asked.

“Will you let me have ten thousand if I tell you?”

“What's happened?”

“Five thousand.”

Erlendur stared at his daughter.

“Are you pregnant?” he asked.

Eva Lind looked at her father with a submissive smile.

“Bingo,” she said.

“But how?” Erlendur groaned.

“What do you mean, how? Do you want me to go into details?”

“None of that clever talk. You use protection, surely? Condoms? The pill?”

“Idon't know what happened. It just happened.”

“And you want to give up dope?”

“Not any more. I can't. Now I've told you everything. Everything! You owe me ten thousand.”

“To get your baby stoned.”

“It's not a baby, you jerk. It's not anything. It's a grain of sand. I can't give up right away. I'll give up tomorrow. I promise. Just not now. Two thousand. What's that to you?”

Erlendur walked back to her. “But you tried. You want to give up. I'll help you.”

“I can't!” Eva Lind shouted. The sweat poured from her face and she tried to conceal the trembling that ran through her whole body.

“That's why you came to see me,” Erlendur said. “You could have gone somewhere else to get money. You've done that until now. But you came to me because you want…”

“Cut that bullshit. I came because Mum asked me to and because you've got money, no other reason. If you don't let me have it I'll get it anyway. That's no problem. There are plenty of old guys like you who are prepared to pay me.”

Erlendur refused to let her throw him off balance.

“Have you been pregnant before?”

“No,” answered Eva Lind, looking the other way.

“Who's the father?”

Eva Lind was dumbstruck and looked up at her father with wide eyes.

“HELLO!” she shouted. “Do I look as if I've just come from the bridal suite at Hotel fucking Saga?”

And before Erlendur had the chance to do anything she'd pushed him away and run out of the flat, down the stairs and into the street where she vanished into the cold autumn rain.

He closed the door slowly behind her, wondering whether he'd used the right approach. It was as if they could never talk to each other without arguing and shouting, and he was tired of that.

With no appetite for his food any more, he sat back down in his armchair, staring pensively into space and worrying about what Eva Lind might resort to. Eventually he picked up the book he was reading, which lay open on a table beside the chair. It was from one of his favourite series, describing ordeals and fatalities in the wilderness.

He continued reading where he'd left off in the story called “Lives Lost on Mosfellsheidi” and he was soon in a relentless blizzard that froze young men to death.

The rain poured down on Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli as they hurried out of their car, ran up the steps to the apartment block on Stigahlíd and rang the bell. They had contemplated waiting until the shower ended, but Erlendur got bored and leapt out of the car. Not wanting to be left behind, Sigurdur Óli followed. They were drenched in an instant. Rain dripped off Sigurdur Óli's hair and down his back and he glared at Erlendur while they waited for the door to open.

At a meeting that morning the policemen who were engaged on the investigation had considered the possibilities. One theory was that Holberg's murder was completely without motive and the attacker had been prowling around the quarter for some time, possibly even for days: a burglar looking for somewhere to break in. He had knocked on Holberg's door to find out if anyone was at home, then panicked when the owner answered it. The message he had left behind was merely intended to lead the police astray. It had no other immediately obvious meaning.

On the same day that Holberg was murdered, the residents of a block of flats on Stigahlíd had reported that two elderly women, twin sisters, had been attacked by a young man in a green army jacket. Someone had let him in the front entrance and he had knocked on the door to their flat. When they answered he burst in, slammed the door behind him and demanded money. When they refused he punched one of them in the face with his bare fist and pushed the other to the floor, kicking her before he finally fled.

A voice answered the intercom and Sigurdur Óli said his name. The door buzzed and they went inside. The stairway was badly lit and smelled unhygienic. When they reached the upper floor one of the women was standing in the doorway waiting for them.

“Have you caught him?” she asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Sigurdur Óli said, shaking his head, “but we'd like to talk to you about…”

“Have they caught him?” said a voice inside the flat and an exact replica of the first woman appeared before them in the doorway. They were aged about 70 and both wore black skirts and red sweaters. They were of stout build with grey, bouffant hair atop round faces with an obvious look of expectation.

“Not yet,” Erlendur said.

“He was a poor wretch,” said woman number one, whose name was Fjóla. She invited them in.

“Don't you go taking pity on him,” said woman number two, whose name was Birna, and she closed the door behind them. “He was an ugly brute who hit you over the head. That's some wretch for you, eh.”

The detectives sat down in the sitting room, looking first at the women in turn and then at each other. It was a small flat. Sigurdur Óli noticed two adjoining bedrooms. From the sitting room he could see into the small kitchen.

“We read your statement,” said Sigurdur Óli, who had flicked through it in the car on the way to the sisters. “Can you give us any more details about the man who attacked you?”

“Man?” Fjóla said. “He was more like a boy.”

“Old enough to attack us though,” Birna said. “He was old enough for that. Pushed me to the floor and kicked me.”

“We haven't got any money,” Fjóla said.

“We don't keep money here,” Birna said. “And we told him so.”

“But he didn't believe us.”

“And he attacked us.”

“He was wild.”

“And swore. The things he called us.”

“In that horrible green jacket. Like a soldier.”

“And wearing that sort of boots, heavy, black ones laced up his legs.”

“But he didn't break anything.”

“No, just ran away.”

“Did he take anything?” Erlendur said.

“It was like he wasn't in his right mind,” said Fjóla, who was trying as hard as she could to find some saving grace for her attacker. “He didn't break anything and he didn't take anything. Just attacked us when he realised he wouldn't get any money from us. Poor wretch.”

“Stoned out of his mind more like,” Birna spat out. “Poor wretch?” She turned to her sister. “Sometimes you can be a real dimwit. He was stoned out of his mind. You could tell from his eyes. Harsh, glazed eyes. And he was sweating.”

“Sweating?” Erlendur said.

“It was running down his face. The sweat.”

“That was the rain,” Fjóla said.

“No. And he was shaking all over.”

“The rain,” Fjóla repeated and Birna gave her the evil eye.

“He hit you over the head, Fjóla. That's the last thing you needed.”

“Does it still hurt where he kicked you?” Fjóla asked, and she looked at Erlendur. He could have sworn her eyes were dancing with glee.

It was still early morning when Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli arrived in Nordurmýri. Holberg's neighbours on the ground and first floor were waiting for them. The police had already taken a statement from the family who had found Holberg but Erlendur wanted to talk to them further. A pilot lived on the top floor. He'd arrived home from Boston at midday on the day Holberg was murdered, gone to bed in the afternoon and not stirred until the police knocked on his door.

They started with the pilot, who answered the door unshaven and wearing a vest and shorts. He was in his thirties, he lived alone and his flat was like a rubbish heap; clothes strewn everywhere, two suitcases open on a newish leather sofa, plastic bags from the duty-free shop on the floor, wine bottles on the tables and open beer cans wherever there was space for them. He looked at the two of them then walked back inside the flat without saying a word and slumped into a chair. They stood in front of him. Couldn't find anywhere to sit. Erlendur looked around the room and thought to himself that he wouldn't even board a flight simulator with this man.

For some reason the pilot started talking about the divorce he was going through and wondered whether it could become a police matter. The bitch had started playing around. He was away, flying. Came home from Oslo one day to find his wife with his old school-friend. Godawful, he added, and they didn't know which he found more godawful, his wife being unfaithful to him or his having to stay in Oslo.

“Concerning the murder that was committed in the basement flat,” Erlendur said, interrupting the pilot's slurred monologue.

“Have you ever been to Oslo?” the pilot asked.

“No,” Erlendur said. “We're not going to talk about Oslo.”

The pilot looked first at Erlendur and then at Sigurdur Óli, and finally he seemed to cotton on.

“I didn't know the man at all,” he said. “I bought this flat four months ago, as far as I understand it had been empty for a long while before that. Met him a few times, just outside. He seemed all right.”

“All right?” Erlendur said.

“Okay to talk to, I mean.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Flying. Mostly. He was interested in flying.”

“What do you mean, interested in flying?”

“The aircraft,” the pilot said, opening a can of beer that he fished from one of the plastic bags. “The cities,” he said, and gulped down some beer. “The hostesses,” he said and belched. “He asked a lot about the hostesses. You know.”

“No,” Erlendur said.

“You know. On the stopovers. Abroad.”

“Yes.”

“What happened, were they hot. Stuff like that. He'd heard things get pretty wild…on international flights.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Sigurdur Óli asked.

The pilot thought. He couldn't remember.

“It was a few days ago,” he said eventually.

“Did you notice whether anyone had visited him recently?” Erlendur asked.

“No, I'm not home much.”

“Did you notice any people snooping around in the neighbourhood, acting suspiciously, or just loitering around the houses?”

“No.”

“Anyone wearing a green army jacket?”

“No.”

“A young man wearing army boots?”

“No. Was it him? Do you know who did it?”

“No,” Erlendur said, and knocked over a half-full can of beer as he turned to leave the flat.

 

The woman had decided to take her children to her mother's for a few days and was ready to leave. She didn't want the children to be in the house after what had happened. Her husband nodded. It was the best thing for them. The parents were visibly shocked. They'd bought the flat four years before and liked living in Nordurmýri. A good place to live. For people with children too. The boys were standing by their mother's side.

“It was terrible finding him like that,” the husband said, in a voice like a whisper. He looked at the boys. “We told them he was asleep,” he added. “But…”

“We know he was dead,” the elder boy said.

“Murdered,” the younger one said.

The couple gave embarrassed smiles.

“They're taking it well,” the mother said and stroked the elder boy on the cheek.

“I didn't dislike Holberg,” the husband said. “We sometimes talked together outside. He'd lived in the house for a long time, we talked about the garden and maintenance, that sort of thing. As you do with your neighbours.”

“But it wasn't close,” the mother said. “Our contact with him, I mean. I think that's as it should be. I don't think it should be too close. Privacy, you know.”

They hadn't noticed any unusual people in the vicinity of the house and hadn't seen anyone in a green army jacket roaming the neighbourhood. The wife was impatient to take the boys away.

“Did Holberg have many visitors?” Sigurdur Óli asked.

“I never noticed any,” the wife said.

“He gave the impression of being lonely,” her husband said.

“His flat stank,” the elder son said.

“Stank,” his brother chorused.

“There's rising damp in the basement,” the husband said apologetically.

“Spreads up here sometimes,” the wife said. “The damp.”

“We talked to him about it.”

“He was going to look into it.”

“That was two years ago.”