Voices (5 page)

'Because of what happened?' the man repeated with a puzzled expression.

'You said I couldn't have the girl in my room because of what happened.'

'Yes.'

'You mean what happened to Santa in the basement.'

'Yes. What do you know about...?'

Erlendur looked down at his underpants and hesitated for a moment.

'I'm taking part in the investigation,' he said. "The police investigation.'

The man looked at him, unable to conceal an expression of disbelief.

'Why did you make that connection?' Erlendur hurried to say.

'I don't follow,' the man said, dithering in front of him.

'So if Santa hadn't been killed it would be all right to have a girl in the room. That was the way you said it. You see what I mean?'

'No,' the man said. 'Did I say "Because of what happened"? I don't remember that.'

'You said just that. The girl wasn't allowed to be in the room because of what happened. You thought my daughter was a ...' Erlendur tried to put it delicately but failed. 'You thought my daughter was a tart and you came to throw her out because Santa got murdered. If that hadn't happened it would have been all right to have a girl in the room. Do you allow girls in the rooms? When everything's all right?'

The man looked at Erlendur.

'What do you mean by girls?'

'Tarts,' Erlendur said. 'Do tarts hang around the hotel, nipping into the rooms, and you ignore it apart from now because of what happened? What did Santa have to do with that? Was he connected with it somehow?'

'I haven't a clue what you're talking about,' the man said.

Erlendur changed tack.

'I can understand that you want to exercise caution when there's been a murder at the hotel. You don't want to draw attention to anything unusual or abnormal even if it's innocent, and there's nothing to say about that. People can do what they want and pay for it for all I care. What I need to know is whether Santa was connected with prostitution at this hotel.'

'I don't know anything about any prostitution,' the man said. 'As you saw, we keep a lookout for girls who go to rooms on their own. Was that really your daughter?'

'Yes,' Erlendur said.

'She told me to fuck off?

'That's her.'

Erlendur closed the door to his room behind him, lay down on the bed and soon fell asleep, dreaming that the heavens were strewn over him, and that he heard the sound of weathervanes rattling in the wind.

SECOND DAY

5

The reception manager had not yet arrived for work when Erlendur went down to the lobby and asked for him. He had given no explanation for his absence, nor phoned in sick or to say he needed the day off to run some errands. A lady in her thirties who worked at reception told Erlendur that it was certainly unusual for the reception manager not to turn up on time, always such a punctual man, and incomprehensible of him not to get in touch if he needed time off.

She told Erlendur this in between pauses while a bio-technician from the National Hospital took a swab of her saliva. Three biotechnicians were collecting samples from the hotel staff. Another group went to the homes of the employees who were not at work. Soon the biotechnicians would have DNA from the hotel's entire staff to compare with the saliva on Santa's condom.

Detectives interrogated the staff about their acquaintanceship with Gudlaugur and the whereabouts of each and every one of them the previous afternoon. The entire Reykjavik CID took part in the murder investigation while information and evidence were being collected.

'What about people who've recently left or worked here a year ago or whatever, and knew Santa?' Sigurdur Óli asked. He sat down beside Erlendur in the dining room and watched him partake of herring and ryebread, cold ham, toast and piping hot coffee.

'Let's see what we discover from this for starters,' Erlendur said, slurping his coffee. 'Have you found out anything about this Gudlaugur?'

'Not much. There doesn't seem to be a lot to say about him. He was forty-eight, single, no children. He'd been working here for the past twenty years or so. I understand he lived in that little room down in the basement for years. It was only supposed to be a temporary solution at the time, that fat manager implied. But he says he's not familiar with the matter. Told us to talk to the previous manager. He was the one who made the deal with Santa. Fatso reckoned Gudlaugur had lost the place he was renting and was allowed to keep his stuff in the room, and he just never left.'

Sigurdur Óli paused, then said: 'Elínborg told me you stayed at the hotel last night.'

'I can hardly recommend it. The room's cold and the staff never give you a moment's peace. But the food's good. Where is Elínborg?'

The dining room was busy and the hotel guests made a din as they indulged in the breakfast spread. Most of them were tourists wearing traditional Icelandic sweaters, hiking boots and thick winter clothing, even though they were going no further than the city centre, ten minutes' walk away. The waiters made sure their coffee cups were refilled and their used plates taken away. Christmas songs were playing softly over the sound system.

'The main hearing starts today. You knew that, didn't you?' Sigurdur Óli asked.

'Yes.'

'Elínborg's down there. How do you think it will turn out?'

'I suppose it will be a couple of months, suspended. Always the same with those bloody judges.'

'Surely he won't be allowed to keep the boy.'

'I don't know,' Erlendur said.

'The bastard,' Sigurdur Óli said. 'They ought to put him in the stocks in the town square.'

Elínborg had been in charge of the investigation. An eight-year-old boy had been committed to hospital after being seriously assaulted. No one had been able to get a word out of him about the attack. The initial theory was that older children had set on him outside the school and beaten him up so badly that he suffered a broken arm, fractured cheekbone and two loose upper teeth. He crawled home in a terrible state. His father notified the police when he got back from work shortly afterwards. An ambulance took the boy to hospital.

The boy was an only child. His mother was in the Kleppur mental hospital when the incident took place. He lived with his father, who owned and ran an internet company, in a big and beautiful two-storey house with a commanding view of the city in Breidholt suburb. Naturally, the father was distressed after the assault and talked about taking vengeance on the boys who had hurt his son so horrifically. He insisted that Elínborg bring them to justice.

Elínborg might never have found out the truth had they not lived in a two-storey house with the boy's room upstairs.

'She identifies with it in a bad way,' Sigurdur Óli said. 'Elínborg has a boy the same age.'

'You shouldn't let that influence you too much,' Erlendur said vacantly.

'Says who?'

The peaceful atmosphere of the breakfast buffet was disturbed by a noise from the kitchen. All the guests looked up, then at each other. A loud-voiced man was ranting about something or other. Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli stood up and went into the kitchen. The voice belonged to the head chef who had caught Erlendur when he nibbled at the ox tongue. He was raging at a biotechnician who wanted to take a saliva sample from him.

'... and bugger off out of here with your bloody swabs!' the chef shouted at a woman of fifty who had a little sampling box open on the table. She went on insisting politely in spite of his fury, which did not soothe his temper. When he saw Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli his rage was redoubled.

'Are you mad?' he shouted. 'Do you think I was down there with Gulli putting a condom on his dick? Are you lot mental? Fucking idiots! No way. No bloody way. I don't give a monkey's what you say! You can stick me in jail and throw away the key but I'm not taking part in this bloody fiasco! Just get that straight! Fucking idiots!'

The chef strode out of the kitchen, swollen with righteous male indignation which was rather undermined, however, by his chimney-like white hat, and Erlendur began to smile. He looked at the biotechnician who smiled back and started to laugh. The tension in the kitchen eased. The cooks and waiters who had gathered round roared with laughter.

'You having trouble?' Erlendur asked the biotechnician.

'No, not at all,' she said. 'Everyone's very understanding really. He's the first one to make a scene about it'

She smiled, and Erlendur thought her smile was pretty. She was roughly the same height as him, with thick, blond hair, cut short, and was wearing a colourful knitted cardigan buttoned down the front. Under the cardigan was a white blouse. She was wearing jeans and elegant black leather shoes.

'My name's Erlendur,' he said, almost instinctively, and held out his hand.

She became a little flustered.

'Yes,' she said, shaking his hand. 'I'm Valgerdur.'

'Valgerdur?' he repeated. He did not see a wedding ring.

Erlendur's mobile phone rang in his pocket.

'Excuse me,' he said, answering the phone. He heard an old, familiar voice asking for him.

'Is that you?' the voice asked.

'Yes, it's me,' Erlendur said.

'I'll never get the hang of these mobile phones,' the voice said. 'Where are you? Are you at the hotel? Maybe you're rushing off somewhere. Or in a lift.'

'I'm at the hotel.' Erlendur put his hand over the mouthpiece and asked Valgerdur to wait a moment, then went back into the dining room and out to the lobby. It was Marion Briem on the phone.

'Are you sleeping at the hotel?' Marion asked. 'Is something wrong? Why don't you go home?'

Marion Briem had worked for the old Police Investigation Department when that institution was still around, and had been Erlendur's mentor. Was already there when Erlendur joined and had taught him the detective's craft. Marion sometimes phoned Erlendur and complained that he never visited. Erlendur had never really liked his former boss and felt no particular urge to reappraise his feelings in Marion's old age. Perhaps because they were too similar. Perhaps because in Marion he saw his own future and wanted to avoid it. Marion lived a lonely life and hated being old.

'Why are you phoning?' Erlendur asked.

'Some people still keep me in the picture, even if you don't,' Marion said.

Erlendur was about to put a swift end to the conversation, but stopped himself. Marion had assisted him before, without being asked. He mustn't be rude.

'Can I help you with anything?' Erlendur asked.

'Give me the man's name. I might find something you've overlooked.'

'You never give up.'

I'm bored,' Marion said. 'You can't imagine how bored I am. I retired almost ten years ago and I can tell you, every day in this hell is like an eternity. Like a thousand years, every single day.'

'There are plenty of things for senior citizens to do,' Erlendur said. 'Have you tried bingo?'

'Bingo!' Marion roared.

Erlendur passed on Gudlaugur's name. He briefed Marion on the case and then said goodbye. His phone rang almost immediately afterwards.

'Yes,' Erlendur said.

'We found a note in the man's room,' a voice said over the phone. It was the head of forensics.

'A note?'

'It says: Henry 18.30.'

'Henry? Wait a minute, when did the girl find Santa?'

'It was about seven.'

'So this Henry could have been in his room when he was killed?'

'I don't know. And there's another thing.'

'Go on.'

'Santa could have owned the condom himself. There was a packet of them in the pocket of his doorman's uniform. It's a packet of ten and three are missing.'

'Anything else?'

'No, just a wallet with a five-hundred-króna note, an old ID card and a supermarket receipt dated the day before yesterday. Oh yes, and a key ring with two keys on it.'

'What sort of keys?'

'One looks like a house key, but the other could be to a locker or something like that. It looks much smaller.'

They said goodbye and Erlendur looked around for the biotechnician, but she was gone.

Two guests at the hotel were named Henry. Henry Bartlet, American, and Henry Wapshott, British. The latter did not answer when his room was dialled, but Bartlet was in and showed surprise when it emerged that the Icelandic police wanted to talk to him. The hotel manager's story about the old man's heart attack had clearly got around.

Erlendur took Sigurdur Óli with him to meet Henry Bartlet; Sigurdur Óli had studied criminology in the US and was rather proud of the fact. He spoke the language like a native and although Erlendur had a particular dislike for the American drawl, he put up with it.

On the way up to Bartlet's floor, Sigurdur Óli told Erlendur that they had talked to most of the hotel employees who were on duty when Gudlaugur was attacked. All had alibis and named people to corroborate their stories.

Bartlet was about thirty, a stockbroker from Colorado. He and his wife had seen a programme about Iceland on American breakfast television some years before and were enchanted by the dramatic scenery and the Blue Lagoon – they had since been there three times. They had decided to make a dream come true and spend Christmas and the New Year in the distant land of winter. The beautiful landscape enthralled them, but they found the prices exorbitant at the restaurants and bars in the city.

Sigurdur Óli nodded. To him, America was paradise on earth. He was impressed on meeting the couple and discussing baseball and American Christmas preparations with them, until Erlendur had had enough and gave him a prod.

Sigurdur Óli explained the death of the doorman and told them about the note in his room. Mr and Mrs Henry Bartlet stared at the detectives as if they had suddenly been transported to a different planet.