House of Evidence (2 page)

J
óhann Pálsson was woken at half past five in the morning by sounds of movement from the apartment above. He heard someone urinating, then flushing the toilet; a door closed, and whoever it was moved back across the creaky old timber floor. Then peace descended once more.

He lay still and tried to go back to sleep but his apartment was in a noisy old tenement in Hringbraut, where all sorts of sounds carried easily between floors and through walls. Jóhann began to turn things over in his mind, and this disturbed him. The task waiting for his attention at work had come into his thoughts and he tried without success to fix his mind on something else. It was no use; he was wide awake.

Jóhann sat up and switched on his bedside light. His double bed was in one corner of the bedroom, while an old desk occupied the rest of the available floor space. There was a large microscope in the center of the desk, which was otherwise covered in books, papers, and pieces of clothing.

It took him a while to get up, not because he was sleepy, but rather because his mind was elsewhere. Anyway, there was no hurry, he thought to himself. He washed his face with cold water and regarded himself in the mirror. His eyes were gray, his skin
rather coarse following an adolescent spotty phase. He had a wide, slightly upturned nose and thick, unruly, mousy-colored hair. He stroked his cheek and decided to put off shaving. He planned to go to the baths at lunchtime anyway, where he liked getting into the hottest pool, submerging his head to soften the skin of his face, and then enjoying a good shave afterward.

Jóhann was in his early thirties, and worked in the detective division of the City Police in Reykjavik. By the time he was twenty-three years old, he had completed an intermediate degree in chemistry at the University of Iceland; the following fall he had traveled to America for graduate studies.

He settled down at the George Washington University campus in the center of Washington, DC, and started to prepare for his courses. While perusing the books at the university bookshop, he came across a thick book titled simply
Crime Investigation
. A textbook on scientific methods of police investigation, more than five hundred pages long, with innumerable pictures and drawings,
Crime Investigation
immediately captured Jóhann’s interest. The description of how a burglar had been caught through the examination of traces left on the plastic shoehorn he had used to loosen a bolt from a door hinge absorbed Jóhann. Three hours later he stood up, walked to the counter, and bought the book, despite its high price. Then he went straight to the university office and asked where this subject was taught. He was directed to the Forensic Science Department, where he found a professor who was amused by this eager foreigner. Jóhann was given permission to take a look at the research laboratories and the various projects the students were working on.

The following night he couldn’t sleep at all. This subject suited him to a T. He had never been interested in crime or the police—or even crime fiction—until now, but what this book revealed
about the research methods investigators used intrigued him. Scientific accuracy, patience, attention to detail, scrupulousness, and prolific imagination were required, and he had a feeling that these were attributes he might just possess.

By dawn he had made a decision, and the following day he put in an application to change departments. Three years later he had passed the exam, and when he needed to explain in his mother tongue what he had studied, he invented an Icelandic word,
réttarvísindi
, for forensic science.

At first he had worked for the police in Fairfax County, Virginia, but was soon offered his current job in Reykjavik. He had arrived here in spring 1971, and had been working as an investigator in the forensics department for a year and eight months.

Jóhann got dressed and went into the small kitchen. He was not hungry, but knew that would change as the morning wore on. He made three sandwiches with butter and a thick spread of liver pâté, wrapped them in plastic, and then rinsed the utensils and put them away. He had always lived in compact lodgings since he’d moved out of the family home in Akureyri in his early twenties, and had learned from experience that it was better to keep a tidy home. After all, there was nobody to clean up after him.

He put on a thick parka and crept soundlessly down the stairs, aware that most of the other residents of the building were probably still asleep. It was snowing, and he put on a woolen hat as soon as he got outside. His five-year-old Ford Cortina was parked nearby, and he carefully cleared the snow off it before driving away. The roads were slippery, so he drove slowly, first east along Hringbraut, then north along Snorrabraut toward Borgartún. He was in no hurry, and he found it comforting to be the only one up and about in the city so early in the morning.

The division’s headquarters were situated on the top floor of an office building in Borgartún. Jóhann headed up the stairs and down a corridor to the laboratory. He started up the coffee machine before going to his desk and switching on his microscope.

A car had been stolen in Kópavogur, not really a story in itself, except that the thief had run over a pedestrian and then driven off. The pedestrian, a man in his seventies, had died in the hospital two days later. The car had been found abandoned a few hours after the incident, bearing clear evidence of the collision: a broken headlamp and various dents and scratches on the bumper and body of the car. An empty vodka bottle had been abandoned on the floor in the back of the car, and it was covered in the fingerprints of a well-known petty thief and all-around troublemaker. It didn’t take long for the man to admit to having been in the car, and to identify a companion of his as the driver. The companion, on the other hand, denied everything, and now it was one man’s word against the other’s. The alleged driver had supposedly been wearing gloves, leaving no fingerprints in or on the car. Now it was Jóhann’s task to find proof that this guy had actually been behind the wheel.

In Jóhann’s experience it was highly likely that someone sitting in a car for any period of time would leave behind a few hairs. Human hair is complicated in structure, and while two hairs from the same person may not be identical, there is enough similarity to match them with some degree of confidence. And, in order to make this identification, various elements need to be examined, such as density, refraction, and so on.

Jóhann had vacuumed the car thoroughly using a machine with a special filter designed for forensic purposes. He had retrieved 374 hairs, discarding 220 of those that obviously belonged to the car
owner’s dog, and then sorted the human hairs according to type and color. He now compared them under the microscope with the hair of the car owner and of the two suspects. Various tests would then be carried out on these hairs, and when the tests were completed they might offer proof of the alleged driver’s identity that would support the witness’s testimony in court.

Jóhann was a scientist; he tackled this type of work objectively, dwelling on neither the tragedy that had taken place nor those involved. His job was to discover all the information that these physical pieces of evidence could provide. Either they would lead to acquittal or to conviction.

The building was quiet at this early hour. Now and again creaking and knocking noises from the central heating system could be heard, and outside the distant sounds of an occasional car driving past. There was a faint but distinct chemical smell in the room that was soon overpowered by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.

Diary I

July 6, 1910. Woke up at seven on board
Vestri
. Arrived at Hólmavík, docking at eight o’clock a.m. There is still snow lying all the way down to the shore in Steingrímsfjördur, it is cold and raining…

July 7, 1910. Saw Drangey Island. There were men out there in boats, catching birds…

July 8, 1910. Arrived at Akureyri at four a.m., disembarked at six. Walked into town. Sunshine and balmy weather, calm sea. On Oddeyrartangi there
were piles of small fish on the quaysides. Helgi and I walked to the church and back. The inhabitants of Akureyri are so wonderfully tasteful; they have beautiful gardens, with trees and flowers around the houses. In some places the trees are as tall as the houses…

July 9, 1910. We borrowed a boat and rowed across Eyjafjördur. We walked across Vadlaheidi to have a look at the new bridge that was built across the Fnjóská River in the summer of 1908. The bridge spans 55 meters from bank to bank, yet the thickness of the arch is only 50 centimeters at the top. Vigfús says that this is the longest arch bridge to have been built in the whole of Scandinavia. The woodland is fenced in, and the trees reach a height of 8 meters…

July 10, 1910. Set off on foot from Akureyri. Breeze from the north and rain showers. We have a picnic for the day…Öxnadalur valley is similar to Hörgárdalur except that it is narrower and there is less vegetation on the hillsides. Toward the mouth of the valley it is almost closed off by sand dunes partially covered by grass, “Hillocks high that half the valley fill,” as poet Jónas Hallgrímsson put it; the farm, Hraun, where he was born, is there…Arriving at Bakkasel, where we shall overnight.

I
t was almost eight o’clock, and
Morgunbladid
had still not been delivered. Halldór Benjamínsson opened the front door and looked around for the paperboy. He didn’t want to start breakfast before the newspaper arrived. An eight-inch-thick blanket of snow had fallen during the night, greeting him at the threshold.

“Halldór, dear, your tea is getting cold,” his wife, Stefanía, called from the kitchen.

He closed the door and went back inside. He was tall and slim, with a bit of a paunch. His gray hair, thinning a little, was carefully combed with a part on the right side. He wore spectacles with a thin gold frame. His face usually bore a benevolent expression, though this morning he was feeling grouchy.

“Can’t you read yesterday’s paper, dear?” asked Stefanía.

“I’ve already read it.”

He looked at the kitchen table. There were two teacups and saucers, and plates with toast beside them. A fat teapot stood there, too, with red tea-bag labels dangling from underneath the lid.

He examined the pattern on the china as he bit into his toast. Gold wreaths and braids atop a white glaze—it had been a wedding present from nearly thirty-five years earlier; during the first years of
their marriage, it had been used for best times only, but it had long since entered daily use, with another set reserved for special occasions. There were fewer cups than there used to be, though.

“Will you be working for long?” Stefanía asked.

“Probably not,” Halldór replied, glancing at his wife. She was wearing a long bathrobe, but apart from that there was nothing to indicate that she had just woken up. Her blond hair was carefully combed and her modest makeup was in place.

“You remember we’ve got a bridge evening here,” she reminded him.

“Yes,” he lied.

“It’s only once a month and there’s no television tonight anyway,” she said.

“I’ll try and come home early.”

“Since we’re playing here, I must make a cake. What sort would you like?”

“Apple cake.”

“I made apple cake last time. We can’t serve it again.”

“Make something else, then.”

“I’ll make apple cake if that’s what you really want.”

From the lobby came the snap of the lid of the mailbox and a faint thud as the paper landed on the floor inside.

“About time,” he said, rising to get the paper.

He glanced over the front page as he came back into the kitchen.

“Vietnam: Peace Clearly in Sight but No Timeline Yet,” the headline read. He turned the paper over. “Trawls Still Being Cut,” read one headline under the fold, and another said, “Twenty-One Trawlers Out of Action if Strike Goes Ahead.”

Halldór had been a policeman all his working life, and was now a senior officer at the detective division in Reykjavik, in spite
of the fact that he had always found the job tedious, and in the beginning had only accepted it as a stopgap measure.

When he moved to the city with his elderly parents early on during the Depression, work had been scarce. He was a good prospect, however—a tall, polite young man. A member of parliament from his home district, who knew his father and knew that he had left behind many relatives in his constituency, had found Halldór a job with the police, where he had come to earn a reputation for conscientiousness and good handwriting. Halldór wrote better reports than almost anyone else, and this was one of the reasons he was offered a job in the detective division. He accepted it in order to get out of the uniform. Much later he had been given a promotion, when his turn came, on grounds of seniority.

When he was younger, he had sometimes thought about becoming a schoolmaster and teaching spelling, but then he had discovered that children scare him; he found it easier to deal with criminals. He had become used to this life, or else he lacked the courage to change it.

Halldór glanced at the clock and stood up. He took a thick gray overcoat from the closet in the lobby, along with a checkered scarf and a fur hat. At the front door he slipped into a pair of well-polished black leather winter boots. His wife handed him his briefcase and kissed him on the cheek.

“Bye, dear, and be careful; it’s very slippery,” she warned. He stopped for a moment on the steps. It was still snowing, and the branches on the big conifers sagged under the bulk of the snow that had piled upon them during the night. It was rare for this amount of snow to fall when it was so calm, and it rather reminded him of a Christmas card. The snow creaked as he carefully descended the steps.

Diary I

July 12, 1910. Skagafjördur. Woke early and crawled out of the tent. The fog had lifted and now there was a view all round. Hegranes is low-lying on the eastern side along the lagoons, but higher toward the west, where marshes alternate with gravel flats and steep cliffs…Crossing the western lagoons by an ancient rope ferry that is hauled by manpower with a winch, an antique if ever I saw one. The ferry carries 8 to 10 horses, and the tariff is 5 aurar per horse and 10 aurar per person. The ferryman is tall, with a full, strawberry-blond beard; a good-looking man, and likeable. He invited us to take a draught from his flask of brennivín after we had paid him a generous fare. He lives on his own in a hovel by the mouth of the lagoon. I felt dizzy during the ferry. Perhaps it was the brennivín. I am not used to it…

July 14, 1910. We set out over Holtavörduheidi. You are hardly aware of the escarpment, although the ground rises steadily. There are a number of watercourses and small rivers to wade across, with concrete arch bridges over the largest ones. In the middle of the heath, there are a number of small lakes with trout, and close by, on top of a prominence, there is a refuge hut; innermost it has a
cabin intended for human habitation while the rest is for horses. There are two bunks in the cabin, a table and cooking utensils, kettles, jugs, a lamp, and other things. There are cribs along the walls in front, and in the loft there is hay. The house is built from turf and stone, with a metal roof and wooden gable…