Tainted Blood (5 page)

Sigurdur Óli parked his car in the Iceland Transport yard where he hoped it would be out of the way. Lorries were standing in rows in the yard. Some were being loaded, some driven away, others reversed up to the cargo warehouse. A stench of diesel and oil filled the air and the noise from the engines of the trucks was deafening. Staff and customers were rushing around the yard and the warehouse.

The Met Office had forecast yet more wet weather. Sigurdur Óli tried to protect himself from the rain by pulling his coat over his head as he ran to the warehouse. He was directed to the foreman who was sitting in a glass cubicle checking papers and appeared to be extremely busy.

A plump man wearing a blue anorak done up with a single button across his paunch and holding a cigar stub between his fingers, the foreman had heard about Holberg's death and said he'd known him quite well. Described him as a reliable man, a hard worker who'd been driving from one end of the country to the other for decades and knew Iceland's road network like the back of his hand. Said he was a secretive type, never talked about himself or in personal terms, never made any friends at the company or talked about what he'd done before, thought he'd always been a lorry driver. Talked as if he had been. Unmarried with no children, as far as he knew. Never talked about his nearest and dearest.

"That's the long and the short of it," the foreman said as if to put an end to the conversation, took a lighter from his anorak pocket and lit the cigar stub. "Damn shame," puff, puff, "to go like that," puff.

"Who did he associate with here mainly?" Sigurdur Óli asked, trying not to inhale the foul-smelling cigar smoke.

"You can talk to Hilmar, I reckon he knew him best. Hilmar's out the front. He's from Reydarfjördur so sometimes he used to stay at Holberg's place in Nordurmýri when he needed to rest in town. There are rest rules that drivers have to comply with, so they have to have somewhere to stay in the city."

"Did he stay there last weekend, do you know?"

"No, he was working in the east. But he might have been there the weekend before."

"Can you imagine who would have wanted to do Holberg any harm? Some friction here at work or . . ."

"No, no, nothing", puff, "like", puff, "that," puff. The man was having trouble keeping his cigar alight. "Talk to", puff, "Hilmar," puff, "mate. He might be able to help you."

Sigurdur Óli found Hilmar after following the foreman's directions. He was standing by one of the warehouse bays supervising a lorry being unloaded. Hilmar was a hulk, two metres tall, muscular, ruddy, bearded and with hairy arms protruding from his T-shirt. Looked about 50. Old-fashioned blue braces held up his tatty jeans. A small forklift was unloading the lorry. Another lorry was backing up to the next bay along; at the same time two drivers beeped their horns and hurled abuse at each other in the yard.

Sigurdur Óli went up to Hilmar and tapped him lightly on the shoulder, but the man didn't notice him. He tapped harder and eventually Hilmar turned round. He could see Sigurdur Óli talking to him but couldn't hear what he was saying and looked down at him with bovine eyes. Sigurdur Óli raised his voice, but to no avail. He raised his voice further and thought he detected a glimmer of comprehension in Hilmar's eyes, but he was mistaken. Hilmar just shook his head and pointed at his ear.

At this, Sigurdur Óli redoubled his efforts, arched himself and stood on tiptoe and shouted at the top of his voice at the very moment everything fell completely silent and his words echoed in all their glory around the walls of the gigantic warehouse and out into the yard:

"DID YOU SLEEP WITH HOLBERG?"

He was raking up leaves in his garden when Erlendur saw him. He didn't look up until Erlendur had been standing watching him for a long time as he toiled away with the slow movements of an old man. He wiped a drip from the end of his nose. It didn't seem to matter that it was raining and the leaves were stuck together and awkward to deal with. He did nothing hurriedly, hooked the leaves with his rake and tried to scrape them into little piles. He still lived in Keflavík. Born and bred there.

Erlendur had asked Elinborg to collect information about him and she'd dug up the main details about the old man whom Erlendur now watched in the garden; his police career, the numerous criticisms of his conduct and procedures during his many years in the force, the handling of Kolbrún's case and how he had been specifically reprimanded over it. She phoned back with the information while Erlendur was sitting over a meal, still in Keflavík. He considered saving the visit until the following day, then thought to himself that he couldn't be bothered driving there and back in a raging storm so he would just go direct.

The man was wearing a green parka and a baseball cap. His white, bony hands held the shaft of the rake. He was tall and had obviously once been sturdier and cut a more authoritative figure but he was old, wrinkled and runny-nosed now. Erlendur watched him, an old man pottering around in his garden. The man looked up from his leaves, but paid no particular attention to his observer. A good while passed like this until Erlendur decided to make a move.

"Why doesn't her sister want to talk to me?" he said and the old man looked up with a start.

"Eh? What was that?" The man stopped what he was doing. "Who are you?" he asked.

"How did you treat Kolbrún when she came to you to press charges?" Erlendur asked.

The old man looked at this stranger who had entered his garden, and he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He looked Erlendur up and down.

"Do I know you?" he said. "What are you talking about? Who are you?"

"My name's Erlendur. I'm investigating the murder of a man from Reykjavik by the name of Holberg. He was accused of rape almost 4
^o
years ago. You were in charge of the investigation. The woman who was raped was called Kolbrún. She's dead. Her sister won't talk to the police for reasons I'm trying to establish. She said to me, 'After what you did to her.' I'd like you to tell me what she's referring to."

The man looked at Erlendur without saying a word. Looked him in the eye and remained silent.

"What did you do to her?" Erlendur repeated.

"I can't remember . .. what right have you got? What kind of an insult is this anyway?" His voice was trembling slightly. "Get out of my garden or I'll call the police."

"No, Rúnar, I am the police. And I don't have time for any of this bollocks."

Rúnar thought it over. "Is this the new method? Attacking people with accusations and abuse?"

"Good of you to mention methods and abuse," Erlendur said. "At one time you ran up eight charges for breaches of duty, including brutality. I don't know who you had to serve to keep your job, but you didn't do him well enough towards the end because eventually you left the police in disgrace. Dismissed ..."

"You shut up," said Rúnar, looking around shiftily. "How dare you."

"... for repeated sexual harassment."

His white, bony hands tightened their grip on the rake, stretching his pallid skin until the knuckles stood out. His face closed up, hateful lines around his mouth, his stare narrowed until his eyes were half closed. On his way to see him, while the information from Elinborg was running through his mind like an electric shock, Erlendur had wondered whether Rúnar should be condemned for what he'd done in another life, when he was a different man. Erlendur had been in the police force long enough to have heard the stories about him, about the trouble he caused. He had in fact met Rúnar a couple of times many years before, but the man he now saw in the garden was so old and decrepit that it took Erlendur a while to be sure that it was the same person. Stories about Rúnar still circulated among the police. Erlendur had once read that the past was a different country and he could understand that. He understood that times change and people too. But he wasn't prepared to erase the past.

They stood in the garden facing one another.

"What about Kolbrún?" Erlendur said.

"Bugger off!"

"Not until you tell me about Kolbrún."

"She was a fucking whore!" Rúnar suddenly said between clenched teeth. "So take that and bugger off! Everything she said about me and to me was bloody lies. There wasn't any fucking rape. She lied the whole time!"

Erlendur visualised Kolbrún sitting in front of this man all those years ago when she filed the rape charge. He imagined her gradually mustering up her courage until finally she dared to go to the police to tell what had happened to her. He imagined the terror she'd experienced and, above all else, wanted to forget as if it had never occurred, as if it had merely been a nightmare from which she'd eventually wake. Then she realised she would never wake up. She had been defiled. She'd been attacked and she'd been plundered.

"She turned up three days after the incident and accused the man of rape," Rúnar said. "It wasn't very convincing."

"So you threw her back out," Erlendur said.

"She was lying."

"And you laughed at her and belittled her and told her to forget it. But she didn't forget it, did she?"

The old man looked at Erlendur with loathing in his eyes.

"She went to Reykjavik, didn't she?" Erlendur said.

"Holberg was never convicted."

"Thanks to whom, do you reckon?"

Erlendur imagined Kolbrún wrangling with Rúnar at the office. Wrangling with him! That man! Arguing the truth of what she'd been through. Trying to convince him she was telling the truth as if he were the supreme judge in her case.

She had to summon all her strength to relate the events of that night to him and tried to give a systematic account, but it was just too painful. She couldn't describe it. Couldn't describe something indescribable, repulsive, hideous. Somehow she man-aged to piece together her disjointed story. Was that a grin? She didn't understand why the policeman was grinning. She had the impression it was a grin, but it couldn't be. Then he started questioning her about the details.

"Tell me exactly what it was like."

She looked at him, confused. Hesitantly began her story again.

"No, I've heard that. Tell me exactly what happened. You were wearing panties. How did he get your panties off? How did he get it inside you?"

Was he serious? Eventually she asked if there were any women working there.

"No. If you want to charge this man with rape, you have to be more precise than this, understand? Had you led him on somehow so he might have thought you were up for it?"

Up for it? She told him in an almost inaudible voice that she certainly had not.

"You'll have to speak up. How did he get your panties off?"

She was sure it was a grin. He questioned her brashly, queried what she said, was rude, some of the questions were downright abusive, filthy, he behaved as though she had provoked the assault, had wanted to have sex with the man, perhaps changed her mind but then it was too late, you know, too late to back out of that kind of thing. "There's no point in going to a dancehall, flirting with the man and then stopping halfway. No point at all," he said.

She was sobbing when she eventually opened her handbag, took out a plastic bag and handed it to him. He opened the bag and took out her ripped panties ...

*

Rúnar let go of the rake and was about to walk past Erlendur, but Erlendur blocked his way and pinned him against the wall of the house. They looked each other in the eye.

"She gave you some evidence," Erlendur said. "The only evidence she had. She was certain Holberg had left something behind."

"She never gave me anything," Rúnar hissed. "Leave me alone."

"She gave you a pair of panties."

"She was lying."

"They should have fired you on the spot. You pathetic fucking beast." With an expression of revulsion Erlendur backed slowly away from the decrepit old man now huddled against the wall.

"I was just showing her what to expect if she pressed charges," he said in a squeaky voice. "I was doing her a favour. The courts laugh at that kind of case."

Erlendur turned around and walked away, wondering how God, if he existed, could possibly justify allowing someone like Rúnar live to an old age but taking the life of an innocent 4-year-old girl.

He planned to go back to see Kolbrún's sister but called in at the Keflavík library first. He walked among the bookshelves, running his eyes over the spines of the books until he found the Bible. Erlendur knew the Bible well. He opened it at the Psalms and found No. 64. He found the line that was inscribed on the headstone. "Preserve my life from fear of the enemy."

He had remembered correctly. The epitaph was a continuation of the first line of the Psalm. Erlendur read it over several times, pensively tracing his fingers across the lines, and quietly repeating the sentence to himself as he stood by the bookshelf.

The first line of the Psalm was a plea to the Lord. Erlendur could almost hear the woman's silent cry across the years.

"Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer."

Erlendur pulled up outside the corrugated-iron-clad white house and switched off the engine. He stayed in the car and finished his cigarette. He was trying to cut back on smoking and was down to five a day when things went well. This was number eight that day and it wasn't even 3 p.m.

He got out of the car, walked up the steps to the house and rang the bell. He waited a good while, but nothing happened. He rang again, but with no result. He put his face to the window and saw the green raincoat and umbrella and boots. He rang a third time, stood on the top step and tried to keep out of the rain. Suddenly, the door opened and Elín glared at him.

"Leave me alone, you hear? Go away! Get out!" She tried to slam the door but Erlendur blocked it with his foot.

"We're not all like Rúnar," he said. "I know your sister wasn't treated fairly. I went and talked to Rúnar. What he did is inexcusable, but it can't be changed now. He's senile and geriatric and he'll never see anything wrong in what he did."

"Will you leave me alone!"

"I have to talk to you. If it doesn't work like this I'll have to bring you in for questioning. I want to avoid that." He took the photograph from the cemetery out of his pocket and slipped it through the crack in the door. "I found this photo in Holberg's flat," he said.

Elín didn't answer him. A long while passed. Erlendur held the photo through the opening in the door, but he couldn't see Elin, who was still pushing against it. Gradually he felt the pressure on his foot easing and Elin took the photograph. Soon the door was open. She went inside holding the photograph. Erlendur stepped inside and closed the door care-fully behind him.

Elín disappeared into a little sitting room and for a moment Erlendur wondered if he ought to take off his wet shoes. He wiped them on the mat and followed Elin into the sitting room, past the tidy kitchen and study. In the sitting room there were pictures and embroidery in gilded frames on the walls and a small electric organ in one corner.

"Do you recognise this photo?" Erlendur asked cautiously.

"I've never seen it before," she said.

"Did your sister have any contact with Holberg after the . . . incident?"

"None that I knew of. Never. You can imagine."

"Wasn't a blood test taken to determine if he was the father?"

"What for?"

"It would have backed up your sister's statement. That she was raped."

She looked up from the photo and gave him a long stare, then said, "You're all the same, you police. Too lazy to do your homework."

"Really?"

"Haven't you looked into the case?"

"The main details. I thought."

"Holberg didn't deny they had sex. He was smarter than that. He denied it was rape. He said my sister wanted him. Said she'd enticed him and invited him back to her place. That was his big defence. That Kolbrún had sex with him of her own free will. He played innocent. Played innocent, the bastard."

"But ..."

"Kolbrùn didn't care about proving paternity. She didn't want him to have anything to do with her child. Proving that Holberg was Audur's father wouldn't have made any difference to her rape claim so a blood test would have been futile."

"I hadn't realised."

"All my sister had was a pair of ripped panties," Elín went on. "She didn't look very roughed up. She wasn't strong, couldn't put up much of a fight, and she told me she was almost paralysed with fright when he started groping at her in the kitchen. He forced her into the bedroom and had his way with her there. Twice. Held her down and groped and talked filth until he was ready to do it again. It took her three days to pluck up the courage to go to the police. The medical examination they gave her later didn't help either. She never understood what made him attack her. She accused herself of provoking what he did. She thought she might have been leading him on at that party they went to after the dancehall closed. That she said something or suggested something that might have aroused him. She blamed herself. I expect that's a common reaction."

Elín stopped talking for a moment.

"When she finally acted, she ran into Rúnar," she continued. "I would have gone with her, but she was so ashamed that she didn't tell anyone what had happened until long afterwards. Holberg threatened her. Said that if she did anything about it he'd come back and torture her. When she went to the police she thought she was heading for safety. She'd be helped. They'd look after her. It wasn't until Rúnar sent her back home, after playing around with her and taking her panties and telling her to forget it, that she came to me."

"The panties were never found," Erlendur said. "Runar denied ..."

"Kolbrùn said she gave them to him and I never knew my sister to lie. I don't know what that man was thinking of. I see him walking around town here sometimes, in the supermarket or at the fish shop. I shouted at him once. Couldn't control myself. He looked as if he enjoyed it. Grinned. Kolbrún talked about that grin of his once. He said he'd never been given any panties and her statement was so vague he thought she was under the influence. That's why he sent her home."

"He was given a warning in the end," Erlendur said, "but it didn't have much effect. Rúnar was always getting warnings. He was well known as a thug in the police but someone was protecting him, that is, until he couldn't be protected any more. Then he was dismissed."

"There were insufficient grounds for bringing charges, that's what they said. What Rúnar said was right, Kolbrún should just have forgotten it. Of course she dithered around for a long time, too long, and she was stupid enough to clean up the whole house from top to bottom, her bedclothes too, removed all the evidence. She kept the panties. After all that she still tried to keep some piece of evidence. As if she felt it would be enough. As if it was enough just to tell the truth. She wanted to wash the incident clean from her life. She didn't want to live with it. And, as I said, she didn't look too roughed up. She had a split lip where he held her mouth and one of her eyes was bloodshot but there were no other injuries."

"Did she get over it?"

"Never. She was a very sensitive woman, my sister. A beautiful soul and easy prey for anyone to harm. Like Holberg. Like Rúnar. They sensed that, both of them. They attacked her in their own separate ways. Savaged their prey." She looked down at the floor. "The beasts."

Erlendur waited for a moment before continuing.

"How did she react when she discovered she was pregnant?" he asked.

"Very sensibly, I thought. She decided straight-away to be happy about the child despite the circumstances, and she genuinely loved Audur. They were very attached to each other and my sister took particularly good care of her daughter. Did every-thing she could for her. That poor sweet girl."

"So Holberg knew the child was his?"

"Of course he knew, but he denied it completely. Said she was nothing to do with him. Accused my sister of sleeping around."

"They never kept in contact then, not about their daughter or ..."

"Contact! Never. How could you imagine such a thing? That could never have happened."

"Kolbrun couldn't have sent him the photo?"

"No. No, I can't imagine that. That's out of the question."

"He could have taken it himself. Or someone who knew the background took it and sent it to him. Maybe he saw the death announcement in the papers. Were any obituaries written about Audur?"

"There was a death announcement in the local paper. I wrote a short obituary. He could have read that."

"Is Audur buried here in Keflavík?"

"No, we're from Sandgerdi, my sister and me, and there's a small cemetery at Hvalsnes, just outside it. Kolbrún wanted her to be buried there. It was the middle of winter. Took them ages to dig the grave."

"The death certificate says she had a brain tumour."

"That was the explanation they gave my sister. She just died. Died on us, poor little thing, and we couldn't do a thing, in her fourth year."

Elín looked up from the photograph to Erlendur. "She just died."

It was dark in the house and the words echoed through the gloom full of questioning and grief. Elin stood up slowly and switched on the dull light of a standard lamp as she walked out to the hallway and into the kitchen. Erlendur heard her turn on the tap, fill something with water, pour it, open a tin, he smelled the aroma of coffee. He stood up and looked at the pictures on the walls. They were drawings and paintings. A pastel by a child was in a thin black frame. Eventually he found what he was looking for. There were two, probably taken two years apart. Photographs of Audur.

The earlier photo had been taken at a studio. It was black-and-white. The girl was probably no more than one year old and was sitting on a big cushion wearing a pretty dress, with a ribbon in her hair and a rattle in one hand. She was half turned towards the photographer and was smiling, showing four little teeth. In the other she was aged about three. Erlendur imagined her mother had taken it. It was in colour. The girl was standing among some shrubs and the sun was shining straight down on her. She was wearing a thick red jumper and a little skirt, with white socks and black shoes with shiny buckles. She was looking directly into the camera. Her expression serious. Maybe she'd refused to smile.

"Kolbrún never got over it," said Elín, from the sitting-room doorway. Erlendur stood up straight.

"That must be the worst thing anyone could go through," he said, taking a cup of coffee. Elin sat back down on the sofa with her cup and Erlendur sat down facing her again and sipped his coffee.

"Do smoke if you want to," she said.

"I'm trying to stop," Erlendur said, trying not to sound apologetic. His thoughts turned to the pain he had in his chest but nevertheless he fished a crumpled pack out of his coat pocket and took one out. His ninth cigarette of the day. She pushed an ashtray towards him.

"Mercifully she didn't take long to die," Elín said. "Started feeling pains in her head. As if she had a headache, and the doctor who examined her only ever talked about child migraine. He gave her some pills, but they didn't do any good. He wasn't a good doctor. Kolbrún told me she smelled alcohol on his breath and she was worried about it. But then it all happened so suddenly. The girl's condition got worse. There was mention of a skin tumour that her doctor should have noticed. Marks. They called them
cafe au lait
at the hospital. Mainly under her arms. Finally she was sent to the hospital here in Keflavík where they decided it was some kind of neural tumour. It turned out to be a brain tumour. The whole thing took about six months."

Elín fell silent. "As I said, Kolbrún was never the same after that," she sighed. "I don't expect anyone could get over such a tragedy."

"Was an autopsy performed on Audur?" Erlendur asked, imagining the little body lit up by fluorescent lights on a cold steel table with a Y-cut across the chest.

"Kolbrun wouldn't entertain the idea," Elín said, "but she had no say in the matter. She went crazy when she found out they'd opened her up. Went mad with grief, of course, after her child died, and she wouldn't listen to anyone. She couldn't bear to think of her little girl being cut open. She was dead and nothing could change that. The autopsy con-firmed the diagnosis. They found a malignant tumour in her brain."

"And your sister?"

"Kolbrún committed suicide three years later. She fell into an uncontrollable depression and needed medical care. Spent a while at a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik, then came back home to Keflavík. I tried to look after her as best I could but it was like she'd been switched off. She had no will to live. Audur had brought happiness into her life in spite of those terrible circumstances. But now she was gone."

Elín looked at Erlendur. "You're probably wondering how she went about it."

Erlendur didn't reply.

"She got into the bath and slashed both her wrists. Bought razor blades to do it with."

Elín stopped talking and the gloom in the sitting room enveloped them. "Do you know what comes into my mind when I think about that suicide? It's not the blood in the bath. Not my sister lying in the red water. Not the cuts. It's Kolbrún in the shop, buying the razor blades. Handing over the money for the razor blades. Counting out the coins."

Elín stopped talking.

"Don't you think it's funny the way your mind works?" she asked, as if she were talking to herself.

Erlendur didn't know how to answer her.

"I found her," Elín continued. "She set it up like that. Phoned me and asked me to come round that evening. We had a short chat. I was always on my guard because of her depression but she seemed to be improving towards the end. As if the fog was lifting. As if she was capable of tackling life again. There was no sign in her voice that evening that she was planning to kill herself. Far from it. We talked about the future. We were going to travel together. When I found her there she was at peace in a way I hadn't seen for ages. Peace and acceptance. But I know she didn't accept it in the slightest and she found no peace in her soul."

"I have to ask you one thing and then I'll leave you alone," Erlendur said. "I have to hear your answer."

"What's that."

"Do you have any knowledge about Holberg's murder?"

"No, I don't."

"And you had no part in it, directly or indirectly?"

"No."

They remained silent for a short while.

"The epitaph she chose for her daughter was about the enemy," Erlendur said.

"'Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.' She chose it herself, even though it didn't go on her own gravestone," Elín said. She stood up, walked over to a beautiful glass-fronted cabinet, opened a drawer in it and took out a little black box. She opened it with a key, lifted up some envelopes and took out a little piece of paper. "I found this on the kitchen table the night she died, but I'm not sure if she wanted me to have it inscribed on her gravestone. I doubt it. I don't think I realised how much she'd suffered until I saw this."

She handed Erlendur the piece of paper and he read the first five words from the Psalm he'd looked up in the Bible earlier: "Hear my voice, O God."