Tainted Blood (6 page)

When Erlendur got home that evening his daughter, Eva Lind, was sitting up against the door to the flat, apparently asleep. He spoke to her and tried to wake her. She showed no response, so he put his hands under her arms, lifted her up and carried her inside. He didn't know whether she was sleeping or stoned. He lay her down on the sofa in the sitting room. Her breathing was regular. Her pulse seemed normal. He looked at her for a good while and wondered what to do. Most of all he wanted to put her in the bath. She gave off a stench, her hands were dirty and her hair matted with filth.

"Where have you been?" Erlendur whispered to himself.

He sat down in the chair beside her, still wearing his hat and coat, and thought about his daughter until he fell into a deep sleep.

He didn't want to wake up when Eva Lind shook him the next morning. Tried to hold on to the snatches of dreams that aroused the same discomfort within him as the one of the night before. He knew this was the same dream, but couldn't manage to fix it in his mind any more than last time, couldn't get a handle on it. All that remained was a lingering discomfort.

It was not yet 8 a.m. and it was still pitch dark outside. As far as Erlendur could tell the rain and autumn winds still hadn't let up. To his astonishment he smelled coffee from the kitchen and steam as if someone had been in the bath. He noticed Eva Lind was wearing one of his shirts and some old jeans that she tied tight around her thin waist with a belt. She was barefoot and clean.

"You were on good form last night," he said, and immediately regretted it. Then he thought that he should have given up being considerate towards her long ago.

"I've made a decision," Eva Lind said, walking into the kitchen. "I'm going to make you a grandfather. Grandad Erlendur."

"So were you having your final fling last night, or what?"

"Is it okay for me to stay here for a while, just until I find somewhere new?"

"For all I care."

He sat down at the kitchen table with her and sipped the coffee that she'd poured into a cup for him.

"And how did you reach this conclusion?"

"Just did."

"Just did?"

"Can I stay with you or not?"

"As long as you want. You know that."

"Will you stop asking me questions? Stop those interrogations of yours. It's like you're always at work."

"I am always at work."

"Have you found the girl from Gardabaer?"

"No. It's not a priority case. I talked to her husband yesterday. He doesn't know anything. The girl left a note saying 'He's a monster what have I done?'"

"Someone must have been dissing her at the party."

"Dissing?" said Erlendur. "Is that a word?"

"What can you do to a bride at a wedding to make her do a runner?"

"I don't know," Erlendur said without interest. "My hunch is that the groom was touching up the bridesmaids and she saw him. I'm glad you're going to have the baby. Maybe it'll help you out of this vicious circle. It's about time."

He paused. "Strange how perky you are after the state you were in yesterday," he said eventually.

He phrased this as cautiously as he could, but he also knew that, under normal circumstances, Eva Lind shouldn't be shining like a summer's day, fresh out of the bath, making coffee and acting as if she'd never done anything but look after her father. She looked at him and he saw her weighing up the options and waited for her speech, waited for her to leap to her feet and give him a piece of her mind. She didn't.

"I brought some pills with me," she said very calmly. "It doesn't happen of its own accord. And not overnight. It happens slowly, over a long time, but it's the way I want to do it."

"And the baby?"

"It won't be harmed by what I use. I don't plan to harm the baby. I'm going to have it."

"What do you know about the effect that dope has on an embryo?"

"I know."

"Have it your own way. Take something, bring yourself down or whatever you call it, stay here in the flat, have a good think about yourself. I can ..."

"No," Eva Lind said. "Don't you do anything. You go on with your life and stop spying on me. Don't think about what I'm doing. If I'm not here when you come home, it doesn't matter. If I come home late or don't come back to the flat at all, then don't interfere. If that happens, I'm gone, flnito."

"So it's none of my business."

"It's never been any of your business," said Eva Lind, and sipped her coffee.

The phone rang and Erlendur got up and answered it. It was Sigurdur Óli, who was calling from home.

"I couldn't get hold of you yesterday," he said. Erlendur remembered he'd switched off his mobile while he was talking to Elín in Keflaívk, and hadn't switched it back on.

"Are there any new developments?" Erlendur asked.

"I spoke to a man called Hilmar yesterday. Another lorry driver who sometimes slept at Holberg's place in Nordurmýri. A rest stop or whatever they call it. He told me Holberg was a good pal, nothing to complain about, and everyone at work seemed to like him, helpful and sociable, blah blah blah. Couldn't imagine he had any enemies, but added that he didn't know him particularly well. Hilmar also told me Holberg hadn't been his usual self the last time he stayed with him, which was about ten days ago. Apparently he was acting strange."

"Strange in what way?"

"The way Hilmar described it, he was sort of afraid to answer the phone. Said there was some bugger who wouldn't leave him in peace, as he put it, always phoning him up. Hilmar said he stayed with him on the Saturday night and Holberg asked him to answer the phone for him once. Hilmar did, but when the caller realised it wasn't Holberg who'd answered he slammed the phone down."

"Can we find out who's been calling Holberg recently?"

"I'm having that checked. Then there's another thing. I've got a printout from the telephone company of the calls Holberg made, and something interesting came out of that."

"What?"

"You remember his computer?"

"Yes."

"We never looked at it."

"No. The technicians do that."

"Did you notice if it was plugged in to the telephone?"

"No."

"Most of Holberg's calls, almost all of them in fact, were to an Internet server. He used to spend days on end surfing the net."

"What does that mean?" asked Erlendur, who was particularly ill-informed about everything to do with computers.

"Maybe we'll see that when we switch on his computer," Sigurdur Óli replied.

They arrived at Holberg's flat in Nordurmýri at the same time. The yellow police tape had gone and there was no visible sign of a crime any more. No lights were on in the upper floors. The neighbours didn't appear to be at home. Erlendur had a key to the flat. They went straight over to the computer and switched it on. It started whirring.

"It's quite a powerful computer," Sigurdur Óli said, wondering for a moment whether he should explain to Erlendur about the size and type, but decided to give it a miss.

"Okay," he said, "I'll have a look to see what web addresses he had stored in his favourites. Loads of them, bloody loads of them. Maybe he's downloaded some files. Wow!"

"What?" said Erlendur.

"His hard drive's jam-packed."

"Which means?"

"You need a hell of a lot of stuff to fill a hard drive. There must be whole movies on here. Here's something he calls
avideo3.
Shall we see what it is?"

"Definitely."

Sigurdur Óli opened the file and a window popped up playing a video. They watched for a few seconds. It was a porn clip.

"Was that a goat they were holding over her?" Erlendur asked in disbelief.

"There are 312
avideo
files," Sigurdur Óli said. "They could be clips like that one, even whole movies."

"Avideo?"
said Erlendur.

"I don't know," said Sigurdur Óli. "Maybe animal videos. There's
gvideo
too. Should we look at, let's say,
gvideo88}
Double-click . . . maximise the window ..."

"Double—?" said Erlendur, but stopped mid-sentence when four men having sex spread themselves across the 17-inch monitor.

"Gvideo
must mean gay videos," said Sigurdur Óli when the scene was over.

"He was obviously obsessed then," Erlendur said. "How many films are there altogether?"

"There are more than a thousand files here, but there could be a lot more stored elsewhere on the drive."

Erlendur's mobile phone rang in his coat pocket. It was Elínborg. She'd been trying to trace the two men who went with Holberg to the party in Keflavík on the night that Kolbrún said she was assaulted. Elínborg told Erlendur that one of them, Grétar, had disappeared years ago.

"Disappeared?" Erlendur said.

"Yes. One of our missing persons."

"And the other one?" Erlendur said.

"The other one's in prison," Elínborg said. "Always been in trouble. He's got one year left to serve of a four-year sentence."

"For what?"

"You name it."

Erlendur reminded forensics about the computer. It would take quite a while to investigate everything on it. He told them to look at every single file, list it and classify it and make a detailed report on the contents. Then he and Sigurdur Óli set off for Litla-Hraun prison, east of the city. It took them just over an hour to get there. Visibility was poor, the road was icy and the car still had summer tyres, so they had to be careful. The weather warmed up once they were through Threngslin Pass. They crossed the river Ölfusá and soon saw the two prison buildings rising up from the hard gravel banks in the hazy distance. The older building was three storeys high, in the gabled style. For years it had had a red corrugated-iron roof and, from a distance, looked like a gigantic old farmhouse. Now the roof had been painted grey to match the new building beside it. That was a steel-clad, cobalt-grey building with a watchtower, modern and fortified, not unlike a financial institution in Reykjavík.

How the times change, Erlendur thought to himself.

Elíborg had told the prison authorities to expect them and which inmate they wanted to talk to. The prison governor welcomed the detectives and accompanied them to his office. He wanted them to have some details about the prisoner before talking to him. They had arrived at the worst possible time. The prisoner in question was in solitary confinement after he and two others had assaulted a recently convicted paedophile and left him for dead. He said he preferred not to go into details, but wanted to inform the police, to make it perfectly clear, that their visit was a breach of his solitary confinement and the prisoner would be, at best, in an unstable condition. After the meeting the inspectors were accompanied to the visiting hall. They sat and waited for the prisoner.

His name was Ellidi and he was a 56-year-old repeat offender. Erlendur knew him, he had in fact accompanied him to Litla-Hraun once himself. Ellidi had done various jobs during his miserable life: been at sea on fishing vessels and merchant ships, where he smuggled alcohol and drugs and was eventually convicted for it. He attempted an insurance fraud by setting fire to a 20-tonne boat off the south-west coast and sinking it. Three of them "survived". The fourth member of the group was left behind by mistake, locked in the engine room, and sank with the boat; the crime was discovered when divers went down to the wreck and it transpired that the fire had started in three places at once. Ellidi did four years at Litla-Hraun for insurance fraud, manslaughter and a number of minor offences of which he was convicted at the same time and that had been accumulating at the State Prosecutor's office. He spent two and a half years inside on that occasion.

Ellidi was notorious for violent physical assaults which in the worst cases left the victims maimed and permanently disabled. Erlendur remembered one case in particular and described it to Sigurdur Óli while they were driving over the moor. Ellidi had a score to settle with a young man in a house on Snorrabraut. By the time the police arrived on the scene he'd beaten the man so badly he was in intensive care for four days. Having tied the man to a chair he had amused himself by cutting his face with a broken bottle. Before they managed to overpower Ellidi he knocked one policeman out cold and broke another's arm. Icelandic judges were notoriously lenient. He received a two-year sentence for that offence and several accumulated minor ones as before. When the verdict was read out, he scoffed at it.

The door opened and Ellidi was brought into the hall by two wardens. He was powerfully built despite his age. Dark skinned, his head shaven bald. He had small ears with attached lobes but had nevertheless managed to pierce a hole in one from which a black swastika now dangled. His false teeth whistled when he spoke. He wore tattered jeans and a black T-shirt that revealed his thick biceps with tattoos up both arms. He towered well over six feet. They noticed he was handcuffed. One of his eyes was red, his face scratched and his upper lip swollen.

A psychopathic sadist, Erlendur said to himself.

The warders took up positions by the door and Ellidi went over to the table where he sat facing Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli. He sized them up with his grey, dull eyes, totally uninterested.

"Did you know a man called Holberg?" Erlendur asked.

Ellidi showed no response. Pretended he hadn't heard the question. He looked at Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli in turn with the same dull eyes. The warders spoke together in quiet voices by the door. Shouting could be heard from somewhere in the building. A door being slammed. Erlendur repeated his question, his words echoing around the empty hall. "Holberg! Do you remember him?"

Still he got no response from Ellidi, who looked aimlessly around the room, as though they weren't there. Some time elapsed in silence. Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli looked at one another and Erlendur asked the question a third time. Had he known Holberg, what was their relationship? Holberg was dead. Found murdered.

Ellidi's interest was aroused on hearing the last word. He put his stout arms on the table, rattling the handcuffs, unable to conceal his surprise. He looked inquisitively at Erlendur.

"Holberg was murdered at his home last week end," Erlendur said. "We're talking to the people who knew him at various times and it seems the two of you were acquainted."

Ellidi had begun staring at Sigurdur Óli, who stared back. He didn't answer Erlendur.

"It's a routine ..."

"I won't talk to you with these handcuffs on," Ellidi said suddenly, not taking his eyes off Sigurdur Óli. His voice was hoarse, rough and provocative. Erlendur thought for a moment, then stood up and went over to the two warders. He explained Ellidi's demand and asked whether his handcuffs could be removed. They hesitated, but then went over to him, undid the handcuffs and took up their posts at the door again.

"What can you tell us about Holberg?" Erlendur asked.

"They leave first," Ellidi said, nodding at the warders.

"Out of the question," Erlendur said.

"Are you a fucking poofter?" Ellidi asked, his gaze still fixed on Sigurdur Óli.

"Don't give us any of that crap," Erlendur said. Sigurdur Óli didn't answer him. They looked each other in the eye.

"Nothing's out of the question," Ellidi said. "Don't you go telling me anything's out of the question."

"They're not leaving," Erlendur said.

"Are you a poofter?" Ellidi said again, still staring at Sigurdur Óli, who showed no reaction.

They remained silent for a while. Eventually Erlendur stood up, went over to the two warders, repeated what Ellidi had said and asked if there was any chance of being left alone with him. The warders said that was impossible, they had orders not to leave the prisoner unattended. After some wrangling they let Erlendur talk to the governor over a two-way radio. Erlendur said it didn't make much difference which side of the door the warders stood, he and Sigurdur Óli had come all the way from Reykjavík and the prisoner was showing a degree of willingness to cooperate if certain conditions could be met. The governor talked to his men and said he'd take personal responsibility for the safety of the two detectives. The warders stepped outside and Erlendur went back to the table and sat down.

"Will you talk to us now?" he asked.

"I didn't know Holberg had been murdered," Ellidi said. "Those fascists put me in solitary for some shit I didn't do. How was he killed?" Ellidi was still glaring at Sigurdur Óli.

"None of your business," Erlendur said.

"My dad said I was the most curious bastard on earth. He was always saying that. None of your business. None of your business! He's dead. Was he stabbed? Was Holberg stabbed?"

"That's none of your business."

"None of my business!" Ellidi repeated and looked at Erlandur. "Fuck off then."

Erlendur thought for a moment. No-one outside the CID knew the details of the case. He was getting fed up with having to concede everything to this character.

"He was hit over the head. His skull was smashed. He died almost instantly."

"Was it a hammer?"

"An ashtray."

Ellidi slowly turned his gaze from Erlendur back to Sigurdur Óli.

"What kind of a wanker uses an ashtray?" he said. Erlendur noticed tiny beads of sweat forming on Sigurdur Óli's brow.

"That's what we're trying to find out," Erlendur said. "Have you been in touch with Holberg?"

"Did he suffer?"

"No."

"The jerk."

"Do you remember Grétar?" Erlendur asked. "He was with you and Holberg in Keflavík."

"Gréar?"

"Do you remember him?"

"What are you asking about him for?" Ellidi said. "What about him?"

"I understand Grétar went missing many years ago," Erlendur said. "Do you know anything about his disappearance?"

"What should I know about it?" Ellidi said. "What makes you think I know anything about it?"

"What were the three of you – you, Grétar and Holberg – doing in Keflavík ..."

"Grétar was nuts," Ellidi said, interrupting Erlendur.

"What were you doing in Kefíavik when ..."

"... he raped that pussy?" Ellidi cut in.

"What did you say?" Erlendur asked.

"Is that what you came here for? To ask about that pussy from Keflavík?"

"So you remember it?"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"I never said ..."

"Holberg liked talking about it. Boasted. Got away with it. He did her twice, did you know that?" Ellidi said this bluntly and looked at them in turn.

"Are you talking about the rape in Keflavík?"

"What colour panties are you wearing, sweetie?" Ellidi turned on Sigurdur Óli, staring at him again. Erlendur looked at his colleague, whose eyes remained fixed on Ellidi.

"You watch your bloody mouth," Erlendur said.

"He asked her. Holberg. Asked about her panties. He was even madder than me." Ellidi giggled. "And they send me to the nick!"

"Who did he ask about the panties?"

"The chick from Keflavík."

"Did he tell you about it?"

"All the details," Ellidi said. "He was always talking about it. Anyway, what are you asking about Keflavík for? What's Keflavík got to do with it? And why are you asking about Grítar now? I don't get it."

"Just our boring routine work," Erlendur said.

"Right, so what do I get out of it?"

"You've got everything you want. We're sitting alone here with you and your handcuffs are off. We have to listen to your filth. There's nothing else we can do for you. Either you answer the question now or we leave."

He couldn't resist the temptation. Reaching across the table he grabbed Ellidi's face in his strong hands and turned him towards him.

"Didn't your father ever tell you it's rude to stare?" he said. Sigurdur Óli looked at Erlendur.

"I can handle him. It's okay," he said.

Erlendur released his grip on Ellidi's face.

"How did you know Holberg?" he asked. Ellidi rubbed his jaw. He knew he'd just scored a minor victory. And he wasn't stopping there.

"Don't think I don't remember you," he said to Erlendur. "Don't think I don't know who you are. Don't think I don't know Eva."

Erlendur stared at the prisoner, thunderstruck. This wasn't the first time he'd heard this kind of thing from criminals, but he was never any less ill-prepared for it. He didn't know exactly who Eva Lind associated with but some of them were convicts, drug dealers, burglars, prostitutes, heavies. It was a long list. She'd been in trouble with the law herself. Once she was arrested after a tip-off from a parent for selling drugs at a school. She could easily know a man like Ellidi. A man like Ellidi could easily know her.

"How did you know Holberg?" Erlendur repeated.

"Eva's all right," Ellidi said. Erlendur could read countless meanings into his words.

"If you mention her again, we're gone," he said. "And then you won't have anyone to play with."

"Cigarettes, a telly in the cell, no fucking slavery and no more fucking solitary. Is that asking too much? Can't two supercops set that up? And it'd be nice to get a tart in here once a month or so. His chick for example," he said, pointing at Sigurdur Óli

Erlendur stood up and Sigurdur Óli slowly rose to his feet. Ellidi started to laugh. A hoarse laugh that seethed inside him, progressed to a loud gurgling and culminated in him coughing up some yellow phlegm which he spat on the floor. They turned away from him and walked towards the door.

"He talked to me a lot about that rape in Keflavík!" he shouted after them. "Told me all about her. How that pussy squealed like a stuck pig and what he whispered in her ear while he waited to get it back up. Do you want to hear what that was? Do you want to hear what he said to her?! Fucking wankers! Do you want to hear what it was?!"

Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli stopped. They turned to see Ellidi shaking his head at them, foaming at the mouth and shrieking curses and oaths. He was on his feet, his hands on the table, leaning over it, stretching his big head in their direction and bellowing at them like a raging bull.

The hall door opened and the two warders stepped inside.

"He told her about the other one!" Ellidi screamed. "He told her what he did to the other fucking pussy he raped!"