Jar City

by Arnaldur Indridason

  “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.”

  4

  The couple from Gardabaer looked at Erlendur with anguish in their eyes. Their little daughter had gone missing. They hadn’t heard from her for three days. Not since the wedding she’d run out from. Their little girl. Erlendur was imagining a child with curly golden locks until he was told she was a 23-year-old psychology student at the University of Iceland.

  “The wedding?” Erlendur said, looking around the spacious lounge; it was like a whole storey of the block of flats where he lived.

  “Her own wedding!” the father said as if he still couldn’t understand it. “The girl ran away from her own wedding!”

  The mother put a crumpled handkerchief to her nose.

  It was midday. Due to road works on the way from Reykjavík it had taken Erlendur half an hour to reach Gardabaer and he found the large detached house only after a considerable search. It was almost invisible from the street, enclosed by a large garden with all kinds of trees growing in it, up to six metres high. The couple met him in a clear state of shock.

  Erlendur thought this was a waste of time. Other more important matters were waiting for him, but even though he’d hardly spoken to his ex-wife for two decades he still felt inclined to do her a favour.

  The mother wore a smart, pale green dress suit, the father a black suit. He said he was growing increasingly worried about his daughter. He knew she would come home eventually and that she was safe and sound – he refused to believe otherwise – but he wanted to consult the police, although he didn’t see any reason to call out the search parties and rescue teams immediately or to send announcements to the radio, newspapers and television.

  “She just disappeared,” the mother said. The couple looked a little older than Erlendur, probably about 60. They ran a business importing children’s wear and that provided for them amply to enjoy a prosperous lifestyle. The nouveaux riches. Age had treated them kindly. Erlendur noticed two new cars in front of their double garage, polished to a shine.

  She braced herself and started to tell Erlendur the story. “It happened on Saturday – three days ago, my God how time flies – and it was such a wonderful day. They had just been married by that vicar who’s so popular.”

  “Hopeless,” her husband said. “Came rushing in, delivered a few clichés and then he was off again with his briefcase. I can’t understand why he’s so popular.”

  His wife wouldn’t let anything mar the beauty of the wedding.

  “A marvellous day! Sunshine and lovely autumn weather. Definitely a hundred people at the church alone. She has so many friends. Such a popular girl. We held the reception at a hall here in Gardabaer. What’s that place called? I always forget.”

  “Gardaholt,” the father said.

  “Such a wonderful cosy place,” she went on. “We filled it. The hall, I mean. So many presents. And then when…then when…”

  “They were supposed to dance the first dance,” the father continued when his wife burst into tears, “and that idiot of a boy was standing on the dance floor. We called out to Dísa Rós, but she didn’t show up. We started looking for her, but it was as if the ground had opened up and swallowed her.”

  “Dísa Rós?” Erlendur said.

  “It turned out that she’d taken the wedding car.”

  “The wedding car?”

  “The limousine. With the flowers and ribbons, that brought them from the church. She just ran away from the wedding. No warning! No explanation!”

  “From her own wedding!” the mother shouted.

  “And you don’t know what made her do that?”

  “She obviously changed her mind,” the mother said. “Must have regretted the whole thing.”

  “But why?” Erlendur said.

  “Please, can you find her for us?” the father asked. “She hasn’t been in touch and you can see how terribly worried we are. The party was a total flop. The wedding was ruined. We’re completely stumped. And our little girl is missing.”

  “The wedding car. Was it found?”

  “Yes. In Gardastraeti.”

  “Why there?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t know anyone there. Her clothes were in the car. Her proper clothes.”

  Erlendur hesitated.

  “Her proper clothes were in the wedding car?” he said eventually, briefly pondering the plane this conversation had dropped to and whether he was in some way responsible.

  “She took off her wedding gown and put on the clothes she’d apparently kept in the car,” the wife said.

  “Do you think you can find her?” the father asked. “We’ve contacted everyone she knows and no-one knows a thing. We just don’t know where to turn. I have a photo of her here.”

  He handed Erlendur a school photograph of the young, beautiful blonde who was now in hiding. She smiled at him from the photograph.

  “You have no idea what happened?”

  “Not a clue,” the girl’s mother replied.

  “None,” the father said.

  “And these are the presents?” Erlendur looked at the gigantic dining table, piled high with colourful parcels, pretty bows, cellophane and flowers. He walked towards it as the couple watched. He’d never seen so many presents in his life
and he wondered what was inside the parcels. Crockery and more crockery, he imagined.

  What a life.

  “And what’s this here?” he said, pointing to some offcuts from a tree that stood in a large vase at one end of the table. Heart-shaped red cards hung from the branches by ribbons.

  “It’s a message tree.”

  “A what?” Erlendur said. He’d only been to one wedding in his life and that was a long time ago. No message trees there.

  “The guests write greetings to the bride and groom on cards and then hang them on the tree. A lot of cards had been hung up before Dísa Rós went missing,” the mother said, still holding her handkerchief to her nose.

  Erlendur’s mobile phone rang in his overcoat pocket. As he fumbled to get it, the phone got stuck in the opening and, instead of patiently working it loose, which would have been so easy, Erlendur tugged at it vigorously until the pocket gave way. The hand holding the phone flew back and sent the message tree flying to the floor. Erlendur looked at the couple apologetically and answered his phone.

  “Are you coming with us to Nordurmýri?” Sigurdur Óli said without any preamble. “To take a better look at the flat.”

  “Are you down there already?” Erlendur asked. He had withdrawn to one side.

  “No. I’ll wait for you,” Sigurdur Óli said. “Where the hell are you?”

  Erlendur hung up.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said to the couple. “I don’t think there’s any danger involved. Your daughter probably just lost her nerve and she’s staying with some friends. You shouldn’t worry too much. I’m sure she’ll ring before long.”

  The couple bent down over the little cards that had fallen to the floor. He noticed that they had overlooked several cards that had slid under a chair and he bent down to pick them up. Erlendur read the greetings and looked at the couple.

  “Had you seen this?” he asked and handed them the card.

  The father read the message and a look of astonishment crossed his face. He handed the card to his wife. She read it over and again but didn’t seem to understand. Erlendur held out his hand for the card and read it again. The message was unsigned.

  “Is this your daughter’s handwriting?” he asked.

  “I think so,” the mother replied.

  Erlendur turned the card over in his hands and reread the message:

  HE’S A MONSTER WHAT HAVE I DONE?

  5

  “Where have you been?” Sigurdur Óli asked Erlendur when he came back to work, but he received no answer.

  “Has Eva Lind tried to contact me?” he asked.

  Sigurdur Óli said he didn’t think so. He knew about Erlendur’s daughter and her problems, but neither of them ever mentioned it. Personal matters seldom entered into their conversations.

  “Anything new on Holberg?” Erlendur asked and walked straight into his office. Sigurdur Óli followed him and closed the door. Murders were rare in Reykjavík and generated enormous publicity on the few occasions they were committed. The CID made it a rule not to inform the media of details of their investigations unless absolutely necessary. That did not apply in this case.

  “We know a little more about him,” Sigurdur Óli said, opening a file he was holding. “He was born in Saudárkrókur, 69 years old. Spent his last years working as a lorry driver for Iceland Transport. Still worked there on and off.”

  Sigurdur Óli paused.

  “Shouldn’t we talk to his workmates?” he said, straightening his tie. Sigurdur Óli was wearing a new suit, tall and handsome, a graduate in criminology from an American university. He was everything that Erlendur was not: modern and organised.

  “What do people in the office think?” Erlendur asked, twiddling with a loose button on his cardigan which eventually dropped into his palm. He was stout and well-built with bushy ginger hair, one of the most experienced detectives on the team. He generally got his way. His superiors and colleagues had long since given up doing battle with him. Things had turned out that way over the years. Erlendur didn’t dislike it.

  “Probably some nutcase,” Sigurdur Óli said. “At the minute we’re looking for that green army jacket. Some kid who wanted money but panicked when Holberg refused.”

  “What about Holberg’s family? Did he have any?”

  “No family, but we haven’t got all the information yet. We’re still gathering it together; family, friends, workmates.”

  “From the look of his flat I’d say he was single and had been for a long time.”

  “You would know, of course,” Sigurdur Óli blurted out, but Erlendur pretended not to hear.

  “Anything from the pathologist? Forensics?”

  “The provisional report’s in. Nothing in it we didn’t know. Holberg died from a blow to the head. It was a heavy blow, but basically it was the shape of the ashtray, the sharp edges, that were decisive. His skull caved in and he died instantly…or almost. He seems to have struck the corner of the coffee table as he fell. He had a nasty wound on his forehead that fitted the corner of the table. The fingerprints on the ashtray were Holberg’s but then there are at least two other sets, one of which is also on the pencil.”

  “Are they the murderer’s then?”

  “There’s every probability that they are the murderer’s, yes.”

  “Right, a typical clumsy Icelandic murder.”

  “Typical. And that’s the assumption we’re working on.”

  It was still raining. The low-pressure fronts that moved in from deep in the Atlantic at that time of year headed east across Iceland in succession, bringing wind, wet and dark winter gloom. The CID was still at work in the building in Nordurmýri. The yellow police tape that had been set up around the building reminded Erlendur of the electricity board; a hole in the road, a filthy tent over it, a flicker of light inside the tent, all neatly gift-wrapped with yellow tape. In the same way, the police had wrapped the murder scene up with neat yellow plastic tape with the name of the authority printed on it. Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli met Elínborg and the other detectives who had been combing the building through the autumn night and into the morning and were just finishing their job.

  People from neighbouring buildings were questioned but none of them had noticed any suspicious movements at the murder scene between the Monday morning and the time the body was found.

  Soon there was no-one left in the building but Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli. The blood on the carpet had turned black. The ashtray had been removed as evidence. The pencil and pad too. In other respects it was as though nothing had happened. Sigurdur Óli went to look in the den and the passage to the bedroom, while Erlendur walked around the sitting room. They put on white rubber gloves. Prints were mounted and framed on the walls and looked as if they’d been bought at the front door from travelling salesmen. In the bookcase were thrillers in translation, paperbacks from a book club, some of them read, others apparently untouched. No interesting hard-bound volumes. Erlendur bent down almost to the floor to read the titles on the bottom shelf and recognised only one: Lolita by Nabokov; paperback. He took it from the bookshelf. It was an English edition and had clearly been read.

  He replaced the book and inched his way towards the desk. It was L-shaped and took up one corner of the sitting room. A new, comfortable office chair was by the desk, with a plastic mat underneath it to protect the carpet. The desk looked much older than the chair. There were drawers on both sides underneath the broader desktop and a long one in the middle, nine in all. On the shorter desktop stood a 17-inch computer monitor with a sliding tray for a keyboard fitted beneath it. The tower was kept on the floor. All the drawers were locked.

  Sigurdur Óli went through the wardrobe in the bedroom. It was reasonably organised, with socks in one drawer, underwear in another, trousers, sweaters. Some shirts and three suits were hanging on a rail, the oldest suit from the disco era, Sigurdur Óli thought, brown striped. Several pairs of shoes on the wardrobe floor. Bedclothes in the top drawer. The man had mad
e his bed before his visitor arrived. A white blanket covered the duvet and pillow. It was a single bed.

  On the bedside table were an alarm clock and two books, one a series of interviews with a well-known politician and the other a book of photographs of Scania-Vabis trucks. The bedside table had a cupboard in it too, containing medicine, surgical spirit, sleeping pills, Panadol and a small jar of Vaseline.

  “Can you see any keys anywhere?” asked Erlendur, who was now by the door.

  “No keys. Door keys, you mean?”

  “No, to the desk.”

  “None of those either.”

  Erlendur went into the den and from there into the kitchen. He opened drawers and cupboards but could see only cutlery and glasses, ladles and plates. No keys. He went over to the hangers by the door, frisked the coats but found nothing except a little black pouch with a ring of keys and some coins in it. Two small keys were hanging from the ring with others to the front door, to the flat and to the rooms. Erlendur tried them on the desk. The same one fitted all nine drawers.

  He opened the large drawer in the centre of the desk first. It contained mainly bills – telephone, electricity, heating and credit-card bills – and also a newspaper subscription. The bottom two drawers to the left were empty and in the next one up were tax forms and wage slips. In the top drawer was a photograph album. All black-and-white, old photographs of people from various times, sometimes dressed up in what appeared to be the sitting room in Nordurmýri, sometimes on picnics: dwarf birch, Gullfoss waterfall and Geysir. He saw two photographs that he thought might be of the murdered man when he was young, but nothing taken recently.

  He opened the drawers on the right-hand side. The top two were empty. In the third he found a pack of cards, a folding chess set, an old inkwell.

  He found the photograph underneath the bottom drawer.

  Erlendur was closing the bottom drawer again when he heard what sounded like a slight rustling from inside it. When he opened and closed it again he heard the same rustling. It rubbed against something on its way in. He sighed and squatted down, looked inside but could see nothing. He pulled it back out but heard nothing, then closed it and the noise came again. He knelt on the floor, pulled the drawer right out, saw something stuck and stretched out to get it.