Voices de-5

by Arnaldur Indridason

  “But what if it isn’t that simple?” Elinborg asked.

  “I don’t think any of the guests know there was a murder,” said Sigurdur Oli, who wanted to get home too. Bergthora, his partner, had phoned him towards evening and asked if he was on his way. It was exactly the right time now and she was waiting for him, she had said. Sigurdur Oli knew immediately what she meant by “the right time”. They were trying to have a baby but nothing was happening and he had told Erlendur that they were beginning to talk about IVF.

  “Don’t you have to give them a jarful?” Erlendur asked.

  “A jarful?” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “In the mornings?”

  Sigurdur Oli looked at Erlendur until he realised what he meant.

  “I should never have told you,” he growled.

  Erlendur sipped his foul-tasting coffee. The three of them were sitting by themselves in the staff coffee room in the basement. All the commotion was over, the police officers and forensics team had left, the room was sealed off. Erlendur was in no hurry. He had no one to go to, only his gloomy apartment in a block of flats. Christmas meant nothing to him. He had a few days holiday owing and nothing to do with them. Perhaps his daughter would visit him and they would boil smoked lamb. Sometimes her brother came with her. And Erlendur sat and read, which he always did anyway.

  “You ought to get yourselves home,” he said. “I’m going to potter around a little longer. Find out whether I can’t talk to that head of reception who never has the time.”

  Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli stood up.

  “Will you be OK?” Elinborg asked. “Why don’t you just go home? Christmas is coming and—”

  “What’s with you and Sigurdur Oli? Why don’t you leave me in peace?”

  “It’s Christmas,” Elinborg said with a sigh. Dithered. Then she said, “Forget it.” She and Sigurdur Oli turned round and left the coffee room.

  Erlendur sat for a good while, sunk in thought. He pondered Sigurdur Oli’s question about where he was going to spend Christmas, and mulled over Elinborg’s thoughtfulness. He saw an image of his flat, the armchair, the battered old television set and the books lining the walls.

  Sometimes he bought a bottle of Chartreuse at Christmas and had a glass beside him while he read about ordeals and death in the days when people travelled everywhere on foot and Christmas could be the most treacherous time of the year. Determined to visit their loved ones, people would battle with the forces of nature, go astray and perish; for those awaiting them back home, Christmas turned from a celebration of salvation to a nightmare. The bodies of some travellers were found. Others were not. They were never found. These were Erlendur’s Christmas carols.

  The head of reception had taken off his hotel jacket and was putting on his raincoat when Erlendur located him in the cloakroom. He said he was exhausted and wanted to get home to his family like everyone else. He had heard about the murder, yes, terrible, but did not know how he could be of assistance.

  “I understand you knew him better than most people at the hotel,” Erlendur said.

  “No, I don’t think that’s right,” the head of reception said as he wrapped a thick scarf around his neck. “Who told you that?”

  “He worked for you, didn’t he?” Erlendur replied, ignoring the question.

  “Worked for me, yes, probably. He was a doorman, I’m in charge of the reception, the check-in, as you may know. Do you know how long the shops are open tonight?”

  He gave the impression of not being particularly interested in Erlendur and his questions, which irritated the detective. And it irritated him that no one seemed to care in the slightest about the fate the man in the basement had met.

  “Round the clock, I don’t know. Who could have wanted to stab your doorman in the chest?”

  “Mine? He wasn’t my doorman. He was the hotel’s doorman.”

  “And why did he have his trousers round his ankles and a condom on his todger? Who was with him? Who normally came to visit him? Who were his friends at the hotel? Who were his friends outside the hotel? Who were his enemies? Why was he living at this hotel? What was the deal? What are you hiding? Why can’t you answer me like a decent human being?”

  “Hey, I, what…?” The man fell silent. “I just want to get home,” he said eventually. “I don’t know the answers to all those questions. Christmas is coming. Can we talk tomorrow? I haven’t had a moment’s rest all day.”

  Erlendur looked at him.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said. As he left the cloakroom he suddenly remembered the question that had been vexing him ever since he met the hotel manager. He turned round. The man was on his way out through the door when Erlendur called to him.

  “Why did you want to get rid of him?”

  “What?”

  “You wanted to get rid of him. Santa. Why?”

  The reception manager hesitated.

  “He’d been sacked.”

  Erlendur found the hotel manager sitting down to a meal. He was at a large table in the kitchen, wearing a chef’s apron and devouring the contents of the half-empty trays that had been brought in from the buffet.

  “You can’t imagine how I love eating,” he said, wiping his mouth, when he noticed Erlendur staring at him. “In peace,” he added.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Erlendur said.

  They were alone in the large, polished kitchen. Erlendur could only admire him. He ate quickly, but deftly and without greed. There was something almost elegant about the motions of his hands. One bite after another disappeared inside him, smoothly and with a visible passion.

  He was calmer now that the body had been removed from the hotel and the police had gone, along with the reporters who had been standing outside the hotel; the police had ordered them to stay out, the entire building was deemed a crime scene. The hotel was returning to business as normal. Very few tourists knew about the body in the basement, but many noticed the police activity and asked about it. The manager instructed his staff to say something about an old man and a heart attack.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m a pig, don’t you?” he said, pausing to take a sip of red wine. His little finger darted out, the size of a cocktail sausage.

  “No, but I do understand why you want to run a hotel,” Erlendur said. Then he lost his patience. “You’re killing yourself, you know that,” he said brashly.

  “I weigh 180 kilos,” the manager said. “Farmed pigs don’t get much heavier. I’ve always been fat. Never known otherwise. Never been on a diet. I’ve never been able to think of changing my lifestyle, as they say. I feel good. Better than you, from the look of things,” he added.

  Erlendur remembered hearing that fat people were supposed to be jollier than skinny people. He did not believe it himself.

  “Better than me?” he said with a hint of a smile. “You’re the last person to judge. Why did you sack the doorman?”

  The manager had resumed eating and some time passed before he put down his knife and fork. Erlendur waited patiently. He could see the manager weighing up the best answer, how to phrase it, given that he had found out about the dismissal.

  “We haven’t been doing too well,” he said eventually. “We’re overbooked in the summer and there’s always plenty of traffic over Christmas and the New Year, but then come dead periods that can be damned difficult. The owners said we had to cut back. Lay off staff. I didn’t think it was necessary to have a full-time doorman all year round.”

  “But I’m told he was much more than just a doorman. Santa Claus, for example. A jack of all trades. Mended things. More like a caretaker.”

  The manager had gone back to feeding his face yet again and another break in their conversation ensued. Erlendur looked around. After taking down their names and addresses, the police had allowed the staff who had finished their shifts to go home; it had still not been established who was the last person to talk to the victim, nor what happened on the last day of his life. No
one had noticed anything unusual about Santa. No one had seen anybody go down to the basement. No one knew of him ever having visitors there. Only a couple of people knew that he lived there permanently, that the little room was his home, and apparently they wanted to know as little as possible about him. Very few said they knew him and he did not seem to have had any friends at the hotel. Nor did the employees know about any friends of his outside it.

  A real Lone Wolf, Erlendur thought to himself.

  “No one is indispensable,” the manager said, his sausagelike finger protruding again as he took another sip of red wine. “Of course, firing people is never fun, but we can’t afford to have a doorman all year. That’s why he was sacked. No other reason. And there wasn’t really much door-manning to do. He put on his uniform when film stars or foreign dignitaries came, and he threw out undesirables.”

  “Did he take it badly? Being sacked?”

  “He understood, I think.”

  “Are any knives missing from the kitchen?” Erlendur asked.

  “I don’t know. We lose knives and forks and glasses worth hundreds of thousands of kronur every year. And towels and … Do you think he was stabbed with a knife from the kitchen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Erlendur watched the manager eat.

  “He worked here for twenty years and no one knew him. Don’t you find that unusual?”

  “Employees come and go,” the manager shrugged. “There’s a high staff turnover in this business. I think people knew about him, but who knows who? Don’t ask me. I don’t know anyone here that well.”

  “You’ve stayed put through all these staff changes”

  “I’m difficult to move.”

  “Why did you talk about chucking him out?”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it was just a turn of phrase. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “But you’d sacked him and were going to chuck him out,” Erlendur said. “Then someone comes along and kills him. It hasn’t exactly been going well for him recently.”

  The manager acted as though Erlendur was not even there while he filled himself with cakes and mousse with his delicate, gourmandising motions, trying to savour the treats.

  “Why was he still here if you’d sacked him?”

  “He was supposed to leave at the end of last month. I’d been hurrying him along, but didn’t pressure him. I should have. Then I’d have avoided this nonsense.”

  Erlendur watched the manager scoffing his food, and said nothing. Maybe it was the buffet. Maybe the gloomy block of flats. Maybe the time of year. The microwave dinner waiting for him at home. The lonely Christmas. Erlendur did not know. Somehow the question just came out. Before he knew it.

  “A room?” the manager said, as if not understanding what Erlendur meant.

  “It doesn’t have to be anything special,” Erlendur said.

  “You mean for you?”

  “A single room is fine,” Erlendur said.

  “We’re fully booked. Unfortunately” The hotel manager stared at Erlendur. He didn’t want to have the detective over him day and night.

  “The head of reception said there was a vacant room,” Erlendur lied, more firmly now. “He said it was no problem if I just talked to you.”

  The manager stared at him. Looked down at his unfinished mousse. Then he pushed the plate away, his appetite ruined.

  It was cold in the room. Erlendur stood gazing out of the window, but saw nothing apart from his own reflection in the glass. He hadn’t looked that man in the face for some time and he noticed in the darkness how he was ageing. Snowflakes fell cautiously to the ground, as if the heavens had split open and their dust was being strewn over the world.

  A little book of verse that he owned suddenly entered his mind, exceptionally elegant translations of poems by Holderlin. He let his mind wander through them until he stopped at a line that he knew applied to the man looking back at him from the window.

  The walls stand speechless and cold, the weathervanes rattle in the wind.

  4

  He was falling asleep when he heard a tap on his door and a voice whispering his name.

  He knew at once who it was. When he opened the door he saw his daughter, Eva Lind, standing in the corridor. They looked each other in the eye, she smiled at him and slipped past him into the room. He closed the door. She sat down at the little desk and took out a packet of cigarettes.

  “I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here,” said Erlendur, who had obeyed the smoke-free policy.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Eva Lind said, fishing a cigarette out of the packet. “Why’s it so cold in here?”

  “I think the radiator’s broken.”

  Erlendur sat down on the side of the bed. Dressed only in his underpants, he pulled the quilt over his head and shoulders and wore it like a wrap.

  “What are you doing?” Eva Lind asked.

  “I’m cold,” Erlendur said.

  “I mean, the hotel room, why don’t you just go home?” She inhaled deep into her lungs, almost a third of the cigarette frizzled away, and then she exhaled, filling the room with smoke.

  “I don’t know. I don’t…” Erlendur stopped.

  “Feel like getting yourself home?”

  “Somehow it didn’t seem right. A man was murdered in this hotel today, have you heard?”

  “Santa Claus, wasn’t it? Was he murdered?”

  “The doorman. He was supposed to play Santa for the children in the hotel. How are you doing?”

  “Great,” Eva Lind said.

  “Still at work?”

  “Yes.”

  Erlendur watched her. She looked better. She was still as skinny as ever but the rings under her beautiful blue eyes had faded and her cheeks were not so sunken. He didn’t think she had touched drugs for almost eight months. Not since she had a miscarriage and lay in a coma at the hospital, halfway between this world and the next. When she was discharged from the hospital she moved in with him and got herself a steady job for the first time in two years. For the past few months she had been renting a room in town.

  “How did you find out where I was?” Erlendur asked.

  “I couldn’t get you on your mobile so I called the station and was told you had checked in to the hotel. What’s going on? Why don’t you go home?”

  “I don’t really know what to say,” Erlendur said. “Christmas is a funny time.”

  “Yeah,” Eva Lind said, and they fell silent.

  “Heard anything from your brother?” Erlendur asked.

  “Sindri’s still working out of town,” Eva Lind said, and the cigarette hissed as it burned down to the filter. Ash dropped to the floor. She looked for an ashtray but couldn’t see one, so she stood the cigarette up on end on the desk to let it burn out.

  “And your mother?” Erlendur said. It was always the same questions, and the answers were generally the same as well.

  “OK. Slaving away as usual.”

  Erlendur said nothing. Eva Lind watched the blue cigarette smoke curling up from the desk.

  “I don’t know if I can hold out any longer,” she said, staring at the smoke.

  Erlendur looked up from beneath his quilt.

  There was a knock on the door and they exchanged looks of surprise. Eva stood up and opened the door. A member of staff was standing in the corridor, dressed in his hotel jacket. He said he worked at reception.

  “Smoking is prohibited here,” was the first thing he said when he looked inside the room.

  “I asked her to put it out,” Erlendur said, sitting in his underpants under the quilt. “She’s never listened to me.”

  “And it’s prohibited to have girls in the rooms too,” the man said. “Because of what happened.”

  Eva Lind gave a faint smile and looked over at her father. Erlendur looked up at his daughter and then at the employee.

  “We were told a girl had come up here,” he continued. “That’s n
ot allowed. You’ll have to leave. Now.”

  He stood in the doorway, waiting for Eva Lind to accompany him. Erlendur stood up, still with the quilt over his shoulders, and walked over to the man.

  “She’s my daughter,” he said.

  “Of course,” the man from the reception said, as if that was none of his business.

  “Seriously; Eva Lind said.

  The man looked at each of them in turn.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” he said.

  “Bugger off then and leave us in peace,” Eva Lind said.

  He stood looking at Eva Lind and at Erlendur in his underpants beneath the quilt, and did not budge.

  “There’s something wrong with the radiator in here,” Erlendur said. “It doesn’t heat up.”

  “She’ll have to come with me,” the man said.

  Eva Lind looked at her father and shrugged.

  “We’ll talk later,” she said. “I’m not taking this bullshit”

  “What do you mean, you can’t hold out any longer?” Erlendur said.

  “We’ll talk later,” Eva said, and went out of the door.

  The man smiled at Erlendur.

  “Are you going to do something about the radiator in here?” Erlendur asked.

  “I’ll notify maintenance,” he said, and closed the door.

  Erlendur sat back down on the edge of the bed. Eva Lind and Sindri Snaer were the fruit of a failed marriage that had come to an end more than two decades ago. Erlendur had had virtually no contact with his children after the divorce. His ex-wife, Halldora, made sure of that. She felt betrayed and used the children to get her own back on him. Erlendur resigned himself to it. Ever since, he had regretted not insisting on his right to see his children. Regretted leaving it all up to Halldora. When they grew older they tracked him down for themselves. His daughter was doing drugs by then. His son had already been through rehab for alcoholism.