Voices de-5

by Arnaldur Indridason

  20

  Erlendur asked for the hotel manager at reception and was told he had popped out. The head chef refused to explain the pimp moniker when he mentioned the “fucking fat bastard of a manager”. Erlendur had rarely met anyone with such a temper. The chef must have realised that in his agitation he had let slip something. Erlendur made no headway. All he could get out of him were snide remarks and abuse, since the man was on home ground in the kitchen. To level the playing field and irritate the chef even further Erlendur thought of arranging for four uniformed police officers to turn up at the hotel and take him off for questioning at the station on Hverfisgata.

  After toying with the idea he decided to shelve it for the time being.

  Instead, he went up to Henry Wapshotts room. He broke the police seal that had been put on the door. The forensics team had taken care not to move anything. Erlendur stood still for a long time, scanning all around. He was looking for some kind of wrapper from a packet of chewing tobacco.

  It was a twin room with two single beds, both unmade as if Wapshott had either slept in both of them or had had a guest for the night. On one table was an old record player connected to an amplifier and two small speakers, and on the other was a 14-inch television set and a video player. Two tapes lay beside it. Erlendur put one in the player and turned on the television, but switched it off as soon as the picture came on. Osp was right about the pornography.

  He opened the drawer of the bedside table, took a good look inside Wapshotts suitcase, checked the cupboard and went into the bathroom, but did not find chewing tobacco anywhere. He looked in the wastepaper basket, but it was empty.

  “Elinborg was right,” said Sigurdur Oli, who suddenly appeared in the room.

  Erlendur turned round.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “Scotland Yard sent us some information about him at last,” Sigurdur Oli said, looking around the room.

  “I’m looking for chewing tobacco,” Erlendur said. “They found some on the condom.”

  “I think I know why he doesn’t want to contact his embassy or a lawyer and is just hoping all this will blow over,” Sigurdur Oli said before relaying Scotland Yard’s information on the record collector.

  Henry Wapshott, unmarried with no children, was born on the eve of the Second World War, in 1938, in Liverpool. His father’s family owned several valuable properties in the city. Some were bombed during the war and rebuilt as quality residential and office premises, which ensured a certain degree of wealth. Wapshott had never needed to work. An only child, he had the best education, Eton and Oxford, but did not complete his degree. When his father died he took over the family business but, unlike the old man, he had little interest in property management and soon attended only the most important meetings, until he stopped that as well and handed over the operations entirely to his managers.

  He always lived in his parents” house and his neighbours regarded him as an eccentric loner; kindly and polite but strange and withdrawn. His only interest was collecting records and he filled his house with albums that he bought from the estates of dead people or at markets. He did a great deal of travelling for his hobby and was said to own one of the largest private record collections in Britain.

  He had twice been found guilty of a criminal offence and was on Scotland Yard’s register of sex offenders. On the first occasion he was imprisoned for raping a twelve-year-old boy. The boy was a neighbour of Wapshott’s and they got to know each other through a common interest in collecting records. The incident took place at Wapshott’s parents” house, and when his mother heard of her son’s behaviour she had a breakdown; it was blown up in the British media, especially the tabloids, which portrayed Wapshott, born into the privileged class, as a beast. Investigations revealed that he paid boys and young men handsomely to perform sexual acts.

  By the time he finished his sentence his mother had died, and he sold his parents” house and moved to another district. Several years later he was back in the news when two boys in their early teens revealed how Wapshott had offered them money to undress at his home, and he was charged with rape again. When the matter came to light Wapshott was in Baden Baden in Germany and was arrested at Brenner’s Hotel Spa.

  The second rape charge could not be proved and Wapshott moved abroad, to Thailand, but retained his British citizenship and kept his record collection in the UK, which he often visited on collecting missions. He used his mothers surname then, Wapshott; his real name was Henry Wilson. He had not fallen foul of the law since emigrating from Britain, but little was known about what he did in Thailand.

  “So it’s not surprising that he wanted to keep a low profile,” Erlendur said when Sigurdur Oli had finished his account.

  “He sounds like a pervert big time,” Sigurdur Oli said. “You can imagine why he chose Thailand.”

  “Don’t they have anything on him at the moment?” Erlendur asked. “Scotland Yard.”

  “No, but I’ll bet they’re relieved to be rid of him,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  They had gone back to the ground floor and into the small bar there. The buffet table was packed. The tourists at the hotel were merry and noisy and gave the impression of being happy with everything they had seen and done, rosy-cheeked in their traditional Icelandic sweaters.

  “Have you found any bank account in Gudlaugur’s name?” Erlendur asked. He lit a cigarette, looked around him and noticed that he was the only smoker at the bar.

  “I’ve still got to look into that,” Sigurdur Oli said, and sipped his beer.

  Elinborg appeared in the doorway and Sigurdur Oli waved her over. She nodded and elbowed her way to the bar, bought a large beer and sat down with them. Sigurdur Oli gave Elinborg a resume of Scotland Yard’s dossier on Wapshott, and she took the liberty of smiling.

  “I bloody knew it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That his interest in choirboys was sexually motivated. His interest in Gudlaugur too for certain.”

  “Do you mean that he was having a bit of fun with Gudlaugur downstairs?” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “Maybe Gudlaugur was forced to take part,” Erlendur said. “Someone was carrying a knife.”

  “What a way to spend Christmas, having to puzzle all this out,” Elinborg sighed.

  “Not exactly good for the appetite,” Erlendur said and finished his Chartreuse. He wanted another. Looked at his watch. If he had been at the office he would have finished work by now. The bar was a little less busy and he waved the waiter over.

  “There must have been at least two people in there with him because you can’t threaten anyone if you’re down on your knees” Sigurdur Oli cast a glance at Elinborg and thought he might have gone a little too far.

  “It gets better all the time,” Elinborg said.

  “Ruins the taste of the Christmas cookies,” Erlendur said.

  “OK, but why did he stab Gudlaugur?” Sigurdur Oli said. “Not just once, but repeatedly. As if he lost control of himself. If Wapshott attacked him first, something must have happened or been said in the basement room that made the pervert snap.”

  Erlendur was going to order but the others declined and looked at their watches — Christmas was drawing quickly closer.

  “I reckon he had a woman in there,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “They measured the level of Cortisol in the saliva on the condom,” Erlendur said. “It was normal. Any woman who was with Gudlaugur could have been gone by the time he was murdered.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely, judging from how we found him,” Elinborg said.

  “Whoever was with him wasn’t forced into anything,” Erlendur said. “I think that’s established. If any level of Cortisol had been found it would have been a sign of excitement or tension in the body.”

  “So it was a whore then,” Sigurdur Oli said, going about her job.”

  “Can’t we talk about something nicer?” Elinborg asked.

  “It could be that they were
fleecing the hotel and Santa knew about it,” Erlendur said.

  “And that’s why he was killed?” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “I don’t know. There might also be some low-key prostitution going on with the manager’s complicity. I haven’t quite worked out all this but we may need to look into these things”

  “Was Gudlaugur tied up in it in any way?” Elinborg asked.

  “Judging from the state he was in when he was found, we can’t rule it out,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “How’s it going with your man?” Erlendur asked.

  “He was poker-faced in the district court,” Elinborg said, sipping her beer.

  “The boy still hasn’t testified against his father, has he?” asked Sigurdur Oli, who was also familiar with the case.

  “Silent as the grave, poor kid,” Erlendur said. “And that bastard sticks to his statement. Flatly denies hitting the boy. And he’s got good lawyers too.”

  “So he’ll get the boy back?”

  “It could well be.”

  “And the boy?” Erlendur asked. “Does he want to go back?”

  “That’s the weirdest part of all,” Elinborg said. “He’s still attached to his father. It’s as if he feels he deserved it.”

  They fell silent.

  “Are you going to spend Christmas at this hotel, Erlendur?” Elinborg asked. There was a tone of accusation in her voice.

  “No, I suppose I’ll get myself home,” Erlendur said. “Spend some time with Eva. Boil some smoked lamb.”

  “How’s she doing?” Elinborg asked.

  “So-so,” Erlendur said. “Fine, I suppose.” He thought they could tell that he was lying. They were well aware of the problems his daughter had run into but rarely mentioned them. They knew he wanted to discuss them as little as possible and never asked in detail.

  “St Thorlac’s Day tomorrow,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Got everything done, Elinborg?”

  “Nothing.” She sighed.

  “I’m wondering about that record collecting,” Erlendur said.

  “What about it?” Elinborg said.

  “Isn’t it something that starts in childhood?” Erlendur said. “Not that I know anything about it. I’ve never collected anything. But isn’t it an interest that develops when you’re a kid, when you collect cards and model planes, stamps of course, theatre programmes, records? Most people grow out of it but some go on collecting books and records until their dying day.”

  “What are you trying to tell us?”

  “I’m wondering about record collectors like Wapshott, although of course they’re not all perverts like him, whether the collecting fad is connected with some kind of yearning for lost youth. Connected with a need to keep hold of something that otherwise would disappear from their lives but which they want to retain for as long as they can. Isn’t collecting an attempt to preserve something from your childhood? Something to do with your memories, something you don’t want to let go but keep on cultivating and nourishing with this obsession?”

  “So Wapshott’s record collecting, the choirboys, is some kind of nostalgia for youth?” Elinborg asked.

  “And then when the nostalgia for youth appears before him in the flesh at this hotel, something snaps inside him?” said Sigurdur Oli. “The boy turned into a middle-aged man. Do you mean something like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Erlendur vacantly watched the tourists at the bar and noticed one who was middle-aged, Asian in appearance and American-sounding. He had a new video camera and was filming his friends. Suddenly it occurred to Erlendur that there might be security cameras at the hotel. The hotel manager had not mentioned it, nor the reception manager. He looked at Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg.

  “Did you ask if there were security cameras at this hotel?” he asked.

  They looked at each other.

  “Weren’t you going to?” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “I just forgot,” Elinborg said. “Christmas and all that. It completely slipped my mind.”

  The reception manager looked at Erlendur and shook his head. He said the hotel had a very firm policy on this issue. There were no security cameras on the hotel premises, neither in the lobby nor lifts, corridors nor rooms. Especially not in the rooms, of course.

  “Then we wouldn’t have any guests,” the manager said seriously.

  “Yes, that had occurred to me,” Erlendur said, disappointed. For a moment he had entertained the vague hope that something had been caught on camera, something that did not tally with the stories and statements, something at odds with what the police had discovered.

  He turned away from the reception to head back to the bar when the manager called out to him.

  “There’s a bank in the south wing, on the other side of the building. There are souvenir shops and a bank, and you can enter the hotel from there. Fewer people use it as an entrance. The bank’s bound to have security cameras. But they’ll hardly show anyone besides their customers”

  Erlendur had noticed the bank and souvenir shops, and he went straight there but saw that the bank was closed. Looking up, he saw the almost invisible eye of a camera above the door. No one was working in the bank. He knocked on the glass door so hard that it rattled, but nothing happened. Eventually he took out his mobile and insisted on having the bank manager fetched.

  While he was waiting Erlendur looked at the souvenirs in the shop, sold at inflated prices: plates with pictures of Gullfoss and Geysir painted on them, a carved figurine of Thor with his hammer, key rings with fox fur, posters showing whale species off the Icelandic coast, a sealskin jacket that would set him back a month’s salary. He thought about buying a memento of this peculiar Tourist-Iceland that exists only in the minds of rich foreigners, but he couldn’t see anything cheap enough.

  The bank manager, a woman of about forty, had been on her way to a Christmas party and was far from amused about being interrupted; at first she thought there had been a robbery at the bank. She had not been told what was going on when two uniformed police officers knocked on the door of her house and asked her to accompany them. She glared at Erlendur in front of the bank when he explained to her that he needed access to her security cameras. She lit a fresh cigarette with the butt of the old one and Erlendur thought to himself that he had not encountered a proper smoker like her for years.

  “Couldn’t this wait until the morning?” she asked coldly, so coldly that he could almost hear the icicles dropping from her words, and thought that he would not like to owe this woman any money.

  “Those things will kill you,” Erlendur said, pointing to the cigarette.

  “They haven’t yet,” she said. “Why did you drag me out here?”

  “Because of the murder,” Erlendur said. “At the hotel”

  “And?” she said, unimpressed by murder.

  “We’re trying to speed up the investigation.” He smiled, but it was pointless.

  “Bloody farce this is,” she said, and ordered Erlendur to follow her inside. The two police officers had left, clearly relieved at being rid of the woman, who had hurled abuse at them on the way. She took him to the staff entrance to the bank, keyed in her PIN, opened the door and commanded him to hurry.

  It was a small branch and inside her office the manager had four monitors connected to the security cameras: one behind each of the two cashiers, in the waiting area and above the entrance. She switched on the monitors and explained to Erlendur that the cameras rolled all day and night, and that tapes were kept for three weeks and then rewritten. The recorders were in a small basement below the bank.

  Already on her third cigarette, she led him downstairs and pointed to the tapes, which were clearly labelled with the dates and locations of the cameras. The tapes were kept in a locked safe.

  “A security guard comes here from the bank every day,” she said, “and takes care of it all. I don’t know how to use it and would ask you not to go fiddling with anything that’s none of your business.”

  “Thank
you” Erlendur said humbly. “I want to start on the day the murder was committed.”

  “Be my guest,” she said, dropping her smoked cigarette on the floor where she diligently stamped it out.

  He found the date he wanted on a tape labelled “Entrance” and put it in a video player that was connected to a small television. He didn’t think he needed to look at the tapes from the cashiers” cameras.

  The bank manager looked at her gold watch.

  “There’s a full twenty-four-hour period on each tape,” she groaned.

  “How do you manage?” Erlendur asked. “At work?”

  “What do you mean, how do I manage?”

  “Smoking? What do you do?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “None at all,” Erlendur hastened to say.

  “Can’t you just take the tapes?” she said. “I don’t have time for this. I was supposed to be somewhere else ages ago and I don’t plan to hang around here while you go through all of these.”

  “No, you’re right,” Erlendur said. He looked at the tapes in the cupboard. “I’ll take the fortnight before the murder. That’s fourteen tapes”

  “Do you know who killed the man?”

  “Not yet,” Erlendur said.

  “I remember him well,” she said. “The doorman. I’ve been manager here for seven years,” she added as if by way of explanation. “He struck me as a nice enough chap.”

  “Did he talk to you at all recently?”

  “I never talked to him. Not a word.”

  “Was this his bank?” Erlendur asked.

  “No, he didn’t have an account here. Not as far as I know. I never saw him in this branch. Did he have any money?”

  Erlendur took the fourteen tapes up to his room and had a television and video player installed. He had started watching the first tape towards evening when his mobile rang. It was Sigurdur Oli.

  “We’ve got to charge him or let him go,” he said. “Really we don’t have anything on him.”