Voices de-5

by Arnaldur Indridason

  They exchanged cordial farewells and Erlendur watched her leave the dining room for the lobby. His mobile rang in his pocket. He fumbled for it and answered. To his surprise, Valgerdur was on the other end.

  “Could I meet you tonight?” she asked without preamble. “Will you be at the hotel?”

  “I can be,” Erlendur said, not bothering to conceal the surprise in his voice. “I thought…”

  “Shall we say eight? In the bar?”

  “All right,” Erlendur said. “Let’s say that What-?”

  He was going to ask Valgerdur what was bothering her when she rang off and all he could hear was silence. Putting away his mobile, he wondered what she wanted. He had written off any chance of getting to know her and concluded he was probably a total loser as far as women were concerned. Then this telephone call came out of the blue and he didn’t know what to read into it.

  It was well past noon and Erlendur was starving, but instead of eating in the dining room he went upstairs and had room service send up some lunch. He still had several tapes to go through, so he put one in the player and let it roll while he waited for his food.

  He soon lost his concentration, his mind wandered from the screen and he started mulling over Stefania’s words. Why had Gudlaugur crept into their house at night? He had told his sister that he wanted to go home. Sometimes I just want to come home. What did those words imply? Did his sister know? What was home in Gudlaugur’s mind? What did he miss? He was no longer part of the family and the person who had been closest to him, his mother, had died long before. He did not disturb his father and sister when he visited them. He did not come by day as normal people would do — if there was such a thing as normal people — to settle scores, to tackle differences and the anger and even hatred that had formed between him and his family. He came by cover of night, taking care not to disturb anyone, and sneaked back out unnoticed. Instead of reconciliation or forgiveness, he seemed to be looking for something perhaps more important to him, something that only he could understand and which was beyond explanation, enshrined in that single word.

  Home.

  What was that?

  Perhaps a feeling for the childhood he spent in his parents” house before life’s incomprehensible complexities and destinies descended upon him. When he had run around that house in the knowledge that his father, mother and sister were his companions and loved ones. He must have gone to the house to gather memories that he did not want to lose and from which he drew nourishment when life weighed him down.

  Perhaps he went to the house to come to terms with what fate had meted out to him. The unyielding demands that his father made, the bullying that went with being considered different, the motherly love that was more precious to him than all other things, and the big sister who protected him too; the shock when he returned home after the concert at Hafnarfjordur cinema, his world in ruins and his father’s hopes dashed. What could be worse for a boy like him than to fail to live up to his father’s expectations? After all the effort he had expended, all the effort his father had made, all the effort his family had made. He had sacrificed his childhood for something too large for him then to comprehend or control — and which then failed to materialise. His father had played a game with his childhood, and in effect deprived him of it.

  Erlendur sighed.

  Who doesn’t want to come home sometimes?

  He was flat out on his bed when suddenly he heard a noise in the room. At first he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He thought the turntable had started up and the needle had missed the record.

  Sitting up, he looked at the record player and saw that it was switched off. He heard the same noise again and looked all around. It was dark and he couldn’t see very clearly. A vague light emanated from the lamp post on the other side of the road. He was about to switch on the bedside lamp when he heard the noise again, louder than before. He didn’t dare move. Then he remembered where he had heard the noise before.

  He sat up in bed and looked towards the door. In the weak glow he saw a small figure, blue with cold, huddled up in the alcove by the door, staring at him, shaking and shivering so that its head bobbed, sniffling.

  The sniffling was the noise that Erlendur recognised.

  He stared at the figure and it stared back at him, trying to smile but unable to do so for the cold.

  “Is that you?” Erlendur gasped.

  In that instant the figure disappeared from the alcove and Erlendur started from his sleep, half out of bed, and stared at the door.

  “Was that you?” he groaned, seeing snatches of the dream, the woollen mittens, the cap, the winter jacket and scarf. The clothing they were wearing when they left their house.

  The clothing of his brother.

  Who sat shivering in the cold room.

  26

  For a long time he stood in silence at the window, watching the snow fall.

  Eventually he sat down to continue watching the tapes. Gudlaugur’s sister didn’t reappear, nor anyone he knew apart from some employees he recognised from the hotel, hurrying to or from work.

  The hotel telephone rang and Erlendur answered.

  “I reckon Wapshott’s telling the truth,” Elinborg said. “They know him well at the collectors” shops and the flea market.”

  “Was he down there at the time he claimed?”

  “I showed them photos of him and asked about the times, and they were pretty close. Close enough to stop us putting him at the hotel when Gudlaugur was attacked.”

  “He doesn’t give the impression of being a murderer either.”

  “He’s a paedophile, but maybe not a murderer. What are you going to do with him?”

  “I suppose we’ll send him to the UK.”

  The conversation ended and Erlendur sat pondering Gudlaugur’s murder, without reaching any conclusion. He thought about Elinborg and his mind soon returned to the case of the boy whose father abused him and whom Elinborg hated for it.

  * * *

  “You’re not the only one,” Elinborg had said to the father. She wasn’t trying to console him. Her tone was accusatory, as if she wanted him to know he was only one of many sadists who maltreated their children. She wanted to let him hear what he was a part of. The statistics that applied to him.

  She had studied the statistics. Well over three hundred children had been examined at the Children’s Hospital in connection with suspected maltreatment over the period 1980-99. Of these, 232 cases involved suspected sexual abuse and 43 suspected physical abuse or violence. Including toxic poisoning. Elinborg repeated the words for emphasis. Including toxic poisoning and wilful neglect. She read from a sheet of paper, calm and collected: head injuries, broken bones, burns, cuts, bites. She reread the list and stared into the father’s eyes.

  “It is suspected that two children died from physical violence over that twenty-year period,” she said. “Neither case went to court.”

  The experts, she told him, considered that this was an underlying problem, which in plain language meant there were probably many more cases.

  “In the UK,” she said, “four children die every week from maltreatment. Four children,” she reiterated. “Every week.

  “Do you want to know what reasons are given?” she continued. Erlendur sat in the interrogation room but kept a low profile. He was only there to help Elinborg if necessary, but she did not appear to need any assistance.

  The father stared into his lap. He looked at the tape recorder. It wasn’t switched on. It wasn’t a proper interrogation. His lawyer had not been notified but the father had not objected nor complained, yet.

  “I shall name some,” Elinborg said, and began listing the reasons that parents are violent to their children: “Stress,” she said. “Financial problems, sickness, unemployment, isolation, poor partner support and momentary insanity.”

  Elinborg looked at the father.

  “Do you think any of this applies to you? Momentary insanity?”

 
He didn’t answer.

  “Some people lose control of themselves, and there are documented cases of parents who are so disturbed by a guilty conscience that they want to be caught. Does that sound familiar?”

  He said nothing.

  “They take the child to the doctor, maybe their GP, because it has, let’s say, a persistent cold. But it’s not the cold that motivates them; they want the doctor to notice the wounds on the child, the bruises. They want to get caught. You know why?”

  He still sat in silence.

  “Because they want to put an end to it. Want someone to intervene. Intervene in a process they have no control over. They are incapable of doing so themselves and hope the doctor will see that something’s wrong.”

  She looked at the father. Erlendur watched in silence. He was worried that Elinborg was going too far. She seemed to draw on every ounce of strength to act professionally, to show that she was not upset by the case. It seemed to be a hopeless struggle and he thought she realised. She was too emotional.

  “I spoke to your GP ,Elinborg said. “He said he had twice reported the boy’s injuries to the child welfare agency. The agency investigated both times but found no conclusive evidence. It didn’t help that the boy said nothing and you admitted nothing. It’s two different things, wanting to be found out for the violence and confessing to it. I read the reports. In the second one, your son is asked about his relationship with you, but he does not seem to understand the question. They repeat the question: “Who do you trust most of all?” And he replies: “My Dad. I trust my Dad most of all.””

  Elinborg paused.

  “Don’t you think that’s appalling?” she said.

  She looked over towards Erlendur and back to the father.

  “Don’t you think that’s just appalling?”

  Erlendur thought to himself that there was a time when he would have given the same answer. He would have named his father.

  When spring came and the snow thawed his father went up to the mountains to look for his lost son, trying to calculate his route in the storm from where Erlendur had been found. He seemed to have made a partial recovery, but was nevertheless tormented by guilt.

  He roamed the moors and the mountains, beyond where there was any chance of his son reaching, but never found anything. He stayed in a tent up there, Erlendur went with him and his mother took part in the search, and sometimes local folk came to help them, but the boy was never discovered. It was crucial to find the body. Until then, he was not dead in the proper sense, only lost to them. The wound remained open and immeasurable sorrow seeped from it.

  Erlendur fought that sorrow alone. He felt bad, and not only about losing his brother. His own rescue he attributed to luck, but a strange sense of guilt preyed on him because it was him and not his younger brother who was saved. Not only had he lost his grip on his brother in the storm, he was also haunted by the thought that he should rather have died himself. He was older and was responsible for his sibling. It had always been that way. He had taken care of him. In all their games. When they were home alone. When they were sent off on errands. He had lived up to those expectations. On this occasion he had failed, and perhaps he did not deserve to be saved since his brother had died. He didn’t know why he survived. But he sometimes thought it would have been better if he were the one lying lost on the moor.

  He never mentioned these thoughts to his parents and in his loneliness he sometimes felt that they must think the same about him. His father had sunk down into his own guilt and wanted to be left alone. His mother was overwhelmed with grief. They both blamed themselves in part for what happened. Between them reigned a curious silence that drowned out the loudest of shouts, while Erlendur fought his own battle in solitude, reflecting on responsibility, blame and luck.

  If they had not found him, would they have found his brother instead?

  Standing by the hotel window, he wondered what mark his brothers death had left on his life, and whether it was more than he realised. He had pondered those events when Eva Lind began asking him questions. Although he had no simple answers, he knew deep down where they were to be found. He had often asked himself the same questions as Eva Lind did when she quizzed him about his past.

  Erlendur heard a knock on his door and turned away from the window.

  “Come in!” he called out. “It’s not locked”

  Sigurdur Oli opened the door and entered.

  He had spent the whole day in Hafnarfjordur, talking to people who knew Gudlaugur.

  “Anything new?” Erlendur asked.

  “I found out the name he was called. You remember, the one after everything had collapsed around him.”

  “Yes, who told you?”

  Sigurdur Oli sighed and sat down on the bed. His wife Bergthora had been complaining how much he had been away from home recently when Christmas was drawing near; she had to handle all the preparations by herself. He intended to go home and take her to buy a Christmas tree, but first he needed to see Erlendur. Over the telephone on his way to the hotel, he explained this to her and said he would hurry, but she had heard that story too often to believe it and was in a huff by the time they finished speaking.

  “Are you going to spend the whole of Christmas in this room?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

  “No,” Erlendur said. “What did you find out in Hafnarfjordur.”

  “Why’s it so cold in here?”

  “The radiator,” Erlendur said. “It won’t heat up. Won’t you get to the point?”

  Sigurdur Oli smiled.

  “Do you buy a Christmas tree? For Christmas?”

  “If I did buy a Christmas tree, I’d do it at Christmas”

  “I located a man who, after waffling a bit, told me he knew Gudlaugur in the old days,” Sigurdur Oli said. He knew he had information that could change the course of the investigation and enjoyed keeping Erlendur in suspense.

  Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg had set themselves the goal of talking to everyone who had been at school with Gudlaugur or knew him as a boy. Most of them remembered him and vaguely recalled his promising career as a singer and the bullying that accompanied his celebrity. The occasional person remembered him well and knew what happened when he left his father paralysed. One had a closer relationship with him than Sigurdur Oli could ever have imagined.

  An old female schoolmate of Gudlaugur’s pointed him out to Sigurdur Oli. She lived in a big house in the newest quarter of Hafnarfjordur. He had telephoned her that morning, so she was expecting him when he arrived. They shook hands and she invited him inside. A pilot’s wife, she worked part time in a book shop; her children were grown up and had left home.

  She told him all the details of her acquaintance with Gudlaugur, even though it was only slight, and also had a dim recollection of his sister, who she knew was older. She thought she remembered him losing his voice, but didn’t know what had happened to him after they left school, and was shocked to see the reports that he was the man who was found murdered in the little basement room at the hotel.

  Sigurdur Oli listened to all this distractedly. He had heard most of it from Gudlaugur’s other classmates. When she finished, he asked whether she knew any name that Gudlaugur was called as a child and teased with. She didn’t remember any, but added, when she saw Sigurdur Oli was about to leave, that she had heard something about him a long time ago that the police might be interested in, if they didn’t know it already.

  “What’s that?” Sigurdur Oli asked, standing up to leave.

  She told him, and was pleased to see that she had managed to arouse the detective’s interest.

  “And is this man still alive?” Sigurdur Oli asked the woman, who said that for all she knew he was, and gave his name. She stood up to fetch the telephone directory and Sigurdur Oli found the man’s name and address. He lived in Reykjavik. His name was Baldur.

  “Are you sure this is the guy?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

  “As far as I know,” the woman said, smiling in the hope that
she had provided some assistance. “It was the talk of the town,” she added.

  Sigurdur Oli decided to go there immediately on the off-chance that the man would be at home. It was late in the day. The traffic to Reykjavik was heavy and on the way Sigurdur Oli called Bergthora who-

  “Please stop beating about the bush,” Erlendur impatiently interrupted Sigurdur Oil’s account.

  “No, this part involves you,” Sigurdur Oli said with a teasing grin. “Bergthora wanted to know if I’d invited you round for Christmas Eve. I told her I had, but you hadn’t given an answer.”

  “I’m spending Christmas Eve with Eva Lind,” Erlendur said. “That’s the answer. Will you please get to the point.”

  “Right on,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “And stop staying “right on”.”

  “Right on.”

  * * *

  Baldur lived in a neat wooden house in the Thingholt district near the city centre and had just got home; he was an architect. Sigurdur Oli rang his doorbell and introduced himself as a detective investigating the murder of Gudlaugur Egilsson. The man showed no surprise. He looked Sigurdur Oli up and down and invited him inside.

  “To tell the truth I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “Or one of you. I was wondering about getting in touch, but I’ve been putting it off. It’s never nice talking to the police.” Smiling again, he offered to hang up Sigurdur Oli’s coat.

  Everything in the house was spick and span. There were lit candles in the sitting room and a decorated Christmas tree. The man offered Sigurdur Oli a glass of liqueur, which he declined. He was of average height, slim, jolly and balding, but what hair was left had clearly been tinted to enhance its ginger colour. Sigurdur Oli thought he recognised Frank Sinatra crooning from speakers.

  “Why were you expecting me, or us?” Sigurdur Oli asked as he sat down on a large red sofa.

  “Because of Gulli,” the man said, sitting opposite him. “I knew you’d dig this up.”