Tainted Blood

by Arnaldur Indridason

  "Are you talking about Holberg?" Erlendur asked.

  "Have you looked at the reports on him?"

  "I know Sigurdur Óli was checking the computer records but I haven't heard from him. What reports?"

  "The question is whether they're actually on file in the computers. Maybe they've been thrown out. Is there any law about when reports become obsolete? Are they destroyed?"

  "What are you driving at?"

  "Turns out Holberg was no model citizen," Marion Briem said.

  "In what way?"

  "The chances are that he was a rapist."

  "Chances are?"

  "He was charged with rape, but never convicted. It was in 1963. You ought to take a look at your reports."

  "Who accused him?"

  "A woman by the name of Kolbrún. She lived in . . ."

  "Keflavík?"

  "Yes, how did you know that?"

  "We found a photograph in Holberg's desk. It was as if it had been hidden there. It was a photograph of the gravestone of a girl called Audur, in a cemetery we still haven't identified. I woke up one of the living dead from the National Statistics Office and found Kolbrún's name on the death certificate. She was the little girl's mother. Audur's mother. She's dead too."

  Marion said nothing.

  "Marion?" Erlendur said.

  "And what does that tell you?" the voice replied. Erlendur thought.

  "Well, if Holberg raped the mother he may well be the father of the girl and that's why the photo was in his desk. The girl was only 4 years old when she died, born in 1964."

  "Holberg was never convicted," Marion Briem said. "The case was dropped due to insufficient evidence."

  "Do you think she made it up?"

  "It would be unlikely in those days, but nothing could be proved. Of course it's never easy for women to press charges for that kind of violence. You can't imagine what she would have gone through almost 40 years ago. It's difficult enough for women to come forward these days, but it was much more difficult then. She could hardly have done it for fun. Maybe the photo's some kind of proof of paternity. Why should Holberg have kept it in his desk? The rape took place in I963. You say Kolbrún had her daughter the following year. Four years later the daughter dies. Kolbrún has her buried. Holberg is implicated somehow. Maybe he took the photo himself. Why, I don't know. Maybe that's irrelevant."

  "He certainly wouldn't have been at the funeral, but he could have gone to the grave later and taken a photograph. Do you mean something like that?"

  "There's another possibility too."

  "Yes?"

  "Maybe Kolbrún took the photo herself and sent it to Holberg."

  Erlendur thought for a moment.

  "But why? If he raped her, why send him a photograph of the little girl's grave?"

  "Good question."

  "Did the death certificate say what Audur died of?" Marion Briem asked "Was it an accident?"

  "She died of a brain tumour. Do you think that could be important?"

  "Did they perform an autopsy?"

  "Definitely. The doctor's name is on the death certificate."

  "And the mother?"

  "Died suddenly at her home."

  "Suicide?"

  "Yes."

  "You've stopped calling in to see me," Marion Briem said after a short silence.

  "Too busy," Erlendur said. "Too damned busy."

  8

  Next morning it was still raining and on the road to Keflavík the water collected in deep tyre tracks that the cars tried to avoid. The rain was so torrential Erlendur could hardly see out of the car windows, which were veiled in spray and rattled in the unrelenting south-easterly storm. The wipers couldn't clear the water from the windscreen fast enough and Erlendur gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He could vaguely make out the red rear lights of the car in front and tried to follow them as best he could.

  He was travelling alone. Thought this was best after a difficult telephone conversation with Kolbrún's sister earlier that morning. She was listed as next of kin on the death certificate. The sister was not cooperative. She refused to meet him. The papers had printed a photograph of the dead man, along with his name. Erlendur asked whether she'd seen it and was about to ask whether she remembered him when she hung up. He decided to test what she would do if he appeared on her doorstep. He preferred not to have the police bring her in to him.

  Erlendur had slept badly that night. He was worried about Eva Lind and feared she would do something stupid. She had a mobile phone, but every time he called a mechanical voice answered saying that the number could not be reached. Erlendur rarely remembered his dreams. It made him uncomfortable when he awoke to snatches of a bad dream passing through his mind before finally vanishing from him completely.

  The police had precious little information about Kolbrún. She was born in I934 and brought charges of rape against Holberg on November 23, I963. Before Erlendur set off to Keflavík, Sigurdur Óli had outlined the rape charge to him, including a description of the incident taken from a police file he'd found in the archives – after a tip-off from Marion Briem.

  Kolbrún was 30 when she gave birth to her daughter, Audur. Nine months after the rape. According to Kolbrún's witnesses, she'd met Hol-berg at the Cross dancehall between Keflavík and Njardvik. It was a Saturday night. Kolbrún didn't know him and had never seen him before. She was with two girlfriends and Holberg and two other men had been with them at the dance that evening. "When it finished they all went to a party at the house of one of Kolbrún's girlfriends. Quite late into the night Kolbrún had got ready to go home. Holberg offered to accompany her, for safety's sake. She didn't object. Neither of them was under the influence of alcohol. Kolbrún stated that she'd had two single vodka and Cokes at the dance and nothing after she left. Holberg drank nothing that evening. He said, in Kolbrún's hearing, that he was taking penicillin for an ear infection. A doctor's certificate, included with the charge sheet, confirmed this.

  Holberg asked if he could phone a taxi to take him to Reykjavik. She hesitated for a moment then told him where the phone was. He went into the sitting room to make this call while she took off her coat in the hallway and then went to the kitchen for a glass of water. She did not hear him finish his telephone conversation, if indeed there was one. She sensed that he was suddenly behind her as she stood at the kitchen sink.

  She was so startled that she dropped her glass, spilling water over the kitchen table. She shouted out when his hands grabbed her breasts, and backed away from him into a corner.

  "What are you doing?" she asked.

  "Shouldn't we have a bit of fun?" he said and stood in front of her, muscularly built with strong hands and thick fingers.

  "I want you to leave," she said firmly. "Now! Will you please get out of here."

  "Shouldn't we have a bit of fun?" he repeated. He took a step closer to her and she held out her arms as if in self-defence.

  "Keep off!" she shouted. "I'll phone the police!" Suddenly she could feel how alone and defenceless she was facing this stranger whom she had let into her home and who by now had moved up close to her, had twisted her arms behind her back and was trying to kiss her.

  She fought back, but it was useless. She tried to talk to him, talk him out of it, but all she could feel was her own vulnerability.

  Erlendur snapped out of his thoughts when a gigantic lorry sounded its horn and overtook him with a mighty rumbling that sent waves of rainwater washing over his car. He tugged at the steering wheel and the car danced on the water for a moment. The rear of the car slid around and, for a second, Erlendur thought he was going to lose control and be thrown out into the lava field. He ground almost to a halt and managed to keep himself on the road, then hurled abuse at the lorry driver who by now had vanished from his sight in the spray of rain.

  Twenty minutes later he pulled up outside a small corrugated-iron-clad house in the oldest part of Keflavík. It was painted white with a lit
tle white fence around it and a garden that was kept almost too fastidiously. The sister's name was Elín. She was several years older than Kolbrún and now retired. She was standing in the hallway, wearing her coat and on her way out, when Erlendur rang the doorbell. She looked at him in astonishment, a short, slim woman with a tough expression on her face, piercing eyes, high cheekbones and wrinkles around her mouth.

  "I thought I told you on the phone I didn't want anything to do with you or the police," she said angrily when Erlendur had introduced himself.

  "I know," Erlendur said, "but . . ."

  "I'm asking you to leave me alone," she said. "You shouldn't have wasted your time coming all the way out here."

  She stepped out onto the doorstep, closed the door behind her, went down the three steps leading to the garden and opened the little gate in the fence, leaving it open as a sign that she wanted Erlendur to leave. She didn't look at him. Erlendur stood on the steps, watching her walk away.

  "You know Holberg's dead," he called out.

  She didn't answer.

  "He was murdered in his home. You know that."

  Erlendur was at the bottom of the steps, hurrying after her. She held a black umbrella onto which the rain poured above her head. He had nothing more than a hat to keep the rain off. She quickened her pace. He ran to catch up with her. He didn't know what to say to make her listen to him. Didn't know why she reacted to him as she did.

  "I wanted to ask you about Audur," he said.

  Elín suddenly stopped and turned round and marched up to him with a contemptuous look on her face.

  "You bloody cop," she hissed between her clenched teeth. "Don't you dare mention her name. How dare you? After what you did to her mother. Get lost! Get lost this minute! Bloody cop!"

  She looked at Erlendur with hatred in her eyes and he stared back at her.

  "After all we did to her?" he said. "To whom?"

  "Go away," she shouted, and turned and walked away, leaving Erlendur where he was. He gave up the chase and watched her disappearing in the rain, stooping slightly, in her green raincoat and black ankle boots. He turned around and walked back to her house and his car, deep in thought. He got inside and lit a cigarette, opened the window a crack, started the engine and slowly drove away from the house.

  As he inhaled he felt a slight pain in the middle of his chest again. It wasn't new. It had been causing Erlendur some concern for almost a year now. A vague pain that greeted him in the mornings but generally disappeared soon after he got out of bed. He didn't have a good mattress to sleep on. Some-times his whole body ached if he lay in bed for too long.

  He inhaled the smoke. Hopefully it was the mattress.

  As Erlendur was putting out his cigarette his mobile phone rang in his coat pocket. It was the head of forensics with the news that they had managed to decipher the inscription on the grave and had located it in the Bible.

  "It's taken from Psalm 64," the head of forensics said.

  "Yes," said Erlendur.

  " 'Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.' "

  "Pardon?"

  "It's what it says on the gravestone: Preserve my life from fear of the enemy. From Psalm 64."

  "'Preserve my life from fear of the enemy'."

  "Does that help you at all?"

  "I've no idea."

  "There were two sets on fingerprints on the photograph."

  "Yes, Sigurdur Óli told me."

  "One set is Holberg's but we don't have the others on our files. They're quite blurred. Very old fingerprints."

  "Can you tell what kind of camera the photo was taken with?" Erlendur asked.

  "Impossible to tell. But I doubt it was a high-quality one."

  9

  Sigurdur Óli parked his car in the Iceland Transport yard where he hoped it would be out of the way. Lorries were standing in rows in the yard. Some were being loaded, some driven away, others reversed up to the cargo warehouse. A stench of diesel and oil filled the air and the noise from the engines of the trucks was deafening. Staff and customers were rushing around the yard and the warehouse.

  The Met Office had forecast yet more wet weather. Sigurdur Óli tried to protect himself from the rain by pulling his coat over his head as he ran to the warehouse. He was directed to the foreman who was sitting in a glass cubicle checking papers and appeared to be extremely busy.

  A plump man wearing a blue anorak done up with a single button across his paunch and holding a cigar stub between his fingers, the foreman had heard about Holberg's death and said he'd known him quite well. Described him as a reliable man, a hard worker who'd been driving from one end of the country to the other for decades and knew Iceland's road network like the back of his hand. Said he was a secretive type, never talked about himself or in personal terms, never made any friends at the company or talked about what he'd done before, thought he'd always been a lorry driver. Talked as if he had been. Unmarried with no children, as far as he knew. Never talked about his nearest and dearest.

  "That's the long and the short of it," the foreman said as if to put an end to the conversation, took a lighter from his anorak pocket and lit the cigar stub. "Damn shame," puff, puff, "to go like that," puff.

  "Who did he associate with here mainly?" Sigurdur Óli asked, trying not to inhale the foul-smelling cigar smoke.

  "You can talk to Hilmar, I reckon he knew him best. Hilmar's out the front. He's from Reydarfjördur so sometimes he used to stay at Holberg's place in Nordurmýri when he needed to rest in town. There are rest rules that drivers have to comply with, so they have to have somewhere to stay in the city."

  "Did he stay there last weekend, do you know?"

  "No, he was working in the east. But he might have been there the weekend before."

  "Can you imagine who would have wanted to do Holberg any harm? Some friction here at work or . . ."

  "No, no, nothing", puff, "like", puff, "that," puff. The man was having trouble keeping his cigar alight. "Talk to", puff, "Hilmar," puff, "mate. He might be able to help you."

  Sigurdur Óli found Hilmar after following the foreman's directions. He was standing by one of the warehouse bays supervising a lorry being unloaded. Hilmar was a hulk, two metres tall, muscular, ruddy, bearded and with hairy arms protruding from his T-shirt. Looked about 50. Old-fashioned blue braces held up his tatty jeans. A small forklift was unloading the lorry. Another lorry was backing up to the next bay along; at the same time two drivers beeped their horns and hurled abuse at each other in the yard.

  Sigurdur Óli went up to Hilmar and tapped him lightly on the shoulder, but the man didn't notice him. He tapped harder and eventually Hilmar turned round. He could see Sigurdur Óli talking to him but couldn't hear what he was saying and looked down at him with bovine eyes. Sigurdur Óli raised his voice, but to no avail. He raised his voice further and thought he detected a glimmer of comprehension in Hilmar's eyes, but he was mistaken. Hilmar just shook his head and pointed at his ear.

  At this, Sigurdur Óli redoubled his efforts, arched himself and stood on tiptoe and shouted at the top of his voice at the very moment everything fell completely silent and his words echoed in all their glory around the walls of the gigantic warehouse and out into the yard:

  "DID YOU SLEEP WITH HOLBERG?"