‘No, definitely not,’ said Erlendur. ‘Why did she want to get back at him?’
‘Unhappy marriage, I suppose.’
‘Did she discuss it with you at all?’
‘Yes, when she broke up with me. She said she was planning to leave him but couldn’t do it yet. She needed more time. Said it was too soon. She couldn’t just go from one man to the next. I talked to her later, after her husband found out. She told me he’d gone completely mental.’
‘That’s understandable, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe. He threatened her.’
‘Any idea how exactly?’
‘No, but I had the feeling she was afraid of him. Of course I told the police but they saw no reason to take action.’
‘You weren’t happy when she broke up with you,’ pointed out Erlendur.
‘No, I wanted … I believed she was in real danger and –’
The phone rang and he answered it, took down an order, then explained he was in a meeting and hung up.
‘Weren’t you the one who told her husband about the affair?’ asked Erlendur.
‘I wanted to help her,’ said Ísidór. ‘I thought I was acting in her best interest. That’s all.’
‘But hadn’t she asked you to keep the relationship secret?’
‘Not in as many words.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been better to err on the side of caution, though?’
‘Look, naturally I wasn’t happy, and I rang her a few times. Once her husband answered and wanted to know who I was. I told him the truth, that Oddný and I were having an affair.’
‘But she’d ended it by then. She’d stopped seeing you.’
‘I happen to believe it was against her will,’ said Ísidór.
‘You must have known how much trouble it would cause, telling him.’
‘Like I said, I thought I was helping her. She’d told me her marriage was on the rocks, but she didn’t dare do anything about it.’
‘She decided not to leave him.’
‘It was a big disappointment,’ said Ísidór.
‘Were you aware that he used to beat her up?’
Ísidór nodded.
‘That’s why she wanted to leave him. Before our brief affair.’
‘Do you think he could have harmed her?’
‘That’s for the police to find out,’ said Ísidór. ‘They have all this information but say they have no evidence against him. In my opinion they’re dragging their feet.’
‘A witness saw her speaking to an unknown man just before she left Thórskaffi. Any idea who it might have been?’
‘No,’ said Ísidór.
‘It wasn’t you?’
‘No. I was at home that evening. Had an early night. I didn’t hurt her; I tried to help her.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘Ask her husband.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I was shocked when I heard she’d disappeared. I’m not saying he killed her or anything. It’s my belief the poor woman committed suicide and he was partly responsible. The police were quick to take that view, and I reckon they were right. But I gather there’s not much they can do about it.’
‘Did she seem suicidal?’
‘Well, unsurprisingly she was depressed about her situation, but it never occurred to me she’d go that far. No, I never got that sense. Not when she was with me.’
‘What about you? You weren’t happy when Oddný dumped you.’
‘That was three years before she disappeared,’ said Ísidór. ‘I had time to get over it. Let me point out that I’ve never been a suspect. You can check up on that for yourself.’
‘Are you married now?’
‘No,’ said Ísidór, ‘I’m not. I’ve … actually I’m living with someone, though I don’t quite see what that has to do with it.’
‘Did she give you an alibi? Your girlfriend?’
‘Give me…? She didn’t need to “give” me an alibi. We were together when Oddný went missing. I didn’t do anything to hurt Oddný. Believe me. Not a thing. All I did was bring home to her how shit her life was.’
36
That evening Erlendur was on his way to work when he spotted Thurí at Hlemmur, near the police station. She was among a group of passengers stepping off a bus, the number three from Nes to Háaleiti. Hlemmur, a popular gathering place for the homeless, was the largest bus station in the city and had recently become the headquarters of Reykjavík Transport. Despite its new-found status, however, the station consisted of little more than a stretch of windswept tarmac, now covered in puddles from the rain that had fallen earlier that day. There was also a large, draughty, east-facing bus shelter, where people huddled in bad weather, praying that number ‘Get Me Out of Here’ would not be late.
He could see no sign of Thurí’s boyfriend Bergmundur, and when he went over to say hello he thought she looked in pretty good shape. She recognised him immediately but was in a terrible mood. It turned out that she had been harassed on the bus and rather than put up with it had decided to get off early at Hlemmur and wait for the next one.
‘Bastards!’ She sniffed loudly.
‘What happened?’
‘There was a bunch of little wankers taking the piss out of me on the bus. I gave them what for. Bloody bastards!’
‘Do you often have problems with … bastards like that?’ asked Erlendur.
‘What’s it to you?’ she countered, her hackles still up from her recent encounter.
‘Oh, nothing, I just thought –’
‘Yeah, well, think what you like.’
Erlendur was early; his shift did not start for another hour. He had intended to spend the time digging around in the police archives, but instead asked Thurí if she wanted a coffee. They could go and sit in a nearby cafe. He had been hoping to ask her a few more questions about how she found the earring, and this seemed like a good opportunity.
‘Going to buy me a drink?’ she fired back.
‘I don’t think they have a licence.’
‘Then you can forget it.’ Thurí stalked off towards the bus shelter. It was empty. She sat down on the bench and Erlendur joined her. The floor was studded with lumps of chewing gum and a drift of sweet papers whirled in the wind. In one corner an empty litter bin lay on its side, next to a broken bottle. Obscenities were scrawled over every inch of the walls.
‘Seen anything of Bergmundur recently?’ began Erlendur.
‘That dickhead.’
‘I thought you two were friends.’
‘Bergmundur hasn’t got any friends. What gave you that idea? He’s a pathetic loser. A pathetic bloody loser.’
‘Actually, I was on my way to visit you,’ said Erlendur.
‘Oh?’
‘I wanted to ask you more about the earring you found.’
‘Did you get it back from that crook?’
‘I’ve got it, yes. It’s at home.’
‘I wouldn’t mind having it back,’ said Thurí.
‘Any particular reason?’
‘I wouldn’t sell it again,’ said Thurí touchily, ‘if that’s what you’re implying. I didn’t mean to sell it. I meant to keep it. But…’
A teenage girl with heavily made-up eyes entered the shelter and eyed them both carefully. Deciding neither looked like a soft touch, she went out again. She was wearing a miniskirt and platforms so high she could barely walk.
‘I wanted to know where you found the earring,’ said Erlendur.
‘I already told you that – in the pipeline!’
‘Yes, but where exactly? Do you remember?’
‘Why the hell do you care?’
‘I just want to know.’
‘Not far from the opening.’
‘Right- or left-hand side?’
‘Right, left, what kind of question is that? What does it matter?’
‘It probably doesn’t,’ admitted Erlendur, ‘but it would be good if you could remember.’
>
‘Left side,’ said Thúri, ‘under one of the pipes. It was dark and I’d never have spotted it if I hadn’t banged my head on the bloody roof when I was crawling in. I saw something shiny and it turned out to be an earring. Have you discovered who it belonged to?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Or what it was doing there?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Erlendur. ‘If it fell off someone’s ear, would it really have rolled all the way under the pipe? I had a look round the other day and no one could squeeze under there – it’s too close to the ground. Do you have any idea how else it could have got there?’
‘Maybe it was kicked under there,’ suggested Thurí.
‘It’s possible.’
‘Or…’
‘What?’
‘Or somebody put it there.’
‘How do you mean? Who could have done that?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ Thurí was angry now, fed up with Erlendur’s questions. ‘I haven’t given it any thought. That’s your job. I haven’t a clue how it ended up there. I just found it. I don’t give a toss who put it there or how it got there or whose it was. I don’t know why you’re asking me. Who the hell are you, anyway?’
‘All right, all right,’ said Erlendur. ‘I’m only trying to work out how Hannibal died.’
‘Well, I can’t help you there.’
‘You’ve been helpful up to now.’
Thurí took out her tin of roll-ups, fished one out, lit it and inhaled.
‘Has the earring got something to do with it?’ she asked. ‘With how Hannibal died?’
‘Good question,’ said Erlendur. ‘The earring’s the only piece that doesn’t fit. The only piece you wouldn’t expect to find among Hannibal’s belongings.’
‘Poor Hannibal,’ said Thurí. ‘They don’t make many like him.’
Erlendur nodded.
‘Did he ever mention his sister to you?’
‘The one he pulled out of the sea?’
‘Yes. Her name’s Rebekka. She’s devastated about what happened to her brother and feels partly responsible, which is absurd, obviously. I’ve got to know her a little and she told me about the accident. She wants to know what happened to Hannibal.’
‘Is that why you’re always pestering me?’
Erlendur smiled.
‘Her name’s Rebekka,’ Thuri said. ‘I didn’t know. He didn’t talk about her much. Or the rest of his family.’
‘He couldn’t save them both.’
‘But why should she feel responsible?’
‘She only joined them at the last minute,’ explained Erlendur. ‘It should have been just Hannibal and his wife in the car. She can’t get over that. Even now it’s still … hard for her to accept.’
Thurí took another drag on her cigarette. She had recovered from the confrontation on the bus; talking about Hannibal and the accident seemed to have calmed her down.
‘Where were you going?’ asked Erlendur, hoping this wouldn’t wind her up again.
‘Going?’
‘Where were you taking the bus to?’
‘Nowhere in particular. I just like riding the bus around the city, seeing the houses and streets, the new areas like Breidholt. Feels almost like I’m travelling. But I’m not going anywhere. Never do. Always end up back in the same place.’
She dropped the cigarette on the pavement and ground it underfoot. She had smoked it down until it burnt her fingertips.
‘All I know is he missed his wife.’
‘Helena?’
‘Hannibal told me she’d waved him away.’ Thurí gazed, unseeing, at the puddles on the tarmac. ‘He went to save her but she pointed to the girl. He told me she’d sacrificed herself for his sister. She’d realised he couldn’t save them both: it would take too much time and effort to free her, then rescue the girl. So she wanted him to concentrate on his sister. She pushed him away. That was the last time he saw her alive. She smiled at him, or so he claimed. But I get the feeling he invented that. It’s what he said once when he was being gentle, but he never mentioned it again.’
* * *
After a while a bus arrived and Thurí stood up, saying a curt goodbye as if she wanted nothing more to do with Erlendur. The sky was leaden and it was raining again. He watched her climb aboard and select a window seat, ready to carry on circling the city with no destination, never leaving the vehicle, not caring where it went: her life a journey without purpose. As Erlendur followed the departing bus with his eyes, he pictured himself in her shoes, forever circling around life, alone, with no destination.
37
Erlendur was not personally acquainted with any of the detectives at CID, though he had visited their offices on Borgartún now and then on various errands, as well as encountering them at the scene of burglaries or cases of serious assault. Uniformed officers were sometimes called as witnesses in investigations but, as a junior officer on the beat, Erlendur had not yet been in that position.
The detective in charge of the inquiry was called Hrólfur; he was around thirty, easygoing, and with little apparent interest in his job. He was busy – Erlendur didn’t know with what exactly – and hardly had a minute to spare, though Erlendur had dressed up in his full uniform in the hope of making an impression. Eventually he managed to corner Hrólfur by the department’s new Xerox machine, which was as noisy as a tractor and shot out brilliant flashes of light in the dark copying room. He enquired if there had been any progress in the case of Oddný’s disappearance.
‘No, nothing new,’ said Hrólfur, as he frantically copied a file. ‘Why do you ask?’
The file seemed to relate to real estate: either Hrólfur was buying or selling a property himself or investigating a scam; Erlendur was unsure which. He had gone to CID with half a mind to report his discovery, since in spite of Rebekka’s plea that he should keep it quiet a little longer, he was feeling guilty about failing to disclose what he knew. It was an awkward predicament, and he was keen to resolve it.
‘Just curious,’ he said. ‘Do you still get tip-offs from the public?’
‘Not many. What happened seems fairly clear.’
‘Which was what?’
‘Well, obviously the poor woman took her own life. Threw herself in the sea or something. It’s the only explanation we can come up with.’
‘Hadn’t she been cheating on her husband?’
‘Well, she’d had a brief fling several years ago.’
‘And you’ve checked out the man in question?’
‘Yes. He was at home with his girlfriend at the time.’
‘So they weren’t lying?’
‘Lying? No, why would you think that?’
‘What about the man she’s supposed to have met at the nightclub?’
‘Never traced him,’ said Hrólfur, the flashes from the copier playing over his face. ‘What did you say your interest in this case was?’
‘So presumably you focused on the husband?’
‘We don’t have a shred of evidence against him.’ Hrólfur lifted the lid of the copier. ‘He may have knocked her about a bit but that doesn’t prove anything.’
‘Knocked her about?’
‘There was a domestic issue. He used to give her the odd slap, nothing major, but enough to ensure that we grilled him about it. Interviewed the couple’s closest friends too. But we never really got anywhere.’
‘Were you tipped off?’
‘Yes.’
‘And her husband confessed?’
‘He admitted it, yes. Who did you say you were?’
‘I’m just interested in this case,’ said Erlendur.
‘Been in the police long?’
‘No.’
‘Acquainted with the people involved, then?’
‘No, not at all. So, what now? Impasse?’
‘We don’t have a body,’ said Hrólfur. ‘Or a murder weapon. Or any real motive. Which makes suicide the most plausible explanation. Their marriage was on the
rocks. She probably wanted to leave him. Maybe she found her own way of doing so.’
‘Her husband was alone at home when she vanished?’
‘It’s not a crime, you know,’ said Hrólfur. ‘He’d been to a Lions Club meeting that evening. Look, I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t concern you. What did you say your name was?’
‘Erlendur.’
‘Well, Erlendur, why the curiosity? Seems like you know quite a bit about this case.’
‘Only what I’ve read in the papers and heard the boys discussing down at the station.’
‘We searched the husband’s house,’ Hrólfur said. ‘And put him through a long, rigorous interrogation. Really got under his skin. Talked to the neighbours too. No one saw him coming or going that night. In the end we had nothing the prosecution could work with. He didn’t even hire a solicitor. The inquiry never got that far.’
‘But he was a suspect?’
‘Was. Still is, in fact. The ex-lover too. The case is unsolved, still open. We go over the file at regular intervals, make phone calls and try to come up with new angles. Follow up any new leads. But the fact remains … Her husband’s sticking to his statement that she never came home from Thórskaffi; he never saw her the night she went missing. And that’s how the matter stands.’
‘So no new evidence has emerged?’
‘No.’
‘A man drowned in Kringlumýri the same weekend she vanished,’ said Erlendur.
‘So?’
‘Are you familiar with the incident?’
‘Yes, what was his name … oh, what was it again?’
‘Hannibal.’
‘Yes, that’s it. A tramp.’
‘You saw no reason to look into his death?’
‘He drowned,’ said Hrólfur. ‘What were we supposed to look into? They did a post-mortem. There were no unexplained injuries, at least nothing related to his death. Does that sort of case interest you?’
‘No, not particularly.’
‘We concentrated all our resources on the woman.’ Hrólfur gathered the copies together and switched off the Xerox machine. ‘The tramp’s death got sidelined. You know how it is.’
‘What?’
‘The first forty-eight hours are crucial in missing-persons cases,’ said Hrólfur in an official tone.
Reykjavik Nights Page 16
