‘No,’ answered Elínborg glumly. ‘I’m sorry to inconvenience you. There wasn’t much money in it, but I’ll have to cancel all my cards and replace my driving licence and …’
‘Yes, well. As I said …’ replied Edvard.
‘Thank you.’
‘Bye.’
Valur was waiting in the car.
‘Do you think he spotted you?’ asked Elínborg as she drove off.
‘No, he didn’t see me.’
‘Well, was that him?’
‘Yeah, it’s the same guy.’
‘The one who came to you using the name Runólfur, and bought Rohypnol from you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You said you only saw him once, about six months ago. You said you didn’t know him, that you’d never seen him before. You said a relative of his had put him in touch with you. That’s a lie, isn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘It’s most important that you tell me the truth about it.’
‘Leave me alone. I’ve got nothing more to say about it. Whatever you’re investigating has got nothing to do with me. I don’t give a fuck what’s important for you and what isn’t. Now take me home.’
They drove the rest of the way in silence. When they reached Valur’s block of flats, he got out without a word and slammed the car door behind him.
Elínborg drove home, deep in thought. A pop song was on the radio, sung by a female singer who had long been a favourite of hers: I whisper your name, but there’s no answer … She thought about Edvard and the girl from Akranes, Lilja. Might he know something about her disappearance, six years before? She had checked it out earlier. Edvard had no criminal record. His relationship with Runólfur might prove to be the key to what had happened in Runólfur’s flat, but she was wary of reading too much into Edvard’s use of his friend’s name when he’d bought the Rohypnol. Had Edvard been supplying Runólfur with prescription drugs? When had that started? And what for? Or was Edvard using the stuff himself? Who was the man Petrína had seen hurrying through Thingholt, towards number 18? Elínborg felt that Petrína’s information about the man was reliable, even though some of her statements were hard to fathom. Why was the man in such a hurry? Did he see something? Did he have a connection with the tandoori woman who had apparently been in Runólfur’s flat? Was he more than just a potential witness? Perhaps he was Runólfur’s assailant?
Elínborg parked outside her home and sat in the car for a while, considering various questions but finding no answers. She was feeling guilty for neglecting her family recently. As if it weren’t enough that she was hardly ever home her mind was invariably on her job, even during the very limited time she did spend with them.
Unhappy though she was about the situation, she could not help herself. That was the way with the difficult cases — they were relentless.
As the years went by, Elínborg increasingly craved the safe haven of her family life with Teddi. She wanted to sit with Theodóra and help her with her knitting. She wanted to know Valthór better, and understand how he was growing into a young man who would soon be leaving home. Then he would probably be largely lost to her, except for the odd awkward phone call, neither of them knowing what to say. A visit now and then. Perhaps she had neglected him when he’d been younger because, in spite of everything, her work had always come first — morning, noon and night. Perhaps she had given it more thought than she had to her own flesh and blood. She understood that she could not turn the clock back but she could still try to make up for it. Or maybe it was too late. Maybe in the future she would only have news of her son from his blog? She no longer knew how to approach him.
She had checked Valthór’s blog earlier in the day when she’d been at work. He was describing a football match he had seen on TV, and a political debate on a popular chat show about conservation — apparently aligning himself with big-business interests. He also sounded off about a teacher at college against whom he apparently had a grudge; and, finally, he mentioned his mother: she wouldn’t leave him alone, he wrote, just like she had never left his brother alone, which had led to him leaving the country to live with his real dad in Sweden. ‘I’m consumed with envy of him,’ blogged Valthór. ‘I’m thinking of renting a place,’ he went on. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’
This? This what? wondered Elínborg. We haven’t spoken for weeks. She clicked on Comments (1), where she saw two words:
Mums suck.
18
The man observed Elínborg as she stood at his door in a block of flats in Kópavogur. He was unwilling to invite her in, so she had to explain what she wanted out on the landing and she was not handling it particularly well. She had acquired a list of over a dozen individuals who had spent time at the Isolation Clinic in Reykjavík. They were the last patients to have contracted polio before the introduction of the immunisation programme in the 1950s.
The man seemed wary, standing half-hidden behind his front door, so Elínborg could not tell whether he was wearing a leg brace. She told him that the police were trying to trace a group of people who had been in the Isolation Clinic in their youth. The enquiry concerned a crime that had been committed in Reykjavík — in fact, in Thingholt.
The man listened, then asked exactly what they were looking for. She told him: a man who might still need a leg brace.
‘Then I can’t help you,’ he said, opening the door wide so that both his legs were visible. He wore no brace.
‘Do you remember any other boy at the Isolation Clinic who might have had to use a brace? In later life, I mean.’
‘None of your business, my dear,’ said the man. ‘Goodbye now.’
That was the end of the interview. The man was the third one that Elínborg had spoken to who had been in the Isolation Clinic. Hitherto she had received friendly responses but had got nowhere.
The next name on Elínborg’s list was that of a man who lived in a townhouse in the eastern suburbs. When he heard what Elínborg wanted he was more helpful than her last interviewee had been. He welcomed her warmly and invited her in. He wore no brace, but she noticed that his left arm was withered.
‘People all over the country caught polio in that epidemic,’ said the man, whose name was Lúkas. He was in his sixties, slim and lithe.
‘I was fourteen, living in Selfoss. I shall always remember how terribly ill I was, you know. My whole body ached, like with a bad case of flu, and I was paralysed from head to toe. I couldn’t move a muscle. I’ve never felt worse in my life.’
‘It must have been an awful illness,’ said Elínborg.
‘It didn’t occur to anyone that it could be polio,’ Lúkas explained. ‘Never even considered it. They assumed it was just the usual flu epidemic. But it turned out to be much, much worse.’
‘And they took you to the Isolation Clinic?’
‘Yes, they put me in quarantine once they realised what was really going on, and they took me to that house, the one they called the Isolation Clinic. There were people there from all over the country, mostly children and youngsters. I think I was lucky. I made a pretty good recovery, thanks to the rehabilitation at the clinic, but my arm’s been useless ever since.’
‘Do you remember any man or boy at the Clinic who had to use a brace — a leg brace, perhaps? — I don’t know much about these things.’
‘And I don’t know how they did in the end, the lads I met there. You lose touch, you see. So I don’t suppose I can tell you anything useful. But there’s one thing I will say: the youngsters I was with there, there was no way they were going to give up.’
‘I’m sure people dealt with their problems in different ways,’ said Elínborg.
‘As I often say, our futures were put on hold for a while,’ Lúkas continued. ‘But we were determined to pick up and go on, and that’s what we did. I think we were all determined not to let it break us. It never occurred to us to give up. Never crossed our minds.’