“If he was as pleasant as his mates Ellidi and Holberg, I’m not surprised nobody missed him,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Thirteen people went missing in Iceland in the 1970s when Gretar disappeared,” Elinborg said. “Twelve in the 1980s, not counting fishermen lost at sea.”
“Thirteen disappearances,” Sigurdur Oli said, “isn’t that rather a lot? None of them solved?”
“There doesn’t have to be anything criminal behind it,” Elinborg said. “People disappear, want to disappear, make themselves disappear.”
“If I understand correctly,” Erlendur said, “the scenario is like this: Ellidi, Holberg and Gretar are having a night out at a dance in the Cross one weekend in the autumn of 1963.”
He saw that Sigurdur Oli’s face was one huge question mark.
“The Cross was an old military hospital post that was converted into a dancehall. They used to hold really raunchy dances there.”
“I think that was where the Icelandic Beatles started playing,” Elinborg interjected.
“They meet some women at the dance and one of the women has a party at her house afterwards,” Erlendur went on. “We need to try to find these women. Holberg walks one of them home and rapes her. Apparently he’d played the same trick before. He whispers to her what he did to another woman. She might have lived in Husavik and in all likelihood never pressed charges. Three days later Kolbrun has finally plucked up the courage to report the crime but runs into a policeman who has no sympathy for women who invite men in after a dance and then shout rape. Kolbrun has a baby girl. Holberg could have known about the baby, we find a photo of her gravestone in his desk. Who took it? Why? The girl dies from a fatal illness and her mother commits suicide three years later. Three years after that, one of Holberg’s mates disappears. Holberg is murdered a few days ago and an incomprehensible message is left behind.
“Why was Holberg murdered now, in his old age? Was his attacker connected to this background? And, if so, why wasn’t Holberg attacked before? Why all the wait? Or didn’t his murder have anything to do with the fact, if it is a fact, that Holberg was a rapist?”
“It doesn’t look like premeditated murder, I don’t think we can ignore that,” Sigurdur Oli interjected. “As Ellidi put it, what kind of wanker uses an ashtray? It’s not as if there was a long historical build-up to it. The message is just a joke, indecipherable. Holberg’s murder doesn’t have anything to do with any rape. We should probably be looking for the young man in the green army jacket.”
“Holberg was no angel,” Elinborg said. “Maybe it’s a revenge murder. Someone probably thought he deserved it.”
“The only person we know for certain who hated Holberg is Kolbrun’s sister in Keflavik,” Erlendur said. “I can’t imagine her killing anyone with an ashtray.”
“Couldn’t she have got someone else to do it?” said Sigurdur Oli.
“Who?” Erlendur asked.
“I don’t know. Anyway, I’m coming round to the idea that someone was prowling around the neighbourhood planning to break in somewhere, burgle the place and maybe smash it up, Holberg caught him and got hit over the head with the ashtray. It was some junkie who couldn’t tell his arse from his elbow. Nothing to do with the past, just the present. Reykjavik the way it is these days.”
“At least, someone thought the right thing to do was to bump him off,” Elinborg said. “We have to take the message seriously. It’s no joke.”
Sigurdur Oli looked at Erlendur. “When you talked about wanting to know precisely what the girl died of, do you mean what I think you mean?” he asked.
“I have a nasty feeling I might,” Erlendur said.
17
Runar answered the door himself and looked at Erlendur for a good while without being able to place his face. Erlendur was standing in a communal hallway, soaking wet after running from the car to building. To his right was a staircase leading to the upper flat. The stairs were carpeted but the carpet was worn through where it had been walked on the most. There was a musty smell in the air and Erlendur wondered whether horse-lovers lived in the house. Erlendur asked Runar whether he remembered him and Runar seemed to do so, because he immediately tried to slam the door, but Erlendur was too fast for him. He was inside the flat before Runar could do a thing about it.
“Cosy,” Erlendur said, looking around the dim interior.
“Will you leave me alone!” Runar tried to shout at Erlendur, but his voice cracked and squeaked.
“Watch your blood pressure. I’d hate to have to give you the kiss of life if you dropped dead on me. I need to get some details from you and then I’m gone and you can get back to dying in here. Shouldn’t take you very long. You don’t exactly look like Super Senior of the Year.”
“Bugger off!” Runar said, as angrily as his age allowed him, turned round, walked into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa. Erlendur followed him and sat down heavily in a chair facing him. Runar didn’t look at him.
“Did Kolbrun talk about another rape when she came to you about Holberg?”
Runar didn’t answer him.
“The sooner you answer, the sooner you get rid of me.
Runar looked up and stared at Erlendur.
“She never mentioned any other rape. Will you leave now?”
“We have reason to believe that Holberg had raped someone before he met Kolbrun. He may have played the same trick again after her raped her, we don’t know. Kolbrun is the only woman who pressed charges against him even if nothing ever came of it, thanks to you.”
“Get out!”
“Are you sure she didn’t mention any other woman? It’s conceivable that Holberg bragged to Kolbrun about another rape.”
“She didn’t say a thing about that,” Runar said, looking down at the table.
“Holberg was with two of his friends that night. One of them was Ellidi, an old lag you might know of. He’s in prison, fighting ghosts and monsters in solitary confinement. The other one was Gretar. He vanished off the face of the earth the summer the national festival was held. Do you know anything about the company Holberg kept?”
“No. Leave me alone!”
“What were they doing in town here the night Kolbrun was raped?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you ever talk to them?”
“No.”
“Who handled the investigation in Reykjavik?”
Runar looked Erlendur in the face for the first time.
“It was Marion Briem.”
“Marion Briem!”
“That bloody idiot.”
Elin wasn’t at home when Erlendur knocked on her door, so he got back inside his car, lit a cigarette and pondered whether to continue on his journey to Sandgerdi. The rain beat down on the car and Erlendur, who never watched the weather forecasts, wondered whether the wet spell would ever come to an end. Maybe this was a mini-version of Noah’s flood, he thought to himself through the blue cigarette smoke. Maybe it was necessary to wash people’s sins away every now and again.
Erlendur was apprehensive about meeting Elin again and was half relieved when it turned out she wasn’t home. He knew she’d turn on him and the last thing he wanted was to provoke her, as when she called him a “bloody cop". But it couldn’t be avoided. Either now or later. He heaved a deep sigh and burnt his cigarette down until he felt the heat against his fingertips. He held down the smoke while he stubbed out the cigarette, then exhaled heavily. A line from an anti-smoking campaign ran through his mind: It only takes one cell to start cancer.