As he’d told Marion Briem, he wasn’t looking for Gretar in particular, any more than for the lost girl from Gardabaer, but he didn’t think it would do any harm to know more about him. Gretar had been at the party the night Kolbrun was raped. Maybe he’d left behind a memory of that night, a stray detail he’d blurted out. Erlendur didn’t expect to find out anything new about his disappearance, Gretar could rest in peace for all he cared, but he’d been interested in missing persons for a long time. Behind each and every one was a horror story, but to his mind there was also something intriguing about people vanishing without trace and no-one knowing why.
Gretar’s mother was 90 and blind. Erlendur spoke briefly to the director of the home, who had difficulty in taking her eyes off his forehead, and told him that Theodora was one of the oldest and longest-standing residents there, a perfect member of the community in all respects, loved and admired by the staff and everyone else.
Erlendur was led in to see Theodora and introduced to her. The old woman was sitting in a wheelchair in her room, wearing a dressing gown, covered with a woollen blanket, her long grey hair in a plait running down the back of the chair, her body hunched up, her hands bony and her face kindly. There were few personal belongings there. A framed photograph of John F. Kennedy hung above her bed. Erlendur sat in a chair in front of her, looked into the eyes that could no longer see, and said he wanted to talk about Gretar. Her hearing seemed to be fine and her mind was sharp. She showed no sign of surprise but got straight to the point. Erlendur could tell she was from Skagafjordur. She spoke with a thick northern accent.
“My Gretar wasn’t a perfect lad,” she said. “To tell you the truth he was an awful wretch. I don’t know where he got it from. A cheap wretch. Going around with other wretches, layabouts, riff-raff the lot of them. Have you found him?”
“No,” Erlendur said. “One of his friends was murdered recently. Holberg. Maybe you’ve heard about it.”
“I didn’t know. He got bumped off, you say?”
Erlendur was amused and for the first time in a long while he saw reason to smile.
“At home. They used to work together in the old days, Holberg and your son. At the Harbour and Lighthouse Authority.”
“The last I saw of my Gretar, and I still had decent sight then, was when he came home to see me the same summer as the national festival and stole some money from my purse and a bit of silver. I didn’t find out until he’d left again and the money had disappeared. And then Gretar disappeared himself. Like he’d been stolen too. Do you know who stole him?”
“No,” Erlendur said. “Do you know what he was up to before he went missing? Who he was in touch with?”
“No idea,” the old woman said. “I never knew what Gretar was up to. I told you so at the time.”
“Did you know he took photographs?”
“Yes. He took photographs. He was always taking those pictures. I don’t know why. He told me once that photos were the mirrors of time, but I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.”
“Wasn’t that a bit highbrow for Gretar?”
“I’d never heard him talk like that.”
“His last address was on Bergstadastraeti where he rented a room. Do you know what happened to his belongings, the camera and films, do you know that?”
“Maybe Klara knows,” Theodora said. “My daughter. She cleaned out his room. Threw all that rubbish away, I think.”
Erlendur stood up and she followed his movements with her head. He thanked her for her assistance, said she’d been very valuable and he wanted to praise her for how well she looked and how sharp her mind was, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to patronise her. He looked up along the wall above her bed at the photograph of Kennedy and couldn’t restrain himself from asking.
“Why have you got a photograph of Kennedy above your bed?” he said, looking into her vacant eyes.
“Oh,” Theodora sighed, “I was so fond of him while he was alive.”
21
The bodies lay side by side on the cold slabs in the morgue on Baronsstigur. Erlendur tried not to think about how he had brought the father and daughter together in death. An autopsy and tests had already been performed on Holberg’s body, but it was awaiting further studies which would focus on genetic diseases and whether he was related to Audur. Erlendur noticed that the body’s fingers were black. He’d been fingerprinted after his death. Audur’s body lay wrapped in a white canvas sheet on a table beside Holberg. She was still untouched.
Erlendur didn’t know the pathologist and saw little of him. He was tall, with large hands. He wore thin plastic gloves, wearing a white apron over a green gown, tied at the back, and wearing green trousers of the same material. He had a gauze over his mouth and a blue plastic cap on his head and white trainers.
Erlendur had been to the morgue often enough before and always felt equally bad there. The smell of death filled his senses and settled in his clothes, the smell of formalin and sterilising agents and the horrifying stench of dead bodies that had been opened. Bright fluorescent lamps were suspended from the ceiling, casting a pure white light around the windowless room. There were large white tiles on the floor and the walls were partly tiled, the upper half painted with white plastic paint. Standing up against them were tables with microscopes and other research equipment. On the walls were many cupboards, some with glass doors, revealing instruments and jars that were beyond Erlendur’s comprehension. However, he did understand the function of the scalpels, tongs and saws that were spread out in a neat row on a long instrument table.
Erlendur noticed a scent card hanging down from a fluorescent lamp above one of the two operating tables. It showed a girl in a red bikini running along a white sandy beach. There was a tape recorder on one of the tables and several cassettes beside it. It was playing classical music. Mahler, Erlendur thought. The pathologist’s lunch box was on a table beside one of the microscopes.
“She stopped giving off any scent long ago, but her body’s still in good shape,” the pathologist said and looked over to Erlendur, who was standing by the door as if hesitant about entering the brightly lit chamber of death and decay.
“Eh?” Erlendur said, unable to take his eyes off the white heap. There was a tone of gleeful anticipation in the pathologist’s voice that he could not fathom.
“The girl in the bikini, I mean,” the pathologist said with a nod at the scent card. “I need to get a new card. You probably never get used to the smell. Do come in. Don’t be afraid. It’s just meat. He waved the knife over Holberg’s body. No soul, no life, just a carcass of meat. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Eh?” Erlendur said again.
“Do you think their souls are watching us? Do you think they’re hovering around the room here or do you think they’ve taken up residence in another body? Been reincarnated. Do you believe in life after death?”
“No, I don’t,” Erlendur replied.
“This man died after a heavy blow to the head that punctured his scalp, smashed his skull and forced its way through to the brain. It looks to me as if the person who delivered the blow was standing facing him. It’s not unlikely that they looked each other in the eye. The attacker is probably right-handed, the wound’s on the left side. And he’s in good physical shape, a young man or middle-aged at most, hardly a woman unless she’s done manual labour. The blow would have killed him almost instantaneously. He would have seen the tunnel and the bright lights.”
“It’s quite probable he took the other route,” Erlendur said.