“What do you mean?”
“Nothing else was touched?”
“I don’t think so. The pathologist didn’t mention anything. What are you getting at?”
Frank looked at Erlendur, thoughtfully. “I don’t expect you’ve ever heard Jar City mentioned, have you?”
“What Jar City?”
“It’s now been closed, I believe, not so very long ago in fact. The room was called that. Jar City.”
“What room?”
“Upstairs on Baronsstigur. Where they kept the organs.”
“Go on.”
“They were kept in formalin in glass jars. All kinds of organs that were sent there from the hospitals. For teaching. In the faculty of medicine. They were kept in a room the medical students called Jar City. Preserved innards. Hearts, livers and limbs. Brains too.”
“From the hospitals?”
“People die in hospitals. They’re given autopsies. The organs are examined. They’re not always returned, some are kept for teaching purposes. At one time the organs were stored in Jar City.”
“What are you telling me this for?”
“The brain needn’t be lost for ever. It might still be in some Jar City. Samples that are preserved for teaching purposes are all documented and classified, for example. If you need to locate the brain there’s a chance that you still can.”
“I’ve never heard about this before. Are the organs taken without permission or do they obtain the relatives’ consent… what’s the arrangement?”
The doctor shrugged. “To tell the truth, I don’t know. Naturally it all depends. Organs are extremely important for medical teaching. All university hospitals have large collections of organs. I’ve even heard that some doctors, medical researchers, have their own private collections, but I can’t vouch for that.”
“Organ collectors?”
“There are such people.”
“What happened to this… Jar City? If it’s not around any more?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you think that’s where the brain could have ended up? Preserved in formalin?”
“Quite easily. Why did you exhume the girl?” “Maybe it was a mistake,” Erlendur sighed.
“Maybe the whole case is one big mistake.”
23
Elinborg located Klara, Gretar’s sister. Her search for Holberg’s other victim, the Husavik woman as Erlendur called her, had produced no results. All the women she had approached showed the same reaction: enormous and genuine surprise followed by such a zealous interest that Elinborg had to use every trick in the book to avoid giving away any details of the case. She knew that no matter how much she and the other policemen who were looking for the woman emphasised that it was a sensitive case and not to be discussed with anyone, that wouldn’t prevent the gossip lines from glowing red hot when evening came around.
Klara greeted Elinborg at the door of her neat flat in the Seljahverfi district of Breidholt suburb. She was a slender woman in her fifties, dark-haired, wearing jeans and a blue sweater. She was smoking a cigarette.
“Did you talk to Mum?” she said when Elinborg had introduced herself and Klara had invited her inside, friendly and interested.
“That was Erlendur,” Elinborg said, “who works with me.”
“She said he wasn’t feeling very well,” Klara said, walking in front of Elinborg into the sitting room and offering her a seat. “She’s always making remarks you can’t figure out.”
Elinborg didn’t answer her.
“I’m off work today,” she said as if to explain why she was hanging around at home in the middle of the day, smoking cigarettes. She said she worked at a travel agency. Her husband was at work, the two children had flown the nest; the daughter studying medicine, she said, proudly. She’d hardly put out one cigarette before she took out another and lit it. Elinborg gave a polite cough, but Klara didn’t take the hint.
“I read about Holberg in the papers,” Klara said as if she wanted to stop herself rambling on. “Mum said the man asked about Gretar. We were half-brother and -sister. Mum forgot to tell him that. We had the same mother. Our fathers are both long since dead.”
“We didn’t know that,” Elinborg said.
“Do you want to see the stuff I cleared out of Gretar’s flat?”
“If you don’t mind,” Elinborg said.
“A filthy hole he lived in. Have you found him?”
Klara looked at Elinborg and hungrily sucked the smoke down into her lungs.
“We haven’t found him,” Elinborg said, “and I don’t think we’re looking for him especially.” She gave another polite cough. “It’s more than a quarter of a century since he disappeared, so…”
“I have no idea what happened,” Klara interrupted, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. “We weren’t often in touch. He was quite a bit older than me, selfish, a real pain actually. You could never get a word out of him, he swore at Mum and stole from both of us if he got the chance. Then he left home.”
“So you didn’t know Holberg?” Elinborg asked.
“No.”
“Or Ellidi?” she added.
“Who’s Ellidi?”
“Never mind.”
“I didn’t know who Gretar went around with. When he went missing someone called Marion contacted me and took me to where he’d been living. It was a filthy hole. A disgusting smell in the room and the floor covered with rubbish, and the half-eaten sheep heads and mouldy mashed turnips that he used to live on.”
“Marion?” Elinborg asked. She hadn’t been working for the CID long enough to recognise the name.
“Yes, that was the name.”
“Do you remember a camera among your brother’s belongings?”
“That was the only thing in the room in one piece. I took it but I’ve never used it. The police thought it was stolen and I don’t approve of that sort of thing. I keep it down in the storeroom in the basement. Do you want to see it? Did you come about the camera?”
“Could I have a look at it?” Elinborg asked.
Klara stood up. She asked Elinborg to wait a moment and went into the kitchen to fetch a key ring. They walked out into the corridor and down to the basement. Klara opened the door that led to the storerooms, switched on the light, went up to one of the doors and opened it. Inside, old rubbish was piled everywhere, deckchairs and sleeping bags, skiing equipment and camping gear. Elinborg noticed a blue foot-massage device and a Soda-stream drinks maker.
“I had it in a box here,” Klara said after squeezing her way, past the rubbish, halfway into the storeroom. She bent down and picked up a little brown cardboard box. “I put all Gretar’s stuff in this. He didn’t own anything except that camera.” She opened the box and was about to empty it when Elinborg stopped her.
“Don’t take anything out of the box,” she said and put out her hands to take it. “You never know what significance the contents might have for us,” she added by way of explanation.
Klara handed her the box with a half-insulted expression and Elinborg opened it. It contained three tattered paperback thrillers, a penknife, a few coins and a camera — a pocket-size Kodak Instamatic that Elinborg recalled had been a popular Christmas and confirmation present years before. Not a remarkable possession for someone with a burning interest in photography, but it undoubtedly served its purpose. She couldn’t see any films in the box. Erlendur had asked her to check specifically whether Gretar had left behind any films. She took out a handkerchief and turned the camera round and saw there was no film in it. There were no photos in the box either.
“Then there are all kinds of trays and liquids here,” Klara said and pointed inside the storeroom. “I think he developed the photos himself. There’s some photographic paper too. It must be useless by now, mustn’t it?”
“I should take that too,” Elinborg said and Klara dived back into the rubbish.