Elin looked at Erlendur, thunderstruck.
“Holberg’s son? Could that be?”
“You said he was the spitting image of him.”
“Yes, but…”
“I’m sort of turning it over in my mind. Somewhere in this case there’s a missing link and I think this man could well be it.”
“But why? What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t you think that’s obvious?”
“What’s obvious?”
“You’re his sister’s aunt,” Erlendur said and watched the expression on Elin’s face change as it gradually dawned on her what Erlendur meant.
“Audur was his sister,” she said. “But how could he know about me? How could he know where I live? How could he link Holberg with me? There’s been nothing about his past in the papers, nothing about his rapes or him having a daughter. No-one knew about Audur. How does that man know who I am?”
“Maybe he’ll tell us that when we find him.”
“Is he Holberg’s killer, do you reckon?”
“Now you’re asking me if he murdered his own father,” Erlendur said.
Elin thought. “My God,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “If you see him outside again, call me.”
Elin had stood up and gone to the window facing the path as if expecting to see him there again.
“I know I was a bit hysterical when I phoned you and said Holberg was here because I felt for a moment that it could be him. It was such a terrible shock seeing him. But I didn’t feel scared. I was angry more than anything, but there was something about the man, the way he was standing, the way he bowed his head. There was something sad about him, in his face, some kind of sorrow. I thought to myself that he couldn’t be feeling well. He can’t feel well. Was he in touch with his father? Do you know?”
“I don’t know for sure that he actually exists,” Erlendur said. “What you saw supports one theory. We have no leads on that man. There aren’t any photos of him at Holberg’s flat if that’s what you mean. But someone did phone Holberg several times shortly before he was murdered and he was nervous about those calls. We don’t know any more than that.”
Erlendur took out his mobile phone and asked Elin to excuse him for a moment.
“What the bloody hell have you got us into now?” Sigurdur Oli shouted in a clearly furious voice. “They hit the shit pipe and it was swarming with filthy bugs, millions of disgusting little bugs under the sodding floor. It’s disgusting. Where the hell are you?”
“Keflavik. Any sign of Gretar?”
“No, there’s no sodding sign of any fucking Gretar,” Sigurdur Oli said and rang off.
“There’s one more thing, Inspector,” Elin said, “I just realised it when you talked about him being related to Audur. I can see now that I was right. I didn’t understand it then, but there was another look on his face that I thought I’d never see again. It was a face from the past that I’ve never forgotten.”
“What was it?” Erlendur said.
“That was why I didn’t feel scared of him. I didn’t realise at first. He reminded me of Audur too. There was something about him that reminded me of Audur.”
29
Sigurdur Oli returned his mobile phone to the holder on his belt and walked back to the house. He’d been inside with several other policemen when the pneumatic drill penetrated the base plate and the stench that came out was so overpowering that he retched. He rushed for the door like everyone else inside and thought he would vomit before he made it out into the fresh air. When they went back in they wore goggles and masks over their mouths, but the horrendous smell still penetrated them.
The drill operator widened the hole over the broken sewage pipe. It was easy going once he was through the floor. Sigurdur Oli dreaded to think how long ago the pipe had been broken. It looked as if waste had been collecting in a large area under the floor. There was a faintly discernable steam rising up from the hole. He shone a torch down at the patch of filth and from what he could see the ground had subsided by at least half a yard from the base plate.
The patch of filth was like a thick, swarming trunk of little black bugs. He jumped back when he saw some kind of creature dart past the beam of light.
“Watch out!” he shouted and strode out of the basement. “There are rats under that bloody thing. Close up the hole and call in pest control. Let’s stop here. Stop everything this minute!”
No-one objected. One of the forensic team spread a plastic sheet over the hole in the floor and the basement was empty in a flash. Sigurdur Oli tore off his mask when he came out of the basement and voraciously gulped down the fresh air. They all did.
On his way home from Keflavik, Erlendur heard about the progress of the investigation in Nordurmyri. A pest-control officer had been called out, but the police would take no further action until the following morning when everything that was living in the foundations had been exterminated. Sigurdur Oli had gone home and was getting out of the shower when Erlendur called him for an update. Elinborg had gone home too. A guard was mounted outside Holberg’s flat while the pest-control officer did his work. Two police cars stood outside the house all night.
Eva Lind met her father at the door when he got home. It was past 9 p.m. The bride had left. Before she went she had told Eva Lind she was going to talk to her husband and find out how he was feeling. She wasn’t sure whether she would tell him the real reason for running out of their wedding. Eva Lind urged her to, said she shouldn’t cover up for that bastard of a father of hers. The last thing she should do was cover up for him.
They sat down in the sitting room. Erlendur told Eva Lind all about the murder investigation, where it had led him and what was going through his mind. He did so not least to gain some kind of understanding of the case for his own benefit, a clearer picture of what had been happening over the past few days. He told her almost everything, from the moment they found Holberg’s body in the basement, the smell in his flat, the note, the old photograph in the drawer, the pornography on his computer, the epitaph on the gravestone, Kolbrun and her sister, Elin, Audur and her unexplained death, the dreams that haunted him, Ellidi in prison and Gretar’s disappearance, Marion Briem, the search for Holberg’s other victim and the man in front of Elin’s house, conceivably Holberg’s son. He tried to give a systematic account and discussed with himself various theories and questions, until he reached a dead end and stopped talking.
He didn’t tell Eva Lind the brain was missing from the child’s body. He hadn’t yet begun to understand how that could have happened.
Eva Lind listened to him without interrupting and she noticed how Erlendur rubbed his chest while he talked. She could feel how the Holberg case was affecting him. She could sense an air of resignation about him that she’d never noticed before. She could sense his weariness when he talked about the little girl. It was as if he withdrew inside himself, his voice went quieter and he became increasingly remote.
“Is Audur the girl you told me about when you were shouting at me this morning?” Eva Lind asked.
“She was, I don’t know, maybe some kind of godsend to her mother,” Erlendur said. “She loved the girl beyond death and the grave. Sorry if I’ve been nasty to you. I didn’t intend to, but when I see the way you live, when I see your careless attitude and your lack of self-respect, when I see the destruction, everything you do to yourself and then I watch the little coffin coming up out of the ground, then I can’t understand anything any more. I can’t understand what’s happening and I want to…”