Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Arnaldur Indriđason
Title Page
Epigraph
First Day
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Second Day
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Third Day
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Fourth Day
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Fifth Day
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Christmas Eve
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Copyright
About the Book
Detective Erlendur encounters memories of his troubled past in this gripping and award-winning continuation of the Reykjavík Murder Mysteries.
At a grand Reykjavík hotel the doorman has been repeatedly stabbed in the dingy basement room he called home. It is only a few days before Christmas and he was preparing to appear as Santa Claus at a children’s party. The manager tries to keep the murder under wraps. A glum detective taking up residence in his hotel and an intrusive murder investigation are not what he needs.
As Erlendur quietly surveys the cast of grotesques who populate the hotel, the web of malice, greed and corruption that lies beneath its surface reveals itself. Everyone has something to hide. But most shocking is the childhood secret of the dead man who, many years before, was the most famous child singer in the country: it turns out to be a brush with stardom which would ultimately cost him everything. As Christmas Day approaches Erlendur must delve deeply into the past to find the man’s killer.
Voices is a tense, atmospheric and disturbing novel from one of Europe’s greatest crime writers.
About the Author
Arnaldur Indriđason worked for many years as a journalist and critic before he began writing novels. His crime novels featuring Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli are consistent bestsellers across Europe. The series has won numerous awards, including the Nordic Glass Key (both for Jar City and Silence of the Grave) and the CWA Gold Dagger (for Silence of the Grave).
Also by Arnaldur Indriđason
Jar City
Silence of the Grave
The Draining Lake
Arctic Chill
Hypothermia
But when winter comes,
where will I find
the flowers, the sunshine,
the shadows of the earth?
The walls stand
speechless and cold,
the weathervanes
rattle in the wind.
From ‘At the Middle of Life’ by Friedrich Hölderlin (translated by James Mitchell)
At last the moment arrived. The curtain went up, the auditorium unfolded; he felt glorious seeing all the people watching him and his shyness vanished in an instant. He saw some of his schoolmates and teachers, and the headmaster who seemed to nod approvingly at him. But most of them were strangers. All these people had come to listen to him and his beautiful voice, which had commanded attention, even outside Iceland.
The murmuring in the auditorium gradually died down and all eyes focused on him in silent expectation.
He saw his father sitting in the middle of the front row in his black horn-rimmed glasses, his legs crossed, and holding his hat on his knees. He saw him watching through the thick lenses and smiling encouragingly; this was the big moment in their lives. From now on, nothing would ever be the same.
The choirmaster raised his arms. Silence descended upon the auditorium.
And he began to sing with the clear, sweet voice that his father had described as divine.
FIRST DAY
1
ELÍNBORG WAS WAITING for them at the hotel.
A large Christmas tree stood in the lobby and there were decorations, fir branches and glittering baubles all around. ‘Silent night, holy night’, over an invisible sound system. A large shuttle coach stood in front of the hotel and a group approached the reception desk. Tourists who were planning to spend Christmas and the New Year in Iceland because it seemed to them like an adventurous and exciting country. Although they had only just landed, many had apparently already bought traditional Icelandic sweaters, and they checked into the exotic land of winter. Erlendur brushed the sleet off his raincoat. Sigurdur Óli looked around the lobby and caught sight of Elínborg by the lifts. He tugged at Erlendur and they walked over to her. She had examined the scene. The first police officers to arrive there had made sure that it would remain untouched.
The hotel manager had asked them not to cause a fracas. Used that phrase when he rang. This was a hotel and hotels thrive on their reputations, and he asked them to take that into account. So there were no sirens outside, nor uniformed policemen bursting in through the lobby. The manager said that at all costs they should avoid arousing fear among the guests.
Iceland mustn’t be too exciting, too much of an adventure.
Now he was standing next to Elínborg and greeted Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli with a handshake. He was so fat that his suit hardly encompassed his body. His jacket was done up across the stomach by one button that was on the verge of giving up. The top of his trousers was hidden beneath a huge paunch that bulged out of his jacket and the man sweated so furiously that he could never put away the large white handkerchief with which he mopped his forehead and the back of his neck at regular intervals. The white collar of his shirt was soaked in perspiration. Erlendur shook his clammy hand.
‘Thank you,’ the hotel manager said, puffing like a grampus. In his twenty years of managing the hotel he had never encountered anything like this.
‘In the middle of the Christmas rush,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t understand how this could happen! How could it happen?’ he repeated, leaving them in no doubt as to how totally perplexed he was.
‘Is he up or down?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Up or down?’ the fat manager puffed. ‘Do you mean whether he’s gone to heaven?’
‘Yes,’ Erlendur said. ‘That’s exactly what we need to know …’
‘Shall we take the lift upstairs?’ Sigurdur Óli asked.
‘No,’ the manager said, casting an irritated look at Erlendur. ‘He’s down here in the basement. He’s got a little room there. We didn’t want to chuck him out. And then you get this for your troubles.’
‘Why would you have wanted to chuck him out?’ Erlendur asked.
The hotel manager looked at him but did not reply.
They walked slowly down the stairs beside the lift. The manager went first. Going down the stairs was a strain for him and Erlendur wondered how he would get back up.
Apart from Erlendur, they had agreed to show a certain amount of consideration, to try to approach the hotel as discreetly as possible. Three police cars were parked at the back, with an ambulance. Police officers and paramedics had gone in through the back door. The district medical officer was on his way. He would certify the death and call out a van to transport the body.
They walked down a long corridor with the panting manager leading the way. Plain-clothes policemen greeted them. The corridor grew darker the further they walked, because the light bulbs on the ceiling had blown and no one had bothered to change them. Eventually, in the darkness, they reached the door, which opened onto a little room. It was more like a storage space than a dwelling, but there was a narrow bed inside, a small desk and a tattered mat on the dirty tiled floor. There was a little window up near the ceiling.
The man was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall. He was wearing a bright red Santa suit and still had the Santa cap on his head, but it had slipped down over his eyes. A large artificial Santa beard hid his face. He had undone the thick belt around his waist and unbuttoned his jacket. Beneath it he was wearing only a white vest. There was a fatal wound to his heart. Although there were other wounds on the body, the stabbing through the heart had finished him off. His hands had slash marks on them, as if he had tried to fight off the assailant. His trousers were down round his ankles. A condom hung from his penis.
‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,’ Sigurdur Óli warbled, looking down at the body.
Elínborg hushed him.
In the room was a small wardrobe and the door was open. It contained folded trousers and sweaters, ironed shirts, underwear and socks. A uniform hung on a coat-hanger, navy blue with golden epaulettes and shiny brass buttons. A pair of smartly-polished black leather shoes stood beside the cupboard.
Newspapers and magazines were strewn over the floor. Beside the bed was a small table and lamp. On the table was a single book: A History of the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
‘Did he live here, this man?’ Erlendur asked as he surveyed the scene. He and Elínborg had entered the room. Sigurdur Óli and the hotel manager were standing outside. It was too small for them all inside.
‘We let him stay here,’ the manager said awkwardly, mopping the sweat from his brow. ‘He’s been working for us for donkey’s years. Since before my time. As a doorman.’
‘Was the door open when he was found?’ Sigurdur Óli asked, trying to be formal, as if to compensate for his little ditty.
‘I asked her to wait for you,’ the manager said. ‘The girl who found him. She’s in the staff coffee room. Gave her quite a shock, poor thing, as you can imagine.’ The manager avoided looking into the room.
Erlendur walked up to the body and peered at the wound to the heart. He had no idea what kind of blade had killed the man. He looked up. Above the bed was an old, faded poster for a Shirley Temple film, sellotaped at the corners. Erlendur didn’t know the film. It was called The Little Princess. The poster was the only decoration in the room.
‘Who’s that?’ Sigurdur Óli asked from the doorway as he looked at the poster.
‘It says on it,’ Erlendur said. ‘Shirley Temple.’
‘Who’s that then? Is she dead?’
‘Who’s Shirley Temple?’ Elínborg was astonished at Sigurdur Óli’s ignorance. ‘Don’t you know who she was? Didn’t you study in America?’
‘Was she a Hollywood star?’ Sigurdur Óli asked, still looking at the poster.
‘She was a child star,’ Erlendur said curtly. ‘So she’s dead in a sense anyway.’
‘Eh?’ Sigurdur Óli said, failing to grasp the remark.
‘A child star,’ Elínborg said. ‘I think she’s still alive. I don’t remember. I think she’s something with the United Nations.’
It dawned on Erlendur that there were no other personal effects in the room. He looked around but could see no bookshelf, CDs or computer, no radio or television. Only a desk, chair, wardrobe and bed with a scruffy pillow and dirty duvet cover. The little room reminded him of a prison cell.
He went out into the corridor and peered into the darkness at the far end, and could make out a faint smell of burning, as if someone had been playing with matches there or possibly lighting their way.
‘What’s down there?’ he asked the manager.
‘Nothing,’ he replied and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Just the end of the corridor. A couple of bulbs have gone. I’ll have that fixed.’
‘How long had he lived here, this man?’ Erlendur asked as he went back into the room.
‘I don’t know, since before my time.’
‘So he was here when you became the manager?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you telling me he lived in this hole for twenty years?’
‘Yes.’
Elínborg looked at the condom.
‘At least he practised safe sex,’ she said.
‘Not safe enough,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
At that point the district medical officer arrived, accompanied by a member of the hotel staff who then went back along the corridor. The medical officer was very fat too, although nowhere near a match for the hotel manager. When he squeezed into the room, Elínborg darted back out for air.
‘Hello, Erlendur,’ the medical officer said.
‘What does it look like?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Heart attack, but I need a better look,’ replied the medical officer, who was known for his appalling sense of humour.
Erlendur looked out at Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg, who were grinning from ear to ear.
‘Do you know when it happened?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Can’t be very long ago. Some time during the last two hours. He’s hardly begun to go cold. Have you located his reindeer?’
Erlendur groaned.
The medical officer lifted his hand from the body.
‘I’ll sign the certificate,’ he said. ‘You send it to the mortuary and they’ll open him up there. They say that orgasm is a kind of moment of death,’ he added, looking down at the body. ‘So he had a double.’
‘A double?’ Erlendur didn’t understand him.
‘Orgasm, I mean,’ the medical officer said. ‘You’ll take photographs, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Erlendur said.
‘They’ll look nice in his family album.’
‘He doesn’t appear to have any family,’ Erlendur said and looked around the room again. ‘So you’re done for the time being?’ he asked, eager to put an end to the wisecracks.
The district medical officer nodded, squeezed back out of the room and went down the corridor.
‘Won’t we have to close down the hotel?’ Elínborg asked, and noticed the manager gasp at her question. ‘Stop all traffic in and out. Question everyone staying here and all the staff? Close the airports. Stop ships leaving port …’
‘For God’s sake,’ the manager groaned, squeezing his handkerchief with an imploring look at Erlendur. ‘It’s only the doorman!’
Mary and Joseph would never have been given a room here, Erlendur thought to himself.
‘This … this … filth has nothing to do with my guests,’ the manager spluttered with indignation. ‘They’re tourists, almost all of them, and regional people, businessmen and the like. No one who has anything to do with the doorman. No one. This is one of the largest hotels in Reykjavík. It’s packed over the holidays. You can’t just close it down! You just can’t!’
‘We could, but we won’t,’ Erlendur said, trying to calm the manager down. ‘We’ll need to question some of the guests and most of the staff, I expect.’
‘Thank God,’ the manager sighed, regaining his composure.
‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Gudlaugur,’ the manager said. ‘I think he’s around fifty. And you’re right about his family, I don’t think he has any.’
‘Who visited him?’
‘I haven’t got a clue,’ the manager puffed.
‘Has anything unusual happened at the hotel involving this man?’
‘No.’
‘Theft?’
‘No. Nothing’s happened.’
‘Complaints?’
‘No.’
‘He hasn’t become embroiled in anything that could explain this?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Was he involved in any conflicts with anyone at this hotel?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Outside the hotel?’
‘Not that I know of but I don’t know him very well. Didn’t,’ the manager corrected himself.
‘Not after twenty years?’
‘No, not really. He wasn’t very sociable, I don’t think. Kept himself to himself as much as he could.’
‘Do you think a hotel is the right place for a man like him?’
‘Me? I don’t know … He was always very polite and there were never really any complaints about him.’
‘Never really?’
‘No, there were never any complaints about him. He wasn’t a bad worker really.’
‘Where’s the staff coffee room?’ Erlendur asked.
‘I’ll show you.’ The hotel manager mopped his brow, relieved that they would not close the hotel.
‘Did he have guests?’ Erlendur asked.
‘What?’ the manager said.
‘Guests,’ Erlendur repeated. ‘It looks like someone who knew him was here, don’t you think?’
The manager looked at the body and his eyes dwelled on the condom.
‘I don’t know anything about his girlfriends,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘You don’t know very much about this man,’ Erlendur said.
‘He’s a doorman here,’ the manager said, and felt that Erlendur should accept that by way of explanation.
They left the room. The forensics team went in with their equipment and more officers followed them. It was difficult for them all to squeeze their way past the manager. Erlendur asked them to examine the corridor carefully and the dark alcove further down. Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg stood inside the little room observing the body.
‘I wouldn’t like to be found like that,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘It’s no concern of his any more,’ Elínborg said.
‘No, probably not,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘Is there anything in it?’ Elínborg asked as she took out a little bag of salted peanuts. She was always nibbling at things. Sigurdur Óli thought it was because of nerves.
‘In it?’ Sigurdur Óli said.
She nodded in the direction of the body. After staring at her for a moment, Sigurdur Óli realised what she meant. He hesitated, then knelt down by the body and stared at the condom.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s empty.’
‘So she killed him before his orgasm,’ Elínborg said. ‘The doctor thought—’
‘She?’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘Yes, isn’t that obvious?’ Elínborg said, emptying a handful of peanuts into her mouth. She offered some to Sigurdur Óli, who declined. ‘Isn’t there something tarty about it? He’s had a woman in here,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t he?’
‘That’s the simplest theory,’ Sigurdur Óli said, standing up.
‘You don’t think so?’ Elínborg said.
‘I don’t know. I don’t have the faintest idea.’
2
THE STAFF COFFEE room had little in common with the hotel’s splendid lobby and well-appointed rooms. There were no Christmas decorations, no Christmas carols, only a few shabby kitchen tables and chairs, linoleum on the floor, torn in one place, and in one corner stood a kitchenette with cupboards, a coffee machine and a refrigerator. It was as if no one ever tidied up there. There were coffee stains on the tables and dirty cups all around. The ancient coffee machine was switched on and burped water.
Several hotel employees were sitting in a semicircle around a young girl who was still traumatised after finding the body. She had been crying and black mascara was smudged down her cheeks. She looked up when Erlendur entered with the hotel manager.
‘Here she is,’ the manager said as if she were guilty of intruding upon the sanctity of Christmas, and shooed the other staff out. Erlendur ushered him out after them, saying he wanted to talk to the girl in private. The manager looked at him in surprise but did not protest, muttering about having plenty of other things to do. Erlendur closed the door behind him.
The girl wiped the mascara off her cheeks and looked at Erlendur, uncertain what to expect. Erlendur smiled, pulled up a chair and sat facing her. She was around the same age as his own daughter, in her early twenties, nervous and still in shock from what she had seen. Her hair was black and she was slim, dressed in the hotel chambermaid’s uniform, a light blue coat. A name tag was attached to her breast pocket. Ösp.
‘Have you been working here long?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Almost a year,’ Ösp said in a low voice. She looked at him. He did not give the impression that he would give her a hard time. With a snuffle she straightened up in her chair. Finding the body had clearly had a strong effect on her. She trembled slightly. Her name Ösp – meaning aspen – suited her, Erlendur thought to himself. She was like a twig in the wind.
‘And do you like working here?’ Erlendur asked.
‘No,’ she said.
‘So why do you?’
‘You have to work.’
‘What’s so bad about it?’
She looked at him as if he did not need to ask.
‘I change the beds,’ she said. ‘Clean the toilets. Vacuum. But it’s still better than a supermarket.’
‘What about the people?’
‘The manager’s a creep.’
‘He’s like a fire hydrant with a leak.’
Ösp smiled.
‘And some of the guests think you’re only here for them to grope.’
‘Why did you go down to the basement?’ Erlendur asked.
‘To fetch Santa. The kids were waiting for him.’
‘Which kids?’
‘At the Christmas ball. We have a Christmas party for the staff. For their children and any kids who are staying at the hotel, and he was playing Santa. When he didn’t show up I was sent to fetch him.’
‘That can’t have been pleasant.’
‘I’ve never seen a dead body before. And that condom.’ Ösp tried to drive the image out of her mind.
‘Did he have any girlfriends at the hotel?’
‘None that I know of.’
‘Do you know about any contacts of his outside the hotel?’
‘I don’t know anything about that man, though I’ve seen more of him than I should of.’
‘Should have,’ Erlendur corrected her.
‘What?’
‘You’re supposed to say “should have”, not “should of”.’
She gave him a pitying look.
‘Do you think it matters?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Erlendur said.
He shook his head, a remote expression on his face.
‘Was the door open when you found him?’
Ösp thought.
‘No, I opened it. I knocked and got no reply, so I waited and was just going to leave when it occurred to me to open the door. I thought it was locked but then it suddenly opened and he was sitting there naked with a rubber on his …’
‘Why did you think it would be locked?’ Erlendur hurried to say. ‘The door.’
‘I just did. I knew it was his room.’
‘Did you see anyone when you went down to fetch him?’
‘No, no one.’
‘So he’d got ready for the Christmas party, but someone came down and disturbed him. He was wearing his Santa suit.’
Ösp shrugged.
‘Who did his bed?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Who changed the linen? It hasn’t been done for a long time.’
‘I don’t know. He must have done it himself.’
‘You must have been shocked.’
‘It was a revolting sight,’ Ösp said.
‘I know,’ Erlendur said. ‘You should try to forget it as quickly as possible. If you can. Was he a good Santa?’
The girl looked at him.
‘What?’ Erlendur said.
‘I don’t believe in Santa.’
The lady who organised the Christmas party was smartly dressed, short and, Erlendur thought, around thirty. She said she was the hotel’s marketing and PR manager, but Erlendur could not have been less interested; most of the people he met these days were marketing-somethings. She had an office on the second floor and Erlendur found her on the phone there. The media had got wind of an incident at the hotel and Erlendur imagined she was telling lies to a reporter. The conversation came to a very abrupt end. The woman slammed down the phone with the words that she had absolutely no comment to make.
Erlendur introduced himself, shook her dry hand and asked her when she had last spoken to the, aahemm, man in the basement. He did not know whether to say doorman or Santa, he had forgotten his name. He felt he could hardly say Santa.
‘Gulli?’ she said, solving the problem. ‘It was just this morning, to remind him of the Christmas party. I met him by the revolving doors. He was working. He was a doorman here as you perhaps know. And more than a doorman, a caretaker really. Mended things and all that.’
‘Easy-going?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Helpful, easy-going, didn’t need much nagging?’
‘I don’t know. Does that matter? He never did anything for me. Or rather, I never needed his help.’
‘Why was he playing Santa? Was he fond of children? Funny? Fun?’
‘That goes back before I started here. I’ve been working here for three years and this is the third Christmas party I’ve organised. He was the Santa the other two times and before that too. He was OK. As Santa. The kids liked him.’
Gudlaugur’s death did not seem to have had the slightest effect on the woman. It was none of her business. All that the murder did was to disturb the marketing and PR for a while. Erlendur wondered how people could be so insensitive and boring.
‘But what sort of person was he?’
‘I don’t know. I never got to know him. He was a doorman here. And the Santa. That was really the only time I ever spoke to him. When he was the Santa.’
‘What happened to the Christmas party? When you found out that Santa was dead?’
‘We called it off. Nothing else for it. Also out of respect for him,’ she added, as if to show a hint of feeling at last. It was futile. Erlendur could tell that she could not care less about the body in the basement.
‘Who knew this man best?’ he asked. ‘Here at the hotel, I mean.’
‘I don’t know. Try talking to the head of reception. The doorman worked for him.’
The telephone on her desk rang and she answered it. She gave Erlendur a look, implying that he was in her way, and he stood up and walked out, thinking that she could not go on telling lies over the phone for ever.
The reception manager had no time to deal with Erlendur. Tourists swarmed around the front desk and even though three other employees were helping to check them in, they could hardly handle the crowd. Erlendur watched them looking at passports, handing over key cards, smiling and moving on to the next guest. The crowd stretched back to the revolving doors. Through them Erlendur saw yet another tourist shuttle stop outside the hotel.
Policemen, most of them in plain clothes, were all over the building questioning the staff. A makeshift incident centre had been set up in the staff coffee room in the basement, from where the investigation was managed.
Erlendur contemplated the Christmas decorations in the lobby. A sentimental Christmas tune was playing over the sound system. He walked over to the large restaurant to one side of the lobby. The first guests were lining up around a splendid Christmas buffet. He walked past the table and admired the herring, smoked lamb, cold ham, ox tongue and all the trimmings, and the delicious desserts, ice cream, cream cakes and chocolate mousse, or whatever it was.
Erlendur’s mouth watered. He had eaten almost nothing all day.
He looked all around and, almost too fast to be seen, popped a bite of spicy ox tongue into his mouth. He did not think anyone had noticed, and his heart leaped when he heard a sharp voice behind him.
‘No, listen, that’s not on. You mustn’t do that!’
Erlendur turned round and a man wearing a large chef’s hat walked up to him glaring.
‘What’s that supposed to mean, picking at the food? What kind of manners do you call that?’
‘Take it easy,’ Erlendur said, reaching for a plate. He began piling an assortment of delicacies onto the plate as if he had always intended to have the buffet.
‘Did you know Santa Claus?’ he asked to change the subject from the ox tongue.
‘Santa Claus?’ the cook said. ‘What Santa Claus? And please don’t put your fingers on the food. It’s not—’
‘Gudlaugur,’ Erlendur interrupted him. ‘Did you know him? He was a doorman and jack of all trades here, I’m told.’
‘You mean Gulli?’
‘Yes, Gulli.’ Erlendur repeated his nickname as he put a generous slice of cold ham on his plate and a dash of yoghurt sauce over it. He wondered whether to call in Elínborg to appraise the buffet; she was a gourmet and had been assembling a book of recipes for many years.
‘No, I … what do you mean by “did I know him”?’ the cook asked.
‘You haven’t heard?’
‘What? Is something wrong?’
‘He’s dead. Murdered. Hasn’t word got around yet?’
‘Murdered?’ the cook groaned. ‘Murdered! What, here? Who are you?’
‘In his little room. Down in the basement. I’m from the police.’
Erlendur went on choosing goodies to put on his plate. The cook had forgotten the ox tongue.
‘How was he murdered?’
‘The least said the better.’
‘At the hotel?’
‘Yes.’
The cook looked all around.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Won’t there be hell to pay?’
‘Yes,’ Erlendur said. ‘There will be hell to pay.’
He knew that the hotel would never be able to shake off the murder. It would never wipe away the smear. After this it would always be known as the hotel where Santa was found dead with a condom on his penis.
‘Did you know him?’ Erlendur asked. ‘Gulli?’
‘No, hardly at all. He was a doorman here and fixed all sorts of stuff.’
‘Fixed?’
‘Yes, mended. I didn’t know him at all.’
‘Do you know who knew him best here?’
‘No,’ the cook said. ‘I don’t know anything about the man. Who could have murdered him? Here? At the hotel? My God!’
Erlendur could tell that he was more worried about the hotel than about the murdered man. He considered telling him that the murder might boost the occupancy rate. That’s the way people think these days. They could even advertise the hotel as a murder scene. Develop crime-based tourism. But he could not be bothered. He wanted to sit down with his plate and eat the food. Have a moment’s peace.
Sigurdur Óli turned up out of nowhere.
‘Did you find anything?’ Erlendur asked.
‘No,’ Sigurdur Óli said, looking at the cook, who hurried off to the kitchen with the news. ‘Are you eating now?’ he added with indignation.
‘Oh, don’t give me any crap. There was a compromising situation.’
‘That man owned nothing, or if he did, he didn’t keep it in his room,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘Elínborg found a couple of old records in his wardrobe. That was the lot. Shouldn’t we shut down the hotel?’
‘Shut down the hotel, what kind of nonsense is that?’ Erlendur said. ‘How are you going to go about shutting down this hotel? And how long do you plan to do that for? Are you going to send a search team into every room?’
‘No, but the murderer could be one of the guests. We can’t ignore that.’
‘That’s absolutely uncertain. There are two possibilities. Either he’s at the hotel, a guest or an employee, or he’s nothing to do with the hotel. What we need to do is to talk to all the staff and everyone who checks out over the next couple of days, especially those who check out earlier than they had planned, although I doubt that the person who did it would try to draw attention to himself like that.’
‘No, right. I was thinking about the condom,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
Erlendur looked for a vacant table, found one and sat down. Sigurdur Óli sat down with him and looked at the heaped plate, and his mouth began watering too.
‘Well, if it’s a woman she’s still of child-bearing age, isn’t she? Because of the condom.’
‘Yes, that would have been the case twenty years ago,’ Erlendur said, savouring the lightly smoked ham. ‘Nowadays a condom’s more than just a contraceptive. It’s protection against bloody everything, chlamydia, Aids …’
‘The condom might also tell us that he wasn’t very well acquainted with the … the person who was in his room. That it must have been a quickie. If he’d known the person well he may not have used a condom.’
‘We must remember that the condom doesn’t rule out that he was with a man,’ Erlendur said.
‘What kind of implement could it be? The murder weapon?’
‘We’ll see what comes out of the autopsy. Obviously there’s no problem getting hold of a knife at this hotel, if it was someone from here who attacked him.’
‘Is that nice?’ Sigurdur Óli asked. He had been watching Erlendur devouring the food and was sorely tempted to get some for himself but was afraid of causing even more of a scandal: two cops investigating a murder at a hotel, who sat down at the buffet as if nothing had happened.
‘I forgot to check whether there was anything in it,’ Erlendur said between bites.
‘Do you think you ought to be eating at the murder scene?’
‘This is a hotel.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘I told you, I ran into a compromising situation. This was the only way to get out of it. Was there anything in it? The condom?’
‘Empty,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘The medical officer thought he’d had an orgasm. Twice in fact, but I didn’t really catch how he came to that conclusion.’
‘I don’t know anyone who can work out what he’s talking about.’
‘So the murder was committed in full swing.’
‘Yes. Something happened when everything was hunky dory.’
‘If everything was hunky dory, why take along a knife?’
‘Maybe it was part of the game.’
‘What game?’
‘Sex has become much more complex than just the old missionary position,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘So it could be anyone?’
‘Anyone,’ Erlendur said. ‘Why do they always talk about the missionary position? What’s the mission?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sigurdur Óli sighed. Sometimes Erlendur asked questions that irritated him because they were so simple but at the same time so infinitely complicated and dull.
‘Is it something from Africa?’
‘Or Catholicism,’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘Why missionary?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The condom doesn’t rule out either sex,’ Erlendur said. ‘Let’s establish that. The condom doesn’t rule out anything. Did you ask the manager why he wanted rid of Santa Claus?’
‘No, did he want rid of Santa?’
‘He mentioned it without any explanation. We have to find out what he meant.’
‘I’ll jot that down,’ said Sigurdur Óli, who always carried around a notepad and pencil.
‘And then there’s one group that uses condoms more than other people.’
‘Really?’ Sigurdur Óli said, his face one huge question mark.
‘Prostitutes.’
‘Prostitutes?’ Sigurdur Óli repeated. ‘Hookers? Do you think there are any here?’
Erlendur nodded.
‘They do a lot of missionary work at hotels.’
Sigurdur Óli stood up and dawdled in front of Erlendur, who had finished his plate and was eyeing up the buffet again.
‘Ehmmm, where will you be spending Christmas?’ Sigurdur Óli asked awkwardly.
‘Christmas?’ Erlendur said. ‘I’ll be … what do you mean, where will I be spending Christmas? Where should I spend Christmas? What business of yours is that?’
Sigurdur Óli hesitated, then took the plunge.
‘Bergthóra was wondering if you’d be on your own.’
‘Eva Lind has some plans. What did Bergthóra mean? That I should visit you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sigurdur Óli said. ‘Women! Who ever understands them?’ Then he sauntered away from the table and down to the basement.
Elínborg was standing in front of the murdered man’s room, watching the forensics team at work, when Sigurdur Óli came walking down the dim corridor.
‘Where’s Erlendur?’ she asked, throttling her little bag of peanuts.
‘At the buffet,’ Sigurdur Óli said peevishly.
A preliminary test made that evening revealed that the condom was covered with saliva.
3
FORENSICS CONTACTED ERLENDUR as soon as the biopsy results were available. He was still at the hotel. For a while the scene of the crime looked like a photographer’s studio. Flashes lit up the dim corridor at regular intervals. The body was photographed from all angles, along with everything found in Gudlaugur’s room. The corpse was then transported to the morgue on Barónsstígur where the postmortem would be performed. Forensics had combed the doorman’s room for fingerprints and found many sets, which would be checked against the police records. All the hotel staff were to be fingerprinted and the forensics team’s discovery also meant that saliva samples would have to be taken.
‘What about the guests?’ Elínborg asked. ‘Won’t we have to do the same with them?’
She yearned to get home and regretted the question; she wanted to finish her shift. Elínborg took Christmas very seriously and missed her family. She hung up fir branches and decorations all around her home. She baked delicious cookies, which she stored in her Tupperware boxes, carefully labelled by variety. Her Christmas roast was legendary, even outside her extended family. The main course every Christmas was a Swedish-style leg of pork, which she kept outside on the balcony to marinate for twelve days, and tended it just as carefully as if it had been the baby Jesus in swaddling clothes.
‘I think we have to assume, initially, that the murderer is an Icelander,’ Erlendur said. ‘Let’s keep the guests in reserve. The hotel is filling up for Christmas now and few people are checking out. We’ll talk to the ones who do, take saliva samples, even fingerprints. We can’t prevent them from leaving the country. They would have to be prime suspects for us to do that. And we need a list of the foreigners staying at the hotel at the time of the murder, we’ll forget about the ones who check in afterwards. Let’s try to keep it simple.’
‘But what if it isn’t that simple?’ Elínborg asked.
‘I don’t think any of the guests know there was a murder,’ said Sigurdur Óli, who wanted to get home too. Bergthóra, his partner, had phoned him towards evening and asked if he was on his way. It was exactly the right time now and she was waiting for him, she had said. Sigurdur Óli knew immediately what she meant by ‘the right time’. They were trying to have a baby but nothing was happening and he had told Erlendur that they were beginning to talk about IVF.
‘Don’t you have to give them a jarful?’ Erlendur asked.
‘A jarful?’ Sigurdur Óli said.
‘In the mornings?’
Sigurdur Óli looked at Erlendur until he realised what he meant.
‘I should never have told you,’ he growled.
Erlendur sipped his foul-tasting coffee. The three of them were sitting by themselves in the staff coffee room in the basement. All the commotion was over, the police officers and forensics team had left, the room was sealed off. Erlendur was in no hurry. He had no one to go to, only his gloomy apartment in a block of flats. Christmas meant nothing to him. He had a few days holiday owing and nothing to do with them. Perhaps his daughter would visit him and they would boil smoked lamb. Sometimes her brother came with her. And Erlendur sat and read, which he always did anyway.
‘You ought to get yourselves home,’ he said. ‘I’m going to potter around a little longer. Find out whether I can’t talk to that head of reception who never has the time.’
Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli stood up.
‘Will you be OK?’ Elínborg asked. ‘Why don’t you just go home? Christmas is coming and—’
‘What’s with you and Sigurdur Óli? Why don’t you leave me in peace?’
‘It’s Christmas,’ Elínborg said with a sigh. Dithered. Then she said, ‘Forget it.’ She and Sigurdur Óli turned round and left the coffee room.
Erlendur sat for a good while, sunk in thought. He pondered Sigurdur Óli’s question about where he was going to spend Christmas, and mulled over Elínborg’s thoughtfulness. He saw an image of his flat, the armchair, the battered old television set and the books lining the walls.
Sometimes he bought a bottle of Chartreuse at Christmas and had a glass beside him while he read about ordeals and death in the days when people travelled everywhere on foot and Christmas could be the most treacherous time of the year. Determined to visit their loved ones, people would battle with the forces of nature, go astray and perish; for those awaiting them back home, Christmas turned from a celebration of salvation to a nightmare. The bodies of some travellers were found. Others were not. They were never found.
These were Erlendur’s Christmas carols.
The head of reception had taken off his hotel jacket and was putting on his raincoat when Erlendur located him in the cloakroom. He said he was exhausted and wanted to get home to his family like everyone else. He had heard about the murder, yes, terrible, but did not know how he could be of assistance.
‘I understand you knew him better than most people at the hotel,’ Erlendur said.
‘No, I don’t think that’s right,’ the head of reception said as he wrapped a thick scarf around his neck. ‘Who told you that?’
‘He worked for you, didn’t he?’ Erlendur replied, ignoring the question.
‘Worked for me, yes, probably. He was a doorman, I’m in charge of the reception, the check-in, as you may know. Do you know how long the shops are open tonight?’
He gave the impression of not being particularly interested in Erlendur and his questions, which irritated the detective. And it irritated him that no one seemed to care in the slightest about the fate the man in the basement had met.
‘Round the clock, I don’t know. Who could have wanted to stab your doorman in the chest?’
‘Mine? He wasn’t my doorman. He was the hotel’s doorman.’
‘And why did he have his trousers round his ankles and a condom on his todger? Who was with him? Who normally came to visit him? Who were his friends at the hotel? Who were his friends outside the hotel? Who were his enemies? Why was he living at this hotel? What was the deal? What are you hiding? Why can’t you answer me like a decent human being?’
‘Hey, I, what…?’ The man fell silent. ‘I just want to get home,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t know the answers to all those questions. Christmas is coming. Can we talk tomorrow? I haven’t had a moment’s rest all day.’
Erlendur looked at him.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ he said. As he left the cloakroom he suddenly remembered the question that had been vexing him ever since he met the hotel manager. He turned round. The man was on his way out through the door when Erlendur called to him.
‘Why did you want to get rid of him?’
‘What?’
‘You wanted to get rid of him. Santa. Why?’
The reception manager hesitated.
‘He’d been sacked.’
Erlendur found the hotel manager sitting down to a meal. He was at a large table in the kitchen, wearing a chef’s apron and devouring the contents of the half-empty trays that had been brought in from the buffet.
‘You can’t imagine how I love eating,’ he said, wiping his mouth, when he noticed Erlendur staring at him. ‘In peace,’ he added.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Erlendur said.
They were alone in the large, polished kitchen. Erlendur could only admire him. He ate quickly, but deftly and without greed. There was something almost elegant about the motions of his hands. One bite after another disappeared inside him, smoothly and with a visible passion.
He was calmer now that the body had been removed from the hotel and the police had gone, along with the reporters who had been standing outside the hotel; the police had ordered them to stay out, the entire building was deemed a crime scene. The hotel was returning to business as normal. Very few tourists knew about the body in the basement, but many noticed the police activity and asked about it. The manager instructed his staff to say something about an old man and a heart attack.
‘I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m a pig, don’t you?’ he said, pausing to take a sip of red wine. His little finger darted out, the size of a cocktail sausage.
‘No, but I do understand why you want to run a hotel,’ Erlendur said. Then he lost his patience. ‘You’re killing yourself, you know that,’ he said brashly.
‘I weigh 180 kilos,’ the manager said. ‘Farmed pigs don’t get much heavier. I’ve always been fat. Never known otherwise. Never been on a diet. I’ve never been able to think of changing my lifestyle, as they say. I feel good. Better than you, from the look of things,’ he added.
Erlendur remembered hearing that fat people were supposed to be jollier than skinny people. He did not believe it himself.
‘Better than me?’ he said with a hint of a smile. ‘You’re the last person to judge. Why did you sack the doorman?’
The manager had resumed eating and some time passed before he put down his knife and fork. Erlendur waited patiently. He could see the manager weighing up the best answer, how to phrase it, given that he had found out about the dismissal.
‘We haven’t been doing too well,’ he said eventually. ‘We’re overbooked in the summer and there’s always plenty of traffic over Christmas and the New Year, but then come dead periods that can be damned difficult. The owners said we had to cut back. Lay off staff. I didn’t think it was necessary to have a full-time doorman all year round.’
‘But I’m told he was much more than just a doorman. Santa Claus, for example. A jack of all trades. Mended things. More like a caretaker.’
The manager had gone back to feeding his face yet again and another break in their conversation ensued. Erlendur looked around. After taking down their names and addresses, the police had allowed the staff who had finished their shifts to go home; it had still not been established who was the last person to talk to the victim, nor what happened on the last day of his life. No one had noticed anything unusual about Santa. No one had seen anybody go down to the basement. No one knew of him ever having visitors there. Only a couple of people knew that he lived there permanently, that the little room was his home, and apparently they wanted to know as little as possible about him. Very few said they knew him and he did not seem to have had any friends at the hotel. Nor did the employees know about any friends of his outside it.
A real Lone Wolf, Erlendur thought to himself.
‘No one is indispensable,’ the manager said, his sausage-like finger protruding again as he took another sip of red wine. ‘Of course, firing people is never fun, but we can’t afford to have a doorman all year. That’s why he was sacked. No other reason. And there wasn’t really much door-manning to do. He put on his uniform when film stars or foreign dignitaries came, and he threw out undesirables.’
‘Did he take it badly? Being sacked?’
‘He understood, I think.’
‘Are any knives missing from the kitchen?’ Erlendur asked.
‘I don’t know. We lose knives and forks and glasses worth hundreds of thousands of krónur every year. And towels and … Do you think he was stabbed with a knife from the kitchen?’
‘I don’t know.’
Erlendur watched the manager eat.
‘He worked here for twenty years and no one knew him. Don’t you find that unusual?’
‘Employees come and go,’ the manager shrugged. ‘There’s a high staff turnover in this business. I think people knew about him, but who knows who? Don’t ask me. I don’t know anyone here that well.’
‘You’ve stayed put through all these staff changes.’
‘I’m difficult to move.’
‘Why did you talk about chucking him out?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it was just a turn of phrase. I didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘But you’d sacked him and were going to chuck him out,’ Erlendur said. ‘Then someone comes along and kills him. It hasn’t exactly been going well for him recently.’
The manager acted as though Erlendur was not even there while he filled himself with cakes and mousse with his delicate, gourmandising motions, trying to savour the treats.
‘Why was he still here if you’d sacked him?’
‘He was supposed to leave at the end of last month. I’d been hurrying him along, but didn’t pressure him. I should have. Then I’d have avoided this nonsense.’
Erlendur watched the manager scoffing his food, and said nothing. Maybe it was the buffet. Maybe the gloomy block of flats. Maybe the time of year. The microwave dinner waiting for him at home. The lonely Christmas. Erlendur did not know. Somehow the question just came out. Before he knew it.
‘A room?’ the manager said, as if not understanding what Erlendur meant.
‘It doesn’t have to be anything special,’ Erlendur said.
‘You mean for you?’
‘A single room is fine,’ Erlendur said.
‘We’re fully booked. Unfortunately.’ The hotel manager stared at Erlendur. He didn’t want to have the detective over him day and night.
‘The head of reception said there was a vacant room,’ Erlendur lied, more firmly now. ‘He said it was no problem if I just talked to you.’
The manager stared at him. Looked down at his unfinished mousse. Then he pushed the plate away, his appetite ruined.
It was cold in the room. Erlendur stood gazing out of the window, but saw nothing apart from his own reflection in the glass. He hadn’t looked that man in the face for some time and he noticed in the darkness how he was ageing. Snowflakes fell cautiously to the ground, as if the heavens had split open and their dust was being strewn over the world.
A little book of verse that he owned suddenly entered his mind, exceptionally elegant translations of poems by Hölderlin. He let his mind wander through them until he stopped at a line that he knew applied to the man looking back at him from the window.
The walls stand speechless and cold, the weathervanes rattle in the wind.
4
HE WAS FALLING asleep when he heard a tap on his door and a voice whispering his name.
He knew at once who it was. When he opened the door he saw his daughter, Eva Lind, standing in the corridor. They looked each other in the eye, she smiled at him and slipped past him into the room. He closed the door. She sat down at the little desk and took out a packet of cigarettes.
‘I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here,’ said Erlendur, who had obeyed the smoke-free policy.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Eva Lind said, fishing a cigarette out of the packet. ‘Why’s it so cold in here?’
‘I think the radiator’s broken.’