11

They entered the hotel through the revolving doors: he was old and frail and in a wheelchair; and she followed behind, short and slim, with a thin, hooked nose and tough, piercing eyes that scoured the lobby. The woman was in her fifties, dressed in a thick, brown winter coat and long leather boots, pushing him along in front of her. The man looked about eighty, white straggles of hair stood out from under the brim of his hat and his skinny face was deathly pale. He sat hunched up, white bony hands protruding from the sleeves of a black coat. He had a scarf around his neck and thick black horn-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes like a fish’s.

The woman pushed him to the check-in desk. The head of reception, who was leaving his office, watched them approach.

“Can I help you?” he asked when they reached the desk.

The man in the wheelchair ignored him, but the woman asked for a detective named Erlendur who she had been told was at work at the hotel. Leaving the bar with Wapshott, Erlendur had seen them enter. They caught his attention immediately. There was something reminiscent of death about them.

He wondered whether to ground Wapshott and stop him from going back to the UK for the time being, but could not think of a good enough reason to detain him. He was pondering who those people could be, the man with haddock eyes and the woman with the eagle’s beak, when the head of reception saw him and waved to him. Erlendur was about to say goodbye to Wapshott, but suddenly he was gone.

“They’re asking for you,” the head of reception said as Erlendur approached the check-in desk.

Erlendur walked behind the desk. The haddock’s eyes stared at him from beneath the hat.

“Are you Erlendur?” the man in the wheelchair asked in an old and slurred voice.

“Do you want to talk to me?” Erlendur asked. The eagle’s beak pointed up in the air.

“Are you in charge of the investigation into the death of Gudlaugur Egilsson at this hotel?” the woman asked.

Erlendur said he was.

“I’m his sister,” she said. “And this is our father. Can we talk somewhere quiet?”

“Do you want me to help you with him?” Erlendur offered. She looked insulted and pushed the wheelchair along. They followed Erlendur into the bar and over to the table where he had been sitting with Wapshott. They were the only people inside. Even the waiter had disappeared. Erlendur did not know whether the bar was open before noon as a rule. Since the door was unlocked he assumed that it must be, but few people seemed to know about it.

The woman steered the wheelchair up to the table and locked the wheels. Then she sat down facing Erlendur.

“I was just on my way to see you,” Erlendur lied; he had intended to let Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg talk to Gudlaugur’s family. He could not remember whether he had actually asked them to do so.

“We’d prefer not to have the police inside our house,” the woman said. “That has never happened. A lady phoned us, presumably your colleague, I think she said her name was Elinborg. I asked who was in charge of the investigation and she told me you were one of them. I was hoping we could get this over with and that you would then leave us in peace.”

There was no hint of sorrow in their demeanour. No mourning for a loved one. Only cold nastiness. They felt they had certain duties to dispatch, felt obliged to give a report to the police, but clearly had a repulsion against doing so and did not mind showing it. It didn’t seem as if the corpse found in the hotel basement was any concern of theirs in the slightest. As if they were above that.

“You know the circumstances in which Gudlaugur was found,” Erlendur said.

“We know he was killed,” the old man said. “We know he was stabbed.”

“Do you know who could have done it?”

“We don’t have the faintest idea,” the woman said. “We had no contact with him. We don’t know who he associated with. Don’t know his friends, nor his enemies if he had any”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Elinborg walked into the bar. She approached them and sat down beside Erlendur. He introduced her to them but they showed no reaction, both equally determined to allow none of this to ruffle them.

“I suppose he must have been about twenty then,” the woman said. “The last time we saw him.”

“Twenty?” Erlendur thought he must have misheard.

“As I said, there was no contact.”

“Why not?” Elinborg asked.

The woman did not even look at her.

“Isn’t it enough for us to talk to you?” she asked Erlendur. “Does this woman have to be here too?”

Erlendur looked at Elinborg. He seemed to cheer up slightly.

“You don’t seem to be mourning his fate very much,” he said without answering her. “Gudlaugur. Your brother” he said, and looked at the woman again. “Your son,” he said, and looked at the old man. “Why? Why haven’t you seen him for thirty years? And as I told you, her name is Elinborg,” he added. “If you have any more comments to make we’ll take you down to the police station and continue there, and you can lodge a formal complaint. We’ve got a police car outside.”

The eagle’s beak rose, offended. The haddock’s eyes narrowed.

“He lived his own life,” she said. “We lived ours. There’s not much more to say about it. There was no contact. That’s the way it was. We were happy with that. So was he.”

“Are you telling me that you last saw him in the mid-seventies?” Erlendur said.

“There was no contact,” she repeated.

“Not once in all that time? Not one phone call? Nothing?”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

“That’s a family matter,” the old man said. “Nothing to do with this. Not a bit. Over and done with. What more do you want to know?”

“Did you know he was working at this hotel?”

“We heard about him every so often,” the woman said. “We knew he was a doorman here. Put on some stupid uniform and held the door open for the hotel guests. And I understand he used to play Santa Claus at Christmas parties.”

Erlendur’s eyes were riveted to her. She said this as if Gudlaugur could not have humiliated his family more, except by being found murdered, half naked, in a hotel basement

“We don’t know much about him,” Erlendur said. “He doesn’t seem to have had many friends. He lived in a little room at this hotel. He seems to have been liked. People thought he was good with children. As you say, he played Santa at the hotel’s Christmas parties. However, we’ve just heard that he was a promising singer. A young boy who made gramophone recordings, two of them I think, but of course you know more about that. I saw on a record sleeve that he was going to tour Scandinavia, and it sounded as if he had the world at his feet. Then somehow that came to an end, apparently. No one knows that boy today apart from a few nutters who collect old records. What happened?”

The eagle’s beak had lowered and the haddock’s eyes dimmed while Erlendur was talking. The old man looked away from him and down at the table, and the woman, who still tried to retain her air of authority and pride, no longer appeared quite so self-assured.

“What happened?” Erlendur repeated, suddenly remembering that he had Gudlaugur’s singles up in his room.

“Nothing happened,” the old man said. “He lost his voice. He matured early and lost his voice at the age of twelve and that was the end of that”

“Couldn’t he sing afterwards?” Elinborg asked.

“His voice turned bad,” the old man said irritatedly. “You couldn’t teach him anything. And you couldn’t do anything for him. He turned against singing. Rebellion and anger took hold of him and he opposed everything. Opposed me. Opposed his sister who tried to do her best for him. He attacked me and blamed me for it all.”

“If there isn’t anything else,” the woman said with a look at Erlendur. “Haven’t we said enough? Haven’t you had enough?”