“Right on.”

Baldur lived in a neat wooden house in the Thingholt district near the city centre and had just got home; he was an architect. Sigurdur Oli rang his doorbell and introduced himself as a detective investigating the murder of Gudlaugur Egilsson. The man showed no surprise. He looked Sigurdur Oli up and down and invited him inside.

“To tell the truth I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “Or one of you. I was wondering about getting in touch, but I’ve been putting it off. It’s never nice talking to the police.” Smiling again, he offered to hang up Sigurdur Oli’s coat.

Everything in the house was spick and span. There were lit candles in the sitting room and a decorated Christmas tree. The man offered Sigurdur Oli a glass of liqueur, which he declined. He was of average height, slim, jolly and balding, but what hair was left had clearly been tinted to enhance its ginger colour. Sigurdur Oli thought he recognised Frank Sinatra crooning from speakers.

“Why were you expecting me, or us?” Sigurdur Oli asked as he sat down on a large red sofa.

“Because of Gulli,” the man said, sitting opposite him. “I knew you’d dig this up.”

“This what?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“That I was with Gulli in the old days,” the man said.

“What do you mean, he was with Gudlaugur in the old days?” Erlendur butted in again. “What could he mean by that?”

“That’s the way he phrased it,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“That he was with Gudlaugur?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“That they were together.”

“You mean Gudlaugur was …?” Countless thoughts rushed through Erlendur’s mind, all screeching to a halt at the stern expressions on the faces of Gudlaugur’s sister and his father in the wheelchair.

“That’s what this Baldur guy says,” Sigurdur Oli said. “But Gudlaugur didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Didn’t want anyone to know about their relationship?”

“He wanted to hide the fact that he was gay.”

27

The man from Thingholt told Sigurdur Oli that his relationship with Gudlaugur began when they were about twenty-five. It was during the disco era when Baldur rented a basement flat in the Vogar district. Neither of them had come out of the closet. “Attitudes to being gay were different then,” he said with a smile. “But it was starting to change.”

“And we didn’t really live together,” Baldur added. “Men didn’t live together then like they do today, without anyone giving it a second thought. Gays could hardly survive in Iceland in those days. Most of us felt compelled to go abroad, as you may know. He often used to visit me, shall we say. Stayed the night with me. He had a room of his own in the west of town and I went there a couple of times, but he was maybe not quite houseproud enough for my taste so I stopped going there. We were mainly at my place.”

“How did you meet?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“There were places where gays used to meet then. One was just off the city centre, in fact not far from here in Thingholt. Not a club, but a sort of meeting place we had in someone’s house. You never knew what to expect at the clubs and you sometimes got thrown out for dancing with other men. This home was a hotchpotch of everything, a coffee bar, guesthouse, night club, advice centre and shelter. He came there one evening with some friends. That was the first time I saw him. Sorry, silly me, can I offer you coffee?”

Sigurdur Oli looked at his watch.

“Maybe you’re in a terrible hurry,” the man said, carefully smoothing down his thin, dyed hair.

“No, it’s not that, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea if you have any,” Sigurdur Oli said, his thoughts on Bergthora. She sometimes got angry when his time-keeping failed. She was very petty about punctuality and would nag him long afterwards if he turned up late.

The man went into the kitchen to make the tea.

“He was awfully repressed,” he said from the kitchen, raising his voice so that Sigurdur Oli could hear him better. “I sometimes thought he hated his own sexuality. As if he still hadn’t fully admitted it. I think he was partly using his relationship with me to help find his way along. He was still searching even at that age. But of course that’s nothing new. People come out in their forties, maybe having been married with four kids.”

“Yes, there are all sorts of permutations,” said Sigurdur Oli, who had no idea what he was talking about.

“Oh yes there are, my dear. Do you like it well brewed?”

“Were you together for long?” Sigurdur Oli asked, adding that he did like his tea strong.

“Three years or so, but it was very on and off towards the end.”

“And you haven’t been in touch with him since?”

“No. I knew about him, sort of,” the man said, returning to the sitting room. “The gay community isn’t that big.”

“In what way was he repressed?” Sigurdur Oli asked while the man put two cups on the table. He had brought in a bowl of cookies, which he recognised as the sort Bergthora baked every Christmas. He tried in vain to remember what they were called.

“He was very mysterious and rarely opened up, or only if we got drunk. It was something to do with his father though, I think. He had no contact with him or with his older sister, who had turned against him, but he missed them terribly. His mother had been dead for years when I met him, but he talked more about her than the rest of his family. He could go on for ever about his mother and it could be very tiring, to tell the truth.”

“How did she turn against him? His sister?”

“This was a long time ago and he never described it exactly. All I know is that he fought what he was. You know what I mean? As if he should have been something else.”

Sigurdur Oli shook his head.

“He thought it was dirty. Something unnatural about it. Being gay.”

“And fought it?”

“Yes and no. He wavered about it. I don’t think he knew which foot to stand on. Poor thing. He didn’t have much self-confidence. Sometimes I think he hated himself?

“Did you know about his past? As a child star?”

“Yes,” the man said, then he stood up to go to the kitchen and returned with a pot of piping-hot tea which he poured into the cups. He took the pot back to the kitchen and they sipped their tea.

“Can’t you speed this up a bit?” Erlendur said to Sigurdur Oli, making no attempt to conceal his impatience as he sat at his hotel room desk listening to the account.

“I’m trying to make it as detailed as possible,” Sigurdur Oli said with a glance at his watch. He was already three-quarters of an hour late for Bergthora.

“Yes, yes, get on with it…”

“Did he ever talk about it?” Sigurdur Oli asked, putting down his teacup and helping himself to a cookie. “His childhood brush with fame?”

“He said he lost his voice,” Baldur said.

“And was he bitter about that?”

“Terribly. It happened at an awful time for him. But he would never tell me about it. He said he was bullied at school for being famous, and that got him down. But he didn’t call it being famous. He didn’t regard himself as ever having been famous. His father wanted him to be, and apparently he came very close to it. But he felt unhappy, and on top of that these feelings started to come out, his gay side. He was reluctant to talk about it. Preferred to say as little as possible about his family. Do have another cookie.”

“No, thanks,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Do you know of anyone who may have wanted to kill him? Someone who wanted to hurt him?”

“Good Lord, no! He was such a pussy cat, he would never have harmed a fly. I don’t know who could have done it. The poor man, going like that. Are you getting anywhere in your enquiries?”

“No,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Did you ever listen to his records, or do you have them?”