“Yes, it is,” Erlendur said.
“I’ve only lived in three places in my life,” the woman added. “The place where I was born, the block of flats you’re talking about and here in Kopavogur. That’s it. What year was this?”
“I’m not absolutely certain, but we’re probably talking about the end of the sixties or beginning of the seventies. It was a small family. A mother and son. She may possibly have been living with a man at the time she was resident in the block. It’s him I’m looking for. He wasn’t the boy’s father.”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“It’s a police matter,” Erlendur said and smiled. “Nothing serious. We just need to have a word with him. The woman’s name was Sigurveig. The boy was called Andres.”
Emma hesitated.
“What?” Erlendur said.
“I remember them well,” she said slowly. “I remember that man. And the boy. The mother, Sigurveig, was an alcoholic. I used to see her coming home late at night, drunk. I don’t think she looked after the boy properly. I don’t think he was very happy.”
“What can you tell me about the man she lived with?”
“His name was Rognvaldur. I don’t know his patronymic, I never heard it. He was at sea, wasn’t he? Anyway, he wasn’t home much. I don’t think he drank, at least not like her. I didn’t really understand what they saw in each other, they were such different types.”
“Do you mean they didn’t seem fond of each other or … ?”
“I never understood that relationship. I used to hear them quarrelling, I could hear it through their door if I was on the landing—”
She abruptly broke off her account as if she felt it necessary to clarify.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said, with a faint smile. “They used to argue pretty loudly. The laundry was in the basement and I’d be on my way down there or coming home …”
“I see,” Erlendur said, picturing her standing on the landing with ears pricked outside her neighbours” door.
“He spoke to her as if she was worthless. Always denigrating her, mocking and humiliating her. I didn’t like him, from what little I had to do with him, not that that was much. But I heard what he was like. Nasty. A nasty piece of work.”
“What about the boy?” Erlendur asked.
“Quiet as a mouse, poor little thing. He avoided the man completely. I had the impression he wasn’t happy. I don’t know what it was, he was somehow so forlorn. Oh, those poor little dears, some of them are just so vulnerable …”
“Can you describe this Rognvaldur for me?” Erlendur asked when she trailed off in mid-sentence.
“I can do better than that,” Emma said. “I believe I have a photo of him somewhere.”
“You do?”
“Where he’s walking past the block of flats. My friend took a picture of me standing outside the front door and it turned out that he was in the background.”
She stood up and went over to a cabinet. Inside were a number of photograph albums, one of which she removed. Erlendur looked around the flat. Everything was spotlessly tidy. He guessed that she put her photos in an album the moment she had them developed. Probably numbered them and labelled them with the date and a short caption. What else was one to do alone in a flat like this during the long, dark winter evenings?
“One of his forefingers was missing,” Emma said as she brought the album over. “I noticed it once. He must have had an accident”
“I see,” Erlendur said.
“Maybe he was doing some carpentry. It was only a stump. On his left hand.”
Emma sat down with the album and turned the pages until she found the picture. Erlendur was right, the photos were carefully arranged in chronological order and clearly labelled. He suspected that every single one had a place in her memory.
“I simply adore looking through these albums,” Emma said, inadvertently confirming Erlendur’s guess.
“They can be precious,” he said. “Memories.”
“Here it is,” she said. “It’s actually not a bad picture of him.”
She handed Erlendur the album and pointed to the photo. There was Emma, more than thirty years younger, smiling at the camera, a slender figure wearing a headscarf, a pretty little cardigan and Capri pants. The picture was in black and white. Behind her he saw the man she referred to as Rognvaldur. He was also looking at the camera but had raised a hand as if to shield his face, as if it had dawned on him too late that he might be caught in the shot. He was thin with a receding hairline, fairly large protruding eyes and delicate eyebrows below a high, intelligent forehead.
Erlendur stared at the man’s face and a shiver ran down his spine when he realised that he had seen him before, very recently. He had changed extraordinarily little despite the passage of time.
“What’s the matter?” Emma asked.
“It’s him!” Erlendur groaned.
“Him?” Emma said. “Who?”
“That man! Is it possible? What did you say his name was?”
“Rognvaldur.”
“No, his name’s not Rognvaldur.”
“Oh, then I must be mistaken. Do you know him?”
Erlendur looked up from the album.
“Is it possible?” he whispered.
He looked again at the man in the picture. He didn’t know anything about him but he had been inside his home and knew who he was.
“Did he call himself Rognvaldur?”
“Yes, that was his name,” Emma said. “I don’t think I’m making it up.”
“I don’t believe it,” Erlendur said.
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“He wasn’t called Rognvaldur when I met him,” Erlendur said.
“You’ve met him?”
“Yes, I’ve met that man.”
“So? If he wasn’t called Rognvaldur, what was his name?”
Erlendur didn’t answer immediately.
“What was he called?” Emma repeated.
“He was called Gestur,” Erlendur said absently, staring at the picture of Sunee’s neighbour from across the landing, the man who had invited him in, the man who knew both Elias and Niran.
22
Erlendur was present when they entered Gestur’s flat across the landing from Sunee’s. Elinborg was with him. The Reykjavik District Court had issued them with a search warrant that afternoon. According to the police officers who had been guarding the staircase since the boy’s body was found, Sunee’s neighbour from the top floor but one had not shown his face at all. Erlendur was the only person to have met and spoken to him. He had not been seen since.
In the end there was no need to break down the door. Gestur rented his flat like the other residents on the staircase, and Erlendur had managed to obtain a spare key. When all the necessary documents were in place and their ringing and knocking had elicited no response, Erlendur put the key in the lock and opened the door. He knew that he had only Andres’s intimation that there was a paedophile in the area, and Andres was an accomplished liar, but Erlendur was disposed to believe him this time. There was something about Andres’s manner when he spoke of this man. Some old fear that still haunted him.
The flat was unchanged since Erlendur’s last visit, apart from the fact that someone seemed to have gone over the whole place with a cloth and disinfectant. The smell of cleaning fluid hung in the air. The kitchen shone like a mirror, as did the bathroom. The living-room carpet had obviously been recently vacuumed, and Gestur’s bedroom looked as if no one had ever slept there. Erlendur was more aware this time of how sparsely furnished the flat was. When he first entered he’d had the impression that it was larger than Sunee’s place, although they were, in fact, identical. Standing in the middle of the living room, he thought he knew why: there was very little furniture in Gestur’s flat. Erlendur had entered it on a dark winter’s evening and Gestur had only turned on one lamp but even so he had sensed the emptiness. There were no pictures on the walls. The living room contained only two armchairs and a coffee table, besides a small dining table with three chairs, and a bookcase containing foreign paperbacks. There was nothing in the bedroom but a bed and an empty bedside table. The kitchen contained three plates, three glasses and three sets of cutlery, a small frying pan and two saucepans of different sizes. Everything had been thoroughly cleaned and put away.