The owner was crouched behind the bar. She was about to ask him about the window but then she lost interest. No doubt there had been a fight. Maybe someone had thrown a table through it. She did not want to know.
‘Has Berti been in today?’ Elínborg asked the proprietor, who was arranging bottles in a fridge. All she could see was the top of his head.
‘Don’t know anyone called Berti,’ he replied without looking up from the beers. ‘Fridbert,’ Elínborg elaborated. ‘I know he hangs out here.’
‘A lot of people come in here,’ the proprietor replied, standing up. He was a thin man of about fifty with a haggard face and a ragged moustache.
Elínborg looked around. She counted three customers.
‘Always this busy, is it?’ she asked.
‘Why don’t you get out?’ he retorted, returning to his task.
Elínborg thanked him for his help. This was the second bar she had visited after she’d received a tip from the Drug Squad about where Rohypnol might be available. They were cooperating with the CID on the Thingholt case.
Elínborg knew that Rohypnol was a medication that was used to treat sleep disorders. Under strict Icelandic legislation it was obtainable only on prescription, from a doctor. Runólfur had not been registered with any GP but Elínborg was able to ascertain without much difficulty that he had been to two doctors since moving to Reykjavík. Three years had passed between the two occasions so Runólfur did not appear to have had any major health problems, just as the pathologist had said. Neither doctor would reveal any information about their consultations with Runólfur without a court order, but both were able to confirm that they had not prescribed Rohypnol. It was no surprise to Elínborg that she was unable to trace the Rohypnol concerned to a doctor. Runólfur could have bought the drug in another country, but he had not left Iceland in the past six years. So far as his colleagues remembered, his last trip abroad had been to Benidorm in Spain where he had spent three weeks. Airline manifests showed that he had not flown anywhere since then, so the likeliest explanation was that he had got hold of the drug in Iceland, on the black market.
Elínborg approached one of the bar’s customers, a woman of indeterminate age who sat sucking in the smoke of her roll-up. The tiny stub burned her lip and she flicked it away. On the table stood a half-full glass of beer, and next to it an empty shot glass.
All at the taxpayer’s expense, Sigurdur Óli would have growled.
‘Seen Berti around, Solla?’ Elínborg asked as she sat down.
The woman glanced up. She was wearing a grubby coat and a battered hat: she might well have been in her forties, or she could even have been getting on for eighty. ‘What business is that of yours?’ she replied hoarsely.
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘Why don’t you talk to me instead?’ retorted Solla.
‘Maybe later,’ Elínborg said. ‘Right now I’ve got to get hold of Berti.’
‘No one wants to talk to me,’ Solla grumbled.
‘Nonsense.’
‘It isn’t. Nobody does.’
‘Have you seen Berti recently?’ Elínborg asked again.
‘No.’
Elínborg eyed the other two customers: a man and a woman she had not seen before, sitting with their glasses of beer, smoking. The man said something, then stood up and put a coin in the fruit machine in the corner. The woman stayed at the table, drinking.
‘What do you want with Berti?’ Solla enquired.
‘It’s in connection with a rape case,’ replied Elínborg.
Solla turned her attention from her beer. ‘Did he rape someone?’
‘No, not him. I need some information from him.’
Solla took a gulp of her drink and watched the man playing the fruit machine. ‘Fucking rapists,’ she murmured.
Elínborg had come across Solla several times over the years. She no longer remembered the woman’s full name, if she had ever known it. From a young age Solla had lived a pitiful life: she had fallen in with losers, incorrigible drinkers and junkies, lived on her own, been in residential care and in halfway homes, slept rough. She had had the occasional brush with the law, arising from some minor incident such as shoplifting or pinching clothes off washing lines, but she was quite harmless except when she was very drunk. Then she became touchy and aggressive, which tended to get her into trouble. She had been beaten up repeatedly, was a regular at the hospital casualty department, and had spent the odd night in police cells.
‘I’m investigating an alleged rapist,’ said Elínborg, wondering if alleged would mean anything to Solla.
‘Hope you get the bastard,’ Solla said.
‘We’ve got him already. We want to find out who killed him,’ Elínborg explained.
‘He’s dead? The case is solved, then, isn’t it?’
‘We want to know who did it.’
‘Why? You going to give him a medal?’
‘It was probably a woman who killed him.’
‘Good for her!’ exclaimed Solla.
‘I hear Berti sometimes comes here …’
‘He’s an idiot,’ Solla exclaimed. She lowered her voice. ‘I don’t use that bloody filth he sells.’
‘I just need to talk to him. He hasn’t been at home.’
According to the Drug Squad, Berti ran a nice line in getting hold of prescription medicines. He spun a story to various doctors around town and some of them would prescribe whatever he asked for, no questions asked. Berti sold on the drugs he got this way for a decent profit. Rohypnol was one such substance. There was no conclusive evidence that any of his clients were using it as a date-rape drug, any more than that they were taking it to treat sleep disorders. Rohypnol was also effective for the withdrawal symptoms experienced by cocaine addicts. In Runólfur’s flat they had found no sign of any other drug use, which was taken to mean that he had used the Rohypnol for one purpose only — assuming that it had in fact belonged to the dead man.
Elínborg sat silently, watching Solla and thinking about prescription medications, coke, drug withdrawal and rape, and reflected on how sad and degraded human life could be.
‘Do you know anything recent about Berti?’ she asked. ‘Any idea where I might be able to find him?’
‘I’ve seen him with Binna Geirs,’ Solla replied.
‘Binna?’
‘He’s got a thing for that hag.’
‘Thank you, Solla.’
‘Yeah, thank me, right … will you buy me a beer? So he doesn’t chuck me out,’ she said, with a nod at the bar where the proprietor was frowning at them.
It emerged that Runólfur had worked out. A surveillance camera in the gym where he had been a member showed that he had been there on the day of his death, at around one p.m. on the Saturday. He left an hour and a half later. He was alone, and to judge from the footage had not spoken to anyone: no member of staff, and no woman who might have left with him. The staff did not specifically remember Runólfur that day but they were familiar with him as a regular and had no complaints about him.
One of the owners, a personal trainer, spoke well of Runólfur, who had transferred from another gym about two years ago. Elínborg gathered that this was one of the most popular gyms in the city. She saw a range of exercise equipment: treadmills, weight machines, exercise cycles and other machinery that she did not recognise. On the walls were giant flatscreens to entertain the clients as they went for the burn.
‘He taught me, rather than me teaching him,’ said the personal trainer, with a smile at Elínborg. They were standing in the main gym. ‘He knew it all.’
‘Did he come here regularly?’ Elínborg asked. She was holding a gym membership card which they had found among Runólfur’s possessions.