“What’s that?” Einar asked.
“The disease,” Erlendur said.
“I don’t understand…”
“It’s Audur’s bio-sample. I think we ought to return it to her.”
Einar looked at the bag and at Erlendur in turn, unsure of what to do. Erlendur moved even closer until he was beside the coffin, which separated them, and he put the bag down on it and calmly backed away again to where he had been standing before.
“I want to be cremated,” Einar suddenly said.
“You’ve got your whole life to arrange that,” Erlendur said.
“Oh yes, a whole life,” Einar said, raising his voice. “What’s that? What’s a life when it’s seven years? Can you tell me that ? What kind of life is that?”
“I can’t answer that,” Erlendur said. “Do you have the gun on you?”
“I talked to Elin,” Einar said, ignoring his question. “You probably know. We talked about Audur. My sister. I knew about her but I didn’t know she was my sister until later. I saw you taking her out of the grave. I could understand Elin when she tried to attack you.”
“How did you know about Audur?”
“From the database. I found all the people who died of this particular strain of the disease. I didn’t know then that I was Holberg’s son and Audur was my sister. I found that out later. How I was conceived. When I asked my mother.”
He looked at Erlendur.
“After I discovered I was a carrier.”
“How did you link Holberg and Audur?”
“Through the disease. The strain of it. The brain tumour is that rare.”
Einar fell silent for a moment and then began giving, methodically and without any digressions or sentimentality, an exact account of his doings, as if he’d been preparing to do so. He never raised his voice but always spoke in the same low tone which sometimes dropped to a whisper. The rain fell to the ground and onto the coffin and the hollow echo from it could be heard in the still of the night. He described how his daughter fell ill out of the blue when she was four years old. The disease proved difficult to diagnose and months went by until the doctors concluded it was a rare neural disease. It was thought to be genetically transmitted and was confined to certain families but the peculiar thing was that it didn’t occur on either his mother’s or his father’s side of the family. It was a kind of deviation or variant strain, which the doctors had difficulty explaining, unless some kind of mutation had taken place.
They said the disease was in the child’s brain and could kill her in the space of a couple of years. What followed was a period that Einar said he couldn’t begin to describe to Erlendur.
“Have you got any children?” he asked.
“Two,” Erlendur said. “A boy and a girl.”
“We just had her,” he said, “and we split up when she died. Somehow there was nothing to keep us together except the sorrow and memories and the struggles at the hospital. When that was over it was like our lives were over too. There was nothing left.”
Einar stopped talking and closed his eyes as if he was about to fall asleep. The rain dripped down his face.
“I was one of the first employees at the new company,” he said then. “When the database was set up I seemed to come back to life. I couldn’t accept the doctors’ answers. I had to find explanations. I regained my interest in finding out how the disease had been transmitted to my daughter, if that was possible. The health database is linked to a genealogy database and the two can be processed together and if you know what you’re looking for and have the key to the encryption you can see where the disease lies and you can trace it back along the family tree. You can even see the deviations. Deviations like me. And Audur.”
“I talked to Karitas at the Genetic Research Centre,” Erlendur said, wondering how he could get through to Einar. “She described to me the trick you played. This is all so new for us. People don’t understand exactly what can be done with all the information that’s been collected. What it contains and what you can read into it.”
“I was beginning to suspect something. My daughter’s doctors had a theory it was genetically transmitted. At first I thought I was simply adopted and it would certainly have been better that way. If they’d adopted me. Then I started suspecting my mother. I tricked her into giving me a blood sample. My father too. I couldn’t find anything in them. Neither of them. But I found it in me.”
“You don’t have any symptoms?”
“Very few,” Einar said, “I’ve lost most of my hearing in one ear. There’s a tumour by the aural nerve. Benign. And I’ve got marks on my skin.”
“ Cafe au lait?”
“You’ve done your homework. I could have contracted the disease through a genetic change. A mutation. But I thought the other explanation was more plausible. In the end I went to the database and got the names of several carriers my mother could have had a relationship with. Holberg was one of them. She told me the whole story straightaway when I challenged her with my suspicions. How she’d kept quiet about the rape and that I’d never suffered for my origins. On the contrary. I’m the youngest son,” he said by way of explanation. “The little baby boy.”
“I know,” Erlendur said.
“What a thing to hear!” Einar shouted out into the still of the night. “I wasn’t my father’s son; my real father raped my mother; I was the son of a rapist; he’d given me corrupt genes that hardly touched me but killed my daughter; I had a half-sister who died of the same disease. I still haven’t taken it all in. Still haven’t managed to grasp it. When my mother told me about Holberg the rage swelled up in me and I just snapped. He was a repulsive character.”
“You started by phoning him.”
“I wanted to hear his voice. Don’t all bastards want to meet their father?” Einar said, a smile playing across his lips. “Even if it is just the once.”
44
The rain had been gradually letting up and now it stopped. The lantern cast a yellow glow onto the ground and the rain, which ran in little streams down the path by the graves. They stood motionless, facing one another, with the coffin between them, looking each other in the eye.
“He must have been shocked to see you,” Erlendur said eventually. He knew the police were on their way to the cemetery and he wanted to make the most of this time he had with Einar before the fuss began. He also knew Einar was almost certainly armed. There was no sign of the shotgun but he couldn’t rule out that Einar had it with him. Einar had one hand inside his coat.
“You should have seen his face,” Einar said. “It was like he’d seen a ghost from the past, and that ghost was his own self.”
Holberg stood in the doorway looking at the man who rang the bell. He had never seen him before but still he recognised the face immediately.
“Hello, Dad,” Einar said sarcastically. He couldn’t hide his rage.
“Who are you?” Holberg said, astonished.
“I’m your son,” Einar said.
“What is all this… are you the one who’s been phoning me? I want to ask you to leave me in peace. I don’t know you in the slightest. You’re not in your right mind.”
They were similar in height and appearance but what Einar found most surprising was how elderly and feeble Holberg looked. When he spoke it was with a wheeze from deep within his lungs after decades of smoking. His face was drawn, sharp-featured, with dark rings under the eyes. His dirty, grey hair stuck down firmly against his head. His skin withered, his fingertips yellow, a slight stoop, his eyes colourless and dull.
Holberg was about to close the door but Einar was stronger and pushed his way into the flat. He sensed the smell immediately. Like the smell of horses, but worse.