“It needn’t be the whole lot,” Marion said. “Maybe some of them. Who else would own them other than the choirboy himself?”
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “We’ve detained a collector who came over from the UK to meet Gudlaugur. A mysterious old sod who tried to run away from us and worships the ex-choirboy. He seems to be the only person around here who realises how much Gudlaugur’s records are worth.”
“Is he a nutter?” Marion Briem asked.
“Sigurdur Oli’s looking into that,” Erlendur said. “Gudlaugur was the hotel Santa,” he added, as if Santa was an official appointment there.
A smile passed over Marion’s grey old face.
“We found a note in Gudlaugur’s room saying Henry and the time 18.30, as if he’d been to a meeting or was supposed to go at that time. Henry Wapshott says he met him at half past six on the day before the murder.”
Erlendur fell silent, deep in thought.
“What are you brooding over?” Marion asked.
“Wapshott told me he paid Gudlaugur half a million kronur to prove he meant business, or words to that effect. In buying the records. That money could have been in the room when he was attacked.”
“Do you mean someone knew about Wapshott and his dealings with Gudlaugur?”
“Possibly.”
“Another collector?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Wapshott’s odd. I know he’s hiding something from us. Whether it’s about him or about Gudlaugur I don’t know.”
“And of course the money was gone when you found him.”
“Yes.”
“I must be going,” Marion said, standing up. Erlendur got to his feet too. “I can barely last half a day any more,” Marion said. “I’m dying of exhaustion. How’s your daughter doing?”
“Eva? I don’t know. I don’t think she feels too good.”
“Maybe you should spend Christmas with her.”
“Yes, maybe.”
“And your love life?”
“Stop going on about my love life,” Erlendur said, and his thoughts turned to Valgerdur. He wanted to phone her but lacked the nerve. What was he supposed to say? What business of hers was his past? What business of anyone’s was his life? Ridiculous, asking her out like that. He didn’t know what had come over him.
“I’m told you dined here with a woman,” Marion said. “That hasn’t happened for years to the best of our knowledge.”
“Who told you that?” Erlendur asked in astonishment.
“Who was the woman?” Marion asked back without answering him. “I hear she’s attractive.”
“There’s no woman,” Erlendur snarled and strutted away. Marion Briem watched him and then walked slowly out of the hotel, chuckling.
On his way down to the lobby, Erlendur had wondered how he could politely accuse the head chef of theft, but Marion had wound him up. After taking the man aside in the kitchen he had not an iota of discretion left in him.
“Are you a thief?” he asked straight out. “And all of you in the kitchen? Do you steal everything that isn’t bolted to the floor?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Santa might have been stabbed to death because he knew about a massive pilfering operation at this hotel. Maybe he was stabbed because he knew who ran the scam. Maybe you crept down to his hovel in the basement and stabbed him to death so he wouldn’t go spilling the beans to everyone. What do you reckon to that theory? And you robbed him in the process.”
The chef stared at Erlendur. “You’re crazy!” he grunted.
“Do you steal from the kitchen?”
“Who have you been talking to?” the chef asked in a deadly serious tone. “Who’s been filling your head with lies? Was it someone from the hotel?”
“Have they taken your saliva sample?”
“Who told you?”
“Why didn’t you want to give a sample?”
“It was done eventually. I think you’re a retard. Taking samples from all the hotel staff! Why? To make us all look like a load of wankers! And then you come calling me a thief. I’ve never stolen as much as a head of cabbage from this kitchen. Never! Who’s been telling you these lies?”
“If Santa had some dirt on you, for thieving, could it just be that he blackmailed you into doing him favours? Like su—”
“Shut up!” the head chef shouted. “Was it the pimp? Who told you these lies?”
Erlendur thought the chef was about to jump on him. He moved so close that their faces almost touched. His chef’s hat bent forward.
“Was it the fucking pimp?” the chef hissed.
“Who’s the pimp?”
“That fucking fat bastard of a manager,” the chef said through gritted teeth.
Erlendur’s mobile started ringing in his pocket. They looked each other in the eye, neither of them prepared to back down. At last Erlendur took out his mobile. The chef walked off, seething.
The head of forensics was on the phone.
“It’s about the saliva on the condom,” he told Erlendur.
“Yes,” Erlendur said, “have you traced the owner?”
“No, we’re still a long way from that,” the head of forensics said. “But we’ve looked at it more closely, the composition I mean, and we found traces of tobacco.”
“Tobacco? You mean pipe tobacco?”
“Well, it’s more like quid,” the voice said over the telephone.
“Quid? I’m not with you.”
“The chemical composition. You used to be able to buy quid in tobacco shops once but I’m not sure if it’s still around. Maybe in sweetshops, I don’t know if they’re still allowed to sell it. We need to check that. You stick it under your lip, either in a lump or in a gauze, you must have heard of it.”
The chef kicked a cupboard door and spouted curses.
“You’re talking about chewing tobacco,” Erlendur said. “Are there traces of chewing tobacco in the sample from the condom?”
“Bingo,” the voice said.
“So what does that mean?”
“The person who was with Santa chews tobacco.”
“What do we gain by knowing that?”
“Nothing. Yet. I just thought you’d want to know. And there’s another thing. You were asking about the Cortisol in the saliva.”
“Yes.”
“There wasn’t very much, in fact it was quite normal.”
“What does that tell us? It was all quiet on that front?”
“A high level of Cortisol indicates a rise in blood pressure due to excitement or stress. The person who was with the doorman was as calm as a millpond all the time. No stress. No excitement. They didn’t have anything to fear.”
“Until something happened,” Erlendur said.
“Yes,” the head of forensics said. “Until something happened.”
They finished the conversation and Erlendur put his mobile back in his pocket. The head chef stood staring at him.
“Do you know anyone here who chews tobacco?” Erlendur asked.
“Fuck off!” the chef screamed.
Erlendur took a deep breath, clasped his hands over his face and rubbed it wearily, then suddenly saw an image of Henry Wapshott’s tobacco-stained teeth.
20
Erlendur asked for the hotel manager at reception and was told he had popped out. The head chef refused to explain the pimp moniker when he mentioned the “fucking fat bastard of a manager”. Erlendur had rarely met anyone with such a temper. The chef must have realised that in his agitation he had let slip something. Erlendur made no headway. All he could get out of him were snide remarks and abuse, since the man was on home ground in the kitchen. To level the playing field and irritate the chef even further Erlendur thought of arranging for four uniformed police officers to turn up at the hotel and take him off for questioning at the station on Hverfisgata.