Stina gave a broad smile.
Erlendur sized her up.
“I know you’re my daughter’s friend and you’ve been helpful,” he said, “but you shouldn’t go comparing yourself with Osp. For a start, she doesn’t have itchy stitches.”
Stina looked at him, still smiling out of one corner of her mouth, then walked out of the office without a word and through the lobby. On the way she swung her fur-collared coat over her, but now her motions lacked all dignity. She came face to face with Sigurdur Oli and Gudlaugur’s sister as they entered the lobby, and Erlendur saw Sigurdur Oli goggle at Stina’s breasts. He thought to himself that she must have got her money’s worth after all.
The hotel manager stood nearby as if he had been waiting for Erlendur’s meeting to finish. Osp was standing by the lift and watched Stina leave the hotel. It was obvious that Osp recognised her. When Stina walked past the head of reception who was sitting at his desk, he looked up and watched her go out through the door. He glanced over at the hotel manager who waddled off in the direction of the kitchen, and Osp entered the lift, which closed behind her.
“What’s behind all this tomfoolery, may I ask?” Erlendur heard Gudlaugur’s sister say as she approached him. “What’s the meaning of such effrontery and rudeness?”
“Effrontery and rudeness?” Erlendur said in a quizzical voice. “That doesn’t sound familiar.”
“This man here,” the sister said, clearly unaware of Sigurdur Oli’s name, “this man has been rude to me and I demand an apology.”
“Out of the question,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“He pushed me and led me out of my home like a common criminal.”
“I handcuffed her,” Sigurdur Oli said. “And I won’t apologise. She can forget that. She called me plenty of names and Elinborg too, and she resisted. I want to lock her up. She was impeding a police officer in the execution of his duty.”
Stefania Egilsdottir looked at Erlendur and said nothing.
“I’m not accustomed to such treatment,” she said at last.
“Take her down the station,” Erlendur said to Sigurdur Oli. “Put her in the cell next to Henry Wapshott. We’ll talk to her tomorrow.” He looked at the woman. “Or the day after.”
“You can’t do this,” Stefania said, and Erlendur could tell that she was severely taken aback. “You have no reason to treat me like this. Why do you think you can throw me in prison? What have I done?”
“You’ve been lying,” Erlendur said. “Goodbye.” And then to Sigurdur Oli, “We’ll be in touch.”
He turned away from them and set off in the direction the hotel manager had gone. Sigurdur Oli took Stefania by the arm and was about to lead her away, but she stood rooted to the spot and stared at Erlendur’s retreating back.
“All right,” she called after him. She tried to shake off Sigurdur Oli. “This is not necessary,” she said. “We can sit down and talk this over like human beings”
Erlendur stopped and turned around.
“My brother,” she said. “Let’s talk about my brother if you want. But I don’t know what you’ll gain by it”
They sat down in Gudlaugur’s little room. She said she wanted to go there. Erlendur asked whether she had been there before and she denied it. When he asked whether she had not met her brother in all those years, she repeated what she had said before, that she had not been in contact with her brother. Erlendur was convinced that she was lying. That her business at the hotel five days before Gudlaugur’s murder was in some way connected with him, not mere coincidence.
She looked at the poster of Shirley Temple in the role of the Little Princess without the slightest change of expression or word of comment. Opening the wardrobe, she saw his doorman’s uniform. Finally she sat down on the only chair in the room, while Erlendur propped himself up against the wardrobe. Sigurdur Oli had meetings scheduled in Hafnarfjordur with more of Gudlaugur’s old classmates and left when they went down to the basement.
“He died here,” the sister said without a hint of regret in her voice, and Erlendur wondered, just as he had at their first meeting, why this woman apparently lacked all feeling towards her brother.
“Stabbed through the heart,” Erlendur said. “Probably with a knife from the kitchen,” he added. “There is blood on the bed.”
“How sparse,” she said, looking around the room. “That he should have lived here all those years. What was the man thinking of?”
“I was hoping you could help me with that one.”
She looked at him and said nothing.
“I don’t know” Erlendur went on. He regarded it as ample. Some people can only live in a villa five hundred metres square. I understand that he benefited from living and working at the hotel. There were plenty of perks.”
“Have you found the murder weapon?” she asked.
“No, but perhaps something resembling it,” Erlendur said. Then he stopped and waited for her to speak, but she did not utter a word and a good while elapsed until she broke the silence.
“Why do you claim I’m lying to you?”
“I don’t know how much of it is a lie but I do know that you’re not telling me everything. You’re not telling me the truth. But of course above all you’re not telling me anything and I’m astonished at your and your father’s reaction to Gudlaugur’s death. It’s as if he was nothing to do with you.”
She took a good long look at Erlendur, then seemed to make a decision.
“There were three years between us,” she said suddenly, “and, young as I was, I still remember the first time they brought him home. One of my first memories in life, I expect. He was the apple of his father’s eye from day one. Dad was always devoted to him and I think he had great things in mind for him from the very start. It didn’t come of its own accord, as it should have done perhaps — our father always had something big planned for when Gudlaugur grew up.”
“What about you?” Erlendur asked. “Didn’t he see you as a genius?”
“He was always kind to me,” she said, “but he worshipped Gudlaugur.”
“And drove him on until he broke down.”
“You want to have things simple,” she said “Things rarely are. I would have thought that a man like you, a policeman, realised that.”
“I don’t think this revolves around me,” Erlendur said.
“No,” she said. “Of course not.”
“How did Gudlaugur end up alone and abandoned in this little room? Why did you hate him so much? I could conceivably understand your father’s attitude if Gudlaugur cost him his health but I don’t understand why you take such a harsh stand against him.”
“Cost him his health?” she said, looking at Erlendur in surprise.
“When he pushed him down the stairs,” Erlendur said. “I’ve heard that story.”
“From whom?”
“That’s not important. Is it true? Did he cripple your father?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Definitely not,” Erlendur said. “Unless it concerns the investigation. Then I’m afraid it’s more people’s business than just you two.”
Saying nothing, Stefania looked at the blood on the bed, while Erlendur pondered why she wanted to talk to him in the room where her brother had been murdered. He thought of asking her, but could not bring himself to.
“It can’t always have been that way,” he said instead. “The choirmaster told me you came to your brother’s rescue when he lost his voice on stage. At some point you were friends. At some point he was your brother.”