“Not much,” Erlendur said. “But I do know that it can be dangerous. Why did you tell us that you hadn’t been in contact with your brother for almost three decades?”
“Because it’s true,” Stefania said.
“It’s not true,” Erlendur said. “You’re lying. Why are you lying about that?”
“Are you going to send me to prison for lying?”
“If I need to I will,” Erlendur said. “We know that you came to this hotel five days before he was murdered. You told us you hadn’t seen or been in contact with your brother for decades. Then we discover that you came to the hotel a few days before his death. On what business? And why did you lie to us?”
“I could have come to the hotel without meeting him. It’s a big hotel. Did that ever occur to you?”
“I doubt that. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you came to the hotel just before he died.”
He saw that she was prevaricating. Saw that she was mulling over whether to take the next step. She had patently prepared herself to give a more detailed account than at their first meeting, and now was the moment to decide whether to take the plunge.
“He had a key? she said in such a low voice that Erlendur could barely hear it. “The one you showed to me and my father.”
Erlendur remembered the key ring that was found in Gudlaugur’s room and the little pink penknife with a picture of a pirate on it. There were two keys on the ring, one that he thought was a door key and the other that could well fit a chest, cupboard or box.
“What about that key?” Erlendur asked. “Did you recognise it? Do you know what it fits?”
Stefania smiled.
“I have an identical key,” she said.
“What key is it?”
“It’s the key to our house in Hafnarfjordur.”
“You mean your home?”
“Yes,” Stefania said. “Where my father and I live. The key fits the basement door at the back of the house. Some narrow steps lead up from the basement to the hall and from there you can get into the living room and kitchen.”
“Do you mean …?” Erlendur tried to work out the implications of what she was saying. “Do you mean he went in the house?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought you weren’t in contact. You said you and your father hadn’t had anything to do with him for decades. That you didn’t want to have any contact with him. Why were you lying?”
“Because Dad didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“That he came. Gudlaugur must have missed us. I didn’t ask him, but he must have done. For him to do that.”
“What was it precisely that your father didn’t know?”
“That Gudlaugur sometimes came to our house at night without us being aware, sat in the living room without making a sound and left before we woke up. He did it for years and we never knew.”
She looked at the bloodstains on the bed.
“Until I woke up in the middle of the night once and saw him.”
24
Erlendur watched Stefania, her words racing through his mind. She was not as haughty as at their first meeting when Erlendur had been outraged at her lack of feeling for her brother, and he thought he may have judged her too quickly. He knew neither her nor her story well enough to be able to sit on his high horse, and suddenly he regretted his remark on her lack of conscience. It was not up to him to judge others, though he was always falling into that trap. To all intents and purposes he knew nothing about this woman who had suddenly turned so pitiful and terribly lonely in front of him. He realised that her life had been no bed of roses, first as a child living in her brother’s shadow, then a motherless teenager and finally a woman who never left her father’s side and probably sacrificed her life for him.
A good while passed in this way, each of them engrossed in their respective thoughts. The door to the little room was open and Erlendur went out into the corridor. All of a sudden he wanted to reassure himself that no one was outside, no one was eavesdropping. He looked along the poorly lit corridor but saw nobody. Turning round, he looked down to the end, but it was pitch dark. He thought to himself that anyone who went down there would have had to walk past the door and that he would have noticed. The corridor was empty. All the same, he had a strong feeling that they were not alone in the basement when he went back into the room. The smell in the corridor was the same as the first time he went there: something burning that he could not place. He did not feel comfortable. His first sight of the body was etched in his mind and the more he found out about the man in the Santa suit, the more wretched was the mental image he preserved and knew he could never shake off.
“Is everything all right?” Stefania asked, still sitting on the chair.
“Yes, fine,” Erlendur said. “A silly idea of mine. I had a feeling someone was in the corridor. Shouldn’t we go somewhere else? For coffee maybe?”
She looked across the room, nodded and stood up. They walked along the corridor in silence, up the stairs and across the lobby to the dining room where Erlendur ordered two coffees. They sat down to one side and tried not to let all the tourists disturb them.
“My father wouldn’t be pleased with me now,” Stefania said. “He’s always forbidden me to talk about the family. He can’t stand any invasion of his privacy”
“Is he in good health?”
“He’s in quite good health for his age. But I don’t know …” Her words trailed off.
“There’s no such thing as privacy when the police are involved,” Erlendur said. “Not to mention when murder has been committed.”
I’m starting to realise that. We were going to shake this off like it was none of our business, but I don’t expect anyone can claim immunity in these dreadful circumstances. I don’t suppose that’s part of the deal.”
“If I understand you correctly? Erlendur said, “you and your father had broken off all contact with Gudlaugur but he sneaked into the house at night without being noticed. What was his motive? What did he do? Why did he do this?”
“I never got a satisfactory answer out of him. He just sat still in the living room for an hour or two. Otherwise I’d have noticed him much earlier. He’d been doing it several times a year for years on end. Then one night about two years ago I couldn’t sleep and was lying in bed in a drowsy state at about four in the morning, when I heard a creaking noise in the sitting room downstairs, which of course startled me. My father’s room is downstairs and his door is always open at night, and I thought he was trying to get my attention. I heard another creak and wondered if it was a burglar, so I crept downstairs. I saw that the door to my father’s room was just as I’d left it, but when I entered the hall I saw someone dart down the stairs, and I called out to him. To my horror he stopped on the stairs, turned round and came back up.”
Stefania paused and stared ahead as if transported away from time and place.
“I thought he would attack me,” she began again. “I stood in the kitchen doorway and turned on the light, and there he was in front of me. I hadn’t seen him face to face for years, ever since he was a young man, and it took me a little while to realise that it was my brother.”
“How did you react to it?” Erlendur asked.
“It threw me completely. I was terrified too, because if it had been a burglar I should have rung the police instead of making all that fuss. I was trembling with fright and let out a scream when I switched on the light and saw his face. It must have been funny to see me so scared and nervous, because he started laughing.”
“Don’t wake Dad,” he said, putting a finger to his lips to hush her.