Arnaldur Indridason - Voices

The father watched Elinborg without saying a word.

“You used a weapon that we have not managed to identify, a rounded or at least blunt instrument; possibly you banged him against the head of the bed. You persistently kicked him. Before calling an ambulance you tidied up in the lounge. You wiped up the liqueur with three towels, which you threw in the dustbin outside the house. You vacuum-cleaned the tiniest fragments of glass. You swept the marble floor as well and gave it a quick scrub. You washed the cabinet carefully. You took the boy’s socks off and threw them in the dustbin. You used detergent on the stains on the stairs but did not manage to remove them completely.”

“You can’t prove a thing, since it’s rubbish anyway. The boy hasn’t said anything. He hasn’t said a word about who assaulted him. Why don’t you try to find his classmates?”

“Why didn’t you tell us about the liqueur?”

“It’s nothing to do with this.”

“And the socks in the dustbin? The little footprints on the staircase?”

“A liqueur bottle did get broken, but I was the one who broke it. It happened two days before my boy was attacked. I was getting myself a drink when I dropped it on the floor and it smashed. Addi saw this and it made him jump. I told him to be careful where he walked, but by then he had trodden in the spillage and ran up the stairs to his room. This has nothing to do with him being attacked and I must say this scenario astonishes me. You haven’t a shred of evidence! Has he said that I hit him? I doubt that. And he never will say it, because it wasn’t me. I’d never do anything like this to him. Never.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about it straight away?”

“Straight away?”

“When we found the stains. You didn’t say anything about it then.”

“This is precisely what I thought would happen. I knew you’d link that accident with Addi getting beaten up. I didn’t want to complicate matters. The boys at the school did it.”

“Your company’s heading for bankruptcy,” Elinborg said. “You’ve laid off twenty employees and expect to make more redundancies. I expect you’re under a lot of strain. You’re losing your house…”

“That’s just business,” he said.

“We have reason to believe you’ve used violence before.”

“Hey, wait a minute …”

“We checked the medical reports. Twice in the past four years he has broken his finger.”

“Have you got kids? Kids are always having accidents. This is nonsense.”

“A paediatrician remarked on the broken finger the second time and informed the child welfare agency. It was the same finger. The agency sent people to your house. Examined the conditions. Found nothing of note. The paediatrician came and found needlemarks on the back of the boy’s hand.”

The father said nothing.

Elinborg could not control herself.

“You bastard,” she hissed.

“I want to talk to my lawyer,” he said and looked away.

“I said, good morning!”

Erlendur returned to his senses and saw Henry Wapshott standing over him. Absorbed in his thoughts about the fleeing boy, he hadn’t noticed Wapshott walk into the bar or heard his greeting.

He leaped to his feet and shook him by the hand. Wapshott was wearing the same clothes as the previous day. His hair was more unkempt and he looked tired. He ordered coffee, and so did Erlendur.

“We were talking about collectors,” Erlendur said.

“Yes,” Wapshott said, a wincing smile forming on his face. “A bunch of loners, such as myself!

“How does a collector like you in the UK find out that forty years ago there was a choirboy with a beautiful voice in Hafnarfjordur in Iceland?”

“Oh, much more than a beautiful voice,” Wapshott said. “Much, much more than that. He had a unique voice, that boy.”

“How did you hear about Gudlaugur Egilsson?”

“Through people with the same interest as me. Record collectors specialise, as I believe I told you yesterday. If we take choral music, for example: collectors can be divided into those who collect only certain songs or certain arrangements, and others who collect certain choirs. Others still, like me, choirboys. Some collect only choirboys who recorded 78 rpm glass records, which they stopped manufacturing in the sixties. Others go in for 45 rpm singles, but only from one particular label. There are infinite types of specialisation. Some look for all the versions of a single song, let’s say “Stormy Weather”, which I’m sure you know. Just so you understand what’s involved. I heard about Gudlaugur through a group or association of Japanese collectors who run a big website for trading. No one collects Western music on the scale of the Japanese. They go all over the world like Hoovers, buying up everything that’s ever been released that they can get their hands on. Particularly Beatles and hippy music. They’re renowned in the record markets, and the best thing of all is that they have money.”

Erlendur was wondering whether it was permitted to smoke at the bar and decided to give it a shot. Seeing that he was about to have a cigarette, Wapshott took out a crumpled packet of Chesterfields and Erlendur gave him a light.

“Do you think we can smoke here?” Wapshott asked.

“We’ll find out,” Erlendur said.

“The Japanese had one copy of Gudlaugur’s first single,” Wapshott said. “The one I showed you last night. I bought it from them. Cost me a fortune but I don’t regret it. When I asked about its background they said they’d bought it from a collector from Bergen in Norway at a record fair in Liverpool. I got in touch with the Norwegian collector and found out that he’d bought some records from the estate of a music publisher in Trondheim. He may have had the copy sent from Iceland, possibly even by someone who wanted to promote the boy abroad.”

“A lot of research for an old record,” Erlendur said.

“Collectors are like genealogists. Part of the fun is tracing the origin. Since then I’ve tried to acquire more copies of his records, but it’s very tough. He only made the two recordings.”

“You said the Japanese sold you your copy for a fortune. Are these records worth anything?”

“Only to collectors,” Wapshott said. “And we’re not talking about huge sums”

“But big enough for you to come up here to Iceland to buy more. That’s why you wanted to meet Gudlaugur. To find out if he had any copies”

“I’ve been dealing with two or three Icelandic collectors for some time now. That goes back long before I became interested in Gudlaugur. Unfortunately, virtually none of his records are around any more. The Icelandic collectors couldn’t locate any. I might have a copy on the way through the Internet from Germany. I came here to meet those collectors, to meet Gudlaugur because I adore his singing, and to go to record shops here and look at the market.”

“Do you make a living from this?”

“Hardly,” Wapshott said, chugging on his Chesterfield, his fingers yellow after decades of smoking. “I came into an inheritance. Properties in Liverpool. I manage them, but most of my time goes on collecting records. You could call it a passion.”

“And you collect choirboys”

“Yes.”

“Have you found anything interesting on this trip?”

“No. Nothing. There doesn’t seem to be much interest in preserving anything here. It all has to be modern. Old stuff is rubbish. Nothing is worth keeping. People seem to treat records badly here. They’re just thrown away. From dead people’s estates, for example. No one is called in to examine them. They’re just driven off to the dump. For a long time I used to think that a company in Reykjavik called Sorpa was a collectors” society. It was always being mentioned in correspondence. It turned out to be a recycling plant that runs a second-hand outlet on the side. Collectors here find all kinds of valuables among the rubbish and sell them over the Internet for good money.”