Arnaldur Indridason - Voices

“Are you there?” she asked, eyes still closed.

“Yes, I’m here,” Erlendur said wearily.

“Why don’t you say anything?”

“What am I supposed to say? What are people ever supposed to say?”

“Well, what you’re doing at this hotel, for instance. Seriously.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to go back to the flat. It’s a bit of a change.”

“Change! What’s the difference between hanging around by yourself in this room and hanging around by yourself at home?”

“Do you want to hear some music?” Erlendur asked, trying to steer the conversation away from himself. He began outlining the case to his daughter, point by point, to gain some kind of a picture of it himself. He told her about the girl who found a stabbed Santa, once an exceptionally gifted choirboy who had made two records that were sought-after by collectors. His voice was unique.

He reached for the record he had yet to listen to. It contained two hymns and was clearly designed for Christmas. On the sleeve was Gudlaugur wearing a Santa hat, with a wide smile showing his adult teeth, and Erlendur thought about the irony of fate. He put the record on and the choirboy’s voice resounded around the room in beautiful, bitter-sweet song. Eva Lind opened her eyes and sat up on the bed.

“Are you joking?” she said.

“Don’t you think it’s magnificent?”

“I’ve never heard a kid sing like that,” Eva said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone sing so beautifully” They sat in silence and listened to the end of the song. Erlendur reached over to the record player, turned the record over and played the hymn on the other side. They listened to it, and when it was over Eva Lind asked him to play it again.

Erlendur told her about Gudlaugur’s family, the concert in Hafnarfjordur, his father and sister who had not been in touch with him for more than thirty years, and the British collector who tried to leave the country and was only interested in choirboys. Told her that Gudlaugur’s records might be valuable today.

“Do you think that’s why he got done?” Eva Lind asked. “Because of the records? Because they’re valuable now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are there any still around?”

“I don’t think so,” Erlendur said, “and that’s probably what makes them collectors” items. Elinborg says collectors look for something that’s unique. But that might not be important. Maybe someone at the hotel attacked him. Someone who didn’t know about the choirboy at all.”

Erlendur decided not to tell his daughter about the way Gudlaugur was found. He knew that when she was taking drugs she had prostituted herself and knew how it operated in Reykjavik. Yet he flinched from broaching that subject with her. She lived her own life and had her own way without him ever having any say in the matter. But since he thought there was a possibility that Gudlaugur had paid for sex at the hotel, he asked her if she knew of any prostitution there.

Eva Lind looked at her father.

“Poor bloke,” she said without answering him. Her mind was still on the choirboy. “There was a girl like that at my school. Primary school. She made a few records. Her name was Vala Dogg. You remember anything by her? She was really hyped. Sang Christmas carols. A pretty little blonde girl.”

Erlendur shook his head.

“She was a child star. Sang on children’s hour and TV shows and sang really well, a little sweetie-pie sort of type. Her dad was some obscure pop singer but it was her mum who was a bit of a nutter and wanted to make a pop star out of her. She got teased big time. She was really nice, not a show-off or pretentious in the least, but people were always bugging her. Icelanders get jealous and annoyed so easily. She was bullied, so she left school and got a job. I met her a lot when I was doing dope and she’d turned into a total creep. Worse than me. Burned-out and forgotten. She told me it was the worst thing that ever happened to her.”

“Being a child star?”

“It ruined her. She never escaped from it. Was never allowed to be herself. Her mum was really bossy. Never asked her if it was what she wanted. She liked singing and being in the spotlight and all that, but she had no idea what was going on. She could never be anything more than the little cutie on children’s hour. She was only allowed to have one dimension. She was pretty little Vala Dogg. And then she got teased about it, and couldn’t understand why until she got older and realised that she’d never be anything but a pretty little dolly singing in her frock. That she’d never be a world-famous pop star like her mum always told her.”

Eva Lind stopped talking and looked at her father.

“She totally fell to bits. She said the bullying was the worst thing, it turns you into shit. You end up with exactly the same opinion of yourself as the people who persecute you.”

“Gudlaugur probably went through the same,” Erlendur said. “He left home young. It must be a strain for kids having to go through all that.”

They fell silent.

“Of course there are tarts at this hotel,” Eva Lind suddenly said, throwing herself back on the bed. “Obviously.”

“What do you know about it? Is there anything you could help me with?”

“There are tarts everywhere. You can dial a number and they wait for you at the hotel. Classy tarts. They don’t call themselves tarts, they provide “escort services”.”

“Do you know of any who work this hotel? Girls or women who do that?”

“They don’t have to be Icelandic. They’re imported too. They can come over as tourists for a couple of weeks, then they don’t need any papers. Then come back a few months later.”

Eva Lind looked at her father.

“You could talk to Stina. She’s my friend. She knows the game. Do you think it was a tart who killed him?”

“I have no idea.”

They fell silent. Outside in the darkness snowflakes glittered as they fell to the ground. Erlendur vaguely recalled a reference to snow in the Bible, sins and snow, and tried to remember it: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

“I’m freaking out,” Eva Lind said. There was no excitement in her voice. No eagerness.

“Maybe you can’t handle it by yourself,” Erlendur said; he had urged his daughter to seek counselling. “Maybe you need someone other than me to help you.”

“Don’t give me that psychology bollocks,” Eva said.

“You haven’t got over it and you don’t look well, and soon you’ll go and take the pain away the old way, then you’re back in exactly the same mess as before.”

Erlendur was on the verge of saying the sentence he still had not dared to say out loud to his daughter.

“Preaching all the time,” Eva Lind said, instantly on edge, and she stood up.

He decided to fire away.

“You’d be failing the baby that died.”

Eva Lind stared at her father, her eyes black with rage.

“The other option you have is to come to terms with this fucking life, as you call it, and put up with the suffering it involves. Put up with the suffering we all have to endure, always, to get through that and find and enjoy the happiness and joy that it brings us as well, in spite of our being alive.”

“Speak for yourself! You can’t even go home at Christmas because there’s nothing there! Not a fucking thing and you can’t go there because you know it’s just a hole with nothing in it which you can’t be bothered to crawl back into any more.”

“I’m always at home at Christmas,” Erlendur said.

Eva Lind looked confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s the worst thing about Christmas,” Erlendur said. “I always go home.”