Arnaldur Indridason - Voices

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.

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.

After toying with the idea he decided to shelve it for the time being.

Instead, he went up to Henry Wapshotts room. He broke the police seal that had been put on the door. The forensics team had taken care not to move anything. Erlendur stood still for a long time, scanning all around. He was looking for some kind of wrapper from a packet of chewing tobacco.

It was a twin room with two single beds, both unmade as if Wapshott had either slept in both of them or had had a guest for the night. On one table was an old record player connected to an amplifier and two small speakers, and on the other was a 14-inch television set and a video player. Two tapes lay beside it. Erlendur put one in the player and turned on the television, but switched it off as soon as the picture came on. Osp was right about the pornography.

He opened the drawer of the bedside table, took a good look inside Wapshotts suitcase, checked the cupboard and went into the bathroom, but did not find chewing tobacco anywhere. He looked in the wastepaper basket, but it was empty.

“Elinborg was right,” said Sigurdur Oli, who suddenly appeared in the room.

Erlendur turned round.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Scotland Yard sent us some information about him at last,” Sigurdur Oli said, looking around the room.

“I’m looking for chewing tobacco,” Erlendur said. “They found some on the condom.”

“I think I know why he doesn’t want to contact his embassy or a lawyer and is just hoping all this will blow over,” Sigurdur Oli said before relaying Scotland Yard’s information on the record collector.

Henry Wapshott, unmarried with no children, was born on the eve of the Second World War, in 1938, in Liverpool. His father’s family owned several valuable properties in the city. Some were bombed during the war and rebuilt as quality residential and office premises, which ensured a certain degree of wealth. Wapshott had never needed to work. An only child, he had the best education, Eton and Oxford, but did not complete his degree. When his father died he took over the family business but, unlike the old man, he had little interest in property management and soon attended only the most important meetings, until he stopped that as well and handed over the operations entirely to his managers.

He always lived in his parents” house and his neighbours regarded him as an eccentric loner; kindly and polite but strange and withdrawn. His only interest was collecting records and he filled his house with albums that he bought from the estates of dead people or at markets. He did a great deal of travelling for his hobby and was said to own one of the largest private record collections in Britain.

He had twice been found guilty of a criminal offence and was on Scotland Yard’s register of sex offenders. On the first occasion he was imprisoned for raping a twelve-year-old boy. The boy was a neighbour of Wapshott’s and they got to know each other through a common interest in collecting records. The incident took place at Wapshott’s parents” house, and when his mother heard of her son’s behaviour she had a breakdown; it was blown up in the British media, especially the tabloids, which portrayed Wapshott, born into the privileged class, as a beast. Investigations revealed that he paid boys and young men handsomely to perform sexual acts.

By the time he finished his sentence his mother had died, and he sold his parents” house and moved to another district. Several years later he was back in the news when two boys in their early teens revealed how Wapshott had offered them money to undress at his home, and he was charged with rape again. When the matter came to light Wapshott was in Baden Baden in Germany and was arrested at Brenner’s Hotel Spa.