Arnaldur Indridason - Tainted Blood

She was so startled that she dropped her glass, spilling water over the kitchen table. She shouted out when his hands grabbed her breasts, and backed away from him into a corner.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Shouldn't we have a bit of fun?" he said and stood in front of her, muscularly built with strong hands and thick fingers.

"I want you to leave," she said firmly. "Now! Will you please get out of here."

"Shouldn't we have a bit of fun?" he repeated. He took a step closer to her and she held out her arms as if in self-defence.

"Keep off!" she shouted. "I'll phone the police!" Suddenly she could feel how alone and defenceless she was facing this stranger whom she had let into her home and who by now had moved up close to her, had twisted her arms behind her back and was trying to kiss her.

She fought back, but it was useless. She tried to talk to him, talk him out of it, but all she could feel was her own vulnerability.

Erlendur snapped out of his thoughts when a gigantic lorry sounded its horn and overtook him with a mighty rumbling that sent waves of rainwater washing over his car. He tugged at the steering wheel and the car danced on the water for a moment. The rear of the car slid around and, for a second, Erlendur thought he was going to lose control and be thrown out into the lava field. He ground almost to a halt and managed to keep himself on the road, then hurled abuse at the lorry driver who by now had vanished from his sight in the spray of rain.

Twenty minutes later he pulled up outside a small corrugated-iron-clad house in the oldest part of Keflavik. It was painted white with a little white fence around it and a garden that was kept almost too fastidiously. The sister's name was Elin. She was several years older than Kolbrun and now retired. She was standing in the hallway, wearing her coat and on her way out, when Erlendur rang the doorbell. She looked at him in astonishment, a short, slim woman with a tough expression on her face, piercing eyes, high cheekbones and wrinkles around her mouth.

"I thought I told you on the phone I didn't want anything to do with you or the police," she said angrily when Erlendur had introduced himself.

"I know," Erlendur said, "but. ."

"I'm asking you to leave me alone," she said. "You shouldn't have wasted your time coming all the way out here."

She stepped out onto the doorstep, closed the door behind her, went down the three steps leading to the garden and opened the little gate in the fence, leaving it open as a sign that she wanted Erlendur to leave. She didn't look at him. Erlendur stood on the steps, watching her walk away.

"You know Holberg's dead," he called out.

She didn't answer.

"He was murdered in his home. You know that."

Erlendur was at the bottom of the steps, hurrying after her. She held a black umbrella onto which the rain poured above her head. He had nothing more than a hat to keep the rain off. She quickened her pace. He ran to catch up with her. He didn't know what to say to make her listen to him. Didn't know why she reacted to him as she did.

"I wanted to ask you about Audur," he said.

Elin suddenly stopped and turned round and marched up to him with a contemptuous look on her face.

"You bloody cop," she hissed between her clenched teeth. "Don't you dare mention her name. How dare you? After what you did to her mother. Get lost! Get lost this minute! Bloody cop!"

She looked at Erlendur with hatred in her eyes and he stared back at her.

"After all we did to her?" he said. "To whom?"

"Go away," she shouted, and turned and walked away, leaving Erlendur where he was. He gave up the chase and watched her disappearing in the rain, stooping slightly, in her green raincoat and black ankle boots. He turned around and walked back to her house and his car, deep in thought. He got inside and lit a cigarette, opened the window a crack, started the engine and slowly drove away from the house.

As he inhaled he felt a slight pain in the middle of his chest again. It wasn't new. It had been causing Erlendur some concern for almost a year now. A vague pain that greeted him in the mornings but generally disappeared soon after he got out of bed. He didn't have a good mattress to sleep on. Some-times his whole body ached if he lay in bed for too long.

He inhaled the smoke. Hopefully it was the mattress.

As Erlendur was putting out his cigarette his mobile phone rang in his coat pocket. It was the head of forensics with the news that they had managed to decipher the inscription on the grave and had located it in the Bible.

"It's taken from Psalm 64," the head of forensics said.

"Yes," said Erlendur.

" 'Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.' "

"Pardon?"

"It's what it says on the gravestone: Preserve my life from fear of the enemy. From Psalm 64."

"'Preserve my life from fear of the enemy'."

"Does that help you at all?"

"I've no idea."

"There were two sets on fingerprints on the photograph."

"Yes, Sigurdur Oli told me."

"One set is Holberg's but we don't have the others on our files. They're quite blurred. Very old fingerprints."

"Can you tell what kind of camera the photo was taken with?" Erlendur asked.

"Impossible to tell. But I doubt it was a high-quality one."

Sigurdur Oli parked his car in the Iceland Transport yard where he hoped it would be out of the way. Lorries were standing in rows in the yard. Some were being loaded, some driven away, others reversed up to the cargo warehouse. A stench of diesel and oil filled the air and the noise from the engines of the trucks was deafening. Staff and customers were rushing around the yard and the warehouse.

The Met Office had forecast yet more wet weather. Sigurdur Oli tried to protect himself from the rain by pulling his coat over his head as he ran to the warehouse. He was directed to the foreman who was sitting in a glass cubicle checking papers and appeared to be extremely busy.

A plump man wearing a blue anorak done up with a single button across his paunch and holding a cigar stub between his fingers, the foreman had heard about Holberg's death and said he'd known him quite well. Described him as a reliable man, a hard worker who'd been driving from one end of the country to the other for decades and knew Iceland's road network like the back of his hand. Said he was a secretive type, never talked about himself or in personal terms, never made any friends at the company or talked about what he'd done before, thought he'd always been a lorry driver. Talked as if he had been. Unmarried with no children, as far as he knew. Never talked about his nearest and dearest.

"That's the long and the short of it," the foreman said as if to put an end to the conversation, took a lighter from his anorak pocket and lit the cigar stub. "Damn shame," puff, puff, "to go like that," puff.

"Who did he associate with here mainly?" Sigurdur Oli asked, trying not to inhale the foul-smelling cigar smoke.

"You can talk to Hilmar, I reckon he knew him best. Hilmar's out the front. He's from Reydarfjordur so sometimes he used to stay at Holberg's place in Nordurmyri when he needed to rest in town. There are rest rules that drivers have to comply with, so they have to have somewhere to stay in the city."

"Did he stay there last weekend, do you know?"

"No, he was working in the east. But he might have been there the weekend before."

"Can you imagine who would have wanted to do Holberg any harm? Some friction here at work or. ."

"No, no, nothing", puff, "like", puff, "that," puff. The man was having trouble keeping his cigar alight. "Talk to", puff, "Hilmar," puff, "mate. He might be able to help you."

Sigurdur Oli found Hilmar after following the foreman's directions. He was standing by one of the warehouse bays supervising a lorry being unloaded. Hilmar was a hulk, two metres tall, muscular, ruddy, bearded and with hairy arms protruding from his T-shirt. Looked about 50. Old-fashioned blue braces held up his tatty jeans. A small forklift was unloading the lorry. Another lorry was backing up to the next bay along; at the same time two drivers beeped their horns and hurled abuse at each other in the yard.