The Mistake Read online

  ‘Not really, I was never a big fan of the guy. A few of the tenants here were opposed to him moving in here in the first place and I was one of them. I didn’t mind him knowing that and I don’t mind you knowing that either.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘His stint in Kleppspítali put some of us off. We wouldn’t be prejudiced against anyone with those sorts of problems but the guy spent a long time there and we were just concerned that he might not fit in. They have halfway houses for those sorts, you know? I was always of the opinion that he would have been better suited to one of those places.’

  ‘Did the two of you ever talk about his time in Kleppspítali?’

  Davið Runar chuckled at the thought of that. His smile didn’t last long though and he was soon back to looking serious again.

  ‘I’m pretty sure he was aware of my opposition to him staying here from the very beginning so I don’t know that he would have opened up to me even if I had asked. He probably thought he’d paid his dues, earned the right to an opportunity to fit back in. But I didn’t agree with that. People like that bring baggage with them, sometimes an awful lot of it. He got himself a job of some kind and seemed to be keeping his nose clean but I always felt as if it was just a matter of time before something went wrong. Something always goes wrong, you see.

  ‘You can prepare for every contingency in this life but there’s always something that’s going to catch you out. He might have done his best to work things through but that best might not have been good enough. No one has complete control over their own destiny and some people have a lot less control than others. Some know enough to swim with the current while others are so busy flapping about it’s all they can do to not drown.’

  ‘And he was a flapper?’ Grímur asked with a trace of a smile on his lips.

  ‘He was flapping when I first laid eyes on him and I bet he’s still flapping now.’

  Grímur struggled to wipe the smile from his face as he pictured the paranoid young man meeting the world weary sea-captain for the first time. He pulled the photo of Gunnar Atli and Nanna out of his jacket pocket and showed it to Davið Runar.

  ‘Have you ever seen this girl before?’

  ‘Is that the dead girl?’

  ‘No, an old girlfriend of his from before his time in Kleppspítali.’

  ‘Funny, she looks like the girl who used to visit him here until recently.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know her name but she looked like that girl there. Not exactly the same, just awfully similar. Used to argue with him all the time, the way some women like to. She stayed with him for about a week and then disappeared.’

  ‘Did this girl have long dark hair like the one in the photo?’

  ‘The first couple of times I saw her she did but after that she cut it short and dyed it.’

  ‘Like she was going for a different look maybe?’

  ‘Sure, or she was trying to hide from someone. It wasn’t long after the thing with the hair that she moved in upstairs but like I said that only lasted a week and then she was gone.’

  ‘And how long ago was that?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her in maybe four or five days.’

  Grímur pulled out a picture of Bella that had been taken by Björn not long after her body had been found and handed it to Davið Runar. He studied it for a couple of seconds before handing it back without comment.

  ‘Is that the girl you saw here?’ Grímur asked.

  ‘That’s her, the one with the big mouth, only it’s even bigger now. You see what I mean about the way they look alike?’

  Grímur was pleased he wasn’t the only one who had noted the similarity. He stood up and turned around so he could see out the front window. To get any sort of view at all he had to stand at the very end of the sofa or directly in front of it.

  Either way his view was obscured by the ferns that grew just outside in the garden. There was no way that Davið Runar would have been able to see Bella where she had been hidden even if he’d known exactly where to look. Grímur thanked him for his time and told him that if he thought of anything else he should give him a call.

  He was going to need another talk with Gunnar Atli, and sooner rather than later. It appeared that the reliability of his memory had been affected in all sorts of ways recently.

  His next stop was the building where Bella had been living, just three doors up the street on the corner of Barónsstígur. He let himself into the building and went straight up to the first floor. When he let himself in with the keys Björn had given him he was instantly disappointed. Bella’s flat was so clean it looked as if someone had been over it with a toothbrush. It no longer even looked as if someone had been staying there. There were no dirty dishes, no rubbish in the bin, the bed had been made up recently with clean sheets and her bags were packed and ready and waiting where she had left them on the living room floor. Something didn’t feel right at all. If she had been in such a hurry to get away it seemed unlikely she would have gone to such an effort to clean the place. And if she’d been planning to leave all along then why hadn’t she told anyone she was going? Or did she just never get the chance? It gave Grímur something else to ponder but wasn’t making things any clearer for him at all. There was nothing for it but to keep going.

  The door on the next floor up was answered by a tall thin lady with long jet-black hair and a crooked smile that didn’t make her look happy. Grímur introduced himself and she nodded silently and let him in. She indicated that he should take a seat in one of her old-fashioned armchairs.

  ‘I’m Adolfína, would you like some coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ he replied. Davið Runar’s brew already had his synapses buzzing and snapping like a poorly wired fuse-board. The country’s coastguard crews must like their coffee both hot and strong. He studied the woman in front of him as she glided into the kitchen. She looked somewhere over forty but it was hard to say exactly where. She was very handsome in a severe sort of way. Hard to read might have been the best way to describe her face. When she returned she had a tray of small delicious looking cakes in her hands. She placed it on the coffee table without a word and took a seat just across from him, so that she was not directly in front of him but not that far away either. Grímur eyed the cakes. They did look rather good but he resisted the urge to try one.

  ‘I appreciate that you’ve already talked to some of our officers today. Is there anything you can tell me about Bella that might help me get a better idea of what she was doing here? Who she spent time with or what she did with herself in Reykjavík? We know next to nothing about why she chose to come here or what she did after she arrived. We’re in the process of trying to clarify that as much as we can.’

  ‘She’d only been here a few months so we didn’t really know each other that well. But we saw each other about the place, mainly going up and down the stairs or in the laundry room.’

  ‘Do you know what she did for work?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue I’m afraid.’

  ‘Her flat looks as though it’s been cleaned recently and all her belongings are packed up as if she was ready to leave. Did she mention anything to you about going anywhere?’

  ‘No, she hadn’t said anything about leaving. As far as I could tell she was happy here.’

  ‘I understand that you used to be a psychiatric nurse.’

  ‘That’s right, why?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘You must have a reason. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked.’

  Grímur decided that this mysterious creature was a lot savvier than she first appeared to be. Her dreamy laid-back exterior was just a front for a rather more tuned-in lady than he’d first anticipated.

  ‘Do you know the other people who live downstairs? There wasn’t anyone there when we called this morning.’

  ‘There’s two girls live down there. I’m afraid I don’t know much about them. They’re foreign I think and don’t have much to say f
or themselves.’

  ‘They’re not Icelandic?’

  ‘No, I don’t know where they’re from.’

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to know if they’re around or not, would you? I’d like to speak to them today as well if I can.’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw them?’

  ‘Maybe two or three days ago.’

  ‘So they might have gone away somewhere for a holiday?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Adolfína smoothed some invisible crease out of her skirt and smiled. It wasn’t just hard to see what was going on behind her eyes, it was impossible. She crossed her legs and waited for him to continue.

  ‘Okay, when you see them again will you let them know that I need to speak to them as soon as possible?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Where do you work now? Are you still in psychiatry?’

  ‘No, I’m retired.’

  Grímur nodded to himself as he made a note of that. She helped herself to one of her own cakes and passed the tray over to him.

  ‘You really should try one of these, their awfully good.’

  There was something about her that didn’t add up. She didn’t look old enough to be retired and he’d never heard of anyone making a fortune working as a nurse.

  Grímur gave in to temptation and tried one of the smaller ones. She was right, it was really good.

  #7

  All Grímur wanted now was for one thing to go as it was supposed to but it was starting to look as if he was never going to get his wish. On top of that, any hopes he might have had about this being a straight forward case had now well and truly faded. Gunnar Atli had lied to his face about how well he’d known Bella and the woman who lived above her had left him scratching his head.

  First things first though. He needed to talk to Gunnar Atli as soon as he could to find out why he’d lied. A quick phone call from headquarters put paid to that idea. According to the receptionist at Hverfisgata, while Grímur had been out questioning the neighbours, Gunnar Atli suffered some sort of a fit or seizure. She was a little hazy on the details but en route to Litla Hraun he started beating his head against the walls and back door of the police van. By the time the officers realised what was going on and pulled over to restrain him, he’d done enough damage to himself to necessitate urgent medical attention.

  They’d had to turn around straight away and bring him back to the city centre. Once his wounds were dressed and he’d been sedated, he was examined by a relief doctor. The stand-in physician had been covering for a sick colleague and probably hadn’t counted on anyone like Gunnar Atli becoming part of his day. Rather than deal with what promised to be a rather tricky case he had readmitted him as fast as he could to his old home-away-from-home, Kleppspítali, in the hope that they might know what to do with him. Anything to get the guy off his hands. That had been almost an hour ago and yet nobody thought to inform Grímur as the drama had been unfolding.

  The receptionist didn’t seem to know why he hadn’t been told about this earlier, either; apparently it all happened too quickly for anybody to remember how to use a phone. Now he faced the prospect of having to obtain permission from the head of admissions at the psychiatric hospital just to talk to him again. As far as he could tell, Gunnar Atli was either extremely crazy or extremely clever. Whichever it was, there wouldn’t be any quick and easy way around the procedural nightmare that now lay ahead of him so he made his way over to the east side of the city centre near the container port, to enquire about his chances of talking to their new patient.

  After being told to wait for the third time he decided to sit on a park bench out in the light snow and smoke a cigarette. The head of admissions at Kleppspítali was Thorgeir Alfreðsson, a slick-looking older gent who was the uncontested heavyweight doctor-in-charge at the hospital. He was in fact one of the most respected psychiatrists in the country who dealt almost exclusively with unhinged and potentially dangerous citizens deemed too risky to release back into the community. It made him an almost priceless possession for the hospital, as well as the nation, but he occasionally seemed to be every bit as crazy as some of his patients. It had been suggested by various co-workers that for every bit of goodness he had been able to get to rub off on those in his care, they had imbued him with just a little of their madness much in the way that pollen attaches to bees too busy to notice exactly which flowers they’re bumping into.

  Grímur contemplated this as he stubbed his cigarette out and wandered back into the reception area with his hands driven firmly into his jacket pockets. As he approached the desk yet again, the young bright-eyed girl on duty, Lilja Skaftadóttir, was waiting for him with his visitor pass in her hand. She handed it to him but wouldn’t release her grip on the thing until she was convinced he was paying sufficient attention to what she had to say.

  ‘This is conditional on a few things, Grímur. Thorgeir wanted me to explain them to you but since you’re both big boys I don’t see why he can’t do that himself. You’re to go up the stairs to the first floor to the last office on the left. It has his name on it.’

  Grímur nodded repeatedly and slowly turned to make his way up the stairs that sat between reception and the dining room. He couldn’t get the clip on his visitor’s pass to attach to his shirt so he just stuffed it in a pocket. It wasn’t as if there was anyone around to check it anyway. The old staircase creaked under his weight as he made his way up to the first floor.

  The last door on the left was open and the doctor had his feet on his desk with a newspaper resting on his knees and a cup of coffee in his hand. He smiled calmly as if he’d been expecting company and motioned for Grímur to take a seat on the other side of the desk. His office window gave him a view over the grounds and right out to the bay.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Been one of those days, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve had better. How about you?’

  The doctor waved the question away as if it were about to land in his coffee and spread its legs in a death roll.

  ‘When can I talk to Gunnar Atli?’

  Thorgeir folded his newspaper up and put in on top of a pile of paperwork.

  ‘Straight to the point, Grímur, that’s what I like about you. So many people seem to prefer beating around the bush these days. We’re dealing with a very troubled individual here. As you probably know this is not his first visit with us.’

  ‘I am aware of that. What can you tell me about that first stint?’

  ‘Well, he was brought here following a rather nasty car accident. The young lady he was travelling with was killed and he suffered a badly broken leg. He recovered from the injury in time and with rehabilitation was able to walk again albeit it with something of a limp. It was during the physical recuperation that the psychological problems began. He held himself responsible for her death. Even tried to take his own life on a couple of occasions.’

  ‘Do you still consider him a danger to himself?’

  ‘Shortly I will let you decide that for yourself. I don’t know what you’ve been told but he has been exhibiting some fairly self-destructive behaviour today. We have him heavily sedated at the moment and I doubt very much that he will talk to you but it would be a good idea for you to at least observe his injuries.’

  ‘When can I see him?’

  ‘Well, there’s no time like the present, is there?’

  He put his coffee down on the table and rolled out of his chair onto his feet before walking over to his office window and staring out at the snowy day. He seemed to lose himself for a moment as he stood silently looking at the scene set out before him.

  ‘There’s a couple of things you need to keep in mind.’

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Gunnar Atli is a patient now, no longer just another one of your suspects,’ Thorgeir held his hand up to cut short any objections that Grímur may have been about to offer. ‘No matter what you t
hink he may have done you are going to have to wait until we see fit to release him to your custody once again. But it would appear that he is far from ready for that.

  ‘We have him sedated for his own good so I will only allow you the briefest of visits. Anything he might say to you should be considered to be of no use to you for the purposes of your investigation. I warn you against attempting to question him in the state he’s in. His lawyer has left me in no doubt that should you transgress in this area she will be down here to see to it that you have no further access to the boy.’

  ‘The boy, as you call him, is thirty years of age and presently the sole suspect in a murder case. The victim was raped and tortured before being killed. This man may very well seem traumatised but that may be because he has killed a young woman and doesn’t want to end up spending a large portion of his life in prison.’

  Thorgeir turned to face Grímur again with a wary, part-amused, part-condescending smile on his face.

  ‘If I decide that I don’t feel like letting you see him again, you will not have access to him. Do you understand that? The only reason you are getting to see him now is because I’m feeling a little charitable but I can assure you that won’t last.’

  ‘Tell me something. When you kept him here for almost eight years, was it because you considered him to be a danger to himself or to others?’

  The smile, such as it was, disappeared from Thorgeir’s face so quickly you would have been forgiven for forgetting it was ever there.

  ‘His room is on the next floor up at the southern end of the corridor. You will find an orderly waiting for you who has been instructed to give you two minutes in the room to observe and nothing else. Do not try his patience on the two minutes and don’t forget any of the other advice you’ve already been given. Enjoy the rest of your day.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Thorgeir gestured towards the door indicating that the detective had taken all the time out of his day that he was going to take. Grímur had to assume he had hit home with his last comment and left it at that.

  The huge orderly at the southern end of the 2nd floor corridor definitely looked as though he wasn’t going to allow Grímur to take any liberties with the restrictions Thorgeir had imposed on his visit. He very well may have been employed for his dimensions alone. He was not the sort of guy any of the patients would ever think about disobeying, or anyone else for that matter.