Outrage (8 page)

‘Nothing,’ said Sigurdur Oli.

Elinborg had gone to bed late and had not managed to get to sleep until the middle of the night. Her mind had been racing with thoughts of Runolfur and the date-rape drug. She had not yet spoken to Valthor about his blog. He had been out of the house when she intended to tell him to stop writing about his family on the net.

Teddi snored quietly next to her. She never remembered him having any trouble sleeping, or having a restless night - no doubt a sign that he was at peace with himself and with the world. He did not complain, and was not much of a talker. He did not take the initiative, preferring to live in peace and quiet. His job was not particularly stressful and he never brought it home with him. Sometimes, when Elinborg felt oppressed by her work, she considered whether she should have stuck to geology and imagined what she might be doing now if she had not joined the police. She might be a teacher; she had taught a few courses at the Police Training College and she enjoyed the role of instructor. She might have pursued postgraduate studies and become a scientist, researching glacial floods and earthquakes. Sometimes, when she observed the work of the police forensics officers, she thought that it might have suited her. She was not especially unhappy in her work, but from time to time she was overcome by the degradation and horrors she had to witness. She could not fathom how human beings could behave like savage beasts.

‘What is it exactly that a telecoms engineer does?’ Elinborg asked the manager. ‘What does the job involve?’

‘Well, it can involve various things,’ the manager - Larus - said. ‘They’re responsible for the telephone system, and they handle maintenance and installation. I checked up on Runolfur in our records. He’d been with us for several years - joined us straight from technical college. An excellent worker. The company was very happy with him.’

‘Was he liked?’

‘Yes, so far as I know. I didn’t have much direct contact with him but I’m told he was sober, punctual and pleasant. Nobody here understands this. We can’t grasp what really happened.’

‘No,’ Elinborg replied. ‘Do they go to people’s houses, these engineers?’

‘Runolfur did. He handled Internet connections, broadband, in-house phone systems, digital tuners, fibre optics. We offer an outstanding service. People have no idea about computers and technology. Someone who had been stamping on his mouse all day rang recently. He thought it was a foot pedal.’

‘Can you give us a list of customers that Runolfur visited in recent months?’ asked Elinborg. ‘He covered the Reykjavik area, didn’t he?’

‘You’ll need a warrant. I’m sure we’ve got a list, but I should think it’s confidential, so …’

‘No problem,’ said Elinborg. ‘You’ll have one by close of business today.’

‘Are you going to interview everyone he visited?’

‘If necessary,’ said Elinborg. ‘Do you know of any friends of Runolfur we could speak to? Either here at the company, or anyone at all?’

‘I don’t, but I’ll ask around.’

On the weekend when he was murdered Runolfur had not been picked up by any CCTV camera in the downtown area where his landlord assumed he had gone on the last evening of his life. There were eight cameras monitoring the busiest locations in the city centre. Perhaps it meant nothing: there were many other routes to and from his home. Perhaps Runolfur knew where the cameras were and had deliberately avoided them. Taxi drivers were questioned: had they seen him, or even picked him up? But this yielded no result. The same applied to the drivers of night buses in the area. Runolfur’s credit- and debit-card transactions were checked, but he seemed to use the cards only for grocery shopping and instalment payments on his computer and iPod, and regular outgoings like phone, heating, electricity and TV bills.

The police had been provided with data that tracked Runolfur’s mobile-phone signal so they could tell whether he had moved from one transmission zone to another on the night in question. Even if he had not used his phone his movements could still be tracked, but as a telecoms engineer he must have known that his position still could not be pinpointed since the whole of the downtown area was covered by a single transmitter with a radius of three kilometres. Had Runolfur wanted to go farther afield without his movements being traceable he might have left his mobile at home: it turned out that the phone had not left the downtown area that night.

A hair sample from the young woman who had been found in distress in Kopavogur was sent abroad for DNA analysis, so that it could be compared with samples from Runolfur’s home and car. It would take some time to establish whether she had been his victim a few weeks before he was killed. But she was not a suspect and had a reliable alibi. The T-shirt that Runolfur had been wearing when he’d died and the shawl found in his flat were also sent for analysis, to reveal whether both had belonged to the same woman. Nothing had been found on his computer that would help the police to determine who had been with him on the night of the murder. In fact the computer contained very little history of Internet usage at all. It appeared that he had been intending to buy a second-hand car since websites selling used cars were listed prominently on the day of his death, along with Icelandic and foreign sports sites, and subjects relevant to his job. All his e-mails related to his work.

‘He didn’t use e-mail as most of us tend to,’ said the forensics officer. ‘And it looks to me as if that’s deliberate.’

‘What do you mean, deliberate?’

‘He leaves no trail,’ he explained.

Elinborg was standing in the doorway of an office at police headquarters. The space was so tiny and constricted that she could not actually enter the room. The officer, who was both tall and proportionately broad, seemed almost to be trapped in his miniature office, unable to move.

‘But is there anything unusual about that? Some people write whatever comes into their heads, while others are more cautious. After all, how do we know who will read our e-mails?’

‘You can get access to anything, and steal it,’ he observed. ‘As we’ve seen in practice - suddenly people’s private affairs appear on the front pages of the papers. Speaking for myself, I would never put anything important in an e-mail. But I have a feeling that this man is rather more than just cautious - he seems to be almost obsessive. It’s as if he did his utmost not to leave anything personal whatsoever on the hard drive. There are no links, other than those relating to his work. No chat rooms. No documents. No personal thoughts. No calendar. Nothing. We know he was interested in films and football. That’s all we got.’

‘Nothing about girlfriends?’

‘Nope.’

‘Because he wanted it that way?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because he had something to hide?’

‘That could be one reason,’ the forensics man replied, reaching for his own computer. ‘He seems to have made a habit of deleting the day’s web-page history before turning off his computer at night.’

‘Not surprising, perhaps, since he was carrying roofies.’

‘No, perhaps not.’

‘So no one knows what he was up to online?’

‘I’m going to see if I can dig anything up. Not everything necessarily goes when the delete button is pressed. His Internet service provider may be able to help us. Actually, it looks as if it’s hosted abroad, so it may take for ever to find out,’ he sighed, shifting in his chair, which creaked in response.

The post-mortem revealed that Runolfur had been in excellent health, with no physical ailments. He was short, slim and well-proportioned. There were no scars or blemishes on his body and his organs had functioned normally.

‘In short, a healthy young man,’ said the pathologist as he finished his recital.

He was standing opposite Elinborg, across from Runolfur’s body, in the city mortuary. The autopsy had been completed and the body had been transferred to a lateral cold chamber. The pathologist had pulled out the drawer and now Elinborg looked down at the corpse.

‘It wasn’t an easy death,’ the pathologist went on. ‘He sustained a number of cuts before he was killed. There are several small cuts on the neck, near to the main wound, and a bruise to the throat, as if someone had held him fast. There’s no indication that he made any real attempt to defend himself.

‘It’s not particularly complicated, but interesting in its way. It’s been done cleanly. The throat has been slit with a razor-sharp blade, almost as sharp as a surgical scalpel. The actual cut was one continuous stroke with absolutely no hesitation marks. It’s rather like an expert surgical incision. I would think that his assailant overpowered him and held him helpless for a time - that’s the inference of the small cuts - before slitting his throat and dropping him to the floor. He survived for a little while. Not long, but perhaps up to a minute. You didn’t find any signs of a struggle, did you?’

‘No.’

‘He had intercourse shortly before he died, as you no doubt know. As to whether the sex was non-consensual, I couldn’t say. There’s no indication that it was. Except the fact that’s he’s dead, of course.’

‘No marks on the body? No scratches, no bites?’

‘No, but then you wouldn’t expect any if the woman concerned was sedated.’

The team investigating the case had repeatedly discussed the condition in which Runolfur’s body had been found in his home, and what clues it might provide. He’d been wearing a T-shirt which was far too small for him and probably belonged to a woman. With the exception of the shawl, no other female garments were found in his flat. They deduced that the T-shirt had probably belonged to a woman who had accompanied him home: if a rape had taken place, Runolfur must have undressed the woman, then raped her, apparently getting some kick out of wearing her own shirt. It looked as if he had tried to create a romantic ambience: no electric lights had been on, except in the living room, and burnt-out tea-light candles were found in both the living room and the bedroom.

Some of the detectives were not convinced that there had even been a rape. They were reluctant to infer too much from the evidence found: although Runolfur had Rohypnol in his home, that told them nothing of what had happened there, and no trace of the drug had been found in glasses, for instance. Perhaps he had sex with the woman, putting on her T-shirt during their lovemaking, and for some reason she picked up the knife and cut his throat. Other members of the team, Sigurdur Oli among them, were of the view that a third person must have intruded on the couple: Runolfur, flustered, had put on the T-shirt but had not managed to finish dressing before he was killed. It was possible that his companion had attacked him, but an alternative had also to be considered: that another person had committed the crime. Elinborg tended to favour that view, although she had no particular arguments to support her hunch. The murder weapon, a razor-sharp knife, might have belonged to the victim. Four kitchen knives were arranged on a magnetic strip on the wall. Perhaps there had originally been a set of five. The killer could have used the fifth, then taken it away when he or she left. It was not clear from the knives whether one was missing, and an exhaustive search of Thingholt and further afield had so far yielded no result.

And then there was the Rohypnol in Runolfur’s mouth and throat. He could hardly have taken it of his own accord.

‘Did you find a lot of Rohypnol in the body?’ she asked.

‘Yes - a good deal, really, which seems to have been forced down him.’

‘But it hadn’t reached the bloodstream?’

‘We don’t know yet,’ replied the pathologist. ‘Tox screening takes longer.’

Elinborg looked at him. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

‘It would have taken about ten minutes to start working, and after that he wouldn’t have been capable of defending himself in any way.’

‘That’s consistent with the fact that we found little sign of a struggle.’

‘Absolutely. He wouldn’t have been able to put up any resistance, however much he wanted to.’

‘Just like his presumed victim.’

‘He got a taste of his own medicine, if that’s what you mean.’

‘So someone forced him to swallow the stuff, then coolly slit his throat?’

The pathologist shrugged. ‘That’s your department.’

Elinborg looked down at the body. ‘He looks pretty fit. Maybe he met women at a gym,’ she said.

‘That’s possible, if he worked out.’

‘And he went to people’s homes and offices. He was a telecoms engineer.’

‘He got around, then.’

‘And there are all the clubs and bars.’

‘Don’t you think it’s more likely that he picked women up at random, rather than targeting them specifically?’

The police officers had discussed this factor at length. Some felt that Runolfur’s modus operandi was fairly straightforward: he met a woman at a bar and invited her home. Some liked the look of him and went with him. It remained unclear whether he drugged any of them since there were no witnesses. Other officers reckoned that he had definitely used drugs and worked in a systematic manner. He did not trust to luck in picking up a woman. He had some acquaintanceship with them, though perhaps only very slight.

‘Maybe,’ said Elinborg. ‘Anyway, we have to find out how he met women. We haven’t dismissed the possibility that a woman was with him when he was killed, and that she may be the killer.’

‘The cut looks like that, at any rate,’ said the pathologist. ‘That was my first reaction when I saw it. My mind went to an old-fashioned straight razor, the kind where the blade folds into the handle. Do you know what I mean?’

‘What did you say about the cut?’

The pathologist looked down at the body. ‘It’s smooth,’ he said. ‘When I saw it I thought to myself that it was … almost feminine.’

9

It was dark in the bar. A large window that faced on to the street had been broken and was now boarded up with plywood. The repair looked recent. Elinborg thought it was probably a temporary measure, but perhaps not. The pane of glass in the door had also been broken, but longer ago. It was covered with black-painted plywood that was scratched and graffitied. It did not look as if the proprietor intended to install new glass. Given up trying, thought Elinborg to herself.