turned to see Ellidi shaking his head at them, foaming at the mouth and shrieking curses and oaths. He was on his feet, his hands on the table, leaning over it, stretching his big head in their direction and bellowing at them like a raging bull.
The hall door opened and the two warders stepped inside.
"He told her about the other one!" Ellidi screamed. "He told her what he did to the other fucking pussy he raped!"
14
When Ellidi saw the warders he went berserk. He leapt over the table, ran at the four men, screaming, and threw himself at them. He landed on top of Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli and they were both slammed to the ground before they could do a thing. He headbutted Sigurdur Óli, the blood spurted from both men's noses and his fist was raised to punch Erlendur's defenceless face when one of the warders took out a little black device and gave him an electric shock in his side. This slowed Ellidi down, but it didn't stop him. He raised his arm again. It was only when the other warder gave him a second electric shock that he slumped down and fell on top of Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli.
They crawled out from underneath him. Sigurdur Óli held a handkerchief to his nose to try to stop the bleeding. Ellidi was given a third electric shock and was finally still. The warders handcuffed him and, with great difficulty, lifted him up. They were going to take him out but Erlendur asked them to wait a moment. He went up to Ellidi.
"Which other one?" he asked.
Ellidi showed no reaction.
"Which other one that he raped?" Erlendur repeated.
Ellidi tried to smile, dazed by the electric shock, and a grimace moved across his face. Blood had run from his nose down into his mouth and his false teeth were bloody. Erlendur tried to conceal the eagerness in his voice, as if he couldn't care less what Ellidi knew. He tried not to make himself vulnerable. Tried not to show any expression. He knew that the slightest weakness made the heart of men like Ellidi pound, turned them into real men, gave them a purpose in their pitiful illusion of life. The slightest deviation would be enough. An eager tone in his voice, a sign in his eyes, a movement of his hands, a hint of impatience. Ellidi had managed to throw him off balance when he mentioned Eva Lind. Erlendur wasn't going to give him the pleasure of grovelling now.
They looked each other in the eye.
"Take him out," Erlendur said and turned away from Ellidi. The warders were about to lead the prisoner away but he stiffened and wouldn't budge when they tried to move him. He took a good, long look at Erlendur as if mulling something over, but eventually he gave in and allowed himself to be led from the room. Sigurdur Óli was still trying to stop the bleeding. His nose was swollen and his handkerchief was dripping with blood.
"That's a nasty nosebleed," Erlendur said and examined Sigurdur Óli's nose. "Nothing else though, nothing serious. There are no cuts and your nose isn't broken." He pinched it tight and Sigurdur Óli let out a shriek of pain.
"Oh, maybe it is broken, I'm no doctor," Erlendur said.
"Is he playing around with us or does he really know about another woman?" Erlendur said as they left the hall. "If there was one more perhaps there were others that Holberg raped who never came forward."
"There's no way to talk sense to that man," Sigurdur Óli said. "He was doing it for his own amusement, winding us up. He was playing with us. You can't trust a word he says. That jerk. That fucking jerk."
They went to the governor's office and gave him a brief report of what had happened. In their opinion, they said, the only place for Ellidi was a padded cell at a psychiatric ward. The governor agreed wearily, but said the only recourse available to the authorities was to keep him at Litla-Hraun. This wasn't the first time Ellidi had been confined to solitary for violence in the prison and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
They went out into the open air. As they were driving away from the prison and waiting for the big blue gate to the car park to open, Sigurdur Óli noticed a warder racing after them, waving to them to stop. They waited until he