Rúnar answered the door himself and looked at Erlendur for a good while without being able to place his face. Erlendur was standing in a communal hallway, soaking wet after running from the car to building. To his right was a staircase leading to the upper flat. The stairs were carpeted but the carpet was worn through where it had been walked on the most. There was a musty smell in the air and Erlendur wondered whether horse-lovers lived in the house. Erlendur asked Rúnar whether he remembered him and Rúnar seemed to do so, because he immediately tried to slam the door, but Erlendur was too fast for him. He was inside the flat before Rúnar could do a thing about it.
"Cosy," Erlendur said, looking around the dim interior.
"Will you leave me alone!" Rúnar tried to shout at Erlendur, but his voice cracked and squeaked.
"Watch your blood pressure. I'd hate to have to give you the kiss of life if you dropped dead on me. I need to get some details from you and then I'm gone and you can get back to dying in here. Shouldn't take you very long. You don't exactly look like Super Senior of the Year."
"Bugger off!" Rúnar said, as angrily as his age allowed him, turned round, walked into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa. Erlendur followed him and sat down heavily in a chair facing him. Rúnar didn't look at him.
"Did Kolbrún talk about another rape when she came to you about Holberg?"
Rúnar didn't answer him.
"The sooner you answer, the sooner you get rid of me.
Rúnar looked up and stared at Erlendur.
"She never mentioned any other rape. Will you leave now?"
"We have reason to believe that Holberg had raped someone before he met Kolbrún. He may have played the same trick again after her raped her, we don't know. Kolbrún is the only woman who pressed charges against him even if nothing ever came of it, thanks to you."
"Get out!"
"Are you sure she didn't mention any other woman? It's conceivable that Holberg bragged to Kolbrún about another rape."
"She didn't say a thing about that," Rúnar said, looking down at the table.
"Holberg was with two of his friends that night. One of them was Ellidi, an old lag you might know of. He's in prison, fighting ghosts and monsters in solitary confinement. The other one was Grétar. He vanished off the face of the earth the summer the national festival was held. Do you know anything about the company Holberg kept?"
"No. Leave me alone!"
"What were they doing in town here the night Kolbrún was raped?"
"I don't know."
"Didn't you ever talk to them?"
"No."
"Who handled the investigation in Reykjavik?"
Rúnar looked Erlendur in the face for the first time.
"It was Marion Briem."
"Marion Briem!"
"That bloody idiot."
Elín wasn't at home when Erlendur knocked on her door, so he got back inside his car, lit a cigarette and pondered whether to continue on his journey to Sandgerdi. The rain beat down on the car and Erlendur, who never watched the weather forecasts, wondered whether the wet spell would ever come to an end. Maybe this was a mini-version of Noah's flood, he thought to himself through the blue cigarette smoke. Maybe it was necessary to wash people's sins away every now and again.
Erlendur was apprehensive about meeting Elín again and was half relieved when it turned out she wasn't home. He knew she'd turn on him and the last thing he wanted was to provoke her, as when she called him a "bloody cop". But it couldn't be avoided. Either now or later. He heaved a deep sigh and burnt his cigarette down until he felt the heat against his fingertips. He held down the smoke while he stubbed out the cigarette, then exhaled heavily. A line from an anti-smoking campaign ran through his mind: It only takes one cell to start cancer.
He'd felt the pain in his chest that morning, but it had gone now.
Erlendur was backing away from the house when Elín knocked on his window.
"Were you coming to see me?" she asked from under her umbrella when he wound down the window.
Erlendur put on an inscrutable smile and gave a slight nod. She opened the door to her house for him and he suddenly felt like a traitor. The others had already set off for the cemetery.