also something intriguing about people vanishing without trace and no-one knowing why.
Grétar's mother was 90 and blind. Erlendur spoke briefly to the director of the home, who had difficulty in taking her eyes off his forehead, and told him that Theodóra was one of the oldest and longest-standing residents there, a perfect member of the community in all respects, loved and admired by the staff and everyone else.
Erlendur was led in to see Theodóra and introduced to her. The old woman was sitting in a wheelchair in her room, wearing a dressing gown, covered with a woollen blanket, her long grey hair in a plait running down the back of the chair, her body hunched up, her hands bony and her face kindly. There were few personal belongings there. A framed photograph of John F. Kennedy hung above her bed. Erlendur sat in a chair in front of her, looked into the eyes that could no longer see, and said he wanted to talk about Grétar. Her hearing seemed to be fine and her mind was sharp. She showed no sign of surprise but got straight to the point. Erlendur could tell she was from Skagafjördur. She spoke with a thick northern accent.
"My Grétar wasn't a perfect lad," she said. "To tell you the truth he was an awful wretch. I don't know where he got it from. A cheap wretch. Going around with other wretches, layabouts, riff-raff the lot of them. Have you found him?"
"No," Erlendur said. "One of his friends was murdered recently. Holberg. Maybe you've heard about it."
"I didn't know. He got bumped off, you say?"
Erlendur was amused and for the first time in a long while he saw reason to smile.
"At home. They used to work together in the old days, Holberg and your son. At the Harbour and Lighthouse Authority."
"The last I saw of my Grétar, and I still had decent sight then, was when he came home to see me the same summer as the national festival and stole some money from my purse and a bit of silver. I didn't find out until he'd left again and the money had disappeared. And then Grétar disappeared himself. Like he'd been stolen too. Do you know who stole him?"
"No," Erlendur said. "Do you know what he was up to before he went missing? Who he was in touch with?"
"No idea," the old woman said. "I never knew what Grétar was up to. I told you so at the time."
"Did you know he took photographs?"
"Yes. He took photographs. He was always taking those pictures. I don't know why. He told me once that photos were the mirrors of time, but I didn't have a clue what he was talking about."
"Wasn't that a bit highbrow for Grétar?"
"I'd never heard him talk like that."
"His last address was on Bergstadastraeti where he rented a room. Do you know what happened to his belongings, the camera and films, do you know that?"
"Maybe Klara knows," Theodóra said. "My daughter. She cleaned out his room. Threw all that rubbish away, I think."
Erlendur stood up and she followed his movements with her head. He thanked her for her assistance, said she'd been very valuable and he wanted to praise her for how well she looked and how sharp her mind was, but he didn't. He didn't want to patronise her. He looked up along the wall above her bed at the photograph of Kennedy and couldn't restrain himself from asking.
"Why have you got a photograph of Kennedy above your bed?" he said, looking into her vacant eyes.
"Oh," Theodóra sighed, "I was so fond of him while he was alive."
21
The bodies lay side by side on the cold slabs in the morgue on Barónsstígur. Erlendur tried not to think about how he had brought the father and daughter together in death. An autopsy and tests had already been performed on Holberg's body, but it was awaiting further studies which would focus on genetic diseases and whether he was related to Audur. Erlendur noticed that the body's fingers were black. He'd been fingerprinted after his death. Audur's body lay wrapped in a white canvas sheet on a table beside Holberg. She was still untouched.
Erlendur didn't know the pathologist and saw little of him. He was tall, with large hands. He wore thin plastic gloves, wearing a white apron over a green gown, tied at the back, and wearing green trousers of the same material. He had a gauze over his mouth and a blue plastic