Tainted Blood - By Arnaldur Indridason Page 0,55

Sigurdur Òli couldn't wait any longer.

"It looks as if you were expecting me," he said, sipping at the coffee. It was watery and tasted foul.

"Well, no-one's talking about anything except that poor woman you're looking for," she said.

Sigurdur Òli gave her a blank look.

"Everyone from Húsavík," the woman said, as if she shouldn't need to explain something so obvious. "We haven't talked about anything else since you started looking for her. We've got a very big club for people from Húsavík here in the city. I'm sure everyone knows you're looking for that woman."

"So it's the talk of the town?" Sigurdur Òli asked.

"Three of my friends from the north who now live here have phoned me since last night and this morning I had a call from Húsavík. They're gossiping about it all the time."

"And have you come to any conclusions?"

"Not really," she said and looked at her husband. "What was this man supposed to have done to her?"

She didn't try to conceal her curiosity. Didn't try to hide her nosiness. Sigurdur Òli was disgusted by how eager she was to find out the details and instinctively tried to guard his words.

"It's a question of an act of violence," he said. "We're looking for the victim, but you probably know that already."

"Oh yes. But why? What did he do to her? And why now? I think, or we think," she said, looking at her husband, who was sitting silently following the conversation, "it's so strange how it matters after all these years. I heard she was raped. Was that it?"

"Unfortunately I can't divulge any details about the inquiry," Sigurdur Òli said. "And maybe it doesn't matter. I don't think you should make too much fuss about it. When you're talking to other people, I mean. Is there anything you could tell me that might be useful?"

The couple looked at each other.

"Make too much fuss about it?" she said, surprised. "We're not making any fuss about it. Do you think we're making any fuss about it, Eyvi?" She looked at her husband, who seemed unaware how to answer. "Go on, answer me!" she said sharply and he gave a start.

"No, I wouldn't say that, that's not right."

Sigurdur Óli's mobile phone rang. He didn't keep it loose in his pocket like Erlendur, but in a smart holder attached to the belt around his stiffly pressed trousers. Sigurdur Òli asked the couple to excuse him, stood up and answered the phone. It was Erlendur.

"Can you meet me at Holberg's flat?" he asked.

"What's going on?" Sigurdur Òli said.

"More digging," Erlendur said and rang off.

When Sigurdur Óli drove into Nordurmýri, Erlendur and Elínborg were already there. Erlendur was standing in the doorway to the basement smoking a cigarette. Elínborg was inside the flat. As far as Sigurdur Óli could see she was having a good sniff around, she stuck her head out and sniffed, exhaled and then tried somewhere else. He looked at Erlendur who shrugged and threw his cigarette into the garden and they went inside the flat together.

"What kind of smell do you think there is in here?" Erlendur asked Sigurdur Òli, and Sigurdur Òli started sniffing at the air like Elínborg. They walked from room to room with their noses in the air, except Erlendur who had a particularly poor sense of smell after so many years of smoking.

"When I first came in here," Elínborg said, "I thought that horsey people must live in the building or in this flat. The smell reminded me of horses, riding boots, saddles, or that sort of thing. Horse dung. Stables, really. It was the same smell that was in the first flat my husband and I bought. But there weren't any horse-lovers living there either. It was a combination of filth and rising damp. The radiators had been leaking onto the carpet and parquet for years and no-one had done anything about it. We also had the spare bathroom converted but the plumbers did it so badly, just stuffed straw into the hole and put a thin layer of concrete over it. So there was always a smell of sewers that came up through the repair."

"Which means?" Erlendur said.

"I think it's the same smell, except it's worse here. Rising damp and filth and sewer rats."

"I had a meeting with Marion Briem," Erlendur said, uncertain whether they knew the name. "Naturally Marion read up on Nordurmýri and reached the conclusion that the fact it's a marsh is important."

Elínborg and Sigurdur Òli exchanged glances.

"Nordurmýri used to be