"It must refer to him," Sigurdur Óli said. "The body, I mean. It can't refer to anyone else."
"I don't know," Erlendur said. "What's the point in leaving that sort of message behind and putting it on top of the body? What's he trying to say by doing that? Is he telling us something? Is the murderer talking to himself? Is he talking to the victim?"
"A bloody nutter," Elínborg said, reaching down to pick up the message. Erlendur stopped her.
"There may have been more than one of them," Sigurdur Óli said. "Attackers, I mean."
"Remember your gloves, Elínborg," Erlendur said, as if talking to a child. "Don't ruin the evidence."
"The message was written out on the desk over there," he added, pointing at the corner. "The paper was torn out of an exercise book owned by the victim."
"There may have been more than one of them," Sigurdur Óli repeated. He thought he had hit on an interesting point.
"Yes, yes," Erlendur said. "Maybe."
"A bit cold-hearted," Sigurdur Óli said. "First you kill an old man and then you sit down to write a note. Doesn't that take nerves of steel? Isn't it a total bastard who does that sort of thing?"
"Or a fearless one," Elínborg said.
"Or one with a Messiah complex," Erlendur said.
He stooped to pick up the message and studied it in silence.
One huge Messiah complex, he thought to himself.
2
Erlendur got back to the block of flats where he lived at around 10 p.m. and put a ready meal in the microwave to heat through. He stood and watched the meal revolving behind the glass. Better than television, he thought. Outside, the autumn winds howled, nothing but rain and darkness.
He thought about people who left messages and vanished. In such a situation, what would he possibly write? Who would he leave a message for? His daughter, Eva Lind, entered his mind. She had a drug addiction and would probably want to know if he had any money. She had become increasingly pushy in that respect. His son, Sindri Snaer, had recently completed a third period in rehab. The message to him would be simple: No more Hiroshima.
Erlendur smiled to himself as the microwave made three beeps. Not that he had ever thought of vanishing at all.
Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli had talked to the neighbour who found the body. His wife was home by then and talked about taking the boys away from the house and to her mother's. The neighbour, whose name was Ólafur, had said that he and all his family, his wife and two sons, went to school and work every day at 8 a.m. and no-one came home until, at the earliest, 4 p.m. It was his job to fetch the boys from school. They hadn't noticed anything unusual when they had left home that morning. The door to the man's flat had been closed. They'd slept soundly the previous night. Heard nothing. They didn't have much to do with their neighbour. To all intents and purposes he was a stranger, even though they had lived on the floor above him for several years.
The pathologist had yet to ascertain a precise time of death, but Erlendur imagined the murder had been committed around noon. In the busiest time of day as it was called. How could anyone even have the time for that these days? he thought to himself. A statement had been issued to the media that a man named Holberg aged about 70 had been found dead in his flat in Nordurmýri, probably murdered. Anyone who had noticed suspicious movements over the previous 24 hours in the area where Holberg lived was requested to contact the Reykjavík police.
Erlendur was roughly 50, divorced many years earlier, a father of two. He never let anyone sense that he couldn't stand his children's names. His ex-wife, with whom he had hardly spoken for more than two decades, thought they sounded sweet at the time. The divorce was a messy one and Erlendur had more or less lost touch with his children when they were young. They sought him out when they were older and he welcomed them, but regretted how they had turned out. He was particularly grieved by Eva Lind's fate. Sindri Snaer had fared better. But only just.
He took his meal out of the microwave and sat at the kitchen table. It was a one-bedroom flat filled with books wherever there was any room to arrange them. Old family photographs hung on the