‘I thought you were anti that sort of thing,’ she said.
‘Well, I… if there was something that could help you, I wouldn’t care what it was or where it came from.’
‘Do you know any psychics?’ she asked.
‘N-no,’ Baldvin said hesitantly.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘It’s something they were discussing at work, The heart surgeons.’
‘What?’
‘Life after death. A recent incident, They had a man die for two minutes on the operating table, They were performing a bypass and the patient experienced cardiac arrest, They had to administer several shocks to resuscitate him, Afterwards he claimed he’d had a near-death experience.’
‘Who did he tell?’
‘Everyone, The nurses, The doctors, He hadn’t been religious before but he said this experience had converted him into a believer.’
Neither of them spoke.
‘He said he’d crossed over into the next world,’ Baldvin said.
‘I’ve never asked you, but are they common in hospitals – stories like this?’
‘You hear similar stuff from time to time, People have even experimented on themselves to try to find answers to questions about the afterlife.’
‘How?’
‘By manufacturing a near-death experience, It’s not unknown. I once saw a bad movie on the subject, Anyway, the doctors started talking about psychics and mediums, and someone knew a good one that his wife had been to see, It occurred to me that… it might be something for you.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘It’s a woman, Her name’s Magdalena. I wondered if you’d like to talk to her, If it might help you in some way.’
15
Tryggvi’s last known abode had been a dirty, stinking mattress in a dump near Raudararstigur, not far from the Hlemmur bus station, where he sometimes stayed with three other homeless men, all ex-prisoners and down-and-outs. It was a condemned building, clad in corrugated iron, with broken windows and a leaky roof, reeking of cats’ pee and crammed with rubbish. The house had been left in a will to its present owners who were embroiled in a bitter dispute over their inheritance and had let the property go to rack and ruin in the meantime. The four men could hardly be described as squatters since they lacked the initiative even for that. Tryggvi had been picked up by the police a few times for drunkenness or vagrancy, but from what Erlendur could discover he was a peaceable loner who took no more notice of other people than they did of him. Sometimes, when it was bitterly cold on the streets of Reykjavik, he would seek shelter in the police cells or at the Salvation Army hostel.
The second time Erlendur walked the short distance from his office on Hverfisgata to the condemned house just off Raudararstigur in an attempt to track Tryggvi down, he encountered a man who could by a stretch of the imagination be called his housemate, a semi-conscious alcoholic who lay propped up on a filthy mattress that had at some stage been placed on the concrete floor for comfort. It was raining and a puddle had formed on the floor beside the man. Empty brennivin bottles lay strewn beside the mattress, along with small bottles that had once contained vanilla essence or some other alcoholic substance used in baking, as well as meths bottles and two hypodermics with short needles. The man squinted up at Erlendur from his mattress. One of his eyes was swollen shut.
‘Who are you?’ he slurred in a hoarse, almost unintelligible voice.
‘I’m looking for Tryggvi,’ Erlendur said. ‘I understand that he stays here sometimes.’
‘Tryggvi? He’s not here.’
‘I can see that. Can you tell me where he would be at this time of day?’
‘I haven’t seen him for ages.’
‘I gather he sometimes sleeps here.’
‘He used to,’ the man said, sitting up. ‘But he hasn’t stayed with us for ages. What day is it today?’
‘Does it matter?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Have you got anything to drink?’ the man asked, a note of hope entering his voice. He was wearing a thick jacket over a jumper, brown trousers and tattered boots that reached up to his bony white calves. Erlendur noticed that his lip was split. He looked as if he had recently been in a fight.
‘No.’
‘What about Tryggvi?’ the man asked.
‘Nothing important,’ Erlendur said. ‘I just wanted to see him.’
‘Are you, what… his brother?’
‘No. How is Tryggvi?’
Erlendur knew that if he stayed too long in this tip his clothes would stink of urine for the rest of the day.
‘I don’t know how he is,’ the tramp snarled, suddenly filled with indignant rage. ‘How do you think he is? Could his life be anything but shit? What, you think you can rescue him from the gutter? They come here and beat you up, the bloody bastards. Threaten to set you alight.’
‘Who?’
‘Fucking kids! Won’t leave you alone.’
‘Was this recently?’
‘A few days ago. They get worse every year, the little shits.’
‘Did they have a go at Tryggvi?’
‘I haven’t seen Tryggvi for…’
‘… ages. Okay.’ Erlendur finished the sentence.
‘Try the pubs. That’s where I saw him last. At the Napoleon. He must have got his hands on some cash or they’d have chucked him out.’
‘Thank you,’ Erlendur said.
‘Have you got any money?’ the man asked.
‘Won’t it just go on booze?’
‘Does it matter?’ the man said, giving Erlendur a crooked glance.
‘No, I don’t suppose it does,’ Erlendur replied, digging in his trouser pocket for some notes.
The Napoleon pub had changed little since Erlendur’s last visit. Men sat hunched over the odd rickety table; the bartender, sporting a black waistcoat and red shirt, was solving a crossword, while the radio over the bar broadcast the afternoon serial, A Place to Call My Own.
Erlendur knew next to nothing about the man he was looking for. He had spoken to the actor Orri Fjeldsted again on the phone. Orri was garrulous now that he had time on his hands following the premature closure of Othello. He didn’t know any more than he had already told Erlendur about the incident in which Tryggvi had been caused to die and then brought back to life. Although he was sure that Baldvin had been involved he couldn’t remember the name of Tryggvi’s cousin who had been in charge of the operation. He referred Erlendur to the Faculty of Theology at the university, where Erlendur was informed that Tryggvi had dropped out after his first year. From there the trail led to the Faculty of Medicine, where Tryggvi had studied for only two years before leaving to get a job. On enquiry, it turned out that he had gone to sea and worked on both trawlers and merchant vessels until he returned to dry land and became a labourer on the docks. An old co-worker from the docks said that he had already been well on his way to becoming a wino back then, a terrible drunk who missed so many days that he was eventually given the boot. After that Tryggvi began to turn up in police reports, generally as a vagrant occupying squats like the one near Hlemmur or else found lying in the street in an alcoholic stupor. But he had no criminal record, as far as Erlendur could ascertain.
He interrupted the bartender’s crossword.
