Tainted Blood by Arnaldur Indridason Read Free Book Online

of rainwater washing over his car. He tugged at the steering wheel and the car danced on the water for a moment. The rear of the car slid around and, for a second, Erlendur thought he was going to lose control and be thrown out into the lava field. He ground almost to a halt and managed to keep himself on the road, then hurled abuse at the lorry driver who by now had vanished from his sight in the spray of rain.
    Twenty minutes later he pulled up outside a small corrugated-iron-clad house in the oldest part of Keflavík. It was painted white with a little white fence around it and a garden that was kept almost too fastidiously. The sister's name was Elín. She was several years older than Kolbrún and now retired. She was standing in the hallway, wearing her coat and on her way out, when Erlendur rang the doorbell. She looked at him in astonishment, a short, slim woman with a tough expression on her face, piercing eyes, high cheekbones and wrinkles around her mouth.
    "I thought I told you on the phone I didn't want anything to do with you or the police," she said angrily when Erlendur had introduced himself.
    "I know," Erlendur said, "but . . ."
    "I'm asking you to leave me alone," she said. "You shouldn't have wasted your time coming all the way out here."
    She stepped out onto the doorstep, closed the door behind her, went down the three steps leading to the garden and opened the little gate in the fence, leaving it open as a sign that she wanted Erlendur to leave. She didn't look at him. Erlendur stood on the steps, watching her walk away.
    "You know Holberg's dead," he called out.
    She didn't answer.
    "He was murdered in his home. You know that."
    Erlendur was at the bottom of the steps, hurrying after her. She held a black umbrella onto which the rain poured above her head. He had nothing more than a hat to keep the rain off. She quickened her pace. He ran to catch up with her. He didn't know what to say to make her listen to him. Didn't know why she reacted to him as she did.
    "I wanted to ask you about Audur," he said.
    Elín suddenly stopped and turned round and marched up to him with a contemptuous look on her face.
    "You bloody cop," she hissed between her clenched teeth. "Don't you dare mention her name. How dare you? After what you did to her mother. Get lost! Get lost this minute! Bloody cop!"
    She looked at Erlendur with hatred in her eyes and he stared back at her.
    "After all we did to her?" he said. "To whom?"
    "Go away," she shouted, and turned and walked away, leaving Erlendur where he was. He gave up the chase and watched her disappearing in the rain, stooping slightly, in her green raincoat and black ankle boots. He turned around and walked back to her house and his car, deep in thought. He got inside and lit a cigarette, opened the window a crack, started the engine and slowly drove away from the house.
    As he inhaled he felt a slight pain in the middle of his chest again. It wasn't new. It had been causing Erlendur some concern for almost a year now. A vague pain that greeted him in the mornings but generally disappeared soon after he got out of bed. He didn't have a good mattress to sleep on. Some-times his whole body ached if he lay in bed for too long.
    He inhaled the smoke. Hopefully it was the mattress.
    As Erlendur was putting out his cigarette his mobile phone rang in his coat pocket. It was the head of forensics with the news that they had managed to decipher the inscription on the grave and had located it in the Bible.
    "It's taken from Psalm 64," the head of forensics said.
    "Yes," said Erlendur.
    " 'Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.' "
    "Pardon?"
    "It's what it says on the gravestone: Preserve my life from fear of the enemy. From Psalm 64."
    "'Preserve my life from fear of the enemy'."
    "Does that help you at all?"
    "I've no idea."
    "There were two sets on fingerprints on the photograph."
    "Yes, Sigurdur Óli told me."
    "One set is Holberg's but we don't have the others on our files.