Voices Read Online Free PDF Page A

indispensable,' the manager said, his sausagelike finger protruding again as he took another sip of red wine. 'Of course, firing people is never fun, but we can't afford to have a doorman all year. That's why he was sacked. No other reason. And there wasn't really much door-manning to do. He put on his uniform when film stars or foreign dignitaries came, and he threw out undesirables.'
'Did he take it badly? Being sacked?'
'He understood, I think.'
'Are any knives missing from the kitchen?' Erlendur asked.
'I don't know. We lose knives and forks and glasses worth hundreds of thousands of krónur every year. And towels and ... Do you think he was stabbed with a knife from the kitchen?'
'I don't know.'
Erlendur watched the manager eat.
'He worked here for twenty years and no one knew him. Don't you find that unusual?'
'Employees come and go,' the manager shrugged. 'There's a high staff turnover in this business. I think people knew about him, but who knows who? Don't ask me. I don't know anyone here that well.'
'You've stayed put through all these staff changes'
'I'm difficult to move.'
'Why did you talk about chucking him out?'
'Did I say that?'
'Yes.'
'Then it was just a turn of phrase. I didn't mean anything by it.'
'But you'd sacked him and were going to chuck him out,' Erlendur said. "Then someone comes along and kills him. It hasn't exactly been going well for him recently.'
The manager acted as though Erlendur was not even there while he filled himself with cakes and mousse with his delicate, gourmandising motions, trying to savour the treats.
'Why was he still here if you'd sacked him?'
'He was supposed to leave at the end of last month. I'd been hurrying him along, but didn't pressure him. I should have. Then I'd have avoided this nonsense.'
Erlendur watched the manager scoffing his food, and said nothing. Maybe it was the buffet. Maybe the gloomy block of flats. Maybe the time of year. The microwave dinner waiting for him at home. The lonely Christmas. Erlendur did not know. Somehow the question just came out. Before he knew it.
'A room?' the manager said, as if not understanding what Erlendur meant.
'It doesn't have to be anything special,' Erlendur said.
'You mean for you?'
'A single room is fine,' Erlendur said.
'We're fully booked. Unfortunately' The hotel manager stared at Erlendur. He didn't want to have the detective over him day and night.
"The head of reception said there was a vacant room,' Erlendur lied, more firmly now. 'He said it was no problem if I just talked to you.'
The manager stared at him. Looked down at his unfinished mousse. Then he pushed the plate away, his appetite ruined.
It was cold in the room. Erlendur stood gazing out of the window, but saw nothing apart from his own reflection in the glass. He hadn't looked that man in the face for some time and he noticed in the darkness how he was ageing. Snowflakes fell cautiously to the ground, as if the heavens had split open and their dust was being strewn over the world.
A little book of verse that he owned suddenly entered his mind, exceptionally elegant translations of poems by Hölderlin. He let his mind wander through them until he stopped at a line that he knew applied to the man looking back at him from the window.
The walls stand speechless and cold, the weathervanes rattle in the wind.

4
He was falling asleep when he heard a tap on his door and a voice whispering his name.
He knew at once who it was. When he opened the door he saw his daughter, Eva Lind, standing in the corridor. They looked each other in the eye, she smiled at him and slipped past him into the room. He closed the door. She sat down at the little desk and took out a packet of cigarettes.
'I don't think you're allowed to smoke in here,' said Erlendur, who had obeyed the smoke-free policy.
'Yeah, yeah,' Eva Lind said, fishing a cigarette out of the packet. 'Why's it so cold in here?'
'I think the radiator's broken.'
Erlendur sat down on the side of the bed. Dressed only in