Voices by Indriðason Arnaldur

Author:Indriðason, Arnaldur [Indriðason, Arnaldur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, thriller
ISBN: 9781407020976
Amazon: 1407020978
Goodreads: 17425885
Publisher: Vintage Digital
Published: 2002-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

18

WAPSHOTT LEFT THE hotel accompanied by the two policemen, while Erlendur found out that Ösp, the girl who had discovered the body, was currently working on the fourth floor. He took the lift and when he arrived there he saw her loading a trolley with dirty laundry outside one of the rooms. She did not notice him until he walked up to her and said her name. She looked up and recognised him at once.

‘Oh, is it you again?’ she said indifferently.

She looked even more tired and depressed than when he had met her in the staff coffee room, and Erlendur thought to himself that Christmas was probably no season of joy in her life either. Before he knew it he had asked her.

‘Does Christmas get you down?’

Instead of answering him she pushed the trolley to the next door, knocked and waited a moment before taking out her master key and opening the door. She called into the room in case someone was inside but had not heard her knocking, then went in and began cleaning, made the bed, picked up the towels from the bathroom floor, squirted cleaner on the mirror. Erlendur wandered into the room after her and watched her at work, and after a while she seemed to notice that he was still there with her.

‘You mustn’t come into the room,’ she said. ‘It’s private.’

‘You do room 312 on the floor below,’ Erlendur said. ‘A weird Brit was there. Henry Wapshott. Did you notice anything unusual in his room?’

She gave him a look of not quite following what he meant.

‘Like a bloodstained knife, for example?’ Erlendur said and tried to smile.

‘No,’ Ösp said. She stopped to think. Then she asked: ‘What knife? Did he kill Santa?’

‘I don’t quite remember how you put it the last time we spoke, but you said some of the guests grope you. I thought you were talking about sexual harassment. Was he one of them?’

‘No, I only saw him once.’

‘And was there nothing that—’

‘He went ballistic,’ she said. ‘When I went into the room.’

‘Ballistic?’

‘I disturbed him and he threw me out. I went to check what was going on and it turned out he’d made a special request at reception not to have his room tidied. No one told me anything. None of this bloody crew ever says a word to us. So I walked in on him and when he saw me he totally lost it. Went for me, the old sod. As if I have any say at this hotel. He should have gone for the hotel manager.’

‘He is a little mysterious.’

‘He’s a creep.’

‘I mean that Wapshott.’

‘Yes, both of them.’

‘So you didn’t notice anything unusual in his room?’

‘It was a real mess, but that’s nothing unusual.’

Ösp stopped working, stood still for a moment and looked pensively at Erlendur.

‘Are you getting anywhere? With Santa?’

‘A little,’ Erlendur said. ‘Why?’

‘This is a weird hotel,’ Ösp said, lowering her voice and looking out into the corridor.

‘Weird?’ Erlendur had a sudden feeling that she was not quite so self-confident.

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