House of Evidence(3)

The following night he couldn’t sleep at all. This subject suited him to a T. He had never been interested in crime or the police—or even crime fiction—until now, but what this book revealed about the research methods investigators used intrigued him. Scientific accuracy, patience, attention to detail, scrupulousness, and prolific imagination were required, and he had a feeling that these were attributes he might just possess.

By dawn he had made a decision, and the following day he put in an application to change departments. Three years later he had passed the exam, and when he needed to explain in his mother tongue what he had studied, he invented an Icelandic word, réttarvísindi, for forensic science.

At first he had worked for the police in Fairfax County, Virginia, but was soon offered his current job in Reykjavik. He had arrived here in spring 1971, and had been working as an investigator in the forensics department for a year and eight months.

Jóhann got dressed and went into the small kitchen. He was not hungry, but knew that would change as the morning wore on. He made three sandwiches with butter and a thick spread of liver pâté, wrapped them in plastic, and then rinsed the utensils and put them away. He had always lived in compact lodgings since he’d moved out of the family home in Akureyri in his early twenties, and had learned from experience that it was better to keep a tidy home. After all, there was nobody to clean up after him.

He put on a thick parka and crept soundlessly down the stairs, aware that most of the other residents of the building were probably still asleep. It was snowing, and he put on a woolen hat as soon as he got outside. His five-year-old Ford Cortina was parked nearby, and he carefully cleared the snow off it before driving away. The roads were slippery, so he drove slowly, first east along Hringbraut, then north along Snorrabraut toward Borgartún. He was in no hurry, and he found it comforting to be the only one up and about in the city so early in the morning.

The division’s headquarters were situated on the top floor of an office building in Borgartún. Jóhann headed up the stairs and down a corridor to the laboratory. He started up the coffee machine before going to his desk and switching on his microscope.

A car had been stolen in Kópavogur, not really a story in itself, except that the thief had run over a pedestrian and then driven off. The pedestrian, a man in his seventies, had died in the hospital two days later. The car had been found abandoned a few hours after the incident, bearing clear evidence of the collision: a broken headlamp and various dents and scratches on the bumper and body of the car. An empty vodka bottle had been abandoned on the floor in the back of the car, and it was covered in the fingerprints of a well-known petty thief and all-around troublemaker. It didn’t take long for the man to admit to having been in the car, and to identify a companion of his as the driver. The companion, on the other hand, denied everything, and now it was one man’s word against the other’s. The alleged driver had supposedly been wearing gloves, leaving no fingerprints in or on the car. Now it was Jóhann’s task to find proof that this guy had actually been behind the wheel.

In Jóhann’s experience it was highly likely that someone sitting in a car for any period of time would leave behind a few hairs. Human hair is complicated in structure, and while two hairs from the same person may not be identical, there is enough similarity to match them with some degree of confidence. And, in order to make this identification, various elements need to be examined, such as density, refraction, and so on.

Jóhann had vacuumed the car thoroughly using a machine with a special filter designed for forensic purposes. He had retrieved 374 hairs, discarding 220 of those that obviously belonged to the car owner’s dog, and then sorted the human hairs according to type and color. He now compared them under the microscope with the hair of the car owner and of the two suspects. Various tests would then be carried out on these hairs, and when the tests were completed they might offer proof of the alleged driver’s identity that would support the witness’s testimony in court.

Jóhann was a scientist; he tackled this type of work objectively, dwelling on neither the tragedy that had taken place nor those involved. His job was to discover all the information that these physical pieces of evidence could provide. Either they would lead to acquittal or to conviction.

The building was quiet at this early hour. Now and again creaking and knocking noises from the central heating system could be heard, and outside the distant sounds of an occasional car driving past. There was a faint but distinct chemical smell in the room that was soon overpowered by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.