Oblivion

48

Billows of steam danced over the outdoor swimming pool before vanishing into the darkness. A bus drove down the street, a few passengers huddled by its windows. Three girls walked past, shrieking with laughter, but paid them no attention. Mensalder sat quietly in the car, rubbing his hands. Erlendur avoided putting any more pressure on him. He didn’t know what sort of mental struggle Mensalder was engaged in, but sensed it was far from easy for him to talk about Dagbjört. The minutes passed. Finally Mensalder seemed to pull himself together. With a heavy sigh he straightened up in his seat and met Erlendur’s eye.

‘I suppose this is what I’ve been dreading all along,’ he said. ‘This moment. When suspicion falls on me. I’ve always dreaded that. That it would happen one day and I’d be in deep trouble, with nothing to plead in my defence.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘No, why should you be? I can hardly understand it myself. I never married, you know. Did Rósanna tell you that? I wanted to but I’ve never been very confident where women are concerned. I... then you get older and you’ve either wasted or messed up the few chances you had and find yourself on your own. And it had an effect on me, you know. What happened. She was so... lovely. So genuine. I sensed that as soon as I got talking to her. She showed an interest in me, thought it was exciting that I knew how to get my hands on all kinds of goods that were unobtainable, different, exotic and...’

Mensalder paused.

‘The thing is, I’d met someone else and that’s why I kept quiet about Dagbjört and never dared tell. I thought she’d come forward and point the finger at me if I owned up... And then there was the bloody smuggling. I was operating on a pretty big scale by then. It would all have been exposed and I’d have got into deep water for that too.’

‘Who’s “she”? What do you mean you’d met someone else? You’ll have to be clearer.’

‘A girl from Keflavík,’ said Mensalder. ‘I went out with her for a bit and she stole some dollars from me. I... she was a real bitch. This was a few months earlier. She worked on the base and used to go with the GIs. She was a real handful, kept getting into screaming matches with me and once it actually came to blows. After that she threatened to go to the police and say I’d attacked her — that I’d beaten her up and raped her. I was afraid she’d come forward if my name was linked to Dagbjört. So...’

‘What happened that morning?’ asked Erlendur. ‘What really happened?’

‘It was my idea to give her a lift to school,’ said Mensalder. ‘We were figuring out how and where to meet and I suggested I pick her up and drive her to school so she could collect the records and pay me at the same time. I was on my way out to Keflavík anyway. I could have let Rósanna take care of it and I’ve often thought since how much easier things would have been if only I’d done that. How my life might have turned out. But I... wanted to get to know Dagbjört. She was so... there was something so beautiful about her. So lovely. She was warm. A warm person. And I sensed she was interested in me too. There was... it was what she said, the way she said it. The way she smiled at me. I only met her that one time when I fetched the records from her house, and spoke to her once after that on the phone, but I immediately sensed there was some spark between us. Some connection. She was like that. She was giving. Kind. Took an interest in you.’

‘But you couldn’t just pick her up at her house?’

‘No, she was quite willing to accept a lift to school but insisted I meet her here. Perhaps she didn’t want to be seen with a black marketeer. I could understand that. And she’d have had a lot of explaining to do to her parents about who that man was waiting for her in the car outside her house first thing in the morning. We laughed about that.’

‘So it was all your idea from the beginning?’ said Erlendur. ‘To get in touch with her? To persuade her to meet you in secret? You prepared it well. You pretended you were going to drive her to school but took her somewhere else instead. Where? What happened? For God’s sake, what did you do to her?’

‘But that’s the whole point, I didn’t do anything!’ exclaimed Mensalder. ‘Not a thing! Haven’t you been listening to a word I said? The reason why I’ve never come clean about it?’

‘You said it was your idea to give her a lift. I assume you lured her into your car.’

‘This is just what I was afraid of,’ said Mensalder, extremely worked up by now. ‘Nobody’ll believe me. That’s why I’ve never dared tell. Because everyone would instantly come to the same conclusion as you. That I’d seduced her. That she owed me money for the goods and I wanted payment in kind. That I hit her, like that bitch in Keflavík accused me of. That I raped her. And killed her. All that rubbish.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Attack her?’

‘I didn’t touch her! I’m trying to explain. The only thing I did wrong was not coming clean. Not telling people that we’d been planning to meet but she never showed up.’

‘Because you were afraid you’d be blamed for her disappearance?’

‘Yes, that they’d pin it on me. Can’t you understand that?’

‘You didn’t dare take the risk?’

‘No, I didn’t want to take the rap. It was nothing to do with me. I wasn’t involved. All I regret is that I didn’t speak up when she went missing. I deeply regret that. Regret it every day.’

‘You’ve had plenty of opportunity over the years.’

‘I know,’ whispered Mensalder, his voice cracking. ‘Do you think I’m not aware of that? That I haven’t thought about it? I justified it to myself that it didn’t make any difference that I’d arranged to meet her. It didn’t change anything. I had no more idea than anyone else about where she’d gone.’

‘Why should the police believe you now? You’ve made your behaviour appear ten times more suspicious by your silence. Your long silence.’

‘I know! None of this is new to me. It was a vicious circle I could see no way out of. I was desperate. Didn’t know what to do. People would have pointed the finger at me for the rest of my life. I’d always be the murder suspect. What do you think that would’ve been like? I couldn’t bear the stigma. Couldn’t bear it. You may think I was a gutless coward but that’s how I felt.’

‘But if you weren’t responsible for her disappearance and she never came to meet you, something must have happened to her before she got here.’

‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ said Mensalder. ‘At one point I thought she must have done it deliberately. Taken her own life for some inexplicable reason. It was... I...’

Mensalder’s brow furrowed.

‘Or someone stopped us from meeting,’ he said at last.

‘Did anyone else know about it?’

‘No. No one. As far as I’m aware. I didn’t tell anyone.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not even Rósanna?’

‘No.’

‘You definitely didn’t tell anyone you were planning to meet?’

‘No. Or it would have come out during the search.’

‘Yes, I suppose it would,’ said Erlendur thoughtfully. ‘So if you’re not lying and she didn’t change her plans, something must have happened to her in the short distance between her house and here.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. It must have done.’

‘It’s not...’

‘What?’

‘No, it’s not far,’ said Erlendur, preoccupied, watching the steam brushing along the surface of the water, then mounting into the air and assuming a variety of strange shapes before dispersing and fading from view. And suddenly an image flashed into his mind, as it had so often during the last few days, of a garden suffering from years of neglect and a pair of furtive, protuberant eyes, peering from the shadows at the girl next door.