The Draining Lake

10

Marion Briem seemed a little livelier when Erlendur called by the next morning. He had managed to dig up a John Wayne western. It was called The Searchers and seemed to cheer up Marion, who asked him to put it in the video player.

“Since when have you watched westerns?” Erlendur asked.

“I’ve always liked westerns,” Marion said. The oxygen mask lay on the table beside the chair in the living room. “The best ones tell simple stories about simple people. I’d have thought you’d enjoy that kind of thing. Western stories. A country bumpkin like you.”

“I never liked the cinema,” Erlendur said.

“Making any headway with Kleifarvatn?” Marion asked.

“What does it tell us when a skeleton, probably dating from the 1960s, is found tied to a Russian listening device?” Erlendur asked.

“Isn’t there only one possibility?” Marion said.

“Espionage?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it might be a genuine Icelandic spy in the lake?”

“Who says he’s Icelandic?”

“Isn’t that a fairly straightforward assumption?”

“There’s nothing to say he’s Icelandic,” Marion said, suddenly bursting into a fit of coughing and gasping for breath. “Hand me the oxygen, I feel better when I’ve got oxygen.”

Erlendur reached for the mask, put it over Marion’s face and turned on the oxygen cylinder. He wondered whether to call a nurse or even a doctor. Marion seemed to read his thoughts.

“Relax. I don’t need any more help. A nurse will be round later.”

“I shouldn’t be tiring you out like this.”

“Don’t go yet. You’re the only visitor I can be bothered to talk to. And the only one who could conceivably give me a cigarette.”

“I’m not going to give you a cigarette.”

There was silence until Marion removed the mask again.

“Did any Icelanders spy during the Cold War?” Erlendur asked.

“I don’t know,” Marion said. “I know that people tried to get them to. I remember one bloke who came to us and said the Russians never left him alone.” Marion’s eyes closed. “It was an exceptionally cheesy spy story, but very Icelandic, of course.”

The Russians had contacted the man to ask if he would help them. They needed information about the Keflavik base and its buildings. The Russians took the matter seriously and wanted to meet the man in an isolated place outside the city. He found them very pushy and could not get rid of them. Although he refused to do what they asked, they would not listen and in the end he gave in. He contacted the police and a simple sting was set up. When the man drove off to meet the Russians by Lake Hafravatn there were two police officers in the car with him, hiding under a blanket. Other policemen had taken up positions nearby. The Russians suspected nothing until the police officers got out of the man’s car and arrested them.

“They were expelled,” Marion said, with a pained smile at the thought of the Russians” amateurish attempts at spying. “I always remember their names: Kisilev and Dimitriev.”

“I wanted to see if you remembered someone from Reykjavik who went missing in the 1960s,” Erlendur said. “A man who sold farm machinery and diggers. He failed to turn up for a meeting with a farmer just outside town and he’s never been heard of since.”

“I remember that well. Niels handled that case. The lazy bastard.”

“Yes, quite,” said Erlendur, who knew Niels. “The man owned a Ford Falcon that was found outside the coach station. One hubcap had been removed.”

“Didn’t he just want to give his old girl the slip? As far as I recall that was our conclusion. That he killed himself.”

“Could be,” Erlendur said.

Marion’s eyes closed again. Erlendur sat on the sofa in silence for a while, watching the film while Marion slept. The video-box blurb described how John Wayne played a Confederate Civil War veteran hunting down the Indians who had killed his brother and sister-in-law and kidnapped their daughter. The soldier spent years searching for the girl and when he found her at last she had forgotten where she came from and become an Indian herself.

After twenty minutes Erlendur stood up and said goodbye to Marion, who was still sleeping under the mask.

When he arrived at the police station, Erlendur sat down with Elinborg, who was writing her speech for the book launch. Sigurdur Oli was in her office too. He said he had traced the sales history of the Falcon right up to the most recent owner.

“He sold the car to a spare-parts dealer in Kopavogur some time before 1980,” Sigurdur Oli said. “The company’s still in business. They just won’t answer the phone. Maybe they’re on holiday.”

“Anything new from forensics about the listening device?” Erlendur asked, and he noticed that Elinborg was moving her lips while she stared at the computer screen, as if she was trying out how the speech sounded.

“Elinborg!” he barked.

She lifted a finger to tell him to wait.

“…And I hope that this book of mine,” she read out loud from the screen, “will bring you endless pleasure in the kitchen and broaden your horizons. I have tried to keep it plain and simple, tried to emphasise the household spirit, because cookery and the kitchen are the focal point…”

“Very good,” Erlendur said.

“Wait,” Elinborg said. “…The focal point of every good household where the family gathers every day to relax and enjoy happy times together.”

“Elinborg,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Is it too sentimental?” Elinborg asked, pulling a face.

“It makes me puke,” Sigurdur Oli said.

Elinborg looked at Erlendur.

“What did forensics say about the equipment?” he asked.

“They’re still looking at it,” Elinborg said. “They’re trying to get in touch with experts from Iceland Telecom.”

“I was thinking about all that equipment they found in Kleifarvatn years ago,” Sigurdur Oli said, “and this one tied to the skeleton. Shouldn’t we talk to some old codger from the diplomatic service?”

“Yes, find out who we can speak to,” Erlendur said. “Someone who remembers the Cold War.”

“Are we talking about spying in Iceland?” Elinborg asked.

“I don’t know,” Erlendur said.

“Isn’t that pretty absurd?” Elinborg said.

“No more than “where the family gathers every day to relax and enjoy happy times together”,” Sigurdur Oli parroted her.

“Oh, shut up,” Elinborg said, and deleted what she had written.

Wrecked cars were kept behind a large fence, stacked six high in some places. Some had been written off, others were just old and worn out. The spare-parts dealer looked the same, a weary man approaching sixty, in a filthy, ripped pair of overalls that had once been light blue. He was tearing the front bumper off a new Japanese car that had been hit from behind and had concertinaed right up to the front seats.

Erlendur stood sizing up the debris until the man looked up.

“A lorry went into the back of it,” he said. “Lucky there was no one in the back seat.”

“A brand new car too,” Erlendur said.

“What are you looking for?”

“I’m after a black Ford Falcon,” Erlendur said. “It was sold or given away to this yard around 1980.”

“A Ford Falcon?”

“It’s hopeless, of course — I know,” Erlendur said.

“It would have been old when it came here,” the man said, pulling out a rag to wipe his hands. “They stopped making Falcons around 1970, maybe earlier.”

“You mean you didn’t have any use for it?”

“Most Falcons were off the streets long before 1980. Why are you looking for it? Do you need spares? Are you doing it up?”

Erlendur told him that he was from the police and that the car was connected with an old case of a missing person. The man’s interest was aroused. He said he had bought the business from a man called Haukur in the mid-1980s but did not recall any Ford Falcon in the stock. The previous owner, who had died years ago, had kept a record of all the wrecks he’d bought, said the dealer, and showed Erlendur into a little room filled to the ceiling with files and boxes of papers.

“These are our books,” the man said with an apologetic smile. “We, er, never throw anything away. You’re welcome to take a look. I couldn’t be bothered to keep records of the cars, never saw the point, but he did it conscientiously.”

Erlendur thanked him and began examining the files, which were all marked on the spine with a year. Spotting a stack from the 1970s, he started there. He did not know why he was looking for this car. Even if it did exist, he had no idea how it could help him. Sigurdur Oli had asked why he was interested in this particular missing person over the others he had heard about in the past few days. Erlendur had no proper answer. Sigurdur Oli would never have understood what he meant if he had told him that he was preoccupied by a lonely woman who believed she had found happiness at last, fidgeting outside a dairy shop, looking at her watch and waiting for the man she loved.

Three hours later, when Erlendur was on the verge of giving up and the owner had asked him repeatedly whether he had turned up anything, he found what he was looking for: an invoice for the car. The dealer had sold a black Ford Falcon on 21 October 1979, engine defunct, interior in reasonable condition, good lacquering. No licence plates. Stapled to the sheet of paper describing the sale was a pencilled invoice: Falcon 1967. 35,000 kronur. Buyer: Hermann Albertsson.