The Shadow District

15

Following their interview with Frank Ruddy, Flóvent and Thorson took a table at a restaurant on Hafnarstræti called Hot and Cold. The place had opened after the outbreak of war and was popular with servicemen. It sold fish and chips alongside traditional Icelandic dishes such as breaded lamb chops, rhubarb pudding, and skyr with cream, which proved a hit with the soldiers. The worst of the crush was over by the time the two men arrived and the owner, a short, curly-haired man in shoes with noticeably built-up heels, was busy clearing the tables. As they tucked into their salt cod with boiled potatoes and dripping they fell to discussing Frank Ruddy.

Ruddy would remain in the custody of the military police until they had confirmed his statement and checked whether he had a criminal record in the States. He had given them the name of the other Icelandic girl he was seeing and Flóvent was planning to talk to her later that evening. Both men instinctively felt he was lying to them about the man he claimed to have seen on the corner of Skuggasund and Lindargata, deliberately misleading them to divert attention from himself. It seemed that had been his intention all along: he was as deceitful and slippery in his dealings with them as he was where Icelandic women were concerned.

‘Luckily they’re not all like him,’ said Thorson.

‘No, the girls deserve better than jackasses like that.’

‘John Carroll?’ mused Thorson. ‘Didn’t he play Zorro?’

‘Yes, he was Zorro.’ Flóvent blew on his hot dripping. He was a keen cinemagoer, and a particular fan of two stars, Clark Gable, and the new lead, Humphrey Bogart.

‘Maybe Frank sees himself as some kind of Zorro,’ said Thorson. ‘A womanising adventurer.’

‘Yes, some hero.’

‘Do you think he had something to do with the girl’s murder?’

‘I can’t picture it,’ said Flóvent. ‘He’s a good-for-nothing fool but I don’t believe he knew her. Why would he take his girlfriend to the scene of the crime? Seems a bit far-fetched to me.’

‘Rósamunda stayed away from GIs according to her parents,’ said Thorson.

‘We shouldn’t set too much store by what they say. After all, Ingiborg kept her relationship with Frank secret from her parents. It’s a common problem with families who forbid fraternisation with soldiers. Many of the girls choose to keep quiet about the men they’re seeing.’

‘This dripping’s pretty good, by the way.’

‘Don’t you have it in Canada?’

‘No, isn’t it uniquely Icelandic?’

‘Probably. How are you enjoying life in the army?’

‘It’s fine. Though I’m counting the days till the war’s over and I can head on home.’

‘Anybody waiting for you there?’ Flóvent had never touched on personal matters before in his conversations with Thorson and hoped he hadn’t overstepped the mark.

‘No.’ Thorson smiled. ‘Nobody.’

Since he hadn’t seemed to take offence at the question, Flóvent decided to keep probing. He knew little about Thorson except that he was a good man to work with, shrewd, diligent and obliging. Didn’t give himself airs either. ‘What about here?’ Flóvent ventured to ask.

‘Nope, nobody here either.’

‘Of course, you’re only, what, twenty-something? Plenty of time to think about that later.’

‘Twenty-four. I guess so. How about you?’

‘Unmarried,’ said Flóvent. ‘Somehow I’ve never had time for... for that sort of thing.’

‘But there must be someone—’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Flóvent and changed the subject. ‘So you’re planning to head home? Once the war’s over?’

‘Home to Manitoba, yes. Get an engineering degree. Do something useful.’

‘Engineering?’

‘I want to build bridges. I was minding my own business, studying structural engineering, when war broke out and I ended up over here.’

‘What about the police? You don’t feel you’re doing anything useful as a cop?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Thorson looked up from his salt cod. ‘Of course the job’s interesting, the crimes and investigations and all that, but I can’t really see myself as a cop. I’ll be glad to be free of police work when the war ends.’

‘Have you visited any of your Icelandic relatives since you came here?’

‘No, there aren’t many left. Anyhow, what about you? What made you become a detective?’

‘They were short of men — and know-how — when they set up the department ten years back,’ said Flóvent. ‘I’d been on the force for several years so they sent me to Scotland and Denmark to learn about criminal investigation. I wanted to go abroad. And the job suited me well. I learnt a great deal. We’re building up the department from scratch really. Collecting fingerprints, photographs of convicts. It’s all new to us. Mind you, operations have mostly been suspended since the war began. In fact, I’m the only one working on that side at present.’

He was devoting every spare moment to compiling the fingerprint archive, though in practice he had very little time. The archive had been started in 1935 when the police first began taking prints from criminals and cataloguing them. At around the same time they had introduced the practice of taking three-dimensional photographs of felons at the police headquarters on Pósthússtræti, using a large stereoscopic camera for the purpose. The collections were still in their infancy, however, like the department itself, which had been founded in Reykjavík about a decade earlier, employing a handful of plain-clothes detectives, including one to take care of the technical side. They carried special badges, a circular silver shield bearing the police star and the inscription Criminal Investigation Department instead of the regular police motto ‘With laws shall the land be built’. The shield was attached to a silver chain and was to be carried in the pocket of the officer’s trousers. Flóvent had never seen any reason to take his out.

‘So what... what do you enjoy about it?’ asked Thorson.

‘Enjoy? I don’t know if that’s the right word. You have to be interested. And have faith in your ability to solve cases.’

‘Is it that challenging in a society as simple as Iceland’s?’

‘It’s getting more complicated by the day,’ said Flóvent, smiling. ‘When a poor farming community is torn up by its roots and dragged into the maelstrom of world events, who can say where it’ll end? But it’s not likely to end well.’

They finished their salt cod.

‘So, what do you do in your free time?’ asked Flóvent. ‘Any particular hobbies?’

‘No,’ said Thorson. ‘I go hiking in the mountains now and then. I like being alone, surrounded by nature. I’ve climbed Mount Esja a few times, and Keilir too. It’s... this is a beautiful country. It’s easy to find peace and quiet out there in the wilderness. Fill your lungs with fresh air. Lie in the grass and contemplate the cloudless sky.’

Flóvent smiled again. He had warmed to the young Canadian from their first meeting. ‘If Frank Ruddy’s telling the truth,’ he said, returning to their case, ‘and there really was a man standing on the corner, do you think he saw the girl being brought there? Or was he even the killer?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Can we track him down?’

‘We can try.’

‘Shouldn’t he have come forward?’

‘Maybe he didn’t actually witness anything.’

‘Or didn’t exist,’ said Flóvent. ‘Frank Ruddy’s an incorrigible liar.’

‘He sure is. I don’t think we should rule out the possibility that soldiers were involved.’

‘Something occurred to me, though I don’t know if it has any bearing on any of this,’ Flóvent said after a pause.

‘What’s that?’

‘The business of Rósamunda’s disappearance three months ago. Could it be linked to her recent abortion?’ said Flóvent. ‘I should have asked her parents.’

‘Are you thinking she might have been with the man who knocked her up?’

‘It crossed my mind. It seems natural to connect the two events.’

‘You mean she stayed over with some guy and didn’t want to tell anyone?’

‘Yes, conceivably.’

‘Why? Because she was afraid her parents wouldn’t approve? I thought you Icelanders were unusually relaxed about that kind of thing.’

‘Well, not everyone is. Actually, I was thinking she might have had an assignation that turned nasty,’ said Flóvent. ‘Maybe with a soldier. Or an Icelander.’

‘Why didn’t she want to have the child? If the father was an Icelander?’

‘Any number of reasons. She was unmarried, she wanted to learn dressmaking, set up her own shop.’

‘A modern woman, in other words?’

‘Yes, a modern woman.’

After their meal they paid a visit to Rósamunda’s parents who agreed to let them see her bedroom. The couple enquired about the progress of the investigation and offered them coffee and doughnuts, but the two men begged them not to put themselves out. They asked if Rósamunda had ever mentioned the National Theatre or shown any interest in it. Her parents couldn’t remember that she had.

‘We were going to try and get hold of a sewing machine for her,’ the woman told them as they stood in Rósamunda’s room, surrounded by pieces of needlework, foreign fashion magazines and drawings of skirts, blouses and dresses that would never now be made.

‘A second-hand one,’ added her husband. ‘They’re pricey.’

‘She always used to say that a good sewing machine would soon pay for itself,’ said his wife. ‘The room’s just as she left it. Please excuse the mess — she was never one for tidying, bless her, my poor darling girl,’ she added in a choked voice.

‘Lots of girls keep diaries,’ said Flóvent. ‘Do you know if she did?’

‘No, no idea,’ said the man, patting his wife’s shoulder.

‘Do you mind if we search for one?’

‘Please, go ahead,’ said the woman. ‘Look, you can see she was making a dress out of velvet, with a lace trim. It was her Lana Turner dress. She saw a gown like that in a Lana Turner film.’

The room was like a little dressmaking workshop. There was a small kitchen table that Rósamunda had used for her sewing, a single bed against one wall and a wardrobe against another. A trunk lay open in the corner, spilling out fabric, ribbons, ruffles and a tin of buttons. As they looked around, they saw the room of a girl who knew what she wanted out of life and was happily immersed in her work.

Flóvent cleared his throat. ‘When Rósamunda returned home three months ago, did everything go back to normal? Was she well? Did she seem like herself?’

‘I didn’t notice any difference,’ the woman said. ‘She worked very hard. She was seldom home. Used to leave early in the morning and come home late at night, only to snatch a few hours’ sleep really.’

Flóvent surveyed the room again. They hadn’t found any kind of diary detailing Rósamunda’s day-to-day existence, dreams, wishes and desires, and nothing that could explain her tragic fate.

Later that evening Flóvent had a brief meeting with Frank Ruddy’s other girlfriend, who was somewhat taken aback to hear that Frank had a wife back in Boston, though less surprised to learn that she wasn’t the only girl he was seeing in Reykjavík.

‘He’s from Illinois,’ said Flóvent.

‘Yes, Boston,’ said the girl.

‘Boston’s not in Illinois.’

‘Oh? What’s this “Illi” then? I’ve never heard of that.’

‘Illinois is a state. Boston’s a big city in a completely different state.’

Her parents exchanged glances.

The girl, who was nineteen, was sitting with her parents and younger brother in their basement flat in Skerjafjördur, at the address supplied by Frank. He had once escorted her home to her door. Her parents had watched furtively from the window as he kissed her goodbye and when he waved to them, they had waved back. They were from the east, from the countryside.

The girl couldn’t tell Flóvent anything he didn’t already know. She knew next to nothing about Frank except that he was a real gentleman, always had plenty of cigarettes and chewing gum, and used to invite her to dances, and although she didn’t speak much English she had the distinct impression that he had once talked seriously about marrying her and taking her back with him to the States.