The Shadow Killer

17

They parted company shortly afterwards, and Flóvent drove back to Fríkirkjuvegur prior to heading home. There was a message waiting for him at the office: a policeman from Pósthússtræti had been asking to speak to him in connection with the Felix Lunden case. He put through a call to the station but learnt that the officer in question had gone off duty. After that, he rang the Reykjavík commissioner’s right-hand man, an old acquaintance from his days with the regular police, to sound him out about Churchill’s visit. His contact, it turned out, was completely in the dark. Astonished by the suggestion, he immediately wanted to know where Flóvent had picked it up. Flóvent merely said he’d heard it on the grapevine. He was reluctant to mention Thorson in case he got the young man into trouble.

Until the rumour had been substantiated, he felt it was premature to link Felix Lunden’s disappearance to a possible visit. So far he had not one shred of evidence to suggest that Felix was involved in a plot connected to Churchill or that he was a German assassin. Even supposing the suitcase did belong to him, and the cyanide capsule too, that wasn’t sufficient grounds for such a conclusion. Admittedly the pill was an indication that there was more to Felix Lunden than met the eye and that he might be working for the Germans, but it revealed nothing about an actual Nazi plot in Iceland.

Flóvent’s acquaintance, Arnfinnur, a man somewhat older than him, said he would make enquiries and get back to him shortly. Then he asked if Flóvent was making any headway with the murder investigation and whether the occupation force was playing ball. Flóvent said it was progressing, slowly, and complained, not for the first time, about a lack of manpower. The Criminal Investigation Department needed more men. Up to now his requests had fallen on deaf ears, but he thought the murder at Felix’s flat might prompt his superiors to remedy the situation. Arnfinnur said he would see what he could do but hinted that since the military police were willing to assist, and the Icelandic force was desperately understaffed at what was after all a difficult time, Flóvent would probably have to make the best of things. Flóvent had heard that one before.

He had no sooner replaced the receiver after his conversation with Arnfinnur than the phone rang. It was his father, wanting to know if he’d be home soon. Flóvent told him not to wait up, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. His father, who worked on the docks, seldom retired for the night until Flóvent came home. He kept supper warm for his son when Flóvent was held up at work, and made sure he never went to bed hungry. They usually spent their evenings chatting or companionably listening to the wireless, and Flóvent knew that his father treasured these moments. He was a family man who had lost half his family in one fell swoop when his wife and daughter died of the Spanish flu. He and Flóvent bore their sorrow in silence. He had never gone out looking for another woman after his wife died. He was a member of the last generation of Icelanders to experience true hardship, having lived through war, depression and epidemic — all without uttering a word of complaint.

Flóvent said he was on his way, but as he was hurrying out of the office the phone rang again. He paused in the doorway, then strode back and snatched up the receiver.

‘Is that Flóvent?’ said a man’s voice.

‘Yes?’

‘I know it’s late but I tried to reach you earlier. My name’s Einar. I’m a police officer, and I was on duty at Pósthússtræti this morning when a man came in, a wholesaler. I’ve been thinking about it ever since he left, because of the man you found murdered in that basement flat.’

‘Oh? What about him?’

‘The wholesaler’s looking for one of his salesmen,’ said the policeman. ‘He thinks he’s made off with his samples and all the cash.’

‘Is his name Felix, the salesman in question? Hasn’t the wholesaler heard our appeal for information about him?’

‘No, actually, it’s not Felix.’

‘Who is it then?’

‘I wondered if he could be the man who was killed. The salesman, I mean — the one who’s been reported missing.’

‘Can you get hold of him quickly? The wholesaler.’

‘Yes, he left a telephone number and—’

‘Ring him and tell him to meet me at the National Hospital mortuary in twenty minutes. Tell him it’s urgent. If necessary, we can send a car for him.’

Thorson didn’t know exactly what he was looking for when he left Hótel Borg, not long after saying goodbye to Flóvent. It wasn’t the first time he had embarked on one of these forays into Reykjavík’s nightlife in an attempt to explore his longings and desires, to find answers to the questions that preyed on his mind. He knew he was unusually inexperienced — perhaps because he was so oddly uninterested. His comrades in the military enjoyed their fair share of attention from the local women and some took full advantage of it, while others were more circumspect, put off by the whole sordid Situation. He’d heard stories from his fellow soldiers, some as tragic as they were extraordinary. Stories of questionable morality. Of bizarre pride. Passing through the camps, he would often think of the freezing night when he had stopped to help an inadequately dressed woman who had fallen into a snowdrift. As he drove her home she confided in him that earlier that evening she had slept with three marines in their barracks. But she had refused to take any money for it, she assured Thorson, saying proudly: ‘I wouldn’t want them to think I was some kind of whore.’

He was headed for Hótel Ísland, a very different, far less classy place than Hótel Borg, consisting of a hotchpotch of wooden buildings that lined the street from Austurstræti to the corner of Adalstræti. The crowd was spilling out into the road outside the dance hall; it was made up mostly of soldiers, a few with women on their arms. When Thorson arrived, a doorman was throwing out a sorry-looking Icelander in shabby clothes, telling him he had no business in there. Thorson hoped it was because he was drunk and not just because he was a local. Recently the Icelandic police had formed the Morality Committee for the Supervision of Minors, and two of its representatives were busy ejecting young girls from the premises despite their protests. Inside, a small jazz band was playing and people were dancing close together in a sweltering fug of cigarette smoke, aftershave and sweat. The noise was deafening, a cacophony of shouts and roars of laughter vying with the music. Thorson edged his way to the bar and bought himself a drink. A drunken sergeant bashed into him. A new consignment of American troops had recently arrived, and he thought their numbers now equalled those of the British and Canadian troops in the dance hall. The local women had already begun to transfer their affections to the Yanks and he soon saw why. The Americans had a lot more money to throw around. They were better groomed. Had broader grins. They were Clark Gable to Britain’s Oliver Twist.

Thorson looked around the room, where the booze was flowing and the dancers’ feet thundered in time to the music.

Hótel Ísland. Hotel Iceland.

It hadn’t occurred to him before just how appropriate the name was. Here you truly got the sense that Iceland was nothing more than a staging post.

A night’s lodging.

A one-night stand.

She was here, as she had been on previous weekends, with a group of marines, but when she spotted him she came straight over and asked if he was going to buy her a drink. He ordered a gin: she had said it was her favourite tipple. They clinked glasses. She was grateful that he spoke Icelandic because she barely knew a word of English. It was a shame he was practically an Icelander, she said, because he looked very dashing in his uniform. Then she laughed because she had a sunny disposition and was easily amused, and he felt comfortable with her. He had learnt quite a bit about her, as she didn’t mind talking about herself, though he put no pressure on her to do so. She was at least ten years older than him, dark-haired, with thick ringlets snaking down to her shoulders, and a curvaceous figure. Her face had lost some of its bloom, which he put down to a fast lifestyle, but her eyes were still beautiful and almost completely round. They grew impossibly wide whenever she repeated, or heard, something she found odd or interesting. A friend of hers had met ever such a nice British soldier from Brighton, she told him, and they were head over heels in love. Of course Thorson knew that Hótel Ísland also had its heart-warming tales: love blossoming across oceans, fairy tales where men and women found their soulmates while war raged on in the outside world, and that this love could be pure and innocent.

‘Have you made up your mind?’ she asked, once they had drained their glasses.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Got the money?’

He put his hand to his pocket but she stopped him.

‘Not here, darling. Come on.’

Baldur was annoyed at being phoned so late at night and initially refused to meet Flóvent at the mortuary, before eventually giving in. Flóvent was waiting for him outside and apologised profusely when the doctor, who lived near the hospital, emerged from the darkness on his bicycle. At that moment a lorry drove up with a roar and out stepped the wholesaler. He asked which of them was Flóvent.

‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked, shaking both their hands. ‘The cop who rang said he’d have to arrest me if I didn’t get over here straight away.’

‘Thank you for coming, sir,’ said Flóvent. ‘I understand you’re missing one of your salesmen.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the wholesaler. He had lit one of his cheap cigars on the way over and was sucking on it avidly. ‘Let’s drop the “sir”, shall we? Do you think he’s in here?’

‘Let’s go and see, shall we?’ said Flóvent. Baldur opened the door for them and they followed him inside. He pulled the trolley out of the cold storage unit and rolled it under the unforgiving lights of the mortuary.

‘I warn you,’ said Flóvent. ‘The man was shot in the head and he’s not a pretty sight, though Baldur here has done his best to tidy him up, so—’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ interrupted the wholesaler. ‘There’s no need. I used to work in an abattoir when I was younger.’

‘This is no abattoir,’ boomed Baldur.

There was a white sheet covering the corpse. Baldur lifted it back, and they saw the instant recognition on the wholesaler’s face.

‘Yes, that’s him. No question. Hardly surprising I couldn’t get in touch with him, is it?’ He seemed to feel compelled to lighten the atmosphere.

‘Who is he?’ asked Flóvent. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Eyvindur,’ replied the wholesaler. ‘I knew he’d come back to town on the Súd, but I had no idea he’d ended up here with you.’

‘Eyvindur?’

‘Yes, the poor chap,’ said the wholesaler. ‘One of the worst salesmen I’ve ever had,’ he added, inadvertently showering the body with ash from his cigar.

She got up off the mattress and wriggled back into her knickers, put on her bra, slipped her dress over her snaking locks and smoothed it down, then looked at him with those large, quizzical eyes that missed nothing but suspected so much.

‘It happens to everyone, darling,’ she said, but she didn’t sound very convincing. ‘Don’t worry about it. This place doesn’t exactly help. I wish I could have offered you something better.’

Thorson glanced briefly around the shed, then buttoned up his trousers and pulled on his shirt, wishing the floor would swallow him up. He mumbled something and tripped over a pile of nets as he slunk out into the August night, then hurried back to his room at Hótel Borg.