Outrage

16

It took Elínborg only a few minutes to drive from Thingholt down to police headquarters, where Sigurdur Óli was waiting for her with a colleague from CID, a veteran detective named Finnur. The two men had been chatting in the cafeteria when the murder investigation came up. Sigurdur Óli mentioned Edvard, who claimed to have bought the Rohypnol for his friend Runólfur.

‘So?’ asked Elínborg, as she took a seat at their table. ‘What’s this about Edvard?’

‘If he’s been dealing in Rohypnol, we’re certainly interested,’ said Finnur, ‘whether it was for himself or someone else.’

‘Why? Have you got anything on him?’

‘You knew all about the case — you were with us at the start of the investigation,’ he said, with a look at Elínborg. ‘Erlendur was always interested. Though we never did succeed in finding the girl. She was nineteen, disappeared from her home, out west in Akranes. The local police called us in.’

‘Akranes?’

‘Yes.’

Elínborg glanced at Finnur, then at Sigurdur Óli. ‘Hang on … are you talking about Lilja? That missing-person case in Akranes?’

Finnur nodded.

‘It turns out that Edvard knew her,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘He was teaching at Akranes Comprehensive College at the time she disappeared. Finnur interviewed him. He remembered Edvard as soon as I mentioned his name, but he didn’t know he’d been buying a date-rape drug on the black market.’

‘If he got in touch with Valur he must have done his homework, because Valur keeps a very low profile,’ Finnur observed. ‘He’s very cautious, trusts nobody. The word is he’s not dealing any more, but we reckon he’s fencing stolen goods and still selling all sorts of dope. I don’t see some ordinary bloke walking in off the street and buying dope from Valur — prescription medicine or anything else. There’s more to it than that.’

‘Valur said he’d never seen him before.’ said Elínborg.

‘You can’t trust a word Valur says,’ replied Finnur. ‘They could have been best mates, met every day.’

‘But the description fits. He described Edvard to us.’

‘Maybe he wants us to take him out of circulation, sees Edvard as a threat. You ought to go back to Valur, talk to him again — the two of them may know each other better than they’re admitting. Get him to make a formal identification and tell you more about his dealings with him.’

‘I can’t imagine anyone seeing Edvard as a threat,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘He’s such a loser.’

‘Do you think Edvard was involved in Lilja’s disappearance?’ asked Elínborg.

Finnur shrugged. ‘He was interviewed during the investigation — but then, we talked to almost everyone there.’

‘Did he teach her?’

‘Not at the time she disappeared, but he’d taught her the previous year,’ said Finnur. ‘He might have had no involvement. I’m not saying he did. We got nowhere with the case, couldn’t even reach a conclusion about whether a crime had been committed, or whether the girl might have taken her own life for reasons we knew nothing about. Or it could have been an accident. We found nothing.’

‘How long ago was it? Six or seven years?’

‘Six. It was in 1999. I remembered Edvard when Siggi told me about him. We spoke to all the teachers, and I did that interview myself. I remember he lived here in Reykjavík and drove up there every day. Siggi says he’s teaching at the Breidholt College here in town now.’

‘He left Akranes College four years ago,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘And don’t call me Siggi.’

‘They were friends, Edvard and Runólfur,’ said Elínborg. ‘According to Edvard they were great mates.’

Elínborg went over in her mind the case of the missing girl, Lilja. The Akranes police had been contacted by the girl’s mother, who was worried because she had not seen or heard from her daughter for more than twenty-four hours. Lilja, who lived with her parents, had left the house to visit a friend, telling her mother they planned to go to the cinema and that she might stay the night at her friend’s place, as she often did. It was a Friday evening. Lilja had no mobile phone. On the Saturday afternoon Lilja’s mother called the friend’s house. The girl told her that she and Lilja had intended to see a film, but in the event she had not heard from her. She had assumed that Lilja had gone to visit her grandparents on their farm in the country.

On the Sunday there was still no trace of the missing girl. The media were informed and a photo was circulated, but without result. An extensive search and investigation yielded very little. Lilja was a student at the comprehensive college and lived an unremarkable life: she attended her classes, and went out at the weekends with friends, or spent time with her maternal grandparents who ran a horse farm in nearby Hvalfjördur. She loved horses, helped out on her grandparents’ farm in the summer holidays, and dreamed of working with them full-time in the future. There was no evidence of alcohol or drug abuse. She had no boyfriend but was one of a close-knit group of friends; the other girls were devastated by her disappearance. Search parties were sent out and townspeople combed the area around the little town. Lilja was never found, nor did any clue to what had become of her that Friday evening ever come to light.

‘Didn’t the girls know anything?’ asked Elínborg.

‘No,’ Finnur replied. ‘Only that they didn’t believe she’d killed herself. They found that a ridiculous suggestion. They thought it more likely that she’d had an accident, or even been murdered. We came up empty-handed.’

‘I don’t suppose you remember what Edvard said at the time?’ asked Elínborg.

‘You can look it up. All the reports and statements are on file,’ said Finnur.

‘I shouldn’t think he said any more than the rest of them — the other teachers: she was a good, conscientious student and they had no idea what had happened to her.’

‘And now it turns out that Edvard was trying to get his hands on a rapists’ drug?’

‘I just wanted to pass on what I know,’ said Finnur. ‘I think there’s something a bit dodgy about the connection to your Runólfur. The bloke was working at Akranes when the girl went missing and he’s been buying Rohypnol. It’s worth looking into.’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Elínborg. ‘Thanks for the tip — we’ll be in touch.’

‘Let me know what comes of it,’ said Finnur, and left.

‘I think …’ started Elínborg, but then she drifted off into her own thoughts in mid-sentence.

‘What?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.

‘It puts a new twist on everything,’ said Elínborg. ‘The two of them, Runólfur and Edvard, and the girl from Akranes. What if there’s a link?’

‘What link?’

‘I don’t know. Could Runólfur have known or found out something about Edvard, something that backfired on him? Meaning that Edvard had to get rid of him? Could the drugs at Runólfur’s place have belonged to Edvard? Maybe Runólfur took them off him. Maybe Runólfur had no intention of using them?’

‘And there was no woman with him on the night his throat was cut?’

‘What if it was some kind of dispute between the two of them?’

‘You mean Runólfur and Edvard?’

‘What if Runólfur was threatening to go to the authorities? Could he have been blackmailing Edvard?’

‘Edvard can spin us any story he likes, of course,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘He knows the Rohypnol was found at Runólfur’s place. It’s been on the news. It’s dead easy for him to claim that Runólfur asked him to get hold of it.’

‘With a little help from you …’ observed Elínborg, unable to resist the dig.

‘No — as I said, he must have worked out his story long before we turned up. Shall we go and bring him in?’

‘No, not yet,’ answered Elínborg. ‘We need to do a bit more groundwork — talk to Valur again. I’m going to look up the records about the missing girl. Then we’ll go and have another word with him.’

Elínborg dug out the police records about Lilja’s disappearance. According to the file, Edvard had taught maths and sciences at Akranes Comprehensive College. His statement was short and provided no leads. He said he had no knowledge of where Lilja had been on the Friday of her disappearance. He remembered her clearly, having taught her the previous year. She was not an outstanding student, he said, but a pleasant, quiet girl. He said he had finished teaching early that Friday, and gone home to Reykjavík.