The Shadow Killer

8

There was still a policeman outside Felix Lunden’s flat when Thorson parked his jeep in front of the building. Flóvent drew up behind him, opened the door for Ólafía, then escorted her up to her house and thanked her once again for her help.

They had been completely wrong-footed when she said she didn’t recognise the man on the mortuary slab and denied that it was Felix Lunden. It transpired that she had never actually got a proper look at the corpse, merely thought it must have been Felix since it was his flat. The man had been lying face down, shot through the head, his blood spattered all over the room, and she had drawn her own conclusions.

When Flóvent had asked if she was absolutely sure and tried to fish for more information, Ólafía had lost her temper and insisted on being taken home. On the way back she explained that she had simply assumed it was her tenant. She was furious with herself for being so unobservant.

Flóvent greeted the police officer on guard and reminded Thorson not to touch anything without letting him know. The sun was setting and he switched on all the lights as soon as they entered the flat. While Flóvent went into the bedroom, Thorson paused by the dark puddle on the living-room floor and studied the blood splashes on the walls, thinking about the symbol on the dead man’s forehead. This was entirely outside his realm of experience, and he knew he would have to learn fast.

‘Felix Lunden’s not a very Icelandic name, is it?’ he said when Flóvent returned from the bedroom carrying some books.

‘No, it’s not. He could be from a German family. I found some Nazi reading matter in his bedroom: Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a book of photographs from the 1927 Nuremberg rally and a pamphlet about something called the Thule Society. He wasn’t exactly advertising the fact he had them, though. I found them in a shoe-box at the back of his wardrobe. The books are all in German, so he must understand the language. He’s obviously interested in Nazism.’

‘And he drew a swastika on the body,’ said Thorson.

‘If he was the killer.’

‘Didn’t you have a home-grown fascist party here?’ asked Thorson.

‘Yes, the Nationalist Party they called themselves. They put up candidates for parliamentary and local elections but hardly got any support. As far as I know, the party dispersed when war broke out.’

‘So they were inspired by German Nazism?’ Thorson began leafing through the books.

‘I believe so. They were opposed to racial “corruption”, hostile to the Jews, hated communists and preached racist ideology, all the usual stuff the Nazis are known for. They called for a strong Iceland, whatever that means. For inviolable national unity. All that kind of propaganda.’

‘Racial corruption?’

‘The Germans sent over a consul called Werner Gerlach, a bit of a fanatic.’ Flóvent took one of the blood-spattered hats out of the suitcase on the sofa and inspected it. ‘He was supposed to be acquainting himself with Icelandic high culture and the pure Aryan race thought to live here.’

‘The descendants of the Vikings?’

‘Yes, the descendants of the Vikings, something like that,’ said Flóvent. ‘The Germans are well versed in medieval Icelandic literature. But, to his great disappointment, Gerlach found that the country was inhabited by a bunch of peasants and the Viking spirit was a thing of the past. He was arrested on the morning of the invasion and deported to Britain. They caught him making a bonfire of his documents in the bathtub at the German consulate.’

‘This one’s got an inscription,’ said Thorson. He handed Flóvent the book containing photographs of the Nuremberg rally.

‘“To Felix, with fond paternal greetings, from Rudolf, Christmas 1930”,’ Flóvent read.

‘Rudolf?’

‘Yes. So Rudolf Lunden is his father, then. He’s a German doctor who used to practise in Reykjavík. Baldur knew him a little. Mentioned that he was a Nazi. We need to get hold of him and track down that son of his.’

Flóvent laid the hat on the sofa and inspected the suitcase more closely. It was evidently well travelled; the brown leather was scuffed and stained and worn at the corners as you would expect of a salesman’s case. It was lined with linen that had once been white, and its owner had used it to tote around his samples — the cleansing creams, toothpaste and hats and belts — extolling their virtues. If Felix had been working as a salesman for some time, he would have crossed paths with any number of people. Visited the same places again and again, acquired loyal customers. According to Ólafía, he had been away a great deal, touring the country. Surely the suitcase was his?

Flóvent ran a hand over the samples, noting that they showed signs of having been taken out and hawked around. He pictured Felix sitting down in people’s homes, catching glimpses of their lives, listening to their stories and trying to find a way in. Trying to convince them that they couldn’t do without his products. He must have travelled to towns and fishing villages and even to remote farming communities. In some places the inhabitants would have set their dogs on him, in others they would have served him coffee while he relayed the news from the nearest town or even from as far afield as Reykjavík, before he produced a hat from his case for the housewife and another for her husband.

As Flóvent smiled to himself, lost in these scenes, his fingers encountered a bump under the lining of the case, near the handle. The bump was relatively small but it didn’t feel like part of the suitcase. When Flóvent examined it more closely he noticed that the seam appeared to have been unpicked, then sewn up again. He pulled at a loose thread and a pocket opened in the lining, revealing a tiny capsule the size of an aspirin tablet. Thorson, from the sound of it, was in the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers.

Flóvent took the capsule out, placed it on his palm and was just wondering what it could be when Thorson emerged from the kitchen with a telephone directory in his hands, saying that he couldn’t find a Rudolf Lunden listed. Seeing that Flóvent was deep in thought, Thorson realised he hadn’t heard a word he said. Moving closer, Thorson spotted the pill in his hand.

‘Say, where did you find the cyanide capsule?’ he asked.