The Draining Lake (26 page)

Driving back from Selfoss, Erlendur and Elínborg discussed Hannes's story. It was evening and there was not much traffic on Hellisheidi moor. Erlendur thought about the black Falcon. There would hardly have been many on the streets in those days. Yet the Falcon was popular, according to Elínborg's husband Teddi. He thought about Tómas, whose girlfriend had gone missing in East Germany. They would visit him at the first opportunity. He still could not work out the link between the body in the lake and the Leipzig students in the 1960s. And he thought about Eva Lind, who was destroying herself in spite of his attempts to save her, and about his son Sindri, whom he did not know in the slightest. He puzzled over all this without managing to organise his thoughts. Giving him a sideways glance, Elínborg asked what was on his mind.

'Nothing,' he said.

'There must be something,' Elínborg said.

'No,' Erlendur said. 'It's nothing.'

Elínborg shrugged. Erlendur thought about Valgerdur, from whom he had not heard for several days. He knew that she needed time and he was in no hurry either. What she saw in him was a riddle to Erlendur. He could not understand what attracted Valgerdur to a lonely, depressive man who lived in a gloomy block of flats. He asked himself sometimes whether he deserved her friendship at all.

However, he knew precisely what it was that he liked about Valgerdur. He had known from the first moment. She was everything he was not but would love to be. To all intents and purposes she was his opposite. Attractive, smiling and happy. In spite of the marital problems she had to deal with, which Erlendur knew had had a profound effect on her, she tried not to let them ruin her life. She always saw the upside to any problem and was incapable of feeling hatred or irritation about anything. She allowed nothing to darken her outlook on life, which was gentle and generous. Not even her husband, whom Erlendur regarded as a moron for being unfaithful to such a woman.

Erlendur knew perfectly what he saw in her. Being with her reinvigorated him.

'Tell me what you're thinking about,' Elínborg pleaded. She was bored.

'Nothing,' Erlendur said. 'I'm not thinking about anything.'

She shook her head. Erlendur had been rather gloomy that summer, even though he had spent an unusual amount of time after work with the other detectives. She and Sigurdur Óli had discussed this and thought he was probably depressed by having virtually no contact with Eva Lind any longer. They knew that he was in anguish about her and had tried to help her, but the girl seemed to have no control over herself. She's a loser, was Sigurdur Óli's stock response. Two or three times Elínborg had approached Erlendur to talk about Eva and ask how she was, but he had brushed her off.

They sat in deep silence until Erlendur drew up in front of Elínborg's townhouse. Instead of getting straight out of the car, she turned to him.

'What's wrong?' she asked.

Erlendur did not reply.

'What should we do about this case? Do we talk to this Tómas character?'

'We have to,' Erlendur said.

'Are you thinking about Eva Lind?' Elínborg asked. 'Is that why you're so quiet and serious?'

'Don't worry about me,' Erlendur said. 'I'll see you tomorrow.' He watched her walk up the steps to her house. When she went inside he drove away.

Two hours later, Erlendur was sitting in his chair at home reading when the doorbell rang. He stood up and asked who it was, then pressed the button to open the front door downstairs. After switching on the light in his flat he went to the hallway, opened the door and waited. Valgerdur soon appeared.

'Perhaps you want to be left alone?' she said.

'No, do come in,' he said.

She slipped past him and he took her coat. Noticing an open book by the chair, she asked what he was reading and he told her it was a book about avalanches.

'And everyone meets a ghastly death, I suppose,' she said.

They had often talked about his interest in Icelandic lore, historical accounts, biography and books about fatal ordeals at the mercy of the elements.

'Not everyone. Some survive. Fortunately.'

'Is that why you read these books about death in the mountains and avalanches?'

'What do you mean?' Erlendur said.

'Because some people survive?'

Erlendur smiled.

'Maybe,' he said. 'Are you still living with your sister?'

She nodded. She said she expected to need to consult a lawyer about the divorce and asked Erlendur if he knew any. She said she had never needed a lawyer's advice before. Erlendur offered to ask at work, where he said lawyers were nineteen to the dozen.

'Have you got any of that green stuff left?' she asked, sitting down on the sofa.

With a nod he produced the Chartreuse and two glasses. Remembered hearing once that thirty different botanical ingredients were used to achieve the correct flavour. He sat down beside her and told her about them.

She told him she had met her husband earlier that day, how he had promised to turn over a new leaf and tried to persuade her to move back in. But when he realised that she was intent on leaving him, he had grown angry and in the end had lost control of himself, shouting and cursing at her. They were in a restaurant and he had showered her with abuse, paying no heed to the customers watching in astonishment. She had stood up and walked out without looking back.

Once she had related the day's events they sat in silence finishing their drinks. She asked for another glass.

'So what should we do?' she asked.

Erlendur downed the rest of his drink and felt it scorch his throat. He refilled the glasses, thinking about the perfume on her that he had noticed when she'd walked past him at the door. It was like the scent of a bygone summer and he was filled with a strange nostalgia that was rooted too far back for him to identify properly.

'We'll do whatever we like,' he said.

'What do you want to do?' she asked. 'You've been so patient and I was wondering if it is really patience, if it isn't just as much . . . that somehow you didn't want to get involved.'

They fell silent. The question hung in the air.

What do you want to do?

He finished his second glass. This was the question he had been asking himself since he first met her. He did not consider himself to have been patient. He had no idea what he had been, apart from trying to be a support to her. Perhaps he had not shown her sufficient attention or warmth. He did not know.

'You didn't want to rush into anything,' he said. 'Nor did I. There hasn't been a woman in my life for a long time.'

He stopped. He wanted to tell her that he had mostly been by himself, in this place, with his books, and that her sitting on his sofa brought him special joy. She was so completely different from everything he was accustomed to, a sweet scent of summer, and he did not know how to handle it. How to tell her this was all he had wanted and yearned for from the moment he saw her. Being with her.

'I didn't mean to be stand-offish,' he said. 'But this sort of thing takes time, especially for me. And of course you've . . . I mean, it's tough going through a divorce . . .'

She could see that he felt uncomfortable discussing this sort of thing. Whenever the conversation took that direction he became awkward and hesitant and clammed up. As a rule he did not say very much, which may have been why she felt comfortable in his presence. There was no pretence about him. He was never acting. He probably would have had no idea how to behave if he wanted to try to be different somehow. He was totally honest in everything he said and did. She sensed this and it offered her a security that she had lacked for so long. In him she found a man she knew she could trust.

'Sorry,' she smiled. 'I wasn't intending to turn this into some kind of negotiation. But it can be nice to know where you stand. You realise that.'

'Completely,' Erlendur said, feeling the tension between them easing slightly.

'It all takes time and we'll see,' she said.

'I think that's very sensible,' he said.

'Fine,' she said, standing up from the sofa. Erlendur stood up as well. She said something about having to meet her sons, which he did not catch. His thoughts were elsewhere. She walked over to the door and while he helped her put on her coat she could tell he was dithering about something. She opened the door to the corridor and asked if everything was all right.

Erlendur looked at her.

'Don't go,' he said.

She stopped in the doorway.

'Stay with me,' he said.

Valgerdur hesitated.

'Are you sure?' she said.

'Yes,' he said. 'Don't go.'

She stood motionless and took a long look at him. He walked up to her, led her back inside, closed the door and began taking off her coat without her offering any objection.

They made love slowly, smoothly and tenderly, both of them feeling a little hesitation and uncertainty which they gradually overcame. She told him that he was the second man she had ever slept with.

As they lay in bed he looked up at the ceiling and told her that he sometimes went to the east of Iceland, to his childhood haunts, where he stayed in his old house. There was nothing but bare walls, a half-collapsed roof and little indication that his family had ever lived there. Yet relics of a vanished life remained. Patches of a patterned carpet that he remembered well. Broken cupboards in the kitchen. Windowsills that little hands had once leaned upon. He told her it was nice to go there, to lie down with his memories and rediscover a world that was full of light and tranquillity.

Valgerdur squeezed his hand.

He started to tell her a story about the ordeals of a young girl who left her mother's house with no exact idea of where she was going. She had suffered setbacks and was weak-willed – understandably perhaps, because she had never been given what she longed for most of all. She felt something lacking in her life. Felt a sense of betrayal. She ploughed on headlong, driven by a strange self-destructive urge, and sank deeper and deeper until she could go no farther, bound up in her self-annihilation. When she was found she was taken back and nursed to health, but as soon as she had recuperated she disappeared again without warning. She roamed around in storms and sometimes sought shelter where her father lived. He tried his best to keep her out of the tempestuous weather, but she never listened and set off again as if fate held nothing in store for her but destruction.

Valgerdur looked at him.

'No one knows where she is now. She's still alive, because I would have heard if she had died. I'm waiting for that news. I've ventured into that storm time and again, found her and dragged her back home and tried to help her, but I doubt whether anyone really can.'

'Don't be too sure,' Valgerdur said after a long silence.

The telephone on his bedside table rang. Erlendur looked at it and was not going to answer, but Valgerdur told him that it must be important for someone to call so late at night. Muttering that it must be Sigurdur Óli with some stupid brainwave, he reached over.

It took him a while to realise that the man on the other end was Haraldur. He was calling from the old people's home and said he had sneaked into the office and wanted to talk to Erlendur.

'What do you want?' Erlendur asked.

'I'll tell you what happened,' Haraldur said.

'Why?' Erlendur asked.

'Do you want to hear it or not?' Haraldur said.

'Calm down,' Erlendur said. 'I'll drop by tomorrow. Is that all right?'

'You do that, then,' Haraldur said, and slammed down the telephone.

He put the pages that he had written into a large envelope, addressed it and laid it on his desk. Running his hand over the envelope, he thought about the story it contained. He had wrestled with himself about whether to describe the events at all, then decided it could not be avoided. The body had been found in Kleifarvatn. Sooner or later the trail would lead to him. He knew that there was really barely any link between him and the body in the lake, and the police would have their work cut out to establish the truth without his assistance. But he did not want to lie. If all he left behind was the truth, that would be enough.

He enjoyed both his visits to Hannes. Ever since their first meeting he had liked him, despite their occasional disagreements. Hannes had helped him. He had shed new light on Emil's relationship with Lothar and revealed that Emil and Ilona had known each other before he arrived in Leipzig, although in very vague terms. Perhaps this helped to explain what happened later. Or perhaps that connection complicated the matter. He did not know what to think about it.

He finally came to the conclusion that he had to talk to Emil. Had to ask him about Ilona and Lothar and the chicanery in Leipzig. He could not be sure that Emil would be able to tell him the answers, but he needed to hear what he did know. Nor could he snoop around Emil's shed. That was beneath his dignity. He did not want to play hide-and-seek.

Another motive drove him on. A thought that had struck him after visiting Hannes, connected with his own involvement and how naive, gullible and innocent he had been. If there was no other explanation for what had happened, then he would have been the cause of it. He had to know which.

This was why he was back on Bergstadastraeti one afternoon a few days after he had trailed Lothar and peered into the shed. He had gone round to confront Emil straight from work. It was starting to get dark and the weather was cold. He felt winter approaching.

He walked into the backyard where the shed stood. As he approached, he noticed that the door was unlocked. The padlock was undone. He pushed the door open and peeped inside. Emil was sitting hunched over the workbench. He crept in. The shed was filled with an assortment of old rubbish that he could not identify in the dark. A single bare light bulb hung above the bench.

Emil did not notice him until he was standing right next to him. His jacket lay over the chair and looked as though it had been ripped in a fight. Emil was muttering something to himself and sounded angry. Suddenly Emil seemed to sense a presence in the shed. He glanced up from his maps, turned his head slowly and looked at him. He saw that it took Emil a while to work out who it was.

'Tómas,' he said with a sigh. 'Is that you?'

'Hello, Emil,' he said. 'The door was open.'

'What are you doing?' Emil said. 'What . . .' He was speechless. 'How did you know . . .'

'I followed Lothar here,' he said. 'I followed him from Aegisída.'

'You followed Lothar?' Emil said in disbelief. He stood up without taking his eyes off the visitor. 'What are you doing?' he repeated. 'Why did you follow Lothar?' He looked out through the door as if expecting more uninvited guests. 'Are you on your own?' Emil asked him.

'Yes, I'm alone.'

'What did you come here for?'

'You remember Ilona,' he said. 'In Leipzig.'

'Ilona?'

'We were going out together, me and Ilona.'

'Of course I remember Ilona. What about her?'

'Can you tell me what happened to her?' he asked. 'Can you tell me now after all these years? Do you know?'

Not wanting to appear overzealous, he tried to remain calm, but it was futile. He could be read like a book, his years of agonising over the girl he had loved and lost plain to see.

'What are you talking about?' Emil said.

'Ilona.'

'Are you still thinking about Ilona? Even now?'

'Do you know what happened to her?'

'I don't know anything. I don't know what you're talking about. You shouldn't be here. You ought to leave.'

He looked around inside the shed.

'What are you doing?' he asked. 'What's this shed for? When did you come home?'

'You ought to get out,' Emil said again, peering anxiously through the door. 'Does anyone else know I'm here?' he added after a moment. 'Does anyone else know about me here?'

'Can you tell me?' he repeated. 'What happened to Ilona?'

Emil looked at him, then suddenly lost his temper.

'Piss off, I said. Get out! I can't help you with that shit.'

Emil pushed him, but he stood firm.

'What did you get for informing on Ilona?' he asked. 'What did they give you, their golden boy? Did they give you money? Did you get good marks? Did you get a good job with them?'

'I don't know what you're on about,' Emil said. He had been half-whispering, but now he raised his voice.

Emil seemed to have changed a lot since Leipzig. He was as skinny as ever but looked unhealthier, with dark rings beneath his eyes, his fingers stained yellow from smoking, his voice hoarse. His protruding Adam's apple moved up and down when he spoke, his hair was starting to thin. He had not seen Emil for a long time and remembered him only as a young man. Now he seemed tired and haggard, with several days' beard on his face; he looked like a drinker.

'It was my fault, wasn't it?' he said.

'Will you stop being so stupid,' Emil said, moving closer to push him again. 'Get out!' he said. 'Forget it.'

He stepped out of the way.

'I was the one who told you what Ilona was doing there, wasn't I? I put you on to her. If I hadn't told you she might have got away. They wouldn't have known about the meetings. They wouldn't have photographed us.'

'Get out of here!'

'I talked to Hannes. He told me about you and Lothar and how Lothar and the FDJ got the university to reward you with good marks. You were never much of a student, were you, Emil? I never saw you open a book. What did you get for grassing on your comrades? On your friends? What did they give you for spying on your friends?'

'She didn't manage to convert me with her preaching, but you fell flat for it,' Emil snarled. 'Ilona was a traitor.'

'Because she betrayed you?' he said. 'Because she wouldn't have anything to do with you? Was it that painful? Was it so painful when she rejected you?'

Emil stared at him.

'I don't know what she saw in you,' he said, a tiny smile playing across his lips. 'I don't know what she saw in the smart idealist who wanted to make a socialist Iceland but changed his mind the moment she got him into the sack. I don't know what it was she saw in you!'

'So you wanted revenge,' he said. 'Was that it? Vengeance against her?'

'You deserved each other,' Emil said.

He stared at Emil and a strange coldness ran through him. He no longer knew his old friend, did not know who or what Emil had become. He knew that he was looking at the same unflinching evil that he had seen in his student years, and knew that he should be consumed by hatred and anger and attack Emil, but suddenly felt no urge to. Felt no need to take out years of worry, insecurity and fear on him. And not only because he had never had a violent streak or never got into fights. He despised violence in all forms. He knew that he ought to have been seized with such mighty rage that he would want to kill Emil. But instead of swelling up with anger, his mind emptied of everything except coldness.

'And you're right,' Emil went on as they stood face to face. 'It was you. You have only yourself to blame. It was you who first told me about her meetings, her views and her ideas about helping people to attack socialism. It was you. If that was what you wanted to know, I can confirm it. It was what you said that got Ilona arrested! I didn't know how she worked. You told me. Do you remember? After that they started watching her. After that they called you in and warned you. But it was too late then. It had moved on. The matter was out of our hands.'

He remembered the occasion well. Time and again he had wondered whether he had told someone something he should not have. He had always believed that he could trust his fellow Icelanders. Trust them not to spy on each other. That the small band of friends was immune to interactive surveillance. That the thought police had nothing to do with the Icelanders. It was in that faith that he told them about Ilona, her companions and their ideas.

Looking at Emil, he recognised his inhumanity and how whole societies could be built on brutality alone.

'There was one thing I started thinking about when it was all over,' he went on as if talking to himself, as if removed from time and space to a place where nothing mattered any more. 'When it was all over and nothing could be put right. Long after I came back to Iceland. I was the one who told you about Ilona's meetings. I don't know why, but I did. I suppose I was just encouraging you and the others to go to the meetings. There were no secrets between us Icelanders. We could discuss it all without worrying. I didn't reckon on someone like you.'

He paused.

'We stood together,' he went on. 'Someone informed on Ilona. The university was a big place and it could have been anyone. It wasn't until long afterwards that I started to consider the possibility that it was one of us Icelanders, one of my friends, who did it.'

He looked Emil in the eye.

'I was an idiot to think we were friends,' he said in a low voice. 'We were just kids. Barely twenty.'

He turned to leave the shed.

'Ilona was a fucking slut,' Emil snarled behind him.

At the moment these words were spat out he noticed a spade standing on top of a dusty old cabinet. He grabbed it by its shaft, turned a half-circle and let out a mighty roar as he brought the spade down on Emil with all his might. It struck him on the head. He saw how the light flickered off in Emil's eyes as he dropped to the floor.

He stood looking down at Emil's limp body as if in a world of his own, until a long-forgotten sentence returned to his mind.

'It's best to kill them with a spade.'

A dark pool of blood began to form on the floor and he knew at once that he had dealt Emil a fatal blow. He was completely detached. Calm and collected as he watched Emil motionless on the floor and the pool of blood growing. Looked on as if it were nothing to do with him. He had not gone to the shed to kill him. He had not planned to murder him. It had happened without a moment's thought.

He had no idea how long he had been standing there before he registered someone beside him, speaking to him. Someone who tugged at him and slapped his cheek lightly and said something indistinct. He looked at the man but did not recognise him at once. He saw him bend over Emil. Put a finger to his jugular as if to check for a pulse. He knew that it was hopeless. He knew that Emil was dead. He had killed Emil.

The man stood up from the body and turned to him. He now saw who it was. He had followed that man through Reykjavík; he had led him to Emil.

It was Lothar.