The Draining Lake de-6 Read online

“Maybe you still don’t today,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “We had a look in our archives,” Quinn said, no longer smiling. “Bob remembered it well. Everyone thought it was a mystery at the time and what was actually going on was never uncovered. What happened, according to our records — and I’ve talked to Bob in detail about this as well — is that an East German attache entered Iceland at a certain time but we never noticed him leaving again.”

  They looked at him blankly.

  “Perhaps you’d like me to repeat that,” Quinn said. “An East German diplomat came to Iceland but did not leave. According to our information, which is fairly reliable, either he’s still here — and doing something completely different from embassy work — or he was killed and the body either disposed of or sent out of the country.”

  “So you lost him in Iceland?” Elinborg said.

  “It’s the only case of this sort that we know about,” Quinn said. “In Iceland, that is,” he added. “The man was an East German spy. He was known to us as such. None of our embassies in other parts of the world picked him up after he came to Iceland. A special alert was sent out about him. He never appeared. We made a special check on whether he had returned to East Germany. It was like the earth had swallowed him. The Icelandic earth.”

  Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli mulled over his words.

  “Could he have gone over to the enemy — I mean to you, the British or the French?” Sigurdur Oli said, trying to recall films and books about spies that he had seen and read. “And then gone underground?” he added, unsure of exactly what he was talking about. He was not a great fan of spy stories.

  “Out of the question,” Quinn said. “We would have known about that.”

  “Or used a false identity when he left the country?” Elinborg suggested, groping and as much in the dark as Sigurdur Oli.

  “We knew most of them,” Quinn said. “And we kept a fairly good watch on their embassies on that score. We believe that this man never left the country.”

  “What about in some other way from what you expected?” Sigurdur Oli said. “By ship?”

  “That was one possibility we checked,” Quinn said. “And without going into too much detail about our procedures then and now, I can assure you that this man never emerged in East Germany, which was where he came from originally, nor in the Soviet Union or any other country in Eastern or Western Europe. He vanished.”

  “What do you think happened? Or thought at the time?”

  “That they killed him and buried him in the embassy garden,” Quinn said without batting an eyelid. “Killed their own spy. Or, as has since transpired, sank him in Lake Kleifarvatn tied to one of their listening devices. I don’t know why. It’s perfectly clear that he didn’t work for us, nor for any NATO country. He wasn’t a counter-espionage agent. If he was, he was working so deep that nobody knew about it, and he would probably have hardly known it himself.”

  Quinn flicked through the folder and told them that the man had first come to Iceland in the early 1960s and worked in the diplomatic corps for a few months. Then, in autumn 1962, he left, but returned briefly two years later. After that he had moved between posts in Norway, East Germany and Moscow for one year and ended up at the East German embassy in Argentina, with the title of “trade attache” — “like most of them,” Quinn said, grinning. “Our guys too. He spent a short spell at the embassy in Reykjavik in 1967, then went back to Germany and from there to Moscow. He returned to Iceland in 1968, in the spring. By the fall he had disappeared.”

  “Fall 1968?” Elinborg said.

  “That was when we noticed that he was no longer at the embassy. We investigated through specific channels and he was nowhere to be found. Admittedly, the East Germans did not operate a proper embassy in Reykjavik, only what was called a trade delegation, but that’s a minor point.”

  “What do you know about this man?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “Did he have friends here? Or enemies at home? Did he do anything wrong to your knowledge?”

  “No. As I say, we’re not aware of that. And of course we don’t know everything. We suspect that something happened to him here in 1968. We don’t know what. He could just as easily have left the diplomatic service and made himself disappear. He knew how to do that, how to merge into the crowd. It’s up to you how you interpret this information. This is all we know.”

  He paused.

  “Perhaps he slipped away from us,” he said then. “Maybe there’s a rational explanation for it all. This is all we’ve got. Now you must tell me one thing. Bob asked about it. How was he killed? The man in the lake.”

  Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli exchanged glances.

  “He was hit over the head and sustained a hole in the skull just by the temple,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “Hit over the head?” Quinn asked.

  “He could have fallen, but it would have been from quite a height,” Elinborg said.

  “So it’s not a straightforward execution? A bullet in the back of the head?”

  “Execution?” Elinborg said. “We’re Icelanders. The last execution in this country was done with an axe almost two hundred years ago.”

  “Yes, of course,” Quinn said. “I’m not saying that an Icelander killed him.”

  “Does it tell you anything, him dying like that?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “If it is this spy who was found in the lake?”

  “No, nothing,” Quinn said. “The man was a spy and his job entailed certain risks.”

  He stood up. They could tell that the conversation was coming to an end. Quinn put the folder down on the table. Sigurdur Oli looked at Elinborg.

  “What was his name?”

  “His name was Lothar,” Quinn said.

  “Lothar,” Elinborg parroted.

  “Yes,” Quinn said, looking at the papers he was holding. “His name was Lothar Weiser and he was born in Bonn. And, interestingly enough, he spoke Icelandic like a native.”

  20

  Later that day they requested a meeting at the German embassy, stating the reason to give the staff time to gather information about Lothar Weiser. The meeting was arranged for later in the week. They told Erlendur about what the meeting with Patrick Quinn had revealed, and discussed the possibility that the man in the lake was an East German spy. A number of signs pointed to that, they felt, notably the Russian device and the location. They agreed that there was something foreign about the murder. Something about the case that they had seldom, if ever, seen before. Admittedly it was ferocious, but all murders were ferocious. More importantly, it appeared to have been carefully planned, skilfully executed, and had remained covered up for so many years. Icelandic murders were not generally committed in this way. They were more coincidental, clumsy and squalid, and the perpetrators almost without exception left a trail of clues.

  “If he didn’t just fall on his head,” Elinborg said.

  “No one falls on their head before being tied to a spying device and thrown into Kleifarvatn,” Erlendur said.

  “Making any progress with the Falcon?” Elinborg asked.

  “None at all,” Erlendur said, “except that I’ve been putting the wind up Leopold’s girlfriend, who can’t understand what I’m going on about.” Erlendur had told them about the brothers from outside Mosfellsbaer and his half-baked hypothesis that the man who owned the Falcon might even still be alive or, for that matter, living in another part of Iceland. They had discussed this idea before and regarded it in much the same way as the missing man’s girlfriend — they had nothing substantial to support it. “Too far-fetched for Iceland,” Sigurdur Oli said. Elinborg agreed. “Perhaps in a city of a million people.”

  “Funny that this guy can’t be found anywhere in the system, though,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “That’s the point,” Erlendur said. “Leopold, as he called himself — that much we do know — is quite a mysterious figure. Niels handled the case originally and never looked into his background properly, he never found any records. It wasn’t investigated as
a criminal matter.”

  “No more than most missing persons in Iceland,” Elinborg chipped in.

  “Only a few people had that name then and they can all be identified. I did a quick check. His girlfriend said he had spent a lot of time abroad. He may even have been born abroad. You never know.”

  “Why do you think he was called Leopold in the first place?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “Isn’t that a rather odd name for an Icelander?”

  “It was the name he used, at least,” Erlendur said. “He may well have used another name elsewhere. That’s quite likely actually. We know nothing about him until he suddenly surfaces selling bulldozers and farm machinery and as the boyfriend of a woman who somehow becomes the victim in the whole affair. She knows precious little about him but is still in mourning for him. We have no background. No birth certificate. Nothing about his schooling. We just know that he travelled widely, lived abroad and might have been born there. He lived abroad for so long that he spoke with a slight foreign accent.”

  “Unless he just killed himself,” Elinborg said. “The only foundation for your theory about Leopold’s double life is in your own fantasies.”

  “I know,” Erlendur said. “The overwhelming odds are that he took his own life and that’s the only mystery there is to it.”

  “I think you were bloody crass, trying out that ludicrous idea on the woman,” Elinborg said. “Now she thinks he might be alive.”

  “She’s believed that herself the whole time,” Erlendur said. “Deep down. That he just walked out on her.”

  They stopped talking. It was late in the day. Elinborg looked at her watch. She was testing a new marinade for chicken breasts. Sigurdur Oli had promised to take Bergthora to Thingvellir. They were going to spend a summer night at the hotel there. The weather was at its best for June: warm, sunny and with the scent of flowers in the air.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Sigurdur Oli asked Erlendur.

  “Nothing,” Erlendur said.

  “Maybe you’d like to come to Thingvellir with me and Bergthora,” he said, making a bad job of concealing the answer he wanted to hear. Erlendur smiled. Their concern for him could get on his nerves. Sometimes, like now, it was merely politeness.

  “I’m expecting a visitor,” Erlendur said.

  “How’s Eva Lind doing?” Sigurdur Oli asked, rubbing his shoulder.

  “I haven’t heard much from her,” Erlendur said. “I just know she completed rehab, but I’ve hardly heard anything else.”

  “What were you saying about Leopold?” Elinborg suddenly said. “Did he speak with a foreign accent? Did you say that?”

  “Lothar was bound to have had an accent,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “What do you mean?” Erlendur said.

  “Well, the guy at the US embassy said that this German, Lothar, spoke fluent Icelandic. But he must have spoken it with an accent.”

  “We’ll have to bear that in mind, of course,” Erlendur said.

  “That they’re the same man?” Elinborg said. “Leopold and Lothar?”

  “Yes,” Erlendur said. “I don’t think it’s an abnormal assumption to make. At least they both disappeared the same year, 1968.”

  “So Lothar called himself Leopold?” Sigurdur Oli said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I have no idea what was going on. Not the faintest.”

  “Then there’s the Russian equipment,” Erlendur said after a long silence.

  “And?” Elinborg said.

  “Leopold’s last business was at Haraldur’s farm. Where would Haraldur have got a Russian listening device to sink him in the lake with? You could begin to understand it if Lothar had been involved, if he was a spy and something happened that ended with his body being dumped in the lake. But Haraldur and Leopold are worlds apart.”

  “Haraldur flatly denies that the salesman ever went to his farm,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Whether his name was Leopold or Lothar.”

  “That’s the point,” Erlendur said.

  “What is?” Elinborg said.

  “I think he’s lying.”

  Erlendur went to three video rental shops before he found the western to take for Marion Briem. He had once heard Marion describe it as a favourite because it was about a man who faced a looming peril alone when the community, including all his best friends, turned its back on him.

  He knocked on the door, but no one answered. Marion was expecting him, because Erlendur had telephoned in advance, so he opened the door, which was unlocked, and let himself in. Not planning to stay, he only intended to drop the video in. He was awaiting a visit that evening from Valgerdur, who had moved in with her sister.

  “So you’re here?” said Marion, who had fallen asleep on the sofa. “I heard you knock. I feel so tired. I’ve slept all day. Do you mind pushing the oxygen tank over to me?”

  Erlendur placed the cylinder by the sofa and an old memory of a lonely and absurd death suddenly crossed his mind when he saw Marion’s hand reach for the oxygen.

  The police had been called to a house in Thingholt. He had gone with Marion. He had only been in the CID a few months. Someone had died at home and it was classified as accidental death. A large elderly woman was sitting in an armchair in front of her television. She had been dead for a fortnight. Erlendur was almost overpowered by the stench in the flat. The woman’s neighbour had called the police because of the smell. He had not seen her for some time and eventually noticed that her television could be heard softly through the wall around the clock. She had choked. A plate of salted meat and boiled turnips was on the table beside her. A knife and fork lay on the floor by the chair. A large lump of meat was lodged in her throat. She had not managed to get out of the deep armchair. Her face was dark blue. It turned out that she had no relatives who called on her. No one ever visited her. No one missed her.

  “I know we all have to die,” Marion had said, looking down at the body, “but I don’t want to die like that.”

  “Poor woman,” Erlendur said, covering his nose and mouth.

  “Yes, poor woman,” Marion said. “Was that why you joined the police force? To look at things like this?”

  “No,” Erlendur said.

  “Why, then?” Marion asked. “What are you doing this for?”

  “Have a seat,” he heard Marion say through his thoughts. “Don’t stand there like a dickhead.”

  He returned to himself and sat down in a chair facing Marion.

  “You don’t have to visit me, Erlendur.”

  “I know,” Erlendur said. “I brought you another film. Starring Gary Cooper.”

  “Have you seen it?” Marion asked.

  “Yes,” Erlendur said. “Ages ago.”

  “Why are you so glum, what were you thinking about?” Marion asked.

  “”We all have to die, but I don’t want to die like that.””

  “Yes,” Marion said, after a short pause. “I remember her. That old girl in the chair. And now you’re looking at me and thinking the same thing.”

  Erlendur shrugged.

  “You didn’t answer my question, “Marion said.” And you still haven’t.”

  “I don’t know why I joined the police force,” Erlendur said. “It was a job. A cushy office job.”

  “No, there was something more to it,” Marion said. “Something more than just a cushy office job.”

  “Don’t you have anyone?” Erlendur asked, trying to change the subject. He di dnot know how to phrase it. “Anyone who can take care of things after… when it’s all over?”

  “No,” Marion said.

  “What do you want done with you?” Erlendur asked. “Don’t we have to discuss that some time? The practical stuff. You’re bound to have arranged it all, if I know you.”

  “Are you starting to look forward to it?” Marion asked.

  “I never look forward to anything,” Erlendur said.

  “I’ve spoken to alawyer, a young solicitor, who will sort out my affairs, thank you. P
erhaps you could handle the practical side. The cremation.”

  “Cremation?”

  “I don’t want to rot in a coffin,” Marion said. “I’ll have myself cremated. There won’t be aceremony. No fuss.”

  “And the ashes?”

  “You know what the film’s really about?” said Marion, clearly trying to avoid giving an answer. “The Gary Cooper film. It’s about the witch hunts against communists in 1950s America. An outlaw gang arrives in town to attack Cooper and his friends turn their backs on him. He ends up alone and defenceless. High Noon. The best westerns are much more than just westerns.”

  “Yes, you said that to me once.”

  It was well into the evening but the sky was still bright. Erlendur looked out of the window. It would not get dark, either. He always missed that in the summer. Missed the darkness. Yearned for the cold black of night and the deep winter.

  “What’s this thing you’ve got about westerns?” Erlendur asked. He could not resist asking. He knew nothing of Marion’s passion for westerns before. In fact he knew very little about Marion at all, and when he started to think about it, sitting in the living room, he recalled only very rarely ever having spoken to Marion on a personal level.

  “The landscapes,” Marion said. “The horses. The wide open spaces.”

  Silence crept over the room. Marion appeared to be dozing off.

  “The last time I was here I mentioned Leopold, the man who owned the Ford Falcon and went missing from the coach station,” Erlendur said. “You told me you’d telephoned his girlfriend to tell her there was no record anywhere of a man by that name.”

  “Does that matter? If I remember correctly, that twat Niels was trying to avoid telling her. I’d never heard anything so stupid.”

  “What did she say when you raised it?”

  Marion’s mind drifted back in time. Erlendur knew that despite old age and various ailments, Marion Briem’s memory was still infallible.

  “Naturally she wasn’t very pleased. Niels was handling the case and I didn’t want to interfere too much.”

  “Did you give her any hope that he could still be alive?”