The Draining Lake de-6 Read online

  “Do as you please,” Niels interrupted him with a hateful glare. “Make an arse of yourself if you want to. You’ll never get a warrant!”

  Erlendur opened the door and went out into the corridor.

  “Don’t cut your fingers off,” he said and closed the door behind him.

  Erlendur had a brief meeting with Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg about the Lake Kleifarvatn case. The search for further information about Lothar Weiser was proving slow and difficult. All enquiries had to go through the German embassy, which Erlendur had managed to offend, and they had few leads. As a formality they sent an inquiry to Interpol and the provisional answer was that it had never heard of Lothar Weiser. Quinn from the US embassy was trying to persuade one of the Czech embassy officials from that period to talk to the Icelandic police. He could not tell what these overtures would deliver. Lothar did not seem to have associated with Icelanders very much. Enquiries among old government officials had led nowhere. The East German embassy’s guest lists had been lost a long time ago. There were no guest lists from the Icelandic authorities for those years. The detectives had no idea how to find out whether Lothar had known any Icelanders. Nobody seemed to remember the man.

  Sigurdur Oli had requested help from the German embassy and Icelandic ministry of education in providing a list of Icelandic students in East Germany. Not knowing which period to focus on, he started by asking about all students from the end of the war until 1970.

  Meanwhile, Erlendur had ample time to absorb himself in his pet topic, the Falcon man. He realised full well that he had almost nothing to go on if he wanted a warrant to mount a full-scale search for a body on the brothers” land near Mosfellsbaer.

  He decided to drop in on Marion Briem, whose condition was improving slightly. The oxygen tank was still at the ready but the patient looked better, talking about new drugs that worked better than the old ones and cursing the doctor for “not knowing his arse from his elbow’. Erlendur thought Marion Briem was getting back on form.

  “What are you doing sniffing around here all the time?” Marion asked, sitting down in the chair. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  “Plenty,” Erlendur said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m not having any luck dying,” Marion said. “I thought I might have died last night. Funny. Of course that can happen when you’re lying around with nothing to do but wait for death. I was certain it was all over.”

  Marion sipped from a glass of water with parched lips.

  “I suppose it’s what they call astral projection,” Marion said. “You know I don’t believe in that crap. It was a delirium while I dozed. No doubt brought on by those new drugs. But I was hovering up there,” Marion said, staring up at the ceiling, “and looked down on my wretched self. I thought I was going and was completely reconciled to it in my heart. But of course I wasn’t dying at all. It was just a funny dream. I went for a check-up this morning and the doctor said I was a bit brighter. My blood’s better than it’s been for weeks. But he didn’t give me any hope for the future.”

  “What do doctors know?” Erlendur said.

  “What do you want from me anyway? Is it the Ford Falcon? Why are you snooping around on that case?”

  “Do you remember if the farmer he was going to visit near Mosfellsbaer had a brother?” Erlendur asked on the off chance. He did not want to tire Marion, but he also knew that his old boss enjoyed all things mysterious and strange.

  Eyes closed, Marion pondered.

  “That lazy bugger Niels talked about the brother being a bit funny.”

  “He says he was a halfwit, but I don’t know what that means, exactly.”

  “He was backward, if I remember correctly. Big and strong but with the mind of a child. I don’t think he could really speak. Just babbled nonsense.”

  “Why wasn’t this investigation pursued, Marion?” Erlendur asked. “Why was it allowed to peter out? It would have been possible to do so much more.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The brothers” land should have been combed. Everyone took it for granted that the salesman never went there. No doubts were ever raised. It was all cut and dried; they decided the man committed suicide or left the city and would come back when it suited him. But he never did come back and I’m not certain that he killed himself.”

  “You think the brothers killed him?”

  “I’d like to look into that. The backward one’s dead but the elder brother’s at an old people’s home here in Reykjavik and I reckon he’d have been capable of attacking someone on the slightest pretext.”

  “And what would that be?” Marion asked. “You know you have no motive. He was going to sell them a tractor. They had no reason to kill him.”

  “I know,” Erlendur said. “If they did, it was because something happened out there when he called on them. A chain of events was set in motion, perhaps by sheer coincidence, which led to the man’s death.”

  “Erlendur, you know better than that,” Marion said. “These are fantasies. Stop this nonsense.”

  “I know I have no motive and no body and it was years ago, but there’s something that doesn’t fit and I’d like to find out what it is.”

  “There’s always something that doesn’t gel, Erlendur. You can never balance all the columns. Life’s more complicated than that, as you of all people ought to know. Where was the farmer supposed to have got the Russian spying equipment to sink the body in Kleifarvatn?”

  “Yes, I know, but that might be another, unrelated case.”

  Marion looked at Erlendur. There was nothing new about detectives becoming absorbed in cases that they were investigating and then getting completely obsessed by them. It had often happened to Marion, who knew that Erlendur tended to take the most serious cases to heart. He had a rare sensitivity, which was both his blessing and his curse.

  “You were talking about John Wayne the other day,” Erlendur said. “When we watched the western.”

  “Have you dug that up?” Marion said.

  Erlendur nodded. He had asked Sigurdur Oli, who knew about all things American and was a mine of information about celebrities.

  “His name was Marion too,” Erlendur said. “Wasn’t it? You are namesakes.”

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Marion said. “Because of the way I am.”

  26

  Benedikt Jonsson, the retired agricultural-machinery importer, greeted Erlendur at the door and invited him in. Erlendur’s visit had been delayed. Benedikt had been to see his daughter who lived outside Copenhagen. He had just returned home and gave the impression he would have liked to stay longer. He said he felt very much at home in Denmark.

  Erlendur nodded intermittently while Benedikt rambled on about Denmark. A widower, he appeared to live well. He was fairly short with small, fat fingers and a ruddy, harmless-looking face. He lived alone in a small, neat house. Erlendur noticed a new Mercedes jeep outside the garage. He thought to himself that the old businessman had probably been shrewd and saved up for his old age.

  “I knew I’d end up answering questions about that man eventually,” Benedikt said when at last he got to the point.

  “Yes, I wanted to talk about Leopold,” Erlendur said.

  “It was all very mysterious. Someone was bound to start wondering in the end. I should probably have told you the truth at the time but…”

  “The truth?”

  “Yes,” Benedikt said. “May I ask why you’re enquiring about this man now? My son said you’d questioned him too and when I spoke to you on the phone you were rather cagey. Why the sudden interest? I thought you investigated the case and cleared it up back then. Actually, I was hoping you had.”

  Erlendur told him about the skeleton found in Lake Kleifarvatn and that Leopold was one of several missing persons being investigated in connection with it.

  “Did you know him personally?” Erlendur asked.

  “Personally? No, I can hardly say that. And he didn’t sell much eit
her, in the short time he worked for us. If I remember correctly he made a lot of trips outside the city. All my salesmen did regional work — we sold agricultural machinery and earth-moving equipment — but none travelled as much as Leopold and none was a worse salesman.”

  “So he didn’t make you any money?” Erlendur said.

  “I didn’t want to take him on in the first place,” Benedikt said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, no, that’s not what I mean. They forced me to, really. I had to sack a damn good man to make room for him. It was never a big company.”

  “Wait a minute, say that again. Who forced you to hire him?”

  “They told me I mustn’t tell anyone so… I don’t know if I should be blabbing about it. I felt quite bad about all that plotting. I’m not one for doing things behind people’s backs.”

  “This was decades ago,” Erlendur said. “It can hardly do any harm now.”

  “No, I guess not. They threatened to move their franchise elsewhere. If I didn’t hire that bloke. It was like I’d got caught up in the Mafia.”

  “Who forced you to take on Leopold?”

  “The manufacturer in East Germany, as it was then. They had good tractors that were much cheaper than the American ones. And bulldozers and diggers. We sold a lot of them although they weren’t considered as classy as Massey Ferguson or Caterpillar.”

  “Did they have a say in which staff you recruited?”

  “That was what they threatened,” Benedikt said. “What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t do a thing. Of course I hired him.”

  “Did they give you an explanation? Why you ought to recruit that specific person?”

  “No. None. No explanation. I took him on but never got to know him. They said it was a temporary arrangement and, like I told you, he wasn’t in the city much, just spent his time rushing back and forth around the country.”

  “A temporary arrangement?”

  “They said he didn’t need to work for me for long. And they set conditions. He wasn’t to go on the payroll. He was to be paid as a contractor, under the table. That was pretty difficult. My accountant was continually querying that. But it wasn’t much money, nowhere near enough to live on, so he must have had another income as well.”

  “What do you think their motive was?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Then he disappeared and I never heard any more about Leopold, except from you lot in the police.”

  “Didn’t you report what you’re now telling me at the time he went missing?”

  “I haven’t told anyone. They threatened me. I had my staff to think of. My livelihood depended on that company. Even though it wasn’t big we managed to make a bit of money and then the hydropower projects started up. The Sigalda and Burfell stations. They needed our heavy plant machinery then. We made a fortune out of the hydropower projects. It was around the same time. The company was growing. I had other things to think about.”

  “So you just tried to forget it?”

  “Correct. I didn’t think it was any skin off my nose, either. I hired him because the manufacturer wanted me to, but he was nothing to do with me as such.”

  “Do you have any idea what could have happened to him?”

  “None at all. He was supposed to meet those people outside Mosfellsbaer but didn’t turn up, as far as we know. Maybe he just abandoned the idea or postponed it. That’s not inconceivable. Maybe he had some urgent business to attend to.”

  “You don’t think that the farmer he was supposed to meet was lying?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Who contacted you about hiring Leopold? Did he do it himself?”

  “No, it wasn’t him. An official from their embassy on Aegisida came to see me. It was really a trade delegation, not a proper embassy, that they ran in those days. Later it all got so much bigger. Actually he met me in Leipzig.”

  “Leipzig?”

  “Yes, we used to go to annual trade fairs there. They arranged big exhibitions of industrial goods and machinery and a fairly large contingent of us who did business with the East Germans always went.”

  “Who was this man who spoke to you?”

  “He never introduced himself.”

  “Do you recognise the name Lothar? Lothar Weiser. An East German.”

  “Never heard the name. Lothar? Never heard of him.”

  “Could you describe this embassy official?”

  “It’s such a long time ago. He was quite plump. Perfectly nice bloke, I expect, apart from forcing me to hire that salesman.”

  “Don’t you think you should have passed on this information to the police at the time? Don’t you think it could have helped?”

  Benedikt hesitated. Then he shrugged.

  “I tried to act as if it wasn’t any business of mine or my company. And I genuinely didn’t think it was any of my business. The man wasn’t one of my team. Really he wasn’t anything to do with the company. And they threatened me. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Do you remember his girlfriend, Leopold’s girlfriend?”

  “No,” Benedikt said after some thought. “No, I can’t say I do. Was she…?”

  He stopped short, as if he had no idea of what to say about a woman who had lost the man she loved and never received any answers about his fate.

  “Yes,” Erlendur said. “She was heartbroken. And still is.”

  Miroslav, the former Czech embassy official, lived in the south of France. He was an elderly man but had a good memory. He spoke French, but also good English, and was prepared to talk to Sigurdur Oli over the telephone. Quinn from the US embassy in Reykjavik, who had put them on to the Czech, acted as a go-between. In the past, Miroslav had been found guilty of spying against his own country and had spent several years in prison. He was not considered a prolific or important spy, having spent most of his diplomatic career in Iceland. Nor did he describe himself as a spy. He said he had succumbed to temptation when he was offered money to inform American diplomats about any unusual developments at his embassy or those of the other Iron Curtain countries. He never had anything to say. Nothing ever happened in Iceland.

  It was the middle of summer. The skeleton in Kleifarvatn had fallen completely off the radar in the summer holidays. The media had long since stopped mentioning it. Erlendur’s request for a warrant to search for the Falcon man on the brothers” farmland had not yet been answered because the staff were on holiday.

  Sigurdur Oli had taken a fortnight in Spain with Bergthora and returned suntanned and content. Elinborg had travelled around Iceland with Teddi and spent two weeks at her sister’s summer chalet in the north. There was still considerable interest in her cookery book and a glossy magazine had quoted her in its People in the News column as saying that she already had “another one in the oven’.

  And one day at the end of July Elinborg whispered to Erlendur that Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora had finally succeeded.

  “Why are you whispering?” Erlendur asked.

  “At last,” Elinborg sighed with delight. “Bergthora just told me. It’s still a secret.”

  “What is?” Erlendur said.

  “Bergthora’s pregnant!” Elinborg said. “It’s been so difficult for them. They had to go through IVF and now it’s worked at last.”

  “Is Sigurdur Oli going to have a baby?” Erlendur said.

  “Yes,” Elinborg said. “But don’t talk about it. No one’s supposed to know.”

  “The poor kid,” said Erlendur in a loud voice, and Elinborg walked off muttering curses under her breath.

  At first Miroslav turned out to be eager to help them. The conversation took place in Sigurdur Oli’s office with both Erlendur and Elinborg present. A tape recorder was connected to the telephone. On the arranged day at the arranged time, Sigurdur Oli picked up the handset and dialled.

  After a number of rings a female voice answered and Sigurdur Oli introduced himself and asked for Miroslav. He was asked to hold the line. Sigurdur Oli look
ed at Erlendur and Elinborg and shrugged as if not knowing what to expect. Eventually a man came to the telephone and said his name was Miroslav. Sigurdur Oli introduced himself again as a detective from Reykjavik and presented his request. Miroslav said at once that he knew what the matter involved. He even spoke some Icelandic, although he asked for the conversation to be conducted in English.

  “Is gooder for me,” he said in Icelandic.

  “Yes, quite. It was about that official with the East German trade delegation in Reykjavik in the 1960s,” Sigurdur Oli said in English. “Lothar Weiser.”

  “I understand you found a body in a lake and think it’s him,” Miroslav said.

  “We haven’t come to any conclusions,” Sigurdur Oli said. “It’s only one of several possibilities,” he added after a short pause.

  “Do you often find bodies tied to Russian spy equipment?” Miroslav laughed. Quinn had clearly put him in the picture. “No, I understand. I understand you want to play safe and not say too much, and obviously not over the phone. Do I get any money for my information?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Sigurdur Oli said. “We don’t have permission to negotiate that kind of thing. We were told you would be cooperative.”

  “Cooperative, right,” Miroslav said. “No monies?” he asked in Icelandic.

  “No,” Sigurdur Oli said, also in Icelandic. “No money.”

  The telephone went silent and they all looked at each other, crammed into Sigurdur Oli’s office. Some time elapsed until they heard the Czech again. He called out something that they thought was in Czech and heard a woman’s voice in the background answer him. The voices were half-smothered as if he were holding his hand over the mouthpiece. More words were exchanged. They could not tell whether it was an argument.

  “Lothar Weiser was one of East Germany’s spies in Iceland,” Miroslav said straightforwardly when he returned to the telephone. The words gushed out as if his exchange with the woman had incited him. “Lothar spoke very good Icelandic that he’d learned in Moscow — did you know that?”

  “Yes, we did,” Sigurdur Oli said. “What did he do here?”