Oblivion Read online

  If the police report was to be believed, the girl’s route to school in the mornings would have passed the old barracks. During the search for her, particular stress had been laid on finding out if she had entered the camp. A number of the huts were searched, along with the ramshackle sheds and lean-tos they had spawned, and the residents were questioned about whether they had seen the girl. Many of them assisted in the search. But this proved no more successful than any of the other efforts to find her.

  The reason Camp Knox had been subjected to particular scrutiny was that, shortly before she went missing, the girl had confided in a friend that she had met a boy from the camp, and the friend had interpreted her words as meaning that she had fallen for him.

  The boy’s identity never came to light.

  6

  IT WAS PAST midnight and Marion Briem had fallen asleep on the office sofa when the desk phone suddenly started ringing. All the other staff had gone home and the shrill sound repeatedly shattered the deep silence in the building. Marion awoke, rose from the sofa and snatched up the receiver.

  ‘What the hell? What time is it?’

  ‘Marion?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry … is it very late?’

  It was the pathologist. Marion sat down at the desk, checking the clock.

  ‘Couldn’t it wait till morning?’

  ‘What, oh, yes, of course,’ said the pathologist. It was well known that Marion liked to nap on the office sofa and would sometimes spend the night there. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. What time is it anyway?’

  ‘Twelve minutes past midnight.’

  ‘Oh, that late? Sorry, I didn’t realise. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I should be off home myself. I am sorry, I had no idea how late it was.’

  Marion knew that the pathologist, Herbert, had lost his wife several years ago and now lived alone. They’d had no children, and once she was gone, he had only an empty house to return to. It didn’t cross his mind to try and meet another woman. Marion had once raised the possibility with him when they were down at the morgue but his reaction had been lukewarm.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Marion, feeling more awake. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Hadn’t we better leave it till tomorrow?’

  ‘No, come on, out with it. You’ve woken me up now. The damage is done.’

  ‘He bit his nails.’

  ‘The man from the lagoon?’

  ‘Bit them down to the cuticles. Probably an old habit from childhood. That doesn’t help us, unfortunately.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we might have been able to find some residual traces under his nails – if he’d been in a fight, for example.’

  ‘Ah, I’m with you.’

  ‘I get the impression he worked with his hands. Did some job involving a workshop. The lagoon cleaned them to some extent but I found traces of dirt, grease and oil around his fingernails, or what’s left of them. It’s all I can think of. A garage. Machine shop. Something along those lines.’

  ‘Grease?’

  ‘Yes, and it’s not just the dirt.’

  The pathologist explained to Marion that he’d noticed the man’s hands were covered in small cuts or abrasions, old and new, as well as being calloused from manual labour. He recognised the signs since his own brothers were both mechanics. It was this that had led him to suspect that the body was that of a tradesman or labourer. He was no more than thirty-five years old and enough of his teeth were still intact for them to be compared to dental records if he couldn’t be identified by other means.

  ‘Do you think the lagoon was supposed to conceal this?’ asked Marion. ‘The dirt on his hands? The small cuts?’

  ‘I think the lagoon was intended to conceal his body, that’s all. But of course it’s not my place to express an opinion.’

  ‘Can you see anything to suggest that he might have been American? An American from the base? A foreigner?’

  ‘A serviceman, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  ‘He was wearing cowboy boots and –’

  ‘That’s not enough. Did you find anything that could link him to the base? Anything that could place him at Keflavík? Erlendur was talking about the possibility.’

  ‘Not that I noticed. But there’s another detail I should mention,’ said the pathologist. His voice suddenly sounded threadbare, as if the late hour was catching up with him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘All the evidence is that the man died as the result of falling from a great height, as we’ve discussed. From what I can deduce, he landed on a smooth surface, a pavement or tarmac, maybe even a concrete floor.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve already told us that.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I am repeating myself, but there are so many strange aspects to this death. Like, for example, the fact that he landed flat on his face without raising his arms to protect himself. I don’t believe he fell directly into the lagoon from a plane, as you two were suggesting. If that were the case the impact would have mainly come from hitting water. No, the surface he landed on was much harder.’

  ‘In other words he fell from a great height,’ said Marion, yawning. ‘Everything points to that. So there are only three possibilities: accident, suicide or murder. If it was an accident or suicide, it’s very puzzling that anyone would have wanted to hide his body in a mudbath. But if it was murder, it’s much easier to understand why the perpetrator would have wanted to cover his tracks. I believe we can rule out suicide, in any case. Involuntary manslaughter or an accident aren’t inconceivable, but then we have to ask ourselves why it wasn’t reported. Murder is by far the most plausible conclusion.’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I wanted to talk to you straight away,’ said the pathologist. ‘I just didn’t realise it was so late. You see, I found something on the back of the man’s head where it’s relatively undamaged.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘An ugly contusion that I missed initially because it’s under his hair. It looks as if he received a heavy blow to the head.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There’s no doubt.’

  ‘Isn’t that just the result of his fall?’

  ‘No. He landed on his face. This is on the back of his head.’

  ‘Are you positive?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to prove it conclusively by further examination,’ said the pathologist, ‘but the odds are that the man was dead before he fell.’

  7

  MARION AND ERLENDUR were gazing out over the lagoon, watching the diver lowering himself into the water. It was his second attempt. On his first he had found nothing in the area where the body had been lying, but he had wanted another chance to make a more thorough search. Marion was sceptical, seeing it as nothing more than a ploy to squeeze more money out of the police, but didn’t say so out loud. The police had called on the diver’s services before when they needed to drag harbours or lakes. He was in his forties, a carpenter by trade, a volunteer member of the rescue team and one of the most capable divers in the country. He had a powerful lamp attached to his head which lit up the water as he submerged, and Marion and Erlendur watched it moving slowly to and fro under the milky-blue surface.

  According to the diver, the lagoon bed was covered in a thick layer of sediment which hampered his efforts. Even if there was some clue sunk in the mud, the cloudiness of the water would make it almost impossible to spot. The lagoon had the detectives stumped. They had never encountered conditions quite like this before and were unsure how to proceed. They had discussed emptying it by pumping out the water but this had been dismissed as impractical. Then Erlendur had suggested dragging the bottom and, as no one had come up with a better solution, preparations were under way.

  Combing the shores of the lagoon for clues had as yet produced no results. The snow had obliterated any tracks that might have been left by the person or people responsible for transporting the body there. And the conjecture that the man had been thro
wn out of a plane had to be taken as seriously as any other, despite indications that he had already been dead before he landed. Reykjavík air traffic control were unaware of any flights over the area in the past week but there were a number of privately owned light aircraft based at the domestic airport and the police were in the process of contacting their owners. The police had also put out a request for information about traffic through smaller airstrips in the south of Iceland, such as those at Selfoss and in the Westman Islands. And they were still awaiting a response from air traffic control at Keflavík about the movements of private planes from the international airport.

  Even before the snow fell no tyre marks had been visible in the environs of the lagoon the evening the body was found. And anyway it was inaccessible to vehicles except perhaps for large, specially equipped four-wheel drives. The most likely scenario was that the body had been carried over the shortest route from the Grindavík road to the pool, then floated some way out into the water before being sunk. The diver could see no sign that it had been weighted down.

  Marion had relayed to Erlendur the gist of the pathologist’s phone call the night before, particularly the detail about the bruising on the back of the man’s head. The pathologist had rung again at lunchtime and repeated his conviction that the man had either been dead before he fell or at least unconscious from a heavy blow to the head.

  ‘That explains why he landed flat on his face,’ said Erlendur, watching the diver’s progress.

  ‘That’s what Herbert thought,’ said Marion. ‘He reckoned it was the most plausible explanation. That he’d been struck.’

  ‘Could he deduce anything about the implement – about what he’d been struck with?’

  ‘We’re maybe talking about a wheel brace, a length of piping or some other blunt instrument. He said it was hard to tell. Though he didn’t think it was a hammer. No sign of sharp edges. The skin wasn’t broken but it must have been a pretty heavy blow.’

  The diver surfaced briefly, then went under again, his headlamp glowing in the water. Heat radiated constantly from the lagoon, condensing into vapour which was swept across the surface by the breeze before dispersing. Erlendur was entranced by the sight: the subterranean fires and bleak terrain of the Reykjanes Peninsula had brought about this convergence of hot water, steam and moss-green lava, and endowed it with an unearthly beauty.

  ‘So the man’s hit on the head, then pushed off a tall building,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Possibly.’

  ‘So it would look like suicide?’

  ‘We have to consider that.’

  Marion and Erlendur had spoken to a manager at the power station who said it was out of the question that the man was a member of his staff. Nobody was missing; everyone had reported for work as usual. He was astonished that a body should have turned up in the run-off lagoon. Few had any reason to go there, though he had heard of people bathing there because of the supposedly beneficial minerals.

  The man, a tall, overweight, ruddy individual, with a red beard covering half his face, had walked back to the lagoon with them and was now watching the diver. It occurred to Erlendur to ask him about flights over the area and the man replied that there was quite a bit of activity thanks to the presence of the international airport and the American naval base on Midnesheidi. The roar of the military jets could be deafening at times. There were a few light aircraft too but the people working at the power station were less aware of them.

  ‘Why do you ask – was he thrown out of a plane or something?’

  The man said it half jokingly. So far no details had leaked out about the state of the body or police speculation that the multiple fractures and unrecognisable face were the result of a fall from a great height. When Erlendur merely shrugged and gave no answer, the man stared at them both in disbelief.

  ‘Was he seriously thrown out of a plane?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘We have no evidence of that,’ said Marion.

  ‘But you’re considering the possibility?’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ said Erlendur firmly.

  ‘What made you think he might have worked for us?’

  ‘We may be talking about a manual worker of some kind, and given that he was found on your doorstep, it was only natural to enquire about your staff. You say you’re not missing anyone, but what about men who used to work for you? Have you had any trouble over the last few months or year? Anyone been given the sack? Anyone issued threats? Any tensions you can recall?’

  ‘No, I can’t remember any problems of that sort,’ said the man.

  The diver reared up out of the water. Steam poured off him and he resembled some creature of the swamp as he waded towards them, his shape distorted by the oxygen tank and mask. He took out his mouthpiece when he reached the shore where they were standing.

  ‘I quit,’ he said. ‘I can’t find a thing in that bloody muck.’

  ‘Difficult to see?’ said Marion.

  ‘Difficult? It’s like diving in soup’

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ interrupted Erlendur, his attention distracted by the sight of a uniformed officer hastening over the lava field towards them.

  The officer and his partner had been sitting in a patrol car on the Grindavík road, guarding the crime scene, when they received an urgent alert over the radio, and had tossed a coin to decide who should abandon the warm interior and dash over to the lagoon with the message. He had lost.

  Marion and Erlendur watched him scrambling over the jumbled rocks, and wondered what was up. The diver, who had started peeling off his wetsuit, stopped to follow what was going on.

  ‘What now?’ he said.

  ‘They want to talk to you!’ shouted the officer breathlessly when he was finally within earshot, gesturing to the patrol car up by the road.

  ‘What’s he bawling about?’ asked Marion.

  ‘Sounds like someone wants to talk to us,’ said Erlendur.

  ‘A woman rang in,’ called the officer, panting. ‘Her … brother’s missing and she thinks he might be … might be your man.’

  8

  THE WOMAN WHO stepped hesitantly into the morgue on Barónsstígur looked somewhat younger than her brother, in her late twenties perhaps. Observing her dismay, Erlendur reassured her that it was all right; she need do nothing that would distress or be too much for her. They could leave whenever she wanted to and she needn’t identify her brother unless she felt up to it. Others could do that now that the police had such a solid lead. She said she had never been here before and Erlendur replied that it was hardly surprising since most people only entered a morgue once and by then they were past caring. She was very grave but smiled faintly at this and he was relieved that his attempt to lighten her mood had not backfired. She had never seen a dead body before either. Erlendur did his best to warn her, since identifying her brother in his present state was bound to be a harrowing experience. But she was resolute, keen to know as soon as possible whether her fears had any basis in fact, desperately hoping they hadn’t. Marion, who was with them, stayed in the background.

  They had already had a conversation at her flat. Nanna had phoned the police that lunchtime after failing to get hold of her brother for the past three days. She had seen the news about the body at Svartsengi but had not connected it to her brother until suddenly she started awake in the middle of the night with the thought: what if it’s him? She hadn’t slept a wink after that and had spent all morning plucking up courage to speak to the police. She had assumed she would have to come down to the station but was asked to wait in for the officers who would be round to see her shortly. A note was taken of her name, address and phone number. The police took her call very seriously: it was their first serious lead.

  Nanna turned out to live in a comfortable basement flat in the Melar district in the west of town. She told them she had moved in after splitting up with the man she’d been living with, and that she was very happy here. She was petite and pretty, with short black hair. She wouldn’t
have mentioned her recent break-up only she wanted to explain how kind her brother had been to her throughout the wretched business. He had helped her find a new place and make a fresh start.

  ‘There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me,’ she said, her gaze swinging from Marion to Erlendur as they sat facing her in the small sitting room. She had shown them a recent photograph of her brother. They could see at once that it was the man from the lagoon but kept the knowledge to themselves.

  Her brother’s name, she told them, was Kristvin, and in a low, hesitant voice she began to go over the salient facts about him. He lived in Reykjavík but worked out at Keflavík. He was an air mechanic and two years ago, after completing his training in America, he had been taken on by Icelandair. He was unmarried, had no children and not many friends either; he had become a bit of a loner since returning home from abroad. He told her he had lost touch with most of his old mates while he was away. They didn’t have much family either: their mother was dead and their father had had little contact with them since he remarried and moved to Denmark.

  ‘When did you last hear from your brother?’ asked Marion.

  ‘About four days ago,’ answered Nanna. ‘He came over and we had a meal together.’

  ‘And was he his usual self?’

  ‘Yes, he was. He didn’t act any differently from normal.’

  ‘Do you see much of each other?’ asked Erlendur.

  ‘Yes, that’s the thing. We talk pretty much every day. He rings me or I ring him and we meet at his place or mine, or go to the cinema, that kind of thing. I tried to get hold of him – er – the day after he came round. Just rang him at home as usual but he didn’t answer. So I tried him again next day and then the next – rang several times – but he never answered. We’d arranged to meet up yesterday. The idea was that I’d go to his, then we’d maybe see a film. But when I went round he didn’t answer the bell. I have a spare key in case he locks himself out and I took it with me because I hadn’t heard from him and was worried he might be ill or something. So I went inside but there was nobody there. The flat smelt musty as if he hadn’t been home for a while. His bed wasn’t made, but that was nothing new. I opened the windows to air the place, then went home, feeling worried. Really worried, to be honest.’