The Draining Lake de-6 Page 5

  All apart from one. Hannes had been in Leipzig the longest of all the Icelanders and avoided the others. Two months passed before Tomas first met him. He knew about Hannes from Reykjavik: the party had big plans for him. The chairman had mentioned his name at an editorial meeting and referred to him as material for the future. Like Tomas, Hannes had worked as a journalist on the party paper and he heard stories about him from the reporters. Tomas had seen Hannes speaking at meetings in Reykjavik and was impressed by his zeal, his phrases about how warmongering cowboys could buy out democracy in Iceland, how Icelandic politicians were puppets in the hands of American imperialists. “Democracy in this country is not worth a shit for as long as the American army spreads its filth over Icelandic soil!” he had shouted to thunderous applause. In his first years in East Germany, Hannes had written a regular column called Letter from the East, describing the wonders of the communist system, until the articles had ceased to appear. The other Icelanders in the city had little to say about Hannes. He had gradually distanced himself from them and had gone his own way. Occasionally they discussed this but shrugged as if it were none of their business.

  One day he came across Hannes in the university library. Evening had fallen, there were few people at the desks and Hannes had his head buried in his books. It was cold and blustery outside. Sometimes it was so cold in the library that people’s breath steamed when they talked. Hannes was wearing a long overcoat and a cap with ear muffs. The library had suffered badly in the air raids and only part of it was in use.

  “Aren’t you, Hannes?” he asked in a friendly tone. “We’ve never met.”

  Hannes looked up from his books.

  “I’m Tomas.” He held out his hand.

  Hannes stared at him and the outstretched hand, then buried his head back in his books.

  “Leave me alone,” he said.

  Tomas was surprised. He had not expected such a reception from his compatriot, least of all from this man, who enjoyed great respect and had impressed him so deeply.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Of course, you’re studying.”

  Instead of answering, Hannes went on jotting notes from the open books on the table in front of him. He wrote quickly in pencil and was wearing fingerless gloves to keep his hands warm.

  “I was just wondering if we could have a coffee sometime,” Tomas went on. “Or a beer.”

  Hannes did not reply. Tomas stood over him, waiting for some kind of response, but when none came he slowly backed off from the table and turned away. He was halfway behind a rack of books when Hannes looked up from his tomes and at last answered him.

  “Did you say Tomas?”

  “Yes, we’ve never met but I’ve heard…”

  “I know who you are,” Hannes said. “I was like you once. What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just to say hello. I was sitting over on that side and I’ve been watching you. I only wanted to say hello. I went to a meeting once where you—”

  “What do you think of Leipzig?” Hannes interrupted.

  “Brass-monkey weather and bad food but the university’s good and the first thing I’m going to do when I get back to Iceland is to campaign for legalising beer.”

  Hannes smiled.

  “That’s true, the beer’s the best thing about this place.”

  “Maybe we could have a jar together sometime,” Tomas said.

  “Maybe,” Hannes said, and delved back into his books. Their conversation was over.

  “What do you mean, you were like me once?” Tomas asked hesitantly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” Hannes said, looking up and scrutinising him. He hesitated.

  “Take no notice of me,” he said. “It’ll do you no good.”

  Confused, he walked out of the library and into the piercing winter wind. On the way to the dormitory he met Emil and Rut. They had been to collect a package posted from Iceland for her. It was a food parcel and they were gloating over it. He did not mention his encounter with Hannes because he did not understand what he had meant.

  “Lothar was looking for you,” Emil said. “I told him you were at the library.”

  “I didn’t see him,” he said. “Do you know what he wanted?”

  “No idea,” Emil said.

  Lothar was his liaison, his Betreuer. Every foreigner at the university had a liaison who was available for help. Lothar had befriended the Icelanders at the dormitory. He offered to take them around the city and show them the sights. He assisted them at the university and sometimes paid the bill when they went to Auerbachkeller. He wanted to go to Iceland, he said, to study Icelandic, and he spoke the language well, could even sing the latest hit songs. He said he was interested in the old Icelandic sagas, had read Njal’s Saga and wanted to translate it.

  “Here’s the building,” Rut said all of a sudden, and stopped. “That’s the office. There are prison cells inside.”

  They looked up at the building. It was a gloomy stone edifice of four storeys. Plywood boarding had been nailed over all the ground-floor windows. He saw the name of the street: Dittrichring. Number 24.

  “Prison cells? What is this place?” he asked.

  “The security police are in there,” Emil said in a low voice, as if someone might hear him.

  “Stasi,” Rut said.

  He looked up along the building again. The pallid street lights cast a murky shadow onto its stone walls and windows, and a slight shiver ran through him. He felt clearly that he never wanted to enter that place but had no way of knowing then how little his own wishes counted for.

  He sighed and looked out to sea where a little sailboat was cruising by.

  Decades later, when the Soviet Union and communism had fallen, he had returned to the headquarters and noticed at once the old nauseating smell. It produced the same effect on him as when the rat had got trapped behind the dormitory stove and they had unwittingly roasted it over and again, until the stench in the old villa became unbearable.

  8

  Erlendur watched Marion sitting in the chair in the living room, breathing through an oxygen mask. The last time he had seen his former CID boss was at Christmas and he did not know that Marion had since fallen ill. Enquiring at work, he had discovered that decades of smoking had ruined Marion’s lungs and a thrombosis had caused paralysis of the right side, arm and part of the face. The flat was dim despite the sun outside, with a thick layer of dust on the tables. A nurse visited once a day and she was just leaving when Erlendur called.

  He sat down in the deep sofa facing Marion and thought about the sorry state to which his old colleague had been reduced. There was almost no flesh left on the bones. That huge head nodded slowly above a weak body. Every bone in Marion’s face was visible, the eyes sunken under yellowy, scraggy hair. Erlendur dwelled on the tobacco-stained fingers and shrivelled nails resting on the chair’s worn arm. Marion was asleep.

  The nurse had let Erlendur in and he sat in silence waiting for Marion to wake. He was remembering the first time he’d turned up for work at the CID all those years ago.

  “What’s up with you?” was the first thing Marion said to him. “Don’t you ever smile?”

  He did not know what to say in reply. Did not know what to expect from this stunted specimen for whom a Camel was a permanent fixture, forever enveloped in a stinking haze of blue smoke.

  “Why do you want to investigate crimes?” Marion continued when Erlendur did not answer. “Why don’t you get on with directing traffic?”

  “I thought I might be able to help,” Erlendur said.

  It was a small office crammed with papers and files; a large ashtray on the desk was full of cigarette butts. The air was thick and smoky inside but Erlendur did not mind. He took out a cigarette.

  “Do you have a particular interest in crime?” Marion asked.

  “Some of them,” Erlendur said, fishing out a box of matches.

  “Some?”
>
  “I’m interested in missing persons,” Erlendur said.

  “Missing persons? Why?”

  “I always have been. I…” Erlendur paused.

  “What? What were you going to say?” Marion chainsmoked and lit a fresh Camel from a tiny butt, still glowing when it landed in the ashtray. “Get to the point! If you dither around like that at work I won’t have anything to do with you. Out with it!”

  “I think they might have more to do with crimes than people think,” Erlendur said. “I’ve got nothing to back me up. It’s just a hunch.”

  Erlendur snapped out of this flashback. He watched Marion inhaling the oxygen. He looked out of the living-room window. Just a hunch, he thought.

  Marion Briem’s eyes opened slowly and noticed Erlendur on the sofa. Their gazes met and Marion removed the oxygen mask.

  “Has everyone forgotten those bloody communists?” Marion said in a hoarse voice, drawling through a mouth twisted by the thrombosis.

  “How are you feeling?” Erlendur asked.

  Marion gave a quick smile. Or maybe it was a grimace.

  “It’ll be a miracle if I last the year.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What’s the point? Can you sort me out a new pair of lungs?”

  “Cancer?”

  Marion nodded.

  “You smoked too much,” Erlendur said.

  “What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette,” Marion said.

  Marion put the mask back on and watched Erlendur, as if expecting him to produce his cigarettes. Erlendur shook his head. In one corner the television was switched on and the cancer patient’s eyes flashed over at the screen. The mask came back down.

  “How’s it going with the skeleton? Has everyone forgotten the communists?”

  “What’s all this talk about communists?”

  “Your boss came to say hello to me yesterday, or maybe to say goodbye. I’ve never liked that upstart. I can’t see why you don’t want to be one of those bosses. What’s the explanation? Can you tell me that? You should have been doing half as much for twice the money ages ago.”

  “There is no explanation,” Erlendur said.

  “He let it slip that the skeleton was tied to a Russian radio transmitter.”

  “Yes. We think it’s Russian and we think it’s a radio transmitter.”

  “Aren’t you going to give me a cigarette?”

  “No.”

  “I haven’t got long left. Do you think it matters?”

  “You won’t get a cigarette from me. Was that why you phoned? So I could finally finish you off? Why don’t you just ask me to put a bullet through your head?”

  “Would you do that for me?”

  Erlendur smiled, and Marion’s face lit up for an instant.

  “Having a stroke is worse. I talk like an idiot and I can’t really move my hand.”

  “What’s all this guff about communists?”

  “It was a few years before you joined us. When was that again?”

  “1977,” Erlendur said.

  “You said you were interested in missing persons, I remember that,” Marion Briem said, wincing. Marion replaced the oxygen mask and leaned back, with eyes closed. A long while passed. Erlendur looked around the room. The flat reminded him uncomfortably of his own.

  “Do you want me to call someone?”

  “No, don’t call anyone,” Marion said, taking the mask off. “You can help me make us coffee afterwards. I just need to gather my strength. But surely you remember it? When we found those devices.”

  “What devices?”

  “In Lake Kleifarvatn. Does nobody remember anything any more?”

  Marion looked at him and in a weak voice began recounting the story of the devices from the lake; it suddenly dawned on Erlendur what his old boss was talking about. He only vaguely recalled the matter and had not linked it at all to the skeleton in the lake, although he should have realised at once.

  On 10 September 1973 the telephone had rung at Hafnarfjordur police station. Two frogmen from Reykjavik — “they’re not called frogmen any more’, Marion chuckled painfully — had chanced upon a heap of equipment in the lake. It was at a depth of ten metres. It soon became clear that most of it was Russian and the Cyrillic lettering had been filed off. Telephone engineers were called in to examine it and established that it was an assortment of telecommunications and bugging devices.

  “There was loads of the stuff,” Marion Briem said. “Tape recorders, radio sets, transmitters.”

  “Were you on the case?”

  “I was at the lake when they fished it all out but I wasn’t in charge of the investigation. The case got a lot of publicity. It was at the height of the Cold War and it was well known that Russian espionage in Iceland took place. Of course, the Americans spied too, but they were a friendly nation. Russia was the enemy.”

  “Transmitters?”

  “Yes. And receivers. It turned out that some were tuned to the wavelength of the American base at Keflavik.”

  “So you want to link the skeleton in the lake with that equipment?”

  “What do you think?” Marion Briem said, eyes closed again.

  “Perhaps that’s not implausible.”

  “You bear it in mind,” Marion said, pulling a weary face.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Erlendur said. “Anything I can get you?”

  “I sometimes watch westerns,” Marion said after a long pause, still sitting with eyes closed.

  Erlendur was unsure whether he had heard correctly.

  “Westerns?” he said. “Are you talking about cowboy films?”

  “Could you bring me a good western?”

  “What’s a good western?”

  “John Wayne,” Marion said in a fading voice.

  Erlendur sat by Marion’s side for some time, in case his old boss woke up again. Noon was approaching. He went into the kitchen, made coffee and poured two cups. He remembered that Marion drank coffee black with no sugar, as he did, and placed one beside the armchair. He did not know what else he should do.

  That afternoon Sigurdur Oli sat down in Erlendur’s office. The man had rung again in the middle of the night, announcing that he was going to commit suicide. Sigurdur Oli had sent a police car to his house, but no one was at home. The man lived alone in a small detached house. On Sigurdur Oli’s orders the police broke in but found no one.

  “He called me again this morning,” Sigurdur Oli said after describing the episode. “He was back home by then. Nothing happened but I’m getting a little tired of him.”

  “Is he the one who lost his wife and child?”

  “Yes. Inexplicably, he blames himself and refuses to listen to anything different.”

  “It was sheer coincidence, wasn’t it?”

  “Not in his mind.”

  Sigurdur Oli had been temporarily assigned to investigating road accidents. A Range Rover had driven into a car at a junction on the Breidholt Road, killing a mother along with her five-year-old daughter who was in the back, wearing a safety belt. The driver of the Range Rover had gone through a red light while drunk. The victims” car was the last in a long queue going over the junction at the very moment the Range Rover raced through the red light. If the mother had waited for the next green light, the Range Rover would have gone through without causing any damage and proceeded on its way. The drunken driver would probably have caused an accident somewhere, but it would not have been at that junction.

  “But that’s just how most accidents happen,” Sigurdur Oli said to Erlendur. “Incredible coincidences. That’s what the man doesn’t understand.”

  “His conscience is killing him,” Erlendur said. “You ought to show some understanding.”

  “Understanding?! He calls me at home in the middle of the night. How can I show him any more understanding?”

  The woman had been shopping with their daughter at the supermarket in Smaralind. She was at the checkout when her husband called
her mobile to ask her to get him a punnet of strawberries. She did, but it delayed her by a few minutes. The man was convinced that if he hadn’t telephoned her she would not have been at the junction at the time when the Range Rover hit her. So he blamed himself. The crash had happened because he’d called her.

  The scene of the accident was awful. The woman’s car was torn apart, a write-off. The Range Rover had rolled off the road. The driver suffered a serious head injury and multiple fractures, and was unconscious when the ambulance took him away. The mother and daughter died instantly. They had to be cut from the wreckage. Blood ran down the road.

  Sigurdur Oli went to visit the husband with a clergyman. The car was registered in the husband’s name. He was beginning to worry about his wife and daughter and went into shock when he saw Sigurdur Oli and the vicar on his doorstep. When he was told what had happened he broke down and they called a doctor. Every so often since then he had telephoned Sigurdur Oli, who had become a kind of confidant, entirely against his will.

  “I don’t want to be his damned confessor,” Sigurdur Oli groaned. “But he won’t leave me alone. Rings at night and talks about killing himself! Why can’t he go on at the vicar? He was there too.”