The Draining Lake Part 1

The Draining Lake.

by ARNALDUR INDRIDASON.

1

She stood motionless for a long time, staring at the bones as if it should not be possible for them to be there. Any more than for her.At first she thought it was another sheep that had drowned in the lake, until she moved closer and saw the skull half-buried in the lake bed and the shape of a human skeleton. The ribs protruded from the sand and beneath them could be seen the outlines of the pelvis and thigh bones. The skeleton was lying on its left side so she could see the right side of the skull, the empty eye sockets and three teeth in the upper jaw. One had a large silver filling. There was a wide hole in the skull itself, about the size of a matchbox, which she instinctively thought could have been made by a hammer. She bent down and stared at the skull. With some hesitation she explored the hole with her finger. The skull was full of sand.The thought of a hammer crossed her mind again and she shuddered at the idea of someone being struck over the head with one. But the hole was too large to have been left by a hammer. She decided not to touch the skeleton again. Instead, she took out her mobile and dialled emergency services.She wondered what to say. Somehow this was so completely unreal. A skeleton so far out in the lake, buried on its sandy bed. Nor was she on her best form. Visions of hammers and matchboxes. She found it difficult to concentrate. Her thoughts were roaming all over the place and she had great trouble rounding them up again.It was probably because she was hung-over. After planning to spend the day at home she had changed her mind and gone to the lake. She had persuaded herself that she must check the instruments. She was a scientist. She had always wanted to be a scientist and knew that the measurements had to be monitored carefully. But she had a splitting headache and her thoughts were far from logical. The National Energy Authority had held its annual dinner dance the night before and, as was sometimes the way, she had had too much to drink.She thought about the man lying in her bed at home and knew that it was on his account that she had hauled herself off to the lake. She did not want to be there when he woke up and hoped that he would be gone when she returned. He had come back to her flat after the dance but was not very exciting. No more than the others she had met since her divorce. He hardly talked about anything except his CD collection and carried on long after she had given up feigning any interest. Then she fell asleep in a living-room chair. When she woke up she saw that he had got into her bed, where he was sleeping with his mouth open, wearing tiny underpants and black socks.'Emergency services,' a voice said over the line.'h.e.l.lo I'd like to report that I've found some bones,' she said. 'There's a skull with a hole in it.'She grimaced. b.l.o.o.d.y hangover! Who says that sort of thing? A skull with a hole in it. She remembered a phrase from a children's rhyme about a penny with a hole in it. Or was it a shilling?'Your name, please,' said the neutral emergency-services voice.She straightened out her jumbled thoughts and stated her name.'Where is it?''Lake Kleifarvatn. North side.''Did you pull it up in a fishing net?''No. It's buried on the bed of the lake.''Are you a diver?''No, it's standing up out of the bed. Ribs and the skull.''It's on the bottom of the lake?''Yes.''So how can you see it?''I'm standing here looking at it.''Did you bring it to dry land?''No, I haven't touched it,' she lied instinctively.The voice on the telephone paused.'What kind of c.r.a.p is this?' the voice said at last, angrily. 'Is this a hoax? You know what you can get for wasting our time?''It's not a hoax. I'm standing here looking at it.''So you can walk on water, I suppose?''The lake's gone,' she said. 'There's no water any more. Just the bed. Where the skeleton is.''What do you mean, the lake's gone?''It hasn't all gone, but it's dry now where I'm standing. I'm a hydrologist with the Energy Authority. I was recording the water level when I discovered this skeleton. There's a hole in the skull and most of the bones are buried in the sand on the bottom. I thought it was a sheep at first.''A sheep?''We found one the other day that had drowned years ago. When the lake was bigger.'There was another pause.'Wait there,' said the voice reluctantly. 'I'll send a patrol car.'She stood still by the skeleton for a while, then walked over to the sh.o.r.e and measured the distance. She was certain the bones had not surfaced when she was taking measurements at the same place a fortnight earlier. Otherwise she would have seen them. The water level had dropped by more than a metre since then.The scientists from the Energy Authority had been puzzling over this conundrum ever since they'd noticed that the water level in Lake Kleifarvatn was falling rapidly. The authority had set up its first automatic surface-level monitor in 1964 and one of the hydrologists' tasks was to check the measurements. In the summer of 2000 the monitor seemed to have broken. An incredible amount of water was draining from the lake every day, twice the normal volume.She walked back to the skeleton. She was itching to take a better look, dig it up and brush off the sand, but imagined that the police would be none too pleased at that. She wondered whether it was male or female and vaguely recalled having read somewhere, probably in a detective story, that their skeletons were almost identical: only the pelvises were different. Then she remembered someone telling her not to believe anything she read in detective stories. Since the skeleton was buried in the sand she couldn't see the pelvis, and it struck her that she would not have known the difference anyway.Her hangover intensified and she sat down on the sand beside the bones. It was a Sunday morning and the occasional car drove past the lake. She imagined they were families out for a Sunday drive to Herdisarvik and on to Selvogur. That was a popular and scenic route, across the lava field and hills and past the lake down to the sea. She thought about the families in the cars. Her own husband had left her when the doctors ruled out their ever having children together. He remarried shortly afterwards and now had two lovely children. He had found happiness.All that she had found was a man she barely knew, lying in her bed in his socks. Decent men became harder to find as the years went by. Most of them were either divorced like her or, even worse, had never been in a relationship at all.She looked woefully at the bones, half-buried in the sand, and was close to tears.About an hour later a police car approached from Hafnarfjordur. It was in no hurry, lazily threading its way along the road towards the lake. This was May and the sun was high in the sky, reflecting off the smooth surface of the water. She sat on the sand watching the road and when she waved to the car it pulled over. Two police officers got out, looked in her direction and walked towards her.They stood over the skeleton in silence for a long time until one of them poked a rib with his foot.'Do you reckon he was fishing?' he said to his colleague.'On a boat, you mean?''Or waded here.''There's a hole,' she said, looking at each of them in turn. 'In the skull.'One officer bent down.'Well,' he said.'He could have fallen over in the boat and broken his skull,' his colleague said.'It's full of sand,' said the first one.'Shouldn't we notify CID?' the other asked.'Aren't most of them in America?' his colleague said, looking up into the sky. 'At a crime conference?'The other officer nodded. Then they stood quietly over the bones for a while until one of them turned to her.'Where's all the water gone?' he asked.'There are various theories,' she said. 'What are you going to do? Can I go home now?'After exchanging glances they took down her name and thanked her, without apologising for having kept her waiting. She didn't care. She wasn't in a hurry. It was a beautiful day by the lake and she would have enjoyed it even more in the company of her hangover if she had not chanced upon the skeleton. She wondered whether the man in the black socks had left her flat and certainly hoped so. Looked forward to renting a video that evening and snuggling up under a blanket in front of the television.She looked down at the bones and at the hole in the skull.Maybe she would rent a good detective film.

2

The police officers notified their duty sergeant in Hafnarfjordur about the skeleton in the lake; it took them some time to explain how it could be out in the middle of the lake yet still on dry land. The sergeant phoned the chief inspector at the Police Commissioner's office and informed him of the find, wanting to know whether or not they would take over the case.'That's something for the identification committee,' the chief inspector said. 'I think I have the right man for the job.''Who's that?''We sent him off on holiday he's got about five years' leave owing to him, I think but I know he'll be pleased to have something to do. He's interested in missing persons. Likes digging things up.'The chief inspector said goodbye, picked up the phone again and asked for Erlendur Sveinsson to be contacted and sent off to Lake Kleifarvatn with a small team of detectives.

Erlendur was absorbed in a book when the telephone rang. He had tried to shut out the relentless May sun as best he could. Thick curtains covered the living-room windows and he had closed the door to the kitchen, where there were no proper curtains. He had made it dark enough around him to have to switch on the lamp by his chair.Erlendur knew the story well. He had read it many times before. It was an account of a journey in the autumn of 1868 from Skaftartunga along the mountain trail north of the Mrdalsjokull glacier. Several people had been travelling together to a fishing camp in Gardar, in the south-west of Iceland. One was a young man aged seventeen whose name was David. Although the men were seasoned travellers and familiar with the route, a perilous storm got up soon after they set off and they never returned. An extensive search was mounted but no trace of them was found. It was not until ten years later that their skeletons were discovered by chance beside a large sand dune, south of Kaldaklof. The men had spread blankets over themselves and were lying huddled against each other.Erlendur looked up in the gloom and imagined the teenager in the group, fearful and worried. He had seemed to know what was in the offing before he set out; local farmers remarked how he had shared out his childhood toys among his brothers and sisters, saying that he would not be back to reclaim them.Putting down his book, Erlendur stood up stiffly and answered the telephone. It was Elinborg.'Will you be coming?' was the first thing she said.'Do I have any choice?' Erlendur said. Elinborg had for many years been compiling a book of recipes which was now finally being published.'Oh my G.o.d, I'm so nervous. What do you think people will make of it?''I can still barely switch on a microwave,' Erlendur said. 'So maybe I'm not . . .''The publishers loved it,' Elinborg said. 'And the photos of the dishes are brilliant. They commissioned a special photographer to take them. And there's a separate chapter on Christmas food . . .''Elinborg.''Yes.''Were you calling about anything in particular?''A skeleton in Lake Kleifarvatn,' Elinborg said, lowering her voice when the conversation moved away from her cookery book. 'I'm supposed to fetch you. The lake's shrunk or something and they found some bones there this morning. They want you to take a look.''The lake's shrunk?''Yes, I didn't quite get that bit.'

Sigurdur Oli was standing by the skeleton when Erlendur and Elinborg arrived at the lake. A forensics team was on the way. The officers from Hafnarfjordur were fiddling around with yellow plastic tape to cordon off the area, but had discovered they had nothing to attach it to. Sigurdur Oli watched their efforts and thought he could understand why village-idiot jokes were always set in Hafnarfjordur.'Aren't you on holiday?' he asked Erlendur as he walked over across the black sand.'Yes,' Erlendur said. 'What have you been up to?''Same old,' Sigurdur Oli said in English. He looked up at the road where a large jeep from one of the TV stations was parking at the roadside. 'They sent her home,' he said with a nod at the policemen from Hafnarfjordur. 'The woman who found the bones. She was taking some measurements here. We can ask her afterwards why the lake's dried up. Under normal circ.u.mstances we ought to be up to our necks on this spot.''Is your shoulder all right?''Yes. How's Eva Lind doing?''She hasn't done a runner yet,' Erlendur said. 'I think she regrets the whole business, but I'm not really sure.'He knelt down and examined the exposed part of the skeleton. He put his finger in the hole in the skull and rubbed one of the ribs.'He's been hit over the head,' he said and stood up again.'That's rather obvious,' Elinborg said sarcastically. 'If it is a he he,' she added.'Rather like a fight, isn't it?' Sigurdur Oli said. 'The hole's just above the right temple. Maybe it only took one good punch.''We can't rule out that he was alone on a boat here and fell against the side,' Erlendur said, looking at Elinborg. 'That tone of yours, Elinborg, is that the style you use in your cookery book?''Of course, the smashed piece of bone would have been washed away a long time ago,' she said, ignoring his question.'We need to dig out the bones,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'When do forensics get here?'Erlendur saw more cars pulling up by the roadside and presumed that word about the discovery of the skeleton had reached the newsdesks.'Won't they have to put up a tent?' he said, still eyeing the road.'Yes,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'They're bound to bring one.''You mean he was fishing on the lake alone?' Elinborg asked.'No, that's just one possibility,' Erlendur said.'But what if someone hit him?''Then it wasn't an accident,' Sigurdur Oli said.'We don't know what happened,' Erlendur said. 'Maybe someone hit him. Maybe he was out fishing with someone who suddenly produced a hammer. Maybe there were only the two of them. Maybe they were three, five.''Or,' Sigurdur Oli chipped in, 'he was. .h.i.t over the head in the city and brought out to the lake to dispose of his body.''How could they have made him sink?' Elinborg said. 'You need something to weight a body down in the water.''Is it an adult?' Sigurdur Oli said.'Tell them to keep their distance,' Erlendur said as he watched the reporters clambering down to the lake bed from the road. A light aircraft approached from the direction of Reykjavik and flew low over the lake; they could see someone holding a camera.Sigurdur Oli went over to the reporters. Erlendur walked down to the lake. The ripples lapped lazily against the sand as he watched the afternoon sun glittering on the water's surface and wondered what was happening. Was the lake draining through the actions of man or was it nature at work? It was as if the lake itself wanted to uncover a crime. Did it conceal more misdeeds where it was deeper and still dark and calm?He gazed up at the road. Forensics technicians wearing white overalls were hurrying across the sand in his direction. They were carrying a tent and bags full of mysteries. He looked skywards and felt the warmth of the sun on his face. Maybe it was the sun that was drying up the lake.The first discovery that the forensics team made when they began clearing the sand from the skeleton with their little trowels and fine-haired brushes was a rope that had slipped between the ribs and lay by the spinal column then under the skeleton, where it vanished into the sand.

The hydrologist's name was Sunna and she had snuggled up under a blanket on the sofa. The tape was in the video player, the American thriller The Bone Collector The Bone Collector. The man in the black socks had gone. He had left behind two telephone numbers which she flushed down the toilet. The film was just starting when the doorbell rang. She was forever being disturbed. If it wasn't cold-callers it was people selling dried fish door-to-door, or boys asking for empty bottles who lied that they were collecting for the Red Cross. The bell clanged again. Still she hesitated. Then with a sigh she threw off the blanket.When she opened the door two men were standing before her. One looked a rather sorry sight, round-shouldered and wearing a peculiarly mournful expression on his face. The other one was younger and much nicer handsome, really.Erlendur watched her staring with interest at Sigurdur Oli and could not suppress a smile.'It's about Lake Kleifarvatn,' he said.Once they had sat down in her living room Sunna told them what she and her colleagues at the Energy Authority believed had happened.'You remember the big south Iceland earthquake on the seventeenth of June 2000?' she said, and they nodded. 'About five seconds afterwards a large earthquake also struck Kleifarvatn, which doubled the natural rate of drainage from it. When the lake started to shrink people at first thought it was because of unusually low precipitation, but it turned out that the water was pouring down through fissures that run across the bed of the lake and have been there for ages. Apparently they opened up in the earthquake. The lake measured ten square kilometres but now it's only about eight. The water level has fallen by at least four metres.''And that's how you found the skeleton,' Erlendur said.'We found the bones of a sheep when the surface had dropped by two metres,' Sunna said. 'But of course it hadn't been hit over the head.''What do you mean, hit over the head?' Sigurdur Oli said.She looked at him. She had tried to be inconspicuous when she looked at his hands. Tried to spot a wedding ring.'I saw a hole in the skull,' she said. 'Do you know who it is?''No,' Erlendur said. 'He would have needed to use a boat, wouldn't he? To get so far out onto the lake.''If you mean could someone have walked to where the skeleton is, the answer's no. It was at least four metres deep there until quite recently. And if it happened years back, which of course I know nothing about, the water would have been even deeper.''So they were on a boat?' Sigurdur Oli said. 'Are there boats on that lake?''There are houses in the vicinity,' Sunna said, staring into his eyes. He had beautiful eyes, dark blue under delicate brows. 'There might be some boats there. I've never seen a boat on the lake.'If only we could row away somewhere, she thought to herself.Erlendur's mobile began ringing. It was Elinborg.'You ought to get over here,' she said.'What's happened?''Come and see. It's quite remarkable. I've never seen anything like it.'

3

He stood up, switched on the television news and groaned. There was a lengthy report on the skeleton found at Lake Kleifarvatn, including an interview with a detective who said that there would be a thorough investigation of the case.He walked over to the window and looked out towards the sea. On the pavement in front of him he saw the couple who walked past his house every evening, the man a few steps ahead as usual, the woman trying to keep up with him. While walking they were in conversation; the man talking over his shoulder and she at his back. They had been pa.s.sing the house for years and had long since ceased to pay attention to their surroundings. In the past they would occasionally look up at the house and at the other buildings on the street by the sea, and into the gardens. Sometimes they even stopped to admire a new swing or work being carried out on fences and terraces. No matter what the weather or the time of year, they always took their walk in the afternoon or the evening, always together.On the horizon he saw a large cargo ship. The sun was still high in the sky although it was well into the evening. The brightest period of the year lay ahead, before the days began growing shorter again and then shrinking to nothing. It had been a beautiful spring. He had noticed the first golden plovers outside his house in mid-April. They had followed the spring wind in from the continent.It had been late summer when he had first sailed abroad. Cargo ships were not so enormous in those days and were not containerised. He remembered the deckhands lugging fifty-kilo sacks around the hold. Remembered their smuggling stories. They knew him from his spell in a summer job at the harbour and enjoyed telling him how they duped the Customs officers. Some stories were so fantastic that he knew they were making them up. Others were so tense and exciting that they had no need to invent any details. And there were stories he was never allowed to hear. Even though they knew he would never tell. Not the communist from that posh school!Never tell.He looked back to the television. He felt as though he had spent his whole life waiting for this report on the news.

He had been a socialist for as far back as he could remember, like everyone on both sides of his family. Political apathy was unheard of and he grew up loathing the conservatives. His father had been involved in the labour movement since the early decades of the twentieth century. Politics was a constant topic of discussion at home; they particularly despised the American base at Keflavik which the Icelandic capitalist cla.s.s cheerfully accepted. It was Icelandic capitalists who benefited the most from the military.Then there was the company he kept, his friends from similar backgrounds. They could be very radical and some were eloquent speakers. He remembered the political meetings well. Remembered the pa.s.sion. The fervent debates. He attended the meetings with his friends who, like him, were finding their feet in the party's youth movement; he listened to their leader's thunderous haranguing of the rich who exploited the proletariat, and the American forces who had them in their pocket. He had heard this repeated over and again with the same unwavering and heartfelt conviction. Everything he heard inspired him, because he had been raised as an Icelandic nationalist and hardline socialist who never doubted his views for one moment. He knew the truth was on his side.A recurrent theme at their meetings was the American presence at Keflavik and the tricks that Icelandic money-grubbers had pulled to allow a foreign military base to be established on Icelandic soil. He knew how the country had been sold to the Americans for the capitalists to grow fat on, like parasites. As a teenager, he was outside Parliament House when the ruling cla.s.s's lackeys stormed out of it with tear gas and truncheons and beat up those protesting against Iceland's entry into NATO. The traitors are lapdogs of US imperialism! We're under the jackboot of American capitalism! The young socialists had no shortage of slogans.He belonged to the oppressed ma.s.ses himself. He was swept along by the fervour and the eloquence and the just notion that all men should be equal. The bosses should work alongside the labourers in the factory. Down with the cla.s.s system! He had a genuine and steadfast faith in socialism. He felt the need to serve the cause, to persuade others and to fight for all the underprivileged, the workers and the oppressed.Arise ye workers from your slumbers ... ...He took full part in discussions at the meetings and read what the youth movement recommended. There was plenty to be found in libraries and bookshops. He wanted to leave his mark. In his heart he knew that he was right. Much of what he had heard from the young socialist movement filled him with a sense of justice.Gradually he learned the answers to questions about dialectical materialism, the cla.s.s struggle as the vehicle of history, about capitalism and the proletariat, and he trained himself to garnish his vocabulary with phrases from the great revolutionary thinkers as he read more and became increasingly inspired. Before long he had surpa.s.sed his comrades in Marxist theory and rhetoric and caught the eye of the youth-movement leaders. Elections to party posts and the drafting of resolutions were important activities and he was asked whether he wanted to join the party council. He was then eighteen. They had founded a society at his school called 'The Red Flag'. His father decided that he should have the benefit of an education, the only one of the four children. For that, he was forever grateful to his father.In spite of everything.The youth movement published a broadsheet and held regular meetings. The chairman was even invited to Moscow and came back full of tales about the workers' state. Such magnificent development. People were so happy. Their every need catered for. The cooperatives and centralised economy promised unprecedented progress. Post-war reconstruction outstripped all expectations. Factories sprouted up, owned and run by the state, by the people themselves. New residential districts were being built in the suburbs. All medical services were free. Everything they had read, everything they had heard, was true. Every word of it. O, what times!Others had been to the Soviet Union and described a different experience. The young socialists remained unmoved. The critics were servants of capitalism. They had betrayed the cause, the struggle for a fair society.The Red Flag meetings were well attended and they managed to draft in more and more members. He was unanimously elected chairman of the society and was soon noticed by the Socialist Party's top bra.s.s. In his final year at school it was clear that he was future leadership material.

He turned from the window and walked over to the photograph hanging above the piano, taken at the school-leaving ceremony. He looked at the faces under the traditional white caps. The male students in front of the school building wearing black suits, the girls in dresses. The sun was shining and their white caps glittered. He was second-best student of the year. Only a hair's breadth from coming top of the school. He stroked his hand over the photograph. He missed those years. Missed the time when his conviction had been so strong that nothing could break it.

In his last year at school he was offered a job on the party paper. In his summer vacation he had worked as a docker, got to know the labourers and deckhands, and talked politics with them. Many of them were outright reactionaries and they called him 'the communist'. He was interested in journalism and knew that the paper was one of the pillars of the party. Before he started there, the chairman of the youth movement took him to the deputy leader's house. The deputy leader, a skinny man, sat in a deep armchair polishing his spectacles with a handkerchief and telling them about the establishment of a socialist state in Iceland. Everything that soft voice said was so true and so right that a chill ran down his spine as he sat in the little living room, devouring every word.He was a good student. History, mathematics or any other subject came equally easily to him. Once a piece of knowledge entered his mind he retained it for instant recall. His memory and gift for study proved useful in journalism and he was a quick learner. He worked and thought fast, and could do long interviews without needing to jot down more than a few sentences. He knew that he was not an impartial reporter, but nor was anyone else in those days.He had planned to enrol that autumn at the University of Iceland, but was asked to stay on at the paper for the winter. He didn't need to think twice. In the middle of the winter the deputy leader invited him home. The East German Communist Party was offering places for several Icelandic students at the University of Leipzig; if he accepted one he would have to make his own way there but would be provided with board and lodging.He had wanted to go to Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union to see the post-war reconstruction for himself. To travel, discover different cultures and learn languages. He wanted to see socialism in action. He had been considering applying to the University of Moscow and had still not made up his mind when he visited the deputy leader. Wiping his spectacles, the deputy leader said that studying in Leipzig was a unique opportunity for him to observe the workings of a communist state and train to serve his own country even better.The deputy leader put on his gla.s.ses.'And serve the cause,' he added. 'You'll like it there. Leipzig's a historical city and has links with Icelandic culture. Halldor Laxness visited his friend the poet Johann Jonsson there. And Jon arnason's collection of folk tales was published by Hinrich Verlag of Leipzig in 1862.'He nodded. He had read everything Laxness had written about socialism in Eastern Europe and admired his powers of persuasion.The idea that he could go by ship and work his pa.s.sage occurred to him. His uncle knew someone at the shipping company. Securing the pa.s.sage was no problem. His family were ecstatic. None of them had been abroad, to say nothing of studying in another country. It would be such an adventure. They wrote to each other and telephoned to discuss the wonderful news. 'He'll turn out to be something,' people said. 'It wouldn't surprise me if he ended up in government!'The first port of call was in the Faroe Islands, then Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Hamburg. From there he took the train to Berlin and slept the night at the railway station. The following day, at noon, he boarded a train to Leipzig. He knew that n.o.body would be there to welcome him. He had an address written on a note in his pocket and asked for directions when he reached his destination.

Sighing heavily, he stood in front of the school photo-graph, looking at the face of his friend from Leipzig. They had been in the same cla.s.s at school. If only he had known then what would happen.He wondered whether the police would ever discover the truth about the man in the lake. He consoled himself with the thought that it was such a long time ago and that what had happened no longer mattered.No one cared about the man in the lake any more.

4

Forensics had erected a large tent over the skeleton. Elinborg stood outside it as she watched Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli hurrying across the dry bed of the lake towards her. It was late in the evening and the media had left. Traffic had increased around the lake after the find was reported, but had died down and the area was quiet again.'Nice of you to find the time,' Elinborg said as they approached.'Sigurdur had to stop for a hamburger on the way,' Erlendur grunted. 'What's going on?''Come with me,' Elinborg said, opening the tent. 'The pathologist is here.'Erlendur looked down towards the lake in the evening calm and thought about the fissures in its bed. The sun was still up, so it was completely daylight. Staring up at the white puffs of cloud directly above him, he was still pondering how strange it was that there had once been a lake four metres deep where he was standing.The forensics team had unearthed the skeleton, which could now be seen in its entirety. There was not a single piece of flesh or sc.r.a.p of clothing left on it. A woman aged about forty knelt beside it, picking at the pelvis with a yellow pencil.'It's a male,' she said. 'Average height and probably middle-aged, but I need to check that more carefully. I don't know how long he's been in the water, perhaps forty or fifty years. Maybe longer. But that's just a guess. I can be more precise once I get him down to the morgue to study him properly.'She stood up and greeted them. Erlendur knew her name was Matthildur and that she had recently been recruited as a pathologist. He longed to ask her what drove her to investigate crimes. Why she didn't just become a doctor like all the others and milk the health service?'He's been hit over the head?' Erlendur asked.'Looks like it,' Matthildur said. 'But it's difficult to establish what kind of instrument was used. All the marks around the hole have gone.''We're talking about wilful murder?' Sigurdur Oli said.'All murders are wilful,' Matthildur said. 'Some are just more stupid than others.''There's no question that it's murder,' said Elinborg, who had been listening.She scrambled over the skeleton and pointed down to a large hole that the forensics team had dug. Erlendur went over to her and saw that inside the hole was a bulky black metal box, tied by a rope to the bones. It was still mostly buried in the sand but what appeared to be broken instruments with black dials and black b.u.t.tons were visible. The box was scratched and dented, it had opened up and there was sand inside.'What's that?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'G.o.d knows,' Elinborg said, 'but it was used to sink him.''Is it some kind of measuring device?' Erlendur said.'I've never seen anything like it,' Elinborg said. 'Forensics said it was an old radio transmitter. They went off for something to eat.''A transmitter?' Erlendur said. 'What kind of transmitter?''They didn't know. They've still got to dig it up.'Erlendur looked at the rope tied around the skeleton and at the black box used to sink the body. He imagined men lugging the corpse out of a car, tying it to the transmitter, rowing out onto the lake with it and throwing the whole lot overboard.'So he was sunk?' he said.'He hardly did it himself,' Sigurdur Oli blurted out. 'He wouldn't really go out onto the lake, tie himself to a radio transmitter, pick it up, fall over on his head and still take care to end up in the lake so he'd be sure to disappear. That would be the most ridiculous suicide in history.''Do you suppose the transmitter's heavy?' Erlendur asked, trying to contain his irritation with Sigurdur Oli.'It looks really heavy to me,' Matthildur said.'Is there any point in combing the bottom of the lake for a murder weapon?' Elinborg asked. 'With a metal detector, if it was a hammer or the like? It might have been thrown in with the body.''Forensics will handle that,' Erlendur said, kneeling down by the black box. He rubbed away the sand from it.'Maybe he was a radio ham,' Sigurdur Oli said.'Are you coming?' Elinborg asked. 'To my book launch?''Don't we have to?' Sigurdur Oli said.'I'm not going to force you.''What's the book called?' Erlendur asked.'More Than Just Desserts,' Elinborg said. 'It's a pun. Justice get it and desserts, and it's not just desserts . . .''Very droll,' Erlendur said, casting a look of astonishment at Sigurdur Oli, who was trying to smother his laughter.

Eva Lind sat facing him, wearing a white dressing gown with her legs curled up under her on the seat, twiddling her hair around her index finger, circle after circle as if hypnotised. As a rule in-patients were not allowed to receive guests but the staff knew Erlendur well and made no objection when he asked to see her. They sat in silence for a good while. They were in the in-patients' lounge and there were posters on the walls warning against alcohol and drug abuse.'You still seeing that old bag?' Eva said, fiddling with her hair.'Stop calling her an old bag,' Erlendur said. 'Valgerdur's two years younger than me.''Right, an old bag. You still seeing her?''Yes.''And . . . does she come round to yours, this Valgerdur woman?''She has done, once.''And then you meet at hotels.''Something like that. How are you doing? Sigurdur Oli sends his regards. He says his shoulder's getting better.''I missed. I wanted to hit him over the head.''You really can be a b.l.o.o.d.y idiot sometimes,' Erlendur said.'Has she left her bloke? She's still married, isn't she, that Valgerdur?''It's none of your business.''So she's cheating on him? Which means you're s.h.a.gging a married woman. How do you feel about that?''We haven't slept together. Not that it's any of your business. And cut out that filthy language!''Like h.e.l.l you haven't slept together!''Aren't you supposed to get medication here? To cure your temper?'He stood up. She looked up at him.'I didn't ask you to put me in here,' she said. 'I didn't ask you to interfere in my life. I want you to leave me alone. Completely alone.'He walked out of the lounge without saying goodbye.'Say h.e.l.lo to the old bag from me,' Eva Lind called out after him, twiddling her hair as collected as ever. 'Say h.e.l.lo to that f.u.c.king old bag,' she added under her breath.

Erlendur parked outside his block of flats and entered the stairwell. When he reached his floor he noticed a lanky young long-haired man loitering by the door, smoking. The upper part of his body was in the shadows and Erlendur could not make out his face. At first he thought it was a criminal who had unfinished business with him. Sometimes they called him when they were drunk and threatened him for encroaching in some way or other upon their miserable lives. The occasional one turned up at his door to argue. He was expecting something like that in the corridor.The young man stood up straight when he saw Erlendur approach.'Can I stay with you?' he asked, having trouble deciding what to do with his cigarette b.u.t.t. Erlendur noticed two dog-ends on the carpet.'Who are . . .?''Sindri,' the man said, stepping from the shadows. 'Your son. Don't you recognise me?''Sindri?' Erlendur said in surprise.'I've moved back into town,' Sindri said. 'I thought I'd look you up.'

Sigurdur Oli was in bed beside Bergthora when the telephone rang. He looked at the caller ID. Realising who it was, he decided not to answer. On the sixth ring, Bergthora gave him a nudge.'Answer it,' she said. 'It'll do him good to talk to you. He thinks you help him.''I'm not going to let him think he can call me at home in the middle of the night,' Sigurdur Oli said.'Come on,' Bergthora said, reaching over from her side of the bed for the telephone.'Yes, he's here,' she said. 'Just a minute.'She handed Sigurdur Oli the telephone.'It's for you,' she said, smiling.'Were you asleep?' a voice said at the other end of the line.'Yes,' Sigurdur Oli lied. 'I've asked you not to call me at home. I don't want you to.''Sorry,' the voice said. 'I can't sleep. I'm taking medication and tranquillisers and sleeping tablets but none of them work.''You can't just call whenever you please,' Sigurdur Oli said.'Sorry,' the man said. 'I don't feel too good.''Okay,' Sigurdur Oli said.'It was a year ago,' the man said. 'To the day.''Yes,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'I know.''A whole year of h.e.l.l,' the man said.'Try to stop thinking about it,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'It's time you stopped tormenting yourself like this. It doesn't help.''That's easy enough to say,' the man on the telephone said.'I know,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'But just try.''What was I thinking of with those b.l.o.o.d.y strawberries?''We've been through this a thousand times,' Sigurdur Oli said, shaking his head as he glanced at Bergthora. 'It wasn't your fault. Stop torturing yourself.''Of course it was,' the man said. 'Of course it was my fault. It was all my fault.'Then he rang off.

5

The woman looked at them in turn, gave a weak smile and invited them in. Elinborg went first and Erlendur closed the door behind them. They had telephoned in advance and the woman had placed crullers and soda cake on the table. The aroma of coffee wafted in from the kitchen. This was a town house in Breidholt suburb. Elinborg had spoken to the woman on the telephone. She had remarried. Her son from the previous marriage was doing a doctorate in medicine in the States. She had had two children with her second husband. Surprised by Elinborg's call, she had taken the afternoon off work to meet her and Erlendur at home.'Is it him?' the woman asked as she offered them a seat. Her name was Kristin, she was past sixty and had put on weight with age. She had heard on the news about the skeleton that had been found in Lake Kleifarvatn.'We don't know,' Erlendur said. 'We know it's a male but we're waiting for a more precise age on it.'A few days had pa.s.sed since the skeleton had been found. Some bones had been sent for carbon a.n.a.lysis but the pathologist had also used a different method, which she thought could speed up the results.'Speed up the results how?' Erlendur had asked Elinborg.'She uses the aluminium smelter in Straumsvik.''The smelter?''She's studying the history of pollution from it. It involves sulphur dioxide and fluoride and that sort of gunge. Have you heard about it?''No.''A certain amount of sulphur dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere and falls onto the land and the sea; it's found in lakes near the smelter, such as Kleifarvatn. They've reduced the quant.i.ty now with improved pollution control. She said she found a trace in the bones and at a very provisional estimate says the body was put in the lake before 1970.''Give or take?''Five years either way.'At this stage the investigation into the skeleton from Kleifarvatn focused on males who had gone missing between 1960 and 1975. There were eight cases in the whole of Iceland. Five had lived in or around Reykjavik.Kristin's first husband had been one of them. The detectives had read the files. She had reported his disappearance herself. One day he had not come home from work. She'd had his dinner ready for him. Their son was playing on the floor. She bathed the boy, put him to bed and tidied up in the kitchen. Then sat down and waited. She would have watched television, but in those days there were no broadcasts on Thursdays.This was the autumn of 1969. They lived in a small flat they had recently bought. He was an estate agent and had been given a good deal on it. She had just finished Commercial College when they met. A year later they were married with due ceremony and a year after that their son was born. Her husband worshipped him.'That's why I couldn't understand it,' Kristin said, her gaze flicking between them.Erlendur had a feeling that she was still waiting for the husband who had so suddenly and inexplicably vanished from her life. He visualised her waiting alone in the autumn gloom. Calling people who knew him and their friends, telephoning the family, who would quietly gather in the flat over the following days to give her strength and support her in her grief.'We were happy,' she said. 'Our little boy Benni was the apple of our eye, I'd got a job with the Merchants' a.s.sociation and as far as I knew my husband was doing well at work. It was a big estate agency and he was a great salesman. He wasn't so good at school, dropped out after two years, but he worked hard and I thought he was happy with life. He never suggested otherwise to me.'She poured coffee into their cups.'I didn't notice anything unusual on the last day,' Kristin went on, pa.s.sing them the dish of crullers. 'He said goodbye to me in the morning, phoned at lunchtime just to say h.e.l.lo and again to say he would be a little late. That was the last I heard from him.''But wasn't he having trouble at work, even if he didn't tell you?' Elinborg asked. 'We read the reports and . . .''Redundancies were on the way. He'd spoken about it a few days earlier but didn't know who. Then he was called in that day and told that they no longer needed him. The owner told me that later. He said my husband had showed no response to being made redundant, didn't protest or ask for an explanation, just went back out and sat down at his desk. Didn't react.''He didn't phone you to tell you?' Elinborg asked.'No,' the woman said, and Erlendur could sense the sorrow still enveloping her. 'Like I told you, he phoned but didn't say a word about losing his job.''Why was he made redundant?' Erlendur asked.'I never had a satisfactory answer to that. I think the owner wanted to show me compa.s.sion or consideration when we spoke. He said they needed to cut back because sales were down, but later I heard that Ragnar had apparently lost interest in the job. Lost interest in what he was doing. After a school reunion he had talked about enrolling again and finishing. He was invited to the reunion even though he had quit school and all his old friends had become doctors and lawyers and engineers. That was the way he talked. As if it brought him down, dropping out of school.''Did you link this to his disappearance in any way?' Erlendur asked.'No, not particularly,' Kristin said. 'I can just as easily put it down to a little tiff we had the day before. Or that our son was difficult at night. Or that he couldn't afford a new car. Really I don't know what to think.''Was he depressive?' Elinborg said, noticing Kristin slip into the present tense, as if it had all just happened.'No more than most Icelanders. He went missing in the autumn, if that means anything.''At the time you ruled out the possibility that there was anything criminal about his disappearance,' Erlendur said.'Yes,' she said. 'I couldn't imagine that. He wasn't involved in anything of that sort. If he met someone who murdered him, it would have been pure bad luck. The thought that anything like that happened never crossed my mind, nor yours at the police. You never treated his disappearance as a criminal matter either. He stayed behind at work until everyone had left and that was the last time he was seen.''Wasn't his disappearance ever investigated as a criminal matter?' Elinborg said.'No,' Kristin said.'Tell me something else: was your husband a radio ham?' Erlendur asked.'A radio ham? What's that?''To tell the truth I'm not quite sure myself,' Erlendur said, looking to Elinborg for help. She sat and said nothing. 'They're in radio contact with people all around the world,' Erlendur continued. 'You need, or used to need, a quite powerful transmitter to broadcast your signal. Did he have any equipment like that?''No,' the woman said. 'A radio ham?''Was he involved in telecommunications?' Elinborg asked. 'Did he own a radio transmitter or . . . ?'Kristin looked at her.'What did you find in that lake?' she asked with a look of astonishment. 'He never owned a radio transmitter. What kind of transmitter, anyway?''Did he ever go fishing in Kleifarvatn?' Elinborg continued without answering her. 'Or know anything about it?''No, never. He wasn't interested in angling. My brother's a keen salmon fisherman and tried to get him to go along, but he never would. He was like me in that. We never wanted to kill anything for sport or fun. We never went to Kleifarvatn.'Erlendur noticed a beautifully framed photograph on a shelf in the living room. It showed Kristin with a young boy, whom he took to be her fatherless son, and he started thinking about his own son, Sindri. He had not realised at once why he had dropped by. Sindri had always avoided his father, unlike Eva Lind who wanted to make him feel guilty for ignoring her and her brother in their childhood. Erlendur had divorced their mother after a short marriage and as the years wore on he increasingly regretted having had any contact with his children.

They shook hands embarra.s.sedly on the landing like two strangers; he let Sindri in and made coffee. Sindri said he was looking for a flat or a room. Erlendur said he didn't know of any vacant places but promised to tell him if he heard of anything.'Maybe I could stay here for the time being,' Sindri said, looking at the bookcase in the living room.'Here?' Erlendur said in surprise, appearing in the kitchen doorway. The purpose behind Sindri's visit dawned on him.'Eva said you had a spare room that's just full of old junk.'Erlendur looked at his son. There was indeed a spare room in his flat. The old junk Eva had mentioned was his parents' effects, which he kept because he could not bring himself to throw it out. Items from his childhood home. A chest full of letters written by his parents and forebears, a carved shelf, piles of magazines, books, fishing rods and a heavy old shotgun that his grand-father had owned, broken.'What about your mother?' Erlendur said. 'Can't you stay with her?''Of course,' Sindri said. 'I'll just do that, then.'They fell silent.'No, there's no s.p.a.ce in that room,' Erlendur said eventually. 'So . . . I don't know . . .''Eva's stayed here,' Sindri said.His words were followed by a deep silence.'She said you've changed,' Sindri said in the end.'What about you?' Erlendur asked. 'Have you changed?''I haven't touched a drop for months,' Sindri said. 'If that's what you mean.'

Erlendur snapped out of his thoughts and sipped his coffee. He looked away from the photograph on the shelf and over at Kristin. He wanted a cigarette.'So the boy never knew his father,' he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Elinborg glaring at him, but pretended not to notice. He was well aware that he was prying into the private life of a woman whose husband's mysterious disappearance more than thirty years before had never been satisfactorily resolved. Erlendur's question was irrelevant to the police investigation.'His stepfather has treated him well and he has a very good relationship with his brothers,' she said. 'I can't see what that has to do with my husband's disappearance.''No, sorry,' Erlendur said.'I don't think there's anything else, then,' Elinborg said.'Do you think it's him?' Kristin asked, standing up.'I don't think it's very likely,' Elinborg said. 'But we need to look into it more closely.'They stood still for an instant as if something remained to be said. As if something was in the air that needed to be put into words before their meeting would be over.'A year after he went missing,' Kristin said, 'a body was washed ash.o.r.e on Snaefellsnes. They thought it was him but it turned out not to be.'She clasped her hands.'Sometimes, even today, I think he might be alive. That he didn't die at all. Sometimes I think he left us and moved to the countryside or abroad without telling us, and started a new family. I've even caught glimpses of him here in Reykjavik. About five years ago I thought I saw him. I followed this man around like an imbecile. It was in the shopping centre. Spied on him until I saw that of course it wasn't him.'She looked at Erlendur.'He went away, but all the same . . . he'll never go away,' she said with a sad smile playing across her lips.'I know,' Erlendur said. 'I know what you mean.'

When they got into the car Elinborg scolded Erlendur for his callous question about Kristin's son. Erlendur told her not to be so sensitive.His mobile rang. It was Valgerdur. He'd been expecting her to get in touch. They had met the previous Christmas when Erlendur had been investigating a murder at a hotel in Reykjavik. She was a biotechnician and they had been in a very on-off relationship since then. Her husband had admitted to having an affair but when it came to the crunch he did not want to end their marriage; instead he had humbly asked her to forgive him and promised to mend his ways. She maintained that she was going to leave him, but it had not happened yet.'How's your daughter doing?' she asked, and Erlendur told her briefly about his visit to Eva Lind.'Don't you think it's helping her, though?' Valgerdur asked. 'That therapy?''I hope so, but I really don't know what will help her,' Erlendur said. 'She's back in exactly the same frame of mind as just before her miscarriage.''Shouldn't we try to meet up tomorrow?' Valgerdur asked him.'Yes, let's meet up then,' Erlendur agreed, and they said goodbye.'Was that her?' Elinborg asked, aware that Erlendur was in some kind of relationship with a woman.'If you mean Valgerdur, yes, it was her,' Erlendur said.'Is she worried about Eva Lind?''What did forensics say about that transmitter?' Erlendur asked, to change the subject.'They don't know much,' Elinborg said. 'But they do think it's Russian. The name and serial number were filed off but they can make out the outline of the odd letter and think it's Cyrillic.''Russian?''Yes, Russian.'

There were a couple of houses at the southern end of Kleifarvatn and Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli gathered information about their owners. They telephoned them and asked in general terms about missing persons who could be linked to the lake. It was fruitless.Sigurdur Oli mentioned that Elinborg was busy preparing for the publication of her book of recipes.'I think it'll make her famous,' Sigurdur Oli said.'Does she want to be?' Erlendur asked.'Doesn't everyone?' Sigurdur Oli said.'Cobblers,' Erlendur said.

6

Sigurdur Oli read the letter, the last testimony of a young man who had walked out of his parents' house in 1970 and had never come back.The parents were now both aged 78 and in fine fettle. They had two other sons, both younger, now in their fifties. They knew that their eldest son had committed suicide. They did not know how he went about it, nor where his remains were. Sigurdur Oli asked them about Kleifarvatn, the radio transmitter and the hole in the skull, but they had no idea what he was talking about. Their son had never quarrelled with anyone and had no enemies; that was out of the question.'It's an absurd idea that he was murdered,' the mother said with a glance at her husband, still anxious after so many years about the fate of their son.'You can tell from the letter,' the husband said. 'It's obvious what he had in mind.'Sigurdur Oli reread the letter.dear mum and dad forgive me but i i can't do anything else it's unbearable and can't do anything else it's unbearable and i i can't think of living any longer can't think of living any longer i i can't and can't and i i won't and won't and i i can't can'tThe letter was signed Jakob Jakob.'It was that girl's fault,' the wife said.'We don't know anything about that,' her husband said.'She started going out with his friend,' she said. 'Our boy couldn't take it.''Do you think it's him, it's our boy?' the husband asked. They were sitting on the sofa, facing Sigurdur Oli and waiting for answers to the questions that had haunted them ever since their son went missing. They knew that he could not answer the toughest question, the one they had grappled with during all those years, concerning parental actions and responsibilities, but he could tell them whether or not he had been found. On the news they had only said that a male skeleton had been found in Kleifarvatn. Nothing about a radio transmitter and a smashed skull. They did not understand what Sigurdur Oli meant when he started probing about. They had only one question: Was it him?'I don't think that's likely,' Sigurdur Oli said. He looked back and forth at them. The incomprehensible disappearance and death of a loved one had left its mark on their lives. The case had never been closed. Their son had still not come home and that was the way it had been all those years. They did not know where he was or what had happened to him, and this uncertainty sp.a.w.ned discomfort and gloom.'We think he went into the sea,' the wife said. 'He was a good swimmer. I've always thought that he swam out to sea until he knew he had gone too far out or until the cold took him.''The police told us at the time that because the body couldn't be found, he'd most probably thrown himself in the sea,' the husband said.'Because of that girl,' the wife said.'We can't blame her for it,' the husband said.Sigurdur Oli could tell that they had slipped into an old routine. He stood up to take his leave.'Sometimes I get so angry with him,' the wife said, and Sigurdur Oli did not know whether she was referring to her husband or her son.

Valgerdur was waiting for Erlendur at the restaurant. She was wearing the same full-length leather coat that she had worn on their first date. They had met by chance and in a moment of madness he'd invited her out for dinner. He had not known then if she was married but had discovered later that she was, with two grown-up sons who had moved out and a marriage that was failing.At their next meeting she admitted that she had intended to use Erlendur to get even with her husband.Valgerdur contacted Erlendur again soon afterwards and they had met several times since. Once she had gone back to his flat. He'd tried to tidy up as best he could, throwing away old newspapers, arranging books on the shelves. He rarely had visitors and was reluctant to let Valgerdur call on him. She insisted, saying that she wanted to see how he lived. Eva Lind had called his apartment a hole that he crawled into to hide.'Look at all those books,' Valgerdur said, standing in his living room. 'Have you read them all?''Most of them,' Erlendur said. 'Do you want some coffee? I bought some Danish pastries.'She went over to the bookcase and ran her finger along the spines, browsed through a few t.i.tles and took one book off the shelf.'Are these about ordeals and dangerous highland voyages?' she asked.She had been quick to notice that Erlendur took a particular interest in missing persons and that he read whole series of accounts of people who had got lost and disappeared in the wilds of Iceland. He had told her what he had told no one else apart from Eva Lind, that his brother had died at the age of eight up in the highlands in eastern Iceland at the beginning of winter, when Erlendur was ten. There were three of them, the two boys and their father. Erlendur and his father found their way home safely, but his brother froze to death and his body was never found.'You told me once that there was an account of you and your brother in one of these books,' Valgerdur said.'Yes,' Erlendur said.'Would you mind showing it to me?''I will,' Erlendur said, hesitantly. 'Later. Not now. I'll show you it later.'

Valgerdur stood up when he entered the restaurant and they greeted each other with their customary handshake. Erlendur was unsure what kind of a relationship this was but he liked it. Even after meeting regularly for almost half a year they had not slept together. At least their relationship was not a s.e.xual one. They sat and talked about various aspects of their lives.'Why haven't you left him?' he asked when they had eaten and drunk coffee and liqueur and talked about Eva Lind and Sindri and her sons and work. She repeatedly asked him about the skeleton in Kleifarvatn but there was little that he could tell her. Only that the police were talking to people whose loved ones had gone missing during a specific period around 1970.Just before Christmas, Valgerdur had found out that her husband had been having an affair for the past two years. She already knew about an earlier incident which was not as 'serious', as he put it. She told him that she was going to leave him. He broke off the affair at once and nothing had happened since then.'Valgerdur . . . ?' Erlendur began.'You saw Eva Lind at her rehab, then,' she said hurriedly, as if sensing what would come next.'Yes, I saw her.''Did she remember anything about being arrested?''No, I don't think she remembers being arrested. We didn't discuss it.''Poor girl.''Are you going to carry on with him?' Erlendur asked.Valgerdur sipped her liqueur.'It's so difficult,' she said.'Is it?''I'm not prepared to put an end to it,' she said, looking into Erlendur's eyes. 'But I don't want to let go of you, either.'

When Erlendur went home that evening, Sindri Snaer was lying on the sofa, smoking and watching television. He nodded to his father and kept watching the programme. As far as Erlendur could see it was a cartoon. He had given his son a key to the flat and could expect him at any time, even though he had not agreed to let him stay.'Would you mind switching that off?' he said as he took off his coat.'I couldn't find the remote,' he said. 'Isn't this telly prehistoric?''It's only twenty years old or so,' Erlendur said. 'I don't use it much.''Eva phoned me today,' Sindri said, stubbing out his cigarette. 'Was it some friend of yours who arrested her?''Sigurdur Oli. She hit him. With a hammer. Tried to knock him out, but caught him on the shoulder instead. He wanted to charge her with a.s.sault and resisting arrest.''So you made a deal that she'd go into rehab instead.''She's never wanted therapy. Sigurdur Oli dropped the charges for my sake and she went into rehab.'A dealer called Eddi had been involved in a drugs case and Sigurdur Oli and two other detectives had tracked him down to a den just up from Hlemmur bus station, close to the police station on Hverfisgata. Someone who knew Eddi had phoned the police. The only resistance they'd met had been from Eva Lind. She was completely out of her mind. Eddi lay half-naked on the sofa and did not stir. Another girl, younger than Eva Lind, lay naked beside him. When she saw the police Eva went berserk. She knew who Sigurdur Oli was. Knew that he worked with her father. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up a hammer that was lying on the floor and tried to knock him out. Although she missed, she fractured his collarbone. Racked with pain, Sigurdur Oli fell to the floor. As she'd wound up for a second shot, the other officers had pounced and had floored her.Sigurdur Oli did not talk about the incident but Erlendur heard from the other officers that he had hesitated when he saw Eva Lind going for him. She was Erlendur's daughter and he did not want to hurt her. That was how she had been able to deliver the blow.'I thought she'd clean up her act when she had that miscarriage,' Erlendur said. 'But she's twice as difficult. It's as if nothing matters to her any more.''I'd like to go and see her,' Sindri said. 'But they don't allow visitors.''I'll have a word with them.'The telephone rang and Erlendur picked it up.'Erlendur?' said a weak voice on the other end. Erlendur recognised it at once.'Marion?''What was it you found at Kleifarvatn?' Marion Briem asked.'Bones,' Erlendur said. 'Nothing that need concern you.''Oh, really,' said Marion, who had retired but found it difficult not to get involved in any especially interesting cases that Erlendur might be investigating.There was a long silence on the line.'Did you want anything in particular?' Erlendur asked.'You ought to check out Kleifarvatn better,' Marion said. 'But don't let me disturb you. Wouldn't dream of it. I don't want to disturb an old colleague who's got plenty on his plate already.''What about Kleifarvatn?' Erlendur asked. 'What are you talking about?''No. Goodbye,' Marion said, and hung up on Erlendur.

7

Sometimes, when he thought back, he could smell the headquarters on Dittrichring, the smothering stench of dirty carpet, sweat and fear. He also remembered the acrid stink of the coal smog that blanketed the city, even blocking out the sun.Leipzig was not at all as he had imagined. He had swotted up before leaving Iceland and knew that it was located on the confluence of the Elster, Parthe and Pleisse rivers, and was an old centre of the German publishing and book trades. Bach was buried there and it was home to the famous Auerbachkeller Auerbachkeller, the beer cellar on which Goethe modelled a scene in Faust Faust. The composer Jon Leifs studied music in Leipzig and lived there for years. In his mind's eye he had seen an ancient cultural German city. What he found was a sorry, gloomy post-war place. The Allies had occupied Leipzig but later handed it over to the Soviets, and the bullet holes could still be seen in the walls of buildings and half-collapsed houses, the ruins left by war.The train arrived in Leipzig in the middle of the night. He was able to store his suitcase at the railway station and he walked the streets until the city began to awaken. There was an electricity shortage and the city centre was dark but he felt good at having arrived and he enjoyed the adventure of being alone so far from his native haunts. He walked up to Nikolaikirche and when he reached Thomaskirche he sat down on a bench. He recalled the account of the writer Halldor Laxness and poet Johann Jonsson walking together through the city so many years before. Dawn was breaking and he imagined them looking up at Thomaskirche just as he was, admiring the sight before continuing their stroll.A girl selling flowers walked past him and offered him a bouquet, but he had no money to spare and gave her an apologetic smile.He was looking forward to everything that lay ahead. Standing on his own two feet and being the master of his own fate. Although he had no idea what awaited him, he intended to face it with an open mind. He knew that he would not feel homesick because he had set off on an adventure that would shape his life permanently. And while he realised that his course would be demanding, he was not afraid of applying himself. He had a pa.s.sionate interest in engineering and knew that he would meet new people and make new friends. He was impatient to get down to studying.He walked around the ruins and the streets in the light drizzle and a faint smile crossed his face when he thought again of the two writer friends walking the same streets long before.At daybreak he fetched his suitcase, went to the university and found the registration office without any trouble. He was shown to a student residence not far from the main building. The dormitory was an elegant old villa that had been taken over by the university. He would be sharing a room with two other students. One was Emil, his cla.s.smate from school. The other was Czechoslovakian, he was told. Neither of them was in the room when he arrived. It was a three-storey house with a shared bathroom and kitchen on the