The Draining Lake Part 2

25

Niels did not remember Haraldur's brother Johann very clearly or really understand why Erlendur was making a fuss that he went unmentioned in the reports about the missing person. Niels was on the telephone when Erlendur interrupted him in his office. He was talking to his daughter who was studying medicine in America a postgraduate course in paediatric medicine, as a matter of fact, Niels said proudly when he got off the telephone, as if he had never told anyone this before. In fact he hardly spoke about anything else. Erlendur could not have cared less. Niels was approaching retirement and dealt mainly with petty crimes now, car theft and minor burglaries, invariably telling people to try to forget it, not press charges, that it was just a waste of time. If they found the culprits they would make a report, but to no real purpose. The offenders would be released immediately after interrogation and the case would never go to court. In the unlikely event that it did, when enough petty crimes had been acc.u.mulated, the sentence would be ridiculous and an insult to their victims.'What do you remember about this Johann?' Erlendur asked. 'Did you meet him? Did you ever go to their farm near Mosfellsbaer?''Shouldn't you be investigating that Russian spying equipment?' Niels retorted, took a pair of nail clippers from his waistcoat pocket and began manicuring himself. He looked at his watch. It would soon be time for a long and leisurely lunch.'Oh yes,' Erlendur said. 'There's plenty to do.'Niels stopped tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his nails and looked at him. There was something in Erlendur's tone that he disliked.'Johann, or Joi as his brother called him, was a bit funny,' Niels said. 'He was backward, or a halfwit as you used to be allowed to say. Before the political-correctness police ironed out the language with all their polite phrases.''Backward how?' Erlendur asked. He agreed with Niels about the language. It had been rendered absolutely impotent out of consideration for every possible minority.'He was just dim,' Niels said and resumed his manicure. 'I went up there twice and talked to the brothers. The elder one spoke for them both Johann didn't say much. They were completely different. One was nothing but skin and bone with a whittled face, while the other was fatter with a sort of childish, sheepish expression.''I can't quite picture Johann,' Erlendur said.'I don't remember him too well, Erlendur. He sort of clung on to his brother like a little boy and was always asking who we were. Could hardly talk, just stammered out the words. He was like you'd imagine a farmer from some remote valley with straw in his hair and wellington boots on his feet.''And Haraldur managed to persuade you that Leopold had never been to their farm?''They didn't need to persuade me,' Niels said. 'We found the car outside the coach station. There was nothing to suggest that he'd been with the brothers. We had nothing to work with. No more than you do.''You don't reckon the brothers took the car there?''There was no indication of that,' Niels said. 'You know these missing-persons cases. You would have done exactly the same with the information we had.''I located the Falcon,' Erlendur said. 'I know it was years ago and the car must have been all over since then, but something that could be cow dung was found in it. It occurred to me that if you'd bothered to investigate the case properly, you might have found the man and been able to rea.s.sure the woman who was waiting for him then and has been ever since.''What a load of old codswallop,' Niels groaned, looking up from tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his nails. 'How can you imagine anything so stupid? Just because you found some cow s.h.i.t in the car thirty years later. Are you losing it?''You had the chance to find something useful,' Erlendur said.'You and your missing persons,' Niels said. 'Where are you going with this, anyway? Who put you on to it? Is it a real case? Says who? Why are you reopening a thirty-year-old non-case which no one can figure out anyway, and trying to make something of it? Have you raised that woman's hopes? Are you telling her you can find him?''No,' Erlendur said.'You're nuts,' Niels said. 'I've always said so. Ever since you started here. I told Marion that. I don't know what Marion saw in you.''I want to make a search for him in the fields out there,' Erlendur said.'Search for him in the fields?' Niels roared in astonishment. 'Are you crackers? Where are you going to look?''Around the farm,' Erlendur said, unruffled. 'There are brooks and ditches at the bottom of the hill which lead all the way out to sea. I want to see whether we can't find something.''What grounds have you got?' Niels said. 'A confession? Any new developments? b.u.g.g.e.r all. Just a lump of s.h.i.t in an old heap of sc.r.a.p!'Erlendur stood up.'I just wanted to tell you that if you plan to make a song and dance about it, I must point out how shoddy the original investigation was because there are more holes in it than a-''Do as you please,' Niels interrupted him with a hateful glare. 'Make an a.r.s.e of yourself if you want to. You'll never get a warrant!'Erlendur opened the door and went out into the corridor.'Don't cut your fingers off,' he said and closed the door behind him.

Erlendur had a brief meeting with Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg about the Lake Kleifarvatn case. The search for further information about Lothar Weiser was proving slow and difficult. All enquiries had to go through the German emba.s.sy, which Erlendur had managed to offend, and they had few leads. As a formality they sent an inquiry to Interpol and the provisional answer was that it had never heard of Lothar Weiser. Quinn from the US emba.s.sy was trying to persuade one of the Czech emba.s.sy officials from that period to talk to the Icelandic police. He could not tell what these overtures would deliver. Lothar did not seem to have a.s.sociated with Icelanders very much. Enquiries among old government officials had led nowhere. The East German emba.s.sy's guest lists had been lost a long time ago. There were no guest lists from the Icelandic authorities for those years. The detectives had no idea how to find out whether Lothar had known any Icelanders. n.o.body seemed to remember the man.Sigurdur Oli had requested help from the German emba.s.sy and Icelandic ministry of education in providing a list of Icelandic students in East Germany. Not knowing which period to focus on, he started by asking about all students from the end of the war until 1970.Meanwhile, Erlendur had ample time to absorb himself in his pet topic, the Falcon man. He realised full well that he had almost nothing to go on if he wanted a warrant to mount a full-scale search for a body on the brothers' land near Mosfellsbaer.He decided to drop in on Marion Briem, whose condition was improving slightly. The oxygen tank was still at the ready but the patient looked better, talking about new drugs that worked better than the old ones and cursing the doctor for 'not knowing his a.r.s.e from his elbow'. Erlendur thought Marion Briem was getting back on form.'What are you doing sniffing around here all the time?' Marion asked, sitting down in the chair. 'Don't you have anything better to do?''Plenty,' Erlendur said. 'How are you feeling?''I'm not having any luck dying,' Marion said. 'I thought I might have died last night. Funny. Of course that can happen when you're lying around with nothing to do but wait for death. I was certain it was all over.'Marion sipped from a gla.s.s of water with parched lips.'I suppose it's what they call astral projection,' Marion said. 'You know I don't believe in that c.r.a.p. It was a delirium while I dozed. No doubt brought on by those new drugs. But I was hovering up there,' Marion said, staring up at the ceiling, 'and looked down on my wretched self. I thought I was going and was completely reconciled to it in my heart. But of course I wasn't dying at all. It was just a funny dream. I went for a check-up this morning and the doctor said I was a bit brighter. My blood's better than it's been for weeks. But he didn't give me any hope for the future.''What do doctors know?' Erlendur said.'What do you want from me anyway? Is it the Ford Falcon? Why are you snooping around on that case?''Do you remember if the farmer he was going to visit near Mosfellsbaer had a brother?' Erlendur asked on the off chance. He did not want to tire Marion, but he also knew that his old boss enjoyed all things mysterious and strange.Eyes closed, Marion pondered.'That lazy b.u.g.g.e.r Niels talked about the brother being a bit funny.''He says he was a halfwit, but I don't know what that means, exactly.''He was backward, if I remember correctly. Big and strong but with the mind of a child. I don't think he could really speak. Just babbled nonsense.''Why wasn't this investigation pursued, Marion?' Erlendur asked. 'Why was it allowed to peter out? It would have been possible to do so much more.''Why do you say that?''The brothers' land should have been combed. Everyone took it for granted that the salesman never went there. No doubts were ever raised. It was all cut and dried; they decided the man committed suicide or left the city and would come back when it suited him. But he never did come back and I'm not certain that he killed himself.''You think the brothers killed him?''I'd like to look into that. The backward one's dead but the elder brother's at an old people's home here in Reykjavik and I reckon he'd have been capable of attacking someone on the slightest pretext.''And what would that be?' Marion asked. 'You know you have no motive. He was going to sell them a tractor. They had no reason to kill him.''I know,' Erlendur said. 'If they did, it was because something happened out there when he called on them. A chain of events was set in motion, perhaps by sheer coincidence, which led to the man's death.''Erlendur, you know better than that,' Marion said. 'These are fantasies. Stop this nonsense.''I know I have no motive and no body and it was years ago, but there's something that doesn't fit and I'd like to find out what it is.''There's always something that doesn't gel, Erlendur. You can never balance all the columns. Life's more complicated than that, as you of all people ought to know. Where was the farmer supposed to have got the Russian spying equipment to sink the body in Kleifarvatn?''Yes, I know, but that might be another, unrelated case.'Marion looked at Erlendur. There was nothing new about detectives becoming absorbed in cases that they were investigating and then getting completely obsessed by them. It had often happened to Marion, who knew that Erlendur tended to take the most serious cases to heart. He had a rare sensitivity, which was both his blessing and his curse.'You were talking about John Wayne the other day,' Erlendur said. 'When we watched the western.''Have you dug that up?' Marion said.Erlendur nodded. He had asked Sigurdur Oli, who knew about all things American and was a mine of information about celebrities.'His name was Marion too,' Erlendur said. 'Wasn't it? You are namesakes.''Funny, isn't it?' Marion said. 'Because of the way I am.'

26

Benedikt Jonsson, the retired agricultural-machinery importer, greeted Erlendur at the door and invited him in. Erlendur's visit had been delayed. Benedikt had been to see his daughter who lived outside Copenhagen. He had just returned home and gave the impression he would have liked to stay longer. He said he felt very much at home in Denmark.Erlendur nodded intermittently while Benedikt rambled on about Denmark. A widower, he appeared to live well. He was fairly short with small, fat fingers and a ruddy, harmless-looking face. He lived alone in a small, neat house. Erlendur noticed a new Mercedes jeep outside the garage. He thought to himself that the old businessman had probably been shrewd and saved up for his old age.'I knew I'd end up answering questions about that man eventually,' Benedikt said when at last he got to the point.'Yes, I wanted to talk about Leopold,' Erlendur said.'It was all very mysterious. Someone was bound to start wondering in the end. I should probably have told you the truth at the time but . . .''The truth?''Yes,' Benedikt said. 'May I ask why you're enquiring about this man now? My son said you'd questioned him too and when I spoke to you on the phone you were rather cagey. Why the sudden interest? I thought you investigated the case and cleared it up back then. Actually, I was hoping you had.'Erlendur told him about the skeleton found in Lake Kleifarvatn and that Leopold was one of several missing persons being investigated in connection with it.'Did you know him personally?' Erlendur asked.'Personally? No, I can hardly say that. And he didn't sell much either, in the short time he worked for us. If I remember correctly he made a lot of trips outside the city. All my salesmen did regional work we sold agricultural machinery and earth-moving equipment but none travelled as much as Leopold and none was a worse salesman.''So he didn't make you any money?' Erlendur said.'I didn't want to take him on in the first place,' Benedikt said.'Really?''Yes, no, that's not what I mean. They forced me to, really. I had to sack a d.a.m.n good man to make room for him. It was never a big company.''Wait a minute, say that again. Who forced you to hire him?''They told me I mustn't tell anyone so . . . I don't know if I should be blabbing about it. I felt quite bad about all that plotting. I'm not one for doing things behind people's backs.''This was decades ago,' Erlendur said. 'It can hardly do any harm now.''No, I guess not. They threatened to move their franchise elsewhere. If I didn't hire that bloke. It was likeI'd got caught up in the Mafia.''Who forced you to take on Leopold?''The manufacturer in East Germany, as it was then. They had good tractors that were much cheaper than the American ones. And bulldozers and diggers. We sold a lot of them although they weren't considered as cla.s.sy as Ma.s.sey Ferguson or Caterpillar.''Did they have a say in which staff you recruited?''That was what they threatened,' Benedikt said. 'What was I supposed to do? I couldn't do a thing. Of course I hired him.''Did they give you an explanation? Why you ought to recruit that specific person?''No. None. No explanation. I took him on but never got to know him. They said it was a temporary arrangement and, like I told you, he wasn't in the city much, just spent his time rushing back and forth around the country.''A temporary arrangement?''They said he didn't need to work for me for long. And they set conditions. He wasn't to go on the payroll. He was to be paid as a contractor, under the table. That was pretty difficult. My accountant was continually querying that. But it wasn't much money, nowhere near enough to live on, so he must have had another income as well.''What do you think their motive was?''I don't have a clue. Then he disappeared and I never heard any more about Leopold, except from you lot in the police.''Didn't you report what you're now telling me at the time he went missing?''I haven't told anyone. They threatened me. I had my staff to think of. My livelihood depended on that company. Even though it wasn't big we managed to make a bit of money and then the hydropower projects started up. The Sigalda and Burfell stations. They needed our heavy plant machinery then. We made a fortune out of the hydropower projects. It was around the same time. The company was growing. I had other things to think about.''So you just tried to forget it?''Correct. I didn't think it was any skin off my nose, either. I hired him because the manufacturer wanted me to, but he was nothing to do with me as such.''Do you have any idea what could have happened to him?''None at all. He was supposed to meet those people outside Mosfellsbaer but didn't turn up, as far as we know. Maybe he just abandoned the idea or postponed it. That's not inconceivable. Maybe he had some urgent business to attend to.''You don't think that the farmer he was supposed to meet was lying?''I honestly don't know.''Who contacted you about hiring Leopold? Did he do it himself?''No, it wasn't him. An official from their emba.s.sy on Aegisida came to see me. It was really a trade delegation, not a proper emba.s.sy, that they ran in those days. Later it all got so much bigger. Actually he met me in Leipzig.''Leipzig?''Yes, we used to go to annual trade fairs there. They arranged big exhibitions of industrial goods and machinery and a fairly large contingent of us who did business with the East Germans always went.''Who was this man who spoke to you?''He never introduced himself.''Do you recognise the name Lothar? Lothar Weiser. An East German.''Never heard the name. Lothar? Never heard of him.''Could you describe this emba.s.sy official?''It's such a long time ago. He was quite plump. Perfectly nice bloke, I expect, apart from forcing me to hire that salesman.''Don't you think you should have pa.s.sed on this information to the police at the time? Don't you think it could have helped?'Benedikt hesitated. Then he shrugged.'I tried to act as if it wasn't any business of mine or my company. And I genuinely didn't think it was any of my business. The man wasn't one of my team. Really he wasn't anything to do with the company. And they threatened me. What was I supposed to do?''Do you remember his girlfriend, Leopold's girlfriend?''No,' Benedikt said after some thought. 'No, I can't say I do. Was she . . . ?'He stopped short, as if he had no idea of what to say about a woman who had lost the man she loved and never received any answers about his fate.'Yes,' Erlendur said. 'She was heartbroken. And still is.'

Miroslav, the former Czech emba.s.sy official, lived in the south of France. He was an elderly man but had a good memory. He spoke French, but also good English, and was prepared to talk to Sigurdur Oli over the telephone. Quinn from the US emba.s.sy in Reykjavik, who had put them on to the Czech, acted as a go-between. In the past, Miroslav had been found guilty of spying against his own country and had spent several years in prison. He was not considered a prolific or important spy, having spent most of his diplomatic career in Iceland. Nor did he describe himself as a spy. He said he had succ.u.mbed to temptation when he was offered money to inform American diplomats about any unusual developments at his emba.s.sy or those of the other Iron Curtain countries. He never had anything to say. Nothing ever happened in Iceland.It was the middle of summer. The skeleton in Kleifarvatn had fallen completely off the radar in the summer holidays. The media had long since stopped mentioning it. Erlendur's request for a warrant to search for the Falcon man on the brothers' farmland had not yet been answered because the staff were on holiday.Sigurdur Oli had taken a fortnight in Spain with Bergthora and returned suntanned and content. Elinborg had travelled around Iceland with Teddi and spent two weeks at her sister's summer chalet in the north. There was still considerable interest in her cookery book and a glossy magazine had quoted her in its People in the News People in the News column as saying that she already had 'another one in the oven'. column as saying that she already had 'another one in the oven'.And one day at the end of July Elinborg whispered to Erlendur that Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora had finally succeeded.'Why are you whispering?' Erlendur asked.'At last,' Elinborg sighed with delight. 'Bergthora just told me. It's still a secret.''What is?' Erlendur said.'Bergthora's pregnant!' Elinborg said. 'It's been so difficult for them. They had to go through IVF and now it's worked at last.''Is Sigurdur Oli going to have a baby?' Erlendur said.'Yes,' Elinborg said. 'But don't talk about it. No one's supposed to know.''The poor kid,' said Erlendur in a loud voice, and Elinborg walked off muttering curses under her breath.At first Miroslav turned out to be eager to help them. The conversation took place in Sigurdur Oli's office with both Erlendur and Elinborg present. A tape recorder was connected to the telephone. On the arranged day at the arranged time, Sigurdur Oli picked up the handset and dialled.After a number of rings a female voice answered and Sigurdur Oli introduced himself and asked for Miroslav. He was asked to hold the line. Sigurdur Oli looked at Erlendur and Elinborg and shrugged as if not knowing what to expect. Eventually a man came to the telephone and said his name was Miroslav. Sigurdur Oli introduced himself again as a detective from Reykjavik and presented his request. Miroslav said at once that he knew what the matter involved. He even spoke some Icelandic, although he asked for the conversation to be conducted in English.'Is gooder for me,' he said in Icelandic.'Yes, quite. It was about that official with the East German trade delegation in Reykjavik in the 1960s,' Sigurdur Oli said in English. 'Lothar Weiser.''I understand you found a body in a lake and think it's him,' Miroslav said.'We haven't come to any conclusions,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'It's only one of several possibilities,' he added after a short pause.'Do you often find bodies tied to Russian spy equipment?' Miroslav laughed. Quinn had clearly put him in the picture. 'No, I understand. I understand you want to play safe and not say too much, and obviously not over the phone. Do I get any money for my information?''Unfortunately not,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'We don't have permission to negotiate that kind of thing. We were told you would be cooperative.''Cooperative, right,' Miroslav said. 'No monies?' he asked in Icelandic.'No,' Sigurdur Oli said, also in Icelandic. 'No money.'The telephone went silent and they all looked at each other, crammed into Sigurdur Oli's office. Some time elapsed until they heard the Czech again. He called out something that they thought was in Czech and heard a woman's voice in the background answer him. The voices were half-smothered as if he were holding his hand over the mouthpiece. More words were exchanged. They could not tell whether it was an argument.'Lothar Weiser was one of East Germany's spies in Iceland,' Miroslav said straightforwardly when he returned to the telephone. The words gushed out as if his exchange with the woman had incited him. 'Lothar spoke very good Icelandic that he'd learned in Moscow did you know that?''Yes, we did,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'What did he do here?''He was called a trade attache. They all were.''But was he anything else?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'Lothar wasn't employed by the trade delegation, he worked for the East German secret service,' Miroslav said. 'His specialism was enlisting people to work for him. And he was brilliant at it. He used all kinds of tricks and had a knack for exploiting weaknesses. He blackmailed. Set up traps. Used prost.i.tutes. They all did. Took incriminating photographs. You know what I mean? He was incredibly imaginative.''Did he have, how should I say, collaborators in Iceland?''Not that I know of, but that doesn't mean he didn't.'Erlendur found a pen on the desk and started jotting down an idea that had occurred to him.'Was he friends with any Icelanders that you remember?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'I don't know much about his contact with Icelanders. I didn't get to know him very well.''Could you describe Lothar to us in more detail?''All that Lothar was interested in was himself,' Miroslav said. 'He didn't care who he betrayed if he could benefit by it. He had a lot of enemies and a lot of people were sure to have wanted him dead. That's what I heard, at least.''Did you know personally about anyone who wanted him dead?''No.''What about the Russian equipment? Where could it have come from?''From any of the communist emba.s.sies in Reykjavik. We all used Russian equipment. They manufactured it and all the emba.s.sies used it. Transmitters and recorders and bugging devices, radios too and awful Russian television sets. They flooded us with that rubbish and we had to buy it.''We think we've found a listening device that was used to monitor the US military at the Keflavik base.''That was really all we did,' Miroslav said. 'We bugged other emba.s.sies. And the American forces were stationed all over the country. But I don't want to talk about that. I understood from Quinn that you only wanted to know about Lothar's disappearance in Reykjavik.'Erlendur handed the note to Sigurdur Oli, who read out the question that had crossed his mind.'Do you know why Lothar was sent to Iceland?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'Why?' Miroslav said.'We're led to believe that being stuck out here in Iceland wasn't very popular with emba.s.sy officials,' Sigurdur Oli said.'It was fine for us Czechoslovakians,' Miroslav said. 'But I'm not aware that Lothar ever did anything to merit being sent to Iceland as a punishment, if that's what you mean. I know that he was expelled from Norway once. The Norwegians found out he was trying to get a high-ranking official in the foreign ministry to work for him.''What do you know about Lothar's disappearance?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'The last time I saw him was at a reception in the Soviet emba.s.sy. That was just before we started hearing reports that he was missing. It was 1968. Those were bad times of course, because of what was happening in Prague. At the reception, Lothar was recalling the Hungarian uprising of 1956. I only heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of it, but I remember it because what he said was so typical of him.''What was that?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'He was talking about Hungarians he knew in Leipzig,' Miroslav said. 'Especially a girl who hung around with the Icelandic students there.''Can you remember what he said?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'He said he knew how to deal with dissidents, the rebels in Czechoslovakia. They ought to arrest the lot of them and send them off to the gulag. He was drunk when he said it and I don't know what exactly he was talking about, but that was the gist of it.''And soon afterwards you heard that he'd gone missing?' Sigurdur Oli said.'He must have done something wrong,' Miroslav said. 'At least that's what everyone thought. There were rumours that they took him out themselves. The East Germans. Sent him home in a diplomatic bag. They could easily do that. Emba.s.sy mail was never examined and we could take whatever we wanted in and out of the country. The most incredible things.''Or they threw him in the lake,' Sigurdur Oli said.'All I know is that he disappeared and nothing more was ever heard of him.''Do you know what his crime was supposed to have been?''We thought he'd gone over.''Gone over?''Sold himself to the other side. That often happened. Just look at me. But the Germans weren't as merciful as us Czechs.''You mean he sold information . . . ?''Are you sure there's no money in this?' Miroslav interrupted Sigurdur Oli. The woman's voice in the background had returned, louder than before.'Unfortunately not,' Sigurdur Oli said.They heard Miroslav say something, probably in Czech. Then in English: 'I've said enough. Don't call me again.'Then he hung up. Erlendur reached over to the tape recorder and switched it off.'What a t.w.a.t you are,' he said to Sigurdur Oli. 'Couldn't you lie to him? Promise ten thousand kronur. Something. Couldn't you try to keep him on the phone longer?''Cool it,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'He didn't want to say any more. He didn't want to talk to us any more. You heard that.''Are we any closer to knowing who was at the bottom of the lake?' Elinborg asked.'I don't know,' Erlendur said. 'An East German trade attache and a Russian spy device. It could fit the bill.''I think it's obvious,' Elinborg said. 'Lothar and Leopold were the same man and they sank him in Kleifarvatn. He fouled up and they had to get rid of him.''And the woman in the dairy shop?' Sigurdur Oli asked.'She doesn't have a clue,' Elinborg said. 'She doesn't know a thing about that man except that he treated her well.''Perhaps she was part of his cover in Iceland,' Erlendur said.'Maybe,' Elinborg said.'I think it must be significant that the device wasn't functional when it was used to sink the body,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'Like it was obsolete or had been destroyed.''I was wondering whether the device necessarily came from one of the emba.s.sies,' Elinborg said. 'Whether it couldn't have entered the country by another channel.''Who would want to smuggle Russian spying equipment into Iceland?' Sigurdur Oli asked.They fell silent, all thinking in their separate ways that the case was beyond their understanding. They were more accustomed to dealing with simple, Icelandic crimes without mysterious devices or trade attaches who weren't trade attaches, without foreign emba.s.sies or the Cold War, just Icelandic reality: local, uneventful, mundane and infinitely far removed from the battle zones of the world.'Can't we find an Icelandic angle on this?' Erlendur asked in the end, for the sake of saying something.'What about the students?' Elinborg said. 'Shouldn't we try to locate them? Find out if any of them remembers this Lothar? We still have that to check.'

By the following day Sigurdur Oli had obtained a list of Icelandic students attending East German universities between the end of the war and 1970. The information was supplied by the ministry of education and the German emba.s.sy. They began slowly, starting with students in Leipzig in the 1960s and working back. Since there was no hurry, they handled the case alongside other investigations that came their way, mostly burglaries and thefts. They knew when Lothar had been enrolled at the University of Leipzig in the 1950s, but also that he could have been attached to it for much longer than that, and they were determined to do a proper job. They decided to work backwards from when he disappeared from the emba.s.sy.Instead of calling people and speaking to them over the telephone, they thought it would be more productive to make surprise visits to their homes. Erlendur believed that the first reaction to a police visit often provided vital clues. As in war, a surprise attack could prove crucial. A simple change of expression when they mentioned their business. The first words spoken.So, one day in September, when their investigation of Icelandic students had reached the mid-1950s, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg knocked on the door of a woman by the name of Rut Bernhards. According to their information, she had abandoned her studies in Leipzig after a year and a half.She answered the door and was terrified to hear that it was the police.

27

Rut Bernhards stood blinking at Sigurdur Oli and then at Elinborg, unable to understand how they could be from the police. Sigurdur Oli had to tell her three times before it sank in and she asked what they wanted. Elinborg explained. This was around ten o'clock in the morning. They were standing on the landing of a block of flats, not unlike Erlendur's but dirtier, the carpet more worn and a stench of rising damp on every floor.Rut was even more surprised once Elinborg had said her piece.'Students in Leipzig?' she said. 'What do you want to know about them? Why?''Maybe we could come in for a minute,' Elinborg said. 'We won't be long.'Still very doubtful, Rut thought for a moment before opening the door to them. They entered a small hallway which led to the living room. There were bedrooms on the right-hand side and beside the living room was the kitchen. Rut offered them a seat and asked whether they wanted tea or the like, apologising because she had never spoken to the police before. They saw that she was very confused as she stood in the kitchen doorway. Elinborg thought she would come to her senses if she made some tea, so she accepted the offer, to Sigurdur Oli's chagrin. He wasn't interested in attending a tea party and gave Elinborg an expression to signal that. She just smiled back at him.

The day before, Sigurdur Oli had received yet another telephone call from the man who had lost his wife and daughter in a car crash. He and Bergthora had just come back from a visit to the doctor who told them that the pregnancy was progressing well, the foetus was flourishing and they had nothing to worry about. But the doctor's words were not so rea.s.suring. They had heard him talk that way before. They were sitting at home in the kitchen, cautiously discussing the future, when the telephone rang.'I can't talk to you now,' Sigurdur Oli said when he heard who was on the other end.'I didn't mean to disturb you,' the man said, polite as ever. His mood never changed, nor did the pitch of his voice; he spoke with the same calm tone, which Sigurdur Oli attributed to tranquillisers.'No,' Sigurdur Oli said, 'don't disturb me again.''I just wanted to thank you,' the man said.'There's no need, I haven't done anything,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'You don't need to thank me at all.''I think I'm gradually getting over it,' the man said.'That's good,' Sigurdur Oli said.There was silence over the telephone.'I miss her so terribly,' the man said eventually.'Of course you do,' Sigurdur Oli said with a glance at Bergthora.'I'm not going to give up. For their sake. I'll try to put on a brave face.''That's good.''Sorry to bother you. I don't know why I'm always calling you. This will be the last time.''That's okay.''I've got to keep going.'Sigurdur Oli was about to say goodbye when he suddenly rang off.'Is he okay?' Bergthora asked.'I don't know,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'I hope so.'

Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg heard Rut making the tea in the kitchen, then she came out, holding cups and a sugar bowl, and asked whether they took milk. Elinborg repeated what she had said at the front door about their search for Icelandic students from Leipzig, adding that it was potentially connected only potentially, she repeated with a person who went missing in Reykjavik just before 1970.Rut listened to her without answering until the kettle began to whistle in the kitchen. She left and returned with the tea and a few biscuits on a dish. Elinborg knew that she was past seventy and thought she had aged well. She was thin, of a similar height to her, her hair was dyed brown and her face was quite long with a serious expression underlined by wrinkles, but a pretty smile that she seemed to use sparingly.'And you think this man studied in Leipzig?' she asked.'We have no idea,' Sigurdur Oli said.'What missing person are you talking about?' Rut asked. 'I don't remember anything from the news that . . .' Her expression turned thoughtful. 'Except Kleifarvatn in the spring. Are you talking about the skeleton from Kleifarvatn?''It fits.' Elinborg smiled.'Is it connected with Leipzig?''We don't know,' Sigurdur Oli said.'But you must know something if you came here to talk to an ex-student from Leipzig,' Rut said firmly.'We have some clues,' Elinborg said. 'They're not convincing enough for us to say much about them, but we were hoping you might be able to a.s.sist us.''How does this link up with Leipzig?''The man doesn't have to link up with Leipzig at all,' Sigurdur Oli said, in a slightly sharper tone than before. 'You left after a year and a half,' he said to change the subject. 'Didn't you finish your course, or what?'Without answering him, she poured the tea and added milk and sugar to her own. She stirred it with a little spoon, her thoughts elsewhere.'Was it a man in the lake? You said "the man".''Yes,' Sigurdur Oli said.'I understand that you're a teacher,' Elinborg said.'I went to teacher training college when I came back to Iceland,' Rut said. 'My husband was a teacher too. Both primary school teachers. We've just got divorced. I've stopped teaching now. Retired. No need for me any more. It's like you stop living when you stop working.'She sipped her tea, and Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg did the same.'I kept the flat,' she added.'It's always sad when . . .' Elinborg began, but Rut interrupted her as if to say that she was not asking for sympathy from a stranger.'We were all socialists,' she said, looking at Sigurdur Oli. 'All of us in Leipzig.'She paused while her mind roamed back to the years when she was young with her whole life ahead of her.'We had ideals,' she said, moving her gaze to Elinborg. 'I don't know if anyone has them any more. Young people, I mean. Genuine ideals for a better and fairer society. I don't believe anyone thinks about that these days. Nowadays, everyone just thinks about getting rich. No one used to think about making money or owning anything. There wasn't this relentless commercialism then. No one had anything, except perhaps beautiful ideals.''Built on lies,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'Weren't they? More or less?''I don't know,' Rut said. 'Built on lies? What's a lie?''No,' Sigurdur Oli said in a peculiarly brash tone. 'I mean that communism has been abandoned all over the world except where gross violations of human rights take place such as China and Cuba. Hardly anyone admits to having been a communist any more. It's almost a term of abuse. So wasn't it like that in the old days, or what?'Elinborg glared at him, shocked. She could not believe that Sigurdur Oli was being rude to the woman. But she might have expected it. She knew that Sigurdur Oli voted conservative and had sometimes heard him talk about Icelandic communists as if they ought to do penance for defending a system they knew was useless and had ultimately offered nothing but dictatorship and repression. As if communists still had to settle accounts with the past because they should have known the truth all along and were responsible for the lies. Perhaps he found Rut an easier target than most. Perhaps he had run out of patience.'You had to give up your studies,' Elinborg hurried to say, to steer the conversation into safer waters.'To our way of thinking, there was nothing more n.o.ble,' Rut said, still staring at Sigurdur Oli. 'And that hasn't changed. The socialism we believed in then and believe in now remains the same, and it played a part in establishing the labour movement, ensuring a decent living wage and free hospitals to care for you and your family, educated you to become a police officer, set up the national insurance system, set up the welfare system. But that's nothing compared with the implicit socialist values we all live by, you and me and her, so that society can function. It's socialism that makes us into human beings. So don't go making fun of me!''Are you absolutely sure that socialism actually established all this?' Sigurdur Oli said, refusing to budge. 'As far as I recall it was the conservatives who set up the national insurance system.''Rubbish,' Rut said.'And the Soviet system?' Sigurdur Oli said. 'What about that that lie?' lie?'Rut did not reply.'Why do you think you have some kind of score to settle with me?' she asked.'I don't have a score to settle with you,' Sigurdur Oli said.'People may well have thought they had to be dogmatic,' Rut said. 'It might have been necessary then. You could never understand that. Different times come along and att.i.tudes change and people change. Nothing is permanent. I can't understand this anger. Where does it come from?'She looked at Sigurdur Oli.'Where does this anger come from?' she repeated.'I didn't come here to argue,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'That wasn't the aim.''Do you remember anyone from Leipzig by the name of Lothar?' Elinborg asked awkwardly. She was hoping that Sigurdur Oli would invent some excuse to go out to the car, but he sat fast by her side, his eyes fixed on Rut. 'Lothar Weiser,' she added.'Lothar?' Rut said. 'Yes, but not so well. He spoke Icelandic.''I gathered that,' Elinborg said. 'So you remember him?''Only vaguely,' Rut said. 'He sometimes came for dinner with us at the dormitory. But I never got to know him especially well. I was always homesick and . . . the conditions weren't that special, bad housing and . . . I . . . it didn't suit me.''No, obviously things weren't in very good shape after the war,' Elinborg said.'It was just awful,' Rut said. 'West Germany was redeveloping ten times as fast, with the west's backing. In East Germany, things happened slowly, or not at all.''We understand that his role was to get students to work for him,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'Or monitor them somehow. Were you ever aware of that?''They watched us,' Rut said. 'We knew that and everyone else knew that. It was called interactive surveillance, another term for spying. People were supposed to come forward of their own accord and report anything that offended their socialist principles. We didn't, of course. None of us. I never noticed Lothar trying to enlist us. All the foreign students had a liaison they could turn to but who also watched them. Lothar was one of them.''Do you still keep in touch with your student friends from Leipzig?' Elinborg asked.'No,' Rut said. 'It's a long time since I saw any of them. We don't keep in contact, or if they do, I don't know about it. I left the party when I came back. Or maybe I didn't leave, I just lost interest. It's probably called withdrawing.''We have the names of some other students from the time you were there: Karl, Hrafnhildur, Emil, Tomas, Hannes . . .''Hannes was expelled,' Rut interjected. 'I was told he stopped going to lectures and the Day of the Republic parades and generally didn't fit in. We were supposed to take part in all that. And we did socialist work in the summer. On farms and in the coal mines. As I understand it Hannes didn't like what he saw and heard. He wanted to finish his course but wasn't allowed to. Maybe you should talk to him. If he's still alive, I don't know.'She looked at them.'Was it him you found in the lake?' she said.'No,' Elinborg said. 'It's not him. We understand he lives in Selfoss and runs a guest house there.''I remember that he wrote about his Leipzig experiences when he came back to Iceland, and they tore him to shreds for it. The party old guard. Denounced him as a traitor and liar. The conservatives welcomed him like a prodigal son and championed him. I can't imagine he would have cared for that. I think he just wanted to tell the truth as he saw it, but of course there was a price to pay. I met him once a few years later and he looked awfully depressed. Maybe he thought I was still active in the party, but I wasn't. You ought to talk to him. He might have known Lothar better. I was there such a short time.'Back out in the car, Elinborg scolded Sigurdur Oli for allowing his political opinions to influence a police enquiry. He ought to keep his mouth shut and not attack people, she said, especially elderly women who lived by themselves.'What's wrong with you, anyway?' she said as they drove away from the block of flats. 'I've never heard such c.r.a.p. What were you thinking? I agree with what she asked you: where does all this anger come from?''Oh, I don't know,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'My dad was a communist like that, never saw the light,' he added eventually. This was the first time that Elinborg had ever heard him mention his father.

Erlendur had just got back home when the telephone rang. It took him a while to realise which Benedikt Jonsson was on the other end, then suddenly he remembered. The one who had given Leopold a job with his company.'Am I bothering you, phoning home like this?' Benedikt asked politely.'No,' Erlendur said. 'Is there something that . . . ?''It was to do with that man.''Which man?''From the East German emba.s.sy or trade delegation or whatever it was,' Benedikt said. 'The one who told me to hire Leopold and said the company in Germany would take action if I didn't.''Yes,' Erlendur said. 'The fat one. What about him?''As far as I recall,' Benedikt said, 'he knew Icelandic. Actually, I think he spoke it pretty well.'

28

Everywhere he turned he ran up against antipathy and total indifference on the part of the authorities in Leipzig. No one would tell him what had happened to her, where she had been taken, where she was being detained, the reason for her arrest, which police department was responsible for her case. He tried to enlist the help of two university professors but they said they could do nothing. He tried to get the university vice-chancellor to intervene but he refused. He tried to get the chairman of the FDJ to make enquiries but the students' society ignored him.In the end he telephoned the foreign ministry in Iceland, which promised to enquire about the matter but nothing came of it: Ilona was not an Icelandic national, they were unmarried, Iceland had no vested interest in the matter and did not maintain diplomatic relations with East Germany. His Icelandic friends at university tried to pep him up, but were equally at a loss about what to do. They did not understand what was going on. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. She would turn up sooner or later and everything would be clarified. Ilona's friends and other Hungarians at the university, who were as determined as he was to find answers, said the same. They all tried to console him and told him to keep calm everything would be explained eventually.He discovered that Ilona had not been the only person arrested that day. The security police raided the campus and her friends from the meetings were among others taken into custody. He knew she had warned them after he found out they were being watched, that the police had photographs of them. A few were released the same day. Others were detained longer and some were still in prison when he was deported. No one heard anything of Ilona.He contacted Ilona's parents, who had heard of her arrest, and they wrote moving letters asking whether he knew of her whereabouts. To the best of their knowledge she had not been sent back to Hungary. They had received no word from her since she wrote to them a week before her disappearance. Nothing suggested that she was in danger. Her parents described their fruitless efforts to persuade the Hungarian authorities to look into their daughter's fate in East Germany. The authorities were not particularly upset that she was missing. Given the situation in their own country, officials were not concerned about the arrest of an alleged dissident. Her parents said they had been refused permission to travel to East Germany to enquire into Ilona's disappearance. They seemed to have reached a dead end.He wrote back telling them he was looking for answers himself in Leipzig. He longed to tell them all that he knew, how she had spread underground propaganda against the communist party, against the student society FDJ, which was an arm of the party, against the lectures and against restrictions on freedom of speech, a.s.sociation and the press. That she had mobilised young Germans and organised clandestine meetings. And that she could not have foreseen her arrest. No more than he did. But he knew he could not write that kind of letter. Everything he sent would be censored. He had to be careful.Instead, he said he would not rest until he had found out what had happened to Ilona and secured her release.He stopped attending lectures. During the day he went from one government office to the next, asked to meet officials and sought help and information. As time went by, he did this more out of habit, as he received no answers and realised he never would. At night he paced the floor of their little room in anguish. He hardly slept, dozing for a few hours at a time. Strode back and forth hoping that she would appear, that the nightmare would come to an end, that they would let her off with a warning and she would come back to him so that they could be together again. He woke up at every sound on the street. If a car approached he went to the window. If the house creaked he stopped and listened, thinking it might be her. But it never was. And then a new day dawned and he was so terribly alone.Eventually he summoned up the courage to write a new letter to Ilona's parents telling them that she had been pregnant by him. He felt as though he could hear their cries with every key he struck on her old typewriter.

Now, all those years later, he was sitting with their letters in his hands, rereading them and sensing again the anger in what they wrote, then despair and incomprehension. They never saw their daughter again. He never saw his girlfriend again.Ilona had disappeared from them once and for all.He heaved as deep a sigh as ever when he allowed himself to delve into his most painful memories. No matter how many years pa.s.sed, his grief was always as raw, his loss as incomprehensible. These days he avoided imagining her fate. Previously he would torture himself endlessly with thoughts of what might have happened to her after she was arrested. He envisaged the interrogations. He saw the cell beside the little office in the security police headquarters. Had she been locked away there? For how long? Was she afraid? Had she fought back? Did she cry? Had she been beaten? And of course the biggest question of all: what fate did she meet?For years he had obsessed over these questions; there was room for little else in his life. He never married or had children. He tried to stay in Leipzig for as long as he could, but because he no longer went to lectures and was challenging the police and FDJ, his grant was withdrawn. He tried to persuade the student paper and local press to print a photograph of Ilona with a report about her unlawful arrest, but all his requests were turned down and in the end he was ordered to leave the country.There were various possibilities, judging from what he read later when he probed into the treatment of dissidents across Eastern Europe at that time. She could have died at the hands of the police in Leipzig or East Berlin, where the headquarters of the security police were located, or been sent to a prison such as the Honecker castle to die there. That was the largest female prison for political prisoners in East Germany. Another infamous prison for dissidents was Bautzen II, nicknamed 'Yellow Misery' after the colour of its brick walls. Prisoners were sent there who were guilty of 'crimes against the state'. Many dissidents were released soon after their first arrest. That was regarded as a warning. Others were let out after a short internment without trial. Some were sent to prison and came out years later; some never. Ilona's parents received no notification of her death and for years they lived in the hope that she would come back, but that never happened. No matter how they implored the authorities in Hungary and East Germany, they received no information, not even whether she was alive. It was simply as if she had never existed.As a foreigner in a country that he did not know well and understood even less, he had few recourses. He was well aware how little he could do against the might of the state, of his impotence as he went from office to office, from one police chief to the next, one official to another. He refused to give up. Refused to accept that someone like Ilona could be locked away for having opinions that didn't match the official line.

He repeatedly asked Karl what had happened when Ilona was arrested. Karl was the only witness to the police raid on their home. He had been to collect a ma.n.u.script of poems by a young Hungarian dissident which Ilona had translated into German and was going to lend him.'And then what happened?' he asked Karl for the thousandth time as he sat facing him in the university cafeteria with Emil. Three days had pa.s.sed since Ilona disappeared and there was still hope that she might be released; he expected to hear from her at any minute, even for her to walk into the cafeteria. He glanced regularly towards the door. He was out of his mind with worry.'She offered me some tea,' Karl said. 'I said yes and she boiled the water.''What did you talk about?''Nothing really, just the books we were reading.''What did she say?''Nothing. It was just empty conversation. We didn't talk about anything special. We didn't know she'd be arrested a moment later.'Karl could see how he was suffering.'Ilona was a friend to all of us,' he said. 'I don't understand it. I don't understand what's going on.''And then what? What happened next?''There was a knock on the door,' Karl said.'Yes.''The door to the flat. We were in her room, I mean in your room. They hammered on the door and shouted something we couldn't make out. She went to the door and they burst in the moment she opened it.''How many of them were there?''Five, maybe six, I don't remember exactly, something like that. They piled into the room. Some were in uniform like the police on the streets. Others were wearing ordinary suits. One of them was in charge. They obeyed his orders. They asked her name. If she was Ilona. They had a photograph. Maybe from the university files. I don't know. Then they took her away.''They turned everything upside down!' he said.'They found some doc.u.ments that they took away with them, and some books. I don't know what they were,' Karl said.'What did Ilona do?''Naturally she wanted to know their business and kept asking them. I did too. They didn't answer her, nor me. I asked who they were and what they wanted. They didn't give me as much as a look. Ilona asked to make a phone call but they refused. They were there to arrest her and nothing else.''Couldn't you ask where they were taking her?' Emil asked. 'Couldn't you do something?''There was nothing that could be done.' Karl squirmed. 'You have to understand that. We couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything! They meant to take her and they took her.''Was she scared?' he asked.Karl and Emil gave him a sympathetic look.'No,' Karl said. 'She wasn't scared. Defiant. She asked what they were looking for and if she could help them find it. Then they took her away. She asked me to tell you that everything would be okay.''What did she say?''I had to tell you that everything would be okay. She said that. Told me to pa.s.s it on to you. That everything would be okay.''Did she say that?''Then they put her in the car. They had two cars with them. I ran after them but it was hopeless, of course. They disappeared around the next corner. That was the last I saw of Ilona.''What do they want?' he sighed. 'What have they done with her? Why won't anyone tell me anything? Why don't we get any answers? What are they going to do with her? What can they do with her?'He rested his elbows on the table and clutched his head.'My G.o.d,' he groaned. 'What has happened?''Maybe it will be okay,' Emil said, trying to console him. 'Maybe she's back home already. Maybe she'll come tomorrow.'He looked at Emil with broken eyes. Karl sat at the table in silence.'Did you know that . . . no, of course you didn't know.''What?' Emil said. 'What didn't we know?''She told me just before she was arrested. No one knew.''No one knew what?' Emil said.'She's pregnant,' he said. 'She's just found out. We're expecting a baby together. Do you get it? Do you realise how disgusting it is? That f.u.c.king b.l.o.o.d.y interactive f.u.c.king surveillance! What are they? What kind of people are they? What are they fighting for? Are they going to make a better world by spying on each other? How long do they plan to rule by fear and hatred?''Was she pregnant?' Emil groaned.'I should have been with her, Karl, not you,' he said. 'I would never have allowed them to take her. Never.''Are you blaming me?' Karl said. 'There was nothing to be done. I was helpless.''No,' he said, burying his face in his hands to hide the tears. 'Of course not. Of course it wasn't your fault.'Later, on his way out of the country after being ordered to leave Leipzig and East Germany, he sought out Lothar for the final time and found him in the FDJ office at the university. He still had no clue as to Ilona's whereabouts. The fear and anxieties that had driven him on for the first days and weeks had given way to an almost intolerable burden of hopelessness and sorrow.In the office, Lothar was cracking jokes with two girls who were laughing at something he had said. They fell silent when he entered the room. He asked Lothar for a word.'What is it now?' Lothar said without moving. The two girls looked at him seriously. All the joy was purged from their faces. Word of Ilona's arrest had spread around the campus. She had been denounced as a traitor and it was said she had been sent back to Hungary. He knew that was a lie.'I just want a word with you,' he said. 'Is that okay?''You know I can't do anything for you,' Lothar said. 'I've told you that. Leave me alone.'Lothar shifted round to entertain the girls further.'Did you play any part in Ilona's arrest?' he asked, switching to Icelandic.Lothar turned his back on him and did not answer. The girls watched the proceedings.'Was it you who had her arrested?' he said, raising his voice. 'Was it you who told them she was dangerous? That she had to be removed from circulation? That she was distributing anti-socialist propaganda? That she ran a dissidents' cell? Was it you, Lothar? Was that your role?'Pretending not to hear, Lothar said something to the two girls, who returned silly smiles. He walked up to Lothar and grabbed him.'Who are you?' he said calmly. 'Tell me that.'Lothar turned and pushed him away, then walked up to him, seized his jacket by the lapels and thrust him against the filing cabinets. They rattled.'Leave me alone!' Lothar hissed between clenched teeth.'What did you do with Ilona?' he asked in the same collected tone of voice, not attempting to fight back. 'Where is she? Tell me that.''I didn't do a thing,' Lothar hissed. 'Take a closer look, you stupid Icelander!'Then Lothar threw him to the floor and stormed out of the office.On the way back to Iceland he got the news that the Soviet army was crushing an uprising in Hungary.

He heard the old grandfather clock strike midnight, and he put the letters back in their place.He had watched on television when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunited. Seen the crowds scale the wall and hit it with hammers and pickaxes as if striking blows against the very inhumanity that built it.When German reunification had been achieved and he felt ready, he travelled to the former East Germany for the first time since he had studied there. It now took him half a day to reach his destination. He flew to Frankfurt and caught a connection to Leipzig. From the airport he took a taxi to his hotel, where he dined alone. It was not far from the city centre and campus. There were only two old couples and a few middle-aged men in the dining room. Salesmen perhaps, he thought. One nodded at him when their gazes met.In the evening he took a long walk and remembered the first time he had strolled around the city when he arrived there as a student, and he reflected on how the world had changed. He looked around the university quarter. His dormitory, the old villa, had been restored and now served as the headquarters of a multinational company. The old university building where he had studied was gloomier in the dark of night than he remembered it. He walked towards the city centre and looked inside Nikolaikirche, where he lit a candle in memory of the dead. Crossing the old Karl-Marx-Platz to Thomaskirche, he gazed at the statue of Bach that they had so often stood beneath.An old woman approached him and invited him to buy some flowers. With a smile, he bought a small posy.Shortly afterwards he went where his thoughts had so often returned. He was pleased to see that the house was still standing. It had been partly refurbished and there was a light in the window. Much as he longed to, he did not dare peek inside, but he had the impression that a family lived there. A television set gave off a flickering light from what had been the living room of the old landlady who had lost her family in the war. Everything inside would be different now, of course. Perhaps the eldest child was sleeping in their old room.He kissed the posy of flowers, placed it at the door and made the sign of the cross over it.A few years earlier he had flown to Budapest and met Ilona's elderly mother and two brothers. Her father was dead by then, never having discovered his daughter's fate.He spent all day sitting with Ilona's mother, who showed him photographs of Ilona from when she was a baby through to her student years. The brothers, who like him were beginning to age, told him what he already knew: nothing had come of their search for answers about Ilona. He could sense their bitterness, the resignation that had taken root in them long ago.The day after he arrived in Leipzig he went to the old security police headquarters, which were still in the same building on Dittrichring 24. Instead of police at the reception desk in the foyer, there was now a young woman who smiled as she handed him a brochure. Still able to speak pa.s.sable German, he introduced himself as a visitor to the city and asked to look around. Other people had entered the building for the same purpose, and walked in and out through open and unlocked doors, free to go where they pleased. When she heard his accent the young woman asked where he was from. Then she told him that an archive was being set up in the old Stasi offices. He was welcome to listen to a talk that was about to begin, then tour the building. She showed him to the corridor leading to where chairs had been arranged, every one of them occupied. Some of the audience were standing up against the walls. The talk was about the imprisonment of dissident writers in the 1970s.After the talk he went to the office in the alcove where Lothar and the man with the thick moustache had interrogated him. The cell next door was open and he went inside. He thought again that Ilona might have been there. There were graffiti and scratches all over the walls, made with spoons, he imagined.He had put in a formal application to look at the files when the Stasi archive opened after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its purpose was to help people delve into the fate of loved ones who had gone missing, or find information about themselves that had been collected by neighbours, colleagues, friends and family, under the system of interactive surveillance. Journalists, academics and people who suspected they had been doc.u.mented in the files could apply for access, which he had done by letter and telephone from Iceland. Applicants had to explain in detail why they needed to study the files and what they were looking for. He knew there were thousands of large brown paper bags full of files that had been shredded in the last days of the East German regime; a huge team was employed on taping them back together. The scale of the records was incredible.His trip to East Germany produced nothing. No matter how he searched, he could not find a sc.r.a.p of information about Ilona. Her file had probably been destroyed, he was told. Possibly she had been sent to a labour camp or gulag in the old Soviet Union, so there was a slim chance that he could find some record of her in Moscow. It was also conceivable that she had died in police custody in Leipzig or in Berlin if she had been sent there.Nor did he find any information in the Stasi files about whichever traitor had turned his beloved girlfriend over to the security police.

He sat and waited for the police to call. He had done that all summer; now it was autumn and nothing had happened yet. Certain that the police would knock on his door sooner or later, he sometimes wondered how he would react. Would he act nonchalantly, deny the accusations and feign surprise? It would depend on what evidence they had. He had no idea what this might be, but imagined that it would be substantial, if they had managed to trace a lead to him in the first place.He stared into s.p.a.ce and drifted back once again to his years in Leipzig.Four words from his last encounter with Lothar had remained etched into his mind right up to the present day and would remain there for ever. Four words that said it all.Take a closer look.

29

Erlendur and Elinborg arrived unannounced, knowing very little about the man they were going to see, except that his name was Hannes and he had once studied in Leipzig. He ran a guest house in Selfoss and grew tomatoes as a sideline. They knew where he lived, so they drove straight there and parked outside a bungalow identical to all the others in the little town, apart from not having been painted for a long time and having a concreted s.p.a.ce in front of it where a garage was perhaps supposed to stand. The garden around the house was well kept, with hedges and flowers and a small birdhouse.In the garden was a man they took to be in his seventies struggling with a lawnmower. The motor would not catch and he was clearly out of breath from tugging at the starting cord, which as soon as he released it darted back into its hole again like a snake. He did not notice them until they were standing right next to him.'A heap of old junk, is it?' Erlendur asked as he looked down at the lawnmower and inhaled smoke from his cigarette. He had lit up the moment he got out of the car. Elinborg had forbidden him to smoke on the way. His car was awful enough anyway.The man looked up and stared at them, two strangers in his garden. He had a grey beard and grey hair that was starting to thin, a tall and intelligent forehead, thick eyebrows and alert brown