Into Oblivion

by Arnaldur Indridason

  ‘Erlendur.’

  She continued to eye him.

  ‘What business is it of yours?’

  ‘The girl’s aunt hasn’t quite given up hope of finding out what happened. She asked me to do some digging around for her.’

  The woman was still sizing up the stranger, with suspicious, grey eyes.

  ‘All right,’ she said at last and began to hobble up the old wooden staircase. Erlendur slipped inside and tried to lighten her load by taking the shopping bag but she wouldn’t hear of it. He caught some muttered comment about thieving scum. He followed her upstairs to the landing where she laid down the bag, put her key in the lock and opened the door.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘come in then.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Erlendur entered the small flat. The woman turned on the lights and went into the kitchen to put away her shopping. Then she re-emerged, took off her coat and hung it in a cupboard.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she said. Erlendur had not dared to go into the sitting room without permission and was still hovering by the door. ‘Go on, sit down. Excuse the state of the place. I’m not used to visits like this and to tell the truth I don’t like ’em.’

  ‘No, I’m sorr—’

  ‘Don’t waste time apologising, just get on with it and tell me what you want. Wait a moment, though. I should make us some coffee.’

  With that she went back into the kitchen and before long a strong aroma of coffee wafted into the sitting room. As he took in his surroundings, Erlendur reflected that she had no need to be ashamed of her housekeeping. Despite the signs of poverty – the shabby old furniture, the lack of all ornaments apart from a few family photos – everything was spick and span. The photographs appeared for the most part to be of her children, grown up and surrounded by their own families. An impressively large group. One daughter had died, he knew, and one of her sons was well known to the police and often on the streets. He’d been in trouble from a young age and still got on the wrong side of the law from time to time. He had crossed Erlendur’s path now and then when he was an officer on the beat. There was an old photo of him with his brothers and sisters, and this made Erlendur feel oddly uncomfortable, as if he had been forced into a closer intimacy with the man than he would have liked.

  ‘They didn’t half make a fuss about that girl,’ Baldvina remarked as she came in with the coffee.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Erlendur, removing his gaze from the photos. ‘It was a terrible business.’

  ‘I don’t know how I can help. Hasn’t everyone forgotten all about it?’

  ‘I gather you were a single mother at the time. It must have been a hard slog bringing up five children on your own,’ said Erlendur, his eyes returning to the pictures.

  ‘I had kids by three men,’ said Baldvina. ‘A mixed bunch. The first was a boozer, no use to anyone. The second was good to me. We had a decent life, had three kids together but then he went and died and left me on my own, and I had no choice but to move into the camp. He had an accident in Hvalfjördur. He was all right, the poor sod; he couldn’t help what happened to him. The last one used to knock me about. Biggest piece of shit I ever met. There weren’t any more and I’m bloody glad about it and that’s a fact.’

  Erlendur wasn’t sure how to respond to this.

  ‘Yes, the camp was a rough place,’ continued the woman. ‘I’m not one to grumble but it wasn’t easy.’

  ‘They weren’t good places to live in, were they?’ said Erlendur. ‘The huts, I mean.’

  ‘Good places to live in! Are you joking? Some of them may have been better than others but the ones I knew weren’t fit for people. They were damp and cold and leaked and the smell of mould used to get into your clothes – “the smell of the camp”, they called it. All you had to heat the place was a small oil stove, and oil cost an arm and a leg, and the hut never got properly warm. But the housing shortage was so dire you just had to put up with it. Families used to be squashed in three or four to a hut, with one small room each. Don’t know what people would say to that nowadays. And the men used to get smashed out of their skulls and you’d have a hell of a time trying to see the buggers off.’

  Baldvina took a mouthful of coffee, her gnarled fingers crooked around the cup.

  ‘But the worst was the chill from the floor,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t put the children down at all for the cold, and water used to collect under it during the spring thaw and flood up into the hut. Then there were the open sewers, and the rats …’

  She stared down into her coffee cup.

  ‘It’s always the kids who come off worst in dumps like that,’ she added, and Erlendur saw her gaze flicker to the photo of her son, the homeless alcoholic.

  ‘You said you remembered Dagbjört walking past on her way to and from school?’

  ‘Yes, though I was never sure. They showed us pictures and I thought it was the girl who walked past sometimes, but that’s all I could tell them. I knew nothing about her. Never saw her in the camp. Then I heard she was supposed to have had the hots for a boy there but I didn’t know anything about that either. Mind you, my friend Begga reckoned she’d been hanging about there, or a girl who looked like her, anyway. Begga lived in the hut next door. Died years ago. Don’t know if the police ever talked to her.’

  ‘Begga?’ said Erlendur, unable to recall any reference to her in the files. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘She told me once, when I bumped into her years later and we got talking about it, that one of the lads had moved out of the camp around the same time. Begga reckoned it was Stella’s boy and that he left because of some business with a girl. Though it needn’t have been that girl, I don’t think. But maybe you could talk to my son Vilhelm. He may’ve known the lad. I have a feeling they were the same sort of age.’

  ‘Stella’s son? Who was Stella?’

  ‘Oh, she had it tough, poor thing. I didn’t see much of her after we moved out of the camp. Heard a few years ago that she was dead.’

  ‘Do you know which boy it was? What he was called?’

  ‘No, I don’t. She had several sons. I expect he went off the rails like some of the other kids from the camp.’ Baldvina looked back at the photo.

  ‘Where can I find Vilhelm?’

  ‘God knows. He’s on the streets. Never been able to stick at anything. He’s well meaning, though. Heart’s in the right place. He came out of it worst of all my lot.’

  ‘Out of Camp Knox?’

  ‘Camp Knox was that sort of place.’

  Erlendur pictured her son now, a frail homeless man with broken glasses. He had once dossed down in a hot-water pipeline, back when Erlendur was investigating the death of another tramp who had long been living rough and had ended up drowned in the old peat diggings in Kringlumýri.

  Baldvina’s eyes were lowered to her arthritic hands.

  ‘No one was that bothered just because some girl had done herself in.’

  23

  It was late afternoon when Caroline finally answered the phone. She remembered Marion straight away. Marion wondered if it would be possible to meet her to ask a favour. Although initially reluctant, Caroline yielded in the face of Marion’s polite insistence, said she was free that evening and suggested a time and place. Marion asked if they could meet in private. Caroline took a moment to grasp what was required.

  ‘Somewhere off the beaten track would be best,’ said Marion. ‘I need to meet you where we can be sure we won’t be disturbed.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘If there’s some way you could arrange that, I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Also it would be better if you didn’t mention our meeting to anyone.’

  ‘Why … why all the secrecy?’

  ‘We’d like to proceed with caution,’ said Marion. ‘We trust you. And we don’t know anyone else on the base. We won’t try and force you to do anything you don’t want to. I promise.’

  Eventually, after a lengthy pause
for thought, Caroline agreed to these conditions. Evidently she was less than enthusiastic about a clandestine meeting with the Icelandic police in connection with a murder that, in her opinion, had nothing to do with her or the US military. She said as much to Marion, adding that she didn’t know what they expected of her. Marion asked her to be patient, to listen first before deciding whether or not to help them.

  It had been Erlendur’s idea that Marion should go alone to the meeting with Caroline. He believed Marion would get on better with her. Besides, there was no need for them both to go; that would only put her on her guard. Grudgingly Marion conceded to this logic and drove south through the early-winter darkness to Midnesheidi. Caroline had given directions to the bowling alley, and after driving through the gate and taking several wrong turns, Marion finally located the place. According to Caroline, the alley was closed for refurbishment. Marion parked some distance away, as she had suggested, found the unlocked back door and wondered how Caroline came to have access to the building when it was closed. She was there already, in ordinary clothes this time: jeans, a college sweatshirt, a thin leather jacket and sneakers.

  ‘I don’t like this one bit,’ she said as Marion entered. ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this. Don’t know why I agreed to meet with you here.’

  ‘Thanks for going to all this trouble,’ said Marion, surveying the empty lanes, the balls in their racks, the beer adverts on the walls. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t be doing it unless you were the tiniest bit curious.’

  ‘I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be curious about,’ said Caroline. ‘Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me.’

  ‘Of course. There are two things we thought you might be able to help us with –’

  ‘Why me? You don’t even know me. You know nothing about me.’

  ‘It’s simple,’ said Marion. ‘We’re just regular police officers, you and I. So we ought to understand what needs doing without making things overcomplicated. What we need is access to the police here on the base, but we don’t want it to blow up into some major diplomatic incident involving senior military commanders and politicians from the Right and Left, and all the associated hassle. We don’t want the press getting in on the act, or the anti-NATO protesters or … You see, we had a good feeling about you right from the start, so we wanted to ask if you would help us.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m talking about simplifying matters rather than complicating them. I’m talking about keeping things on a personal level.’

  ‘What are the two things you need to know?’

  ‘The Icelander whose body we found had fallen from a considerable height. Such a great height, in fact, that there aren’t many places to choose from around here …’

  ‘Did it happen on the base?’

  ‘We believe so.’

  ‘From a great height? Are you talking about one of the hangars?’

  ‘Hangar 885, to be precise,’ said Marion. ‘The Icelander had a reason to be in the hangar because he was a flight mechanic and used to service aircraft there. His company has permission to use the hangar at busy times. We believe it’s possible he may have witnessed something in there that cost him his life. We’ve no idea what it was but there’s a chance it’s linked to the airline we asked you about the other day—’

  ‘Northern Cargo Transport.’

  ‘That’s right. They seem to be involved in some kind of arms shipments, according to a source in Reykjavík, and we wondered if you could check up on that for us. Find out what this company is. What connection it has to the army. And whether it transports weapons. Because if it’s a civilian operator, that would be highly irregular.’

  ‘No, that doesn’t sound right,’ said Caroline thoughtfully.

  ‘Our guess is that if we start making inquiries about this airline through the usual, official channels, doors will be slammed in our faces. Of course, we’ll have to go down that road sooner or later, but we’d like to gather information by other means first, if we possibly can.’

  ‘I don’t know how … what to believe. I don’t know who you are. Don’t even know what you do, though you claim to be a detective. This is all kind of … What’s the other thing you want me to look into?’

  ‘We heard that the Icelander, this Kristvin we were asking the residents about, known as Krissi –’

  ‘Chrissy? Isn’t that a girl’s name?’

  ‘It’s short for Kristvin. Krissi with a “K”.’

  ‘It’s kind of weird the way you use first names when you talk about strangers. It takes some getting used to.’

  ‘It’s an old custom here in Iceland,’ said Marion.

  ‘I’m aware of that.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re also aware that Icelandic women don’t take their husband’s name when they marry?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caroline. ‘Not such a bad idea.’

  ‘No, not bad at all,’ said Marion, smiling. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I call you Caroline?’

  ‘No, that’s fine.’

  ‘The thing is, Kristvin had a girlfriend – or lover – on the base. According to our informant, she’s married to a serviceman.’

  ‘An American?’ said Caroline in surprise. ‘Usually it’s the other way around – American men get involved with Icelandic women.’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, we think that’s why his car was here. He’d been visiting her.’

  ‘We went round every single dorm in the neighbourhood,’ pointed out Caroline.

  ‘Well, we wanted to ask if you could go back. Alone this time. Put your ear to the ground. See what you can pick up. One of the residents might let slip some detail that could come in useful. I don’t care how trivial. Everything matters.’

  ‘You’re not asking much.’

  ‘I know,’ said Marion. ‘We’ve been over and over this, my colleague and I, and our conclusion was to approach you for help at this stage, then see what comes out of it. Kristvin was also smuggling marijuana off base, so his business at the barracks might have been related to that. We just don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t think I told you,’ said Caroline, ‘but residents are assigned housing according to rank. The dorms where the car was found are enlisted quarters, for the lowest ranks and the least educated. But that doesn’t mean they’re all murderers, drug dealers or adulterers.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Marion.

  ‘Not all the personnel are in a hurry to leave,’ said Caroline. ‘Lots of Icelandics work here and we’re on good terms with them. There are good schools, good stores. Maybe the weather could be a little better at times but, hey, you can’t have everything.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I think I’m going to have to turn you down,’ said Caroline after a pause.

  ‘Are you absolutely positive? You might want a bit longer to consider.’

  ‘No, I can’t do it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Marion. ‘I don’t mean to –’

  ‘I can’t work against the interests of the military. Surely you understand that? Regardless of what you guys claim happened. You’ll just have to find some other way. It’s … I can’t believe I’m even discussing this.’

  ‘Fine, no problem. All I was going to say is that if an Icelandic civilian has lost his life because of corruption in the army, it’ll be easy for you lot to stonewall us and then we’ll never solve the crime. We have no say over what the Defense Force does, and besides there are influential politicians and businessmen in our country who are only too willing to grovel to the US. And on the other side there are factions who are implacably opposed to it. So the only sensible way to investigate the incident is through people like us. Ordinary people like us.’

  Caroline stared at Marion, the worry plain on her face.

  ‘I can’t help you,’ she said decisively. ‘I won’t report our meeting but that’s all I can do for you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid so
.’

  ‘Well, thank you for at least agreeing to meet me,’ said Marion. ‘I hope you understand my position – why I’m asking this. I’d be grateful if you could keep it to yourself.’

  ‘I’ve already promised that. But why the secrecy? Why don’t you trust the military?’

  ‘In this instance?’

  ‘In general.’

  ‘I think that question could equally be turned on its head,’ said Marion. ‘Why doesn’t the military trust us?’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Fleet Air Command has no interest in answering questions about Hangar 885 and we can’t put any pressure on them unless we know exactly what to ask. We sent a request for access to the area and cooperation with the inquiry into Kristvin’s death. They responded that the matter had nothing to do with them. It looks as if they’re going to be deliberately obstructive when it comes to anything involving US nationals on the base.’

  ‘Is that so surprising?’

  ‘No,’ said Marion, ‘maybe not. But we feel they’re being unreasonable. They’ve reached a decision without being prepared to discuss the matter at all. Which makes it look as if they’ve got something to hide.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for example, if you could –’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not getting mixed up in any of this,’ said Caroline. ‘No way.’

  ‘If, for example, you could find out who was in Hangar 885 the evening Kristvin died,’ persevered Marion. ‘I mean, who does have access to it, in general?’

  ‘As far as I know there’s not much work going on in there at the moment because they’re installing a fire-extinguisher system. So in the evenings it would be mainly security guards.’

  ‘If you could find out who they were …’

  ‘Like I said, you’re putting me in an impossible position. I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere. Sorry.’

  Caroline glanced at her watch and said she had to run. Their meeting was over.

  ‘I’ve never been bowling,’ remarked Marion, looking around the alley one last time before leaving again by the back door.