The Draining Lake

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Erlendur knocked on Haraldur's door at the old people's home. Breakfast had just finished and the clatter of plates could still be heard from the canteen. Sigurdur Óli was with him. They heard Haraldur shout something from inside and Erlendur opened the door. Haraldur was sitting up in bed, his head lowered, staring down at the floor. He looked up when they entered the room.

  'Who's that with you?' he asked when he saw Sigurdur Óli.

  'He works with me,' Erlendur said.

  Instead of greeting Sigurdur Óli, Haraldur shot him a warning look. Erlendur sat on a chair facing Haraldur. Sigurdur Óli remained standing and leaned against the wall.

  The door opened and another grey-haired resident put his head in.

  'Haraldur,' he said, 'there's choir practice in room eleven tonight.'

  Without waiting for an answer, he closed the door again.

  Erlendur gaped at Haraldur.

  'Choir practice?' he said. 'Surely you don't go in for that?'

  '"Choir practice" is code for a booze-up,' Haraldur grunted. 'I hope I don't disappoint you.'

  Sigurdur Óli grinned to himself. He was having trouble concentrating. What he had said to Elínborg that morning was not entirely true. Bergthóra had been to the doctor, who had told her that it was fifty-fifty. Bergthóra had tried to be positive when she related this, but he knew that she was in torment.

  'Let's get a move on,' Haraldur said. 'Maybe I didn't tell you the whole truth, but I can't see why you need to go around sticking your nose into other people's affairs. But . . . I wanted . . .'

  Erlendur sensed an unusual hesitation in Haraldur when the old man lifted his head to be able to look him in the face.

  'Jói didn't get enough oxygen,' he said, looking back at the floor. 'That was why. At birth. They thought it was all right, he grew properly, but he turned out different. He wasn't like the other kids.'

  Sigurdur Óli indicated to Erlendur that he had no idea what the old man was talking about. Erlendur shrugged. Something about Haraldur had changed. He was not his usual self. He was in some way milder.

  'It turned out that he was a bit funny,' Haraldur continued. 'Simple. Backward. Kind inside but couldn't cope, couldn't learn, never knew how to read. It took a long time to emerge and we took a long time to accept it and come to terms with it.'

  'That must have been difficult for your parents,' Erlendur said after a long silence, once Haraldur seemed unlikely to say anything else.

  'I ended up looking after Jói when they died,' Haraldur said at last, his eyes trained on the floor. 'We lived out there on the farm, barely scraping a living towards the end. Had nothing to sell but the land. It was worth quite a lot because it was so close to Reykjavík and we made a fair bit on the deal. We could buy a flat and still have money left over.'

  'What was it you were going to tell us?' Sigurdur Óli said impatiently. Erlendur glared at him.

  'My brother stole the hubcap from the car,' Haraldur said. 'That was the whole crime and now you can leave me alone. That's the long and the short of it. I don't know how you can make such a fuss about it. After all these years. He stole a hubcap! What kind of a crime is that?'

  'Are we talking about the black Falcon?' Erlendur asked.

  'Yes, it was the black Falcon.'

  'So Leopold did visit your farm,' Erlendur said. 'You're admitting that now.'

  Haraldur nodded.

  'Do you think you were right to sit on this information for your whole life?' Erlendur asked angrily. 'Causing everyone unnecessary trouble?'

  'Don't you go preaching to me,' Haraldur said. 'It won't get you anywhere.'

  'There are people who have been suffering for decades,' Erlendur said.

  'We didn't do anything to him. Nothing happened to him.'

  'You ruined the police investigation.'

  'Put me in the nick, then,' Haraldur said. 'It won't make much difference.'

  'What happened?' Sigurdur Óli asked.

  'My brother was a bit simple,' Haraldur said. 'But he never harmed that man. There wasn't a violent bone in him. He thought the bloody hubcaps were pretty so he stole one. He thought it was enough for that bloke to have three.'

  'And what did the man do?' Sigurdur Óli asked.

  'You were looking for a missing man,' Haraldur went on, staring at Erlendur. 'I didn't want to complicate things. You would have complicated it if I'd told you that Jói took the hubcap. Then you would have wanted to know if he killed him, which he didn't, but you'd never have believed me and you'd have taken Jói away.'

  'What did this man do when Jói took the hubcap?' Sigurdur Óli repeated.

  'He seemed very tense.'

  'So what happened?'

  'He attacked my brother,' Haraldur said. 'He shouldn't have done that, because even though Jói was stupid, he was strong. Threw him off like a sack of feathers.'

  'And killed him,' Erlendur said.

  Haraldur raised his head.

  'What did I just tell you?'

  'Why should we believe you now, after you've been lying all these years?'

  'I decided to pretend that he never came. That we'd never met him. That was the obvious thing to do. We never touched him, apart from Jói defending himself. He left and he was fine then.'

  'Why should we believe you now?' Sigurdur Óli said.

  'Jói didn't kill anyone. He never could have. He never hurt a fly, Jói. But you wouldn't have believed that. I tried to get him to give the hubcap back, but he wouldn't say where he'd hidden it. Jói was like a raven. He liked pretty things and they were nice, shiny hubcaps. He wanted to own one. As simple as that. The bloke got really worked up and threatened us both, and then he went for Jói. We had a fight and then he left and we never saw him again.'

  'Why should I believe this?' Erlendur asked again.

  Haraldur snorted.

  'I don't give a monkey's what you believe,' he said. 'Take it or leave it.'

  'Why didn't you tell the police this touching tale about you and your brother when they were searching for the man?'

  'The police didn't seem interested in anything much,' Haraldur said. 'They didn't ask for any explanations. They took a statement from me and that was it.'

  'And the man left you after the fight?' Erlendur said, thinking of lazy Níels.

  'Yes.'

  'With one hubcap missing?'

  'Yes. He stormed off without bothering about the hubcap.'

  'What did you do with it? Or did you ever find it?'

  'I buried it. After you started asking about that bloke. Jói told me where he'd put it and I dug a little hole behind the house and buried it in the ground. You'll find it there.'

  'All right,' Erlendur said. 'We'll poke around behind the house and see if we can't find it. But I still think you're lying to us.'

  'I don't care,' Haraldur said. 'You can think what you like.'

  'Anything else?' Erlendur said.

  Haraldur sat without saying a word. Perhaps he felt he had said enough. There wasn't a sound in his little room. Noises were heard from the canteen and the corridor: old people wandering around, waiting for their next meal. Erlendur stood up.

  'Thank you,' he said. 'This will be useful. We should have been told this more than thirty years ago, but . . .'

  'He dropped his wallet,' Haraldur said.

  'His wallet?'

  'In the fight. The salesman. He dropped his wallet. We didn't find it until after he'd gone. It was where his car had been parked. Jói saw it and hid it. He wasn't that stupid.'

  'What did you do with it?' Sigurdur Óli asked.

  'I buried it with the hubcap,' Haraldur said, a sudden vague smile on his face. 'You'll find that there, too.'

  'You didn't want to return it?'

  'I tried, but I couldn't find the name in the phone book. Then you lot started asking about that bloke, so I hid it with the hubcap.'

  'You mean Leopold wasn't in the directory?'

  'No, and nor was the other name.'

  'The
other name?' Sigurdur Óli said. 'Did he have another name?'

  'I couldn't figure out why, but some documents in the wallet had the name he introduced himself by, Leopold, and on others there was a different name.'

  'What name?' Erlendur asked.

  'Jói was funny,' Haraldur said. 'He was always hanging around the spot I buried the hubcap. Sometimes he'd lie on the ground or sit down where he knew it was. But he never dared dig it up. Never dared touch it again. He knew he'd done something wrong. He cried in my arms after that fight. The poor boy.'

  'What name was it?' Sigurdur Óli asked.

  'I can't remember,' Haraldur said. 'I've told you all you need to know, so bugger off. Leave me alone.'

  Erlendur drove to the abandoned farm just outside Mosfellsbaer. A cold northerly wind was getting up and autumn was descending over the land. He felt chilly when he walked behind the house. He pulled his coat tighter around him. At one time there had been a fence around the yard, but it had broken up long before and the yard was now mostly overgrown with grass. Before they left, Haraldur had given Erlendur a fairly detailed description of where he had buried the hubcap.

  He took a shovel from the farmhouse, paced out the distance from the wall and began to dig. The hubcap would not be buried very deep. The digging made him hot, so he took a rest and lit a cigarette. Then he carried on. He dug down about one metre but found no sign of the hubcap. He began widening the hole. He took another break. It was a long time since he had done manual work. He smoked another cigarette.

  About ten minutes later there was a chink when he thrust the shovel's blade down, and he knew he had found the hubcap from the black Falcon.

  He dug carefully around it, then got down on his knees and scraped the dirt away with his hands. Soon the entire hubcap was visible and he lifted it carefully from the earth. Although rusty, the hubcap was clearly from a Ford Falcon. Erlendur stood up and knocked it against the wall, and the dirt fell away. The hubcap made a ringing sound when it struck the wall.

  Erlendur put it down and peered into the hole. He still had to find the wallet that Haraldur had described. It was not yet visible, so he knelt down again, leaned over the hole and dug away at the earth with his hands.

  Everything that Haraldur had told him was true. Erlendur found the wallet in the ground nearby. After carefully extracting it he stood up. It was a regular, long, black leather wallet. The moisture in the ground meant that the wallet had begun to rot and he had to handle it carefully because it was in tatters. When he opened it he saw a cheque book, a few Icelandic banknotes long since withdrawn from circulation, a few scraps of paper and a driving licence in Leopold's name. The damp had seeped through and the photograph was ruined. In another compartment he found another card. It looked like a foreign driving licence and the photograph on it was not so badly damaged. He peered at it, but did not recognise the man.

  As far as Erlendur could tell the licence had been issued in Germany, but it was in such a bad condition that only the odd word was legible. He could see the owner's name clearly, but not his surname. Erlendur stood holding the wallet and looked up.

  He recognised the name on the driving licence.

  He recognised the name Emil.

  35

  Lothar Weiser shook him, shouted at him and slapped him repeatedly around the face. Gradually he came to his senses and saw how the pool of blood under Emil's head had spread across the dirty concrete floor. He looked into Lothar's face.

  'I killed Emil,' he said.

  'What the hell happened?' Lothar hissed. 'Why did you attack him? How much did you know about him? How did you track him down? What are you doing here, Tómas?'

  'I followed you,' he said. 'I saw you and followed you. And now I've killed him. He said something about Ilona.'

  'Are you still thinking about her? Aren't you ever going to forget that?'

  Lothar went over to the door and closed it carefully. He looked around the shed as if searching for something. Tómas stood riveted to the spot, watching Lothar as if in a trance. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could now see better inside the shed. It was full of piles of old rubbish: chairs and gardening tools, furniture and mattresses. Scattered across the bench he noticed various pieces of equipment, some of which he did not recognise. There were telescopes, cameras of different sizes and a large tape recorder that seemed to be connected to something resembling a radio transmitter. He also noticed photographs lying around, but could not see clearly what they showed. On the floor by the bench was a large black box with dials and buttons whose function eluded him. Beside it was a brown suitcase that the black box could fit inside. It appeared to be damaged – the dials were smashed and the back had dropped open onto the floor.

  He was still mesmerised. In a strange, dreamlike state. What he had done was so unreal and remote that he could not begin to face it. He looked at the body on the floor and at Lothar tending to it.

  'I thought I recognised him . . .'

  'Emil could be a real bastard,' Lothar said.

  'Was it him? Who told you about Ilona?'

  'Yes, he drew our attention to her meetings. He worked for us in Leipzig. At the university. He didn't care who he betrayed or what secrets he spilled. Even his best friends weren't safe. Like you,' Lothar said and stood up again.

  'I thought we were safe,' he replied. 'The Icelanders. I never suspected . . .' He stopped in mid-sentence. He was coming back to his senses. The haze was lifting. His thoughts were clearer. 'You weren't any better,' he said. 'You weren't any better yourself. You were exactly the same as him, only worse.'

  They looked each other in the eye.

  'Do I need to be afraid of you?' he asked.

  He had no feeling of fear. Not yet, at least. Lothar posed no threat to him. On the contrary, Lothar already appeared to be wondering what to do about Emil lying on the floor in his own blood. Lothar had not attacked him. He had not even taken the spade from him. For some absurd reason he was still holding the spade.

  'No,' Lothar said. 'You don't need to be afraid of me.'

  'How can I be sure?'

  'I'm telling you.'

  'I can't trust anyone,' he said. 'You ought to know that. You taught me that.'

  'You must get out of here and try to forget this,' Lothar said as he took hold of the spade's shaft. 'Don't ask me why. I'll take care of Emil. Don't go and do anything stupid like calling the police. Forget it. Like it never happened. Don't do anything stupid.'

  'Why? What are you helping me for? I thought—'

  'Don't think anything,' Lothar interrupted him. 'Go away and never mention this to anyone. It's nothing to do with you.'

  They stood facing each other. Lothar gripped the spade tighter.

  'Of course it's something to do with me!'

  'No,' Lothar said firmly. 'Forget it.'

  'What did you mean by what you just said?'

  'What was that?' Lothar asked.