‘… but they don’t know yet,’ said the minister, who was somewhat older than his companions. ‘Of course, it’ll have to be kept hush-hush.’
‘It seems highly unlikely,’ said one of the other men. ‘That he’ll come here.’
‘Well, they aren’t ruling it out. There’s no more information as yet, but they’re hoping for the best.’
The three men glanced at Thorson, who smiled blithely as if he didn’t understand a word they said, then continued down the steps to his jeep. As he drove into town, he wondered if he’d heard right. Could Winston Churchill really be planning a visit to Iceland?
6
By the time Flóvent arrived at the mortuary, the doctor who conducted most of the post-mortems at the hospital had finished his examination of Felix Lunden’s body. There were two other bodies covered in white sheets waiting on nearby trolleys. The doctor, Baldur, a native of the Hornstrandir Peninsula in the north-west, lurched a little as he moved, his slight limp the legacy of an old tuberculosis infection in one foot. In front of him was a metal trolley bearing an array of bloodstained instruments – scalpels, forceps and small saws – of the type used to pry into the most secret places of the human body. He went over to the metal sink and started washing his hands.
‘It can’t have been a pretty sight,’ he remarked, drying his hands on a towel. ‘With half his face shot away like that.’
‘No,’ said Flóvent. ‘It wasn’t pretty.’
‘No need to tell you how he died – a single shot to the head.’ Baldur offered Flóvent some coffee from a thermos flask that he kept wrapped in a woollen sock. He poured out a cup of the still-warm liquid, handed it to Flóvent and asked if he’d like a drop of brennivín in it to improve the taste. When Flóvent declined, Baldur fortified his own coffee with a splash from a bottle that he kept in the cupboard under the sink. It was getting on for evening but he still had a lot to do; he’d told Flóvent he would probably be there until midnight. It was cold in the mortuary. Flóvent couldn’t think of a less inviting place to be in the whole of Reykjavík.
‘Did the post-mortem turn up anything interesting?’ he asked.
‘Nothing of real significance with regard to the body. The man wasn’t very fit. He was probably a chain-smoker: you can see that from the tar on his fingers and the state of his lungs. He hadn’t done any manual labour for a long time. His hands are soft, no calluses.’
‘I’m told he was a salesman.’
‘Yes, that would fit. Well, it looks like a professional job to me. A single shot did the trick.’
‘As if it was the work of a soldier? Is that what you’re implying?’
‘Yes, perhaps. Though of course I can’t say for sure.’
‘Am I right in thinking that the killer then smeared blood on his forehead?’ asked Flóvent.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘With a finger?’
‘Yes, he used his finger.’
‘He stuck it in the wound?’
‘Yes, unless he used blood from the floor. I expect there was quite a pool around the body when it was found.’
‘Why would he do a thing like that? Why add insult to injury by smearing blood on the victim’s forehead?’
‘What did you say his name was – Felix Lunden, wasn’t it?’
Flóvent nodded.
‘I’m guessing he might be related to a doctor who once worked here at the hospital,’ said Baldur. ‘There can’t be many people in Iceland with that surname. He had a surgery on Hafnarstræti for many years.’
‘Who was he?’
‘Rudolf, he was called. Rudolf Lunden. From a Danish–German family. He was forced to close his surgery following a riding accident. I don’t think he’s practised medicine since. But I didn’t know him well. He had a reputation for being cantankerous. If I remember right, he was linked to the Icelandic Nazi movement in their heyday before the war.’
‘Could this be his son then?’
‘That would be my guess,’ said Baldur. ‘Given his name. And that mark on his forehead.’
‘Oh? Were you able to decipher it?’
‘Yes, I believe so.’ The doctor took a sip of coffee. ‘I believe the person who did this wanted to send a very specific message when he drew that symbol.’
‘What is … What symbol?’
Just then the door of the mortuary opened to admit a young soldier. Over his uniform he wore an armband that identified him as a member of the US Military Police Corps. The young man looked from one of them to the other.
‘I was told I could find Detective Flóvent of the Reykjavík police here?’ he said diffidently. His Icelandic was fluent.
‘I’m Flóvent.’
‘How do you do, sir?’ the young man said politely, and shook Flóvent’s hand. ‘My name’s Thorson. I was told to offer my services to the Icelandic police in connection with a man’s death. I thought I’d better make contact with you as soon as possible. I hope this isn’t a bad moment?’
‘No, not at all. We were just discussing the post-mortem,’ said Flóvent. ‘You speak very good Icelandic. Are you an Icelander, by any chance? No need to call me “sir”, by the way.’
‘I’m a West Icelander,’ Thorson explained, shaking hands with Baldur as well. ‘From Manitoba in Canada. My parents originally came from Eyjafjördur. Is that the man who was shot in the head?’ Flóvent noticed that he avoided looking directly at the corpse.
‘Yes,’ said Flóvent. ‘Felix Lunden, a travelling salesman, from what we’ve managed to establish so far. Used to peddle hats, belts, a variety of face creams and toothpaste, that sort of thing.’
‘Face creams?’ said Baldur, adding another shot of brennivín to his coffee. ‘Can people really make a living from that?’
‘Apparently. He didn’t have any dependants. Lived alone.’ Noticing that Thorson was looking a little pale, Flóvent turned to him: ‘I don’t suppose you’re used to seeing bodies in this sort of state.’
‘No,’ said Thorson. ‘I … I’ve only served in Iceland. I haven’t seen any action yet and the cases I’ve dealt with so far in the military police haven’t … haven’t been quite like this.’
Flóvent could tell the young soldier was making a great effort to appear professional. He wasn’t doing too bad a job of it either. Indeed, Flóvent thought he detected an air of maturity about the young man despite his boyish appearance. Thorson was in his early twenties, fair, with a guileless face that hinted at a trusting nature. Perhaps too trusting, Flóvent thought. There was a look in his eyes that suggested people had been known to betray that trust.
‘Do you think he was killed by a member of the US forces?’ asked Thorson.
‘You’ve probably heard that we found the bullet and that it comes from a Colt .45?’
‘Couldn’t an Icelander get hold of a weapon like that?’
‘We’re certainly not ruling out the possibility,’ said Flóvent.
‘If a soldier was responsible, and word gets out, my commanding officers are afraid it might lead to – how did they put it? – increased mistrust of the defence force. They’re concerned that public debate about this crime could end up being a little one-sided.’
‘And it’s your role to prevent that?’ asked Baldur. ‘Bit young for politics, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not interested in politics,’ said Thorson. ‘What’s that on his forehead?’ he added, changing the subject. He had obviously plucked up the courage to examine the corpse’s shattered face. ‘Is that a letter?’
‘I was just telling Flóvent when you came in,’ said Baldur. ‘It’s not a letter, no; it’s something else, and quite interesting too. You could say the body’s been deliberately branded.’
‘What with?’ asked Flóvent.
‘As far as I can tell, with the Nazi symbol.’
‘The Nazi symbol? You mean the swastika?’
‘Yes, the swastika,’ said the doctor. He walked heavily over to the body and aimed a lamp at the head.
‘It looks to me as if that’s exactly what this mess on the man’s forehead is meant to represent.’
Flóvent and Thorson stepped closer and examined the mark. The doctor was right. Clumsy and smudged though it was, when viewed under the powerful lamp it was clear that the body had been branded with the distinctive Nazi swastika.
7
There was a commotion outside in the corridor, caused, Flóvent guessed, by the arrival of Ólafía. He had sent for her to identify the body of her tenant. He went out to greet her and was told in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t pleased about being dragged out to this horrible place. She was exhausted, she said. The day had been dreadfully difficult for her. A brutal murder had been committed in her house. Its reputation had been ruined. Her reputation had been ruined. She, who was always so scrupulous in everything, so very particular about selecting her tenants. Only respectable people. With no more than two children.
‘I found the poor man lying on the floor, what more do you want?’ she asked as Flóvent showed her into the mortuary.
‘I’m afraid we need to take care of this formality as quickly as possible,’ he explained. ‘I don’t know how clearly you were able to see him, ma’am, but I have to state in my report that you formally identified your tenant. We need to contact the man’s family and –’
‘Yes, yes, let’s get it over with, then.’
‘Did you get a good first impression of Felix when he started renting from you?’
‘A very good impression,’ said Ólafía. ‘I have a nose for these things. Polite. Obviously well brought up. Nice manners.’
‘You mentioned that he always paid his rent on time?’
‘Always. He was very careful about that.’
‘Did he pay in Icelandic krónur? Or did he use foreign currency? Dollars? Pounds?’
‘Foreign money? No, he didn’t have any foreign money. At least not that I was aware of. He paid in krónur like everybody else.’
‘Did he ever mention his parents’ names to you?’ asked Flóvent. ‘His father? Or mother?’
‘No. Are his parents still alive?’
‘We don’t know. Nor do we know if he had any brothers or sisters. In fact, we hardly know anything about him yet. That’s why it’s so important for you to do us this favour.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t like it at all,’ said Ólafía sourly. ‘It’s a terrible business altogether. Put yourself in my place. I don’t know if I’ll be able to rent out that flat again. Don’t know if I’ll have the heart to. Or if anyone will want to live there after something so … shocking. I haven’t a clue what I’m supposed to do with the place. I’ll have to pay some girls to clean it, and that won’t come cheap.’
She entered the mortuary, where she greeted Baldur and Thorson. The doctor showed her to the table.
‘I’ve tried to tidy him up a bit,’ said Baldur, ‘in case his relatives want to see him. But he’s a bit of a mess, so I hope it won’t give you a turn, dear. Let me know when you’ve seen enough.’
‘I was the one who found him, you know,’ said Ólafía. ‘And I’m not your “dear”.’
‘Of course, I do beg your pardon,’ said Baldur, shooting a glance at Flóvent as if amused by her testiness. He lifted the sheet back from Felix’s head. Ólafía was visibly shocked by the disfigured face, the empty eye socket, the shattered cheekbone and jaw. But the man’s features were still clearly visible on the other side, where the bullet hadn’t done as much damage, and she focused her attention on this, appearing suddenly unsure. Her gaze swung from Baldur to Flóvent and back again, as though she was thoroughly confused.
‘What? Has there been another murder?’ she asked, her face taking on a forbidding expression, as though her patience had been tried enough. ‘Just like the other one?’
‘The other one?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ asked Flóvent.
‘I thought I was here to identify my tenant, Felix Lunden. Wasn’t that why you dragged me to this horrible place?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then where is he?’ asked Ólafía, peering around.
‘What do you mean?’ Flóvent repeated. ‘Isn’t that him lying on the table in front of you?’
‘Who?’
‘Felix Lunden, of course.’
‘This man?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. I’ve never seen this man before in my life.’
‘But…?’
‘This isn’t Felix Lunden, I can tell you that for sure,’ said Ólafía firmly. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea who this man is.’
8
There was still a policeman outside Felix Lunden’s flat when Thorson parked his jeep in front of the building. Flóvent drew up behind him, opened the door for Ólafía, then escorted her up to her house and thanked her once again for her help.
They had been completely wrong-footed when she said she didn’t recognise the man on the mortuary slab and denied that it was Felix Lunden. It transpired that she had never actually got a proper look at the corpse, merely thought it must have been Felix since it was his flat. The man had been lying face down, shot through the head, his blood spattered all over the room, and she had drawn her own conclusions.
When Flóvent had asked if she was absolutely sure and tried to fish for more information, Ólafía had lost her temper and insisted on being taken home. On the way back she explained that she had simply assumed it was her tenant. She was furious with herself for being so unobservant.
Flóvent greeted the police officer on guard and reminded Thorson not to touch anything without letting him know. The sun was setting and he switched on all the lights as soon as they entered the flat. While Flóvent went into the bedroom, Thorson paused by the dark puddle on the living-room floor and studied the blood splashes on the walls, thinking about the symbol on the dead man’s forehead. This was entirely outside his realm of experience, and he knew he would have to learn fast.
‘Felix Lunden’s not a very Icelandic name, is it?’ he said when Flóvent returned from the bedroom carrying some books.
‘No, it’s not. He could be from a German family. I found some Nazi reading matter in his bedroom: Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a book of photographs from the 1927 Nuremberg rally and a pamphlet about something called the Thule Society. He wasn’t exactly advertising the fact he had them, though. I found them in a shoe-box at the back of his wardrobe. The books are all in German, so he must understand the language. He’s obviously interested in Nazism.’
‘And he drew a swastika on the body,’ said Thorson.
‘If he was the killer.’
‘Didn’t you have a home-grown fascist party here?’ asked Thorson.
‘Yes, the Nationalist Party they called themselves. They put up candidates for parliamentary and local elections but hardly got any support. As far as I know, the party dispersed when war broke out.’
‘So they were inspired by German Nazism?’ Thorson began leafing through the books.
‘I believe so. They were opposed to racial “corruption”, hostile to the Jews, hated communists and preached racist ideology, all the usual stuff the Nazis are known for. They called for a strong Iceland, whatever that means. For inviolable national unity. All that kind of propaganda.’
‘Racial corruption?’
‘The Germans sent over a consul called Werner Gerlach, a bit of a fanatic.’ Flóvent took one of the blood-spattered hats out of the suitcase on the sofa and inspected it. ‘He was supposed to be acquainting himself with Icelandic high culture and the pure Aryan race thought to live here.’
‘The descendants of the Vikings?’
‘Yes, the descendants of the Vikings, something like that,’ said Flóvent. ‘The Germans are well versed in medieval Icelandic literature. But, to his great disappointment, Gerlach found that the country was inhabited by a bunch of peasants and the Viking spirit was a thing of the past. He was arrested on the morning of the invasion and deported to Britain. They c
aught him making a bonfire of his documents in the bathtub at the German consulate.’
‘This one’s got an inscription,’ said Thorson. He handed Flóvent the book containing photographs of the Nuremberg rally.
‘“To Felix, with fond paternal greetings, from Rudolf, Christmas 1930”,’ Flóvent read.
‘Rudolf?’
‘Yes. So Rudolf Lunden is his father, then. He’s a German doctor who used to practise in Reykjavík. Baldur knew him a little. Mentioned that he was a Nazi. We need to get hold of him and track down that son of his.’
Flóvent laid the hat on the sofa and inspected the suitcase more closely. It was evidently well travelled; the brown leather was scuffed and stained and worn at the corners as you would expect of a salesman’s case. It was lined with linen that had once been white, and its owner had used it to tote around his samples – the cleansing creams, toothpaste and hats and belts – extolling their virtues. If Felix had been working as a salesman for some time, he would have crossed paths with any number of people. Visited the same places again and again, acquired loyal customers. According to Ólafía, he had been away a great deal, touring the country. Surely the suitcase was his?
Flóvent ran a hand over the samples, noting that they showed signs of having been taken out and hawked around. He pictured Felix sitting down in people’s homes, catching glimpses of their lives, listening to their stories and trying to find a way in. Trying to convince them that they couldn’t do without his products. He must have travelled to towns and fishing villages and even to remote farming communities. In some places the inhabitants would have set their dogs on him, in others they would have served him coffee while he relayed the news from the nearest town or even from as far afield as Reykjavík, before he produced a hat from his case for the housewife and another for her husband.
As Flóvent smiled to himself, lost in these scenes, his fingers encountered a bump under the lining of the case, near the handle. The bump was relatively small but it didn’t feel like part of the suitcase. When Flóvent examined it more closely he noticed that the seam appeared to have been unpicked, then sewn up again. He pulled at a loose thread and a pocket opened in the lining, revealing a tiny capsule the size of an aspirin tablet. Thorson, from the sound of it, was in the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers.
The Shadow Killer Page 3