The Shadow Killer

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Until the rumour had been substantiated, he felt it was premature to link Felix Lunden’s disappearance to a possible visit. So far he had not one shred of evidence to suggest that Felix was involved in a plot connected to Churchill or that he was a German assassin. Even supposing the suitcase did belong to him, and the cyanide capsule too, that wasn’t sufficient grounds for such a conclusion. Admittedly the pill was an indication that there was more to Felix Lunden than met the eye and that he might be working for the Germans, but it revealed nothing about an actual Nazi plot in Iceland.

  Flóvent’s acquaintance, Arnfinnur, a man somewhat older than him, said he would make enquiries and get back to him shortly. Then he asked if Flóvent was making any headway with the murder investigation and whether the occupation force was playing ball. Flóvent said it was progressing, slowly, and complained, not for the first time, about a lack of manpower. The Criminal Investigation Department needed more men. Up to now his requests had fallen on deaf ears, but he thought the murder at Felix’s flat might prompt his superiors to remedy the situation. Arnfinnur said he would see what he could do but hinted that since the military police were willing to assist, and the Icelandic force was desperately understaffed at what was after all a difficult time, Flóvent would probably have to make the best of things. Flóvent had heard that one before.

  He had no sooner replaced the receiver after his conversation with Arnfinnur than the phone rang. It was his father, wanting to know if he’d be home soon. Flóvent told him not to wait up, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. His father, who worked on the docks, seldom retired for the night until Flóvent came home. He kept supper warm for his son when Flóvent was held up at work, and made sure he never went to bed hungry. They usually spent their evenings chatting or companionably listening to the wireless, and Flóvent knew that his father treasured these moments. He was a family man who had lost half his family in one fell swoop when his wife and daughter died of the Spanish flu. He and Flóvent bore their sorrow in silence. He had never gone out looking for another woman after his wife died. He was a member of the last generation of Icelanders to experience true hardship, having lived through war, depression and epidemic – all without uttering a word of complaint.

  Flóvent said he was on his way, but as he was hurrying out of the office the phone rang again. He paused in the doorway, then strode back and snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Is that Flóvent?’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know it’s late but I tried to reach you earlier. My name’s Einar. I’m a police officer, and I was on duty at Pósthússtræti this morning when a man came in, a wholesaler. I’ve been thinking about it ever since he left, because of the man you found murdered in that basement flat.’

  ‘Oh? What about him?’

  ‘The wholesaler’s looking for one of his salesmen,’ said the policeman. ‘He thinks he’s made off with his samples and all the cash.’

  ‘Is his name Felix, the salesman in question? Hasn’t the wholesaler heard our appeal for information about him?’

  ‘No, actually, it’s not Felix.’

  ‘Who is it then?’

  ‘I wondered if he could be the man who was killed. The salesman, I mean – the one who’s been reported missing.’

  ‘Can you get hold of him quickly? The wholesaler.’

  ‘Yes, he left a telephone number and –’

  ‘Ring him and tell him to meet me at the National Hospital mortuary in twenty minutes. Tell him it’s urgent. If necessary, we can send a car for him.’

  * * *

  Thorson didn’t know exactly what he was looking for when he left Hótel Borg, not long after saying goodbye to Flóvent. It wasn’t the first time he had embarked on one of these forays into Reykjavík’s nightlife in an attempt to explore his longings and desires, to find answers to the questions that preyed on his mind. He knew he was unusually inexperienced – perhaps because he was so oddly uninterested. His comrades in the military enjoyed their fair share of attention from the local women and some took full advantage of it, while others were more circumspect, put off by the whole sordid Situation. He’d heard stories from his fellow soldiers, some as tragic as they were extraordinary. Stories of questionable morality. Of bizarre pride. Passing through the camps, he would often think of the freezing night when he had stopped to help an inadequately dressed woman who had fallen into a snowdrift. As he drove her home she confided in him that earlier that evening she had slept with three marines in their barracks. But she had refused to take any money for it, she assured Thorson, saying proudly: ‘I wouldn’t want them to think I was some kind of whore.’

  He was headed for Hótel Ísland, a very different, far less classy place than Hótel Borg, consisting of a hotchpotch of wooden buildings that lined the street from Austurstræti to the corner of Adalstræti. The crowd was spilling out into the road outside the dance hall; it was made up mostly of soldiers, a few with women on their arms. When Thorson arrived, a doorman was throwing out a sorry-looking Icelander in shabby clothes, telling him he had no business in there. Thorson hoped it was because he was drunk and not just because he was a local. Recently the Icelandic police had formed the Morality Committee for the Supervision of Minors, and two of its representatives were busy ejecting young girls from the premises despite their protests. Inside, a small jazz band was playing and people were dancing close together in a sweltering fug of cigarette smoke, aftershave and sweat. The noise was deafening, a cacophony of shouts and roars of laughter vying with the music. Thorson edged his way to the bar and bought himself a drink. A drunken sergeant bashed into him. A new consignment of American troops had recently arrived, and he thought their numbers now equalled those of the British and Canadian troops in the dance hall. The local women had already begun to transfer their affections to the Yanks and he soon saw why. The Americans had a lot more money to throw around. They were better groomed. Had broader grins. They were Clark Gable to Britain’s Oliver Twist.

  Thorson looked around the room, where the booze was flowing and the dancers’ feet thundered in time to the music.

  Hótel Ísland. Hotel Iceland.

  It hadn’t occurred to him before just how appropriate the name was. Here you truly got the sense that Iceland was nothing more than a staging post.

  A night’s lodging.

  A one-night stand.

  She was here, as she had been on previous weekends, with a group of marines, but when she spotted him she came straight over and asked if he was going to buy her a drink. He ordered a gin: she had said it was her favourite tipple. They clinked glasses. She was grateful that he spoke Icelandic because she barely knew a word of English. It was a shame he was practically an Icelander, she said, because he looked very dashing in his uniform. Then she laughed because she had a sunny disposition and was easily amused, and he felt comfortable with her. He had learnt quite a bit about her, as she didn’t mind talking about herself, though he put no pressure on her to do so. She was at least ten years older than him, dark-haired, with thick ringlets snaking down to her shoulders, and a curvaceous figure. Her face had lost some of its bloom, which he put down to a fast lifestyle, but her eyes were still beautiful and almost completely round. They grew impossibly wide whenever she repeated, or heard, something she found odd or interesting. A friend of hers had met ever such a nice British soldier from Brighton, she told him, and they were head over heels in love. Of course Thorson knew that Hótel Ísland also had its heart-warming tales: love blossoming across oceans, fairy tales where men and women found their soulmates while war raged on in the outside world, and that this love could be pure and innocent.

  ‘Have you made up your mind?’ she asked, once they had drained their glasses.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Got the money?’

  He put his hand to his pocket but she stopped him.

  ‘Not here, darling. Come on.’

  * * *

  Baldur was annoyed at being phoned so
late at night and initially refused to meet Flóvent at the mortuary, before eventually giving in. Flóvent was waiting for him outside and apologised profusely when the doctor, who lived near the hospital, emerged from the darkness on his bicycle. At that moment a lorry drove up with a roar and out stepped the wholesaler. He asked which of them was Flóvent.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked, shaking both their hands. ‘The cop who rang said he’d have to arrest me if I didn’t get over here straight away.’

  ‘Thank you for coming, sir,’ said Flóvent. ‘I understand you’re missing one of your salesmen.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the wholesaler. He had lit one of his cheap cigars on the way over and was sucking on it avidly. ‘Let’s drop the “sir”, shall we? Do you think he’s in here?’

  ‘Let’s go and see, shall we?’ said Flóvent. Baldur opened the door for them and they followed him inside. He pulled the trolley out of the cold storage unit and rolled it under the unforgiving lights of the mortuary.

  ‘I warn you,’ said Flóvent. ‘The man was shot in the head and he’s not a pretty sight, though Baldur here has done his best to tidy him up, so –’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ interrupted the wholesaler. ‘There’s no need. I used to work in an abattoir when I was younger.’

  ‘This is no abattoir,’ boomed Baldur.

  There was a white sheet covering the corpse. Baldur lifted it back, and they saw the instant recognition on the wholesaler’s face.

  ‘Yes, that’s him. No question. Hardly surprising I couldn’t get in touch with him, is it?’ He seemed to feel compelled to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Flóvent. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Eyvindur,’ replied the wholesaler. ‘I knew he’d come back to town on the Súd, but I had no idea he’d ended up here with you.’

  ‘Eyvindur?’

  ‘Yes, the poor chap,’ said the wholesaler. ‘One of the worst salesmen I’ve ever had,’ he added, inadvertently showering the body with ash from his cigar.

  * * *

  She got up off the mattress and wriggled back into her knickers, put on her bra, slipped her dress over her snaking locks and smoothed it down, then looked at him with those large, quizzical eyes that missed nothing but suspected so much.

  ‘It happens to everyone, darling,’ she said, but she didn’t sound very convincing. ‘Don’t worry about it. This place doesn’t exactly help. I wish I could have offered you something better.’

  Thorson glanced briefly around the shed, then buttoned up his trousers and pulled on his shirt, wishing the floor would swallow him up. He mumbled something and tripped over a pile of nets as he slunk out into the August night, then hurried back to his room at Hótel Borg.

  18

  Flóvent saw at once that something was missing from the flat. He realised what it was when he opened the wardrobe in the bedroom and noticed that all the clothes were gone from one side. Then he remembered what the wholesaler had said about the woman Eyvindur lived with: that she hadn’t been home either when he called round. He checked the cupboard in the hall. Same story. Only men’s clothing. He surveyed the flat. From all the small touches that were absent, it was plain that there wasn’t a woman living there now.

  Apart from that the wholesaler hadn’t been a great deal of help. He knew little about Eyvindur, though he was able to tell them that his patronymic was Ragnarsson and that he had worked for him for nearly a year, undertaking numerous sales trips during that time. The fruits of these trips had been pretty meagre, though the wholesaler admitted that he hadn’t always given Eyvindur the best or easiest goods to shift. He believed the man was honest, though he had admittedly suspected him of theft when he hadn’t shown up after his latest trip. He also told them that Eyvindur lived with a woman – Vera he thought her name was – but she hadn’t been home in the last few days when he had gone round to their flat. He’d heard a rumour that she’d left Eyvindur.

  They weren’t married, as far as the wholesaler knew, and had no children. But Eyvindur never used to speak about himself, except when he complained about the presence of the occupation force and said there was no way he would ever work for British imperialists. Still less for American capitalists. Mind you, he hadn’t been any better disposed towards the Germans. The wholesaler had heard him roundly cursing the Nazis too.

  There had been nothing out of the ordinary about Eyvindur’s last sales trip, or any of his other trips, for that matter. He generally sailed with the coaster Súd and went ashore at selected destinations; he would stay for a few days before returning with the boat and reporting back with the proceeds and orders, if there were any. So his employer couldn’t begin to imagine who would have possibly wanted him out of the way. He had been an innocent soul, as the wholesaler put it – never hurt a fly, to the best of his knowledge. Why he should have been round at Felix Lunden’s flat was a mystery to him. Of course they were both commercial travellers, but he wasn’t aware that they knew each other outside work. The wholesaler knew who Felix was, but only by reputation. He worked for another company, he explained and supplied a name, which Flóvent committed to memory.

  Too impatient to wait until morning to examine the victim’s flat, Flóvent went straight from the mortuary to the address, which the wholesaler had given him, in the west of town. He saw no need to bring in Thorson at this stage, but called out a locksmith who worked for the police when required. The man picked the lock in no time, then went home again, leaving Flóvent alone in the flat. Sparsely and shabbily furnished, it consisted of a small living room and kitchen, a bedroom and a WC. Nothing new, nothing modern. Clearly the couple who lived there had been hard up. There were three photographs on a chest of drawers, two of them portraits of old people, the third a picture of a young couple that was a little out of focus – Eyvindur and Vera themselves, Flóvent guessed.

  ‘Why did you jump to the conclusion that Eyvindur had stolen from you?’ Flóvent had asked the wholesaler as they were saying goodbye outside the mortuary. ‘Had he ever done that before?’

  ‘Good God, no. But I was owed some money by a client in the West Fjords and I’d asked Eyvindur to call in the debt. I know for certain that he received the money, so, when I couldn’t get hold of him, naturally the possibility crossed my mind. But as far as I know Eyvindur was as honest as the day is long.’

  ‘Would he have been carrying money, then?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t a large amount,’ said the wholesaler. ‘Perhaps he spent it. But you’ll let me know if you find anything among his possessions, won’t you?’

  Flóvent found Eyvindur’s wallet on the kitchen table. It contained nothing but small change. He searched the flat for the wholesaler’s money but couldn’t find it. There hadn’t been any cash on the body either, and he wondered if Eyvindur could have been murdered for a handful of krónur from the West Fjords. The notion seemed far-fetched. He had no reason to suspect the wholesaler – the man seemed honest enough – but Flóvent knew he shouldn’t eliminate him from his enquiries. Could he have killed Eyvindur over a paltry sum like that? Was his concern for the salesman a front? He could have reported Eyvindur to the police with the intention of putting them off the scent. Such a ploy wasn’t unheard of. Sometimes the best place to hide was in plain sight.

  The only interesting discovery Flóvent made during this preliminary inspection of the flat was a small crumpled brown envelope, half hidden under the battered sofa in the living room, as if someone had chucked it there. When he smoothed it out, he realised what it was; he’d come across that sort of thing before, and tried but failed to understand the writing on it: Individual Chemical Prophylactic Packet. The envelope had contained what was popularly known by the soldiers as an EPT kit. This one was empty but there should have been a sheet of directions, a soap-impregnated cloth, a cleansing tissue and five grams of antiseptic ointment for application to the genitals. The kits, which were issued to the troops on a regular basis, were inte
nded to provide protection against venereal disease.

  Flóvent pocketed the envelope and searched for further clues about the woman who had been living with Eyvindur but seemed to have vanished from his life. He studied the blurred photo again and was just hunting for any letters or messages when he heard a noise outside in the hallway. He went out to see what was going on and found a man wrestling with the door of the flat opposite. ‘Damn it,’ he heard the man say with a sigh, and saw that he was trying, rather ineffectually, to free the key that had jammed in the lock. The man nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Flóvent emerging from Eyvindur’s flat.

  ‘Wh … what … Who are you?’ he stammered, gaping at Flóvent in alarm.

  ‘I’m from the police. Do you live here?’

  ‘Well … yes, I … I’m having a bit of trouble with the key,’ said the man, turning back to the lock. Flóvent reckoned he was drunk, too drunk to open his own front door without a struggle. ‘I had a new key cut,’ the man explained, ‘but it sometimes gets stuck in the lock. Are the police looking … looking for Eyvindur, then?’

  ‘Have you seen him recently?’ asked Flóvent, deliberately withholding the news of Eyvindur’s fate. A reek of spirits filled the hallway.

  ‘No, I haven’t a clue where he is. You should talk to his uncle. He owns the flat. He might know something.’

  ‘Has he been round here looking for him? Have people been asking after him, that you’re aware?’