‘No, the motive’s not clear,’ said Flóvent.
‘He was always rather alone in the world, poor lad. Had a tough time of it. I let him live here for a song, considering what I could have charged these days. If I’d known what she … what that Vera was up to while he was away, carrying on her sordid trade here, I’d have thrown her out.’
‘Do you by any chance know where she is, sir?’
‘No need for formality, young man – and no, I don’t, and I don’t want to. She can go to the devil, for all I care. Isn’t she behind this whole thing? I never liked her. Never. Wasn’t this just her way of getting rid of the boy? They said on the wireless that he’d been shot with a soldier’s pistol.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Isn’t it obvious then?’ asked the uncle, addressing Thorson now. ‘Wasn’t it one of you lot? Isn’t that … so-called army of yours nothing but a parcel of murderers and good-for-nothings? She must have talked one of them into shooting my nephew. It wouldn’t have been difficult. She wanted to carry on her whoring in peace. Eyvindur must have been pestering her, begging her to come back, so she egged on some soldier-boy to get rid of him. Isn’t that the most likely story?’
‘Do you know if your nephew had any dealings with the military?’ asked Thorson, ignoring the man’s conjecture. It was obvious that he had a grudge against the occupation force. This was nothing new.
‘As far as I know, he had nothing to do with them. But Vera, on the other hand … She seems to have been busy keeping them happy and earning a bit of money on the side.’
‘Did Eyvindur ever mention this? That he was afraid of Vera? Of what she might do to him?’
‘No. Eyvindur would never have done anything to upset her. She had him completely under her thumb. Bit of a doormat, he was. Let her push him around. Hardly drew breath without asking her permission. I reckon it was her that persuaded him to go in for this sales racket. Ordered him, more like. I could tell from the way he talked about it. She wanted him out of her hair, said he was smothering her. Of course, she only did it to get him out of the way, so she could carry on with her whoring in peace. Eyvindur was no salesman. He said so himself.’
‘When did he say that?’
‘Not that long ago. He was paying me part of the rent he owed, and said he didn’t have much money and that Vera was always complaining. There was all sorts of stuff she wanted. I felt a bit sorry for the lad as he was already months behind with his rent. None of my other tenants would have got away with that. I thought of using him as a rent collector, but I knew he’d be hopeless. People would laugh in his face. Strange, that. They wouldn’t have laughed at my brother.’
‘At Eyvindur’s father, you mean?’
‘Ragnar Ragnarsson. You ought to recognise the name if you’re not a complete greenhorn.’
‘Ragnar Ragnarsson? You don’t mean…?’
‘Spent years behind bars. You ought to know who he was.’
Flóvent did indeed recognise the name and remembered having to deal with the man in his early days with the force. Recalled an ugly, powerfully built thug with tattoos up both arms. An arrest after a violent brawl at a drinking hole. A charge for assault. Ragnar had gone berserk when the police arrested him. His victim, a younger man, had been in a state of shock, more dead than alive when they reached the scene and got him to a doctor. He hadn’t known his assailant from Adam. Flóvent also remembered other occasions when Ragnar Ragnarsson had come to the attention of the police. Smuggling, burglaries, beatings. Then suddenly he was gone. Fell ill while serving a lengthy sentence. There had been a delay in calling out a doctor and by the time they got him to hospital he was dead. Flóvent heard later that it was a blood clot in the brain that had killed him.
‘I remember him well,’ he said, unable to hide his surprise. ‘You mean he was Eyvindur’s father?’
‘You wouldn’t exactly say Eyvindur was a chip off the old block,’ said Sigfús. ‘I’ve never met two men more different than Eyvindur and his father. I’d swear that boy didn’t have a drop of his blood. And the lad paid the price for that.’
‘Of course, Ragnar was a bully and a jail—’
‘Careful how you talk about him. I know he was no angel, but he was still my brother.’
‘No angel?’ Flóvent repeated. ‘He was a vicious brute. No one shed a tear at the station when they heard he’d kicked the bucket. It just meant one less thug on the streets.’
‘Well, say what you like,’ said Sigfús, ‘I’m not going to argue with you. What have you got there? Are those Eyvindur’s photographs?’
Flóvent passed him the photograph they had found in the trunk, and Sigfús said it was of his own parents, a farming couple who had only visited Reykjavík once in their lives and had the photograph taken as a souvenir. The school anniversary booklet was new to him, though, and so was the photograph it featured, though he immediately identified Eyvindur as one of the two bareheaded boys.
‘We believe one of the adults is the headmaster, Ebeneser,’ said Flóvent. ‘Do you have any idea who the other people are?’
‘No, I … Isn’t that a nurse?’
‘We think so.’
‘I seem to remember Eyvindur talking about a nurse at his school. I used to have him to stay when … when things were difficult at home.’
‘What did he have to say about her?’
‘Oh, only that there was a woman there who was kind to him,’ said Sigfús. ‘No more than that. I have a feeling it was the nurse.’
‘Do you remember her name?’
‘No, I don’t. Don’t recall if he ever told me her name. Only that she treated him well. Was kind to him. They weren’t all kind. I expect that’s why he talked about it. It wasn’t what he was used to at home, poor lad. Totally neglected, he was. Crawling with lice the times I looked after him.’
‘What about his mother?’ asked Thorson.
‘She died before he was confirmed. Didn’t take much notice of him when she was alive, mind you. She was a drunk. But then the wretched woman didn’t have an easy time of it with my brother.’ Sigfús looked back at the picture. ‘This boy here…’ he said thoughtfully, pointing at the other bareheaded pupil.
‘Yes?’
‘He used to knock around with Eyvindur a bit. If I remember right, they used to play together sometimes when the lad was living with me. A foreigner, or he had a foreign sort of name, at any rate.’
‘Could it have been Lunden? Felix Lunden?’
‘Felix? Yes, damn it, that was it.’
‘You mean he and Eyvindur were at the same school?’
‘I think so, yes. As far as I can tell, that’s him – the Lunden boy.’
‘Have you heard where your nephew’s body was found?’ asked Flóvent.
‘Yes, in some flat here in town. I was going to ask you about that. Round at some other salesman’s place, wasn’t it?’
‘It was at the home of a man called Felix Lunden.’
Sigfús stared at Flóvent as if he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘What are you saying? Is it … was it him who shot Eyvindur?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Isn’t it as plain as day? Where is he? Where is this Felix?’
‘We don’t know that either.’
‘Is he … has he gone into hiding? Damn it to hell! It was him, wasn’t it? He was the one who killed Eyvindur!’
21
There was no answer when they knocked at Rudolf Lunden’s door. Flóvent pressed his face to the windows but couldn’t see any movement inside. Thorson did a circuit of the house but saw no sign of life. The place was locked up and lightless, as if no one had ever lived there. Not even the mild August sun could soften the cold, dark pebble-dash of its walls.
Having drawn a blank, they headed over to the headmaster’s house, only to be told that he was at the school. His wife smiled at these two policemen who had come to see her husband, her eyes flickering towards Thorson’s uniform. In spite of her friendly manner s
he couldn’t conceal her surprise. It appeared that Ebeneser hadn’t told her about their visit the day before. She made polite but determined efforts to discover why they wanted to see him, but they gave nothing away.
Eyvindur’s uncle had been unable to tell them any more about his nephew’s friendship with Felix Lunden. Eyvindur hadn’t had many friends, he said, and it was rare for anyone to come round to see him. And Eyvindur hadn’t wanted them to anyway. He was ashamed of his home and afraid of his father.
‘Ragnar used to raise his fist to the lad,’ Sigfús had said as they were parting, and they sensed his growing reluctance to talk about his brother. ‘Nothing serious, as these things go,’ he continued, ‘though I suppose that sort of thing’s always serious. Eyvindur was, well, he was scared of Ragnar. That’s another reason why I let him stay with me.’
‘Were they good friends, Eyvindur and Felix?’
‘I expect so, good enough,’ said Sigfús. ‘At least, I remember they used to knock around together.’
‘Did Eyvindur ever mention Felix again after they left school? Recently, for instance? Do you know if they kept in touch?’
‘No, I never heard Eyvindur talk about him.’
That was all they could prise out of the man. Following this encounter, Flóvent was keen to speak to the woman he’d caught sight of in Rudolf’s window, to ask her when the photograph had been taken and why, and he wanted to hear about her dealings with Eyvindur as a boy. He and Thorson both felt that Eyvindur and Felix’s old friendship could hold the key to the mystery – why Eyvindur had been murdered in the flat of ‘the Lunden boy’, as the uncle called him, and why Felix had fled.
‘Why was a doctor’s son playing with a lice-ridden boy from a bad home?’ asked Thorson after they had taken their leave of Ebeneser’s wife. ‘The son of a violent convict and an unfit mother?’
‘It’s not so unlikely in this town,’ said Flóvent. ‘We’re a small community, and people are connected in a variety of ways, though the class divisions here are bigger than many are willing to admit. Their paths are bound to have crossed later on as well, as adults. Especially once they both started working in the same business.’
‘And it all ends with Eyvindur getting shot in the head?’
‘Yes, it ends in disaster.’
‘Surely the most likely explanation is that Felix shot him?’
‘Yes, I think that’s very likely.’
‘Eyvindur must have got hold of a key to his flat.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And Felix caught him in the act…?’
They finally located Ebeneser in a classroom at the school. He was bending down behind the teacher’s desk and nearly jumped out of his skin when the two of them walked in without warning. The classroom was on the small side; all the furniture was designed for the youngest boys, and the three men were out of all proportion to the tiny desks and chairs.
‘You … you here?’ stammered Ebeneser, hurriedly straightening up. ‘I thought … I thought I’d answered all your questions?’
‘Yes, I just need to run a few more things past you,’ said Flóvent, shaking his hand and noticing, as he did so, that the other man’s palm was clammy. The headmaster didn’t look much better than he had on his return from his fishing trip. His hair was still tousled, he was unshaven and his suit could have done with a clean. At that moment a bottle of brennivín rolled out from under the teacher’s desk and came to a halt against one of the legs with a loud clunk.
‘Aha … there … there it is,’ said Ebeneser quickly, as though he had caught somebody out. ‘That sort of thing has no place here.’ Hastily he stooped to pick up the bottle. ‘We can’t be having that. Unfortunately … I knew he kept it here, you see … or I … that is, I suspected him … of having it, and yes, here it … so that’s clear then.’ He placed the bottle on the desk. Then, thinking better of it, shoved it in a drawer.
Flóvent didn’t think Ebeneser had been drinking. If he had, he hid it well. But they had obviously walked in on the headmaster at an awkward moment. Flóvent behaved as if he hadn’t noticed anything: he wanted to keep Ebeneser sweet. Thorson adopted the same approach. They allowed him to stage this little play without comment; after all, it was none of their business.
‘We’re trying to, er … trying to get to grips with the problem,’ said Ebeneser, pulling himself together. ‘I’m sorry you had to witness that. The master in question … he … well, never mind, I wasn’t … really wasn’t expecting to see you here, to be honest. You’ve a knack of taking one by surprise.’
‘We heard you were here,’ Flóvent explained, suddenly remembering that he hadn’t had a moment to check Ebeneser’s alibi. He reminded himself to remedy this the first chance he got.
‘Was Felix a pupil at this school?’ asked Thorson.
‘Felix was here, yes.’
‘You taught him yourself, maybe?’
‘Yes, on occasion.’
‘Was he a good pupil?’
‘He was an exceptional pupil.’
‘He had a promising future, then?’
‘Yes, that’s fair to say.’
‘Yet he ended up as a travelling salesman?’
Ebeneser hesitated, unsure how to take this comment.
‘Weren’t people expecting a little more from him?’ asked Flóvent. ‘With all due respect to salesmen, of course. His occupation must have been rather a disappointment to his family. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I imagine his father expected more of him, yes, probably. If that’s what you mean.’
‘But it didn’t do any good?’
‘Felix tried to continue his education but didn’t seem to … er … have what it took any more. He left Reykjavík College without taking his exams and went abroad. To Denmark. To his father’s family. I thought I’d already told you that. He didn’t complete his education there either.’
‘Do you remember a pupil of yours called Eyvindur?’ asked Flóvent. ‘Eyvindur Ragnarsson? He would have been about Felix’s age.’
Ebeneser thought. He was recovering his composure. ‘Eyvindur Ragnarsson? Yes, I remember a boy by that name. He was a pupil here about ten years ago, if memory serves. At the same time as Felix. He had a tough time of it, the poor boy. A difficult home. His father –’
‘Yes, we know all about Ragnar,’ said Flóvent.
‘He was a nasty piece of work,’ Ebeneser went on. ‘An out-and-out criminal. From what I recall, Eyvindur had to be taken away from his parents – temporarily, at least – on more than one occasion. There was always trouble at home. The child welfare authorities had to be brought in. They were forever having to intervene. His mother wasn’t fit to look after him.’
‘Do you remember her?’
‘Not really. She was never around for Eyvindur. Nor was his father, of course. Appalling neglect, I’m afraid. One of the worst cases we’ve seen at this school.’
‘Forgive me for jumping from one thing to another, but why did you say that Felix no longer had what it took?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You said Felix had tried to continue his education at Reykjavík College but didn’t have what it took any more. What did you mean by that? Did he have what it took before? If so, what changed?’
Ebeneser said he didn’t follow. He eyed the drawer containing the brennivín bottle as if he wished they would go away and leave him to carry on where he had left off. He was afraid he couldn’t help them, he said. He was due at a meeting. If they wanted to discuss these matters further – though why they should was a mystery to him – it would be better if they called and arranged an appointment. He could receive them at the school or at his house at a time that suited them. But now, alas, he was busy, if they would be so kind …
Ebeneser prepared to leave the room. Although the man’s discomfort was plain, Flóvent still hadn’t obtained the information he was after. ‘But we haven’t discussed the boys yet,’ he said.
‘The boys?’ said Ebeneser c
onfused. ‘What boys?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Flóvent. ‘I was hoping you could enlighten me.’
‘Which boys are you referring to?’
‘The boys you were arguing about with Rudolf Lunden.’
22
Ebeneser stared at Flóvent without saying a word. As Flóvent waited patiently for an answer the silence in the little classroom grew more and more oppressive. The three of them seemed to be the only people in the building. There were still a few weeks left before term began and the corridors filled again with children, sunburnt and boisterous after their long summer break. At this time of year the building was cold and silent. It gave Flóvent such a strange empty feeling, walking through the echoing corridors of a school during the summer holidays.
‘I … I’m afraid I’m not with you,’ said the headmaster eventually, folding his arms.
‘You said you hadn’t seen Rudolf lately but we happen to know that’s not true,’ said Flóvent. ‘We know you went to his house recently and we’d be grateful if you’d tell us more about your meeting.’
‘I … as I said, I can’t help you with that…’
‘You did meet?’
‘Well, since you’re so determined to have an answer,’ said Ebeneser, who seemed to have finally made up his mind about what to say, ‘we did meet briefly the other day. I didn’t think there was any need to mention it because … he … It concerned a private matter that I don’t believe is any of your business. I don’t know where you got your information from, but it’s not unusual for me to talk to Rudolf. He’s my brother-in-law. Did he tell you about our meeting?’
‘Is it unusual for you to avoid talking about it?’ chipped in Thorson. ‘You seem very reluctant to do so.’
‘No, it’s not that I’m reluctant. To be frank, it’s simply none of your business,’ said Ebeneser, on a firmer note. ‘Look, can we bring this to a close? I’m extremely busy.’
‘In a minute,’ said Flóvent. ‘What did you two discuss? Your nephew Felix? Who were the boys you were talking about?’
The Shadow Killer Page 11