Those were his ghosts.
10
Marion Briem seemed a little livelier when Erlendur called by the next morning. He had managed to dig up a John Wayne western. It was called The Searchers and seemed to cheer up Marion, who asked him to put it in the video player.
“Since when have you watched westerns?” Erlendur asked.
“I’ve always liked westerns,” Marion said. The oxygen mask lay on the table beside the chair in the living room. “The best ones tell simple stories about simple people. I’d have thought you’d enjoy that kind of thing. Western stories. A country bumpkin like you.”
“I never liked the cinema,” Erlendur said.
“Making any headway with Kleifarvatn?” Marion asked.
“What does it tell us when a skeleton, probably dating from the 1960s, is found tied to a Russian listening device?” Erlendur asked.
“Isn’t there only one possibility?” Marion said.
“Espionage?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it might be a genuine Icelandic spy in the lake?”
“Who says he’s Icelandic?”
“Isn’t that a fairly straightforward assumption?”
“There’s nothing to say he’s Icelandic,” Marion said, suddenly bursting into a fit of coughing and gasping for breath. “Hand me the oxygen, I feel better when I’ve got oxygen.”
Erlendur reached for the mask, put it over Marion’s face and turned on the oxygen cylinder. He wondered whether to call a nurse or even a doctor. Marion seemed to read his thoughts.
“Relax. I don’t need any more help. A nurse will be round later.”
“I shouldn’t be tiring you out like this.”
“Don’t go yet. You’re the only visitor I can be bothered to talk to. And the only one who could conceivably give me a cigarette.”
“I’m not going to give you a cigarette.”
There was silence until Marion removed the mask again.
“Did any Icelanders spy during the Cold War?” Erlendur asked.
“I don’t know,” Marion said. “I know that people tried to get them to. I remember one bloke who came to us and said the Russians never left him alone.” Marion’s eyes closed. “It was an exceptionally cheesy spy story, but very Icelandic, of course.”
The Russians had contacted the man to ask if he would help them. They needed information about the Keflavik base and its buildings. The Russians took the matter seriously and wanted to meet the man in an isolated place outside the city. He found them very pushy and could not get rid of them. Although he refused to do what they asked, they would not listen and in the end he gave in. He contacted the police and a simple sting was set up. When the man drove off to meet the Russians by Lake Hafravatn there were two police officers in the car with him, hiding under a blanket. Other policemen had taken up positions nearby. The Russians suspected nothing until the police officers got out of the man’s car and arrested them.
“They were expelled,” Marion said, with a pained smile at the thought of the Russians” amateurish attempts at spying. “I always remember their names: Kisilev and Dimitriev.”
“I wanted to see if you remembered someone from Reykjavik who went missing in the 1960s,” Erlendur said. “A man who sold farm machinery and diggers. He failed to turn up for a meeting with a farmer just outside town and he’s never been heard of since.”
“I remember that well. Niels handled that case. The lazy bastard.”
“Yes, quite,” said Erlendur, who knew Niels. “The man owned a Ford Falcon that was found outside the coach station. One hubcap had been removed.”
“Didn’t he just want to give his old girl the slip? As far as I recall that was our conclusion. That he killed himself.”
“Could be,” Erlendur said.
Marion’s eyes closed again. Erlendur sat on the sofa in silence for a while, watching the film while Marion slept. The video-box blurb described how John Wayne played a Confederate Civil War veteran hunting down the Indians who had killed his brother and sister-in-law and kidnapped their daughter. The soldier spent years searching for the girl and when he found her at last she had forgotten where she came from and become an Indian herself.
After twenty minutes Erlendur stood up and said goodbye to Marion, who was still sleeping under the mask.
When he arrived at the police station, Erlendur sat down with Elinborg, who was writing her speech for the book launch. Sigurdur Oli was in her office too. He said he had traced the sales history of the Falcon right up to the most recent owner.
“He sold the car to a spare-parts dealer in Kopavogur some time before 1980,” Sigurdur Oli said. “The company’s still in business. They just won’t answer the phone. Maybe they’re on holiday.”
“Anything new from forensics about the listening device?” Erlendur asked, and he noticed that Elinborg was moving her lips while she stared at the computer screen, as if she was trying out how the speech sounded.
“Elinborg!” he barked.
She lifted a finger to tell him to wait.
“…And I hope that this book of mine,” she read out loud from the screen, “will bring you endless pleasure in the kitchen and broaden your horizons. I have tried to keep it plain and simple, tried to emphasise the household spirit, because cookery and the kitchen are the focal point…”
“Very good,” Erlendur said.
“Wait,” Elinborg said. “…The focal point of every good household where the family gathers every day to relax and enjoy happy times together.”
“Elinborg,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Is it too sentimental?” Elinborg asked, pulling a face.
“It makes me puke,” Sigurdur Oli said.
Elinborg looked at Erlendur.
“What did forensics say about the equipment?” he asked.
“They’re still looking at it,” Elinborg said. “They’re trying to get in touch with experts from Iceland Telecom.”
“I was thinking about all that equipment they found in Kleifarvatn years ago,” Sigurdur Oli said, “and this one tied to the skeleton. Shouldn’t we talk to some old codger from the diplomatic service?”
“Yes, find out who we can speak to,” Erlendur said. “Someone who remembers the Cold War.”
“Are we talking about spying in Iceland?” Elinborg asked.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said.
“Isn’t that pretty absurd?” Elinborg said.
“No more than “where the family gathers every day to relax and enjoy happy times together”,” Sigurdur Oli parroted her.
“Oh, shut up,” Elinborg said, and deleted what she had written.
Wrecked cars were kept behind a large fence, stacked six high in some places. Some had been written off, others were just old and worn out. The spare-parts dealer looked the same, a weary man approaching sixty, in a filthy, ripped pair of overalls that had once been light blue. He was tearing the front bumper off a new Japanese car that had been hit from behind and had concertinaed right up to the front seats.
Erlendur stood sizing up the debris until the man looked up.
“A lorry went into the back of it,” he said. “Lucky there was no one in the back seat.”
“A brand new car too,” Erlendur said.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m after a black Ford Falcon,” Erlendur said. “It was sold or given away to this yard around 1980.”
“A Ford Falcon?”
“It’s hopeless, of course — I know,” Erlendur said.
“It would have been old when it came here,” the man said, pulling out a rag to wipe his hands. “They stopped making Falcons around 1970, maybe earlier.”
“You mean you didn’t have any use for it?”
“Most Falcons were off the streets long before 1980. Why are you looking for it? Do you need spares? Are you doing it up?”
Erlendur told him that he was from the police and that the car was connected with an old case of a missing perso
n. The man’s interest was aroused. He said he had bought the business from a man called Haukur in the mid-1980s but did not recall any Ford Falcon in the stock. The previous owner, who had died years ago, had kept a record of all the wrecks he’d bought, said the dealer, and showed Erlendur into a little room filled to the ceiling with files and boxes of papers.
“These are our books,” the man said with an apologetic smile. “We, er, never throw anything away. You’re welcome to take a look. I couldn’t be bothered to keep records of the cars, never saw the point, but he did it conscientiously.”
Erlendur thanked him and began examining the files, which were all marked on the spine with a year. Spotting a stack from the 1970s, he started there. He did not know why he was looking for this car. Even if it did exist, he had no idea how it could help him. Sigurdur Oli had asked why he was interested in this particular missing person over the others he had heard about in the past few days. Erlendur had no proper answer. Sigurdur Oli would never have understood what he meant if he had told him that he was preoccupied by a lonely woman who believed she had found happiness at last, fidgeting outside a dairy shop, looking at her watch and waiting for the man she loved.
Three hours later, when Erlendur was on the verge of giving up and the owner had asked him repeatedly whether he had turned up anything, he found what he was looking for: an invoice for the car. The dealer had sold a black Ford Falcon on 21 October 1979, engine defunct, interior in reasonable condition, good lacquering. No licence plates. Stapled to the sheet of paper describing the sale was a pencilled invoice: Falcon 1967. 35,000 kronur. Buyer: Hermann Albertsson.
11
The First Secretary at the Russian embassy in Reykjavik was the same age as Erlendur but thinner and considerably healthier-looking. When he received them he seemed to make a special effort to be casual. He was wearing khaki trousers and said, with a smile, that he was on his way to the golf course. He showed Erlendur and Elinborg to their seats in his office, then sat down behind a large desk and smiled broadly. He knew the reason for their visit. The meeting had been arranged well in advance so Erlendur was surprised to hear the golfing excuse. He had the impression that they were supposed to rush through the meeting and then disappear. They spoke English and, although the First Secretary was aware of the reason for the enquiry, Elinborg briefly repeated the need for the meeting. A Russian listening device had been found tied to the skeleton of a man probably murdered and thrown into Lake Kleifarvatn some time after 1961. The discovery of the Russian equipment had still not leaked to the press.
“There have been a number of Soviet and Russian ambassadors in Iceland since 1960,” the Secretary said, smiling self-confidently as if none of what they had related was any of his business. “Those who were here in the 1960s and early 1970s are long since dead. I doubt that they knew anything about Russian equipment in that lake. Any more than I do.”
He smiled. Erlendur smiled back.
“But you spied here in Iceland during the Cold War? Or at least tried to.”
“That was before my time,” the Secretary said. “I couldn’t say.”
“Do you mean you don’t spy any more?”
“Why would we spy? We just go on the Internet like everyone else. Besides, your military base isn’t so important any more. If it matters at all. The conflict zones have shifted. America doesn’t need an aircraft carrier like Iceland any more. No one can understand what they’re doing here with that expensive base. If this were Turkey I could understand.”
“It’s not our military base,” Elinborg said.
“We know that some embassy staff were expelled from Iceland on suspicion of spying,” Erlendur said. “When things were very tense in the Cold War.”
“Then you know more than I do,” the Secretary said. “And of course it is your military base,” he added, looking at Elinborg. “If we did have spies in this embassy then there were certainly twice as many CIA agents at the US embassy. Have you asked them? The description of the skeleton you found suggests to me — how should one put it — a mafia killing. Had that occurred to you? Concrete boots and deep water. It’s almost like an American gangster movie.”
“It was Russian equipment,” Erlendur said. “Tied to the body. The skeleton…”
“That tells us nothing,” the Secretary said. “There were embassies or offices from other Warsaw Pact countries that used Soviet equipment. It need not be connected with our embassy.”
“We have a detailed description of the device with us, and photographs,” Elinborg said, handing them to him. “Can you tell us anything about how it was used? Who used it?”
“I am not familiar with this equipment,” the Secretary said as he looked at the photographs. “Sorry. I will enquire, though. But even if we did recognise it, we can’t help you very much.”
“Couldn’t you give it a try?” Erlendur asked.
The Secretary smiled.
“You’ll just have to believe me. The skeleton in the lake has nothing to do with this embassy or its staff. Neither in the present, nor in the past.”
“We believe it’s a listening device,” Elinborg said. “It is tuned to the old wavelength of the American troops in Keflavik.”
“I can’t comment on that,” the Secretary said, looking at his watch. His round of golf was waiting.
“If you had spied in the old days, which you didn’t,” Erlendur said, “what would you have been interested in?”
The Secretary hesitated for an instant.
“If we had been doing anything then obviously we would have wanted to observe the base, the transportation of military hardware, movements of warships, aircraft, submarines. We would have wanted to know about America’s capability at any time. That’s obvious. We would have wanted to know about what was going on at the base and other military installations in Iceland. They were all over the place. Not just in Keflavik. There were activities all over Iceland. We would also have monitored the activities of other embassies, domestic politics, political parties and that sort of thing.”
“A lot of equipment was found in Lake Kleifarvatn in 1973,” Erlendur said. “Transmitters, microwave equipment, tape recorders, even radios. All from Warsaw Pact countries. Mostly from the Soviet Union.”
“I’m not aware of the incident,” the Secretary said.
“No, of course not,” Erlendur said. “But what reason could there have been for throwing that equipment in the lake? Did you use a particular method for getting rid of old stuff?”
“I’m afraid I cannot assist you with that,” the Secretary said, no longer smiling. “I’ve tried to answer you as best I can but there are some things I simply don’t know. And that’s that.”
Erlendur and Elinborg stood up. There was a smugness about the man that Erlendur disliked. Your base! What did he know about military bases in Iceland?
“Was the equipment obsolete, so there was no point in sending it home in a diplomatic bag?” he asked. “Couldn’t you throw it away like any other rubbish? These devices clearly demonstrate that spying went on in Iceland. When the world was much simpler and the lines were clearly drawn.”
“You can say what you like about it,” the Secretary said, standing up. “I have to be somewhere else.”
“The man whose body was found in Kleifarvatn, could he have been at the embassy?”
“I think that’s out of the question.”
“Or from another Eastern bloc embassy?”
“I don’t think there’s the slightest chance. And now I must ask you to—”
“Are there any persons missing from this period?”
“No.”
“You just know that? You don’t need to look it up?”
“I have looked it up. No one is missing.”
“No one who disappeared and you don’t know what became of them?”
“Goodbye,” the Secretary said, with a smile. He had opened the door.
“Definitely no one who disappeared?” Erlendur said as he walked out into t
he corridor.
“No one,” the Secretary said, and closed the door in their faces.
Sigurdur Oli was refused a meeting with the US ambassador or his staff. Instead he received a message from the embassy marked “confidential” which stated that no US citizen in Iceland had been reported missing during the period in question. Sigurdur Oli wanted to take the matter further and insist on a meeting, but his request was denied by the top CID officials. The police would need something tangible to link the body in the lake to the US embassy, the base or American citizens in Iceland.
Sigurdur Oli telephoned a friend of his, a head of section at the Defence Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to ask whether he could locate any past employee to tell the police about foreign embassy officials in the 1960s and 1970s. He tried to give away as little as possible about the investigation, just enough to arouse his interest, and his friend promised to get back to him.
Erlendur stood awkwardly, a glass of white wine in his hand, scouring the crowd at Elinborg’s book launch. He had found it quite difficult to make up his mind whether to put in an appearance, but in the end he had decided to go. Gatherings annoyed him, the few that came his way. He sipped the wine and grimaced. It was sour. He thought ruefully of his bottle of Chartreuse back home.
He smiled at Elinborg, who was standing in the crowd and waved to him. She was talking to the press. The fact that a woman from the Reykjavik CID had written a cookery book had prompted quite a lot of publicity and Erlendur was pleased to see Elinborg basking in the attention. She had once invited him, Sigurdur Oli and his wife Bergthora for dinner to test a new Indian chicken dish that she had said would be in the book. It was a particularly spicy and tasty meal and they had praised Elinborg until she blushed.
Erlendur did not recognise many people apart from the police officers and was relieved to see Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora walk over in his direction.
“Do try to smile for once when you see us,” Bergthora said, kissing him on the cheek. He drank a toast of white wine, then they toasted Elinborg specially afterwards.
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