Oblivion

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Two hours later they were back where they had started.

  ‘Too bad you didn’t get anywhere,’ said Caroline, shaking their hands in parting. ‘If there’s nothing else, I have to get going.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Marion.

  ‘By the way,’ said Erlendur, ‘have you by any chance heard of an airline called Northern Cargo Transport or NCT?’

  He approved of Caroline’s methods; the way she had observed, quietly and unobtrusively, only stepping in when necessary, and then firmly, without throwing her weight around. He’d had his doubts about her at first, but now regretted this and felt she could be trusted. Far from being obstructive, as he had feared, she had been useful, and he wanted to know if they could trespass on her helpfulness a little further.

  ‘Northern Cargo Transport?’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. What company’s that?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Erlendur. ‘We were told they have some connection to the air force. And we believe they’re American.’

  ‘What sort of connection?’

  ‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ said Marion. ‘They operate Hercules transports which stop over here, and Kristvin, who was a mechanic, serviced one of them.’

  ‘What do you want – you’re not asking me to spy on some airline for you?’ asked Caroline, smiling.

  ‘We need information about this company,’ said Erlendur. ‘But it’ll probably take us forever if we go through the official channels with all the applications and paperwork and delays. If you … I wouldn’t call it spying exactly … but if you could speed things up …’

  ‘I … Sorry, but I think you’ll just have to go down the regular, time-consuming route,’ said Caroline. ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start.’

  ‘All right,’ said Erlendur. ‘It doesn’t matter. We just thought you might be able to check for us, but we understand your position. Thanks again for your help.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Caroline. ‘It was nice meeting you. I haven’t met many Icelandics – you’re the first, to tell the truth. Sorry I can’t be of any further assistance.’

  She was on her way back to her vehicle when Erlendur remembered something that had occurred to him as they were interviewing the residents.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ he called. ‘Has anything out of the ordinary happened on the base recently?’

  Caroline turned back. ‘Out of the ordinary? Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Erlendur. ‘An accident? Any deaths?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe so.’

  ‘Have you had problems with any known troublemakers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Thank you again.’

  17

  SHE HAD TOLD Erlendur, when he rang to explain what he wanted, that she would rather they met at a cafe than at her home, and she was already there when he finally arrived, a little late, after being held up at work. They exchanged greetings and he apologised, explaining that things were very busy right now. It was true. The state prosecutor’s office and police commissioner had issued a letter rogatory for permission to carry out an examination of Hangar 885, Kristvin’s last known place of work. The letter had also contained a request to interview members of the Defense Force in cooperation with the military authorities. The request had been submitted and re-submitted, but no response had as yet been received from Fleet Air Command. Marion thought their lack of enthusiasm might be related to the fact that the hangar housed not only fighter jets and Hercules transports but also powerful AWACS spy planes, early-warning aircraft involved in the surveillance of Icelandic airspace. Presumably the authorities were reluctant to let the Icelandic police, forensics team and photographer loose on the premises. The matter CID had spent so long debating – and the reason for Erlendur’s late arrival – was whether to apply to the Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs to put pressure on the base command.

  The woman responded coolly when Erlendur said he had not meant to keep her waiting, but asked no questions. She knew he was a detective but was meeting her today in an unofficial capacity; his interest in Dagbjört’s case was a private affair. They ordered coffee. He was hungry, having eaten next to nothing all day, so he bought a sandwich and asked if she would like something. She thought for a moment, then accepted a slice of cake. Apart from that she sat and smoked in silence. Her name was Silja and she was forty-four years old, the same age as her friend Dagbjört would have been. Erlendur found himself inadvertently tracing the signs of ageing, the lines etched deeper into her face, the harder expression round her mouth, and tried to picture how Dagbjört might have looked today. He had seen the grainy black-and-white photo printed in the papers at the time of her disappearance, which had been taken a couple of years earlier, when she was sixteen. When he met her aunt, Svava, she had lent him a copy of the same photo, which was much clearer than the published version. As he studied the picture of Dagbjört, who beamed at him, eternally young, through the grey mists of time, he had experienced an odd sensation in his chest and his thoughts had slipped back to his brother who had been lost on the moors of their childhood home in the east. He found himself wondering how Bergur would have aged and whether he would have been able to recognise him as an adult. Bergur had been only eight years old when he disappeared in a blizzard and was never found. The incident had set an indelible mark on Erlendur’s soul. He had been out there with Bergur but lost hold of his hand, and later had been rescued, more dead than alive, from a snowdrift. Ever since then he had been wrestling with the question of why Bergur should have suffered such a cruel fate while he himself was spared. But he had never found any answers or discovered what had become of his brother.

  ‘Strange business about that man they found at Svartsengi,’ Silja remarked as they waited for their order. ‘Are you on that case, by any chance?’

  ‘I’m part of the inquiry, yes.’

  ‘Do you know what happened yet? Or who he was?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t comment,’ Erlendur replied. ‘The matter’s under investigation.’

  ‘But it was murder, wasn’t it? That’s what I read in the papers.’

  ‘As I said –’

  ‘You can’t comment.’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘I know I already asked you on the phone but why are you reopening Dagbjört’s case now? You said there was no new evidence and it sounds like you have enough on your plate already.’

  ‘No, there’s no new evidence,’ said Erlendur. ‘But her father died the other day and –’

  ‘Yes, I saw. I read the obituaries.’

  ‘I spoke to his sister, and we agreed that I should make one final effort to get to the bottom of what happened to Dagbjört. Time’s passing and there are fewer and fewer people left who remember.’

  ‘Fewer left who remember,’ repeated Silja, as if the words held a peculiar significance for her. ‘Two other girls from our class are gone now, as well as Dagbjört,’ she explained after a brief pause. ‘And it wasn’t that big a class.’

  ‘Your testimony was pretty significant,’ said Erlendur. ‘No one else knew Dagbjört had a boyfriend, let alone that he lived in Camp Knox.’

  Silja had not touched the cake but sipped her coffee and lit another cigarette. She smoked each one only halfway down before stubbing it out.

  ‘I often think of her,’ she said. ‘We were … we were born only three weeks apart and we … were so alike, shared the same interests, used to spend a lot of time together. Listened to Doris Day. Giggled about boys. One day she told me she was interested in a boy who lived near her and who she sometimes saw on her way to school, in Camp Knox. They’d met up a couple of times without telling anyone, and she thought she was falling for him.’

  ‘That’s all she told you?’

  ‘Yes. She wouldn’t tell me his name. Or where he lived, at first.’

  ‘Did she seem ashamed of him?’

  ‘Dagbjört wasn’t like that. She didn’t have a snobbish
bone in her body. But the relationship was still at a delicate stage, I suppose – had only just got off the ground – and she didn’t want to say too much about it. Certainly not to her parents. Of course, that’s the last thing you … kids want to do – you know how it is. So I wasn’t surprised they didn’t know what she was up to – or what I was talking about when I told them. They were completely floored – to hear there was a boy.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine.’

  ‘Her mother … she was so disappointed,’ continued Silja. ‘Not that Dagbjört had fallen for a boy from Camp Knox, you understand, but that she hadn’t confided in her. They were very close and her mother was great, a really nice woman – always so kind to the rest of us. When she heard about this boy she refused to believe it, said I must have made a mistake.’

  ‘But you hadn’t?’

  ‘No,’ said Silja. ‘I didn’t make any mistake.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Don’t be like everyone else and start casting doubt on what I said. I didn’t make it up.’

  ‘No, I’m sure, but the boy never contacted the police.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘How should I know? I can’t answer that.’

  ‘No, of c—’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said Silja, lighting yet another cigarette and inhaling deeply. Her voice sounded weary. ‘I was just repeating what she told me. Sometimes I wished she’d never told me about him. You’ve no idea what I went through at the time, and her poor parents hung on my every word because they had nothing else to go on.’

  She glanced down blankly at the untouched cake.

  ‘I don’t know why it had to be me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask for it. It was a really hard time for me too, you know. Really hard. I lost one of my best friends and as if that wasn’t enough people cast doubt on every word I said. She’d asked me to keep it a secret, you see. I wasn’t to tell anyone, she made me promise, and all of a sudden there I was having to blurt it out to all and sundry. At that stage she was still only missing. She could still have come back.’

  The cafe was popular; there was a clinking of spoons and cups, a buzz of cheerful conversation. Every table was occupied and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Trashy music – the latest Icelandic disco hit – was playing in the background.

  ‘So all she told you was that she’d fallen for a boy from Camp Knox?’ said Erlendur.

  ‘Yes, that’s more or less it. Next to nothing to go on, really. Naturally I was dying to know more but she said she’d tell me later. We’d just finished gym; I had to hurry into town and she was on her way home, and that was the last time I saw her. Next day she didn’t turn up to school or to the meeting we’d arranged later that afternoon with the other girls, and then we found out she’d set out that morning and never arrived.’

  ‘What made her tell you about the boy just then?’

  ‘Well, Camp Knox had a bad reputation,’ said Silja, ‘and I remember I was saying my brother was afraid of the lads from there. According to him they were hooligans – which some of them definitely were. But she said they weren’t all like that and when I started interrogating her, she told me about this boy she’d met who was no hooligan.’

  ‘They were a similar age, then?’

  ‘Yes, I assume so.’

  ‘Could she have been making it up?’

  ‘She had no reason to,’ said Silja. ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because the boy doesn’t seem to have existed,’ said Erlendur. ‘He can hardly have failed to notice that the girl he was seeing had gone missing. They searched for her for weeks – in the camp as well. You’d have thought it would’ve been simplest for him to come forward and admit he’d known her, that he was the boy she’d been seeing, and try to help her family.’

  ‘Unless he knew what’d happened to her?’ said Silja.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it so often, wondering if he played some part in what happened to her. If she met him that morning and they quarrelled. Perhaps she was having second thoughts and tried to call it off – if there was anything to call off. How might he have reacted?’

  Silja wasn’t the only person who had thought along those lines. The police had always considered it likely that the young man might have been involved in her disappearance, and Erlendur had come to the same conclusion after reading up on the case. The man could still be alive today, in possession of the solution to the mystery. He would be in his mid-forties by now, if he was around Dagbjört’s age. Silja seemed to anticipate what he was going to say next.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure the man existed,’ she murmured, so quietly Erlendur could hardly hear her. ‘Dagbjört wasn’t lying. And I know I’m not either.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I believe he’s still alive,’ she whispered. ‘In fact I’m sure he’s still alive and knows exactly what happened to her.’

  18

  VERNHARDUR LIVED IN the town of Hafnarfjördur, a few miles south of Reykjavík, and was happy to come to the CID offices in Kópavogur. He turned up punctually and asked for Erlendur, who had spoken to him on the phone. They took a seat in the office with Marion. Dusk was already falling, and it didn’t help that the weather was dull and overcast. The sun hadn’t shown its face for days. It didn’t bother Erlendur but Marion would have given anything to see a break in the clouds.

  Like Kristvin, Vernhardur was a flight mechanic. He was a tall, imposing man with an air of self-confidence that went well with his stately name. He didn’t bite his nails but kept them short and neat. His face was clean-shaven apart from a fine pair of sideburns, and he had wavy fair hair, thinning on top.

  He told them he had known Kristvin since he’d joined Icelandair. It had been Venni’s job to show him the ropes and he had worked closely with Kristvin for the first few months and got on well with him. They were a similar age, both single and soon became good mates. He couldn’t believe his ears when he heard that the man found at Svartsengi was none other than Kristvin, nor could he begin to imagine what had happened to him.

  ‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘Kristvin was a gentle guy who stayed out of trouble and didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone. That he should end up like that is just, well, like I said, it doesn’t make sense. How’s his poor sister? He took really good care of her. Maybe you know she’s ill?’

  Erlendur nodded. ‘We found various items in his possession that we have reason to believe came from the base,’ he said. ‘Beer, vodka and so on. Do you know where he got hold of them? Who his contacts were?’

  ‘He was so afraid of losing her,’ Vernhardur continued, as if he hadn’t heard the question. ‘I’ve never met a brother and sister so close, such good friends. He was devastated when he heard about the cancer. She put off telling him until he’d started to suspect something was wrong, and … he just refused to believe it, couldn’t accept that she was so ill. He was determined to help her in any way he could. Whatever it took.’

  ‘Like buying drugs from the base?’

  ‘She told you? What he got for her?’

  ‘If you mean the marijuana …’

  Vernhardur nodded.

  ‘Any idea who his dealer was?’

  ‘He was in contact with some soldiers. I don’t know their names. He didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know. I don’t bring anything home from the base myself. No alcohol or cigarettes or sweets. Nothing. And I don’t mix with anyone who works there apart from the other Icelanders.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Marion.

  ‘I’m against the army,’ said Vernhardur. ‘All that black-market shit associated with it. I’m totally against all that. I hate the fact that every time I go to work I have to pass through a bloody military checkpoint. Hate it.’

  ‘If your friend was scoring drugs for himself and his sister,’ said Marion, ‘why are you so surprised he got into trouble? It’
s hardly like popping down to the shop for a can of Coke.’

  ‘Well, of course you never know what sort you’ll run up against in that scene,’ said Vernhardur, ‘what kind of scumbags they have in the army. He said it wasn’t risky. The quantities were so small it was no big deal.’

  ‘How did you find out? Did he tell you?’

  Vernhardur nodded again. ‘You mustn’t think I was involved – I wasn’t. No way. You may think that but I assure you I wasn’t. Just to be clear.’

  It was the day Kristvin told Vernhardur about his sister’s illness. They used to take turns driving to and from work in Keflavík. One day when Kristvin was in the grey Corolla and they were about to head home, he said he needed to run a quick errand and asked Vernhardur to wait for him by the PX – he would only be ten minutes. Vernhardur protested but Kristvin was insistent and set him down by the store. Vernhardur had never set foot in the PX and had no wish to go inside now. Besides, he knew Icelanders needed a sponsor – a member of the Defense Force to sign them in – if they wanted to use any of the facilities or visit the clubs on the base. Vernhardur had never got to know any of the Americans and wasn’t interested in doing so. He hung about outside the PX for almost half an hour, feeling like a bum, and was fuming by the time Kristvin came to pick him up. As they drove down to the gate, Vernhardur gave him an earful and Kristvin apologised profusely and promised to explain. Vernhardur thought Kristvin seemed jittery for some reason. As a rule the guards on the gate were fairly lax and the Icelanders who worked on the base and passed this way regularly were waved through. But occasionally there was an unexpected crackdown, as seemed to be the case now.

  It was the end of the working day, a queue had formed at the gate and they noticed that a car had been called out for closer inspection. There were three vehicles ahead of them and the first was also signalled to pull over. The next car was waved through, as was the one in front of them. A US serviceman and an Icelandic police officer were manning the gate while another pair searched the cars. Kristvin drove slowly through the barrier, then was given a sign to stop. ‘Shit! They’re never going to search me?’ Vernhardur heard him mutter in a panic. The policeman scrutinised them both through the windscreen, then waved them on. Kristvin heaved a sigh of relief. When they looked back they saw the car behind them being pulled over.