The Draining Lake

by Arnaldur Indridason

  'We were happy,' she said. 'Our little boy Benni was the apple of our eye, I'd got a job with the Merchants' Association and as far as I knew my husband was doing well at work. It was a big estate agency and he was a great salesman. He wasn't so good at school, dropped out after two years, but he worked hard and I thought he was happy with life. He never suggested otherwise to me.'

  She poured coffee into their cups.

  'I didn't notice anything unusual on the last day,' Kristín went on, passing them the dish of crullers. 'He said goodbye to me in the morning, phoned at lunchtime just to say hello and again to say he would be a little late. That was the last I heard from him.'

  'But wasn't he having trouble at work, even if he didn't tell you?' Elínborg asked. 'We read the reports and . . .'

  'Redundancies were on the way. He'd spoken about it a few days earlier but didn't know who. Then he was called in that day and told that they no longer needed him. The owner told me that later. He said my husband had showed no response to being made redundant, didn't protest or ask for an explanation, just went back out and sat down at his desk. Didn't react.'

  'He didn't phone you to tell you?' Elínborg asked.

  'No,' the woman said, and Erlendur could sense the sorrow still enveloping her. 'Like I told you, he phoned but didn't say a word about losing his job.'

  'Why was he made redundant?' Erlendur asked.

  'I never had a satisfactory answer to that. I think the owner wanted to show me compassion or consideration when we spoke. He said they needed to cut back because sales were down, but later I heard that Ragnar had apparently lost interest in the job. Lost interest in what he was doing. After a school reunion he had talked about enrolling again and finishing. He was invited to the reunion even though he had quit school and all his old friends had become doctors and lawyers and engineers. That was the way he talked. As if it brought him down, dropping out of school.'

  'Did you link this to his disappearance in any way?' Erlendur asked.

  'No, not particularly,' Kristín said. 'I can just as easily put it down to a little tiff we had the day before. Or that our son was difficult at night. Or that he couldn't afford a new car. Really I don't know what to think.'

  'Was he depressive?' Elínborg said, noticing Kristín slip into the present tense, as if it had all just happened.

  'No more than most Icelanders. He went missing in the autumn, if that means anything.'

  'At the time you ruled out the possibility that there was anything criminal about his disappearance,' Erlendur said.

  'Yes,' she said. 'I couldn't imagine that. He wasn't involved in anything of that sort. If he met someone who murdered him, it would have been pure bad luck. The thought that anything like that happened never crossed my mind, nor yours at the police. You never treated his disappearance as a criminal matter either. He stayed behind at work until everyone had left and that was the last time he was seen.'

  'Wasn't his disappearance ever investigated as a criminal matter?' Elínborg said.

  'No,' Kristín said.

  'Tell me something else: was your husband a radio ham?' Erlendur asked.

  'A radio ham? What's that?'

  'To tell the truth I'm not quite sure myself,' Erlendur said, looking to Elínborg for help. She sat and said nothing. 'They're in radio contact with people all around the world,' Erlendur continued. 'You need, or used to need, a quite powerful transmitter to broadcast your signal. Did he have any equipment like that?'

  'No,' the woman said. 'A radio ham?'

  'Was he involved in telecommunications?' Elínborg asked. 'Did he own a radio transmitter or . . . ?'

  Kristín looked at her.

  'What did you find in that lake?' she asked with a look of astonishment. 'He never owned a radio transmitter. What kind of transmitter, anyway?'

  'Did he ever go fishing in Kleifarvatn?' Elínborg continued without answering her. 'Or know anything about it?'

  'No, never. He wasn't interested in angling. My brother's a keen salmon fisherman and tried to get him to go along, but he never would. He was like me in that. We never wanted to kill anything for sport or fun. We never went to Kleifarvatn.'

  Erlendur noticed a beautifully framed photograph on a shelf in the living room. It showed Kristín with a young boy, whom he took to be her fatherless son, and he started thinking about his own son, Sindri. He had not realised at once why he had dropped by. Sindri had always avoided his father, unlike Eva Lind who wanted to make him feel guilty for ignoring her and her brother in their childhood. Erlendur had divorced their mother after a short marriage and as the years wore on he increasingly regretted having had any contact with his children.

  They shook hands embarrassedly on the landing like two strangers; he let Sindri in and made coffee. Sindri said he was looking for a flat or a room. Erlendur said he didn't know of any vacant places but promised to tell him if he heard of anything.

  'Maybe I could stay here for the time being,' Sindri said, looking at the bookcase in the living room.

  'Here?' Erlendur said in surprise, appearing in the kitchen doorway. The purpose behind Sindri's visit dawned on him.

  'Eva said you had a spare room that's just full of old junk.'

  Erlendur looked at his son. There was indeed a spare room in his flat. The old junk Eva had mentioned was his parents' effects, which he kept because he could not bring himself to throw it out. Items from his childhood home. A chest full of letters written by his parents and forebears, a carved shelf, piles of magazines, books, fishing rods and a heavy old shotgun that his grand-father had owned, broken.

  'What about your mother?' Erlendur said. 'Can't you stay with her?'

  'Of course,' Sindri said. 'I'll just do that, then.'

  They fell silent.

  'No, there's no space in that room,' Erlendur said eventually. 'So . . . I don't know . . .'

  'Eva's stayed here,' Sindri said.

  His words were followed by a deep silence.

  'She said you've changed,' Sindri said in the end.

  'What about you?' Erlendur asked. 'Have you changed?'

  'I haven't touched a drop for months,' Sindri said. 'If that's what you mean.'

  Erlendur snapped out of his thoughts and sipped his coffee. He looked away from the photograph on the shelf and over at Kristín. He wanted a cigarette.

  'So the boy never knew his father,' he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Elínborg glaring at him, but pretended not to notice. He was well aware that he was prying into the private life of a woman whose husband's mysterious disappearance more than thirty years before had never been satisfactorily resolved. Erlendur's question was irrelevant to the police investigation.

  'His stepfather has treated him well and he has a very good relationship with his brothers,' she said. 'I can't see what that has to do with my husband's disappearance.'

  'No, sorry,' Erlendur said.

  'I don't think there's anything else, then,' Elínborg said.

  'Do you think it's him?' Kristín asked, standing up.

  'I don't think it's very likely,' Elínborg said. 'But we need to look into it more closely.'

  They stood still for an instant as if something remained to be said. As if something was in the air that needed to be put into words before their meeting would be over.

  'A year after he went missing,' Kristín said, 'a body was washed ashore on Snaefellsnes. They thought it was him but it turned out not to be.'

  She clasped her hands.

  'Sometimes, even today, I think he might be alive. That he didn't die at all. Sometimes I think he left us and moved to the countryside – or abroad – without telling us, and started a new family. I've even caught glimpses of him here in Reykjavík. About five years ago I thought I saw him. I followed this man around like an imbecile. It was in the shopping centre. Spied on him until I saw that of course it wasn't him.'

  She looked at Erlendur.

  'He went away, but all the same . . . he'll never go away,' she sa
id with a sad smile playing across her lips.

  'I know,' Erlendur said. 'I know what you mean.'

  When they got into the car Elínborg scolded Erlendur for his callous question about Kristín's son. Erlendur told her not to be so sensitive.

  His mobile rang. It was Valgerdur. He'd been expecting her to get in touch. They had met the previous Christmas when Erlendur had been investigating a murder at a hotel in Reykjavík. She was a biotechnician and they had been in a very on-off relationship since then. Her husband had admitted to having an affair but when it came to the crunch he did not want to end their marriage; instead he had humbly asked her to forgive him and promised to mend his ways. She maintained that she was going to leave him, but it had not happened yet.

  'How's your daughter doing?' she asked, and Erlendur told her briefly about his visit to Eva Lind.

  'Don't you think it's helping her, though?' Valgerdur asked. 'That therapy?'

  'I hope so, but I really don't know what will help her,' Erlendur said. 'She's back in exactly the same frame of mind as just before her miscarriage.'

  'Shouldn't we try to meet up tomorrow?' Valgerdur asked him.

  'Yes, let's meet up then,' Erlendur agreed, and they said goodbye.

  'Was that her?' Elínborg asked, aware that Erlendur was in some kind of relationship with a woman.

  'If you mean Valgerdur, yes, it was her,' Erlendur said.

  'Is she worried about Eva Lind?'

  'What did forensics say about that transmitter?' Erlendur asked, to change the subject.

  'They don't know much,' Elínborg said. 'But they do think it's Russian. The name and serial number were filed off but they can make out the outline of the odd letter and think it's Cyrillic.'

  'Russian?'

  'Yes, Russian.'

  There were a couple of houses at the southern end of Kleifarvatn and Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli gathered information about their owners. They telephoned them and asked in general terms about missing persons who could be linked to the lake. It was fruitless.

  Sigurdur Óli mentioned that Elínborg was busy preparing for the publication of her book of recipes.

  'I think it'll make her famous,' Sigurdur Óli said.

  'Does she want to be?' Erlendur asked.

  'Doesn't everyone?' Sigurdur Óli said.

  'Cobblers,' Erlendur said.

  6

  Sigurdur Óli read the letter, the last testimony of a young man who had walked out of his parents' house in 1970 and had never come back.

  The parents were now both aged 78 and in fine fettle. They had two other sons, both younger, now in their fifties. They knew that their eldest son had committed suicide. They did not know how he went about it, nor where his remains were. Sigurdur Óli asked them about Kleifarvatn, the radio transmitter and the hole in the skull, but they had no idea what he was talking about. Their son had never quarrelled with anyone and had no enemies; that was out of the question.

  'It's an absurd idea that he was murdered,' the mother said with a glance at her husband, still anxious after so many years about the fate of their son.

  'You can tell from the letter,' the husband said. 'It's obvious what he had in mind.'

  Sigurdur Óli reread the letter.

  dear mum and dad forgive me but i can't do anything else it's unbearable and i can't think of living any longer i can't and i won't and i can't

  The letter was signed Jakob.

  'It was that girl's fault,' the wife said.

  'We don't know anything about that,' her husband said.

  'She started going out with his friend,' she said. 'Our boy couldn't take it.'

  'Do you think it's him, it's our boy?' the husband asked. They were sitting on the sofa, facing Sigurdur Óli and waiting for answers to the questions that had haunted them ever since their son went missing. They knew that he could not answer the toughest question, the one they had grappled with during all those years, concerning parental actions and responsibilities, but he could tell them whether or not he had been found. On the news they had only said that a male skeleton had been found in Kleifarvatn. Nothing about a radio transmitter and a smashed skull. They did not understand what Sigurdur Óli meant when he started probing about. They had only one question: Was it him?

  'I don't think that's likely,' Sigurdur Óli said. He looked back and forth at them. The incomprehensible disappearance and death of a loved one had left its mark on their lives. The case had never been closed. Their son had still not come home and that was the way it had been all those years. They did not know where he was or what had happened to him, and this uncertainty spawned discomfort and gloom.

  'We think he went into the sea,' the wife said. 'He was a good swimmer. I've always thought that he swam out to sea until he knew he had gone too far out or until the cold took him.'

  'The police told us at the time that because the body couldn't be found, he'd most probably thrown himself in the sea,' the husband said.

  'Because of that girl,' the wife said.

  'We can't blame her for it,' the husband said.

  Sigurdur Óli could tell that they had slipped into an old routine. He stood up to take his leave.

  'Sometimes I get so angry with him,' the wife said, and Sigurdur Óli did not know whether she was referring to her husband or her son.

  Valgerdur was waiting for Erlendur at the restaurant. She was wearing the same full-length leather coat that she had worn on their first date. They had met by chance and in a moment of madness he'd invited her out for dinner. He had not known then if she was married but had discovered later that she was, with two grown-up sons who had moved out and a marriage that was failing.

  At their next meeting she admitted that she had intended to use Erlendur to get even with her husband.

  Valgerdur contacted Erlendur again soon afterwards and they had met several times since. Once she had gone back to his flat. He'd tried to tidy up as best he could, throwing away old newspapers, arranging books on the shelves. He rarely had visitors and was reluctant to let Valgerdur call on him. She insisted, saying that she wanted to see how he lived. Eva Lind had called his apartment a hole that he crawled into to hide.

  'Look at all those books,' Valgerdur said, standing in his living room. 'Have you read them all?'

  'Most of them,' Erlendur said. 'Do you want some coffee? I bought some Danish pastries.'

  She went over to the bookcase and ran her finger along the spines, browsed through a few titles and took one book off the shelf.

  'Are these about ordeals and dangerous highland voyages?' she asked.

  She had been quick to notice that Erlendur took a particular interest in missing persons and that he read whole series of accounts of people who had got lost and disappeared in the wilds of Iceland. He had told her what he had told no one else apart from Eva Lind, that his brother had died at the age of eight up in the highlands in eastern Iceland at the beginning of winter, when Erlendur was ten. There were three of them, the two boys and their father. Erlendur and his father found their way home safely, but his brother froze to death and his body was never found.