The Draining Lake

by Arnaldur Indridason

  'How I knew about him. How I tracked him down. Has he been living here long?'

  'Here in Iceland? No.'

  'What's going on? What are you doing together? What's all this equipment in this shed? What are those photographs on the bench?'

  Lothar kept hold of the shovel's shaft, trying to disarm him, but he held on grimly and did not let go.

  'What was Emil doing here?' he asked. 'I thought he was living abroad. In East Germany. That he had never come back after university.'

  Lothar was still a riddle to him, more so now than ever before. Who was this man? Had he been wrong about Lothar all the time, or was he the same arrogant and treacherous beast he had been in Leipzig?

  'Go back home,' Lothar said. 'Don't think about it any more. It's nothing to do with you. What happened in Leipzig isn't connected with this.'

  He did not believe him.

  'What happened there? What happened in Leipzig? Tell me. What did they do to Ilona?'

  Lothar cursed.

  'We've been trying to get you Icelanders to work for us,' he said after a while. 'It hasn't worked. You all inform on us. Two of our men were arrested a few years ago and deported after they tried to get someone from Reykjavík to take photographs.'

  'Photographs?'

  'Of military installations in Iceland. No one wants to work for us. So we got Emil to.'

  'Emil?'

  'He didn't have a problem with it.'

  Seeing the look of disbelief on his face, Lothar started to tell him about Emil. It was as if Lothar was trying to convince him that he could trust him, that he had changed.

  'We provided him with a job that allowed him to travel around the country without arousing suspicion,' Lothar said. 'He was very interested. He felt like a genuine spy.'

  Lothar cast a glance down at Emil's body.

  'Maybe he was.'

  'And he was supposed to photograph American military installations?'

  'Yes, and even work temporarily at places near them, like the base at Heidarfjall on Langanes or Stokksnes near Höfn. And in Hvalfjördur, where the oil depot is. Straumsnesfjall in the west fjords. He worked in Keflavík and took listening devices with him. He sold agricultural machinery so he always had a reason for being somewhere. We had an even bigger role lined up for him in the future,' Lothar said.

  'Like what?'

  'The possibilities are endless,' Lothar replied.

  'What about you? Why are you telling me all this? Aren't you one of them?'

  'Yes,' Lothar said. 'I'm one of them. I'll take care of Emil. Forget all this and never mention it to anyone. Understood?! Never.'

  'Wasn't there a risk that he'd be found out?'

  'He set up a cover,' Lothar said. 'We told him it was unnecessary, but he wanted to use a fake identity and so on. If anyone recognised him as Emil he was going to say he was on a quick visit home, but otherwise he called himself Leopold. I don't know where he dreamt up that name. Emil enjoyed deceiving people. He took a perverse pleasure in pretending to be someone else.'

  'What are you going to do with him?'

  'Sometimes we dispose of rubbish in a little lake south-west of the city. It shouldn't be a problem.'

  'I've hated you for years, Lothar. Did you know that?'

  'To tell the truth I'd forgotten you, Tómas. Ilona was a problem and she would have been found out sooner or later. What I did is irrelevant. Totally irrelevant.'

  'How do you know I won't go straight to the police?'

  'Because you don't feel guilty about him. That's why you should forget it. That's why it never happened. I won't say what happened and you'll forget that I ever existed.'

  'But . . .'

  'But what? Are you going to confess to committing murder? Don't be so childish!'

  'We were just children, just kids. How did it end up like this?'

  'We try to get by,' Lothar said. 'That's all we can do.'

  'What are you going to tell them? About Emil? What will you say happened?'

  'I'll tell them I found him like this and don't know what the hell happened. But the main thing is to get rid of him. They understand that. Now go away! Get out of here before I change my mind!'

  'Do you know what happened to Ilona?' he asked. 'Can you tell me what happened to her?'

  He had gone to the door of the shed when he turned round and asked the question that had long tormented him. As if the answer might help him to accept those irreversible events.

  'I don't know much,' Lothar said. 'I heard that she tried to escape. She was taken to hospital and that's all I know.'

  'But why was she arrested?'

  'You know that perfectly well,' Lothar said. 'She took a risk; she knew the stakes. She was dangerous. She incited revolt. She worked against them. They had experience from the 1953 uprising. They weren't going to let that repeat itself.'

  'But . . .'

  'She knew the risks she was taking.'

  'What happened to her?'

  'Stop this and get out!'

  'Did she die?'

  'She must have,' Lothar said, looking thoughtfully at the black box with the broken dials. He glanced at the bench and noticed the car keys. A Ford logo was on the ring.

  'We'll make the police think he drove out of town,' he said, almost to himself. 'I have to persuade my men. That could prove difficult. They hardly believe a word I tell them any more.'

  'Why not?' he asked. 'Why don't they believe you?'

  Lothar smiled.

  'I've been a bit naughty,' Lothar said. 'And I think they know.'

  36

  Erlendur stood in the garage in Kópavogur, looking at the Ford Falcon. Holding the hubcap, he bent down and attached it to one of the front wheels. It fitted perfectly. The woman had been rather surprised to see Erlendur again, but let him into the garage and helped him to pull the heavy canvas sheet off the car. Erlendur stood looking at the streamlining, the shiny black paint, round rear lights, white upholstery, the big, delicate steering wheel and the old hubcap that was back in place after all those years, and suddenly he was seized by a powerful urge. He had not felt such a longing for anything in a very long time.

  'Is that the original hubcap?' the woman asked.

  'Yes,' Erlendur said, 'we found it.'

  'That's quite an achievement,' the woman said.

  'Do you think it's still roadworthy?' Erlendur asked.

  'It was, the last time I knew,' the woman said. 'Why do you ask?'

  'It's rather a special car,' Erlendur said. 'I was wondering . . . if it's for sale . . .'

  'For sale?' the woman said. 'I've been trying to get rid of it ever since my husband died but no one's shown any interest. I even tried advertising it but the only calls I got were from old nutters who weren't prepared to pay. Just wanted me to give it them. I'll be damned if I'd give them that car!'

  'How much do you want for it?' Erlendur asked.

  'Don't you need to check whether it starts first and that sort of stuff?' the woman asked. 'You're welcome to have it for a couple of days. I need to talk to my boys. They know more about these matters than I do. I don't know the first thing about cars. All I know is that I wouldn't dream of giving that car away. I want a decent price for it.'

  Erlendur's thoughts turned to his old Japanese banger, crumbling from rust. He had never cared for possessions, did not see the point in accumulating lifeless objects, but there was something about the Falcon that kindled his interest. Perhaps it was the car's history and its connection with a mysterious, decades-old case of a missing person. For some reason, Erlendur felt he had to own that car.

  Sigurdur Óli had trouble concealing his astonishment when Erlendur collected him at lunchtime the following day. The Ford was entirely roadworthy. The woman said that her sons came to Kópavogur regularly to make sure it was still running smoothly. Erlendur had gone straight to a Ford garage where the car was checked, lubricated and rustproofed and the electrics were fixed. He was told that the car was as good as new, the sea
ts showed little sign of wear, all the instruments were working and the engine was in reasonable condition despite hardly having been used.

  'Where's your head at?' Sigurdur Óli asked as he got into the passenger seat.

  'Where's my head at?'

  'What are you planning to do with this car?'

  'Drive it,' Erlendur said.

  'Are you allowed to? Isn't it evidence?'

  'We'll find out.'

  They were going to see one of the students from Leipzig, Tómas, whom Hannes had told them about. Erlendur had visited Marion that morning. The patient was back on form, asking about the Kleifarvatn case and Eva Lind.

  'Have you found your daughter yet?' his old boss asked him.

  'No,' Erlendur said. 'I don't know anything about her.'

  Sigurdur Óli told Erlendur that he had been looking into the Stasi's activities on the Internet. East Germany had come the closest of any country to almost total surveillance of its citizens. The security police had headquarters in 41 buildings, the use of 1,181 houses for its agents, 305 summer holiday houses, 98 sports halls, 18,000 flats for spy meetings and 97,000 employees, of whom 2,171 worked on reading mail, 1,486 on bugging telephones and 8,426 on listening to telephone calls and radio broadcasts. The Stasi had more than 100,000 active but unofficial collaborators; 1,000,000 people provided the police with occasional information; reports had been compiled on 6,000,000 persons and one department of the Stasi had the sole function of watching over other security police members.

  Sigurdur Óli finished spouting his figures just as he and Erlendur reached the door of Tómas's house. It was a small bungalow with a basement, in need of repair. There were blotches in the paint on the corrugatediron roof, which was rusted down to the gutters. There were cracks in the walls, which had not been painted for a long time, and the garden was overgrown. The house was well located, overlooking the shore in the westernmost part of Reykjavík, and Erlendur admired the view out to sea. Sigurdur Óli rang the doorbell for the third time. No one appeared to be at home.

  Erlendur saw a ship on the horizon. A man and a woman walked quickly along the pavement outside the house. The man took wide strides and was slightly ahead of the woman, who did her best to keep up with him. They were talking, the man over his shoulder and the woman in a raised voice so that he could hear her. Neither noticed the two police officers at the house.

  'So does this mean that Emil and Leopold were the same person?' Sigurdur Óli said as he rang the bell again. Erlendur had told him about his discovery at the brothers' farm near Mosfellsbaer.

  'It looks that way,' Erlendur said.

  'Is he the man in the lake?'

  'Conceivably.'

  Tómas was in the basement when he heard the bell. He knew it was the police. Through the basement window he had seen two men get out of an old black car. It was purely by chance that they happened to call at precisely that moment. He had been waiting for them since the spring, all summer long, and by now autumn had arrived. He knew they would come in the end. He knew that if they had any talent at all they would eventually be standing at his front door, waiting for him to answer.

  He looked out of the basement window and thought about Ilona. They had once stood beneath Bach's statue next to Thomaskirche. It was a beautiful summer's day and they had their arms around each other. All around them were pedestrians, trams and cars, yet they were alone in the world.

  He held the pistol. It was British, from the Second World War. His father had owned it, a gift from a British soldier, and he had given it to his son, along with some ammunition. He had lubricated, polished and cleaned it, and a few days earlier he had gone to Heidmörk nature reserve to test whether it still worked. There was one bullet left in it. He raised his arm and put the muzzle to his temple.

  Ilona looked up the façade of the church to the steeple.

  'You're my Tómas,' she said, and kissed him.

  Bach was above them, silent as the grave, and he felt that a smile played across the statue's lips.

  'For ever,' he said. 'I'll always be your Tómas.'

  'Who is this man?' Sigurdur Óli asked, standing with Erlendur on the doorstep. 'Does he matter?'

  'I only know what Hannes told us,' Erlendur replied. 'He was in Leipzig and had a girlfriend there.'

  He rang the bell again. They stood and waited.

  It was hardly the sound of a shot that reached their ears. More like a slight thud from inside the house. Like a hammer tapping on a wall. Erlendur looked at Sigurdur Óli.

  'Did you hear that?'

  'There's someone inside,' Sigurdur Óli said.

  Erlendur knocked on the door and turned the handle. It was not locked. They stepped inside and called out but received no reply. They noticed the door and the steps down to the basement. Erlendur walked cautiously down the steps and saw a man lying on the floor with an antiquated pistol by his side.

  'There's an envelope here addressed to us,' Sigurdur Óli said as he came down the steps. He was holding a thick yellow envelope marked 'Police'.

  'Oh,' he said when he saw the man on the floor.

  'Why did you do this?' Erlendur said, as if to himself.

  He walked over to the body and stared down at Tómas.

  'Why?' he whispered.

  Erlendur visited the girlfriend of the man who called himself Leopold but whose name was Emil. He told her that the skeleton from Kleifarvatn was indeed the earthly remains of the person she had once loved and who then vanished without a trace from her life. He spent a long time sitting in the living room telling her about the account that Tómas had written and left behind before he went down to the basement, and he answered her questions as best he could. She took the news calmly. Her expression remained unchanged when Erlendur told her that Emil had conceivably been working undercover for the East Germans.

  Although his story surprised her, Erlendur knew that it was not the question of what Emil did, or who he was, that she would mull over when towards evening he finally took his leave. He could not answer the question that he knew gnawed at her more than any other. Did he love her? Or had he simply used her as an alibi?

  She tried to put the question into words before he left. He could tell how difficult she found it and halfway through he put his arm around her. She was fighting back the tears.

  'You know that,' he said. 'You know that yourself, don't you?'

  One day shortly afterwards, Sigurdur Óli returned home from work to find Bergthóra standing confused and helpless in the living room, looking at him through broken eyes. He realised at once what had happened. He ran over to her and tried to console her, but she burst into an uncontrollable fit of tears that made her whole body shake and tremble. The signature tune for the evening news was playing on the radio. The police had reported a middle-aged man missing. The announcement was followed by a brief description of him. In his mind's eye Sigurdur Óli suddenly saw a woman in a shop, holding a punnet of fresh strawberries.

  37

  When winter had descended, bringing piercing northerly winds and swirling snow, Erlendur drove out to the lake where Emil's skeleton had been found that spring. It was morning and there was little traffic around the lake. Erlendur parked the Ford Falcon by the side of the road and walked down to the water's edge. He had read in the newspapers that the lake had stopped draining and was beginning to fill again. Experts from the Energy Authority predicted that it would eventually reach its former size. Erlendur looked over to the nearby pool of Lambhagatjörn, which had dried up to reveal a red muddy bed. He looked at Sydri-Stapi, a bluff protruding into the lake, and at the encircling range of mountains, and felt astonished that this peaceful lake could have been the setting for espionage in Iceland.