The Shadow Killer

by Arnaldur Indridason

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you that,’ said Flóvent as politely as he could. He had a degree of sympathy for Rudolf, under the circumstances, but the doctor’s withering scorn undeniably grated on his nerves. ‘At present, anyway,’ he added, noting that the man’s face had turned even darker red. ‘Could you tell me where I can get hold of her? We’ve established that she used to rent rooms on Njálsgata until a few years ago. My colleague is going to speak to her landlord –’

  ‘That is no concern of mine. You can invent whatever nonsense you like,’ said Rudolf. ‘Leave me alone. I have nothing whatsoever to say to you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Flóvent. ‘There’s just one more question I’m obliged to put to you.’

  ‘I have no desire to speak to you. You seem incapable of grasping the fact.’

  ‘Who’s Hans Lunden?’ asked Flóvent. ‘Who is Dr Hans Lunden?’

  Rudolf shot him a glance, visibly startled by the name. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘He was in the country shortly before the war, and it’s possible he’s visited on other occasions too. Perhaps you could enlighten me. Who is he and what was he doing here?’

  Rudolf said nothing.

  ‘He’s your brother, is he not? How did he come to know the consul, Dr Werner Gerlach?’

  He wasn’t really expecting Rudolf to answer any of his questions, given how uncooperative he had been up to now. And his instinct was correct. The doctor lay there in stubborn silence, waiting for Flóvent to take himself off. But the visit hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Flóvent had no idea what it all meant, but he had made it clear to Rudolf that he knew about Hans Lunden and his links to the German consul. If this information was significant, Rudolf was bound to wonder how he had found out and, more importantly, whether Flóvent knew more about what Hans and Gerlach had been up to. Before he left, there was one more thing he wanted the doctor to think over.

  ‘What is the nature of the relationship between Brynhildur Hólm and Hans Lunden?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘What do you think you know?’ Rudolf finally retorted with a sneer. ‘You know nothing. You are an ignorant fool.’

  ‘What is it that I don’t know?’ asked Flóvent. ‘Do enlighten me. Why can’t you be straight with me? Don’t you feel the slightest concern for your son?’

  Rudolf turned his head away.

  ‘I want to ask you again about your quarrel with Ebeneser,’ said Flóvent. ‘You had a row about something to do with some boys. To do with Felix, I would guess. Can you confirm that?’

  Rudolf didn’t react.

  ‘Would you care to tell me about that?’

  The silence dragged on and Flóvent gave up. Clearly it was futile to keep pressing the doctor on these points. His eye happened to fall on the copy of Skírnir lying on the bedside table, and, changing the subject, he asked the doctor about his interest in the origin of the Icelanders and this new theory about the Heruli. Rudolf continued to snub him, staring silently out of the window.

  Only as Flóvent was leaving the room did Rudolf finally turn to him.

  ‘To think they believed that Iceland was home to such a remarkable race,’ he said. ‘That this was the ancestral heritage…’

  ‘Who? What heritage?’

  ‘These peasants.’

  ‘What heritage?’

  ‘These … damned peasants.’

  Rudolf could not be persuaded to explain, so Flóvent took his leave, wishing him a quick recovery. He walked out of the hospital feeling intensely frustrated. He lingered for a while outside, letting the hot August sun warm his face and trying to make sense of Rudolf’s parting comment. Eventually, he set off and was heading west, alongside the hospital, when a woman suddenly emerged from the building. To his astonishment, it appeared to be Brynhildur Hólm. He was about to call out to her but checked himself and instead began to follow her at a discreet distance as she walked briskly up towards Skólavörduholt. She strode purposefully past the military barracks on top of the hill, looking neither right nor left, wearing a long black coat and black lace-up shoes, and clutching a small black doctor’s bag.

  26

  Brynhildur Hólm’s former landlord was eager to assist the police, especially when he heard that Thorson was Icelandic-Canadian. He had relatives in North America himself, he said: two maternal uncles who had emigrated to Winnipeg just after the turn of the century, with their entire families, and still kept up with their relatives back in Iceland. He was very interested in Thorson’s life out west, so Thorson told him a little about Manitoba, about the farming conditions and a few of the well known figures in the Icelandic community, poets and others who had made their mark. In spite of the landlord’s curiosity, he was deliberately vague about his own circumstances.

  The man remembered Brynhildur well. She had rented rooms from him on Njálsgata for several years and always paid on time; he had no complaints about her as a tenant. She had been single, and he suspected she might have been a little lonely as few people came to see her and she made no effort to get to know her neighbours. Having said that, she had been helpful with their minor injuries and ailments once they learnt she was a nurse. He didn’t think she had ever been married, but her manner had discouraged personal questions, so he couldn’t be sure.

  The landlord asked what the military police wanted with Brynhildur since he couldn’t imagine her ever breaking the law. Thorson dodged the question by explaining that he was merely assisting the Reykjavík police with a minor matter involving relations between the armed forces and local civilians. Brynhildur was a possible witness to the incident, he lied.

  The man hadn’t heard from Brynhildur Hólm since she moved out. He had seen her about town but didn’t know where she might be lodging now. He had never come across Rudolf Lunden but knew of the headmaster, Ebeneser, by reputation. The rooms Brynhildur had rented were now occupied by a family from the East Fjords; the husband made a decent living working for the British at Nauthólsvík Cove.

  As Thorson was thanking the man and about to leave, the landlord said that, come to think of it, he had been meaning to get in touch with Brynhildur Hólm for quite some time because she had asked him to look after two boxes of books for her when she moved out, but had never come back to fetch them. They were still in his storeroom and although they didn’t take up much space, naturally he would like to restore them to their rightful owner. Speaking of which, he wondered if Thorson would be seeing Brynhildur any time soon. Thorson said he assumed so, that it was only a matter of time before he managed to track her down.

  ‘You couldn’t possibly remind her about the two boxes she left with me?’ the landlord asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Thorson.

  ‘They’re in here,’ said the man and beckoned Thorson to follow him, adding that honestly he would be grateful to be rid of them sooner rather than later. ‘There’s nothing valuable in there,’ he said. ‘I checked. Just some old books that she’s obviously not that bothered about.’

  The storeroom was down in the cellar. The man showed Thorson inside and pointed to two small boxes protruding from a shelf among a lot of tools and pots of paint.

  ‘It needs a tidy-up in here,’ the man said, apologetically surveying the room. ‘I’m always meaning to clear it out but never find the time. No one uses the room but me. I expect most of this lot could be taken to the tip. But there you go.’

  He lifted down one of the boxes, opened it and said he had sometimes thought of taking the books to an antiquarian to find out if they were worth anything – and selling them if they were. ‘It costs money to store these boxes, you know,’ he said. ‘Nothing in life comes for free. Nothing comes for free.’

  As he rattled on, he showed Thorson the contents of the box. There must have been about fifteen books, mostly Icelandic children’s titles, including the Nonni books, some of them in German translations. When the man picked one up and flicked through it, Thorson noticed that Brynhildur had written
her name on the flyleaf. The man put the books back, taking care to make it look as if they hadn’t been disturbed.

  The other box contained German and English works on nursing – textbooks, Thorson thought. When the landlord handed him one, a small pamphlet fell out onto the floor. Picking it up, Thorson discovered that it had been translated from German to English and published in London five years ago. It consisted of no more than twenty pages and had a cheap grey paper cover, which featured the title and the author’s name. Thorson wouldn’t have given it a second glance were it not for the name that caught his eye when he picked it up from the floor. The author was one Hans Lunden. The title also aroused his interest. It was couched as a question: ‘Can crime rates be reduced by selective breeding?’

  ‘What’ve you got there?’ asked the landlord. ‘Anything of interest?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Thorson, leafing through the pamphlet.

  ‘Would you like to take it away with you?’ asked the landlord, seeing that Thorson was absorbed in the text.

  ‘No, thanks. No need,’ said Thorson, handing it back. He recalled what Graham and Ballantine had told him at the Leper Hospital. About the genetic research the Nazis were conducting on prisoners in an attempt to prove that criminal traits were hereditary. Experiments in German concentration camps, they’d said. The name Buchenwald had come up.

  ‘So, that’s all there is in these boxes. Probably not worth anything, like I say,’ said the landlord with a sigh, tidying away the pamphlet and putting the boxes back on the shelf. ‘Not surprising the lady has never got round to fetching them, really. Mind you, it’s not like her. She was always so neat and tidy when she lived here. Took good care of her belongings, from what I could see. Always punctual with her rent: I never had to ask. Not once. You’ll remind her when you see her, won’t you? About the boxes?’

  Thorson promised. They went back upstairs, and he said goodbye to the landlord, and thanked him for being so helpful. As Thorson was driving away he regretted not having taken the pamphlet with him to show Flóvent. Especially the short paragraph about the author, which stated that Hans Lunden had been born in Schleswig-Holstein, graduated in medicine from the University of Stuttgart and subsequently worked as a lecturer at the University of Jena’s Pathological Institute, specialising in genetics.

  Thorson was sure he remembered hearing that the German consul, Werner Gerlach, had carried out research in genetics at the same university.

  27

  Flóvent wasn’t sure what to do. As he shadowed Brynhildur Hólm over Skólavörduholt, he debated whether he should keep going or abandon this game and order her to stop. He didn’t even know why he had decided to follow her instead of approaching her and introducing himself. She must have been visiting Rudolf, shortly before Flóvent himself had arrived, and then lingered at the hospital for some reason. Perhaps she had stopped to speak to a nurse she knew and had slipped out of the back exit just as he happened to leave. She appeared to be heading for the centre of town, walking briskly, as if her errand couldn’t wait.

  It was on top of Skólavörduholt that the British had erected the first barracks in Reykjavík, christening it Camp Skipton after a small town in Yorkshire. Some seventy Nissen huts now colonised the crown of this hill, where there were plans to raise a splendid church one day in honour of the poet and clergyman Hallgrímur Pétursson, author of the Hymns of Passion. The main route out of town had once led this way, passing Steinka’s Cairn, where wayfarers had customarily thrown a stone for good luck. In 1805, an unfortunate woman from the West Fjords had been found guilty of a crime of passion and died in prison. Denied the right to lie in consecrated ground, she had been buried on the hill under a pile of stones like an animal. Flóvent glanced in passing at the place where her cairn had once stood. A large Nissen hut now occupied the spot.

  Looking ahead again, he saw Brynhildur threading her way between the puddles in the road that ran past the camp. Although she was no longer young he heard the odd wolf whistle from the soldiers who were lounging in the sunshine, playing cards, smoking and exchanging banter. Brynhildur didn’t so much as glance at them, but marched on in her tightly buttoned coat, clutching her black bag, heading towards Skólavördustígur.

  She followed the street down to where it joined Bankastræti, then at the bottom turned right towards the harbour. In no time at all she had entered Hafnarstræti where she slowed her pace, then without warning darted into an alleyway. Seeing her vanish round a corner, Flóvent hurried after her. As he drew near to the entrance, he slowed down, then cautiously entered the alley. It ran between two buildings, a few doors down from Mrs Marta Björnsson’s restaurant, and ended in a courtyard. Flóvent couldn’t see a soul and had no way of telling where Brynhildur had gone. But it stood to reason that she must have entered one of the buildings, because there was no obvious route out of the yard apart from the alley.

  Flóvent guessed that she had noticed him and deliberately slipped into the alley to shake him off. He ran back out to the street in case she had crept into one of the houses and out of the front door, but he couldn’t see any sign of her. Returning to the yard, he began trying the back doors, one after the other. They were all locked. He reasoned that Brynhildur must have the key to one of them and decided to see if he could get through the front.

  As he stepped back out onto Hafnarstræti, he almost ran into a group of US Marines and had to wait for them to pass. Then he scanned the front of the buildings and noticed a small, easily missed sign in one window advertising Hermundur Fridriksson’s Clinic. It was then that he remembered Rudolf Lunden had once had a medical practice on Hafnarstræti.

  So that’s where Brynhildur Hólm had been heading in such a hurry.

  Not knowing the address of Rudolf’s surgery, he decided to try the house with the sign on it. The front door was unlocked. It was a three-storey stone building with a high attic and a steep staircase that creaked beneath his feet. He knocked on two doors on the ground floor, and, when no one answered, continued up to the next floor. Again he started knocking on doors, and the second was answered by an elderly woman who said she remembered Rudolf Lunden well and that his surgery had been on the top floor of the house next door. The buildings had once contained both apartments and offices, including two doctor’s surgeries, but then old Hermundur had died and Rudolf had closed his practice. As far as the woman knew, both surgeries were standing empty.

  Flóvent rushed back down the stairs and tried the front door of the neighbouring house. It was also unlocked and, on entering, he found himself in a dark hall with the same kind of staircase. He wondered how Rudolf had managed to get up all those steps. He didn’t know how long the doctor had been confined to a wheelchair, but he could see why he would have had to close his practice after the accident. Flóvent found the surgery at the top of the stairs. Although the door was locked, it rattled when he tried the handle and he thought it shouldn’t be too difficult to force. He put his shoulder to it and shoved hard until he heard a snap and felt the lock giving way and the door opening.

  Immediately inside was a small waiting room with three chairs, a framed photograph of the Alps hanging on one of the panelled walls. The curtains were drawn, leaving the place in semi-darkness, and the air was thick with dust. Another door led from the waiting room into the consulting room, where a small partition screened off the examination area. Flóvent pressed a switch on the wall, but no light came on. He went over to the window and pulled back the curtains, admitting enough light to see by. There were dusty medicine cabinets and optometry instruments, a desk, a filing cabinet, an examination table and half-open drawers containing dressings and hypodermic needles. The surgery looked as if it had been a busy, thriving practice when it was abandoned. As if Rudolf had walked out at the end of an ordinary day’s work and never returned.

  But somebody had been there recently, because the dust had been disturbed in places, particularly around the desk and examination table. When Flóvent inspected the room
more closely, he also discovered the remains of a meal, two milk bottles and a coffee thermos. Picking up the thermos, he sniffed at it. There was no question. Someone was holed up in the old surgery.

  For an instant he stood stock still, listening, but all he could hear was the noise from the street below.

  ‘Felix!’ he called out. ‘Are you there? Felix Lunden!’

  His words echoed round the rooms but there was no reply.

  Flóvent returned to the little waiting room and this time noticed another door in the back wall. From the window he saw that it seemed to open onto a narrow fire escape. He guessed that Brynhildur Hólm had come up that way and fled as soon as she heard him outside on the landing, rattling the door. Perhaps Felix had been with her. At any rate somebody had recently been inside Rudolf Lunden’s surgery. Flóvent was about to race down the stairs after her but changed his mind, deciding it was too late now.

  He returned to the consulting room, and when his eyes had adjusted once more to the gloom, he spotted the black doctor’s bag that Brynhildur had been carrying when she left the hospital. On opening it, he found it contained not medical equipment but essential supplies: a razor, soap and newspapers, a packet of coffee and a few slices of bread.

  He picked up the razor, hearing, as he did so, a faint creak from one corner of the room. Flóvent jerked his head round towards the sound and noticed a large wardrobe built into the wall.

  ‘Felix?’ he called.

  He listened.

  ‘Brynhildur?’

  When no one answered, he tiptoed over to the wardrobe.

  ‘Felix?’ he called again.

  He received no response and was about to yank open the door when, without warning, it flew towards him. A man he had never seen before leapt out and took a swing at him. Flóvent saw something gleam in the man’s hand and felt a searing pain, first at his temple, then in the back of his head. The man had struck him twice before Flóvent could even raise a hand to defend himself. As Flóvent reached out to grab his attacker, he felt his strength rapidly dwindling, his body becoming a dead weight, incapable of obeying his commands. Then he blacked out and wasn’t even aware of his head hitting the floor with a crack.