The Draining Lake de-6

by Arnaldur Indridason

  “I don’t know,” Ilona said. “Come on, let’s go out the back door.”

  “Go where?” he said.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  Ilona took him by the hand and led him out through the little kitchen where the old woman was in a chair, knitting. She looked up and smiled, and they smiled back and said goodbye. They came out in a dark backyard, climbed over a fence and ended up in a narrow alleyway. He had no idea what was happening. Why was he chasing behind Ilona on a dark evening, looking over his shoulder to check whether anyone was following them?

  She took detours, stopping every so often and standing still to listen for footsteps. Then she continued on, with him in pursuit. After a long trek they emerged in a new residential quarter where blocks of flats were being built on an otherwise empty site a fair distance from the city centre. Some of the buildings had no windows or doors but people had moved in to others. They went inside one of the partially occupied blocks and ran down to the basement. Ilona banged on a door. Voices could be heard on the other side: they fell silent suddenly at the knock. The door opened. About ten people were in a small flat, looking out at them in the doorway. They scrutinised him. Ilona walked in, greeted them and introduced him.

  “He’s a friend of Hannes,” she said, and they looked at him and nodded.

  A friend of Hannes, he thought in astonishment. How did they know Hannes? He was caught completely off his guard. A girl stepped forward, held out her hand and welcomed him.

  “Do you know what happened?” she asked. “Do you know why he was expelled?”

  He shook his head.

  “I have no idea,” he said. He surveyed the group. “Who are you?” he asked. “How do you all know Hannes?”

  “Did anyone follow you?” the girl asked Ilona.

  “No,” Ilona said. “Tomas doesn’t know what’s going on and I wanted him to hear it from you.”

  “We knew they were watching Hannes,” the girl said. “After he refused to work for them. They were just waiting for a chance. Waiting for the opportunity to expel him from the university.”

  “What did they want him to do?”

  “They call it serving the communist party and the proletariat.”

  A man came over to him.

  “He was always so careful,” the man said. “He made sure never to say anything that could get him into trouble.”

  “Tell him about Lothar,” Ilona said. The tension had eased slightly. Some of the group sat back down. “Lothar is Tomas’s Betreuer.”

  “Nobody followed you?” someone else from the group asked, casting an anxious look at Ilona.

  “No one,” she said. “I told you. I made sure of that.”

  “What about Lothar?” he asked, incredulous about all that he heard and saw. He looked around the little flat, at the people staring at him in fear and curiosity. He realised that he was at a cell meeting, but in reverse. This was not like when the young socialists met back in Iceland. It was not a meeting to campaign for socialism but a clandestine gathering of dissidents. These people met in secret for fear of being punished for anti-socialist behaviour.

  They told him about Lothar. He had not been born in Berlin as he claimed. He was from Bonn and had been educated in Moscow, where Icelandic was one of the subjects he studied. His mission was to recruit young people at the university into the communist party. He made a particular effort with foreign students in places such as Leipzig who could conceivably be of use when they went home. It was Lothar who had tried to get Hannes to work for him. It was without doubt Lothar who had eventually played a part in his expulsion.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Hannes?” he asked Ilona, perplexed.

  “We don’t talk about this,” Ilona said. “Not to anyone. Hannes never mentioned it to you either, did he? Otherwise you would have leaked it all to Lothar.”

  “To Lothar?” he said.

  “You told him about Hannes,” Ilona said.

  “I didn’t know…”

  “We have to guard what we say all the time. You certainly didn’t help Hannes by talking to Lothar.”

  “I didn’t know about Lothar, Ilona.”

  “It needn’t be Lothar,” Ilona said. “It could be anyone. You can never tell. You never know who it is. That’s how the system works. That’s how they work.”

  He stared at Ilona and knew she was right. Lothar had used him, taken advantage of his anger. What Hannes had written in his message was right. He had said something to someone that should have remained unspoken. No one had warned him. No one had talked about secrets. But he also knew in his heart that no one should have needed to tell him. He felt awful. Consumed by guilt. He was well aware how the system worked. He knew all about interactive surveillance. He had let his rage lead him astray. His naivety had helped them take Hannes.

  “Hannes had stopped hanging around with the rest of us Icelanders,” he said.

  “Yes,” Ilona said.

  “Because he…” He did not finish the sentence.

  Ilona nodded.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s really going on here? Ilona?”

  She glanced around the group as if waiting for a response. The man who had spoken earlier nodded to her and she revealed that they had contacted her on their own initiative. One member of the group — Ilona pointed to the girl who had greeted him with a handshake — was studying German with her at the university and wanted to know details of what was happening in Hungary, dissent against the communist party there and fear of the Soviet Union. After cautious overtures to probe her views, and once she was convinced that Ilona was in favour of the uprising in Hungary, she asked her to come and meet her companions. The group held clandestine meetings. Surveillance was being stepped up considerably and people were urged increasingly to notify the security police if they became aware of anti-socialist behaviour or attitudes. This was connected with the 1953 uprising and was to some extent a reaction to the situation in Hungary. Ilona had met Hannes at her first meeting with the young activists in Leipzig. They wanted to know about Hungary and whether similar resistance could be built up in East Germany.

  “Why was Hannes in this group?” he asked. “How does he come into all this?”

  “Hannes was completely brainwashed, just like you,” Ilona said. “You must have strong leadership in Iceland.” She looked towards the man who had spoken before. “Martin and Hannes are friends from engineering,” she said. “It took Martin a long time to get Hannes to understand what we were saying. But we trusted him. We had no reason not to.”

  “If you know all this about Lothar, why don’t you do something?” he asked.

  “We can’t do anything except avoid him, which is difficult because he’s trained to be friends with everyone,” a man said. “What we can do if he gets too inquisitive is to lead him astray. People don’t cotton on to him. He says what we want to hear and agrees with our views. But he’s false. And he’s dangerous.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said, looking at Ilona. “If you knew about Lothar, didn’t Hannes know who he is?”

  “Yes, Hannes knew,” Ilona said.

  “Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he warn me? Why didn’t he say anything?”

  Ilona went up to him.

  “He didn’t trust you,” she said. “He didn’t know where you stand.”

  “He said he wanted to be left alone.”

  “He did want to be left alone. He didn’t want to spy on us or his fellow countrymen.”

  “He called after me when I walked out on him. He was going to say something else but he… I was angry, I stormed out. And bumped straight into Lothar.”

  He looked at Ilona.

  “So that wasn’t a coincidence?”

  “I doubt it,” Ilona said. “But it was sure to have happened sooner or later. They were keeping a close watch on Hannes.”

  “Are there more people like Lothar at the university?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Ilo
na said. “But we don’t know who they are. We only know about some of them.”

  “Lothar is your Betreuer,” said a man sitting in a chair who had been listening to the proceedings without saying a word.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your point?” Ilona said to the man.

  “Liaisons are supposed to watch the foreigners,” the man said, standing up. “They’re supposed to report everything about the foreigners. We know that Lothar is also meant to get them to collaborate.”

  “Tell him what you want to say,” Ilona said and took a step closer to the man.

  “How do we know we can trust this friend of yours?”

  “I trust him,” Ilona said. “That’s enough.”

  “How do you know Lothar is dangerous?” he asked. “Who told you that?”

  “That’s our business,” the man said.

  “He’s right,” Tomas said, looking towards the man who had doubted his integrity. “Why should you trust me?”

  “We trust Ilona,” came the reply.

  Ilona smiled awkwardly.

  “Hannes said you’d come round eventually,” she said.

  He looked at the faded sheet of paper and read the old message from Hannes. Soon it would be evening and the couple would walk past his window. He thought about that night in the basement flat in Leipzig and how it had changed his life. He thought about Ilona and about Hannes and Lothar. And he thought about the terrified people in the basement.

  It was the children of those people who had turned Nikolaikirche into their fortress and had rushed out onto the streets when, decades later, the situation finally reached boiling point.

  18

  Valgerdur was not with Erlendur at Sigurdur Oli’s barbecue, nor was her name mentioned. Elinborg barbecued delicious loins of lamb which she had marinated in a special spicy sauce with shredded lemon peel, but first they ate a shrimp dish that Bergthora made which Elinborg praised highly. The dessert was a mousse by Elinborg; Erlendur did not catch what was in it but it tasted good. He had never intended to go to the barbecue, but eventually gave in after relentless badgering by Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora. It was not as bad as Elinborg’s book launch, however. Bergthora was so pleased he had come that she allowed him to smoke in the living room. Sigurdur Oli’s face fell a mile when she brought him an ashtray. Erlendur watched him with a smile and felt he had earned his reward.

  They did not discuss work, apart from one occasion when Sigurdur Oli began wondering why the Russian equipment had been kaput before it went into the lake with the body. Erlendur had told them about the forensics results. The three of them were standing together on the patio. Elinborg was preparing the grill.

  “Doesn’t that tell us something?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know whether it matters whether it worked or not. I can’t see the difference. A listening device is a listening device. Russians are Russians.”

  “Yes, I guess so,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Maybe it was damaged in a struggle. Fell to the floor and smashed.”

  “Conceivably,” Erlendur said. He looked up at the sun. He did not really know what he was doing out there on the terrace. He had not been to Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora’s house before even though they had worked together for a long time. It did not surprise him to find everything neat and tidy there: designer furniture, objets d’art and smart flooring. Not a speck of dust to be seen. Nor any books.

  Indoors, Erlendur perked up when he learned that Teddi, Elinborg’s husband, knew about Ford Falcons. Teddi was a chubby car mechanic who was in love with Elinborg’s cooking, like most people who knew her. His father had once owned a Falcon and he was a great admirer of the model. Teddi told Erlendur that it had been very smooth to drive, with a bench for the front seat, automatic gearbox and a big ivory steering wheel. It was a smaller family car than other American models from the 1960s, which tended to be huge.

  “It didn’t do too well on the old Icelandic roads,” Teddi said as he scrounged a cigarette from Erlendur. “Maybe it wasn’t built strongly enough for Icelandic conditions. We had a lot of bother when the axle broke once out in the countryside. Dad had to get a lorry to transport it back to town. They weren’t particularly powerful cars, but good for small families.”

  “Were the hubcaps special in any way?” Erlendur asked, lighting Teddi’s cigarette.

  “The hubcaps on American cars were always quite flashy, and they were on the Falcon too. But they weren’t really distinctive. Mind you, the Chevrolet…”

  For small families, Erlendur thought to himself, and Teddi’s voice faded out. The missing salesman had bought a nice car for the small family he intended to have with the woman from the dairy shop. That was the future. When he disappeared, one hubcap was missing from his car. He may have taken a bend too quickly or struck the kerb. Or maybe the hubcap was simply stolen outside the coach station.

  “…Then came the oil crisis in the 1970s and they had to manufacture more economical engines,” Teddi ploughed on, sipping his beer.

  Erlendur nodded absent-mindedly and stubbed out his cigarette. He saw Sigurdur Oli opening a window to let the smoke out. Erlendur was trying to cut down but always smoked more than he intended. He was thinking about giving up worrying about cigarettes. It had not done any good so far. He thought about Eva Lind, who had not been in touch since she left rehab. She didn’t worry about her health. He looked out onto the little patio behind Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora’s townhouse, and watched Elinborg barbecuing; she seemed to be warbling a song to herself. He looked into the kitchen where Sigurdur Oli kissed Bergthora on the back of the neck as he walked past her. He cast a sideways glance at Teddi relishing his beer.

  Maybe that was enjoying life. Maybe it was that simple when the sun was shining on a pleasant summer’s day.

  Instead of going home that evening he drove out of the city, past Grafarholt in the direction of Mosfellsbaer. He took a slip road towards a large farmhouse and turned off it nearer the sea until he reached the land that Haraldur and his brother Johann had farmed. Haraldur had given him only limited directions and had tried to be as unhelpful as possible. He refused to tell Erlendur whether the old farm buildings were still standing, claiming to know nothing about them. His brother Johann had died suddenly from a heart attack, he said. Not everyone’s as lucky as my brother Joi, he added.

  The buildings were still standing. Summer chalets had been built here and there on the old farmland. Judging from the trees growing around some of them, they had been there some time. Others were recent. Erlendur saw a golf course in the distance. Although it was late in the evening, he could see a few souls hitting balls, then strolling after them in the warm sun.

  The farm buildings were dilapidated. A small farmhouse and sheds near it. The house was clad with corrugated iron. At one time it had been painted yellow, but the colour had almost entirely faded. Rusty corrugated-metal sheets were hung on the outside of the house; others had surrendered to the wind and weather and fallen to the ground. Most of the roofing sheets had been blown out to sea, Erlendur imagined. All the windows were broken and the front door was missing. Nearby stood the ruins of a small toolshed adjoining a cattle shed and barn.

  He stood in front of the ruined farmhouse. It was almost like his childhood home.

  Stepping inside, he entered a small hallway, then a narrow corridor. On the right was a kitchen and a laundry room, and a little pantry was to the left. An antiquated Icelandic cooker was still in the kitchen, with three hotplates and a small oven, rusted through. At the end of the corridor were two bedrooms and a living room. The floorboards creaked in the quiet of the evening. He did not know what he was looking for. He did not know why he had come there.

  He went down to the sheds. Looking along the row of stalls in the cattle shed and into the barn, he could see a dirt floor. When he walked around the corner he could make out traces of a dung heap behind the cattle shed. A door hung on the toolshed, but when he pulled at it, it came
off its hinges, fell to the ground and broke with what sounded like a heavy groan. Inside the toolshed were racks with little compartments for screws, nuts and bolts, and nails on the walls to hang tools from. The tools were nowhere to be seen. The brothers had doubtless taken everything serviceable with them when they moved to Reykjavik. A broken workbench was propped at an angle against the wall. A tractor bonnet rested on a heap of indeterminate iron objects on the floor. A felloe from the rear wheel of a tractor lay over in one corner.

  Erlendur walked farther inside the toolshed. Did he come here, the driver of the Falcon? Or did he take a coach to some rural destination? If he did come here, what was he thinking? It had been late in the day when he’d left Reykjavik. He’d known that he did not have much time. She would wait for him in front of the dairy shop and he did not want to be late. But he did not want to rush the brothers. They were interested in buying a tractor from him. It would not take much to clinch the sale. But he did not want to give the impression of being pushy. It could jeopardise the deal if he appeared overexcited. Yet he was in a hurry. He wanted to get it all finished.

  If he did come here, why didn’t the brothers say so? Why should they be lying? They had no vested interests. They did not know the man in the least. And why was one hubcap missing from his car? Had it fallen off? Was it stolen outside the coach station? Was it stolen here?

  If he was the man in the lake with a broken skull, how did he end up there? Where did the device tied to him come from? Was it relevant that he sold tractors and machinery from the Eastern bloc? Was there a connection?

  Erlendur’s mobile rang in his pocket.

  “Yes,” he answered curtly.

  “You leave me alone,” said a voice he knew well. He knew the voice particularly well when it was in this state.

  “I intend to,” he said.

  “You do that, then,” the voice said. “You leave me alone from here on. Just stop interfering in my life for—”