‘How does that help anything? The guy you saw her with was probably just one of her Icelandic boyfriends. You know something? As I hear it that girl could have accommodated the whole Goddamn base before lunch and then gone out to meet her lover.’
‘I’d like to see him, Charlie.’
He looked at me gloomily through a veil of cigarette smoke. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it will make you happy. I suppose it can’t do any harm. Then will you go back to your little bugs and Einar Sigurdson and let me be a liaison officer just for today?’
‘Okay, Charlie,’ I said, ‘it’s a deal.’
‘But do me one great big favour – don’t tell Sigurdson or any of his pals that you’ve seen this guy or they’ll start cabling the President of the United States that Charlie Martz has given a limey preferential treatment.’
We walked down a polished corridor populated with lounging sailors and airmen who snapped upright as Martz walked past. At the end of the corridor was a brown door with two guards outside.
Before we went in Martz said: ‘Don’t forget this man hasn’t been charged with anything.’
‘The Icelandic police will want him as soon as they hear that you’ve questioned him.’
‘Then they can get screwed,’ Martz said.
‘I thought you had to hand over a serviceman if a civilian crime has been committed.’
‘What crime? All we know is that there’s a dead girl.’
‘They’ll soon think of a crime. Manslaughter maybe – or whatever the Icelandic equivalent is.’
‘I wouldn’t even describe the guy in this room as a suspect. He’s just having difficulty accounting for his movements on Saturday night.’
‘All right, Charlie,’ I said. ‘But you know, and I know, that you’ve got a lot of trouble ahead of you.’
He shrugged and opened the door. Sitting at a table and looking very frightened, was the fair-haired boy with the bright blue eyes who had been dancing with the dead girl.
9
Airman First Class Fred Shirey
His name was Fred Shirey, airman first class, and he came from Cleveland, Ohio. Of German extraction with a name change somewhere along the line, born in St Paul, Minnesota.
His eyes were just as blue as I remembered them being; his hair was flaxen and longish on top; his complexion baby pink; in fact his colouring was albino except for the sapphire eyes. Now his face was dirty from fear and fatigue. He was wearing a blue windcheater, grey crew-neck sweater and grey slacks.
He looked at me with new apprehension as if I had come to take him away from the small functional office furnished with a table, a couple of chairs and a green metal filing cabinet.
I appealed to Martz. ‘Could we have it from the beginning?
Martz sighed. ‘Okay, once more won’t do any harm.’ He turned to Shirey. ‘All right, airman, begin at the beginning. This is Mr Conran from England. He’s here to help you.’
Shirey looked at me suspiciously. How could an Englishman help an American in trouble in Iceland?
‘I can’t explain now,’ I said, ‘but Commander Martz is right – I may be able to help you. Can you tell me about Saturday, right from the moment you left the base?’
‘Okay, sir.’ He searched in the pocket of his blue windcheater for a cigarette; I gave him one of mine.
Shirey said he caught the bus into town in the afternoon, hung around the shops for a while, went for a coffee in the Café Trod in Austurstraeti where you could sometimes get fixed up without going to a dance at the Saga or Loftleidir.
‘What do you mean by fixed-up?’ I asked. ‘Girls?’
‘Not necessarily. You can meet young people there and maybe get invited to a party or something. As you know we have to be off the streets by ten so if you can get an invite to someone’s home you’re okay. The young people seem to like us.’ He looked warily at Martz, one of the perpetrators of an Icelandic-American plot to stop fraternising.
Martz said: ‘Just get on with the story, airman.’
Shirey said he met some young Icelandic men at the Trod; they drank coffee and talked for a couple of hours. Then some girls came along and they all invited him to a party.
‘But you didn’t go,’ I said.
‘I sure did.’ His bright eyes stared at me. Hard face, baby face – both, perhaps, in different circumstances. ‘But they reckoned there weren’t enough girls to go round.’ He almost smiled. ‘In Iceland – can you imagine that? I didn’t want any trouble by getting involved with one of their girls so I decided to go find one for myself. Two, maybe – one for one of the other spare guys at the party. It isn’t difficult to pick up girls here.’ He looked defensively at Martz. ‘The girls here seem to like us. So, come to that, do the guys.’
Martz said: ‘I didn’t make the rules, Shirey.’ And to me he recited one of his liaison statistics: ‘We average sixteen marriages a year with Icelandic girls.’
‘That doesn’t sound much with 3,000 American servicemen stationed here,’ I said.
Martz said: ‘A thousand of those are married.’ Which left 2,000 bachelors kicking their heels at Keflavik on a Saturday night separated from the available nubile girls of Reykjavik by thirty-five kilometres of ancient lava.
I gave Shirey another cigarette and asked him: ‘Do you like being posted in Iceland?’
Martz said: ‘Now see here …’
Shirey said: ‘Sure, I like it.’ The resilience of the German settler showed through. ‘It’s what you make it. A challenge, I guess. We get good leave in Europe and there’s a lot of sport and entertainment on the base and skiing up in the north.’
‘And dodging the patrols at night,’ I said.
He shrugged and I heard him thinking: Not in front of an officer – but if you’re on a manslaughter rap what the hell? ‘And dodging the patrols,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you, if you were treated like a juvenile delinquent or something? All most of the guys want to do is to make some friends outside the base.’
‘Okay, Shirey,’ Martz said. ‘Get on with Saturday night. How come you were at the Saga if you also went to a party?
‘Like I said – I went to look for some girls. I went to the Saga early and had a couple of drinks at the bar. No one paid much attention to me. It’s the colour of my hair, I guess. I get taken for an Icelander – that’s why the patrols often miss me …’ He paused. ‘Although I’ve had to run for it a couple of times.’
‘Get on with it, Shirey,’ Martz said.
‘So I’m sitting there drinking a bourbon when I get into conversation with a couple of Icelandic guys. They thought I was Icelandic. When they found I was American they became very friendly – like they all do. And I drank a few more bourbons – got a little high, I guess. Then this girl came up. She was pretty high, too. The two men knew her and introduced her. She said she liked American boys and would I dance with her? So I did.’ He went on the defensive again. ‘Is there any law against that?’
‘None that I know of,’ I said. ‘So you had a dance. What then?’
‘She seemed pretty sexy. You know how it is on a dance floor.’ He examined Martz and myself and decided that we didn’t. ‘You know, rubbing herself around, leg in between mine – all that sort of thing.’
‘So you thought you were on to a good thing,’ Martz said.
‘Sure I did. I don’t go around grabbing it but when it’s offered I don’t refuse.’
‘Then what happened?’ I asked.
‘I was working out where we could go when I looked up and saw the patrol. An American and an Icelander. The American looked as if he might have recognised me from the base. So I told the girl to wait for me while I hid out. One of the staff there knows me and sticks me away in a room when the patrol comes in. When I came back, she’d gone.’
‘She stayed quite a while,’ I said.
‘How do you know, sir?’
‘I was there,’ I said. ‘I can back up your story so far.’
He digested this information, nibb
ling away at his bottom lip, giving himself a chipmunk look. His teeth were very white and even. Finally he said: ‘I appreciate that, sir.’
‘But only so far,’ I said. ‘What happened then?’
‘I went looking for her. She was back in the bar downstairs. She said did I want to go with her and I said yes I did. I knew she was drunk but I also knew she wasn’t any innocent virgin or anything like that. So I said, “Okay, where can we go?” And she said she lived in an apartment across the way with her parents but they were away in Akureyri or some place. So she got her coat and we walked down some streets until we came to her parents’ place.’ His speech slowed down and he shivered as he remembered what it was all about. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘it’s cold.’
I tried to relax him a bit. ‘I’ll check on the Chill Factor.’
‘That only applies in the winter,’ Martz said. ‘What happened in the apartment?’
Shirey clenched his fists, trying to control the shivers of fear. ‘We sat on a sofa and played around a bit. Petting, if you like. She wanted it.’ He looked through us, remembering. ‘She wanted it bad. But she was too Goddamn drunk. She was very pale and I remember thinking she was going to throw up. I thought, Jesus this isn’t for me. I mean, I’ve had girls and everything, but never when they’re that bad.’
‘How old are you?’ I asked.
‘Nineteen,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Carry on.’
Outside a jet of some sort came in to land. A whine, a scream and silence. Shirey looked for it out of the window. He looked a long way from home.
He went on: ‘So I asked her if she was all right. She said she was. Then she started pulling at her clothes. But I’d lost interest by then and all I wanted was out. I felt sorry for her, though, so I tried to make her lie down and take it easy. But she just grabbed at me. I broke loose and got the hell out of it.’
‘How was she when you left?’ I asked.
‘Okay. Drunk like I said. But she was sitting up looking at me.’
‘And that’s all you did?’
‘And that’s all I did, so help me.’
‘How far did the petting go?’
He looked embarrassed despite his experienced words. ‘Far enough. Not too far.’ He searched in his pocket for a cigarette and I gave him another. ‘What do you want, a blow by blow account? I didn’t screw her if that’s what you mean. I would have but she was too drunk. I don’t go for that sort of scene.’
‘Do you swear she was alive when you left her?’
‘On the Bible. I had nothing to do with that girl’s death. When I left her she was stoned. But, Jesus, I’m not the first guy to have walked out on a girl because she was stoned.’ He thought for a moment. ‘If anyone is responsible for that girl’s death it’s the guy who bought her all that hooch.’ He turned to Martz. ‘Can I go now, sir?’
Martz shook his head, but his voice was almost kindly. ‘Not yet, son.’
‘Why not, sir? I haven’t committed any crime.’ There was a break in his voice and the shivering started again. ‘Not unless picking up a girl and leaving her when you find she’s drunk is a crime.’
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ Martz said inadequately. He had a son a couple of years younger than Shirey.
‘I don’t think we’ve quite finished,’ I said. ‘You say you went to that party?’
‘I sure did. After I left the girl’s apartment I went to the address they had given me. It wasn’t far away. I had a ball,’ he added as if he might never have one again.
‘Then the people at the party will be able to give you an alibi for the time you were there?’
‘Sure they will.’
I said to Charlie Martz: ‘Are the people at the party being checked out?’
He stared bleakly at the sky which was half way through one of its quick-changes, with small white clouds darkening and fusing. ‘Not yet. Not at our request anyway. It would alert the Icelanders to the fact that we’ve been questioning one particular airman.’
Shirey moved his head around as if the muscles at the nape of his neck ached.
I said: ‘They’ll know soon enough anyway.’
‘We’ll wait till that happens,’ Martz said with Service obstinacy.
‘Why, when they’re bound to find out anyway?’
Martz picked up the ringing phone. For a couple of minutes he did most of the listening, supplying the occasional affirmative, massaging the chopped stalks of his hair with the tips of his fingers. Finally he said: ‘Tell them they’ll have to wait.’ He replaced the receiver gently and thoughtfully. Then he turned to the two of us and said: ‘They’ve found out.’
‘Do you think Shirey had anything to do with it?’ Martz stood gazing at the photograph of Kennedy and himself; I wondered if the young Naval officer had known then what deviousness lay ahead of him.
‘No more than he said he did.’
‘Nor do I.’ He sat down and swivelled around in his chair. ‘But they’re clamouring for him out there.’ He pointed in the direction of Reykjavik. ‘I guess we’ll have to hand him over. They’re pretty fair,’ he added, excusing himself.
‘Don’t do it, Charlie,’ I said. ‘Not yet anyway.’
‘I told you this was none of your business. Stick to spies and bird watching. You should have learned your lesson in Moscow.’
‘That boy hasn’t committed any crime,’ I said. ‘And you know it. You’ve just admitted it. If you hand him over he’ll be crucified by the Communists. He’ll get bad publicity and the story will reach the papers in Minnesota and Cleveland. You could ruin him.’
‘I know all about that, Bill old buddy,’ he said, seeking camaraderie again because he knew that he was in the wrong. ‘But there’s a whole lot more to it than that. The future relations between America and Iceland. The future of this base. In 1959 there were a couple of incidents. An American woman was taken in for some driving offence or something and we refused to hand her over to the Icelandic authorities. Then there was some sort of balls-up when some Icelander was found inside the base and held at gun-point. As a result of all that the commanding officer was recalled to the States. At least, that’s the story the way the Icelanders tell it.’
The phone went. Martz put one hand over the mouthpiece and said: ‘It’s the Admiral.’ He spoke with respect but no servility. He finished by saying: ‘I would be grateful, sir, if you would agree to a few delaying tactics. After all, as far as we can make out, no crime has been committed.’ The voice at the other end jangled on for another minute. Then Martz said: ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ and hung up.
‘You’re a good man, Charlie Martz,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘That boy down the end of the corridor didn’t ask to join the Air Force. And he didn’t ask to come to Iceland. Just like they don’t ask to go to Vietnam. I just hope to Christ they don’t start a demonstration. The Admiral wasn’t too pleased about what they did to the TV equipment.’
I grinned. ‘You’re getting too soft for this job, Charlie Martz.’
‘Screw you,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you get back to your birds?’
As I neared the haunted hill of Stapi I accelerated in case the gunman – Magnusson? – was lurking there. Then, as the playing-card roofs of habitation came into view, I slowed down and thought about Shirey.
What could I do to help him? Not much – except pursue my inquiries because I was sure it was all connected. Break the network and you would stifle the agitation. I could also go to the Café Trod and try and find some of the other guests at the party. I switched on the car radio and heard that demonstrations were being planned to demand Icelandic access to Shirey.
A group of long-haired students had gathered in one corner of the Trod coffee bar. Clean, not too matted, reading books on modern art over coffee long gone cold, occasionally glancing defiantly around in search of sneers.
Other young Icelanders were distributed around the place, not so shaggy, mo
st of them wearing sweaters and flared trousers. In another corner sat an American sailor in uniform and another American in sportscoat, sharply-creased grey slacks and square black shoes. They looked puzzled and resentful, brooding over bottles of Coke.
The bar had modern furniture and lighting and some good painting around the walls.
The waitress brought me a jug of black coffee and a little jug of milk. I asked her if she remembered anyone answering Shirey’s description in the café on Saturday. She said she did: he had looked so Scandinavian – more Scandinavian than Icelandic, she thought – and he had turned out to be American. He had been getting on very well with some young Icelandic people: this she liked to see.
I asked the waitress, who was dark and jolly and thirty-ish, if any of Shirey’s acquaintances were in the café. She pointed at two boys of about eighteen, one in an Icelandic sweater, the other in a grey wool shirt. ‘Those two,’ she said. ‘They were conversing wery vell.’
‘Do the Americans get on well with the Icelanders here?’
‘Usually they do.’ Her jolliness wilted a bit. ‘But the feeling is not so good now since that poor girl died. Those two American boys over there wanted to make friends with some Icelandic boys but it was no go.’
‘Do you ever have trouble between Americans and Icelanders?’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘Never the troubles. The Icelandic young people are very keen to learn about America. The Americans want to know about Iceland. And they want to meet girls. Why should they not?’ She sighed. ‘If it was not for politics they would all be very happy together.’
‘Wouldn’t we all,’ I said.
I joined the two Icelanders who had been with Shirey. They looked at me with hostility and finished their coffee. I asked them if they had been with a fair-haired, blue-eyed American on Saturday.
The boy in the wool-shirt said: ‘Are you American?’ He was thin and sensitive and prematurely assured.
‘No. English.’
They relaxed a little. The same boy said: ‘Why are you asking about some American, then?’
The Chill Factor Page 8
