Arnaldur Indridason - The Draining Lake

“Is he the one who lost his wife and child?”

“Yes. Inexplicably, he blames himself and refuses to listen to anything different.”

“It was sheer coincidence, wasn’t it?”

“Not in his mind.”

Sigurdur Oli had been temporarily assigned to investigating road accidents. A Range Rover had driven into a car at a junction on the Breidholt Road, killing a mother along with her five-year-old daughter who was in the back, wearing a safety belt. The driver of the Range Rover had gone through a red light while drunk. The victims” car was the last in a long queue going over the junction at the very moment the Range Rover raced through the red light. If the mother had waited for the next green light, the Range Rover would have gone through without causing any damage and proceeded on its way. The drunken driver would probably have caused an accident somewhere, but it would not have been at that junction.

“But that’s just how most accidents happen,” Sigurdur Oli said to Erlendur. “Incredible coincidences. That’s what the man doesn’t understand.”

“His conscience is killing him,” Erlendur said. “You ought to show some understanding.”

“Understanding?! He calls me at home in the middle of the night. How can I show him any more understanding?”

The woman had been shopping with their daughter at the supermarket in Smaralind. She was at the checkout when her husband called her mobile to ask her to get him a punnet of strawberries. She did, but it delayed her by a few minutes. The man was convinced that if he hadn’t telephoned her she would not have been at the junction at the time when the Range Rover hit her. So he blamed himself. The crash had happened because he’d called her.

The scene of the accident was awful. The woman’s car was torn apart, a write-off. The Range Rover had rolled off the road. The driver suffered a serious head injury and multiple fractures, and was unconscious when the ambulance took him away. The mother and daughter died instantly. They had to be cut from the wreckage. Blood ran down the road.

Sigurdur Oli went to visit the husband with a clergyman. The car was registered in the husband’s name. He was beginning to worry about his wife and daughter and went into shock when he saw Sigurdur Oli and the vicar on his doorstep. When he was told what had happened he broke down and they called a doctor. Every so often since then he had telephoned Sigurdur Oli, who had become a kind of confidant, entirely against his will.

“I don’t want to be his damned confessor,” Sigurdur Oli groaned. “But he won’t leave me alone. Rings at night and talks about killing himself! Why can’t he go on at the vicar? He was there too.”

“Tell him to consult a psychiatrist.”

“He sees one regularly.”

“Of course, it’s impossible to put yourself in his shoes,” Erlendur said. “He must feel terrible.”

“Yes,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“And he’s contemplating suicide?”

“So he says. And he could easily do something stupid. I just can’t be bothered with it all.”

“What does Bergthora reckon?”

“She thinks I can help him.”

“Strawberries?”

“I know. I’m always telling him. It’s ridiculous.”

Erlendur sat listening to an account of someone who had gone missing in the 1960s. Sigurdur Oli was with him. This time it was a man in his late thirties.

A preliminary examination of the skeleton suggested that the body in Kleifarvatn was that of a man aged between 35 and 40. Based on the age of the accompanying Russian device, it had been left in the lake some time after 1961. A detailed study had been made of the black box discovered under the skeleton. It was a listening device — known in those days as a microwave receiver — which could intercept the frequency used by NATO in the 1960s. It was marked with the year of manufacture, 1961, badly filed off, and such inscriptions as remained to be deciphered were clearly Russian.

Erlendur examined newspaper reports from 1973 about the Russian equipment being found in Lake Kleifarvatn and most of what Marion Briem had told him fitted the journalists” accounts. The devices had been discovered at a depth of ten metres just off Geirshofdi cape, some distance from where the skeleton had been found. He told Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg about this and they discussed whether it might be linked to their skeleton. Elinborg thought it was obvious. If the police had explored more thoroughly when they’d found the Russian equipment, they might have found the body as well.

According to contemporary police reports, the divers had seen a black limousine on the road to Kleifarvatn when they went there the previous week. They immediately thought it was a diplomatic car. The Soviet embassy did not answer enquiries about the case, nor did other Eastern European representatives in Reykjavik. Erlendur found a brief report stating that the equipment was Russian. It included listening devices with a range of 160 kilometres which were probably used to intercept telephone conversations in Reykjavik and around the Keflavik base. The devices probably dated from the 1960s, and used valves that had been rendered obsolete by transistor technology. They were battery-powered and would fit inside an ordinary suitcase.

The woman sitting opposite them was approaching seventy but had aged well. She and her partner had not had children by the time of his sudden disappearance. They were unmarried but had discussed going to the registrar. She had not lived with anyone since, she told them rather coyly but with a hint of regret in her voice.

“He was so nice,” the woman said, “and I always thought he’d come back. It was better to believe that than to think he was dead. I couldn’t accept that. And never have accepted it.”

They had found themselves a small flat and planned to have children. She worked in a dairy shop. This was in 1968.

“You remember them,” she said to Erlendur, “and maybe you too,” she said, looking at Sigurdur Oli. “They were special dairy shops that only sold milk, curds and the like. Nothing but dairy products.”

Erlendur nodded calmly. Sigurdur Oli had already lost interest.

Her partner had said he would collect her after work as he did every day, but she stood alone in front of the shop and waited.

“It’s more than thirty years ago now,” she said, with a look at Erlendur, “and I feel like I’m still standing in front of the shop waiting. All these years. He was always punctual and I remember thinking how late he was after ten minutes had gone by, then the first quarter of an hour and half an hour. I remember how infinitely long it was. It was like he’d forgotten me.”

She sighed.

“Later it was like he’d never existed.”

They had read the reports. She reported his disappearance early the following morning. The police went to her home. He was reported missing in the newspapers and on radio and television. The police told her he would surely turn up soon. Asked whether he drank or whether he had ever disappeared like this before, whether she knew about another woman in his life. She denied all these suggestions but the questions made her consider the man in completely different terms. Was there another woman? Had he ever been unfaithful? He was a salesman who drove all over the country. He sold agricultural equipment and machinery, tractors, hay blowers, diggers and bull-dozers, and travelled a lot. Maybe several weeks at a time on the longest trips. He had just returned from one when he disappeared.

“I don’t know what he could have been doing up at Kleifarvatn,” she said, glancing from one detective to the other. “We never went there.”

They had not told her about the Soviet spying equipment or the smashed skull, only that a skeleton had been found where the lake had drained and that they were investigating persons reported missing during a specific period.