Arnaldur Indridason - The Draining Lake

“There’s Teddi,” Bergthora said, with a wave at Elinborg’s husband.

Someone tapped a spoon against a glass and the murmuring stopped. In a far corner of the room a man began talking and they could not hear a word, but everyone laughed. They saw Elinborg push her way over to him and take out the speech that she had written. They inched closer to hear her and managed to catch her closing thanks to her family and colleagues in the force for their patience and support. A round of applause followed.

“Are you going to stay long?” Erlendur asked, sounding ready to leave.

“Don’t be so uptight,” Bergthora said. “Relax. Enjoy yourself a bit. Get drunk.”

She snatched a glass of white wine from the nearest tray.

“Get this inside you!”

Elinborg appeared from the crowd, greeted them all with a kiss and asked if they were bored. She looked at Erlendur, who took a swig of the sour white wine. She and Bergthora started talking about a female television celebrity who was there and who was having an affair with some businessman. Sigurdur Oli shook the hand of someone whom Erlendur did not recognise and he was about to sneak out when he bumped into an old colleague. He was nearing retirement, something that Erlendur knew he feared.

“You’ve heard about Marion,” the man said, sipping his white wine. “Buggered lungs, I’m told. Just sits at home suffering.”

“That’s right,” Erlendur said. “And watches westerns.”

“Were you making enquiries about the Falcon?” the man asked, emptied his glass and grabbed another from a tray as it glided past them.

“The Falcon?”

“They were talking about it at the station. You were looking into missing persons in connection with the Kleifarvatn skeleton.”

“Do you remember anything about the Falcon?” Erlendur asked.

“No, not exactly. We found it outside the coach station. Niels was in charge of the investigation. I saw him here just now. Nifty book that girl’s written,” he added. “I was just looking at it. Good photos.”

“I think the girl’s in her forties,” Erlendur said. “And yes, it’s a really good book.”

He scouted around for Niels and found him sitting on a wide windowsill. Erlendur sat down beside him and recalled how he had once envied him. Niels had a long police career behind him and a family that anyone would be proud of. His wife was a well-known painter, they had four promising children, all university graduates and now providing them with a succession of grandchildren. The couple owned a large house in the suburb of Grafarvogur, splendidly designed by the artist, and two cars, and had nothing to cast a shadow on their eternal happiness. Erlendur sometimes wondered whether a happier and more successful life was possible. They were not the best of friends. Erlendur had always found Niels lazy and absolutely unsuited for detective work. Nor did his personal success diminish the antipathy Erlendur felt towards him.

“Marion’s really ill, I hear,” Niels said when Erlendur sat down beside him.

“I’m sure there’s a while left yet,” Erlendur said against his better judgement. “How are you doing?”

He asked simply out of politeness. He always knew how Niels was doing.

“I’ve given up trying to figure it out,” Niels said. “We arrested the same man for burglary five times in one weekend. Every time he confesses and is released because the case is solved. He breaks in somewhere again, gets arrested, is released, burgles somewhere else. It’s brainless. Why don’t they set up a system here for sending idiots like that straight to prison? They clock up twenty or so crimes before they’re given the minimum custodial sentence, then the minute they’re out on probation you’re arresting the same buggers again. What’s the point of such madness? Why aren’t these bastards given a proper sentence?”

“You won’t find a more hopeless set-up than the Icelandic judicial system,” Erlendur said.

“Those scum make fools of the judges,” Niels said. “And then those paedophiles! And the psychos!”

They fell silent. The debate on leniency struck a nerve among police officers, who brought criminals, rapists and paedophiles into custody only to hear later that they had been given light sentences or even suspended ones.

“There’s another thing,” Erlendur said. “Do you remember the man who sold agricultural machinery? He owned a Ford Falcon. Vanished without a trace.”

“You mean the car outside the coach station?”

“Yes.”

“He had a nice girlfriend, that bloke. What do you reckon happened to her?”

“She’s still waiting,” Erlendur said. “One of the hubcaps was missing from the car. Do you remember that?”

“We assumed it must have been stolen from outside the coach station. There was nothing about the case to suggest criminal activity — apart from that hubcap being stolen, perhaps. If it was stolen. He could have hit the kerb. Anyway, it was never found. No more than its owner was.”

“Why should he have killed himself?” Erlendur said. “He had everything going for him. A pretty girlfriend. Bright future. He’d bought a Ford Falcon.”

“You know how none of that counts when people commit suicide,” Niels said.

“Do you think he caught a coach somewhere?”

“We thought that it was likely, if I recall correctly. We talked to the drivers but they didn’t remember him. Still, that doesn’t mean he didn’t take a coach out of town.”

“You think he killed himself.”

“Yes,” said Niels. “But…”

Niels hesitated.

“What?” Erlendur said.

“He was playing some kind of a game, that bloke,” Niels said.

“How so?”

“She said his name was Leopold but we couldn’t find anyone by that name of the age she said he was; there was no one on our files or in the national register. No birth certificate. No driving licence. There was no Leopold who could have been that man.”

“What do you mean?”

“Either all the records about him had gone missing or…”

“Or he was deceiving her?”

“He couldn’t have been called Leopold, at least,” Niels said.

“What did she say to that? What did his girlfriend say when you asked her about it?”

“We had the feeling he’d been pulling a fast one on her,” Niels said eventually. “We felt sorry for her. She didn’t even have a photograph of him. What does that tell you? She didn’t know a thing about that man.”

“So?”

“We didn’t tell her.”

“You didn’t tell her what?”

“That we had no files about this Leopold of hers,” Niels said. “It looked cut and dried to us. He lied to her, then walked out on her.”

Erlendur sat in silence while he tried to work out the implications of what Niels had told him.

“Out of consideration for her,” Niels said.

“And she still doesn’t know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why did you keep it a secret?”

“Probably for the sake of kindness.”

“She’s still sitting waiting for him,” Erlendur said. “They were going to get married.”

“That was what he convinced her of before he left.”

“What if he was murdered?”

“We considered it very unlikely. It’s a rare scenario, but admittedly not unknown: men lie their way into women’s lives, get… how should I put it, comfortable, then disappear. I think she knew deep down. We didn’t need to tell her.”

“What about the car?”

“It was in her name. The loan for it was in her name. She owned the car.”

“You should have told her.”

“Perhaps. But would she have been any better off? She would have learned that the man she loved was a confidence trickster. He told her nothing about his family. She knew nothing about him. He had no friends. Forever on sales trips all over the countryside. What does that tell you?”