Arnaldur Indridason - The Draining Lake

Looking at Emil, he recognised his inhumanity and how whole societies could be built on brutality alone.

“There was one thing I started thinking about when it was all over,” he went on as if talking to himself, as if removed from time and space to a place where nothing mattered any more. “When it was all over and nothing could be put right. Long after I came back to Iceland. I was the one who told you about Ilona’s meetings. I don’t know why, but I did. I suppose I was just encouraging you and the others to go to the meetings. There were no secrets between us Icelanders. We could discuss it all without worrying. I didn’t reckon on someone like you.”

He paused.

“We stood together,” he went on. “Someone informed on Ilona. The university was a big place and it could have been anyone. It wasn’t until long afterwards that I started to consider the possibility that it was one of us Icelanders, one of my friends, who did it.”

He looked Emil in the eye.

“I was an idiot to think we were friends,” he said in a low voice. “We were just kids. Barely twenty.”

He turned to leave the shed.

“Ilona was a fucking slut,” Emil snarled behind him.

At the moment these words were spat out he noticed a spade standing on top of a dusty old cabinet. He grabbed it by its shaft, turned a half-circle and let out a mighty roar as he brought the spade down on Emil with all his might. It struck him on the head. He saw how the light flickered off in Emil’s eyes as he dropped to the floor.

He stood looking down at Emil’s limp body as if in a world of his own, until a long-forgotten sentence returned to his mind.

“It’s best to kill them with a spade.”

A dark pool of blood began to form on the floor and he knew at once that he had dealt Emil a fatal blow. He was completely detached. Calm and collected as he watched Emil motionless on the floor and the pool of blood growing. Looked on as if it were nothing to do with him. He had not gone to the shed to kill him. He had not planned to murder him. It had happened without a moment’s thought.

He had no idea how long he had been standing there before he registered someone beside him, speaking to him. Someone who tugged at him and slapped his cheek lightly and said something indistinct. He looked at the man but did not recognise him at once. He saw him bend over Emil. Put a finger to his jugular as if to check for a pulse. He knew that it was hopeless. He knew that Emil was dead. He had killed Emil.

The man stood up from the body and turned to him. He now saw who it was. He had followed that man through Reykjavik; he had led him to Emil.

It was Lothar.

Karl Antonsson was at home when Elinborg knocked on his door. His curiosity was aroused the moment she told him that the discovery of the skeleton in Kleifarvatn had prompted them to make inquiries about Icelandic students in Leipzig. He invited Elinborg into the living room. He and his wife were on their way to the golf course, he told her, but it could wait.

Earlier that morning Elinborg had telephoned Sigurdur Oli and asked how Bergthora was feeling. He said she was fine. Everything was going well.

“And that man, has he stopped phoning you at night?”

“I hear from him now and again.”

“Wasn’t he suicidal?”

“Pathologically,” Sigurdur Oli said, and added that Erlendur was waiting for him. They were going to meet Haraldur at the old people’s home as a part of Erlendur’s ridiculous quest for Leopold. The application for a full-scale search of the land in Mosfellsbaer had been turned down, much to Erlendur’s disgust.

Karl lived on Reynimelur in a pretty house divided into three flats with a neatly kept garden. His wife Ulrika was German and she shook Elinborg’s hand firmly. The couple wore their age well and were both fit. It might be the golf, Elinborg thought to herself. They were very surprised by this unexpected visit and looked blankly at each other when they heard the reason.

“Is it someone who studied in Leipzig that you found in the lake?” Karl asked. Ulrika went into the kitchen to make coffee.

“We don’t know,” Elinborg said. “Do either of you remember a man by the name of Lothar in Leipzig?”

Karl looked at his wife, who was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“She’s asking about Lothar,” he said.

“Lothar? What about him?”

“They think it’s him in the lake,” Karl said.

“That’s not quite right,” Elinborg said. “We aren’t suggesting that’s the case.”

“We paid him to clear everything,” Ulrika said. “Once.”

“Clear everything?”

“When Ulrika came back to Iceland with me,” Karl said. “He had influence and was able to assist us. But for a price. My parents scraped it together — and Ulrika’s parents in Leipzig too, of course.”

“And Lothar helped you?”

“Very much,” Karl said. “He charged for it so it wasn’t just a favour, and I think he helped other people too, not just us.”

“And all it involved was paying money?”

Karl and Ulrika exchanged glances and she went into the kitchen.

“He mentioned that we might be contacted later, you know. But we never were and never would have entertained the idea. Never. I was never in the party after we came back to Iceland, never went to meetings or the like. I gave up all involvement in politics. Ulrika was never political, she had an aversion to that sort of thing.”

“You mean you would have been given tasks?” Elinborg said.

“I have no idea,” Karl said. “It never came to that. We never met Lothar again. Thinking back, it’s sometimes hard to believe what we actually experienced in those years. It was a completely different world.”

“The Icelanders called it “the charade”,” Ulrika said, having rejoined them. “I always thought that was an apt way to describe it.”

“Are you in contact with your university friends at all?” Elinborg asked.

“Very little,” Karl said. “Well, we bump into each other in the street sometimes, or at birthday parties.”

“One of them was called Emil,” Elinborg said. “Do you know anything about him?”

“I don’t think he ever came back to Iceland,” Karl said. “He always lived in Germany. I haven’t seen him since… is he still alive?”

“I don’t know,” Elinborg said.

“I never liked him,” Ulrika said. “He was a bit sleazy.”

“Emil was always a loner. He didn’t know many people. He was said to do the authorities” bidding. I never saw that side of him.”

“And you don’t know anything else about this Lothar character?”

“No, nothing,” Karl said.

“Do you have any photographs of the students from Leipzig?” Elinborg asked. “Of Lothar or anyone else?”

“Not Lothar and definitely not Emil, but I do have one of Tomas and his girlfriend. Ilona. She was Hungarian.”

Karl stood up and walked across the living room to a large cupboard. He took out an old album and flicked through it until he found the photograph, which he handed to Elinborg. It was a black-and-white snap of a young couple holding hands. The sun was shining on them and they were smiling into the camera.

“It’s taken in front of Thomaskirche,” Karl said. “A few months before Ilona disappeared.”

“I heard about that,” Elinborg said.

“I was there when they came to get her,” Karl said. “It was awful. The brutality. No one found out what happened to her and I don’t think Tomas ever recovered.”

“She was very brave,” Ulrika said.

“She was a dissident,” Karl said. “That was frowned upon.”

Erlendur knocked on Haraldur’s door at the old people’s home. Breakfast had just finished and the clatter of plates could still be heard from the canteen. Sigurdur Oli was with him. They heard Haraldur shout something from inside and Erlendur opened the door. Haraldur was sitting up in bed, his head lowered, staring down at the floor. He looked up when they entered the room.