have fallen from the sky. Cautiously straightening the man up, he examined the bullet wound in his forehead and the gun in his hand.
‘Strange angle, don’t you think?’ he asked his colleague, who was younger and a good deal better dressed. ‘If you were going to shoot yourself in the head, would you aim straight at your forehead?’
‘I’ve never given it any thought,’ his colleague replied.
‘And if he did hold the gun up to his forehead, shouldn’t there be signs of scorching or powder marks? Or blowback on his forearm?’
‘So you don’t think it was suicide, despite the note on the computer?’
‘According to his driver’s licence, the man lives on the other side of town, in Breidholt. If you were going to kill yourself, would you go to someone else’s house to do it?’
‘Why do you keep asking me how I would do it if I was going to commit suicide?’ the younger detective asked, running a hand down the handsome tie that complemented his suit exactly. ‘Is it secret wishful thinking?’
‘Not secret enough, obviously,’ replied the older man, who in contrast was wearing a torn jumper and battered hat. ‘This Kristin who lives here, what does she do?’
‘Lawyer with the foreign ministry.’
‘And Runolfur here was in the Import-Export business, whatever that means. There’s no sign of a struggle, and the upstairs neighbours say they weren’t at home. Still, it’s a small gun. It wouldn’t have made much noise.’
‘You’re the firearms expert.’
‘Indulge me, if you will, in my attempted reconstruction,’ the elder officer said, ignoring his colleague’s jibe. ‘If you were going to kill yourself, would you shoot a bullet through the front door first?’
‘Let’s see, the door was open. He must have meant to shoot himself in the head but missed and the bullet entered the door. After that he aimed straight at his forehead to be sure of hitting it. Something like that?’
‘So he shot himself with the door of the flat open?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘This is one of the most cack-handed suicides I’ve ever seen. Why shoot himself here? Was he involved in a relationship with this Kristin?’
‘I imagine Kristin would be in a better position to answer that than I am.’
‘I suppose we’d better put out a wanted notice. But don’t say anything about her being a suspect in a murder inquiry, only that we need to speak to her.’
‘Is it really conceivable that a government lawyer could have killed this man?’
‘If I were going to murder someone, I’d go for a salesman every time,’ the older detective replied, carefully scrutinising the hole in the man’s forehead.
Chapter 18
KEFLAVIK AIR BASE,
SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 0500 GMT
Arnold’s directions proved accurate. Before he left them at the administration block, he had told Steve how to get out of the base without using a gate or climbing over the wire. Kristin could not begin to imagine what sort of favour he owed Steve, but it must have been considerable. She preferred not to think about it.
After leaving Thompson, they headed west, away from the airport and Leifur Eiriksson terminal. The military traffic in the area had intensified; police roadblocks had been set up at intervals around the base and soldiers now patrolled the perimeter fence on the Keflavik side. To the south and west the base was bracketed by sea. Avoiding the more frequented ways, they darted from building to building, shielded by the darkness, until the built-up area petered out, giving way to lava and snowfields which ran down to the shore.
The sky was cloudless and full of stars, and with the moon lighting their way they covered the distance quickly. Arnold’s detailed description of the landmarks soon led them to the Zodiac. All they needed now was to follow the shore south past Hvalsnes and into Kirkjuvogur bay, to the hamlet of Hafnir, where they could abandon the boat and hitch a lift into Reykjavik. The Zodiac had a quiet outboard motor, a twenty-horsepower engine that chugged into life at the first attempt. As Steve steered away from shore, Kristin had the impression that this was not the first time he had navigated along this stretch of coast. An icy wind buffeted her face and although the boat did not achieve much of a speed, it smacked into the waves at regular intervals, forcing her to cling with all her strength to the rope fastened at the bows. Her anorak was soon drenched by the spray.
A quarter of an hour later they abandoned the boat at Hafnir. They had not spoken at all during the journey.
‘Is this how they smuggle the drugs?’ Kristin asked at last, once Steve had made the rubber dinghy fast.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. They left it at that.
As they made their way north from Hafnir towards the Reykjanes dual carriageway, they saw the distant reddish-brown glow illuminating the sky above Keflavik and Njardvik. After about forty-five minutes’ walk in complete silence they noticed headlights approaching out of the darkness behind them. The car slowed down as it drew near, finally stopping a little way ahead of them. It was a baker on his way to Keflavik; he offered them a lift up to the main road. From there it should not take them long to hitch a lift to Reykjavik.
Michael Thompson had given them the Reykjavik address of Leo Stiller’s widow, Sarah Steinkamp, in case she could shed any more light on Stiller’s theories. Apart from that, he claimed to know little about her situation and was unwilling to discuss her; he looked in on her every few years for the sake of his old commanding officer, he said, but she was a difficult person – angry, bitter and depressive – so he never stayed long.
She lived in the old Thingholt district, on the ground floor of a small, dilapidated two-storey wooden house. The corrugated-iron cladding had rusted away where it met the ground and the small windows were only single-glazed. Long ago, the front door had been painted green but most of the paint had now flaked off. A large fir tree stood in the middle of the small garden that had once been enclosed by a wooden fence, the palings of which were now rotten and had largely collapsed.
Kristin and Steve approached the house with caution; they had seen no sign of their pursuers but still peered nervously into the darkness that surrounded them. Despite being confident that they had escaped unseen from the base, they were taking no chances. They stepped into the circle of weak light shed by the tiny lamp above Sarah Steinkamp’s door, an icy wind chapping their faces. It was about seven in the morning.
Steve pressed the doorbell. There was a small copper plate on the door with a name engraved on it in faint lettering. It was almost illegible but Kristin thought she could make out ‘Sarah Steinkamp’. There were no other names; the upstairs apartment must be unoccupied. Its dark windows stared down at them like empty eye-sockets. Steve pushed the bell again. Even when he put his ear to the door he could hear no sign of life inside.
He rang the bell yet again, more forcefully this time but still nothing happened. They took a few steps backwards from the doorstep and out into the glow of the streetlamps, straining their eyes towards the windows on the raised ground floor but could not see any lights inside. Steve rang the bell a fourth time to be sure and they heard it jangling deep inside the house. They had just turned away, on the point of abandoning hope, when a ground floor window opened. The unexpected noise in the still morning made them both jump. A tremulous woman’s voice asked what was going on.
‘Are you Sarah Steinkamp?’ Steve asked. There was no answer. ‘I’m sorry to call so early in the morning but it’s urgent.’
‘What do you want with her? Who are you?’
‘It’s about…’ Steve began. ‘Could you let us in, please? My name’s Steve; this is my friend Kristin. She’s Icelandic.’
‘Icelandic?’ said the quavering voice. They could not make out her face in the darkness, just a faint, disembodied silhouette at the window.
‘And you? You don’t sound Icelandic.’
‘I’m American. We need your help. Could you let us in? You’re Leo Stiller’s widow, aren’t you?’
