‘Leo? What do you want with Leo? Leo’s dead.’
‘We know that. We want to talk to you about Leo,’ Steve said, doing his best to sound agreeable.
They stood motionless for a long time in front of the house, unable to see even whether the figure in the gloom was still at the window. Just as they had given up all hope, the door opened a crack, revealing a woman of tiny, almost dwarflike, stature. The security chain rattled.
‘What do you want with my Leo?’ she asked, her eyes fixed on Kristin. She spoke English with a thick European accent that Kristin could not place exactly but suspected might be Eastern European.
‘It’s because he was a pilot,’ Steve said. ‘We need some information about him.’
‘What kind of information? What are you talking about?’
‘Could we come in and talk to you?’ Steve asked.
‘No,’ the woman said irritably. ‘You can’t.’
‘It’s terribly urgent that we talk to you,’ Kristin said, taking two steps towards the door. ‘You are Sarah, aren’t you? Sarah Steinkamp?’
‘Who are you?’ the woman asked. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘My name’s Kristin. My brother’s in danger. A retired pilot, Michael Thompson, suggested we talk to you. You know him, don’t you? He lives on the base.’
‘I know Thompson,’ the woman said. ‘He was a friend of Leo’s. Why’s your brother in danger?’
‘Because of a plane,’ Kristin said. ‘Your husband was a pilot at the base, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, Leo was a pilot.’
‘That’s why we want to talk to you,’ said Kristin, who had inched her way forwards to a spot beside the front door. She had a better view of the woman now: long grey hair, a wrinkled face, her body painfully thin and a little hunched, clad in a worn, brown dressing gown. Admittedly, they had disturbed her at the crack of dawn but Kristin sensed that their sudden appearance had also disturbed her on some more profound level. She hesitated. It was an uneasy stand-off, the woman half-hidden by the door as if she felt a physical threat.
‘What plane?’ the woman repeated.
‘A plane on the Vatnajokull glacier,’ Kristin replied.
‘On Vatnajokull?’ the little woman said in surprise.
‘Yes, my brother saw a plane on the glacier and then I lost contact with him. He saw soldiers too.’
The old woman pulled her dressing gown more tightly around her.
‘Come in,’ she said in a low voice, undoing the chain and opening the door wider. Kristin hesitated, then stepped inside the house, Steve at her heels, entering a hall that served both flats. A staircase led up to the floor above but directly opposite them the door to the old woman’s flat stood open. Inside it was dark and stiflingly hot; she must have left the radiators on full blast all night. Kristin lost sight of the little woman as she vanished into the gloom. She stood stock still, not daring to move forward, screwing her eyes up towards where she thought she saw a movement. Then a match hissed and she saw the woman’s face briefly illuminated in the flame. She was lighting candles; the house appeared to be full of them and the old woman walked around lighting one after another until Kristin lost count. They cast a soft, flickering glow over the sitting room. Kristin noticed a piano and a violin, family photographs crowding the walls and tables, a threadbare sofa and armchairs, and thick rugs on the floors. The woman invited them to sit down but she herself remained standing by the piano.
‘I feel like Gretel,’ Kristin whispered to Steve.
‘Then I’m Hansel,’ Steve breathed back. ‘As long as she doesn’t put us in her oven.’
‘Please excuse the intrusion, Mrs Steinkamp,’ Kristin said, once her eyes had adjusted to the candlelight. ‘We had no alternative. We won’t keep you long.’
‘I don’t understand how Leo could have anything to do with you,’ the woman said.
‘It’s a long, complicated story,’ Steve replied.
‘But it’s more than thirty years since he died,’ the woman pointed out.
‘Yes, how did he die?’
‘He was killed in a helicopter crash. An error, they said, but I never received any explanation. They never conducted an inquiry but I have my suspicions. I moved away from the base and came to Reykjavik. They send me his pension every month.’
‘What happened?’ Kristin asked.
‘Leo was an outstanding pilot,’ the woman said, the dim glow of the candles playing over her features. She had clearly once been an elegant, even beautiful, young woman but Kristin suspected that life had not been kind to her; age had set its stamp on her hard and there was a glittering determination in her eyes that hinted at past troubles. She must have been in her late seventies. Kristin examined the family pictures on the walls and piano; they were old, taken in the first half of the century, all photos of adults or elderly people, encased in thick, black frames. She could not see any children in the pictures, nor any recent photos or colour pictures. Only old, black-and-white images of men and women, posing for the photographer in their best clothes. The woman caught her looking at them.
‘All long dead,’ she said. ‘Every single one of them. That’s why there aren’t any new pictures. Those are mourning frames. Is that enough of an answer for you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kristin said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘Leo told me to keep my maiden name, Steinkamp. That was Leo all over. He was a Jew like me. We met in Hungary after the war and he took me in. My family were all dead. All I had left were photographs. Everything else had gone. Our neighbour in Budapest had saved them. Leo tracked him down and I’ve kept the pictures with me ever since.’
‘They’re beautiful photographs,’ Kristin said.
‘Are you investigating Leo?’
‘Investigating?’ Steve said. ‘No, of course not. We just need information.’
‘They never investigated anything. They said it was an accident. Said he’d made a mistake. My Leo didn’t make mistakes. He was a perfectionist, you know? Always checking. He saved my life. I don’t know what would have happened to me if he hadn’t found me…’ She was silent for a moment, then asked: ‘What sort of information?’
‘About the plane on Vatnajokull. Did Leo ever tell you anything about it?’
‘Leo knew all about the plane on the glacier. He said it belonged to the Nazis.’
They stared at the woman in astonishment.
‘And then he died,’ she added.
‘The Nazis?’ Kristin repeated. ‘What do you mean? What did he mean?’
‘There was a Nazi plane on the glacier. That’s what Leo said. Then he died. In a helicopter crash. But Leo was a very good pilot. How peculiar that you should come knocking on my door after all these years, asking questions. No one has mentioned the plane since those days.’
‘But it crashed after the war was over,’ Kristin said, confused.
‘No, it did not,’ Sarah corrected, her small eyes meeting Kristin’s steadily. ‘It crashed before the end of the war. The Nazis were trying to escape, scattering in all directions to save their wretched skins.’
‘Thompson said it was carrying American soldiers who had stolen some gold,’ Kristin said.
‘Of course he did.’
‘Did Leo tell you the same story?’
‘No, he knew what was really happening and he did not keep secrets from his wife.’
‘What exactly did he tell you?’ Steve asked.
The woman still appeared suspicious and uncertain, as if in two minds about whether to answer them, but then she seemed to come to a decision.
‘Leo made a fuss about it at the base. About the plane. They wanted to cover it up but my Leo wanted to know what was going on. He wouldn’t shut up. He couldn’t stand all the secrecy.’
‘And what happened then? Did he get any answers?’ Steve asked.
‘No, nothing,’ Sarah Steinkamp replied. ‘The plane appeared out of the ice, then vanished again.’
‘What do you mean?’ Kristin asked.
‘Leo said that the glacier was like that. He said the plane had been buried in the glacier but then reappeared. End of story.’
‘Was this in 1967?’
‘Yes, 1967, exactly.’
