‘What about Baldvin?’
‘You mean before he met his wife? I can’t really help you much with that. Though I did hear something about him falling for Karolina who was in his year. She was pretty enough but had no real talent as an actress and never played any major roles. In fact, I have no idea on what grounds we let her into the school. I never did know.’
‘Did she ever become an actress?’ Erlendur asked, regretting his ignorance of the theatre.
‘Oh, her career didn’t last long; it was a complete non-event. I don’t think she’s acted for years. She generally played very minor roles. Her biggest part got such bad reviews that it must have utterly destroyed her.’
‘What role was that?’ Erlendur asked.
‘It was a Swedish problem play that used to do all right in the old days. Not great but not a stinker either. It was known as Flame of Hope in Icelandic. I don’t know why they put it on; kitchen-sink drama was going out of fashion by then.’
‘Mm,’ Erlendur said, in complete ignorance of Swedish theatre.
‘The author was quite popular in those days.’
Erlendur nodded, still none the wiser.
‘There was one thing that was a bit unusual about Karolina. No one wanted fame more than her: to be the star, the diva. I think it was the only reason she went to the school, whereas the other students were probably more interested in the actual drama and what it can teach you. Karolina was a bit daft in that way. But then, she didn’t have what it takes, didn’t have the talent. No matter what we tried at the school, it just didn’t work.’
‘But she got the role anyway?’
‘The role in Flame of Hope wasn’t that bad,’ Johannes said, finishing his fruit tea. ‘But she was a disaster in it. Utterly wooden, poor darling. After that I think she more or less retired. Anyway, she and Baldvin were seeing each other before he married and had… no, they never did have children, did they?’
‘No,’ Erlendur said, surprised at how well informed the drama teacher was. Apparently there wasn’t much that those big ears missed.
‘Perhaps it affected the woman that way,’ he said. ‘Being childless.’
Erlendur shrugged.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Hanged herself, didn’t she?’
Erlendur nodded.
‘And Baldvin? How did he take it?’
‘How anyone would, I imagine.’
‘Yes, how do people cope with something like that? I don’t know. I met Baldvin a few years ago. He was standing in for my GP at the local surgery. A very dear boy, Baldvin. Always had money troubles, from what I remember. Left a trail of debts everywhere. He used to cadge loans from me until I stopped lending him money. He spent way beyond his income, but doesn’t everyone these days?’
‘Yes,’ Erlendur said, getting to his feet.
‘It’s as if it’s in fashion to run up as large a debt as possible,’ Johannes said, accompanying him to the door.
Erlendur shook him by the hand.
‘She actually made rather a lovely Magdalena,’ the actor said. ‘A pretty girl.’
Erlendur stopped in the doorway.
‘Magdalena?’ he said.
‘Yes, a lovely Magdalena. Karolina, I mean. Hang on, am I talking rubbish? It’s all getting mixed up in my head, actors and roles and all that.’
‘Who was Magdalena?’ Erlendur asked.
‘Karolina’s part in the Swedish play. She played a young woman called Magdalena.’
‘Magdalena?’
‘Does that help you at all?’
‘I don’t know,’ Erlendur said. ‘Possibly.’
Erlendur sat in his car, still brooding on coincidences. He had smoked four cigarettes and was aware of a touch of heartburn. He hadn’t eaten properly since that morning and had been assuaging his hunger pangs by smoking. Most of the smoke escaped via a narrow gap at the top of the driver’s window. It was evening. He had watched the autumn sun disappear behind a bank of cloud. The car was parked at a discreet distance from an old detached house in the west of Kopavogur, the town immediately to the south of Reykjavik, and he had been keeping an intermittent eye on the house while watching the sunset. He knew the woman lived there alone and presumably didn’t have much money or else some of it would surely have been spent on maintenance. The place was in a pretty bad state of repair; hadn’t been painted for a long time and brown streaks of rust ran down beside the windows. He hadn’t seen anyone coming or going. A battered little Japanese car was parked in the road in front. The people who lived in the surrounding houses had trickled home from work or school or shopping trips or whatever people did in their daily grind, and, feeling rather ashamed of himself, Erlendur spied on the typical family life going on behind the two kitchen windows that were visible from his car.
He was there because of a coincidence in a case which he had no idea why he was investigating so assiduously. There was no indication of anything other than the tragic death of a woman who had been on the brink. This was indicated by her past, certainly by the loss of her mother, her obsession with the afterlife. He had found no evidence of foul play until recently when he had heard a name that had come up before. The name sparked off odd ideas about connections, both known and unknown, between the people that the unhappy woman at Thingvellir had known or not known. Magdalena was the name of the medium that Maria had visited. Erlendur knew that coincidences were rarely anything other than life itself playing nasty tricks on people or giving them a nice surprise. They were like the rain that fell on both the just and the unjust. They could be good and they could be bad. They shaped people’s so-called fate to a greater or lesser degree. They originated from nowhere: unexpected, odd and inexplicable.
Erlendur was careful to avoid confusing coincidences with something else. But from his job he knew better than anyone that they could sometimes be manipulated. They could be skilfully planted in the lives of unsuspecting individuals. In that case the incidents could no longer be described as coincidence. It varied as to how one referred to them but in Erlendur’s line of work there was only one name: crime.
He was going over and over these thoughts when a light came on by the entrance to the house, the door opened and a woman stepped out. She closed the door behind her, went over to the car that was parked in front, got in and drove away. She had to try the ignition three times before the engine coughed into life, and the car disappeared down the road with a considerable racket. Erlendur thought that part of the exhaust must have gone.
He watched the car drive away, then started his old Ford and followed at a slight distance. He knew little about the woman he was spying on. After his visit to the drama teacher he had given himself a quick briefing on the career of Karolina Franklin. Her patronymic was Franklinsdottir but she used the Franklin part as a surname, a show of pretension which her old teacher found very telling: ‘Utterly superficial, that girl,’ he said, adding, ‘nothing up here,’ and tapped his forehead with his finger. Erlendur discovered that Karolina worked as a secretary at a large finance company in the city. She was single, childless and had not acted in public for years. The part of Magdalena in Flame of Hope had been her last role. In it she had played a working-class Swedish girl, according to Johannes, who discovered that her husband was committing adultery and plotted her revenge on him.
He followed Karolina to a kiosk and video-rental shop in the neighbourhood, and watched her choose a film and buy some snacks before driving back home.
Erlendur sat in his car outside her house for an hour or so, smoked two more cigarettes, then drove away down the street and towards home.
25
The bank manager did not keep Erlendur waiting. He came out and greeted him with a firm handshake before inviting him into his office. He was in his forties, smartly dressed in a pinstriped suit with a tastefully chosen tie and
