‘Do you think you could do something like that?’
‘It’s perfectly possible.’
‘Could you do it to me? For me?’
‘Foryou?’
‘Yes, I… I’ve read so much about near-death experiences.’
‘I know.’
‘Is the experiment risky?’
‘It could be,’ Baldvin said. ‘I’m not going to-’
‘Could we do it here?’ Maria asked. ‘Here at home?’
‘Maria… ’
‘Is it very dangerous?’
‘Maria, I can’t-’
‘Is it very dangerous?’
‘That… that depends, Are you seriously considering it?’
‘Why not?’ Maria said, ‘What have I got to lose?’
‘Are you sure?’ Baldvin said.
‘Did you lock the gate?’ Maria asked.
‘Yes, I locked it when I came in.’
‘He looked horrible,’ Maria said, ‘Horrible.’
‘Who?’
‘Dad. I know he’s not happy, Hecan’t be happy. I know that, Hewasn’t meant to go like that, Hewasn’t meant to die like that, It should never have happened.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Tell me more about this Tryggvi,’ Maria said. ‘What happened exactly? How would you go about something like that? What would you need to make it work?’
27
Erlendur called his daughter early on Sunday morning and asked if she would like to come for a drive. He wanted to spend the day driving around the Reykjavik area, looking at lakes. Eva Lind was asleep when he rang and it took her a while to grasp what he was saying. She was unenthusiastic but Erlendur would not accept no for an answer. Surely she didn’t have much to do that Sunday, any more than she ever did. It was not as if she went to church, after all. Finally she gave in. Erlendur tried to get hold of Sindri Snaer but received a message saying that either his phone was switched off or he was out of range. Valgerdur was working all weekend.
Under normal circumstances he would have made the trip alone and been happy to do so, but this time he wanted Eva’s company; naturally he was fed up with his own, as she was quick to point out during their phone conversation. He smiled. Eva Lind was in a better humour than usual, even though her idea of bringing Erlendur and Halldora together had led nowhere and her dream of establishing a better relationship between her parents seemed doomed to failure.
Neither mentioned the subject as they drove out of town together. It was a beautiful autumnal day. The sun shone low over the Blafjoll range and the weather was still but cold. They stopped off at a kiosk where Erlendur bought them some sandwiches and cigarettes. He had made a thermos of coffee before leaving home. There was a blanket in the boot. It occurred to him as he drove away from the shop that he had never been for a Sunday outing with Eva Lind before.
They began with a small circuit of the city. He had studied detailed maps of Reykjavik and its vicinity, and was surprised at the vast number of lakes that were to be found in a relatively small area. They were almost uncountable. He and Eva Lind started at Lake Ellidavatn where a new suburb had sprung up, then did a circuit of Raudavatn on a decent road, before continuing to Reynisvatn which had now disappeared behind the new suburb of Grafarholt. From there they drove past Langavatn and had a view of numerous little lakes on Middalsheidi Moor before slowly proceeding to Mosfellsheidi. They inspected Leirvogsvatn beside the road to Thingvellir, followed by Stiflisdalsvatn and Mjoavatn. It was late by the time they descended to Thingvellir, turned north and passed Sandkluftavatn which lay beside the road north of Hofmannaflot on the route over the pass at Uxahryggir and down the Lundarreykjadalur valley. They picnicked beside Litla-Brunnavatn, just off the road to Biskupsbrekka.
Erlendur spread out the blanket and they stretched their legs and tucked into the sandwiches from the kiosk. He took out some chocolate biscuits and poured them two cups of coffee, then gazed across the treeless landscape to Thingvellir and Hofmannaflot beneath Mount Armannsfell, where people in the Middle Ages used to entertain themselves with horse fights. He had visited various second-hand bookshops in search of the lake book that David might conceivably have been intending to buy. The only one that seemed to fit the bill had been published just before David had gone missing and was called simply Lakes in the Reykjavik Area. It was a handsome volume, lavishly illustrated with photographs of lakes and their surroundings, taken in different seasons. Eva Lind leafed through the book, studying the pictures.
‘If you think she fell in one of these lakes then all I can say is good luck finding her,’ she remarked, sipping her coffee.
Erlendur had told her about Gudrun, or Duna, who had disappeared thirty years ago without anyone knowing exactly when. He told her about Gudrun’s fascination with lakes and said that he did not think it was completely far-fetched to link her disappearance to another missing-person case, that of a young man called David. Eva Lind was intrigued by the idea that David might have met the girl shortly before he vanished. Erlendur imagined that the book might have been intended for Gudrun. She and David would only just have met at that point, so recently that no one except David’s friend Gilbert would have had any inkling of it. Information about their budding relationship had not emerged until many years later when Gilbert moved home to Iceland from Denmark.
Eva Lind found her father’s theory rather implausible and said as much. Erlendur nodded but pointed out that the one important detail that these two cases had in common was that there was so little information to go on. Nothing was known about David’s disappearance. And all that was known about Gudrun was that her car had vanished with her and had never been found.
‘What if they knew each other?’ Erlendur said, gazing out over Litla-Brunnavatn. ‘What if David bought the lake book for her? What if they went for that last drive together? We know when David went missing. The report of Gudrun’s disappearance reached the police just over a fortnight later. That’s why we never connected the two cases, but she might well have gone missing at the same time as him.’
‘Then good luck finding them,’ Eva Lind repeated. ‘There must be a thousand lakes that fit the bill if you think that’s what they went to look at. It’s like fucking Finland. Wouldn’t it be simpler to assume that they drove into the sea, drove off the docks somewhere?’
‘We dragged all the main harbours for her car,’ Erlendur said.
‘Couldn’t they both have just committed suicide separately?’
‘Yes, of course. That’s what we’ve thought up to now. I… It’s a completely new idea to link them. I’m rather taken with it. There’s been no progress on these cases for decades, then suddenly it emerges that she was fascinated by lakes and that he mentioned buying a book about lakes, a subject he had never shown the slightest interest in before.’
Erlendur took a sip of coffee.
‘And on top of that his father is dying and will probably never receive any sort of answer to his questions. Any more than the boy’s mother – who is already dead. I’m thinking of that, too. Of answers. They should have some kind of answer. People don’t just walk out of their homes and disappear. They always leave some trace. Except in these two cases. That’s what they have in common. There’s no trace. We have nothing to go on. In either case.’
‘Granny never got any answers,’ Eva Lind said, lying back on the blanket and staring up at the sky.
‘No, she never got any answers,’ Erlendur agreed.
‘Yet you never give up,’ Eva said. ‘You keep on looking. You go out east.’
‘Yes, I do. I go out east. I walk over to Hardskafi and up on to Eskifjordur Moor. I camp there
