“No idea,” Emil said.
Lothar was his liaison, his
“Here’s the building,” Rut said all of a sudden, and stopped. “That’s the office. There are prison cells inside.”
They looked up at the building. It was a gloomy stone edifice of four storeys. Plywood boarding had been nailed over all the ground-floor windows. He saw the name of the street: Dittrichring. Number 24.
“Prison cells? What is this place?” he asked.
“The security police are in there,” Emil said in a low voice, as if someone might hear him.
“Stasi,” Rut said.
He looked up along the building again. The pallid street lights cast a murky shadow onto its stone walls and windows, and a slight shiver ran through him. He felt clearly that he never wanted to enter that place but had no way of knowing then how little his own wishes counted for.
He sighed and looked out to sea where a little sailboat was cruising by.
Decades later, when the Soviet Union and communism had fallen, he had returned to the headquarters and noticed at once the old nauseating smell. It produced the same effect on him as when the rat had got trapped behind the dormitory stove and they had unwittingly roasted it over and again, until the stench in the old villa became unbearable.
8
Erlendur watched Marion sitting in the chair in the living room, breathing through an oxygen mask. The last time he had seen his former CID boss was at Christmas and he did not know that Marion had since fallen ill. Enquiring at work, he had discovered that decades of smoking had ruined Marion’s lungs and a thrombosis had caused paralysis of the right side, arm and part of the face. The flat was dim despite the sun outside, with a thick layer of dust on the tables. A nurse visited once a day and she was just leaving when Erlendur called.
He sat down in the deep sofa facing Marion and thought about the sorry state to which his old colleague had been reduced. There was almost no flesh left on the bones. That huge head nodded slowly above a weak body. Every bone in Marion’s face was visible, the eyes sunken under yellowy, scraggy hair. Erlendur dwelled on the tobacco-stained fingers and shrivelled nails resting on the chair’s worn arm. Marion was asleep.
The nurse had let Erlendur in and he sat in silence waiting for Marion to wake. He was remembering the first time he’d turned up for work at the CID all those years ago.
“What’s up with you?” was the first thing Marion said to him. “Don’t you ever smile?”
He did not know what to say in reply. Did not know what to expect from this stunted specimen for whom a Camel was a permanent fixture, forever enveloped in a stinking haze of blue smoke.
“Why do you want to investigate crimes?” Marion continued when Erlendur did not answer. “Why don’t you get on with directing traffic?”
“I thought I might be able to help,” Erlendur said.
It was a small office crammed with papers and files; a large ashtray on the desk was full of cigarette butts. The air was thick and smoky inside but Erlendur did not mind. He took out a cigarette.
“Do you have a particular interest in crime?” Marion asked.
“Some of them,” Erlendur said, fishing out a box of matches.
“Some?”
“I’m interested in missing persons,” Erlendur said.
“Missing persons? Why?”
“I always have been. I…” Erlendur paused.
“What? What were you going to say?” Marion chainsmoked and lit a fresh Camel from a tiny butt, still glowing when it landed in the ashtray. “Get to the point! If you dither around like that at work I won’t have anything to do with you. Out with it!”
“I think they might have more to do with crimes than people think,” Erlendur said. “I’ve got nothing to back me up. It’s just a hunch.”
Erlendur snapped out of this flashback. He watched Marion inhaling the oxygen. He looked out of the living- room window. Just a hunch, he thought.
Marion Briem’s eyes opened slowly and noticed Erlendur on the sofa. Their gazes met and Marion removed the oxygen mask.
“Has everyone forgotten those bloody communists?” Marion said in a hoarse voice, drawling through a mouth twisted by the thrombosis.
“How are you feeling?” Erlendur asked.
Marion gave a quick smile. Or maybe it was a grimace.
“It’ll be a miracle if I last the year.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What’s the point? Can you sort me out a new pair of lungs?”
“Cancer?”
Marion nodded.
“You smoked too much,” Erlendur said.
“What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette,” Marion said.
Marion put the mask back on and watched Erlendur, as if expecting him to produce his cigarettes. Erlendur shook his head. In one corner the television was switched on and the cancer patient’s eyes flashed over at the screen. The mask came back down.
“How’s it going with the skeleton? Has everyone forgotten the communists?”
“What’s all this talk about communists?”
“Your boss came to say hello to me yesterday, or maybe to say goodbye. I’ve never liked that upstart. I can’t see why you don’t want to be one of those bosses. What’s the explanation? Can you tell me that? You should have been doing half as much for twice the money ages ago.”
“There is no explanation,” Erlendur said.
“He let it slip that the skeleton was tied to a Russian radio transmitter.”
“Yes. We think it’s Russian and we think it’s a radio transmitter.”
“Aren’t you going to give me a cigarette?”
“No.”
“I haven’t got long left. Do you think it matters?”
“You won’t get a cigarette from me. Was that why you phoned? So I could finally finish you off? Why don’t you just ask me to put a bullet through your head?”
“Would you do that for me?”
Erlendur smiled, and Marion’s face lit up for an instant.
“Having a stroke is worse. I talk like an idiot and I can’t really move my hand.”
“What’s all this guff about communists?”
“It was a few years before you joined us. When was that again?”
“1977,” Erlendur said.
“You said you were interested in missing persons, I remember that,” Marion Briem said, wincing. Marion replaced the oxygen mask and leaned back, with eyes closed. A long while passed. Erlendur looked around the
