discovered at a depth of ten metres just off Geirshofdi cape, some distance from where the skeleton had been found. He told Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg about this and they discussed whether it might be linked to their skeleton. Elinborg thought it was obvious. If the police had explored more thoroughly when they’d found the Russian equipment, they might have found the body as well.
According to contemporary police reports, the divers had seen a black limousine on the road to Kleifarvatn when they went there the previous week. They immediately thought it was a diplomatic car. The Soviet embassy did not answer enquiries about the case, nor did other Eastern European representatives in Reykjavik. Erlendur found a brief report stating that the equipment was Russian. It included listening devices with a range of 160 kilometres which were probably used to intercept telephone conversations in Reykjavik and around the Keflavik base. The devices probably dated from the 1960s, and used valves that had been rendered obsolete by transistor technology. They were battery-powered and would fit inside an ordinary suitcase.
The woman sitting opposite them was approaching seventy but had aged well. She and her partner had not had children by the time of his sudden disappearance. They were unmarried but had discussed going to the registrar. She had not lived with anyone since, she told them rather coyly but with a hint of regret in her voice.
“He was so nice,” the woman said, “and I always thought he’d come back. It was better to believe that than to think he was dead. I couldn’t accept that. And never have accepted it.”
They had found themselves a small flat and planned to have children. She worked in a dairy shop. This was in 1968.
“You remember them,” she said to Erlendur, “and maybe you too,” she said, looking at Sigurdur Oli. “They were special dairy shops that only sold milk, curds and the like. Nothing but dairy products.”
Erlendur nodded calmly. Sigurdur Oli had already lost interest.
Her partner had said he would collect her after work as he did every day, but she stood alone in front of the shop and waited.
“It’s more than thirty years ago now,” she said, with a look at Erlendur, “and I feel like I’m still standing in front of the shop waiting. All these years. He was always punctual and I remember thinking how late he was after ten minutes had gone by, then the first quarter of an hour and half an hour. I remember how infinitely long it was. It was like he’d forgotten me.”
She sighed.
“Later it was like he’d never existed.”
They had read the reports. She reported his disappearance early the following morning. The police went to her home. He was reported missing in the newspapers and on radio and television. The police told her he would surely turn up soon. Asked whether he drank or whether he had ever disappeared like this before, whether she knew about another woman in his life. She denied all these suggestions but the questions made her consider the man in completely different terms. Was there another woman? Had he ever been unfaithful? He was a salesman who drove all over the country. He sold agricultural equipment and machinery, tractors, hay blowers, diggers and bull-dozers, and travelled a lot. Maybe several weeks at a time on the longest trips. He had just returned from one when he disappeared.
“I don’t know what he could have been doing up at Kleifarvatn,” she said, glancing from one detective to the other. “We never went there.”
They had not told her about the Soviet spying equipment or the smashed skull, only that a skeleton had been found where the lake had drained and that they were investigating persons reported missing during a specific period.
“Your car was found two days later outside the coach station,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“No one there recognised my partner from the descriptions,” the woman said. “I had no photos of him. And he had none of me. We hadn’t been together that long and we didn’t own a camera. We never went away together. Isn’t that when people mostly use cameras?”
“And at Christmas,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Yes, at Christmas,” she agreed.
“What about his parents?”
“They’d died long before. He’d spent a lot of time abroad. He’d worked on merchant ships and lived in Britain and France too. He spoke with a slight accent, he’d been away that long. About thirty coaches left the station heading all over Iceland between the time he disappeared and when the car was found, but none of the drivers could say if he had been on board one. They didn’t think so. The police were certain that someone would have noticed him if he’d been on a coach, but I know they were just trying to console me. I think they supposed he was on a bender in town and would turn up in the end. They said worried wives sometimes called the police when their husbands were out drinking.”
The woman fell silent.
“I don’t think they investigated it very carefully,” she eventually said. “I didn’t feel they were particularly interested in the case.”
“Why do you think he took the car to the coach station?” Erlendur asked. He noticed Sigurdur Oli jotting down the remark about the police work.
“I haven’t got the faintest idea.”
“Do you think someone else could have driven it there? To throw you off the track, or the police? To make people think he’d left town?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said. “Of course I wondered endlessly whether he had simply been killed, but I don’t understand who was supposed to have done it and even less why. I just can’t understand it.”
“It’s often plain coincidence,” Erlendur said. “There needn’t always be an explanation. In Iceland there’s rarely a real motive behind a murder. It’s an accident or a snap decision, not premeditated and in most cases committed for no obvious reason.”
According to police reports, the man had gone on a short sales trip early that day and intended to go home afterwards. A dairy farmer just outside Reykjavik was interested in buying a tractor and he was planning to drop by to try to clinch the sale. The farmer said the man had never called. He had waited for him all day, but he had never showed up.
“Everything seems hunky-dory, then he makes himself disappear,” Sigurdur Oli said. “What do you personally think happened?”
“He didn’t make himself disappear,” the woman retorted. “Why do you say that?”
“No, sorry,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Of course not. He disappeared. Sorry.”
“I don’t know,” the woman said. “He could be a bit depressive at times, silent and closed. Perhaps if we’d had children… maybe it would all have turned out differently if we’d had children.”
They fell silent. Erlendur imagined the woman waiting outside the dairy shop, anxious and disappointed.
“Was he in contact with any embassies in Reykjavik at all?” Erlendur asked.
“Embassies?”
“Yes, the embassies,” Erlendur said. “Did he have any connections with them, the Eastern European ones in particular?”
“Not at all,” the woman said. “I don’t follow… what do you mean?”
“He didn’t know anyone from the embassies, work for them or that sort of thing?”
“No, certainly not, or at least not after I met him. Not that I knew of.”
“What kind of car did you have?” Erlendur asked. He could not remember the model from the files.
The woman pondered. These strange questions were confusing her.
“It was a Ford,” she said. “I think it was called a Falcon.”
“From the case files, it doesn’t look as if there were any clues to his disappearance in the car.”
“No, they couldn’t find anything. One of the hubcaps had been stolen, but that was all.”
“In front of the coach station?” Sigurdur Oli asked.
“That’s what they thought.”
“A hubcap?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the car?”
