The Draining Lake

“I can’t comment on that,” the Secretary said, looking at his watch. His round of golf was waiting.

“If you had spied in the old days, which you didn’t,” Erlendur said, “what would you have been interested in?”

The Secretary hesitated for an instant.

“If we had been doing anything then obviously we would have wanted to observe the base, the transportation of military hardware, movements of warships, aircraft, submarines. We would have wanted to know about America’s capability at any time. That’s obvious. We would have wanted to know about what was going on at the base and other military installations in Iceland. They were all over the place. Not just in Keflavik. There were activities all over Iceland. We would also have monitored the activities of other embassies, domestic politics, political parties and that sort of thing.”

“A lot of equipment was found in Lake Kleifarvatn in 1973,” Erlendur said. “Transmitters, microwave equipment, tape recorders, even radios. All from Warsaw Pact countries. Mostly from the Soviet Union.”

“I’m not aware of the incident,” the Secretary said.

“No, of course not,” Erlendur said. “But what reason could there have been for throwing that equipment in the lake? Did you use a particular method for getting rid of old stuff?”

“I’m afraid I cannot assist you with that,” the Secretary said, no longer smiling. “I’ve tried to answer you as best I can but there are some things I simply don’t know. And that’s that.”

Erlendur and Elinborg stood up. There was a smugness about the man that Erlendur disliked. Your base! What did he know about military bases in Iceland?

“Was the equipment obsolete, so there was no point in sending it home in a diplomatic bag?” he asked. “Couldn’t you throw it away like any other rubbish? These devices clearly demonstrate that spying went on in Iceland. When the world was much simpler and the lines were clearly drawn.”

“You can say what you like about it,” the Secretary said, standing up. “I have to be somewhere else.”

“The man whose body was found in Kleifarvatn, could he have been at the embassy?”

“I think that’s out of the question.”

“Or from another Eastern bloc embassy?”

“I don’t think there’s the slightest chance. And now I must ask you to—”

“Are there any persons missing from this period?”

“No.”

“You just know that? You don’t need to look it up?”

“I have looked it up. No one is missing.”

“No one who disappeared and you don’t know what became of them?”

“Goodbye,” the Secretary said, with a smile. He had opened the door.

“Definitely no one who disappeared?” Erlendur said as he walked out into the corridor.

“No one,” the Secretary said, and closed the door in their faces.

Sigurdur Oli was refused a meeting with the US ambassador or his staff. Instead he received a message from the embassy marked “confidential” which stated that no US citizen in Iceland had been reported missing during the period in question. Sigurdur Oli wanted to take the matter further and insist on a meeting, but his request was denied by the top CID officials. The police would need something tangible to link the body in the lake to the US embassy, the base or American citizens in Iceland.

Sigurdur Oli telephoned a friend of his, a head of section at the Defence Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to ask whether he could locate any past employee to tell the police about foreign embassy officials in the 1960s and 1970s. He tried to give away as little as possible about the investigation, just enough to arouse his interest, and his friend promised to get back to him.

Erlendur stood awkwardly, a glass of white wine in his hand, scouring the crowd at Elinborg’s book launch. He had found it quite difficult to make up his mind whether to put in an appearance, but in the end he had decided to go. Gatherings annoyed him, the few that came his way. He sipped the wine and grimaced. It was sour. He thought ruefully of his bottle of Chartreuse back home.

He smiled at Elinborg, who was standing in the crowd and waved to him. She was talking to the press. The fact that a woman from the Reykjavik CID had written a cookery book had prompted quite a lot of publicity and Erlendur was pleased to see Elinborg basking in the attention. She had once invited him, Sigurdur Oli and his wife Bergthora for dinner to test a new Indian chicken dish that she had said would be in the book. It was a particularly spicy and tasty meal and they had praised Elinborg until she blushed.

Erlendur did not recognise many people apart from the police officers and was relieved to see Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora walk over in his direction.

“Do try to smile for once when you see us,” Bergthora said, kissing him on the cheek. He drank a toast of white wine, then they toasted Elinborg specially afterwards.

“When do we get to meet this woman you’re seeing?” Bergthora asked, and Erlendur noticed Sigurdur Oli tensing beside her. Erlendur’s relationship with a woman was the talk of the CID, but few dared pry into the matter.

“One day, perhaps,” Erlendur said. “On your eightieth birthday.”

“Can’t wait,” Bergthora said.

Erlendur smiled.

“Who are all these people?” Bergthora said, looking around the gathering.

“I only know the officers,” Sigurdur Oli said. “And I think all those fatsos over there are with Elinborg.”

“There’s Teddi,” Bergthora said, with a wave at Elinborg’s husband.

Someone tapped a spoon against a glass and the murmuring stopped. In a far corner of the room a man began talking and they could not hear a word, but everyone laughed. They saw Elinborg push her way over to him and take out the speech that she had written. They inched closer to hear her and managed to catch her closing thanks to her family and colleagues in the force for their patience and support. A round of applause followed.

“Are you going to stay long?” Erlendur asked, sounding ready to leave.

“Don’t be so uptight,” Bergthora said. “Relax. Enjoy yourself a bit. Get drunk.”

She snatched a glass of white wine from the nearest tray.

“Get this inside you!”

Elinborg appeared from the crowd, greeted them all with a kiss and asked if they were bored. She looked at Erlendur, who took a swig of the sour white wine. She and Bergthora started talking about a female television celebrity who was there and who was having an affair with some businessman. Sigurdur Oli shook the hand of someone whom Erlendur did not recognise and he was about to sneak out when he bumped into an old colleague. He was nearing retirement, something that Erlendur knew he feared.

“You’ve heard about Marion,” the man said, sipping his white wine. “Buggered lungs, I’m told. Just sits at home suffering.”

“That’s right,” Erlendur said. “And watches westerns.”

“Were you making enquiries about the Falcon?” the man asked, emptied his glass and grabbed another from a tray as it glided past them.

“The Falcon?”

“They were talking about it at the station. You were looking into missing persons in connection with the Kleifarvatn skeleton.”

“Do you remember anything about the Falcon?” Erlendur asked.

“No, not exactly. We found it outside the coach station. Niels was in charge of the investigation. I saw him here just now. Nifty book that girl’s written,” he added. “I was just looking at it. Good photos.”

“I think the girl’s in her forties,” Erlendur said. “And yes, it’s a really good book.”

He scouted around for Niels and found him sitting on a wide windowsill. Erlendur sat down beside him and recalled how he had once envied him. Niels had a long police career behind him and a family that anyone would be proud of. His wife was a well-known painter, they had four promising children, all university graduates and now providing them with a succession of grandchildren. The couple owned a large house in the suburb of Grafarvogur, splendidly designed by the artist, and two cars, and had nothing to cast a shadow on their eternal happiness. Erlendur sometimes wondered whether a happier and more successful life was possible. They were not the best