said, “and worked here without the American embassy ever noticing him leave the country, would your friend Bob know about that?”
“Yes,” Omar said. “I think Bob could help you with that kind of question.”
Marion Briem lugged the oxygen cylinder back into the sitting room after answering the door to Erlendur. Erlendur followed, wondering if this would be his fate when he grew old, withering away at home on his own, lost to the world and hauling an oxygen cylinder behind him. As far as he knew Marion had no siblings and few friends, yet the old fogey in the oxygen mask had never regretted not starting a family.
“What for?” Marion had said once. “Families are just a nuisance.”
The subject of Erlendur’s family had cropped up, which did not happen often because Erlendur disliked talking about himself. Marion had asked after his children, whether he kept in touch with them. This had been many years ago.
“Aren’t there two of them?” Marion had asked.
Erlendur was sitting in his office writing a report on a fraud case when Marion suddenly appeared and started asking about his family. The scam involved two sisters who had defrauded their mother and left her penniless. This had prompted Marion to label families a nuisance.
“Yes, there are two of them,” Erlendur said. “Can’t we talk about this case here? I think that…”
“And when was the last time you saw them?” Marion asked.
“I don’t think that’s any of your b—”
“No, it’s none of my business, but it’s your business, isn’t it? Isn’t it your business? Having two children?”
The memory ebbed from Erlendur’s mind when he sat down opposite Marion, who slumped into the tatty armchair. There was a reason that Erlendur did not like his ex-boss. He expected it was the same reason why the cancer patient had few visitors. Marion did not attract friends. On the contrary. Even Erlendur, who visited now and again, was no great friend.
Marion watched Erlendur and put on the oxygen mask. Some time went by without a word being said. At last Marion pulled down the mask. Erlendur cleared his throat.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m dreadfully tired,” Marion said. “Always dozing off. Maybe it’s the oxygen.”
“Probably too healthy for you,” Erlendur said.
“Why do you keep hanging around here?” Marion said weakly.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “How was the western?”
“You ought to watch it,” Marion said. “It’s a tale of obstinacy. How’s it going with Kleifarvatn?”
“It’s going,” Erlendur said.
“And the driver of the Falcon? Have you located him?”
Erlendur shook his head but said he had found the car. The current owner was a widow who did not know much about Ford Falcons and wanted to sell it. He told Marion how the man, Leopold, had been a mysterious figure. Not even his girlfriend knew much about him. There was no photograph of him and he was not in the official records. It was as if he had never existed, as if he had been a figment of the imagination of the woman who worked in the dairy shop.
“Why are you looking for him?” Marion asked.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I’ve been asked that quite a lot. I have no idea. Because of a woman who once worked in a dairy shop. Because a hubcap was missing from the car. Because a new car was left outside the coach station. There’s something in all this that doesn’t fit.”
Marion sank back deeper into the armchair, eyes closed now.
“We have the same name,” Marion said in an almost inaudible voice.
“What?” Erlendur said, leaning forwards. “What was that you said?”
“Me and John Wayne,” Marion said. “The same name.”
“What are you raving about?” Erlendur said.
“Don’t you find it strange?”
Erlendur was about to reply when he saw that Marion had fallen asleep. He picked up the video case and read the title:
16
Sigurdur Oli was on his way out of his office when the telephone rang. He hesitated. He would have liked to slam the door behind him, but instead he sighed and answered the call.
“Am I disturbing you?” the man on the phone said.
“You are actually,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I’m on my way home. So…”
“Sorry,” the man said.
“Stop apologising for everything — and stop phoning me, too. I can’t do anything for you.”
“I don’t have many people I can talk to,” the man said.
“And I’m not one of them. I’m just someone who turned up at the scene of the accident. That’s all. I’m not an agony aunt. Talk to the vicar.”
“Don’t you think it’s my fault?” the man asked. “If I hadn’t called…”
They had already gone back and forth through this conversation innumerable times. Neither believed in an inscrutable god who demanded sacrifices such as the man’s wife and daughter. Neither was a fatalist. They did not believe that all things were predetermined and impossible to influence. Both believed in simple coincidences. Both were realists and accepted the fact that had the man not phoned his wife and delayed her, she would not have been at the crossing at the moment that the drunken driver in the Range Rover went through the red light. However, Sigurdur Oli did not blame the man for what happened, and thought his reasoning was absurd.
“The accident was not your fault,” Sigurdur Oli said. “You know that, so stop tormenting yourself about it. You’re not the one on the way to prison for manslaughter, it’s the prat in the Range Rover.”
“That doesn’t make any difference,” the man sighed.
“What does the psychiatrist say?”
“All she talks about is pills and side effects. If I take these drugs I’ll get fat again. If I take those I’ll lose my appetite. If I take others I’ll vomit all the time.”
“Consider this scenario,” Sigurdur Oli said. “A group of people have gone camping every year for twenty-five years. One member of the group originally suggested it. Then one year there’s a fatal accident. One of the group is killed. Is the person who had the idea in the first place to blame? Of course that’s rubbish! How far can you take speculations? Coincidences are coincidences. No one can control them.”
The man did not reply.
“Do you understand what I mean?” Sigurdur Oli said.
“I know what you mean but it doesn’t help me.”
“Yes, well, I must be on my way,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Thank you,” the man said, and rang off.
Erlendur was sitting in his chair at home, reading. He was lit up by lantern with a party of travellers beneath the slopes of Oshlid at the beginning of the twentieth century. There were seven in the party, travelling past Steinofaera gully on their way from Isafjordur. On one side was the sheer mountainside, bulging with snow, and on the other the icy sea. They were walking in a tight group to benefit from the single lantern they had with them. Some of them had been to see a play in Isafjordur that evening,
