“Can’t we find an Icelandic angle on this?” Erlendur asked in the end, for the sake of saying something.
“What about the students?” Elinborg said. “Shouldn’t we try to locate them? Find out if any of them remembers this Lothar? We still have that to check.”
By the following day Sigurdur Oli had obtained a list of Icelandic students attending East German universities between the end of the war and 1970. The information was supplied by the ministry of education and the German embassy. They began slowly, starting with students in Leipzig in the 1960s and working back. Since there was no hurry, they handled the case alongside other investigations that came their way, mostly burglaries and thefts. They knew when Lothar had been enrolled at the University of Leipzig in the 1950s, but also that he could have been attached to it for much longer than that, and they were determined to do a proper job. They decided to work backwards from when he disappeared from the embassy.
Instead of calling people and speaking to them over the telephone, they thought it would be more productive to make surprise visits to their homes. Erlendur believed that the first reaction to a police visit often provided vital clues. As in war, a surprise attack could prove crucial. A simple change of expression when they mentioned their business. The first words spoken.
So, one day in September, when their investigation of Icelandic students had reached the mid-1950s, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg knocked on the door of a woman by the name of Rut Bernhards. According to their information, she had abandoned her studies in Leipzig after a year and a half.
She answered the door and was terrified to hear that it was the police.
27
Rut Bernhards stood blinking at Sigurdur Oli and then at Elinborg, unable to understand how they could be from the police. Sigurdur Oli had to tell her three times before it sank in and she asked what they wanted. Elinborg explained. This was around ten o’clock in the morning. They were standing on the landing of a block of flats, not unlike Erlendur’s but dirtier, the carpet more worn and a stench of rising damp on every floor.
Rut was even more surprised once Elinborg had said her piece.
“Students in Leipzig?” she said. “What do you want to know about them? Why?”
“Maybe we could come in for a minute,” Elinborg said. “We won’t be long.”
Still very doubtful, Rut thought for a moment before opening the door to them. They entered a small hallway which led to the living room. There were bedrooms on the right-hand side and beside the living room was the kitchen. Rut offered them a seat and asked whether they wanted tea or the like, apologising because she had never spoken to the police before. They saw that she was very confused as she stood in the kitchen doorway. Elinborg thought she would come to her senses if she made some tea, so she accepted the offer, to Sigurdur Oli’s chagrin. He wasn’t interested in attending a tea party and gave Elinborg an expression to signal that. She just smiled back at him.
The day before, Sigurdur Oli had received yet another telephone call from the man who had lost his wife and daughter in a car crash. He and Bergthora had just come back from a visit to the doctor who told them that the pregnancy was progressing well, the foetus was flourishing and they had nothing to worry about. But the doctor’s words were not so reassuring. They had heard him talk that way before. They were sitting at home in the kitchen, cautiously discussing the future, when the telephone rang.
“I can’t talk to you now,” Sigurdur Oli said when he heard who was on the other end.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” the man said, polite as ever. His mood never changed, nor did the pitch of his voice; he spoke with the same calm tone, which Sigurdur Oli attributed to tranquillisers.
“No,” Sigurdur Oli said, “don’t disturb me again.”
“I just wanted to thank you,” the man said.
“There’s no need, I haven’t done anything,” Sigurdur Oli said. “You don’t need to thank me at all.”
“I think I’m gradually getting over it,” the man said.
“That’s good,” Sigurdur Oli said.
There was silence over the telephone.
“I miss her so terribly,” the man said eventually.
“Of course you do,” Sigurdur Oli said with a glance at Bergthora.
“I’m not going to give up. For their sake. I’ll try to put on a brave face.”
“That’s good.”
“Sorry to bother you. I don’t know why I’m always calling you. This will be the last time.”
“That’s okay.”
“I’ve got to keep going.”
Sigurdur Oli was about to say goodbye when he suddenly rang off.
“Is he okay?” Bergthora asked.
“I don’t know,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I hope so.”
Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg heard Rut making the tea in the kitchen, then she came out, holding cups and a sugar bowl, and asked whether they took milk. Elinborg repeated what she had said at the front door about their search for Icelandic students from Leipzig, adding that it was potentially connected — only potentially, she repeated — with a person who went missing in Reykjavik just before 1970.
Rut listened to her without answering until the kettle began to whistle in the kitchen. She left and returned with the tea and a few biscuits on a dish. Elinborg knew that she was past seventy and thought she had aged well. She was thin, of a similar height to her, her hair was dyed brown and her face was quite long with a serious expression underlined by wrinkles, but a pretty smile that she seemed to use sparingly.
“And you think this man studied in Leipzig?” she asked.
“We have no idea,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“What missing person are you talking about?” Rut asked. “I don’t remember anything from the news that…” Her expression turned thoughtful. “Except Kleifarvatn in the spring. Are you talking about the skeleton from Kleifarvatn?”
“It fits.” Elinborg smiled.
“Is it connected with Leipzig?”
“We don’t know,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“But you must know something if you came here to talk to an ex-student from Leipzig,” Rut said firmly.
“We have some clues,” Elinborg said. “They’re not convincing enough for us to say much about them, but we were hoping you might be able to assist us.”
“How does this link up with Leipzig?”
“The man doesn’t have to link up with Leipzig at all,” Sigurdur Oli said, in a slightly sharper tone than before. “You left after a year and a half,” he said to change the subject. “Didn’t you finish your course, or what?”
Without answering him, she poured the tea and added milk and sugar to her own. She stirred it with a little spoon, her thoughts elsewhere.
“Was it a man in the lake? You said “the man”.”
“Yes,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“I understand that you’re a teacher,” Elinborg said.
“I went to teacher training college when I came back to Iceland,” Rut said. “My husband was a teacher too. Both primary school teachers. We’ve just got divorced. I’ve stopped teaching now. Retired. No need for me any more. It’s like you stop living when you stop working.”
She sipped her tea, and Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg did the same.
“I kept the flat,” she added.
“It’s always sad when…” Elinborg began, but Rut interrupted her as if to say that she was not asking for sympathy from a stranger.
“We were all socialists,” she said, looking at Sigurdur Oli. “All of us in Leipzig.”