“Doesn’t that tell us something?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know whether it matters whether it worked or not. I can’t see the difference. A listening device is a listening device. Russians are Russians.”
“Yes, I guess so,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Maybe it was damaged in a struggle. Fell to the floor and smashed.”
“Conceivably,” Erlendur said. He looked up at the sun. He did not really know what he was doing out there on the terrace. He had not been to Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora’s house before even though they had worked together for a long time. It did not surprise him to find everything neat and tidy there: designer furniture, objets d’art and smart flooring. Not a speck of dust to be seen. Nor any books.
Indoors, Erlendur perked up when he learned that Teddi, Elinborg’s husband, knew about Ford Falcons. Teddi was a chubby car mechanic who was in love with Elinborg’s cooking, like most people who knew her. His father had once owned a Falcon and he was a great admirer of the model. Teddi told Erlendur that it had been very smooth to drive, with a bench for the front seat, automatic gearbox and a big ivory steering wheel. It was a smaller family car than other American models from the 1960s, which tended to be huge.
“It didn’t do too well on the old Icelandic roads,” Teddi said as he scrounged a cigarette from Erlendur. “Maybe it wasn’t built strongly enough for Icelandic conditions. We had a lot of bother when the axle broke once out in the countryside. Dad had to get a lorry to transport it back to town. They weren’t particularly powerful cars, but good for small families.”
“Were the hubcaps special in any way?” Erlendur asked, lighting Teddi’s cigarette.
“The hubcaps on American cars were always quite flashy, and they were on the Falcon too. But they weren’t really distinctive. Mind you, the Chevrolet…”
For small families, Erlendur thought to himself, and Teddi’s voice faded out. The missing salesman had bought a nice car for the small family he intended to have with the woman from the dairy shop. That was the future. When he disappeared, one hubcap was missing from his car. He may have taken a bend too quickly or struck the kerb. Or maybe the hubcap was simply stolen outside the coach station.
“…Then came the oil crisis in the 1970s and they had to manufacture more economical engines,” Teddi ploughed on, sipping his beer.
Erlendur nodded absent-mindedly and stubbed out his cigarette. He saw Sigurdur Oli opening a window to let the smoke out. Erlendur was trying to cut down but always smoked more than he intended. He was thinking about giving up worrying about cigarettes. It had not done any good so far. He thought about Eva Lind, who had not been in touch since she left rehab. She didn’t worry about her health. He looked out onto the little patio behind Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora’s townhouse, and watched Elinborg barbecuing; she seemed to be warbling a song to herself. He looked into the kitchen where Sigurdur Oli kissed Bergthora on the back of the neck as he walked past her. He cast a sideways glance at Teddi relishing his beer.
Maybe that was enjoying life. Maybe it was that simple when the sun was shining on a pleasant summer’s day.
Instead of going home that evening he drove out of the city, past Grafarholt in the direction of Mosfellsbaer. He took a slip road towards a large farmhouse and turned off it nearer the sea until he reached the land that Haraldur and his brother Johann had farmed. Haraldur had given him only limited directions and had tried to be as unhelpful as possible. He refused to tell Erlendur whether the old farm buildings were still standing, claiming to know nothing about them. His brother Johann had died suddenly from a heart attack, he said. Not everyone’s as lucky as my brother Joi, he added.
The buildings were still standing. Summer chalets had been built here and there on the old farmland. Judging from the trees growing around some of them, they had been there some time. Others were recent. Erlendur saw a golf course in the distance. Although it was late in the evening, he could see a few souls hitting balls, then strolling after them in the warm sun.
The farm buildings were dilapidated. A small farmhouse and sheds near it. The house was clad with corrugated iron. At one time it had been painted yellow, but the colour had almost entirely faded. Rusty corrugated-metal sheets were hung on the outside of the house; others had surrendered to the wind and weather and fallen to the ground. Most of the roofing sheets had been blown out to sea, Erlendur imagined. All the windows were broken and the front door was missing. Nearby stood the ruins of a small toolshed adjoining a cattle shed and barn.
He stood in front of the ruined farmhouse. It was almost like his childhood home.
Stepping inside, he entered a small hallway, then a narrow corridor. On the right was a kitchen and a laundry room, and a little pantry was to the left. An antiquated Icelandic cooker was still in the kitchen, with three hotplates and a small oven, rusted through. At the end of the corridor were two bedrooms and a living room. The floorboards creaked in the quiet of the evening. He did not know what he was looking for. He did not know why he had come there.
He went down to the sheds. Looking along the row of stalls in the cattle shed and into the barn, he could see a dirt floor. When he walked around the corner he could make out traces of a dung heap behind the cattle shed. A door hung on the toolshed, but when he pulled at it, it came off its hinges, fell to the ground and broke with what sounded like a heavy groan. Inside the toolshed were racks with little compartments for screws, nuts and bolts, and nails on the walls to hang tools from. The tools were nowhere to be seen. The brothers had doubtless taken everything serviceable with them when they moved to Reykjavik. A broken workbench was propped at an angle against the wall. A tractor bonnet rested on a heap of indeterminate iron objects on the floor. A felloe from the rear wheel of a tractor lay over in one corner.
Erlendur walked farther inside the toolshed. Did he come here, the driver of the Falcon? Or did he take a coach to some rural destination? If he did come here, what was he thinking? It had been late in the day when he’d left Reykjavik. He’d known that he did not have much time. She would wait for him in front of the dairy shop and he did not want to be late. But he did not want to rush the brothers. They were interested in buying a tractor from him. It would not take much to clinch the sale. But he did not want to give the impression of being pushy. It could jeopardise the deal if he appeared overexcited. Yet he was in a hurry. He wanted to get it all finished.
If he did come here, why didn’t the brothers say so? Why should they be lying? They had no vested interests. They did not know the man in the least. And why was one hubcap missing from his car? Had it fallen off? Was it stolen outside the coach station? Was it stolen here?
If he was the man in the lake with a broken skull, how did he end up there? Where did the device tied to him come from? Was it relevant that he sold tractors and machinery from the Eastern bloc? Was there a connection?
Erlendur’s mobile rang in his pocket.
“Yes,” he answered curtly.
“You leave me alone,” said a voice he knew well. He knew the voice particularly well when it was in this state.
“I intend to,” he said.
“You do that, then,” the voice said. “You leave me alone from here on. Just stop interfering in my life for—”
He rang off. It was more difficult to switch off the voice. It echoed in his head: stoned, angry and repulsive. He knew that she must be in a den somewhere with someone whose name might be Eddi and was twice her age. He tried not to think about the life she led in too much detail. He had repeatedly done everything in his power to help her. He did not know what else to try. He was completely at a loss about his junkie daughter. Once he would have tried to locate her. Run off and found her. Once he would have persuaded himself that when she said “leave me alone” she actually meant “come and help me’. Not any more. He did not want to any more. He wanted to tell her: “It’s over. You can take care of yourself.”