“Of course it can wait,” Erlendur said, “but I’ve just found out that there was cow dung on the floor of the car. I had a sample taken. How long had you and Leopold owned the car when he went missing?”
“Not long — only a few weeks. I thought I told you that.”
“Did he ever drive it out into the countryside?”
“The countryside?”
The woman considered this.
“No,” she said, “I don’t think so. He’d owned it such a short time. I also remember him saying that he didn’t want to waste it on the country roads, which were in such bad condition. He was just going to use it to drive around town to begin with.”
“There’s another thing,” Erlendur said, “and forgive me for disturbing you so late at night, this case is just… I know the car was registered in your name. Do you remember how he paid for it? Did Leopold take a loan? Did he have any savings? Do you remember, by any chance?”
Another silence followed on the line while the woman went back in time and tried to recall details that few people would ever commit to memory.
“I didn’t pay any of it,” she said eventually. “I remember that. I think he already had most of what it cost. He’d been saving up when he was working on the ships, he told me. What do you want to know that for? Why did you telephone me so late? Has anything happened?”
“Do you know why he wanted to have the car in your name?”
“No.”
“Didn’t you find that odd?”
“Odd?”
“That he didn’t register the car in his own name? That would have been the normal procedure. The men bought the cars and were registered as the owners. There were very few exceptions to that rule in those days.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Asta said.
“He could have done it to cover his tracks,” Erlendur said. “If the car had been registered in his name it would have meant providing certain information about himself, which he might not have wanted to do.”
There was a long silence.
“He wasn’t in hiding,” the woman said at last.
“No, perhaps not,” Erlendur said. “But he might have had a different name. Something different from Leopold. Don’t you want to know who he was? Who he really was?”
“I know perfectly well who he was,” the woman said, and he could hear that she was on the verge of tears.
“Of course,” Erlendur said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I didn’t notice the time. I’ll let you know if we find anything out.”
“I know perfectly well who he was,” the woman repeated.
“Of course,” Erlendur said. “Of course you do.”
21
The cow dung provided no help. The car had had other owners before being sold for scrap and any one of them could have trodden in dung and carried it inside. Reykjavik had been so provincial thirty years ago that the owner would not even have needed to leave the city to come across cows.
Haraldur’s temper had not improved since the last time Erlendur sat in his room. He was eating his lunch, some kind of thin porridge with a slice of soft liver sausage, his dentures sitting on the bedside table. Erlendur tried to avoid stealing a glance at the teeth. Hearing the slurping of porridge and seeing it running out of one side of his mouth was quite enough. Haraldur sucked up his porridge and relished the liver sausage that went with it.
“We know that the owner of the Falcon visited you and your brother at the farm,” Erlendur said when the liquid noises stopped and Haraldur had wiped his mouth. As before he had snorted when he saw Erlendur and told him to bugger off, but Erlendur had just smiled and sat down.
“Can’t you leave me alone?” Haraldur had said with a greedy eye on his porridge. He had not wanted to start eating with Erlendur watching over him.
“Eat your porridge,” Erlendur had said. “I can wait.”
Haraldur shot him a filthy look but soon gave up.
“Where’s your proof?” Haraldur said. “You’ve got no proof because he never came to us. Isn’t there a law against this kind of harassment? Are you allowed to badger people day in and day out?”
“We now know that he visited you,” Erlendur said.
“Huh. Bloody nonsense. How do you think you know that?”
“We’ve examined his car more closely,” Erlendur said. In fact he had nothing concrete but thought it was worth putting pressure on the old man. “We didn’t take a comprehensive forensic profile of the car at the time. But microscopic technology has been revolutionised since then.”
He tried to use long words. Haraldur hung his head as before and stared at the floor.
“So we obtained some new evidence,” Erlendur went on. “At the time, the case wasn’t investigated as a criminal matter. Missing persons generally aren’t, because it isn’t considered significant in this country if people disappear. It could be the climate. Or Icelandic apathy. Perhaps we don’t mind having a high suicide rate.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Haraldur said.
“His name was Leopold. You remember? He was a salesman and you’d led him on about buying a tractor and all he had left to do was to pop over to see you that day. I think he did.”
“I must have some rights,” Haraldur said. “You can’t just burst in here whenever you like.”
“I think Leopold came to visit you,” Erlendur repeated without answering Haraldur.
“Bollocks.”
“He came to see you and your brother and something happened. I don’t know what. He saw something he wasn’t supposed to see. You started arguing with him about something he said. Maybe he was too pushy. He wanted to agree the sale that day.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Haraldur repeated. “He never came. He said he was going to, but he didn’t.”
“How long do you think you have left to live?” Erlendur asked.
“Fuck knows. And if you had any evidence you’d have told me about it. But you don’t have a thing. Because he never came.”
“Won’t you just tell me what happened?” Erlendur said. “You can’t have long to go. You’d feel better. Even if he did come to your farm, it doesn’t mean that you killed him. I’m not saying that. He might just as easily have left you and then vanished.”
Haraldur raised his head and stared at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows.
“Get out,” he said. “I never want to see you here again.”
“You had cows at the farm, you and your brother, didn’t you?”
“Get out!”
“I went out there and saw the cattle shed and the dung heap behind it. You told me you had ten cows.”
“What are you getting at?” Haraldur said. “We were farmers. Are you going to bang me up for that?”
Erlendur stood up. Haraldur was irritating him, although he knew he shouldn’t have allowed him to. He ought to have walked out and continued with the investigation instead of allowing him to wind him up. Haraldur was nothing but a bad-tempered and annoying old fogey.
“We found cow dung in the car,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been thinking about your cows. Daisy and Buttercup or whatever you called them. I don’t think the dung was brought into the car on his shoes. Of course there’s a chance that he trod in it and drove away. But I think someone else brought the dung into the car. Someone who lived on the farm he visited. Someone who quarrelled with him. Someone who attacked him, then jumped into the car in his wellies straight from the cow shed and drove down to the coach station.”
“Leave me alone. I don’t know anything about any cow dung.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, now go away. Leave me in peace.”
Erlendur looked down at Haraldur.
“There’s just one flaw in this theory of mine,” Erlendur continued.