“I’ll tell them I found him like this and don’t know what the hell happened. But the main thing is to get rid of him. They understand that. Now go away! Get out of here before I change my mind!”
“Do you know what happened to Ilona?” he asked. “Can you tell me what happened to her?”
He had gone to the door of the shed when he turned round and asked the question that had long tormented him. As if the answer might help him to accept those irreversible events.
“I don’t know much,” Lothar said. “I heard that she tried to escape. She was taken to hospital and that’s all I know.”
“But why was she arrested?”
“You know that perfectly well,” Lothar said. “She took a risk; she knew the stakes. She was dangerous. She incited revolt. She worked against them. They had experience from the 1953 uprising. They weren’t going to let that repeat itself.”
“But…”
“She knew the risks she was taking.”
“What happened to her?”
“Stop this and get out!”
“Did she die?”
“She must have,” Lothar said, looking thoughtfully at the black box with the broken dials. He glanced at the bench and noticed the car keys. A Ford logo was on the ring.
“We’ll make the police think he drove out of town,” he said, almost to himself. “I have to persuade my men. That could prove difficult. They hardly believe a word I tell them any more.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Why don’t they believe you?”
Lothar smiled.
“I’ve been a bit naughty,” Lothar said. “And I think they know.”
36
Erlendur stood in the garage in Kopavogur, looking at the Ford Falcon. Holding the hubcap, he bent down and attached it to one of the front wheels. It fitted perfectly. The woman had been rather surprised to see Erlendur again, but let him into the garage and helped him to pull the heavy canvas sheet off the car. Erlendur stood looking at the streamlining, the shiny black paint, round rear lights, white upholstery, the big, delicate steering wheel and the old hubcap that was back in place after all those years, and suddenly he was seized by a powerful urge. He had not felt such a longing for anything in a very long time.
“Is that the original hubcap?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Erlendur said, “we found it.”
“That’s quite an achievement,” the woman said.
“Do you think it’s still roadworthy?” Erlendur asked.
“It was, the last time I knew,” the woman said. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s rather a special car,” Erlendur said. “I was wondering… if it’s for sale…”
“For sale?” the woman said. “I’ve been trying to get rid of it ever since my husband died but no one’s shown any interest. I even tried advertising it but the only calls I got were from old nutters who weren’t prepared to pay. Just wanted me to give it them. I’ll be damned if I’d give them that car!”
“How much do you want for it?” Erlendur asked.
“Don’t you need to check whether it starts first and that sort of stuff?” the woman asked. “You’re welcome to have it for a couple of days. I need to talk to my boys. They know more about these matters than I do. I don’t know the first thing about cars. All I know is that I wouldn’t dream of giving that car away. I want a decent price for it.”
Erlendur’s thoughts turned to his old Japanese banger, crumbling from rust. He had never cared for possessions, did not see the point in accumulating lifeless objects, but there was something about the Falcon that kindled his interest. Perhaps it was the car’s history and its connection with a mysterious, decades-old case of a missing person. For some reason, Erlendur felt he had to own that car.
Sigurdur Oli had trouble concealing his astonishment when Erlendur collected him at lunchtime the following day. The Ford was entirely roadworthy. The woman said that her sons came to Kopavogur regularly to make sure it was still running smoothly. Erlendur had gone straight to a Ford garage where the car was checked, lubricated and rustproofed and the electrics were fixed. He was told that the car was as good as new, the seats showed little sign of wear, all the instruments were working and the engine was in reasonable condition despite hardly having been used.
“Where’s your head at?” Sigurdur Oli asked as he got into the passenger seat.
“Where’s my head at?”
“What are you planning to do with this car?”
“Drive it,” Erlendur said.
“Are you allowed to? Isn’t it evidence?”
“We’ll find out.”
They were going to see one of the students from Leipzig, Tomas, whom Hannes had told them about. Erlendur had visited Marion that morning. The patient was back on form, asking about the Kleifarvatn case and Eva Lind.
“Have you found your daughter yet?” his old boss asked him.
“No,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know anything about her.”
Sigurdur Oli told Erlendur that he had been looking into the Stasi’s activities on the Internet. East Germany had come the closest of any country to almost total surveillance of its citizens. The security police had headquarters in 41 buildings, the use of 1,181 houses for its agents, 305 summer holiday houses, 98 sports halls, 18,000 flats for spy meetings and 97,000 employees, of whom 2,171 worked on reading mail, 1,486 on bugging telephones and 8,426 on listening to telephone calls and radio broadcasts. The Stasi had more than 100,000 active but unofficial collaborators; 1,000,000 people provided the police with occasional information; reports had been compiled on 6,000,000 persons and one department of the Stasi had the sole function of watching over other security police members.
Sigurdur Oli finished spouting his figures just as he and Erlendur reached the door of Tomas’s house. It was a small bungalow with a basement, in need of repair. There were blotches in the paint on the corrugatediron roof, which was rusted down to the gutters. There were cracks in the walls, which had not been painted for a long time, and the garden was overgrown. The house was well located, overlooking the shore in the westernmost part of Reykjavik, and Erlendur admired the view out to sea. Sigurdur Oli rang the doorbell for the third time. No one appeared to be at home.
Erlendur saw a ship on the horizon. A man and a woman walked quickly along the pavement outside the house. The man took wide strides and was slightly ahead of the woman, who did her best to keep up with him. They were talking, the man over his shoulder and the woman in a raised voice so that he could hear her. Neither noticed the two police officers at the house.
“So does this mean that Emil and Leopold were the same person?” Sigurdur Oli said as he rang the bell again. Erlendur had told him about his discovery at the brothers” farm near Mosfellsbaer.
“It looks that way,” Erlendur said.
“Is he the man in the lake?”
“Conceivably.”
Tomas was in the basement when he heard the bell. He knew it was the police. Through the basement window he had seen two men get out of an old black car. It was purely by chance that they happened to call at precisely that moment. He had been waiting for them since the spring, all summer long, and by now autumn had arrived. He knew they would come in the end. He knew that if they had any talent at all they would eventually be standing at his front door, waiting for him to answer.
He looked out of the basement window and thought about Ilona. They had once stood beneath Bach’s statue next to Thomaskirche. It was a beautiful summer’s day and they had their arms around each other. All around them were pedestrians, trams and cars, yet they were alone in the world.
He held the pistol. It was British, from the Second World War. His father had owned it, a gift from a British soldier, and he had given it to his son, along with some ammunition. He had lubricated, polished and cleaned it, and a few days earlier he had gone to Heidmork nature reserve to test whether it still worked. There was one bullet left in it. He raised his arm and put the muzzle to his temple.