‘Was everything you told me a lie?’ she whispered. ‘About us? Everything?’
Frank’s gaze slid away from hers. Thorson turned to the other soldiers, thanked them again for their help and told them they were free to go. Exchanging bemused glances and muttering under their breath, the men filed out of the room. Ingiborg turned to Flóvent.
‘May I go too?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But wouldn’t you like a ride home?’
‘No, thank you, I’ll manage.’ She hurried out without looking at Frank. He watched her leave, his expression hard to read, though Thorson couldn’t detect even the slightest hint of remorse.
Once they were alone, the three of them sat down and Frank lit a cigarette, looking from Flóvent to Thorson in turn.
‘Is this about the girl we found?’
‘Yes,’ said Thorson.
‘I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Then why did you run away?’
‘Because it wasn’t my problem. I know nothing about it. I didn’t know the girl. I can’t help you. I realised that right away and got the hell out of there. Did Ingiborg call you? Did she lose her nerve?’
‘What’s your real name?’ asked Thorson, ignoring his questions.
‘Frank Ruddy.’
‘Why did you give a fake name?’
Frank shrugged as if it was self-evident.
‘You’re not a sergeant either,’ continued Thorson. ‘You lied to the girl about that as well. You didn’t think being a private would impress her?’
‘They like it better if you’re an officer,’ said Frank. ‘They can’t tell the uniforms apart. Don’t understand the stripes.’
‘And that makes it all right to feed them a pack of lies, does it?’ asked Flóvent. He spoke good English with a slight Scots burr from a stint in Edinburgh.
Frank didn’t answer.
‘It says here that you’re married, with two children,’ said Thorson, leafing through some papers. ‘Are you divorced?’
‘No,’ said Frank, seeing no reason to lie any more since he assumed they would check up on whatever he said. ‘I didn’t want Ingiborg to find out I was married. That’s why I skedaddled.’
‘You didn’t want her to know that you were a husband and father of two back in Illinois?’ said Flóvent.
‘That’s right,’ said Frank. ‘I thought if we were summoned as witnesses I’d be exposed, and I didn’t want to hurt Ingiborg.’
‘A true gentleman,’ said Thorson. ‘Are there other women in the picture?’
‘Other women?’
‘Other Icelandic women, I mean. Are you seeing other women? Apart from Ingiborg?’
Frank hesitated. ‘OK, I’ll tell you so you don’t think I’m lying. This is the truth. I’ve been dating one other girl. That’s all. There aren’t any others.’
‘Does Ingiborg know about her?’ asked Flóvent.
‘No. And she doesn’t know about Ingiborg either.’
‘So you had a few reasons for fleeing the scene,’ said Thorson disgustedly.
‘I didn’t want any trouble.’
‘And that’s the only reason, eh? You’d been screwing around?’
‘What are you driving at?’
‘Sounds like more bullshit. Like the name you invented. Where did you get it from anyway? Who’s Carroll?’
‘He’s a Hollywood actor. They were showing a movie of his when I met Ingiborg. The Flying Tigers.’
‘With John Wayne,’ Flóvent told Thorson in Icelandic. ‘I saw it. The actor’s called John Carroll. He’s not making that part up.’
‘Right,’ said Frank, catching the name and looking rather shamefaced. ‘John Carroll. We were standing by the movie theatre and she asked me what else I was called besides Frank and I saw the name John Carroll on a poster and... it just slipped out. I didn’t even think, just told her my name was Frank Carroll.’
‘Why did you run away from the theatre, Frank?’ asked Thorson.
‘I’ve already—’
‘Was it because you recognised the girl the moment you clapped eyes on her?’
‘No. I never saw her before.’
‘Ever heard the name Rósamunda?’
‘No. Who’s that?’
‘The murdered girl.’
‘Never heard of her,’ said Frank. ‘I swear to you. I didn’t know that girl. Didn’t recognise her. I never saw her before. Did you talk to the guy who was standing on the corner?’
‘What guy?’ asked Thorson.
‘The one who was standing on the corner behind the theatre.’
‘Which corner?’
‘Which one? I don’t know the names of the streets around there. He was standing on the corner smoking when we first arrived, but when I looked back he was gone.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know. He wasn’t a soldier, I can tell you that. He was an Icelander — he was dressed like a civilian, wasn’t in uniform. But I couldn’t see that well. It was dark. I just happened to clock a man standing there and it looked to me like he had a cigarette, but when I checked to see if he was still there, he’d disappeared.’
‘Was this to your right or left as you were facing away from the theatre?’
‘The nearest corner on the right, the other side of the street,’ said Frank, patting his right arm for emphasis.
‘Which street is that?’ asked Thorson, turning to Flóvent.
‘Skuggasund,’ said Flóvent. ‘That’ll be the corner of Lindargata and Skuggasund.’
‘Ingiborg didn’t mention a man.’
‘Then she can’t have noticed him. I only saw him for a second. But I’m not lying — he was standing there.’
‘What was this man doing?’
‘Nothing. Just standing on the corner, smoking. Then he was gone.’
Thorson wanted to head straight over to Skuggasund, even though a couple of days had passed since Frank had spotted the man. He and Flóvent parked on Lindargata, walked to the corner in question and looked around for evidence of the smoker. A faint illumination came from Skuggasund, but apart from that the place was shrouded in darkness; the street light on the corner was broken, and the next one was a fair way off. Thorson had a torch, which he shone carefully around them. They didn’t know exactly what they were looking for, and all they found were the butts of two American cigarettes that had been ground into the street.
‘What kind are they?’ asked Flóvent.
‘Lucky Strike.’
14
That evening Konrád’s sister dropped in to see him. She was single, worked in a library and lived a life of fairly unrelieved monotony. Her workplace suited her down to the ground, as books had been her greatest passion since childhood. She was something of a collector too and had built up an enviable library of her own. Elísabet, or Beta as she was affectionately known, was an old-school communist and took a dismissive attitude to most things on the grounds that they were bourgeois. There was nothing she loathed more than capitalism, a term that covered a multitude of sins in her book.
‘Is this a bad time?’ she asked, perfunctorily as always. If it was, she pretended not to notice.
‘No, come in,’ said Konrád. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ He took out a bottle of Dead Arm.
‘No, thanks. Drinking rather a lot, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t think so. Anyway, red wine’s good for you.’
‘Good for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Huh, don’t tell me you swallow that crap from the red-wine capitalists,’ said Beta, taking a seat in the kitchen. She noticed that her brother seemed rather distracted.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did I come at a bad time?’
‘No. Actually, I was just thinking about Dad and the seances at our flat.’
‘What on earth made you think of that?’