‘I’ve strictly forbidden her to fraternise with soldiers but it seems she’s determined to disobey me. Doesn’t listen to a word I say. Her mother encourages it — this wilfulness.’
‘If we might... if you would show us to a quiet place where we could have a word with Ingiborg, sir, we’d be very grateful,’ said Flóvent. ‘I assure you it won’t take long. And please excuse us again for disturbing you at such a late hour. We felt it couldn’t wait until morning.’
‘You can use the drawing room,’ said the girl’s mother, coming down the stairs with Ingiborg following on her heels. She cast fearful glances at her father. The last thing she wanted was to anger him; in spite of everything she respected him. She knew she had put him in an awkward position by stubbornly persisting in meeting Frank, and now there were two policemen in their house and it was all her fault.
Her mother showed the men into the drawing room and pushed Ingiborg in after them. Ísleifur made to follow but she stopped him.
‘We can talk to them afterwards,’ she said firmly, closing the door.
‘And her,’ said her husband grimly. ‘She’ll have to answer for her actions, the silly little slut.’
‘That’s enough,’ said his wife, now angry herself. ‘I won’t let you talk about our daughter like that.’
‘But it’s intolerable,’ her husband snapped at her. ‘Don’t you understand? The girl’s up to her neck in the Situation! The police here in our house! How could she do this to me? What do you think people will say? You know there’ll be gossip. I have to think of my reputation. Do you have any idea what that means for a man in my position? It doesn’t even cross your mind, does it? My reputation?’
6
Gratefully, they removed their heavy coats and hung them over the back of a chair in the drawing room. Having waited politely for Ingiborg to take a seat, Flóvent sat down himself, but Thorson remained standing behind him. The notification had reached Flóvent almost two hours earlier: a woman passing through the area known as the Shadow District had come across the body of a young woman behind the National Theatre building. On learning that the witness had seen two figures hurrying away from the scene in the direction of Arnarhóll, one of them unmistakably an American serviceman, Flóvent had put out a call for Thorson. The two men had worked together on other cases that fell within the jurisdictions of both the Icelandic police and the US Military Police Corps.
When war broke out Thorson had enlisted with the Canadian Army and, following the British occupation of Iceland, quickly found himself posted there as an interpreter. He had initially served with the British military police, then with the Americans when they took over the defence of the country. Born in Canada to Icelandic parents, he spoke the language fluently and was employed as a liaison officer between the occupying force and the Icelandic police. Although Thorson had never worked as a detective, he had taken a keen interest in the investigations right from the start, and he and Flóvent had come to collaborate on all the more serious cases involving servicemen and local civilians. The two men got on well and both preferred to solve cases with a minimum of red tape, sidestepping, where possible, the inevitable delays that would result from using the labyrinthine official channels.
When the report came in that a body had been found, Flóvent had been alone in the offices of Reykjavík’s fledgling Criminal Investigation Department, which was housed in the large building at number 11 Fríkirkjuvegur. This property, which stood near the small lake in the centre of town and resembled an Italianate villa with its ornamental columns and balconies, had once belonged to the wealthiest family in Iceland. Before the war it had passed into the hands of the Temperance Movement, who now rented out office space to the Criminal Investigation Department, among others. Flóvent enjoyed working there, though the rest of the small plain-clothes team had been seconded to other assignments as part of the war effort, and detective work had been largely suspended.
When the phone rang he had just returned to the office after a conversation with his father and had been intending to dedicate a few hours to the fingerprint archive. Their conversation had revolved once again around the plot in the cemetery on Sudurgata. His father wanted him to look into the possibility of locating and disinterring the remains of his mother and sister, and moving them to a new plot where father and son could also be buried in due course, but Flóvent was less than enthusiastic. He felt it would be better to leave well alone, but in the end he had half promised to find out who else shared the mass grave with his mother and sister and look into the possibility of opening it up. The grave had been dug at the height of the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918.
Flóvent strode briskly along Lækjargata in the blisteringly cold north wind, past the statue of the old poet laureate, Jónas Hallgrímsson. There was hardly anyone about. He had got into the habit of greeting Jónas whenever he walked by. Over time this had developed into a superstitious compulsion to raise a hand to him or silently recite a line of his verse, for fear it would call down bad luck if he neglected the ritual. ‘No one mourns an Icelander / Lying in his lonely grave...’
A small knot of people had gathered by the National Theatre: the woman who had discovered the body, a couple of passers-by and the sentries who had now ventured out from behind their barricade of sandbags.
Thorson was over at the US naval air station at Nauthólsvík Cove when he belatedly received the summons. He jumped into the military jeep at his disposal and tore into town, reaching the theatre just as they were about to remove the body. After greeting Flóvent, he knelt down beside the girl.
‘Injuries to the neck?’ he asked.
‘Yes, she appears to have been strangled.’
Judging by her clothes, the young woman must have been killed elsewhere, then dumped in the doorway. She could hardly have been outside wearing a flimsy dress and nothing else in that weather. It appeared that someone had tried to conceal her body under pieces of cardboard and other rubbish.
‘Not a very good hiding place,’ remarked Thorson, looking up at the gloomy building.
‘No, indeed.’
‘There are sentries out front.’
Flóvent shrugged. ‘You can drive a vehicle right up to the back of the building. It would’ve taken next to no time to dispose of the body.’
‘But why here, why the National Theatre?’
‘Good question.’
‘Perhaps the murderer was making a dramatic gesture,’ said Thorson. ‘By leaving her here.’
‘What about the soldiers manning the depot?’ asked Flóvent. ‘Could she have been inside? Did she know someone here?’
‘How come the witness is so sure the man she saw was American?’ asked Thorson, glancing over at the older woman who had found the body. She was standing a little way off with two uniformed policemen, complaining that she didn’t have time for all this and needed to be getting home.
‘She’s positive.’
‘There are still some British troops around. Canadians too. And Norwegians.’
‘She recognised the young woman with him as well.’
‘Oh?’
‘Says she used to teach her at Reykjavík College.’
‘It’s not exactly a tough job,’ said Thorson, wrapping his greatcoat more tightly around himself.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Being a cop in Reykjavík.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Flóvent. ‘Right, I’m going to get a photographer out here. We need pictures of the scene.’
Ingiborg looked mortified as she sat hunched in the chair, her thoughts focused on her father waiting out in the hall. Both men sensed they would have to go easy on her if they didn’t want her to break down.