While Erlendur tried to convince her, a strange thought slipped into his mind. From now on, after what he had said and could not retract, it would be much greater consolation for the woman to know that the man was dead, rather than to find him alive. That would cause her immeasurable grief. He looked at her, and she seemed to be thinking something similar.

“Leopold’s dead,” she said. “There’s no point telling me otherwise. To me, he’s dead. Died years ago. A whole lifetime ago.”

They both fell silent.

“But what do you know about the man?” Erlendur repeated after some while. “In actual fact?”

Her look implied that she wanted to tell him to give up and go.

“Do you seriously mean that he was called something else and wasn’t using his real name?” she said.

“Nothing of what I’ve said need necessarily have happened,” Erlendur emphasised once again. “The most likely explanation, unfortunately, is that for some reason he killed himself.”

“What do we know about other people?” she suddenly said. “He was a quiet type and didn’t talk much about himself. Some people are full of themselves. I don’t know if that’s any better. He said a lot of lovely things to me that no one had ever told me before. I wasn’t brought up in that kind of family. Where people said nice things.”

“You never wanted to start again? Find a new man. Get married. Have a family.”

“I was past thirty when we met. I thought I’d end up an old maid. My time would run out. That was never the plan, but somehow that was how it turned out. Then you reach a certain age and all you have is yourself in an empty room. That’s why he… he changed that. And even though he didn’t say much and was away a lot, he was still my man.”

She looked at Erlendur.

“We were together, and after he went missing I waited for several years, and I’m probably still waiting. When do you stop? Is there any rule about it?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “There’s no rule.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said, and he felt painfully sorry for her when he noticed that she was starting to weep.

19

One day a message appeared on Sigurdur Oli’s desk from the US embassy in Reykjavik stating that it had information that might prove useful to the police in their investigation regarding the skeleton from Kleifarvatn. The message was delivered by the gloved hand of an embassy chauffeur who said he was supposed to wait for a reply. With the help of Omar, the ex-director general of the foreign ministry, Sigurdur Oli had made contact with Robert Christie in Washington, who had promised to assist them after hearing what the request involved. According to Omar, Robert — or Bob, as he called him — had been interested in the case and the embassy would soon be in touch.

Sigurdur Oli looked at the chauffeur and his black leather gloves. He was wearing a black suit and wore a peaked cap with gold braid; he looked a complete fool in such a get-up. After reading the message, Sigurdur Oli nodded. He told the chauffeur that he would be at the embassy at two o’clock the same day and would bring with him a detective called Elinborg. The chauffeur smiled. Sigurdur Oli expected him to salute on departing, but he did not.

Elinborg almost bumped into the chauffeur at the door to Sigurdur Oli’s office. He apologised and she watched him walk off down the corridor.

“What on earth was that?” she said.

“The US embassy,” Sigurdur Oli said.

They arrived at the embassy on the stroke of two. Two Icelandic security guards stood outside the building and eyed them suspiciously as they approached. They stated their business, the door was opened and they were allowed inside. Two more security guards, this time American, received them. Elinborg was braced for a weapons check when a man appeared in the lobby and welcomed them with a handshake. He said his name was Christopher Melville and asked them to follow him. He praised them for being “right on time’. They spoke in English.

Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg followed Melville up to the next floor, along the corridor and to a door which he opened. A sign on the door said: Director of Security. A man of around sixty was waiting for them inside, his head crewcut although he was wearing civilian clothes, and he introduced himself as the said director, Patrick Quinn. Melville left and they sat down with Quinn on a small sofa in his spacious office. He said he had spoken to the Defence Department at Iceland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that the Americans would gladly help the Icelandic police if they could. They exchanged a few words about the weather and agreed it was a good summer by Reykjavik standards.

Quinn said he had been with the embassy ever since Richard Nixon visited Iceland in 1973 for his summit meeting with French President Georges Pompidou, which was held at Kjarvalsstadir Art Museum. He said he liked Iceland very much in spite of the cold, dark winters. At that time of year he tried to make it to Florida for a vacation. He smiled. “Actually I’m from North Dakota, so I’m used to this kind of winter. But I miss the warmer summers.”

Sigurdur Oli smiled back. He thought they had made enough idle chat, much as he would have liked to tell Quinn that he had studied criminology for three years in the States and loved America and all things American.

“You studied in the US, didn’t you?” Quinn said. “Criminology. Three years, wasn’t it?”

The smile froze on Sigurdur Oli’s face.

“I understand you like the country,” Quinn added. “It’s good for us to have friends in these difficult times.”

“Do you… do you have a file on me here?” Sigurdur Oli asked, dumbfounded.

“A file?” Quinn laughed. “I just phoned Bara from the Fulbright Foundation.”

“Bara, yes, I see,” Sigurdur Oli said. He knew the foundation’s director well.

“You were on a scholarship, right?”

“That’s right,” Sigurdur Oli said awkwardly. “I thought for a moment that…” He shook his head at his own folly.

“No, but I’ve got the CIA file on you here,” Quinn said, reaching over for a folder from the desk.

The smile froze on Sigurdur Oli’s face again. Quinn waved an empty folder at him and started laughing.

“Boy, is he uptight,” he said to Elinborg.

“Who is this colleague of yours?” she asked.

“Robert Christie occupied the post I now hold at the embassy,” Quinn said. “But the job is totally different now. He was the embassy’s director of security during the Cold War. The security issues I handle are those of a changed world where terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and, as borne out by events, to the rest of the world.”

He looked at Sigurdur Oli, who was still recovering.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“No, it’s fine,” Sigurdur Oli said. “A little joke. Never harmed anyone.”

“Bob and I are good friends,” Quinn continued. “He asked me to help you with this skeleton you found at, what do you call it, Klowffervatten?”

“Kley-varrr-vahtn.” Elinborg pronounced it for him.

“Right,” Quinn said. “You don’t have anyone reported missing who could be the skeleton you found, or what?”

“Nothing seems to fit the man from Kleifarvatn.”

“Only two out of forty-four missing-persons cases over the past fifty years have been investigated as criminal matters,” Sigurdur Oli said. “This one is the sort we want to look into more closely.”

“Yes,” Quinn said, “I also understand that the body was tied to a Russian radio device. We’d be happy to examine it for you. If you have trouble establishing the model and date and its potential applications. That’s easily done.”

“I think forensics is working on it with Iceland Telecom,” Sigurdur Oli said cheerfully. “They might contact you.”

“Anyway, a missing person, not necessarily an Icelander,” Quinn said, putting on his reading glasses. He took a black folder from his desk and browsed through some papers. “As you may know, embassy staffing was under close surveillance in the old days. The Reds watched us and we watched the Reds. That was the way things were and no one thought it was strange.”