“Johann, or Joi as his brother called him, was a bit funny,” Niels said. “He was backward, or a halfwit as you used to be allowed to say. Before the political-correctness police ironed out the language with all their polite phrases.”
“Backward how?” Erlendur asked. He agreed with Niels about the language. It had been rendered absolutely impotent out of consideration for every possible minority.
“He was just dim,” Niels said and resumed his manicure. “I went up there twice and talked to the brothers. The elder one spoke for them both — Johann didn’t say much. They were completely different. One was nothing but skin and bone with a whittled face, while the other was fatter with a sort of childish, sheepish expression.”
“I can’t quite picture Johann,” Erlendur said.
“I don’t remember him too well, Erlendur. He sort of clung on to his brother like a little boy and was always asking who we were. Could hardly talk, just stammered out the words. He was like you’d imagine a farmer from some remote valley with straw in his hair and wellington boots on his feet.”
“And Haraldur managed to persuade you that Leopold had never been to their farm?”
“They didn’t need to persuade me,” Niels said. “We found the car outside the coach station. There was nothing to suggest that he’d been with the brothers. We had nothing to work with. No more than you do.”
“You don’t reckon the brothers took the car there?”
“There was no indication of that,” Niels said. “You know these missing-persons cases. You would have done exactly the same with the information we had.”
“I located the Falcon,” Erlendur said. “I know it was years ago and the car must have been all over since then, but something that could be cow dung was found in it. It occurred to me that if you’d bothered to investigate the case properly, you might have found the man and been able to reassure the woman who was waiting for him then and has been ever since.”
“What a load of old codswallop,” Niels groaned, looking up from trimming his nails. “How can you imagine anything so stupid? Just because you found some cow shit in the car thirty years later. Are you losing it?”
“You had the chance to find something useful,” Erlendur said.
“You and your missing persons,” Niels said. “Where are you going with this, anyway? Who put you on to it? Is it a real case? Says who? Why are you reopening a thirty-year-old non-case which no one can figure out anyway, and trying to make something of it? Have you raised that woman’s hopes? Are you telling her you can find him?”
“No,” Erlendur said.
“You’re nuts,” Niels said. “I’ve always said so. Ever since you started here. I told Marion that. I don’t know what Marion saw in you.”
“I want to make a search for him in the fields out there,” Erlendur said.
“Search for him in the fields?” Niels roared in astonishment. “Are you crackers? Where are you going to look?”
“Around the farm,” Erlendur said, unruffled. “There are brooks and ditches at the bottom of the hill which lead all the way out to sea. I want to see whether we can’t find something.”
“What grounds have you got?” Niels said. “A confession? Any new developments? Bugger all. Just a lump of shit in an old heap of scrap!”
Erlendur stood up.
“I just wanted to tell you that if you plan to make a song and dance about it, I must point out how shoddy the original investigation was because there are more holes in it than a—”
“Do as you please,” Niels interrupted him with a hateful glare. “Make an arse of yourself if you want to. You’ll never get a warrant!”
Erlendur opened the door and went out into the corridor.
“Don’t cut your fingers off,” he said and closed the door behind him.
Erlendur had a brief meeting with Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg about the Lake Kleifarvatn case. The search for further information about Lothar Weiser was proving slow and difficult. All enquiries had to go through the German embassy, which Erlendur had managed to offend, and they had few leads. As a formality they sent an inquiry to Interpol and the provisional answer was that it had never heard of Lothar Weiser. Quinn from the US embassy was trying to persuade one of the Czech embassy officials from that period to talk to the Icelandic police. He could not tell what these overtures would deliver. Lothar did not seem to have associated with Icelanders very much. Enquiries among old government officials had led nowhere. The East German embassy’s guest lists had been lost a long time ago. There were no guest lists from the Icelandic authorities for those years. The detectives had no idea how to find out whether Lothar had known any Icelanders. Nobody seemed to remember the man.
Sigurdur Oli had requested help from the German embassy and Icelandic ministry of education in providing a list of Icelandic students in East Germany. Not knowing which period to focus on, he started by asking about all students from the end of the war until 1970.
Meanwhile, Erlendur had ample time to absorb himself in his pet topic, the Falcon man. He realised full well that he had almost nothing to go on if he wanted a warrant to mount a full-scale search for a body on the brothers” land near Mosfellsbaer.
He decided to drop in on Marion Briem, whose condition was improving slightly. The oxygen tank was still at the ready but the patient looked better, talking about new drugs that worked better than the old ones and cursing the doctor for “not knowing his arse from his elbow’. Erlendur thought Marion Briem was getting back on form.
“What are you doing sniffing around here all the time?” Marion asked, sitting down in the chair. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Plenty,” Erlendur said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m not having any luck dying,” Marion said. “I thought I might have died last night. Funny. Of course that can happen when you’re lying around with nothing to do but wait for death. I was certain it was all over.”
Marion sipped from a glass of water with parched lips.
“I suppose it’s what they call astral projection,” Marion said. “You know I don’t believe in that crap. It was a delirium while I dozed. No doubt brought on by those new drugs. But I was hovering up there,” Marion said, staring up at the ceiling, “and looked down on my wretched self. I thought I was going and was completely reconciled to it in my heart. But of course I wasn’t dying at all. It was just a funny dream. I went for a check-up this morning and the doctor said I was a bit brighter. My blood’s better than it’s been for weeks. But he didn’t give me any hope for the future.”
“What do doctors know?” Erlendur said.
“What do you want from me anyway? Is it the Ford Falcon? Why are you snooping around on that case?”
“Do you remember if the farmer he was going to visit near Mosfellsbaer had a brother?” Erlendur asked on the off chance. He did not want to tire Marion, but he also knew that his old boss enjoyed all things mysterious and strange.
Eyes closed, Marion pondered.
“That lazy bugger Niels talked about the brother being a bit funny.”
“He says he was a halfwit, but I don’t know what that means, exactly.”
“He was backward, if I remember correctly. Big and strong but with the mind of a child. I don’t think he could really speak. Just babbled nonsense.”
“Why wasn’t this investigation pursued, Marion?” Erlendur asked. “Why was it allowed to peter out? It would have been possible to do so much more.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The brothers” land should have been combed. Everyone took it for granted that the salesman never went there. No doubts were ever raised. It was all cut and dried; they decided the man committed suicide or left the city and would come back when it suited him. But he never did come back and I’m not certain that he killed himself.”