Oblivion (33 page)

Svava had invited Erlendur to attend. He had managed to crawl to the nearest house to raise the alarm before fainting again from loss of blood. He hadn’t woken up until noon next day. Marion told him they had found Rasmus locked in the car just as Erlendur had left him. He had put up no resistance and even asked if Erlendur was all right. The car turned out to have belonged to Rasmus’s mother; he didn’t have a licence so had never driven it himself. It had been taken off the register shortly after Mrs Kruse’s death and had remained in the garage ever since. Forensics had established that the body had in all probability been kept in the back seat from the beginning.

One of Erlendur’s first actions once he was feeling a little better, though still stuck in hospital, swathed in bandages, with an ache in his side, was to send someone round to see Svava and fill her in on the events of the last few days. He had needed an operation to repair the damage caused by the scissors but Erlendur was quick to recover and his strength was improving by the day. He was still in charge of the Dagbjört inquiry. Rasmus had been remanded in custody at Sídumúli Prison where he was undergoing psychiatric tests.

Once he was out of hospital, Erlendur went round to see Svava himself to tell her the whole story, explaining how he had picked up the trail as a result of exhaustive interviews with a number of people. He reported his encounter with Mensalder who had kept quiet all this time about his planned meeting with Dagbjört for fear of being implicated in her disappearance. It was unlikely that he could have saved the girl’s life by coming forward at once, but she would almost certainly have been found much earlier. Suspicion would immediately have fallen on Dagbjört’s nearest neighbours, including Rasmus. The man hadn’t attracted any attention at the time since there had been no reason to suppose that Dagbjört had died so close to home. He had been regarded as an eccentric recluse but not dangerous. He had nothing to do with his neighbours and they had nothing to do with him and so it remained.

‘What kind of person is he?’ asked Svava.

‘I don’t know,’ said Erlendur. ‘Disturbed, obviously, but pathetic too. He said he wasn’t always like that. Perhaps the secret in the garage gradually warped him into what he’s become today.’

‘How’s it possible? How could he have kept it secret? Their next-door neighbour!’

‘I don’t kn—’

‘Why wasn’t the man ever investigated?’

‘It’s not a crime to live alone and shut yourself off from the world.’

‘Perhaps he lived too close to her,’ said Svava. ‘It didn’t occur to anybody that she could be in the house next door. Nobody dreamt of such a thing. That she could have vanished only a few yards from home.’

‘Yes, of course, it was highly improbable. He … he says he loved her and I think there’s a grain of truth in that. In his own peculiar way he did love her.’

‘I don’t believe that for a minute,’ said Svava. ‘As for that business with the car … Who would do such a thing? Why did he keep …?’

‘Obviously Rasmus is very ill,’ said Erlendur, ‘and I don’t know how far to trust what he says, but he claims it was all he could think of. He couldn’t bear to bury her in the garden. And he was proud of how well he’d looked after the car. Says he polished it lovingly at least once a month.’

‘Dagbjört’s coffin.’

‘He says he did it for her. But he never went inside the car. In all those years. He drew the line at that.’

‘The poor, darling girl,’ sighed Svava. ‘I’ve been trying to come to terms with what happened, what became of her, but I … I just can’t.’

‘No, I can well understand that.’

‘What about the boy from Camp Knox? Didn’t he exist after all?’

‘We still haven’t found him,’ said Erlendur, ‘and I don’t suppose we ever will now. No one’s come forward and they’re hardly likely to after this. The case has received a lot of publicity following Rasmus’s arrest, just as it did when Dagbjört originally vanished, and that’s one of the details that has been disclosed on the news, but nobody’s … I’m not saying Silja was lying. Perhaps Dagbjört did know a boy from Camp Knox.’

‘So you’re not ruling it out?’

‘No, there’s no call to do that.’

‘I’m so glad,’ said Svava. ‘I’ve always … I’ve always indulged myself in a little fantasy that she’d met some nice boy. ‘That’s what I like to think. That she had a chance to discover what it is to … that Dagbjört had a chance to experience love. To know what it’s like to be in love. Even if only for a short time.’

‘Perhaps he was only passing through and never looked back. There are some places in their past that people don’t like to acknowledge. They don’t want to look back. I get the feeling Camp Knox was one of those. You wouldn’t want it to dog you through life but it would be hard to shake off.’

Svava looked curiously at Erlendur.

‘It sounds as if you’re talking from experience.’

‘I think we all have places like that,’ Erlendur said. ‘Our own private Camp Knox.’

‘But what about …?’

She kept up a relentless flow of questions and Erlendur tried to field them as best he could but knew he had no real answers, only reassuring platitudes. And with these he tried to comprehend and to provide comfort, for himself as much as her.

Nanna listened as Marion Briem described her brother’s fate, his affair with Joan and how Earl had taken revenge on him as a result. Marion attributed the success of the case above all to Caroline. Without her the Icelandic police would probably never have laid hands on the three men currently sitting in custody at Sídumúli Prison where they were undergoing interviews. The Icelandic and American authorities had come to an agreement about the handling of the case. Caroline had escaped with no more than a reprimand for disobeying orders. She kept her job with the military police and was part of the team questioning the three men along with the Icelandic police. She told Marion she had been in touch with Joan and was trying to support her through the investigation. She was an important witness and had stuck to her testimony against Earl and his friends. Earl claimed not to remember how he found out about her affair with Kristvin. Caroline was convinced he was lying. Wilbur Cain must have been involved and perhaps even egged Earl on as a way of putting an end to Kristvin’s snooping.

‘My brother never mentioned her – this Joan,’ said Nanna. ‘I didn’t even know she existed. I’d have thought he’d have told me –’

‘They hadn’t known each other long,’ said Marion. ‘I’m sure he’d have told you sooner or later.’

Erlendur was there too but took little part in the conversation. He stood by the window, gazing out at the playground. They had found a quiet room in Nanna’s nursery school where they could talk in private.

‘I’m really surprised he got involved with a married woman.’

‘She didn’t tell him at first. She was scared of her husband. But it’s possible she was trying to make Earl jealous too. She’s a bit vague on that point. Earl had been in trouble with the police back home in America before he joined the army. He was accused of assault on two occasions but never charged. He carried out a brutal attack on Joan when he heard she’d been cheating on him, then forced her to call your brother and ask him round. She’d never have done it if Earl hadn’t used violence against her.’

‘And they were lying in wait for him?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about him in the hands of those men. Alone and helpless, one against three.’

‘I know.’

‘He didn’t deserve what they did to him. Not him of all people.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Erlendur. ‘No one would deserve that.’

‘I thought it was my fault,’ said Nanna. ‘What happened to him. That he’d got into trouble because of me. Because he put himself in danger buying drugs for me.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘And this Joan, who is she, what kind of person is she?’ Nanna asked after a lengthy pause.

‘To be honest I don’t know,’ said Marion. ‘I can put you in touch with her, if you like. Kristvin told her about you. She knew about your illness. Asked after you.’

‘Maybe,’ said Nanna. ‘We’ll see.’

The sound of the children’s voices carried in to them. Nanna went to the window where Erlendur was standing watching them. His thoughts were with another little girl in a different playground, in red waterproof trousers and a woolly hat, playing alone in the sand.

‘I miss him,’ said Nanna. ‘I keep expecting him to ring … It … losing him hurts so much.’

‘How are you otherwise?’ asked Marion. ‘How’s your treatment going?’

‘They think I’ll live,’ she said, ‘but what do they know?’

ONE EVENING SEVERAL
weeks later Erlendur took a last stroll down the street where Dagbjört had lived and died, then kept on walking until he reached the site where Camp Knox had once stood as a memorial to military occupation and Icelandic poverty. For many years he had been haunted by Dagbjört’s story, by her inexplicable disappearance, the mystery shrouding her fate. He had immersed himself in the details of her life, followed in her footsteps time and again, stood brooding in front of her house and now, at last, discovered what had befallen her so heart-rendingly close to home.

It was a cold day and a biting northerly whipped up the loose snow and blew it along the street. He dug his hands deeper into his pockets and headed into the wind, conscious that the Dagbjört affair had only intensified his fascination with those who never came back. Solving the case had given him no more than a temporary respite. Lately the old pop song ‘Dagný’ had been running through his mind, conjuring up an image of the schoolgirls who once came together to sing about joy and delight, that poignant melody that would always remind him of Dagbjört. It was a relief to have found answers to the questions about her fate that had preyed on him so long, but he knew that for him there would be no closure. Her song would continue to haunt him for the rest of his days.