The Draining Lake - By Arnaldur Indridason Page 0,17
'It'll do you no good.'
Confused, he walked out of the library and into the piercing winter wind. On the way to the dormitory he met Emil and Rut. They had been to collect a package posted from Iceland for her. It was a food parcel and they were gloating over it. He did not mention his encounter with Hannes because he did not understand what he had meant.
'Lothar was looking for you,' Emil said. 'I told him you were at the library.'
'I didn't see him,' he said. 'Do you know what he wanted?'
'No idea,' Emil said.
Lothar was his liaison, his Betreuer. Every foreigner at the university had a liaison who was available for help. Lothar had befriended the Icelanders at the dormitory. He offered to take them around the city and show them the sights. He assisted them at the university and sometimes paid the bill when they went to Auerbachkeller. He wanted to go to Iceland, he said, to study Icelandic, and he spoke the language well, could even sing the latest hit songs. He said he was interested in the old Icelandic sagas, had read Njal's Saga and wanted to translate it.
'Here's the building,' Rut said all of a sudden, and stopped. 'That's the office. There are prison cells inside.'
They looked up at the building. It was a gloomy stone edifice of four storeys. Plywood boarding had been nailed over all the ground-floor windows. He saw the name of the street: Dittrichring. Number 24.
'Prison cells? What is this place?' he asked.
'The security police are in there,' Emil said in a low voice, as if someone might hear him.
'Stasi,' Rut said.
He looked up along the building again. The pallid street lights cast a murky shadow onto its stone walls and windows, and a slight shiver ran through him. He felt clearly that he never wanted to enter that place but had no way of knowing then how little his own wishes counted for.
He sighed and looked out to sea where a little sailboat was cruising by.
Decades later, when the Soviet Union and communism had fallen, he had returned to the headquarters and noticed at once the old nauseating smell. It produced the same effect on him as when the rat had got trapped behind the dormitory stove and they had unwittingly roasted it over and again, until the stench in the old villa became unbearable.
8
Erlendur watched Marion sitting in the chair in the living room, breathing through an oxygen mask. The last time he had seen his former CID boss was at Christmas and he did not know that Marion had since fallen ill. Enquiring at work, he had discovered that decades of smoking had ruined Marion's lungs and a thrombosis had caused paralysis of the right side, arm and part of the face. The flat was dim despite the sun outside, with a thick layer of dust on the tables. A nurse visited once a day and she was just leaving when Erlendur called.
He sat down in the deep sofa facing Marion and thought about the sorry state to which his old colleague had been reduced. There was almost no flesh left on the bones. That huge head nodded slowly above a weak body. Every bone in Marion's face was visible, the eyes sunken under yellowy, scraggy hair. Erlendur dwelled on the tobacco-stained fingers and shrivelled nails resting on the chair's worn arm. Marion was asleep.
The nurse had let Erlendur in and he sat in silence waiting for Marion to wake. He was remembering the first time he'd turned up for work at the CID all those years ago.
'What's up with you?' was the first thing Marion said to him. 'Don't you ever smile?'
He did not know what to say in reply. Did not know what to expect from this stunted specimen for whom a Camel was a permanent fixture, forever enveloped in a stinking haze of blue smoke.
'Why do you want to investigate crimes?' Marion continued when Erlendur did not answer. 'Why don't you get on with directing traffic?'
'I thought I might be able to help,' Erlendur said.
It was a small office crammed with papers and files; a large ashtray on the desk was full of cigarette butts. The air was thick and smoky inside but Erlendur did not mind. He took out a cigarette.
'Do you have a particular interest in crime?' Marion asked.
'Some of them,' Erlendur said, fishing out a box of matches.
'Some?'
'I'm interested in missing persons,' Erlendur said.