The Draining Lake - By Arnaldur Indridason Page 0,19

base at Keflavík.'

'So you want to link the skeleton in the lake with that equipment?'

'What do you think?' Marion Briem said, eyes closed again.

'Perhaps that's not implausible.'

'You bear it in mind,' Marion said, pulling a weary face.

'Is there anything I can do for you?' Erlendur said. 'Anything I can get you?'

'I sometimes watch westerns,' Marion said after a long pause, still sitting with eyes closed.

Erlendur was unsure whether he had heard correctly.

'Westerns?' he said. 'Are you talking about cowboy films?'

'Could you bring me a good western?'

'What's a good western?'

'John Wayne,' Marion said in a fading voice.

Erlendur sat by Marion's side for some time, in case his old boss woke up again. Noon was approaching. He went into the kitchen, made coffee and poured two cups. He remembered that Marion drank coffee black with no sugar, as he did, and placed one beside the armchair. He did not know what else he should do.

That afternoon Sigurdur Óli sat down in Erlendur's office. The man had rung again in the middle of the night, announcing that he was going to commit suicide. Sigurdur Óli had sent a police car to his house, but no one was at home. The man lived alone in a small detached house. On Sigurdur Óli's orders the police broke in but found no one.

'He called me again this morning,' Sigurdur Óli said after describing the episode. 'He was back home by then. Nothing happened but I'm getting a little tired of him.'

'Is he the one who lost his wife and child?'

'Yes. Inexplicably, he blames himself and refuses to listen to anything different.'

'It was sheer coincidence, wasn't it?'

'Not in his mind.'

Sigurdur Óli had been temporarily assigned to investigating road accidents. A Range Rover had driven into a car at a junction on the Breidholt Road, killing a mother along with her five-year-old daughter who was in the back, wearing a safety belt. The driver of the Range Rover had gone through a red light while drunk. The victims' car was the last in a long queue going over the junction at the very moment the Range Rover raced through the red light. If the mother had waited for the next green light, the Range Rover would have gone through without causing any damage and proceeded on its way. The drunken driver would probably have caused an accident somewhere, but it would not have been at that junction.

'But that's just how most accidents happen,' Sigurdur Óli said to Erlendur. 'Incredible coincidences. That's what the man doesn't understand.'

'His conscience is killing him,' Erlendur said. 'You ought to show some understanding.'

'Understanding?! He calls me at home in the middle of the night. How can I show him any more understanding?'

The woman had been shopping with their daughter at the supermarket in Smáralind. She was at the checkout when her husband called her mobile to ask her to get him a punnet of strawberries. She did, but it delayed her by a few minutes. The man was convinced that if he hadn't telephoned her she would not have been at the junction at the time when the Range Rover hit her. So he blamed himself. The crash had happened because he'd called her.

The scene of the accident was awful. The woman's car was torn apart, a write-off. The Range Rover had rolled off the road. The driver suffered a serious head injury and multiple fractures, and was unconscious when the ambulance took him away. The mother and daughter died instantly. They had to be cut from the wreckage. Blood ran down the road.

Sigurdur Óli went to visit the husband with a clergyman. The car was registered in the husband's name. He was beginning to worry about his wife and daughter and went into shock when he saw Sigurdur Óli and the vicar on his doorstep. When he was told what had happened he broke down and they called a doctor. Every so often since then he had telephoned Sigurdur Óli, who had become a kind of confidant, entirely against his will.

'I don't want to be his damned confessor,' Sigurdur Óli groaned. 'But he won't leave me alone. Rings at night and talks about killing himself! Why can't he go on at the vicar? He was there too.'

'Tell him to consult a psychiatrist.'

'He sees one regularly.'

'Of course, it's impossible to put yourself in his shoes,' Erlendur said. 'He must feel terrible.'

'Yes,' Sigurdur Óli said.

'And he's contemplating suicide?'

'So he says. And he could easily do something stupid. I just can't be bothered with it