The Draining Lake - By Arnaldur Indridason Page 0,3

on this spot.'

'Is your shoulder all right?'

'Yes. How's Eva Lind doing?'

'She hasn't done a runner yet,' Erlendur said. 'I think she regrets the whole business, but I'm not really sure.'

He knelt down and examined the exposed part of the skeleton. He put his finger in the hole in the skull and rubbed one of the ribs.

'He's been hit over the head,' he said and stood up again.

'That's rather obvious,' Elínborg said sarcastically. 'If it is a he,' she added.

'Rather like a fight, isn't it?' Sigurdur Óli said. 'The hole's just above the right temple. Maybe it only took one good punch.'

'We can't rule out that he was alone on a boat here and fell against the side,' Erlendur said, looking at Elínborg. 'That tone of yours, Elínborg, is that the style you use in your cookery book?'

'Of course, the smashed piece of bone would have been washed away a long time ago,' she said, ignoring his question.

'We need to dig out the bones,' Sigurdur Óli said. 'When do forensics get here?'

Erlendur saw more cars pulling up by the roadside and presumed that word about the discovery of the skeleton had reached the newsdesks.

'Won't they have to put up a tent?' he said, still eyeing the road.

'Yes,' Sigurdur Óli said. 'They're bound to bring one.'

'You mean he was fishing on the lake alone?' Elínborg asked.

'No, that's just one possibility,' Erlendur said.

'But what if someone hit him?'

'Then it wasn't an accident,' Sigurdur Óli said.

'We don't know what happened,' Erlendur said. 'Maybe someone hit him. Maybe he was out fishing with someone who suddenly produced a hammer. Maybe there were only the two of them. Maybe they were three, five.'

'Or,' Sigurdur Óli chipped in, 'he was hit over the head in the city and brought out to the lake to dispose of his body.'

'How could they have made him sink?' Elínborg said. 'You need something to weight a body down in the water.'

'Is it an adult?' Sigurdur Óli said.

'Tell them to keep their distance,' Erlendur said as he watched the reporters clambering down to the lake bed from the road. A light aircraft approached from the direction of Reykjavík and flew low over the lake; they could see someone holding a camera.

Sigurdur Óli went over to the reporters. Erlendur walked down to the lake. The ripples lapped lazily against the sand as he watched the afternoon sun glittering on the water's surface and wondered what was happening. Was the lake draining through the actions of man or was it nature at work? It was as if the lake itself wanted to uncover a crime. Did it conceal more misdeeds where it was deeper and still dark and calm?

He gazed up at the road. Forensics technicians wearing white overalls were hurrying across the sand in his direction. They were carrying a tent and bags full of mysteries. He looked skywards and felt the warmth of the sun on his face. Maybe it was the sun that was drying up the lake.

The first discovery that the forensics team made when they began clearing the sand from the skeleton with their little trowels and fine-haired brushes was a rope that had slipped between the ribs and lay by the spinal column then under the skeleton, where it vanished into the sand.

The hydrologist's name was Sunna and she had snuggled up under a blanket on the sofa. The tape was in the video player, the American thriller The Bone Collector. The man in the black socks had gone. He had left behind two telephone numbers which she flushed down the toilet. The film was just starting when the doorbell rang. She was forever being disturbed. If it wasn't cold-callers it was people selling dried fish door-to-door, or boys asking for empty bottles who lied that they were collecting for the Red Cross. The bell clanged again. Still she hesitated. Then with a sigh she threw off the blanket.

When she opened the door two men were standing before her. One looked a rather sorry sight, round-shouldered and wearing a peculiarly mournful expression on his face. The other one was younger and much nicer – handsome, really.

Erlendur watched her staring with interest at Sigurdur Óli and could not suppress a smile.

'It's about Lake Kleifarvatn,' he said.

Once they had sat down in her living room Sunna told them what she and her colleagues at the Energy Authority believed had happened.

'You remember the big south Iceland earthquake on the seventeenth of June 2000?' she said, and they nodded. 'About five seconds