‘Did you tell him about me and Marion?’
‘Sure. Wasn’t I supposed to?’
‘Yes, of course. Look, wouldn’t it be best if you went straight to Fleet Air Command? Is there any reason to wait? Marion and I could go with you, if you like.’
‘Brad told me not to trust anyone or talk to anyone till I’d heard back from him,’ said Caroline. ‘He’s going to try and find out what Wilbur Cain’s up to in Iceland. Chances are he’s here with the knowledge and at the request of the military authorities. Brad told me that when the time came, I should go directly to the Rear Admiral and take you both with me.’
‘Good,’ said Erlendur. ‘In the meantime, you can come with me if you want. We could put you up in a hotel in Reykjavík or—’
‘No, thanks all the same. But it was good talking to you. I feel a bit less stressed. I’ll be fine. I have friends here I can turn to.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You won’t go back to your apartment, will you?’
‘No, not till I hear from Brad. Maybe the whole thing’s a big mistake and Wilbur Cain has nothing to do with Kristvin’s death. That’s what Brad said. But I think he was just trying to reassure me.’
‘And you definitely trust him?’
‘Yes, I trust him,’ said Caroline firmly. ‘You’d better not talk to anyone about this either until you hear from me. You never know by what route information reaches the base. If something’s happening here that’s costing the lives of innocent civilians, the Icelandic government might well be in on it. Brad told me to trust nobody. Nobody at all.’
‘I don’t believe the Icelandic government could be—’
‘Everyone has their price and it was you who told me that the defence question here revolved mainly around money.’
‘All right,’ said Erlendur, ‘though I hope you trust me and Marion, if no one else.’
‘Yes, maybe you two. But not many others.’
Caroline looked despondently out into the gloom. Erlendur sensed that she had not quite finished. Something remained to be said. Not wanting to put pressure on her, he let time pass without breaking the silence.
‘Marion asked me to check who could have been in the hangar the night Kristvin was killed,’ said Caroline at last.
‘Oh?’
‘Work’s been suspended for the most part because of the construction, but the hangar’s guarded twenty-four/seven. I discovered that one of the security guards is called Matthew Pratt. A private. Young. Only twenty-two. A friend of mine who works on the airport gate knows him but he didn’t recognise the names of the other guards. There are several, apparently, and they patrol it in shifts.’
‘Have you spoken to him? This Pratt?’
‘That’s the strange part.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t trace him,’ said Caroline. ‘He’s not at home. His neighbours haven’t seen him for forty-eight hours. He hasn’t been on duty and I’m told he reported in sick several days ago. He hasn’t left the base, to the best of my knowledge, but he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.’
32
Erlendur couldn’t persuade Caroline to change her mind about returning to the base, so he left her in the car park by the Keflavík football ground. She gave him the phone number of some people she was going to take refuge with and said she would be in touch soon.
‘Be careful,’ Erlendur said in parting. ‘The fewer people you tell, the better. Are you sure you can trust them?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Caroline. ‘They’re the kind of friends who’ll help without asking any questions.’ She pulled up the hood of her jacket and got out of the car.
As Erlendur drove back along the Keflavík road he looked over at the billows of steam rising from Svartsengi and felt as if many weeks had passed since he saw Kristvin’s body floating in the lagoon. Since then the inquiry into his death had almost entirely focused on the naval air station on Midnesheidi, and now both the CIA and Military Intelligence had become tangled up in it. Erlendur found it highly unlikely that a nobody like Kristvin could have constituted a serious thorn in the side for a powerful nation like the US, but then again Caroline was clearly rattled, and maybe Kristvin had as much chance as anyone else on the base of stumbling on classified information. He had access to the largest hangar on the site, after all, so he could have witnessed something he wasn’t supposed to.
As Erlendur wrestled with this question on the drive back to Reykjavík, he reflected on what he had told Caroline about the difference in scale between their two nations. From there, his thoughts wandered back to Dagbjört and what the old woman, Baldvina, had told him about Camp Knox. Erlendur had made casual enquiries about where he might find her son Vilhelm these days. All he had learned was that the tramp was still alive and occasionally showed his face at the shelter for alcoholics and homeless men on Thingholt.
When Erlendur got back to the office he found Marion sitting at the desk, apparently sufficiently recovered to return to work. Erlendur gave a detailed account of his meeting with Caroline out at Gardskagi and how her investigations had put her on the trail of Wilbur Cain, who scared her.
‘But she insisted on going back to the base in spite of that?’ said Marion, once Erlendur had finished.
‘She said she was going to stay with friends and would be in touch when she had more information. Let’s just hope she knows what she’s doing. I told her we’re a bunch of clueless bloody amateurs when it comes to the world she moves in.’
‘Maybe not such a bad thing to be, in the circumstances,’ said Marion.
‘No, true.’
‘What can we do at this end to help her?’ asked Marion. ‘Anything practical?’
‘She said she didn’t trust the Icelandic government any more than the military authorities. One option would be for us to issue a warrant for Wilbur Cain’s arrest, but we can’t produce any evidence to back it up. Caroline said they could whisk him away at a moment’s notice and claim ignorance of his existence.’
‘What are the chances he killed Kristvin — realistically?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Erlendur. ‘Caroline thinks it’s possible Wilbur knew him and was with him at that club or bar or whatever it is, the Animal Locker. We have Joan’s word for that. She referred to Kristvin’s companion as “W”. Admittedly it’s not definitely “Wilbur”, but it was enough to spur Caroline to talk to her contact in Washington, who told her to watch out for this Cain character.’
‘I hope we’re not going to live to regret the fact we persuaded her to help us,’ said Marion.
‘She can look after herself.’
Erlendur announced that he had a brief errand to run. Marion promised to stay by the phone in the meantime in case Caroline rang. Saying he would call in regularly to check if there were any developments, Erlendur left and drove down to the homeless shelter on Thingholt. He spoke to the warden who knew Vilhelm well and said he had spent the previous night there, but he didn’t know whether to expect him back that evening.
‘The poor bloke’s in pretty bad shape,’ said the warden.
‘Well, it’s a dog’s life.’
‘You could try the centre of town — they sometimes gather in Austurvöllur Square in spite of the cold. Or up on Arnarhóll. Or by the bus station at Hlemmur.’
Erlendur drove through the centre of town without seeing Vilhelm. During his years on the beat he had become acquainted with the desperate lives led by the city’s homeless and knew the names of many of the men and women who roamed the streets, in varying states of intoxication. Among their number was a woman called Thurí and he spotted her now, standing on the corner by the post office, wearing a thick anorak, two scarves tightly knotted round her neck and a torn hat on her head, the ear flaps fluttering in the wind. She recognised him immediately when he drew up beside her. They were old friends.