‘Can you see anything to suggest that he might have been American? An American from the base? A foreigner?’
‘A serviceman, you mean?’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘He was wearing cowboy boots and—’
‘That’s not enough. Did you find anything that could link him to the base? Anything that could place him at Keflavík? Erlendur was talking about the possibility.’
‘Not that I noticed. But there’s another detail I should mention,’ said the pathologist. His voice suddenly sounded threadbare, as if the late hour was catching up with him.
‘Yes?’
‘All the evidence is that the man died as the result of falling from a great height, as we’ve discussed. From what I can deduce, he landed on a smooth surface, a pavement or tarmac, maybe even a concrete floor.’
‘Yes, you’ve already told us that.’
‘Well, perhaps I am repeating myself, but there are so many strange aspects to this death. Like, for example, the fact that he landed flat on his face without raising his arms to protect himself. I don’t believe he fell directly into the lagoon from a plane, as you two were suggesting. If that were the case the impact would have mainly come from hitting water. No, the surface he landed on was much harder.’
‘In other words he fell from a great height,’ said Marion, yawning. ‘Everything points to that. So there are only three possibilities: accident, suicide or murder. If it was an accident or suicide, it’s very puzzling that anyone would have wanted to hide his body in a mudbath. But if it was murder, it’s much easier to understand why the perpetrator would have wanted to cover his tracks. I believe we can rule out suicide, in any case. Involuntary manslaughter or an accident aren’t inconceivable, but then we have to ask ourselves why it wasn’t reported. Murder is by far the most plausible conclusion.’
‘Yes, that’s why I wanted to talk to you straight away,’ said the pathologist. ‘I just didn’t realise it was so late. You see, I found something on the back of the man’s head where it’s relatively undamaged.’
‘What was it?’
‘An ugly contusion that I missed initially because it’s under his hair. It looks as if he received a heavy blow to the head.’
‘Really?’
‘There’s no doubt.’
‘Isn’t that just the result of his fall?’
‘No. He landed on his face. This is on the back of his head.’
‘Are you positive?’
‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to prove it conclusively by further examination,’ said the pathologist, ‘but the odds are that the man was dead before he fell.’
7
Marion and Erlendur were gazing out over the lagoon, watching the diver lowering himself into the water. It was his second attempt. On his first he had found nothing in the area where the body had been lying, but he had wanted another chance to make a more thorough search. Marion was sceptical, seeing it as nothing more than a ploy to squeeze more money out of the police, but didn’t say so out loud. The police had called on the diver’s services before when they needed to drag harbours or lakes. He was in his forties, a carpenter by trade, a volunteer member of the rescue team and one of the most capable divers in the country. He had a powerful lamp attached to his head which lit up the water as he submerged, and Marion and Erlendur watched it moving slowly to and fro under the milky-blue surface.
According to the diver, the lagoon bed was covered in a thick layer of sediment which hampered his efforts. Even if there was some clue sunk in the mud, the cloudiness of the water would make it almost impossible to spot. The lagoon had the detectives stumped. They had never encountered conditions quite like this before and were unsure how to proceed. They had discussed emptying it by pumping out the water but this had been dismissed as impractical. Then Erlendur had suggested dragging the bottom and, as no one had come up with a better solution, preparations were under way.
Combing the shores of the lagoon for clues had as yet produced no results. The snow had obliterated any tracks that might have been left by the person or people responsible for transporting the body there. And the conjecture that the man had been thrown out of a plane had to be taken as seriously as any other, despite indications that he had already been dead before he landed. Reykjavík air traffic control were unaware of any flights over the area in the past week but there were a number of privately owned light aircraft based at the domestic airport and the police were in the process of contacting their owners. The police had also put out a request for information about traffic through smaller airstrips in the south of Iceland, such as those at Selfoss and in the Westman Islands. And they were still awaiting a response from air traffic control at Keflavík about the movements of private planes from the international airport.
Even before the snow fell no tyre marks had been visible in the environs of the lagoon the evening the body was found. And anyway it was inaccessible to vehicles except perhaps for large, specially equipped four-wheel drives. The most likely scenario was that the body had been carried over the shortest route from the Grindavík road to the pool, then floated some way out into the water before being sunk. The diver could see no sign that it had been weighted down.
Marion had relayed to Erlendur the gist of the pathologist’s phone call the night before, particularly the detail about the bruising on the back of the man’s head. The pathologist had rung again at lunchtime and repeated his conviction that the man had either been dead before he fell or at least unconscious from a heavy blow to the head.
‘That explains why he landed flat on his face,’ said Erlendur, watching the diver’s progress.
‘That’s what Herbert thought,’ said Marion. ‘He reckoned it was the most plausible explanation. That he’d been struck.’
‘Could he deduce anything about the implement — about what he’d been struck with?’
‘We’re maybe talking about a wheel brace, a length of piping or some other blunt instrument. He said it was hard to tell. Though he didn’t think it was a hammer. No sign of sharp edges. The skin wasn’t broken but it must have been a pretty heavy blow.’
The diver surfaced briefly, then went under again, his headlamp glowing in the water. Heat radiated constantly from the lagoon, condensing into vapour which was swept across the surface by the breeze before dispersing. Erlendur was entranced by the sight: the subterranean fires and bleak terrain of the Reykjanes Peninsula had brought about this convergence of hot water, steam and moss-green lava, and endowed it with an unearthly beauty.
‘So the man’s hit on the head, then pushed off a tall building,’ he said.
‘Yes. Possibly.’
‘So it would look like suicide?’
‘We have to consider that.’
Marion and Erlendur had spoken to a manager at the power station who said it was out of the question that the man was a member of his staff. Nobody was missing; everyone had reported for work as usual. He was astonished that a body should have turned up in the run-off lagoon. Few had any reason to go there, though he had heard of people bathing there because of the supposedly beneficial minerals.
The man, a tall, overweight, ruddy individual, with a red beard covering half his face, had walked back to the lagoon with them and was now watching the diver. It occurred to Erlendur to ask him about flights over the area and the man replied that there was quite a bit of activity thanks to the presence of the international airport and the American naval base on Midnesheidi. The roar of the military jets could be deafening at times. There were a few light aircraft too but the people working at the power station were less aware of them.
‘Why do you ask — was he thrown out of a plane or something?’