‘If you’re often here, maybe you can help me,’ said Elínborg. ‘I’ve discussed it with Jóhanna. She knows I’m with the police, and I’ve told her I’m trying to trace a young woman, with dark hair, who may be a customer of yours. She probably buys tandoori spices, could have bought a tandoori pot.’
The girl was deep in thought.
‘She might have been wearing a shawl,’ said Elínborg. ‘I can show it to you but I haven’t got it with me now.’
‘A shawl?’ the girl asked. ‘Wasn’t Jóhanna able to help you?’
‘She was going to look into it for me.’
‘I’ve only sold one tandoori pot this autumn,’ said the girl. ‘And it wasn’t to a young woman with a shawl. It was to a man.’
‘So you don’t remember any regular customer — a dark-haired woman? Who’s interested in Indian cookery, or any kind of Asian food, spices? Maybe she’s been to the Far East?’
The girl shook her head. ‘I wish I could be more help,’ she said.
‘Of course. This man who bought the tandoori pot, was he alone? Do you remember?’
‘He was. There was no girl with him. I remember him particularly because I helped him take the pot out to his car.’
‘Yes?’
‘He didn’t want to be a nuisance, but I assured him it was no problem.’
‘He needed assistance, did he?’
‘He walked with a limp,’ the girl explained. ‘There was something wrong with his leg. He was very nice, and awfully grateful.’
19
The family had done well for themselves. The husband, Elínborg had learned, was a qualified economist and a head of department at the Ministry of Agriculture. The wife worked in a bank. They lived in a townhouse in a prosperous district of the city, furnished with leather sofas, an oak dining table, and new-looking kitchen fittings. The floors were parquet, and on the walls hung two fine oil paintings and a number of drawings. Photographs of the family at different ages: three children, from infancy to college graduation. Glancing casually around, Elínborg took all this in as she was shown into the living room.
She had decided to make this visit alone. She did not want to make the man uncomfortable. Jóhanna’s assistant at the shop had dug out the credit-card slip for the tandoori pot that he had bought in the late summer. He had written his name clearly and firmly on the receipt: this was no illegible scribble, like so many credit-card signatures. This man’s signature was neat, controlled, confidence-inspiring.
In trying to trace him, Elínborg had first spoken to two men of the same name, both of them mystified to be contacted by the police. At her third attempt she had struck lucky. The man asked whether she wanted him to come to the station, but she allowed him to meet her on his own territory and she had the impression that he was relieved. She had told him she was a police officer, looking for witnesses in the Thingholt murder case. ‘A man was seen near the scene of the crime, with some kind of support on his leg — as if he had a broken leg, or an injury or disability,’ she had said.
‘Oh?’
‘He had a brace on one leg. We’ve been trying to identify him, and we’re wondering if you’re the right man.’
He was silent. Then he said he was aware of the case, and he recalled that he had been in Thingholt at about that time. ‘What … how can I help you?’ He was uncertain how to address a police officer. This was evidently a new experience for him.
‘We’re trying to find witnesses, but there are very few,’ explained Elínborg. ‘I’d just like to speak to you, to find out if you noticed anything unusual when you were in Thingholt.’
‘By all means come round,’ the man answered courteously. ‘But I don’t know that I can contribute anything.’
‘No, no, of course. That remains to be seen,’ said Elínborg.
And now she was sitting with him in his living room. His wife was not yet back from work. The children had all left home now, he told Elínborg, unprompted.
‘This is just a routine enquiry,’ announced Elínborg. ‘I hope I’m not intruding.’
‘You said there weren’t many witnesses,’ he answered. Konrád was sixtyish, not tall but sturdily built, with a head of thick greying hair, cropped short, and a broad face with laughter lines around the mouth. He had powerful shoulders and big hands. He walked slowly, because he had a brace on one leg. Elínborg recalled Petrína’s fantastical description: to the old lady, buzzing with radiomagnetism at her window, the metal rod on the brace might well resemble an aerial. Konrád was wearing a comfortable pair of tracksuit bottoms zipped open over the calves. They flapped as he walked, revealing the brace.
‘Have you been trying to reach me at work?’ asked Konrád.
‘No, I only rang here,’ answered Elínborg.
‘Good. I’ve had a touch of flu recently. So you’ve been looking for me?’
‘Yes, actually, we have. As I said, a man with a leg brace was seen near a house in Thingholt where a man was murdered. We thought that might indicate a physical disability, so we contacted an orthopaedist, who mentioned polio as a possibility. We looked back at the records of the Isolation Clinic and compiled a list which includes your name.’ Elínborg decided not to mention at this stage the line of enquiry about tandoori cuisine.
‘Yes, I was at the Isolation Clinic, that’s right. I caught polio in the last epidemic here in Iceland, in 1955, and this is what I got out of it,’ said Konrád. He patted the brace. ‘I never regained full strength in my leg. But you must know all this, of course.’
‘You were unlucky. The immunisation programme started the following year.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘So you were in the Isolation Clinic for a while?’ asked Elínborg. She sensed that he was slightly uneasy. ‘Can’t have been much fun for a young lad.’
‘No,’ replied Konrád politely. ‘It was a difficult experience. Really quite difficult. But that’s not why you’re here.’
‘I’m sure you must have heard about what happened in Thingholt,’ said Elínborg. ‘We’re trying to gather as much information as we can, from all possible sources. You were there, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, I was, but I didn’t go anywhere near that house, the one on the news. I’d parked my car nearby earlier that evening and I was reluctant to leave it there overnight. It was a Saturday and my wife and I had gone out for the evening. Then I went to fetch the car. I might have had one too many — we’d been to a number of bars. I know you’re not supposed to drink and drive, but I really didn’t want to leave my car where it was.’
‘It’s a bit of a walk from Thingholt into the centre of town, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose I wanted to be sure that the car wouldn’t be vandalised. It can be a bit dodgy downtown from that point of view — nothing seems to be safe unless it’s nailed down.’
‘Oh, yes, there are plenty of vandals about,’ said Elínborg. ‘So you went out for a few drinks, did you?’
‘I suppose you could put it like that.’
‘And then you went to get the car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Couldn’t your wife have gone? You’re the one with the bad leg, after all.’
‘She’d had more to drink than me,’ replied Konrád, with a smile. ‘I preferred to go myself. Please don’t get the idea that this is something we make a habit of. And it wasn’t far. We stayed near the centre, on Bankastræti and Laugavegur.’
‘And you walked back alone to collect the car?’
‘Yes. Did someone see me hobbling along, then?’ Konrád smiled as if he had said something amusing. Elínborg noticed that he smiled a lot. She wondered if his smile was a mask, intended to deceive. Should she tell him about the Asian food shop and the tandoori pot, the shawl smelling of Indian cuisine that had been found at the scene of the murder? She decided to leave that line of questioning for now. Elínborg did not enjoy interrogating witnesses. She disliked misleading people, catching them out in their lies. She was quite certain that most of what Konrád had told her was a carefully constructed fabrication, and that she would have to trick him into admitting whatever it was that he was striving to conceal. If she asked random and irrelevant questions she might be able to trip him up and induce him to reveal something important that would give her a handle on the case. She saw her interrogation technique as being like one of those party games in which questions had to be answered without using the words yes or no, black or white, and so on. If her instinct was correct, both she and Konrád knew there were certain things he must not say, and as the game progressed she would make it more and more difficult for him to maintain his focus.