‘Eyvindur?’
‘Yes, the poor chap,’ said the wholesaler. ‘One of the worst salesmen I’ve ever had,’ he added, inadvertently showering the body with ash from his cigar.
She got up off the mattress and wriggled back into her knickers, put on her bra, slipped her dress over her snaking locks and smoothed it down, then looked at him with those large, quizzical eyes that missed nothing but suspected so much.
‘It happens to everyone, darling,’ she said, but she didn’t sound very convincing. ‘Don’t worry about it. This place doesn’t exactly help. I wish I could have offered you something better.’
Thorson glanced briefly around the shed, then buttoned up his trousers and pulled on his shirt, wishing the floor would swallow him up. He mumbled something and tripped over a pile of nets as he slunk out into the August night, then hurried back to his room at Hótel Borg.
18
Flóvent saw at once that something was missing from the flat. He realised what it was when he opened the wardrobe in the bedroom and noticed that all the clothes were gone from one side. Then he remembered what the wholesaler had said about the woman Eyvindur lived with: that she hadn’t been home either when he called round. He checked the cupboard in the hall. Same story. Only men’s clothing. He surveyed the flat. From all the small touches that were absent, it was plain that there wasn’t a woman living there now.
Apart from that the wholesaler hadn’t been a great deal of help. He knew little about Eyvindur, though he was able to tell them that his patronymic was Ragnarsson and that he had worked for him for nearly a year, undertaking numerous sales trips during that time. The fruits of these trips had been pretty meagre, though the wholesaler admitted that he hadn’t always given Eyvindur the best or easiest goods to shift. He believed the man was honest, though he had admittedly suspected him of theft when he hadn’t shown up after his latest trip. He also told them that Eyvindur lived with a woman — Vera he thought her name was — but she hadn’t been home in the last few days when he had gone round to their flat. He’d heard a rumour that she’d left Eyvindur.
They weren’t married, as far as the wholesaler knew, and had no children. But Eyvindur never used to speak about himself, except when he complained about the presence of the occupation force and said there was no way he would ever work for British imperialists. Still less for American capitalists. Mind you, he hadn’t been any better disposed towards the Germans. The wholesaler had heard him roundly cursing the Nazis too.
There had been nothing out of the ordinary about Eyvindur’s last sales trip, or any of his other trips, for that matter. He generally sailed with the coaster Súd and went ashore at selected destinations; he would stay for a few days before returning with the boat and reporting back with the proceeds and orders, if there were any. So his employer couldn’t begin to imagine who would have possibly wanted him out of the way. He had been an innocent soul, as the wholesaler put it — never hurt a fly, to the best of his knowledge. Why he should have been round at Felix Lunden’s flat was a mystery to him. Of course they were both commercial travellers, but he wasn’t aware that they knew each other outside work. The wholesaler knew who Felix was, but only by reputation. He worked for another company, he explained and supplied a name, which Flóvent committed to memory.
Too impatient to wait until morning to examine the victim’s flat, Flóvent went straight from the mortuary to the address, which the wholesaler had given him, in the west of town. He saw no need to bring in Thorson at this stage, but called out a locksmith who worked for the police when required. The man picked the lock in no time, then went home again, leaving Flóvent alone in the flat. Sparsely and shabbily furnished, it consisted of a small living room and kitchen, a bedroom and a WC. Nothing new, nothing modern. Clearly the couple who lived there had been hard up. There were three photographs on a chest of drawers, two of them portraits of old people, the third a picture of a young couple that was a little out of focus — Eyvindur and Vera themselves, Flóvent guessed.
‘Why did you jump to the conclusion that Eyvindur had stolen from you?’ Flóvent had asked the wholesaler as they were saying goodbye outside the mortuary. ‘Had he ever done that before?’
‘Good God, no. But I was owed some money by a client in the West Fjords and I’d asked Eyvindur to call in the debt. I know for certain that he received the money, so, when I couldn’t get hold of him, naturally the possibility crossed my mind. But as far as I know Eyvindur was as honest as the day is long.’
‘Would he have been carrying money, then?’
‘Well, it wasn’t a large amount,’ said the wholesaler. ‘Perhaps he spent it. But you’ll let me know if you find anything among his possessions, won’t you?’
Flóvent found Eyvindur’s wallet on the kitchen table. It contained nothing but small change. He searched the flat for the wholesaler’s money but couldn’t find it. There hadn’t been any cash on the body either, and he wondered if Eyvindur could have been murdered for a handful of krónur from the West Fjords. The notion seemed far-fetched. He had no reason to suspect the wholesaler — the man seemed honest enough — but Flóvent knew he shouldn’t eliminate him from his enquiries. Could he have killed Eyvindur over a paltry sum like that? Was his concern for the salesman a front? He could have reported Eyvindur to the police with the intention of putting them off the scent. Such a ploy wasn’t unheard of. Sometimes the best place to hide was in plain sight.
The only interesting discovery Flóvent made during this preliminary inspection of the flat was a small crumpled brown envelope, half hidden under the battered sofa in the living room, as if someone had chucked it there. When he smoothed it out, he realised what it was; he’d come across that sort of thing before, and tried but failed to understand the writing on it: Individual Chemical Prophylactic Packet. The envelope had contained what was popularly known by the soldiers as an EPT kit. This one was empty but there should have been a sheet of directions, a soap-impregnated cloth, a cleansing tissue and five grams of antiseptic ointment for application to the genitals. The kits, which were issued to the troops on a regular basis, were intended to provide protection against venereal disease.
Flóvent pocketed the envelope and searched for further clues about the woman who had been living with Eyvindur but seemed to have vanished from his life. He studied the blurred photo again and was just hunting for any letters or messages when he heard a noise outside in the hallway. He went out to see what was going on and found a man wrestling with the door of the flat opposite. ‘Damn it,’ he heard the man say with a sigh, and saw that he was trying, rather ineffectually, to free the key that had jammed in the lock. The man nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Flóvent emerging from Eyvindur’s flat.
‘Wh... what... Who are you?’ he stammered, gaping at Flóvent in alarm.
‘I’m from the police. Do you live here?’
‘Well... yes, I... I’m having a bit of trouble with the key,’ said the man, turning back to the lock. Flóvent reckoned he was drunk, too drunk to open his own front door without a struggle. ‘I had a new key cut,’ the man explained, ‘but it sometimes gets stuck in the lock. Are the police looking... looking for Eyvindur, then?’
‘Have you seen him recently?’ asked Flóvent, deliberately withholding the news of Eyvindur’s fate. A reek of spirits filled the hallway.
‘No, I haven’t a clue where he is. You should talk to his uncle. He owns the flat. He might know something.’