The Draining Lake Read Online Free PDF Page A

remarried. Her son from the previous marriage was doing a doctorate in medicine in the States. She had had two children with her second husband. Surprised by Elínborg's call, she had taken the afternoon off work to meet her and Erlendur at home.
    'Is it him?' the woman asked as she offered them a seat. Her name was Kristín, she was past sixty and had put on weight with age. She had heard on the news about the skeleton that had been found in Lake Kleifarvatn.
    'We don't know,' Erlendur said. 'We know it's a male but we're waiting for a more precise age on it.'
    A few days had passed since the skeleton had been found. Some bones had been sent for carbon analysis but the pathologist had also used a different method, which she thought could speed up the results.
    'Speed up the results how?' Erlendur had asked Elínborg.
    'She uses the aluminium smelter in Straumsvík.'
    'The smelter?'
    'She's studying the history of pollution from it. It involves sulphur dioxide and fluoride and that sort of gunge. Have you heard about it?'
    'No.'
    'A certain amount of sulphur dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere and falls onto the land and the sea; it's found in lakes near the smelter, such as Kleifarvatn. They've reduced the quantity now with improved pollution control. She said she found a trace in the bones and at a very provisional estimate says the body was put in the lake before 1970.'
    'Give or take?'
    'Five years either way.'
    At this stage the investigation into the skeleton from Kleifarvatn focused on males who had gone missing between 1960 and 1975. There were eight cases in the whole of Iceland. Five had lived in or around Reykjavík.
    Kristín's first husband had been one of them. The detectives had read the files. She had reported his disappearance herself. One day he had not come home from work. She'd had his dinner ready for him. Their son was playing on the floor. She bathed the boy, put him to bed and tidied up in the kitchen. Then sat down and waited. She would have watched television, but in those days there were no broadcasts on Thursdays.
    This was the autumn of 1969. They lived in a small flat they had recently bought. He was an estate agent and had been given a good deal on it. She had just finished Commercial College when they met. A year later they were married with due ceremony and a year after that their son was born. Her husband worshipped him.
    'That's why I couldn't understand it,' Kristín said, her gaze flicking between them.
    Erlendur had a feeling that she was still waiting for the husband who had so suddenly and inexplicably vanished from her life. He visualised her waiting alone in the autumn gloom. Calling people who knew him and their friends, telephoning the family, who would quietly gather in the flat over the following days to give her strength and support her in her grief.
    'We were happy,' she said. 'Our little boy Benni was the apple of our eye, I'd got a job with the Merchants' Association and as far as I knew my husband was doing well at work. It was a big estate agency and he was a great salesman. He wasn't so good at school, dropped out after two years, but he worked hard and I thought he was happy with life. He never suggested otherwise to me.'
    She poured coffee into their cups.
    'I didn't notice anything unusual on the last day,' Kristín went on, passing them the dish of crullers. 'He said goodbye to me in the morning, phoned at lunchtime just to say hello and again to say he would be a little late. That was the last I heard from him.'
    'But wasn't he having trouble at work, even if he didn't tell you?' Elínborg asked. 'We read the reports and . . .'
    'Redundancies were on the way. He'd spoken about it a few days earlier but didn't know who. Then he was called in that day and told that they no longer needed him. The owner told me that later. He said my husband had showed no response to being made redundant, didn't protest or ask for an explanation, just went back out and sat down at his