The Draining Lake Read Online Free PDF

desk. Didn't react.'
    'He didn't phone you to tell you?' Elínborg asked.
    'No,' the woman said, and Erlendur could sense the sorrow still enveloping her. 'Like I told you, he phoned but didn't say a word about losing his job.'
    'Why was he made redundant?' Erlendur asked.
    'I never had a satisfactory answer to that. I think the owner wanted to show me compassion or consideration when we spoke. He said they needed to cut back because sales were down, but later I heard that Ragnar had apparently lost interest in the job. Lost interest in what he was doing. After a school reunion he had talked about enrolling again and finishing. He was invited to the reunion even though he had quit school and all his old friends had become doctors and lawyers and engineers. That was the way he talked. As if it brought him down, dropping out of school.'
    'Did you link this to his disappearance in any way?' Erlendur asked.
    'No, not particularly,' Kristín said. 'I can just as easily put it down to a little tiff we had the day before. Or that our son was difficult at night. Or that he couldn't afford a new car. Really I don't know what to think.'
    'Was he depressive?' Elínborg said, noticing Kristín slip into the present tense, as if it had all just happened.
    'No more than most Icelanders. He went missing in the autumn, if that means anything.'
    'At the time you ruled out the possibility that there was anything criminal about his disappearance,' Erlendur said.
    'Yes,' she said. 'I couldn't imagine that. He wasn't involved in anything of that sort. If he met someone who murdered him, it would have been pure bad luck. The thought that anything like that happened never crossed my mind, nor yours at the police. You never treated his disappearance as a criminal matter either. He stayed behind at work until everyone had left and that was the last time he was seen.'
    'Wasn't his disappearance ever investigated as a criminal matter?' Elínborg said.
    'No,' Kristín said.
    'Tell me something else: was your husband a radio ham?' Erlendur asked.
    'A radio ham? What's that?'
    'To tell the truth I'm not quite sure myself,' Erlendur said, looking to Elínborg for help. She sat and said nothing. 'They're in radio contact with people all around the world,' Erlendur continued. 'You need, or used to need, a quite powerful transmitter to broadcast your signal. Did he have any equipment like that?'
    'No,' the woman said. 'A radio ham?'
    'Was he involved in telecommunications?' Elínborg asked. 'Did he own a radio transmitter or . . . ?'
    Kristín looked at her.
    'What did you find in that lake?' she asked with a look of astonishment. 'He never owned a radio transmitter. What kind of transmitter, anyway?'
    'Did he ever go fishing in Kleifarvatn?' Elínborg continued without answering her. 'Or know anything about it?'
    'No, never. He wasn't interested in angling. My brother's a keen salmon fisherman and tried to get him to go along, but he never would. He was like me in that. We never wanted to kill anything for sport or fun. We never went to Kleifarvatn.'
    Erlendur noticed a beautifully framed photograph on a shelf in the living room. It showed Kristín with a young boy, whom he took to be her fatherless son, and he started thinking about his own son, Sindri. He had not realised at once why he had dropped by. Sindri had always avoided his father, unlike Eva Lind who wanted to make him feel guilty for ignoring her and her brother in their childhood. Erlendur had divorced their mother after a short marriage and as the years wore on he increasingly regretted having had any contact with his children.
     
    They shook hands embarrassedly on the landing like two strangers; he let Sindri in and made coffee. Sindri said he was looking for a flat or a room. Erlendur said he didn't know of any vacant places but promised to tell him if he heard of anything.
    'Maybe I could stay here for the time being,' Sindri said, looking at the bookcase in the living room.
    'Here?'