Decades later, when the Soviet Union and communism had fallen, he had returned to the headquarters and noticed at once the old nauseating smell. It produced the same effect on him as when the rat had got trapped behind the dormitory stove and they had unwittingly roasted it over and again, until the stench in the old villa became unbearable.

Erlendur watched Marion sitting in the chair in the living room, breathing through an oxygen mask. The last time he had seen his former CID boss was at Christmas and he did not know that Marion had since fallen ill. Enquiring at work, he had discovered that decades of smoking had ruined Marion’s lungs and a thrombosis had caused paralysis of the right side, arm and part of the face. The flat was dim despite the sun outside, with a thick layer of dust on the tables. A nurse visited once a day and she was just leaving when Erlendur called.

He sat down in the deep sofa facing Marion and thought about the sorry state to which his old colleague had been reduced. There was almost no flesh left on the bones. That huge head nodded slowly above a weak body. Every bone in Marion’s face was visible, the eyes sunken under yellowy, scraggy hair. Erlendur dwelled on the tobacco-stained fingers and shrivelled nails resting on the chair’s worn arm. Marion was asleep.

The nurse had let Erlendur in and he sat in silence waiting for Marion to wake. He was remembering the first time he’d turned up for work at the CID all those years ago.

“What’s up with you?” was the first thing Marion said to him. “Don’t you ever smile?”

He did not know what to say in reply. Did not know what to expect from this stunted specimen for whom a Camel was a permanent fixture, forever enveloped in a stinking haze of blue smoke.

“Why do you want to investigate crimes?” Marion continued when Erlendur did not answer. “Why don’t you get on with directing traffic?”

“I thought I might be able to help,” Erlendur said.

It was a small office crammed with papers and files; a large ashtray on the desk was full of cigarette butts. The air was thick and smoky inside but Erlendur did not mind. He took out a cigarette.

“Do you have a particular interest in crime?” Marion asked.

“Some of them,” Erlendur said, fishing out a box of matches.

“Some?”

“I’m interested in missing persons,” Erlendur said.

“Missing persons? Why?”

“I always have been. I…” Erlendur paused.

“What? What were you going to say?” Marion chainsmoked and lit a fresh Camel from a tiny butt, still glowing when it landed in the ashtray. “Get to the point! If you dither around like that at work I won’t have anything to do with you. Out with it!”

“I think they might have more to do with crimes than people think,” Erlendur said. “I’ve got nothing to back me up. It’s just a hunch.”

Erlendur snapped out of this flashback. He watched Marion inhaling the oxygen. He looked out of the living-room window. Just a hunch, he thought.

Marion Briem’s eyes opened slowly and noticed Erlendur on the sofa. Their gazes met and Marion removed the oxygen mask.

“Has everyone forgotten those bloody communists?” Marion said in a hoarse voice, drawling through a mouth twisted by the thrombosis.

“How are you feeling?” Erlendur asked.

Marion gave a quick smile. Or maybe it was a grimace.

“It’ll be a miracle if I last the year.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What’s the point? Can you sort me out a new pair of lungs?”

“Cancer?”

Marion nodded.

“You smoked too much,” Erlendur said.

“What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette,” Marion said.

Marion put the mask back on and watched Erlendur, as if expecting him to produce his cigarettes. Erlendur shook his head. In one corner the television was switched on and the cancer patient’s eyes flashed over at the screen. The mask came back down.

“How’s it going with the skeleton? Has everyone forgotten the communists?”

“What’s all this talk about communists?”

“Your boss came to say hello to me yesterday, or maybe to say goodbye. I’ve never liked that upstart. I can’t see why you don’t want to be one of those bosses. What’s the explanation? Can you tell me that? You should have been doing half as much for twice the money ages ago.”

“There is no explanation,” Erlendur said.

“He let it slip that the skeleton was tied to a Russian radio transmitter.”

“Yes. We think it’s Russian and we think it’s a radio transmitter.”

“Aren’t you going to give me a cigarette?”

“No.”

“I haven’t got long left. Do you think it matters?”

“You won’t get a cigarette from me. Was that why you phoned? So I could finally finish you off? Why don’t you just ask me to put a bullet through your head?”

“Would you do that for me?”

Erlendur smiled, and Marion’s face lit up for an instant.

“Having a stroke is worse. I talk like an idiot and I can’t really move my hand.”

“What’s all this guff about communists?”

“It was a few years before you joined us. When was that again?”

“1977,” Erlendur said.

“You said you were interested in missing persons, I remember that,” Marion Briem said, wincing. Marion replaced the oxygen mask and leaned back, with eyes closed. A long while passed. Erlendur looked around the room. The flat reminded him uncomfortably of his own.

“Do you want me to call someone?”

“No, don’t call anyone,” Marion said, taking the mask off. “You can help me make us coffee afterwards. I just need to gather my strength. But surely you remember it? When we found those devices.”

“What devices?”

“In Lake Kleifarvatn. Does nobody remember anything any more?”

Marion looked at him and in a weak voice began recounting the story of the devices from the lake; it suddenly dawned on Erlendur what his old boss was talking about. He only vaguely recalled the matter and had not linked it at all to the skeleton in the lake, although he should have realised at once.

On 10 September 1973 the telephone had rung at Hafnarfjordur police station. Two frogmen from Reykjavik — “they’re not called frogmen any more’, Marion chuckled painfully — had chanced upon a heap of equipment in the lake. It was at a depth of ten metres. It soon became clear that most of it was Russian and the Cyrillic lettering had been filed off. Telephone engineers were called in to examine it and established that it was an assortment of telecommunications and bugging devices.

“There was loads of the stuff,” Marion Briem said. “Tape recorders, radio sets, transmitters.”

“Were you on the case?”

“I was at the lake when they fished it all out but I wasn’t in charge of the investigation. The case got a lot of publicity. It was at the height of the Cold War and it was well known that Russian espionage in Iceland took place. Of course, the Americans spied too, but they were a friendly nation. Russia was the enemy.”

“Transmitters?”

“Yes. And receivers. It turned out that some were tuned to the wavelength of the American base at Keflavik.”

“So you want to link the skeleton in the lake with that equipment?”

“What do you think?” Marion Briem said, eyes closed again.

“Perhaps that’s not implausible.”

“You bear it in mind,” Marion said, pulling a weary face.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Erlendur said. “Anything I can get you?”

“I sometimes watch westerns,” Marion said after a long pause, still sitting with eyes closed.

Erlendur was unsure whether he had heard correctly.

“Westerns?” he said. “Are you talking about cowboy films?”

“Could you bring me a good western?”

“What’s a good western?”

“John Wayne,” Marion said in a fading voice.

Erlendur sat by Marion’s side for some time, in case his old boss woke up again. Noon was approaching. He went into the kitchen, made coffee and poured two cups. He remembered that Marion drank coffee black with no sugar, as he did, and placed one beside the armchair. He did not know what else he should do.