66° North (21 page)

‘Yes. Don’t worry, I haven’t told them anything. They don’t know anything about you, do they?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Frikki. ‘I’ve never spoken to them.’

‘Good.’ The woman smiled. ‘Let’s hope it stays that way. That will be four hundred and fifty krónur.’

Frikki handed her the money. ‘Nice to see you,’ he said.

‘And you.’

‘Who was that?’ Magda asked as they left the bakery. Frikki and she spoke a mixture of English and Icelandic to each other, and
Magda could understand Icelandic reasonably well. ‘You Icelanders never introduce people!’

‘Sorry. It’s a woman I met last winter during the protests. I haven’t seen her since then. Her name is Harpa.’

‘What was that about the police?’ Magda asked.

‘Nothing,’ Frikki said.

‘What do you mean, “nothing”?’ Magda said. ‘I could see it was something.’

Frikki hesitated. A dozen different stories flashed across his brain, but he didn’t want to lie to Magda. Then again, he didn’t want to tell her the truth either.

‘There was some trouble after the demonstrations. The police asked some questions.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it, Magda,’ Frikki said.

‘OK,’ Magda shrugged, although Frikki could tell she wasn’t happy. They got into the car. ‘Let’s go. And I will try to save this pastry for when we get to the beach.’

On the long drive back to Reykjavík Magnus thought about what Unnur had said. She had been quite convincing that his grandfather was actually glad that Ragnar had been caught in an affair with her. Yet there was no doubt that Hallgrímur must have disliked Ragnar intensely.

Could his grandfather really be responsible for his father’s death?

Hallgrímur would have been in his sixties when Ragnar was stabbed in Duxbury. Magnus knew he was still farming actively at that age, and he would have been fit and strong enough to stab Ragnar. Especially in the back. The medical examiner’s report was etched on Magnus’s brain. The first stab wound was probably taken in the back, with the two subsequent ones in the chest, after Ragnar had fallen. This, together with the lack of any sign of a break-in, suggested that Ragnar had not felt threatened by whoever
had called on him that day. It also meant that the murderer did not have to be big and strong enough to overcome him.

Stabbed in the back. Yes, Magnus could imagine Hallgrímur stabbing someone in the back.

But was Hallgrímur in the United States at the time? Magnus had never checked on that specific point. His grandfather seemed embedded in Bjarnarhöfn, part of the soil. Magnus could scarcely imagine him travelling as far as Reykjavík, let alone Boston. When he had visited Iceland himself just after his father’s death, there had been no mention of any travel to America. That was something he would have to check up on. Since 2001 he was sure US Immigration records would show everyone who had come into the country. But Ragnar was killed in 1996.

There should be a way of checking it out.

It didn’t quite feel right, though. Magnus knew that Hallgrímur was a cruel and vindictive man. For that reason he could imagine the pleasure that the old man would have felt at the discovery of Ragnar’s affair, even if it hurt his daughter. It was true that when his father had come back to Iceland to retrieve Magnus and Óli, the two men had had almighty rows; in the heat of the moment Magnus could just about imagine Hallgrímur killing his father then.

But eight years later? It didn’t feel right.

The key thing would be to figure out whether Hallgrímur was in the States at the time. If he was, that would be pretty conclusive.

But Magnus had the strong feeling he was heading up yet another blind alley. A blind alley with his grandfather at the end of it.

His spirits lifted as he drove south. The sun was setting to the west, burnishing the endless silver flatness of the Atlantic. The hillsides glowed. As he emerged from the tunnel under the Hvalfjördur, with Mount Esja looming above him, his phone rang.

‘Magnus?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Sharon Piper.’

Magnus could detect the excitement in her voice.

‘Hi, Sharon, did you get back OK?’

‘I went straight into the station. I’ve been checking the interview notes. You remember Óskar had a Venezuelan girlfriend, Claudia Pamplona-Rodríguez?’

‘Yes.’

‘When she was interviewed, she mentioned a woman coming around to the house in Kensington once over the summer. She thinks some time in July. An Icelandic woman. She wanted to speak to Óskar in private, so they went into the living room with the door shut. It only took about a quarter of an hour. Afterwards the woman came out looking angry and left. Óskar didn’t seem too bothered.’

‘Let me guess. The woman was tall and thin with dark curly hair?’

‘You’ve got it. In her thirties. Quite attractive. Or attractive enough for Claudia to be suspicious.’

‘You don’t have a photo of Harpa, do you?’

‘No, but if you send me one I can get Claudia to ID her.’

H
ARPA LOOKED NERVOUS
as she sat in the interview room. One hand was tugging and twisting the curls in her hair.

Magnus had called Vigdís, who was still on duty, and asked her to bring Harpa in and take her photograph. A copy had already been sent by e-mail to Piper in London.

Magnus and Vigdís had hatched a plan for the interview.

‘Hi, Harpa, thank you for coming in,’ Magnus said. ‘Have you been offered some coffee?’

Harpa shook her head.

‘Would you like some?’

‘No thank you.’ Harpa glanced at both detectives suspiciously. ‘Why am I here?’

Magnus smiled. ‘We’ve got a couple more little questions to ask you. Things come out in an investigation like this, and we have to go back and check them out with witnesses. Sorry, but that’s just the way it works.’

Harpa seemed to relax a bit. ‘OK. What do you want to know?’

‘Have you travelled abroad in the last few months?’ Magnus asked.

Harpa didn’t answer right away. At that moment, Magnus was sure that Harpa was the woman that Claudia had seen. Magnus and Vigdís waited expectantly.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I went to London in July. Just for a couple of days.’

‘Ah, I see. And why did you go?’

‘Oh, you know, shopping.’

‘Shopping?’ Magnus raised his eyebrows. ‘That might have made sense a year ago. But now? Everything is so expensive abroad now, isn’t it? And you can’t have very much money or you wouldn’t be working in a bakery. In fact how many weeks’ wages did the trip cost?’

‘It’s true. It was expensive,’ Harpa said. ‘But I needed a holiday really badly.’

‘I’ll bet,’ said Magnus.

‘What did you buy?’ Vigdís asked.

‘Oh, um, nothing in the end,’ Harpa said, trying to sound casual. ‘You are right. I hadn’t realized how expensive things are there until I was actually in the shops.’

‘Did you visit any friends?’ Magnus asked.

‘Er. No,’ said Harpa.

‘So you didn’t see any other Icelanders?’

Harpa glanced at the two detectives. Magnus could see that she understood the trap. She didn’t know how much they knew. How far she would have to tell the truth in order to avoid being caught out.

‘I did see one Icelander,’ she said, carefully.

‘And who was that?’ Magnus asked innocently.

‘Óskar,’ Harpa said. ‘Óskar Gunnarsson.’

‘Huh.’ Magnus didn’t mention the fact that Harpa had left that information out of their previous discussions. Not yet. ‘And what did you talk with Óskar about?’

‘Er, well, I don’t remember. I suppose I was a bit lonely in London and I wanted to see an old friend.’

‘And how long did you spend with him?’

‘Twenty minutes. Half an hour. He was busy, he had somewhere to go.’

She must have figured out that Claudia had seen them together.

Magnus leaned forward. ‘How much money did you ask him for?

‘What? I, er, I didn’t ask him for money.’

‘Yes you did, Harpa. How much? A million krónur? Ten million? Perhaps something every month?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about. Why would I ask him for money?’

‘To pay for his son, Harpa. To pay for his son.’

‘No, no that’s not right,’ Harpa said, her voice rising. ‘He never knew Markús was his son. He never knew that. I
told
you that.’

‘You told us a lot of things, Harpa, and frankly I don’t believe many of them. Now, how much did you ask for?’

Harpa was breathing heavily. ‘Am I under arrest?’

‘Not yet,’ said Magnus. ‘But we can fix that if you like.’

‘I won’t say anything more unless I have spoken to a lawyer. I have a right to speak to a lawyer, don’t I?’

‘You do,’ said Vigdís, nodding towards the tape recorder. Magnus understood. This all had to be done according to the book, if the evidence was going to be admissible. It was just a slightly different book than he was used to. ‘Do you have one in mind, or would you like us to call one for you?’

‘Um, I have a friend who is a lawyer. Can I call her?’

‘Just wait a moment,’ said Vigdís. She turned off the tape and indicated to Magnus that they should leave the room.

‘So we get her a lawyer, right?’ said Magnus, once they were outside.

‘We speak to Baldur first,’ said Vigdís.

‘But you know what he’ll say,’ said Magnus in frustration. ‘Let her go.’

‘Actually, I don’t,’ said Vigdís. ‘But I do know that if we take this interview any further without discussing it with him he will be seriously pissed off.’

‘Well, let him be pissed off!’ Magnus had trouble keeping his voice down. ‘Someone’s got to crack this case open, and if we don’t do it, no one else will!’

‘Magnús,’ Vigdís said. She looked at him steadily.

‘All right,’ said Magnus, the frustration subsiding to a simmer. ‘You’re right. Let’s go talk to him.’

Baldur was in his office. He listened closely to what Magnus and Vigdís had to report. He was a good detective. He spotted what had been going on at once.

‘How did Sharon know that the dark-haired Icelandic woman who visited Óskar was important?’

Magnus could try bullshitting his boss, but that was never a good long-term strategy. ‘I told her about Harpa. In fact she was with me when Harpa admitted that Óskar was the father of her child.’

Baldur glared at Magnus. ‘I specifically told you to leave Harpa out of it.’

‘I know. I kept it unofficial,’ Magnus said. ‘And Sharon didn’t make a big deal of it at the British end. But she needed to know about Harpa just in case a link came up at her end. Which it did.’

Baldur ran his hand over his bare forehead where his hair had once grown many years before. ‘OK. OK, I take your point. But we know Harpa didn’t actually kill Óskar, right? She was in Iceland at the time.’

‘Yes, it looks that way. Her boss says she came to work early the following morning. We can check out the alibi more thoroughly, but my guess is it will stand.’

‘So what about the boyfriend?’

‘We don’t know where he was. I tried to see him today up in Grundarfjördur but he was out on a boat somewhere.’

‘I didn’t realize you were working today?’

Magnus shrugged.

‘OK,’ said Baldur. ‘You need to check him out.’

‘What about Harpa?’ Vigdís asked.

‘Let Harpa get her lawyer. And then ask her about Óskar and only Óskar. I don’t want you linking this to Gabríel Örn’s suicide, do you understand?’

‘But what if there is a link?’ Magnus protested.

‘There isn’t,’ Baldur said. ‘There is no firm evidence of one. And I don’t want you conjuring evidence out of thin air. ’

‘But the lawyer will tell her to keep her mouth shut,’ Magnus said.

‘Quite possibly,’ Baldur said. ‘And in that case, you let her go.’

Frikki and Magda sat on a stone on Grótta beach and watched the sun set. Despite the recent wind, the sea was calm and quiet, lapping against the black gritty shore. Ducks patrolled the water a few metres out, while along the shoreline a busy little gathering of small grey and white birds scampered in and out in time with the gentle waves.

The sun, a milky yellow ball, was heading for the horizon straight ahead of them. Layer upon layer of creamy clouds reflected its light in orange and gold. Way out to sea, there was nothing. Just the Atlantic.

Frikki and Magda had talked incessantly as they had walked along the beach, with Frikki doing most of the talking. It was strange: before she had come he had decided he would hide the dullness and the misery of his life, the fact that he found it difficult to get up in the morning, the way his whole week was concerned with looking forward to getting smashed at the weekend. But actually he found he wanted to talk to her about it, and she listened.

He didn’t tell her everything, of course. Nothing about the drugs. Or the petty burglary.

And now they sat in silence, watching the sun on its slow, inexorable descent towards the sea.

‘I know you stole that laptop, Frikki,’ said Magda.

‘What!’ Frikki was shocked out of his reverie. He turned to her in fake outrage. ‘I bought it off Gunni. Cheap. I told you that.’

Magda looked at him steadily, her eyes warm, without judgement.

‘Honest,’ he said.

‘OK,’ she said at last, and turned back to the sea.

The sun slipped further. ‘You’re right,’ said Frikki. ‘I did steal it. Some idiot left it on the front seat of his car. Mine was bust and I
needed
a computer. I had to keep in touch with you. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ said Magda.

She didn’t say: ‘but it was still wrong’. She didn’t have to.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frikki. ‘Can you forgive me?’

‘Of course, I can forgive you,’ said Magda. ‘But what I really want to do is help you.’

‘What do you mean?’

Magda took hold of his hand. ‘I love you, Frikki. I’m sure this year has been hard for you. I know you’ve been trying to hide it, but I can see you are letting things go. Doing things you shouldn’t do.’

‘You’re right,’ said Frikki, giving her hand a quick squeeze. He took out a cigarette and lit it. Magda didn’t smoke.