Last Rituals (43 page)

 

 

Gunnar looked at his watch. "So am I, actually—I have to hand over the letter to María." Judging from his expression, he did not relish the task. "Anyway, they went to the main archives in Reykjavík, the national archives, the manuscript department of the national library, and such places to compile a record of all the documents and letters mentioning Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson. They made good progress, I understand, until Bríet claimed to have discovered that some letters were missing from the national archives."

 

 

"Isn't that conceivable?" Thóra asked, with a glance at the ripped letter on the desk. "I mean, such things happen."

 

 

"That may well be, but in this case it was a simple administrative error. Admittedly the whereabouts of the letters are uncertain, but she blamed the theft on a certain man who is above suspicion in this instance."

 

 

"Who?" Thóra asked.

 

 

"Yours truly," said Gunnar, then fell silent. He looked at them, his eyes daring them to challenge his innocence.

 

 

"I see," Thóra said, looking Gunnar firmly in the eye, then added: "Excuse me for asking, but why should she have suspected you?"

 

 

"As I said, there was an administrative error. According to the records I was the last person to have examined the letter, but I never touched it. Either someone used my name, or the entry numbers were mixed up. Brynjólfur Sveinsson does not interest me and it never occurred to me to look for documents related to him. What made the matter even more unfortunate was that the girl tried to take advantage of this to make me help her through her course. She said straight out that she'd keep quiet if I gave her a helping hand, as she so tastefully put it. I discussed it with Harald and he promised to talk her out of this nonsense. I contacted my friends at the archives and demanded an inquiry. I didn't want some silly girl thinking she could blackmail me. But they found nothing because it was such a long time ago, a decade or so. In the end they admitted that it must have been a mistake on their part, the letter had presumably been filed away with another and would eventually come to light. Bríet had the sense not to mention it to me again."

 

 

"What was this letter anyway?" asked Thóra. "What was it about, I mean?"

 

 

"The letter was written in 1702 from one of the clergymen at Skálholt, to Árni Magnússon. It appears to be a reply to his inquiry about what had happened to part of the foreign manuscript collection owned by Bishop Brynjólfur, who had died some time before, in 1675. So there's no doubt the letter was in the archive. Many people remember it. It was old news."

 

 

"Nothing else?" Thóra persisted. "Nothing about hidden manuscripts or attempts to spirit them away from Skálholt?"

 

 

Gunnar studied her face. "Why do you ask if you already know the answer?"

 

 

"What do you mean?" Thóra exclaimed. "All I know about that letter is what you've just told me." Her eyes returned to Gunnar's tiepin. Why the hell was it bothering her? And what was the man driving at?

 

 

"It's a remarkable coincidence," said Gunnar dryly. He clearly believed she and Matthew knew more than they actually did. "We can go on beating about the bush if you want. The letter contains a cryptic passage about safeguarding valuables from Danish colonial officials and storing them beside the ancient cross. This is generally agreed to be a reference to the holy cross in the church at Kadlanes, which was removed during the Reformation when places of worship were stripped of their icons."

 

 

"You seem to know an awful lot about this letter," said Matthew, chipping in for the first time. "Considering that you've never seen it."

 

 

"Of course I acquainted myself with it when the accusations were made against me," Gunnar snapped. "The letter is well known among historians, and several fine papers have been written about it."

 

 

Thóra stared at his tie as if in a trance. The pin was unusual, quite irregular in shape and apparently made of silver. "Where did you get that tiepin?" she asked suddenly, pointing to his chest.

 

 

Gunnar and Matthew both looked at her, dumbfounded. Gunnar grasped his tie and examined the pin. He released it and looked again at Thóra. "I must admit I don't understand the direction this conversation is taking. But since you seem so interested, it was a fiftieth-birthday present." He stood up. "I don't think there's any point in talking further—I have no particular interest in discussing my appearance. I have a less than pleasant meeting awaiting me with the director of the Manuscript Institute and I can't waste any more time on such nonsense. I sincerely wish you all the best with your investigation but I suggest that you stick to the present, because the past has nothing to do with Harald's murder."

 

 

He accompanied them to the door.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 33

Matthew looked at Thóra and shook his head. They were standing in the lobby of the faculty building. "That went well."

 

 

"Didn't you notice his tiepin?" Thóra hissed. "It was a sword. The pin had a silver base with a silver sword on it, lying across the tie. Didn't you notice it?"

 

 

"Yes. So?" replied Matthew.

 

 

"Don't you remember the pictures of Harald's neck? The mark that looked like a dagger or a cross? What was it the doctor said? 'If you look closely you can see it resembles a little dagger.'"

 

 

"Oh, yes," Matthew responded. "I see what you're driving at. But I'm not sure it's the same object. The photos weren't that clear, Thóra." He sighed. "The man's a historian. The Viking sword on his tiepin is obviously connected with his specialist field, the settlement of Iceland. I wouldn't read too much into it. The mark on Harald's neck looked more like a cross to me." He smiled. "Maybe he was killed by a mad vicar."

 

 

Thóra hesitated. She reached for her mobile. "I want to talk to Bríet. There's something funny about all this."

 

 

Matthew shook his head, but Thóra went ahead undeterred. Bríet answered on the fourth ring, grumpily. When Thóra told her the news of Halldór's arrest, the girl relaxed a little and agreed to meet them at the student bookshop in a quarter of an hour. Matthew mumbled a protest, but when Thóra told him he could buy something to eat there, he gave in. He was busy devouring a pizza when Bríet appeared.

 

 

"What's Dóri told the police?" she asked in a quavering voice the moment she sat down at the table.

 

 

"Nothing," replied Thóra. "But he's told me bits and pieces about that night and your part in what went on. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he tells more people before long. He thinks you killed Harald."

 

 

All the color drained from Bríet's face. "Me?" she squeaked. "I had nothing to do with his death."

 

 

"He said that you vanished from the group that night and acted strange when you all found the body—not like your usual self."

 

 

Bríet's jaw dropped and she sat gaping for a while before she spoke. "I nipped out for twenty minutes—max. And I was in total shock when we found the body. I couldn't even think, let alone string a sentence together."

 

 

"Where did you go?" asked Matthew.

 

 

Bríet gave him a suggestive smile. "Me? I went to the bathroom with an old friend of mine. He can vouch for that."

 

 

"For twenty minutes?" Matthew asked doubtfully.

 

 

"Yes. So? You want to know what we were doing?"

 

 

"No, thanks," interrupted Thóra. "We can guess."

 

 

"What do you want from me, anyway? I didn't kill Harald. I just stood beside Dóri while he fixed the body. Andri's the only one in deep shit if Dóri tells the cops. He helped. I didn't even touch Harald." Bríet was trying to reassure herself, without much success.

 

 

"I'd like to ask you about a project you did with Harald on Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson, and the missing letter," said Thóra. "Dóri told me you and Harald quarreled over it. Is that right?"

 

 

Bríet looked blank. "That crap? What's that got to do with this?"

 

 

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking," Thóra replied.

 

 

"Harald was pathetic," said Bríet suddenly. "I had Gunnar by the balls. He got nervous when I went to him and told him I knew he'd stolen a letter from the national archives. He definitely did it, whatever anyone says."

 

 

"In what way was Harald pathetic?" Matthew asked.

 

 

"At first he thought it was funny and dared me to have a go at Gunnar. We even sneaked into his office to look for it after the old bastard threw me out. It was really weird. We were inside and then Harald suddenly changed his mind. He found some old article about Irish monks and flipped like I've never seen before."

 

 

"How do you mean?" asked Thóra.

 

 

Bríet shrugged. "It was some research paper by Gunnar in one of the cabinets. Harald found it and got me to tell him what the captions said. He was incredibly excited about two of them. One was a cross and the other some fucking hole. Then he wanted to know all about another drawing. I was shitting bricks because I was afraid Gunnar would come. I didn't want to hang around there translating for Harald. In the end he stuffed the article in his pocket and we stopped searching. We just ran."

 

 

"What did he say exactly? Can you remember?" asked Thóra.

 

 

"Not exactly. We went to the common room and he insisted I tell him what the hole in the photograph was. It was a fireplace in some cave. The cross too. It was carved into the wall there. Some kind of altar."

 

 

"And the drawing?" asked Matthew. "What did it show?"

 

 

"It was a plan of the cave with symbols showing what was what. If I remember right, one was beside the cross, another by a hole in the roof—I think that was a chimney—and the third was by a hole that was supposed to be a fireplace." Bríet looked at Matthew. "I remember him pointing excitedly at the third symbol and asking me if I thought the monks would have cooked on the altar. I said I had no idea. Then he asked if I thought they would have put the fireplace under the chimney. It wasn't like that at all on the drawing. The fireplace was beside the altar but the chimney was by the entrance. It was so boring, and it wasn't like Harald to get worked up about that kind of nonsense."

 

 

"Then what happened?" Matthew asked.

 

 

"He went and talked to Gunnar. Afterward he ordered me not to do anything else about the letter." She looked at them angrily. "But he was the one who'd been egging me on to torment Gunnar in the first place—fucking Gastbucht, as he called him."

 

 

"Gastbucht?" exclaimed Thóra. What did it say on Harald's sketch? Gastbucht? So it wasn't the visitors' book of the cross, as she had imagined—it wasn't a cross but the letter
t,
and Gastbucht was the nickname Harald had made up from Gunnar's last name, Gestvík: Guest's bay.

 

 

* * *

Thóra and Matthew went straight back to the faculty building. As they hurried along, she called Markús at the police station and told him the idea she and Matthew had had about Gunnar, which he immediately scoffed at. After a little persuasion, however, he agreed to check the professor's bank account transactions.

 

 

Gunnar's office was empty when they arrived. Instead of waiting, they took the liberty of sitting down inside, assuming that Gunnar had gone to meet the director of the Manuscript Institute to hand back the letter.

 

 

Matthew looked at the clock. "Surely he'll be back soon."

 

 

At that moment the door opened and Gunnar walked in.

 

 

He was flabbergasted to see them. "Who let you in?"

 

 

"No one. It was open," Thóra said calmly.

 

 

Gunnar strode over to his desk. "I thought we'd said good-bye earlier." He sat down at his desk and glared at them. "I'm not in the best of moods. María wasn't exactly overjoyed at getting the letter back in that state."

 

 

"We won't keep you for long," said Matthew. "We didn't quite manage to conclude our business with you."

 

 

"Really?" snapped Gunnar. "I don't think I have anything left to say to you."

 

 

"We just want to ask you about a few outstanding details," Thóra said.

 

 

Gunnar tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. He groaned before looking back at them. "Fair enough. What would you like to know?"

 

 

Thóra looked at Matthew first, then at Gunnar. "The ancient cross mentioned in the letter to Árni Magnússon—could it be the cross in the Irish monks' cave near Hella?" she asked. "You're supposed to be an expert on that period—aren't you? At least, the cross was in Iceland before the settlement proper began."

 

 

Gunnar turned beet red. "What would I know about that?" he stammered.

 

 

Thóra shrugged. "Actually, I think you know all about it. Isn't that a photograph of you and the farmer who owns the land where the caves are?" She pointed to the framed photograph on the wall. "The monks' caves?"

 

 

"As it happens, it is. But I don't see the connection," Gunnar said. "I find your questions irrelevant and I can't understand your interest in history. If you want to enroll in the department, there are application forms in the office."

 

 

Thóra went on, unruffled. "I think you understand the connection perfectly. You were at the celebration that lasted until midnight on the night of Harald's murder." When Gunnar said nothing she added: "Could it be that you met Harald that night?"