Fire & Ice 02.5 - Edge of Nowhere

by Michael Ridpath

Magnus grinned. ‘Good point. I know you searched the area thoroughly, but I think I’ll take another look.’

  Magnus spent twenty minutes poking about the scene with Tómas as the light drained off the mountainside. They saw nothing suspicious, but Tómas’s question bothered him. Why had Gústi climbed up to that spot? Magnus stood next to the generator, where Gústi must have been working and stared at the place where he had been crushed.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Tómas.

  He took Tómas’s powerful flashlight and led him up to the slide. He scrabbled across the rocks, sending several stones crashing down to the road below.

  ‘Careful!’ said Tómas.

  ‘Help me,’ said Magnus as he began to push boulders away a few metres beyond where Gústi’s body had lain. ‘He must have seen something and been climbing up towards it. If he did, that something is under these stones.’

  It took them half an hour to find the thing, or rather things. There was a small hurricane lamp, its glass smashed. A stuffed bear, a polar bear to be precise, with a red ribbon tied around its neck. And a fold of several thousand kronur in notes.

  ‘Bait,’ said Magnus. ‘We’ve found the bait.’

  They photographed and bagged the bear, the lamp and the banknotes. Tómas called Gústi’s boss to tell him to clear the road, but they left the tape around the immediate crime scene. Magnus climbed into Tómas’s police Jeep, and the constable drove them back to the village.

  ‘You were right to be suspicious,’ Magnus said.

  ‘Do you really think the bear was bait?’

  ‘Could well be,’ said Magnus. ‘Gústi arrives at the site, sees a light and a teddy bear, goes a bit closer, sees the banknotes, goes to pick them up and he’s just where the murderer wanted him. If it was bait, it worked.’

  ‘Could it be anything else?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Some elf-related weirdness, Magnus thought but didn’t say. The less said about elves in this investigation, the better. ‘Tell me about Gústi. And this guy Arnór.’

  ‘Gústi worked for the local construction company, Bolungarvíkur Engineering. They do road maintenance, minor building works, they build the odd house. Knock things down. It’s not high tech, but the quality of their work is pretty good. He’s lived here all his life. Used to be married, but it ended in disaster about ten years ago. Two kids that Gústi sees as little of as he can. No one much likes him, or trusts him. In a community this size it’s bad not to be trusted. He works hard, so they tolerate him, but that’s about it.’

  ‘I’m impressed with your knowledge.’

  ‘I know people in the town,’ said Tómas. ‘It’s unavoidable.’

  It was not yet completely dark and they were getting closer to Bolungarvík. On their left Magnus spotted a sign for a golf course, although all he could see was a flattish area of snow. As they drew nearer, the mass of the mountain reared up above the tiny village, wrinkles of grey rock peeking out beneath the snow. It looked as if it might crush the human habitation at any moment. And given what Magnus had heard about landslides, that possibility didn’t seem too far fetched.

  They passed a white church with a small red steeple standing alone on a knoll and crossed the bridge over a river into town.

  Eyrún was right, Bolungarvík would not win any architectural prizes. Square blocks of white concrete, much of it peeled away by the Atlantic winds. Most of the roofs were classic Icelandic red corrugated metal, with the odd lime green specimen thrown in.

  ‘And Arnór?’

  ‘He’s a fisherman. Small-time, struggling. Same age as Gústi; they’ve been enemies since school. Things got out of hand last year when someone gave the Ministry of Fisheries a tip-off about Arnór cheating on his quota. That’s a big deal, as I’m sure you know.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘The Ministry investigated, didn’t find enough evidence to prosecute Arnór, but they warned him. Arnór was sure that Gústi had tipped the Ministry off. They had a fight outside the local bar last Saturday night: it had been a long time in coming. I slung them into the two separate cells at the station for the night – although when they began screaming at each other, I let Gústi go.’

  ‘Death threats?’

  ‘And the rest. Arnór swore he would kill Gústi that very day. And then leave him on the mountain for a troll to sodomize him.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Didn’t see any evidence of troll-rape back there,’ said Tómas. ‘You can usually spot the signs.’

  Magnus laughed. He missed the black humour of the Boston homicide cops. He liked Tómas.

  They pulled up outside a flashy white block made of concrete, glass and wood, that might in fact win an architecture prize. It was the municipal building: town hall, mayor’s office, police station, post office all in one.

  A woman was waiting for them outside the entrance. She was in her forties, short, with long red hair spreading out underneath a brightly striped woolly hat.

  She approached Magnus as soon as he was out of the police car. ‘Are you the detective from Reykjavík?’

  ‘Not now, Rós,’ said Tómas. ‘We are busy.’

  ‘But I have some information for the detective,’ Rós said. ‘About Gústi’s death.’

  ‘Well, come back tomorrow morning and I’ll take a statement from you,’ said Tómas.

  ‘No, that’s all right,’ said Magnus. ‘Rós, is it?’

  The woman nodded. She had a broad friendly face with big brown eyes.

  ‘My name is Sergeant Magnús. Come in and you can tell me what you have to say.’

  The three of them sat in the police station’s small interview room, and once Rós had been furnished with a cup of coffee, Magnus took out a pen and pad. With her hat off, Rós’s flaming red hair spread out over her shoulders. ‘It’s the hidden people. They killed him.’

  ‘I see,’ said Magnus, in as serious a tone as he could muster. He wrote down the words ‘hidden people’ on his pad in big letters and underlined it. ‘And why do you think that?’

  ‘They told me they would.’

  ‘Really?’ Magnus said. ‘How?’

  ‘In a dream. Well, in several dreams over the last few months. They are very unhappy about their homes being destroyed. You know they live in the rocks on this side of the tunnel?’

  Magnus nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve just been to see where Gústi was killed. Tómas pointed out their home.’

  ‘That’s just one of their dwellings. There are many more, or there were, before they were blown up to make the tunnel.’

  ‘And the hidden people are unhappy about this?’

  ‘You can say that again. At first they told me they would break the construction company’s machines. Which they did. But the company couldn’t take the hint. So now someone has been killed.’

  ‘I see,’ said Magnus. ‘And they told you this in a dream?’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘Who did?’ said Magnus.

  ‘One of the hidden people.’

  ‘Which one?’

  Rós looked a little confused by the question.

  ‘I’m investigating who killed Gústi,’ Magnus said. ‘I need names.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t have a name,’ said Rós uncertainly.

  ‘All right,’ said Magnus. ‘Then how about a description?’

  ‘A description?’

  ‘That’s right. Of the hidden person who told you this. In the dream.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Rós. She cleared her throat and frowned. ‘She was a woman, maybe thirty years old, long, fair hair.’

  ‘Height?’

  ‘Height?’

  ‘How tall was she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Magnus allowed himself to frown at the witness. ‘OK. Dress?’

  ‘A long blue dress. Plain.’ Magnus raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s all I can say, really. Her hair was braided.’ She paused. ‘She was beautiful. She is beautiful.’ The woman’s eyes glowed in rapture.

 
; Magnus wrote the words down. ‘And did she mention Gústi by name?’

  ‘No,’ said Rós. ‘But she wanted me to tell everyone in town that if construction went ahead on the tunnel, there would be trouble. Nobody took any notice, of course, even after all their equipment was broken. So they built the tunnel anyway. I hoped that the apology we gave the hidden people on Sunday would have worked, but it obviously didn’t.’

  ‘Obviously not,’ said Magnus. ‘What was this apology?’

  ‘We had a little ceremony, a lot of the people in Bolungarvík came, including the pastor. He said a prayer. It was an important thing to do.’

  ‘I see that,’ said Magnus. He spent another ten minutes asking Rós about the hidden people and their habits, before finally putting his pen down. He had two sides of notes on his pad. ‘OK, thank you for coming forward, Rós,’ said Magnus.

  The red-haired woman smiled, in her stride now. ‘Not at all. I’m glad the police are finally listening to me.’ Her eyes flicked to Tómas sharply.

  ‘One other thing,’ Magnus said. ‘Did you ever leave anything out for the hidden people?’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘A gift of some kind,’ said Magnus.

  ‘A stuffed polar bear, for instance?’ said Tómas. Magnus concealed his irritation: that was a detail he wanted to keep to himself. Now everyone in Bolungarvík would know. Until then, Tómas’s actions had been very professional, but Magnus had forgotten that the constable wasn’t a detective.

  ‘Did you find one where Gústi was killed?’ Rós asked.

  ‘Did you leave anything for them?’ Magnus repeated.

  ‘No,’ said Rós.

  ‘Do you know anyone else who might have?’

  ‘There are a lot of people in town who are angry on behalf of the hidden people,’ she said. ‘It could have been anyone.’

  ‘Why a polar bear?’ Magnus asked. ‘Do the hidden people here like polar bears?’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous question,’ said Rós. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Magnus smiled apologetically. ‘Thanks again, Rós. And next time you see your hidden woman, ask her her name, will you?’

  ‘Why did you take her so seriously?’ Tómas asked, after Rós was safely out of the police station.

  ‘To shut her up, mostly,’ said Magnus. ‘And her friends. If the hidden people are as popular in town as you say they are, we could waste a lot of time dealing with people who want us to take them seriously. Now they know we do.’

  ‘You don’t believe any of this crap, do you?’ said Tómas.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course not. I was brought up in this town and I’ve heard it all my life. That woman is a nutcase. There aren’t any hidden people here or anywhere else. It’s only because we are all stuck in the middle of nowhere that it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve heard about you. You lived in America, didn’t you? Don’t tell me you believe her.’

  ‘I spent twelve years working as a cop in Boston, and you’re right I didn’t come across any elves there,’ said Magnus. ‘I was in Homicide; elves would come under Narcotics.’

  Tómas smiled.

  ‘I was also curious about the bear,’ Magnus said. ‘I thought she might have put it there.’

  ‘It’s the kind of whacko thing she’d do,’ said Tómas.

  ‘By the way, when we are interviewing someone together, leave the disclosure of information to me,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s always good to hold some details back.’

  Tómas blushed. ‘Oh. Oh, I see. I’m sorry.’

  ‘We still have the ribbon,’ said Magnus. ‘I wonder what that was for?’

  Tómas thought a moment. ‘So Gústi could see the white bear in the snow?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Magnus. ‘But why a polar bear?’

  ‘They are popular in this town,’ the constable said. ‘There’s a stuffed one in the Museum. It was shot north of here when it arrived from Greenland on an ice floe. It’s very famous.’

  ‘Of course,’ Magnus couldn’t help smiling. He was getting used to Icelanders craving attention. Even in this far corner of this remote island, there was something of world renown. There had to be. It wasn’t quite as strange as the Penis Museum in the small town of Húsavík further to the east, but a polar bear was better than nothing. ‘Sorry, Tómas. Let’s take a quick look at Gústi’s house and then pay a visit to Arnór.’

  3

  Gústi’s house was little more than a run-down shack on the edge of town next to the river. For someone involved in the construction industry, he had spent very little time on his own dwelling. Outside, paint was peeling on the concrete walls and the roof was rusting. Inside, there was a hole in the ceiling.

  Tómas had the key he had taken from Gústi’s body. Magnus and Tómas walked slowly through the small house, made up of two bedrooms (one little more than a closet), a kitchen, a living room and bathroom. It was clear that Gústi’s wife was long gone. The bed was unmade, there were coffee cups and the signs of an early breakfast by the sink. The surfaces in the bathroom were covered in a layer of brown scum.

  Gústi liked vodka. There were four bottles in the house, three of them empty. He also liked Manchester United. The posters tacked to the walls showed teenage enthusiasms; a programme from a match against Blackburn Rovers at Old Trafford ten years before had pride of place in his bedroom, next to a giant poster of a semi-naked Icelandic model Magnus had never heard of.

  Magnus poked around: bills; payslips from the construction company; fishing gear; lots of tools, many of them in bad condition; an old desktop computer with an ancient screen in the bedroom; no notes of any interest; an address book, in which most of the dialling codes were local. Magnus checked the room for photographs. Icelandic homes were full of family photographs; Icelanders had large families and usually everyone had to be represented. But not in Gústi’s house.

  ‘Where is his wife?’ asked Magnus.

  ‘In Ísafjördur,’ said Tómas. ‘With his kids.’

  ‘Any other family in town?’

  ‘Just a brother. They didn’t really get on.’

  Magnus grunted. They should interview the wife. Spouses were always suspects, even long-gone ones. Although somehow Magnus suspected no one was going to inherit very much from Gústi.

  Magnus went back into the bedroom. He glanced at the computer. Next to it was a small stand-alone webcam. Magnus picked it up. It looked new, certainly newer than the other equipment.

  ‘Tómas, can you get a warrant for us to impound the machine?’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t we just check it out now?’ said the constable, reaching for the on switch.

  ‘No,’ said Magnus. ‘If this does become a murder investigation we need to be sure that evidence is gathered by the book.’ Back in Boston too many cases had gone wrong because someone somewhere had screwed up the chain of evidence.

  ‘Are you sure? I’ll have to go to the magistrate in Ísafjördur.’

  Magnus glanced again at the webcam. ‘Best do it,’ he said. ‘After we have seen Arnór.’

  They found Arnór at the harbour next to a small blue fishing boat named Bragi. He was wrestling with a net. He was a broad-shouldered man of about forty, unshaven, with dark thinning hair. He had the rock-hard face of a man who had spent a couple of decades battling the North Atlantic.

  He stood up and wiped his hands on his overalls. ‘I heard about Gústi,’ he said. ‘I expected a visit from you. Come on board.’

  He led them into the boat’s small cabin and they sat on benches crammed around a little table. It was only marginally warmer than the quay outside.

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ Arnór said.

  Magnus took out his notebook. ‘You appreciate I have to ask you some questions.’

  ‘I just told you – I didn’t kill him. That’s really all you need to know.’

  ‘Tell me what you did this morning. From when you woke up.’

&nb
sp; Arnór stared at Magnus. Magnus stared back. The fisherman rolled a cigarette and lit it. He had big strong hands, and he looked as if he was about to crush the roll-up as he held it between thumb and forefinger. He took a deep drag. Magnus waited. Eventually Arnór spoke. ‘The alarm went off at six. I got dressed, loaded some tackle on to my pickup, checked the computer and went down to the café at the harbour. Had breakfast with some of the guys.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘About seven, I guess. I’m not sure.’

  ‘And who was there?’

  Arnór gave Magnus and Tómas five names, all of which were known to Tómas.

  ‘Who else lives with you?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘My wife and two kids.’

  ‘Did they see you get up?’ Family members could always lie, of course, but then they could also tell the truth.

  ‘Nah. Whenever my wife hears the alarm she just rolls over. She doesn’t start work until nine. And the kids don’t get up for school until after seven. I’m often up early and they just ignore me.’

  ‘OK,’ said Magnus. ‘Now tell me about Gústi.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ repeated Arnór.

  ‘That may be so, but you didn’t like him?’

  ‘He was a bastard. A lying, sneaking bastard.’ Arnór launched into a long disquisition on what a lying, sneaking bastard Gústi had been since the days when they had both been to school together. Magnus let him talk.

  ‘What happened last Saturday?’ he asked when Arnór had eventually finished. ‘You two had a fight. Why?’

  ‘Haven’t I given you enough reasons why?’ Arnór asked.

  ‘Yes, but why last Saturday in particular?’

  Arnór took a drag on his cigarette. ‘There was a guy from Grindavík in here last week. Helgi. We don’t know each other well. He was in the café and I was talking to him, just chatting, you know. A couple of other guys were there as well. We were talking about quotas and me being busted last year. I mentioned my suspicions that Gústi had told someone in the ministry lies about me. Anyway, Helgi said his brother worked in the ministry and that he knew that the tip-off had come from someone living in Bolungarvík. It was proof that it was Gústi. Not that I needed it, I’d known all along, but Gústi had always denied it.’