The Puffin of Death

by Betty Webb

  “Angry trolls keep the water riled up.”

  I wasn’t certain I heard her right. “Trolls, did you say?”

  “Legend says that those big columns in the water are the remains of three fishing vessels the trolls tried to pull out to sea. They could not quite manage it, so to spite other fishermen, they made the water so rough no one has been able to boat near here. Or swim. So whatever you do, do not fall in the water!”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  While we rode along, flocks of seagulls, grebes, and fat-bodied puffins cawed and shrieked against the rising wind. Our horses weren’t bothered by the racket. They were unflappable, and tolted across the black sand as if the sea and the sky had remained motionless.

  Casting a look at the darkening day, Bryndis shouted back at me, “If we want to see the puffin rookery, we must hurry. Once the rain begins, the trail up will be too slippery for safety.” She pointed to the top of the cliff, from which the parrot-beaked birds peered down at us.

  Surely she didn’t mean for our horses to scale the cliff! I would have shared my concern, but she had already urged her horse forward, and we sped along the black sand at such speed it was startling. A few minutes later we rounded the jutting southern end of the cliff and entered a low, lava-and-grass-speckled marsh at the harbor’s mouth. In the distance I saw the picturesque village of Vik, its green, yellow, and red corrugated iron homes bright against the darkening sky. Unlike the sheer rock wall ahead of us, they looked welcoming.

  As we grew closer to the base of the cliff, I could see a narrow trail leading up to the top, but it appeared dangerously steep, eased only by a series of switchbacks. One misstep and we would wind up in the churning North Atlantic, food for hungry trolls.

  I urged my horse forward until he caught up with Bryndis. Trying to disguise my concern, I said, “You said that the rookery is a popular spot for birders, but most birders I’ve known aren’t mountain-climbers, so how…?”

  She reined Freya to a halt and pointed inland, where I saw that the cliff wall was actually the abrupt end of a land bridge that began in the inland hills to the north. Sitting atop the highest was the Hótel Brattholt. We had ridden in a long semi-circle and come out on the other side.

  “From the hotel, it is an easy hike along the footpath to the rookery, but nowhere near as scenic as the way we’ve ridden. If you look hard, you can see the footpath and the pedestrian footbridge that crosses over the road.”

  Squinting, I saw a serpentine scar winding from the inn to the cliff’s plateau. I was about to suggest that we return to the hotel and pick our way along the footpath, a much easier journey, but Bryndis and Freya had already started up the steep incline on the side of the cliff. Without asking my opinion, Einnar followed suit.

  The ride proved as unsettling as I’d feared, and a couple of times I had to shut my eyes against the steep drop to the beach, trusting Einnar to make his way along the narrow track without my guidance. Braver and more surefooted than I, he did, and after a climb that felt like hours but by my watch was only minutes, we arrived at the summit, a windswept expanse of flat land interrupted here and there by eerie lava formations. Some of them were vaguely human-shaped, which Bryndis told me might have given rise to the still-prevalent Icelandic belief in gnome-like creatures called the “hidden people.”

  “Be careful or one might grab you,” Bryndis teased, dismounting on the same spot where the footpath from the hotel came to an end. “The hidden people love redheads.”

  Only half-convinced she was kidding—I’d read somewhere that as many as two-thirds of Icelanders still believed in gnomes and trolls—I watched my step.

  By now the wind was blowing in earnest, and the first drops of rain had begun to fall. The North Atlantic roared far below us, the surf’s noise eclipsed by the squawking and cawing of innumerable nesting puffins. White-and-black heads adorned with vivid red, yellow, and blue-black beaks stuck their heads out of their underground burrows, shrieking their displeasure at our trespass. Sympathetic to their distress, I dismounted and led my horse toward what appeared to be solid ground, but before I’d traveled more than a few yards, a nesting puffin poked its head out of a nearby burrow and squawked a warning.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, seeing a downy chick hunkered beside it.

  Mama Puffin was in no mood to accept my apology. Believing I meant harm to her baby, she squawked again, then hopped out of the burrow to deliver a swift series of pecks to my boot. Her garish beak must have been stronger than it looked, because I could feel her assault through the thick leather. I stepped further away, continuing my apologies. Not that Mama Puffin cared.

  “Avoid the nesting females,” Bryndis advised. “They are protective of their young. The males, too, come to think of it. Uh oh. Here comes Papa Puffin now.”

  A larger puffin swept by me, several small, silver-colored fish dangling from its bill. Once the bird landed at the mouth of the burrow, it ignored me until it had finished stuffing breakfast into its chick’s craw, but as soon as that had been accomplished, it fixed me with an evil eye and growled. Yes, growled.

  My horse and I beat a hasty retreat.

  “Come here!” Bryndis shouted over the wind. “Twins!”

  I’d read enough about puffins to know that surviving twins weren’t common among the species, so I led Einnar to where Bryndis and Freya had halted. The zookeeper took out her iPhone and aimed it at the ground, while her horse stood stoically, ignoring the caws and growls of nearby puffins. From the bottom of the burrow, two small nestlings looked up at us, their dark eyes glittering. Unlike the adult birds nearby, they appeared fearless—at least until their parents returned. Then, goaded by the larger birds’ growls and squawks, the nestlings screeched an alarm, further distressing the parents.

  “We’d better move away,” I said, hoping to spare my boots from another attack.

  “Just one more picture.”

  Leaving her to it, I set off on the footpath, snapping pictures as I moved inland up the slope with the faithful Einnar heeling me like a well-trained dog. All went well for a few minutes, until I zeroed in on a particularly human-like lava formation thirty yards away. Around five feet high and as thin as a fashion model, the moss covering it could have been a haute couture dress. At its feet, half-hidden in the shadow of the morning sun, was another lava formation, this one stretched horizontally across the ground. In the dark shadow, its color appeared more blue than green. For some reason, Einnar decided he didn’t like it, and with an alarmed snort, pulled up short, almost yanking the reins from my hand.

  “Don’t ruin your breed’s reputation,” I murmured, focusing my iPhone’s lens on the lava. The interplay of colors—black, green, blue, pink, and red—would make for a nice print. The shutter clicked at the same time I asked myself…

  Pink? Red?

  Frowning, I tugged at Einnar’s reins and led him closer to the formations.

  No.

  Only one lava formation.

  The horizontal shape was a man lying face-down across a puffin burrow.

  Dropping Einnar’s reins, I ran forward, scattering puffins in every direction. “Bryndis!” I shouted. “Someone’s been hurt!”

  When I touched the back of the man’s neck, his skin felt cool. But so did the wind and rain whipping across the top of the cliff. Hoping it wasn’t too late to render aid, I turned him over…

  And saw that nothing could help him now.

  The man must have been dead before he fell across the puffin burrow, because he hadn’t closed his eyes against the bird’s vicious beak. His nose had been pecked to a pulp by the burrow’s inhabitant—a female puffin protecting her chick. But the injuries she’d inflicted didn’t bother me as much as did the small, neat hole in his forehead.

  Although I’d seen plenty of grisly things in my life, I had to sit down on a nearby rock.

 
The female puffin popped her head out of the burrow and growled. Blood smeared her beak and stained the unusual white stripe that ran lengthwise down her head. Blood had trickled onto her fat chick, too, but the birds were in better shape than the dead man.

  “Is he…?” Whatever else Bryndis had been about to say was silenced by a gasp.

  “Better call the police,” I said, not bothering to turn around. “He’s dead. And I think I know who he is. Uh, was.”

  The man’s lush sideburns identified him as Drunk Elvis, the American birder who’d caused a disturbance on my flight, and then proceeded to repeat his churlish performance at the Viking Tavern.

  Bryndis had to see for herself. Once she saw him, she made a sound similar to a hiccup, then punched in a series of numbers on her cell. A spate of Icelandic soon followed.

  While she spoke to the authorities, I felt his carotid in hopes of even a tiny pulse. Nothing. Not even a flutter. As I leaned over him, a series of panicked thoughts staggered through my head. What was the emergency number in Iceland? My tourist guide to Iceland the number listed the number as 1-1-2 for cops, ambulances, whatever, maybe even for driving directions, since Icelandic road signs were all in unreadable Icelandic. Come to think of it, why didn’t these people change their road signs to English so that tourists would stop getting lost, like maybe Drunk Elvis? Yes, that was it. Drunk Elvis became lost and somebody killed him, yes, they did, and then he’d fallen on his face, and, yeah, Mama Puffin pecked away at him….

  Wait a minute. Puffins don’t shoot people. Besides the hole in Drunk Elvis’ forehead, he had a matching hole in the back. And, oh, my God, look at that camera strapped around his neck, an upmarket Nikon D4 with a lens a yard long, and his binoculars must have cost a small fortune, and why’d he look so familiar? Even in my shock, I remembered thinking the same thing on the plane.

  Realizing that I needed to get myself back under control, I stood up and brushed the moss off my pant. I took a deep breath to ensure that my voice wouldn’t tremble, then said, “Bryndis, we need to back away a few yards. Unless I’m wrong, and I don’t think I am, this is a crime scene.”

  “What are you talking about, Teddy? That man…he…he must have fallen and hit his head. Then the puffin got him.” She paused, then began to back up with her horse. “Although I have never seen a puffin do that. Kill someone. How could a little puffin kill a person? They are such small birds and they never hurt anyone other than give them a peck or two. I was pecked once when I…” She hiccupped again. “Oh, this is a terrible, terrible thing.”

  For some reason, the fact that Bryndis sounded panicked herself helped calm me, and I shook my head. “The puffin didn’t kill him, Bryndis. He was shot.”

  She stared at me in disbelief. “Shot? We don’t shoot people in Iceland!”

  “Somebody didn’t get the memo.”

  ***

  The first policeman to arrive was a black-uniformed constable from Hvolsvöllur, a small village a few miles down the road from Vik. Given his peach-fuzz beard and reedy build, Constable Galdur Frimannsson looked little older than a high school senior, but after taking one look at the dead man’s wounds, he made a quick call on his radio. He spoke in Icelandic, but there was no mistaking his serious tone. He, too, recognized a crime scene when he saw one.

  Even if people didn’t shoot people in Iceland.

  While waiting for reinforcements, I found myself chilled to the bone. A hard rain now blew sideways across the moss-covered plateau. The yellow slicker I’d packed kept off the worst of the damp, but did little to protect me from the plummeting temperature. Turning my back to the wind meant that I had to face Dead Elvis, which made me even more wretched. I wanted to hop onto Einnar’s back and return to the Hótel Brattholt, but Constable Frimannsson refused to let us leave the scene. At least he was polite about it.

  “You must both be interviewed by Inspector Thorvaald Haraldsson, who will be arriving from Reykjavik with a forensics team,” he’d explained, looking apologetic. “This death is an unusual occurrence, and given the weather, I’m sorry, but the dispatcher told me to keep you here so that the inspector himself can question you. Since you, Miss Bentley, are unused to Icelandic weather, he might send someone up to the inn to get you some coffee. Or hot chocolate.”

  Bryndis rolled her eyes. Truth be told, my fellow zookeeper looked as miserable as I, but true to her Viking heritage, she’d begun putting a stern face on her discomfort. Ignoring the dead man, she faced the raging North Atlantic. “Ah, a freshening wind,” she said, stretching her arms as if to embrace the rain. “Good for one’s blood.”

  Not dead Dead Elvis’. Constable Frimannsson had covered the body with a tarp harvested from the trunk of his police cruiser, but most of the man’s blood had washed away in the rain. Not happy about the continued deterioration of the crime scene, Frimannsson’s frown deepened when he spied people walking toward us down the slope from the hotel. As they crossed the narrow pedestrian bridge across the Ring Road, I could see cameras strapped around their necks. Their relaxed body language suggested they were unaware of the drama below. Birders, probably, like Dead Elvis. Then I remembered. At the Viking Tavern, he had been with an unhappy-looking woman. His wife? A girlfriend? She might be part of the approaching group.

  Hoping to prevent the constable from having to deal with a hysterical widow, I filled him in on last night’s bar brawl. He flicked a quick look up the land bridge—yes, several women were among the pack—then down at the tarp. There was no mistaking the human-sized form underneath it.

  “So now we have another problem,” he said, his voice so low I could hardly hear him over the screaming wind. “Tourists.” He sighed. “Miss Bentley, since those people may all be countrymen of yours, perhaps you would be kind enough to inform them there’s been an accident and tell them to return to the Hótel Brattholt, that there will be no birding today. At least not here. Whatever you do, don’t mention the deceased person. When Inspector Haraldsson arrives, he will send someone to the hotel to tell them what has happened to their friend.” He paused, then added grimly, “And to question them.”

  Young, perhaps, but no fool.

  With a feeling of foreboding because my “countrymen” tended to be less amiable than Icelanders, I started toward them. Before I was halfway there, I heard the whup-whup-whup of a helicopter.

  The cavalry had arrived.

  Chapter Four

  Chief Inspector Haraldsson, head of the Violent Crimes Squad, displayed little Icelandic politesse as he and another officer ordered the birders back to the hotel. Above the wind, I could hear snatches of anger.

  “Listen, buster, you can’t tell me…”

  “Do you have any idea how much this trip cost…?”

  “The American Embassy will hear about…”

  They didn’t go quietly, but in the end, they went.

  Unlike the other police officers who’d arrived at the crime scene, Inspector Haraldsson wore civilian clothes, a dark raincoat loosely draped over a severe gray suit. A man with sandy hair flecked with gray, he was tall, even for an Icelander, and his sharply angled face was clenched into a don’t-mess-with-me expression.

  Despite the inspector’s forbidding appearance, I noticed that Constable Frimannsson addressed him as Thor, the diminutive for Thorvaald, his first name. As they talked quietly, one of the inspector’s uniformed minions began taping off the area, while several officers in forensic overalls got busy erecting a tent over the body to protect the crime scene from the worsening weather. During the commotion, the puffin and her wobbly chick decamped to another burrow, squawking bird-curses the entire way.

  Bryndis and I watched as Haraldsson, who’d slipped on a pair of latex gloves, went through the dead man’s pockets. He came back to us holding a black wallet. After inspecting it, he said to me, “He’s American. A Mr. Simon Parr, with an Arizona address on his driver’s license,�
� he said, in unaccented English. “Do you know him?”

  Parr. Simon Parr. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. I shook my head and repeated the story I’d told the young constable about the scene on the plane, followed by the slap-down at the Viking Tavern, adding that Bryndis had also witnessed the scene. Once he was through with me, he proceeded to interview her in Icelandic. I surmised that she told him pretty much the same thing, with one notable exception: although she mentioned the Gunn Zoo several times, I never heard her say Ragnar’s name.

  Expressionless, Haraldsson returned his attention to me. “So. Welcome to Iceland, Miss Theodora Bentley, of the Gunn Zoo, in Gunn Landing, California. Bryndis tells me you’ve traveled all the way here for a polar bear cub.”

  “True, along with two Icelandic foxes, and a couple of puffins. Our zoo has a new exhibit called Northern Climes. We’ve already brought in penguins, a couple of species, actually.”

  “Northern Climes?” A faint smile softened the hard lines of his face. “I was unaware that penguins could be found in the northern hemisphere.”

  “Of course not, they’re…”

  “My little jest. What are your thoughts about the fight in the Viking Tavern? Was there blood?”

  “Nothing but slaps.”

  “Was Mr. Parr drunk?”

  “As the proverbial lord.”

  A hint of his former smile came back. “I am certain we will find out more when we interview members of his group. Describe the woman he was with. Young? Old? Did he call her by name?”

  “She had dyed red hair darker than mine, kind of a burgundy wine color, and she was around forty, forty-five, maybe even fifty. And no, I didn’t hear him call her by name, he was too busy getting beat up at the time. Oh, and I just remembered. On the plane, I was certain I’d seen his face before, but I still can’t make the connection.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Could you have seen him at your zoo?”