Meltwater

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Nothing,’ Ingileif said. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Loads of flights to Europe have been cancelled. The ash from the volcano.’

  ‘Really? Then I would have to stay here a few days longer. That would be a shame.’

  ‘Actually, I think it would be rather nice,’ Magnus said.

  Ingileif smiled. ‘So do I.’

  ‘You know, I wish you’d given me some warning you were coming to Iceland,’ Magnus said.

  ‘It was all over my Facebook page,’ Ingileif said. ‘Didn’t you see?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not, Magnús? I set you up your own page.’

  ‘I just didn’t get around to it.’ Magnus had successfully avoided Facebook in America, but Ingileif’s life revolved around it, so she had set a page up for him when she left for Hamburg. He had looked at her page a couple of times, but it just made him depressed. It was visual proof that she was having a frantic, fun-filled life without him.

  ‘You know, I checked your page last week,’ Ingileif said.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Do you know you only have one friend? And that’s me.’

  ‘That’s in Facebook world,’ said Magnus. ‘Not the real world.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and how many friends do you have in the real world?’

  Magnus winced but didn’t answer. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it.

  ‘Ninety-five per cent of Icelanders between twenty and thirty are on Facebook, Magnús. You have to use it. Otherwise you’ll never meet anyone.’

  Magnus glanced at Ingileif sharply. ‘What do you mean, meet anyone?’

  Ingileif’s cheeks reddened slightly. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Friends.’

  ‘You mean women?’

  ‘Well. Do you see any women?’

  ‘Do you see any men?’ Magnus asked. ‘In Hamburg?’

  ‘What I do in Hamburg is my own business, Magnús, just as what you do here is yours.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Magnus. As usual, the status of his relationship with Ingileif was confusing him, but this time he felt more uncomfortable than usual. Wait. Wasn’t ‘Status’ something Facebook sorted out? They would probably need room for a paragraph for that section in Iceland, he thought. ‘Look, I’ve got to go.’

  Ingileif reached over and gripped his hand. ‘Hey. Sorry. I can cancel my dinner this evening if you like. We could go out somewhere nice. No more vampires and trolls.’

  Magnus grinned. ‘That’s a very nice idea. I would like that.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT WAS ONLY a few minutes from Mokka to the Culture House, and so Magnus walked, leaving his car by the café. He checked his phone: one missed call from a number he didn’t recognize.

  He called it back.

  ‘Hello?’ a female voice answered.

  ‘This is Magnús. Who is this?’

  ‘Oh, it’s Ásta.’

  ‘You called me?’

  ‘Um, it’s nothing,’ Ásta said uncertainly.

  Magnus stopped on the pavement. ‘Are you in the house?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ásta.

  ‘Well, if you can’t speak now I can call you back in a few minutes. Give you a chance to go back outside where no one can hear you.’

  ‘No, it was nothing, really.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m quite sure.’

  ‘OK, but if you do want to talk to me call me right back. I’ll pick up this time.’

  ‘All right.’ Ásta hung up.

  Magnus frowned. Next time he saw Ásta he would be sure to take her to one side. He was certain there was something she had wanted to tell him. It might turn out to be ‘nothing really’, or it might not.

  The Culture House was a grand building at the western end of Hverfisgata near the town centre. It had formerly served as the National Library, but now displayed a selection of the best of the saga manuscripts. The bulk of the collection was housed in the Árni Magnússon Institute at the university.

  The café was a small room reached through the gift shop. It was three-quarters full and there were two men sitting alone: one was a young guy with a beard, obviously an American tourist, flipping through a guidebook. The other was a big man with a shock of white hair, wearing a tweed jacket, and scanning the room expectantly.

  Magnus approached him. ‘Jóhannes?’

  The man got to his feet. He was the same height as Magnus. ‘Yes. You must be Sergeant Magnús?’

  ‘That’s right.’ They shook hands and sat down. ‘I’m very glad you called, Jóhannes, but I don’t have much time. Shall we order now?’ He waved down a waitress. He ordered a salad, Jóhannes a sausage.

  ‘Good choice, this,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Jóhannes. ‘I bring my classes here whenever I can.’

  ‘You’re a schoolteacher?’

  ‘Yes. Icelandic. Have you been inside recently?’

  Magnus smiled. ‘It’s one of my favourite places in this city.’

  ‘Mine too. Have you seen Gaukur’s Saga?’

  Magnus nodded. ‘Yes, I have seen it.’

  ‘Remarkable, isn’t it? I can’t believe it’s real.’

  ‘Oh, it’s real, all right,’ Magnus said. A lot of people had gone to a lot of effort twelve months before establishing that. ‘I used to read sagas over and over when I was a kid in America. It’s wonderful to see the real things here.’

  Jóhannes smiled. ‘I’m glad to hear it. I suppose you could say it has been my life’s work to bring the sagas to adolescent children.’

  ‘A noble thing to do,’ Magnus said.

  Jóhannes nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Hi, Magnus.’

  Magnus looked up in surprise to see his brother approaching the table. Ollie’s face was grim. ‘Hi, Ollie, I’m glad you came.’

  Ollie nodded curtly and looked at Jóhannes with an air of insolence. Magnus could feel the schoolteacher bridle.

  ‘Let me introduce my brother, Óli,’ Magnus said in Icelandic. ‘This is Jóhannes Benediktsson. His father was a neighbour of Grandpa’s at Bjarnarhöfn.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Ollie. Or was it ‘Hae’, the Icelandic greeting?

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Jóhannes,’ said Magnus. ‘Do you mind if we speak English? My brother doesn’t speak Icelandic.’

  ‘That will be acceptable,’ said Jóhannes in a precise accent.

  ‘What do you want, Ollie?’ Magnus said, catching the waitress’s eye. Ollie’s surliness irritated him, but maybe it was a sign that his brother was finally accepting that Magnus was going to ask difficult questions, whatever Ollie thought.

  ‘I’ll take a Coke,’ he said, and sat down, crossing his arms.

  Jóhannes was watching Ollie with ill-disguised distaste.

  ‘I’ve read a couple of your father’s books,’ Magnus said to him. ‘But only recently.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Jóhannes. ‘Moor and the Man and “The Slip”?’

  Magnus nodded. ‘I enjoyed Moor and the Man. It reminded me a bit of—’

  ‘Halldór Laxness?’ Jóhannes interrupted. ‘But not quite as good?’ He eyed Magnus suspiciously.

  ‘I was going to say Steinbeck.’

  Jóhannes smiled. ‘I’m sorry. I am a little sensitive about my father and his literary reputation. I have had a trying time recently. I lost my job two days ago, and I’ve discovered some disturbing facts.’

  ‘Sorry about the job,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Thirty-one years I’ve been showing children the wonders of our literature. Thirty-one years.’

  ‘That’s tough.’ Magnus paused while the waitress delivered their meals. ‘So, what did you find out?’

  Magnus ate while Jóhannes told him about his trip to Búdir and the confrontation that the groom there had witnessed between Hallgrímur and Benedikt a few weeks before Benedikt’s murder. Magnus listened closely. Ollie’s arms were firmly folded and a scowl was fixed on his face, the Coke in fron
t of him untouched. But he was listening too.

  ‘So when I left Stykkishólmur, Unnur, who is my aunt’s niece, told me that you had done some investigating yourself last year.’

  ‘I have,’ said Magnus. ‘Like you, I spotted that Moor and the Man and “The Slip” both seemed to describe real events: the murder of Benedikt’s father by Hallgrímur’s father, and then the killing of Hallgrímur’s father by Benedikt on Búland’s Head.’

  ‘I notice you don’t say murder,’ Jóhannes said.

  ‘I suppose I should have done,’ Magnus said. ‘It was murder, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was revenge,’ said Jóhannes. ‘We were just talking about the sagas. My father was a good man. I think he thought it was his duty to avenge the murder of his own father. You remember what Thorstein’s father tells him in “The Tale of Thorstein the Staff-Struck” just before the duel? “I would rather lose you than have a coward son.” I often think of that.’

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ said Magnus. ‘That counts as a motive, not a duty. It was murder all right.’

  ‘Hm,’ Jóhannes grunted.

  ‘There’s something else you might find interesting,’ Magnus said. ‘Our own father was murdered eleven years after yours. In 1996.’

  Magnus felt Ollie’s shoulders tighten next to him. He knew his brother wouldn’t like what he was about to say.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Jóhannes.

  ‘It was in the States. We were at the beach in a place called Duxbury for the summer. Everyone was out. Somebody rang the doorbell, my father answered, he let the man in, and then he was stabbed once in the back and twice more in the chest.’

  ‘But that’s what happened to my father!’ Jóhannes said.

  ‘Exactly. Even down to the stab wounds.’

  ‘Do you think there’s a connection?’ Jóhannes asked.

  ‘I’m a cop. I have to think there’s a connection.’

  Jóhannes paused. ‘Could it be Hallgrímur?’ he asked. ‘Was there any tension between him and your father?’

  ‘There was plenty of tension,’ said Magnus. ‘Our mother drank. A lot. Our father had an affair with another woman – Unnur, in fact – and Mom found out about it. They split up. Dad went to America and Mom stayed in Iceland. Ollie and I stayed with Hallgrímur at the farm at Bjarnarhöfn. It was no fun.’

  Beside Magnus, Ollie snorted. It was true – ‘no fun’ was an understatement.

  ‘After four years of hell, Dad came to fetch us and take us over to America with him. Then, eight years later, he was murdered.’

  ‘It sounds as if Hallgrímur had plenty of reason to hate your father.’

  ‘Yes. Although according to Unnur, he was actually glad to see him leave Iceland and our mother.’

  ‘The question remains, could Hallgrímur have murdered your father and my father?’ Jóhannes asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He has never left Iceland, never even been issued with a passport. He certainly never went to America in 1996. And he is left-handed.’

  ‘And the stab wounds were inflicted by someone who was right-handed?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Jóhannes. ‘Do you know anything about the police investigation into my father’s murder? I’ve read press reports, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I read the file last year. It was very thorough. The investigating officer was Inspector Snorri Gudmundsson who is now the National Police Commissioner. But they didn’t find any real suspects.’

  ‘Apart from me.’

  ‘Yes, I remember reading about you,’ said Magnus. ‘You discovered the body, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You were never a real suspect. No one was ever a real suspect.’

  ‘But what about the similarities with your own father’s murder?’ Jóhannes asked.

  ‘That was something I spotted last year when I read the file.’

  ‘And what did they say about that?’

  Magnus lowered his eyes. ‘Nothing. I didn’t tell them.’

  ‘You didn’t tell them! Why not?’

  ‘I . . .’ Magnus glanced at Ollie. ‘We. We didn’t want to reopen the case.’

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t want to reopen the case!’ Jóhannes’s voice was raised in anger, and a number of other diners were staring at him. ‘This is an unsolved murder we are talking about. Two unsolved murders. You have to reopen the case. It’s your duty as a police officer.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Magnus. And he was right. He was glad that Ollie was there to listen to this. ‘You are absolutely right. And it’s something I will do.’

  ‘When? This afternoon, I hope.’

  ‘Soon. There’s another murder investigation going on at the moment. The Italian man killed on the Fimmvörduháls volcano. You have probably seen it on the news.’

  Jóhannes jabbed a finger at Magnus. ‘If you don’t reopen this investigation immediately, I will talk to the Commissioner myself.’

  Magnus glanced at Ollie, whose scowl had deepened. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Now, I have to go. Can you give me your number so I can let you know what I find out? We should stay in touch.’

  Jóhannes tore a page out of a notebook and ripped it in two. He scribbled an address and phone number on each half and pushed the pieces of paper across the table to Magnus and his brother. ‘I look forward to hearing from you soon.’

  ‘Where have you been, Magnús? Ragga’s been waiting for you.’ Árni looked frazzled.

  ‘Ragga?’

  ‘The police artist.’

  ‘Damn.’ Magnus had had an appointment to see her at eleven that morning. They needed to get a good impression of Erika’s attacker out to the police throughout the country. ‘I’ll be with her in a moment. What’s going on?’

  ‘Some progress,’ said Árni. ‘We’ve found the Canadians who rented the Suzuki Vitara from Hertz. They are in Akureyri.’

  ‘Good. Get the police there to find out where they were on Monday evening. If they have a firm alibi let them go, otherwise lock them up.’

  ‘They are checking on that now.’

  ‘What about Italian tourists?’

  ‘The attack on you last night means we can rule out all those who have left the country in the last couple of days, which helps a bit. And the volcano means that the attacker is trapped in this country for a few days at least. He can’t get out.’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘We have two possibles waiting for you. They are both Italian tourists, they match your description and neither one of them has an alibi for Monday night.’

  ‘Good work! I’ll go see them right now. Anything from Interpol?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, keep on to them. How’s the ash cloud?’

  ‘Getting bigger. The volcano is still spewing. The wind is blowing it due south over Britain and the North Atlantic. Flights still cancelled. And it’s falling hard on the farms around Eyjafjallajökull.’

  ‘OK – take me to these Italians, and then I’ll see Ragga. Oh, one last question, Árni. Where can I buy a baseball bat?’

  The Italians were a bust. Although they both fitted Magnus’s general description, he was quite sure that neither of them was the man he had seen holding a knife to Erika’s throat. He let them off with an apology.

  Then he went to see the police artist. He could see the value of some kind of image of the assailant: it would save the police a lot of time.

  Ragga was an ample forty-five-year-old with long curly red hair and big green eyes. She was waiting for him in an interview room with a stack of cards and a sketchbook. She was reading a book.

  ‘Sorry I kept you waiting,’ Magnus said. ‘How long will this take?’

  ‘About an hour,’ she said.

  ‘An hour! I’d have thought they’d have E-Fit or one of those other computer systems.’

  ‘They keep trialling the
m,’ said Ragga. ‘But they always end up with me. They say I’m better. The first three-quarters of an hour I do pretty much the same as a computer; I show you these cards and ask you which image each part of the face most resembles. It’s the last quarter of an hour I make the image into a person. That’s the bit the computer can’t quite do.’

  ‘OK, well, draw me,’ said Magnus. ‘Take just two minutes.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Ragga calmly.

  ‘I want to make sure I’m not wasting my time.’

  ‘OK.’ Ragga worked fast, glancing with those big eyes at Magnus as she sketched. In a couple of minutes she showed him his portrait.

  It looked a lot like the man he saw in the mirror every day. Except: ‘Do I really look that suspicious?’

  ‘You do right now,’ said Ragga.

  Magnus laughed. ‘OK, let’s get to it.’

  An hour later they had a very good likeness of the attacker full face and profile and wearing a woolly hat. Ragga said that in Reykjavík it was good to know what people looked like wearing woolly hats. Magnus was impressed.

  Back at the Violent Crimes Unit, Vigdís was at her desk, working on her computer.

  ‘Flight cancelled?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Her lips were pursed in frustration.

  ‘Any chance of it going tomorrow?’

  ‘They said I should show up at the airport. I’m doubtful though. The eruption is continuing and there’s no change in the weather forecast.’ Usually so cool, Vigdís seemed distinctly unhappy.

  ‘Did you call your man? Is he in Paris yet?’

  ‘He is.’ Vigdís sighed. ‘And he’s not pleased.’

  ‘It’s hardly your fault.’

  ‘I told him that. He said it’s never my fault when I cancel on him. He has a point.’

  ‘Make sure you’re at the airport tomorrow. I don’t want you missing a flight.’

  Vigdís smiled quickly at him, and turned back to her screen.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Trying to track down a loose Suzuki Vitara.’

  ‘Any luck yet?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What about the Canadians, Árni?’ Magnus asked.