Close to the Heel

by Norah McClintock

“Poe?”

  “Edgar Allan Poe. We read one of his stories in school. The Tell-Tale Heart. It’s about a guy who kills someone and then goes crazy with guilt. I think Einar keeps checking the place, you know, to make sure no one has found out. Tryggvi must have told him he found me inside. Einar probably watched me after that and saw me go in again that night. Next thing I know, I’m in the middle of nowhere.”

  Karl looks doubtful. I guess I can’t blame him. He knows Einar. He works with Tryggvi, and even if the two of them aren’t best buddies, they’re cops. Cops have it beaten into their heads that they have to stick together. He continues to look doubtful right up to the moment when I show him where to point his flashlight. He hunkers down and stares between the tiny gaps in the stone wall.

  “You see it?” I say. “It’s under that pile of rocks, but you see it, right?” It was a watch—I was sure of it—peeking out from under a man-sized pile of rock in what I was willing to bet was originally part of this turf hut, which explained why the hut looked smaller from the inside than it did from the outside.

  Karl straightens up slowly.

  “Well, I think you’re on to something.” He turns off the flashlight. “This fellow who gave you those notes in French, how come he didn’t tell the police what was in them?”

  “He didn’t know. He doesn’t read French, and I guess he didn’t think they were important, not after Tryggvi returned the notebooks. When he heard I read French, he asked me to take a look at them and tell him what they said.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not yet. I haven’t had a chance.”

  A shadow falls across the sunlight streaming in through the turf shed’s door; then the light is blotted out as someone steps inside.

  Einar.

  “What’s going on?” he demands. His eyes flick to me. He doesn’t look surprised to see me.

  “This boy was just showing me something interesting behind that wall, Einar,” Karl says.

  Einar looks at the wall and then back at me. “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s something back there,” Karl says. “We need to break down the wall.”

  Einar stands motionless in the doorway. Any minute now he’s going to turn and run, and Karl, like all Icelandic police, isn’t wearing a gun.

  “Well, Einar?” Karl says. “What do you have to say about this?”

  “What do you want me to say?” Einar’s voice is as dull as his eyes.

  “It’s Baldur, isn’t it?” I say. “Did you kill him? Or was it—?”

  “Hold on there, Rennie,” Karl says. “Suppose you leave the questions to me.”

  No way. Not after everything I’ve been through.

  “He tried to kill me,” I say. “I deserve to know. Hell, if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t be here.”

  Karl heaves another sigh.

  “That’s true,” he allows. He turns to Einar. “Well?”

  Einar looks down at the packed-earth floor for a few seconds, like a kid staring at the toes of his sneakers after having been caught cheating on a test. And then he meets my eyes. I don’t know the man well. But I know shame when I see it. Regret too.

  “It was an accident,” Einar says. “Baldur killed my Gudrun. I know he did. But there wasn’t any proof—nothing the cops could use. He was going to get away with it. So I went to him. I tried to get him to do the right thing, to tell what he did. But he refused. And then—” He breaks off and draws in a few deep breaths to steady himself. “I just wanted him to do the right thing. I tried to make him go to the police. But he fought me. What could I do? I fought back. I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident.”

  I almost believe him about the accident part.

  Almost.

  “If that’s true,” I say, “if it was an accident, why didn’t you tell the police what happened?” I’m on a roll. I know it. He’s confessed to killing Baldur. Now I want him to tell the rest. I want him to spill whatever he knows, right here, right now—what he knew, what Tryggvi knew, what Gudrun knew.

  “They would never believe me. Everyone knew I suspected Baldur. Everyone heard me call him a murderer. I would go to prison, and then what would happen to Brynja?” He gets a faraway look in his eyes, like he’s staring into the past, reliving what he’s done. “I should never have let Gudrun take that job. I don’t understand why she wanted it. If she had stayed home, if she had never got it into her head to be a reporter, none of this would have happened. She would never have found out what Baldur did. He never would have killed her, and I never would have done what I did.”

  “Does Brynja know what you did?” I ask.

  It takes a few seconds before Einar’s eyes meet mine. He shakes his head.

  Karl tosses him the pick. He’s going to make Einar break down the wall. He going to make Einar expose what has lain hidden for the past year.

  I’m watching him holding that pick. I’m wondering how he’s going to explain this to Brynja. I’m wondering, too, how she will react.

  Then I say, “How did you know?” because all of a sudden it’s bothering me.

  Einar doesn’t even look at me.

  “You said you knew that Baldur killed Gudrun,” I say. “How did you know? Did she tell you she was going to meet him that night?” I pull the sheet of paper from my pocket. “She says here she’s afraid of how you’re going to react when she tells you something. She can’t decide whether to confront you or go straight to the police. Did she tell you where she was going, is that it? Did she tell you what she suspected and what she was going to do, and you let her go? You let her meet Baldur and that’s why you’re so sure he killed her?” That had to be it. “You feel guilty,” I say as the thought occurs to me. “You could have stopped her. You could have made her stay home that night. But you didn’t.”

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” Einar says in a hushed voice. “She said she had to go out. She was acting strange. Quiet. She left and she never came back. Baldur killed her.”

  “But if you don’t know where she went…” My voice trails off.

  I think.

  I remember what Geir told me: there were originally six notebooks, but he could find only five. He said that one of them must have been misplaced when it was returned—either that or the police had neglected to return it. But there’s a third possibility, namely that Tryggvi destroyed one of the notebooks because it contained information that linked him to Baldur. Once the death investigation was closed, who would bother to look any further? No one had—until I turned up and started asking questions.

  “How do you know Baldur killed her? How do you know Tryggvi didn’t do it?” I say.

  It would be easy for a Quantico graduate like Tryggvi to get rid of evidence that a murder had been committed. It would be just as easy for him to commit a murder and cover up whatever evidence there might be.

  My head is spinning. Things fall into place.

  Gudrun suspects Tryggvi’s involvement. She tries to decide whether to talk to Einar first or the cops, but maybe doesn’t do either. Maybe she goes straight to Tryggvi and presents him with evidence that proves he’s involved with Baldur. I can see how that might go. She calls Tryggvi—or maybe he knows from Baldur that she’s getting close and he calls her. They arrange to meet. Tryggvi tells her where. She goes. He hears her out. He realizes he’s cornered. He has no choice—he kills her and makes sure there’s no evidence left behind. That explains the outcome of the autopsy—undetermined.

  But now Tryggvi has a loose end—Baldur. What if Baldur found out what he’d done? Or what if he even suspected it? He probably hadn’t counted on murder being part of the deal when he borrowed money from the Russians. So Tryggvi whispers in his brother-in-law’s ear, “Gudrun was investigating Baldur, so he killed her. But there’s no evidence. We’ll never be able to prove it.” Einar goes to Baldur. Baldur denies killing Gudrun. He refuses to go to the police—why would he? They fight; Baldur ends up dead. And Tryggvi—lucky Tryggvi—
tells his brother-in-law that they have to hide the body so that Einar won’t be arrested for murder. Ta-dah!

  “Tryggvi?” Einar says. “Why would Tryggvi hurt Gudrun?” I see confusion on his face, and it throws me.

  “Tryggvi helped you hide Baldur’s body, right?” I say. “He’s the one who told you Baldur killed Gudrun, isn’t he?”

  “The boy knows what you did, Einar,” Karl says. “Now everyone is going to know. Brynja is going to know.” He nods at the pick in Einar’s hand. “You know what you have to do.”

  Einar looks at the pick like he can’t figure out how it got there. He shakes his head. Doesn’t he get it? Refusing to knock down the wall isn’t going to change a thing. It’s going to come down with or without him.

  “What would Anders think if he knew what his grandson had become?” he says.

  Anders?

  The two men stare hard at each other.

  “Who is Anders?” I say.

  Something Geir told me hits me like a sledgehammer: the name of the cop who ran the death investigation on Gudrun.

  “What’s Tryggvi’s father’s name?” I ask.

  At first I don’t think anyone is going to answer. But finally Einar says, “Jens.”

  So that makes him Tryggvi Jensson. The cop who ran the investigation—the cop who was trained in the States—was Andersson, not Jensson.

  There’s only one other cop around here who was trained in the States. I turn to Karl.

  “Anders is your grandfather,” I say. According to Geir, Icelanders who emigrate have to adapt, and one of the things they have to adapt to is names frozen at a point in time. Karl’s father, born here, would have taken Andersson as his surname when he moved to the States. Karl was born in the States, where he would have taken the same surname as his father. His name is Andersson too.

  Karl is focused on Einar. “Do you want to go to prison, Einar? Because that’s what’s going to happen unless you do something.”

  Einar doesn’t answer.

  I start to move away, but Karl grabs my arms and wrenches me back.

  “You have no choice, Einar,” he says. “You tried to get rid of Rennie once and failed. You can’t fail again.”

  Einar looks at Karl with dull eyes.

  “We haven’t got all day,” Karl says.

  “You said he would never survive out there,” Einar says. “You said the problem was solved.”

  You said. He means Karl. I try to wrench free, but Karl has a viselike grip on my arm.

  “You killed Gudrun, didn’t you?” I say to Karl.

  Karl doesn’t look at me. “Better to get it over with, Einar,” he says.

  “Gudrun went to meet you,” I say. I stare at his face. I can’t read a thing. In the shadows, it’s as gray and flat as a blank screen, and it tells me everything I need to know. “You killed her and you told Einar that Baldur did it. He knew that Gudrun was investigating Baldur, but he didn’t know about you.”

  Karl ignores me. “If he gets away, I won’t be able to protect you this time,” he says to Einar.

  “You were protecting yourself,” I say. “She knew, didn’t she, Karl? What did you tell her when you arranged to meet with her? Did you feed her a line? Did you tell her you could explain everything?” I could just see it. “Did you tell her you were investigating yourself, but that it was all hush-hush until you made your case?” Still nothing.

  “She was afraid of how Einar would react because you two were friends when you were kids. Gudrun was afraid Einar would be disappointed in you—or maybe angry at her for what she turned up about you. So either she forced you to meet her or you lured her to the falls. Either way, the result was the same. You killed her.”

  Einar is staring at Karl now.

  “Karl?” Einar’s voice is quivering with emotion. “What is he talking about?”

  “You tricked Einar into doing some of your dirty work for you. You made sure he dealt with Baldur, and then you told him to hide the body. That way he wouldn’t push to find out more. He already had it settled in his mind. And it gave you something to hold over him—you could threaten to expose him if you had to. Just like you’re doing now.”

  “Karl? Is this true?”

  “Of course not,” Karl says.

  “Sigurdur saw you,” I say to Einar. “Just before he collapsed, he wanted to show me something. He pointed to this hut. He saw you bring Baldur back here. He saw you drag his body into the hut. But he didn’t say anything because he believed that Baldur had killed Gudrun—because you told him that’s what happened, because that’s what Karl told you.” I turn to Karl. “And you destroyed the sixth notebook too.”

  “What notebook?” Einar says.

  “Gudrun had six notebooks,” I say. “They were all turned over to the police, but only five were returned. No one noticed until now. Karl destroyed the sixth one. I bet there was something in it that implicated him.”

  Einar is staring at his old friend now. “You did this? You killed Gudrun?”

  “No,” Karl says.

  “Yes,” I say. “It wasn’t Baldur. It was Karl.”

  Karl surprises the daylights out of me when he reaches behind himself and pulls out a gun from under his jacket.

  “I thought handguns were illegal in Iceland,” I say.

  Karl smiles. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Give me the pick, Einar.”

  “What are you going to do?” I say. “Kill me and then kill him and say you got here too late to save him?”

  “If you can’t take care of it, I will, Einar,” Karl says.

  “So it is true,” Einar says.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Give me the pick, Einar.”

  “Ask him where he was the night Gudrun died,” I say to Einar.

  Einar looks at Karl for an answer.

  “I was at home,” Karl says. “For god’s sake, Einar!”

  “I bet he wasn’t at home. I bet he was meeting Gudrun.”

  “Give me the pick, Einar.”

  “He did it, Einar. He killed Gudrun.”

  Karl points his gun at me. “I’ve had about enough of you.” He’s going to shoot. I see it in his eyes.

  Einar raises the pick again. His eyes are hard on Karl.

  Karl swings the gun and fires at Einar. I see a dot of red on Einar’s chest. It grows. Einar looks down at it, puzzled. He sinks to his knees and then crumples face-first into the dirt.

  I reach up and grab one of the ropes hanging from a rafter. I swing it, and the pieces of wood strung to it catch Karl across the face. He staggers backward, still clutching the gun. I swing again, harder this time. The rope catches him and wraps around his throat. He drops the gun and claws at the rope to loosen it.

  I dive for the gun. I’m on my feet pointing it at Karl at about the time he manages to loosen the rope. He’s gasping for breath. He eyes the gun in my hand.

  “You gonna shoot me, Rennie?” he says.

  “Get down on your knees or you’re going to find out.”

  He won’t go down. Instead, he takes a step toward me, his hand outstretched.

  “Give me the gun, Rennie, before someone gets hurt.”

  “Someone already got hurt.” I nod at Einar. “Stay where you are or I swear I’ll shoot.”

  He smiles and takes another step toward me.

  A car door slams, and I hear Brynja call in Icelandic for her father.

  “Brynja, call the police in Reykjavik,” I shout. “Call the police in Reykjavik.”

  Karl lunges at me and takes me down in a tackle. I almost pass out from the impact. I hold the gun over my head, as far from him as I can, but he’s on top of me, head-butting me before reaching again for the gun. I see stars. But I don’t let go. I hit him as hard as I can with the gun butt. He collapses on top of me.

  A shadow appears in the doorway. Brynja. She falls to her knees beside her father.

  “Call the police, Brynja,” I say. “And get an ambulance.”

  NINETEEN
>
  After that, everything happens both fast and slow.

  Brynja calls Tryggvi. Tryggvi calls the police in Reykjavik. It takes a while for them to sort everything out. In the meantime, Einar and Karl are loaded into ambulances. Brynja rides to the hospital with her father. A cop rides with Karl. After quizzing me, the remaining cops start to take the back wall of the turf hut apart. After they find the body, they take me in for questioning. It’s hours before I hear that Einar is going to be okay. Even better, he comes clean about everything that’s happened and says that it was Karl’s idea to get rid of me. Karl is charged with two counts of attempted murder. That will hold him until the cops figure out his part in the deaths of Gudrun and Baldur. I also hear that they’re going to take a hard look at his finances, including any off-shore accounts he might have. They let me go. I call the Major and fill him in on what has happened. To my astonishment, he stays calm. He doesn’t yell at me. He talks to the cops and has me put up at a guesthouse in Reykjavik. He says he’s taking the next flight to Iceland.

  Two days later, the police say I can go home with the Major. There’s just one problem. I have unfinished business.

  I get the Major to drive me to the hospital. Just as I suspect, I find Brynja there, shuttling between her father and Sigurdur. On the way over, I was afraid she’d be angry to see me, but she isn’t. Mostly she looks tired.

  “Afi has been asking for you,” she says.

  “And I want to see him. But first I wanted to talk to you. Are you okay?”

  She draws in a deep breath. Maybe I’m wrong, but it looks to me like she’s fighting back tears.

  “My father made a mistake,” she says quietly. “A terrible mistake.”

  “Karl set him up. He used your dad to solve his own problems.”

  “I know.” She holds herself up tall. “I’m going to live with my aunt until—until everything is sorted out.”

  Einar’s sure to end up in prison. Even if he didn’t mean to kill Baldur, he hid the body. It could be a hard sell to a judge and jury that it was an accident. He tried to kill me too, so I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what I found out in that turf hut. I wonder how long they’ll keep him locked up—and what prisons are like in Iceland.