The Flatey Enigma

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  “Is it long, this book?” Thorolfur asked.

  “Not really. Thormodur Krakur has an edition that came out straight after the war. It’s four volumes of about six hundred pages each. You could finish reading it by the fall if you really put your head down.”

  Thorolfur looked at Grimur. “Can you get us a copy of this work?”

  Question twenty-seven: The most cunning chieftain. Second letter. The Norsemen who were on the rampage in Constantinople were known as the Varangians. Their chieftain was Harald, who was called Nordbrigt…They besieged another town that was both bigger and harder to overtake. There were lush and open fields close to the town with beautiful trees in blossom. The birds always flew there from the town during the day and then flew back to their nests on the rooftops of the houses in the evening. Nordbrigt addressed his men: “There is some clay here just outside the town, which we shall collect and knead until it turns into a kind of mortar. Then we will rub this wet mortar on the trees outside the town.” The birds then stuck to the trees when they came looking for food, and many small birds were caught in this manner. Then Nordbrigt said, “Now let’s collect dry and highly flammable wood and ignite a little fire in it by adding sulfur and enveloping it with wax. Then we will attach this load to each of the birds’ backs so that they can fly with it. When night falls we will release them all together, and my guess is that they will fly back to their nests in the town, as is their habit.” This was done, and the birds flew back to their nests and young ones. All the houses on which the birds had made their nests were thatched, and it did not take long for the birds’ feathers to catch fire and then the rooftops, with one thing igniting another. At the same time, the besiegers armed themselves and attacked the town. The townspeople then had to fend off both the fire and the fierce attack, and they were unable to cope with both. The answer is “Harald,” and the second letter is a.

  Kjartan said, “Here Lund wrote the name ‘Nordbrigt.’”

  “Then the answer is either a or o.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Hogni went off to collect Thormodur Krakur, who, as was to be expected, arrived for the questioning in his Sunday suit, and with his walking stick and medal of honor pinned to his chest. His clothes were still damp after the night, although he had made a worthy attempt at drying them over the stove that morning. He had brought along his copies of the printed version of the Flatey Book, at Grimur’s request, and clutched them firmly in his arms.

  Thorolfur contemplated the deacon at length from head to toe before starting the interrogation.

  “Did you meet the deceased Bryngeir on Sunday?” he asked.

  “Bryngeir came to my cowshed at around dinnertime on Sunday,” Thormodur Krakur haughtily replied. “He offered me a sip of rum, and I gave him a cup of milk and some dried fish instead. I sometimes have some stockfish hanging in the corner of the barn to nibble at between meals, and it came in handy that evening. Then we sat there and chatted a little.”

  “What did you chat about?”

  “We spoke about dreams and the extrasensory powers of some thinking beings. The late Bryngeir was knowledgeable on the subject, and it then transpired that he was very apt at deciphering unusual dreams. He’d also studied spiritism at night school with some famous medium in Reykjavik. Unfortunately, one doesn’t often meet evolved souls of this kind on the island. He was slightly psychic when he was sober. That’s why he drank so much, he told me. Some people can’t handle the power and try to suppress their talents. They need help. But he was willing and capable of reading dreams. He was able to solve the calf dream I’d been grappling with for so long. The dream is as follows: I sense I’m inside this church and then…”

  “Thanks, that’s enough,” Thorolfur interrupted. “Where did he go after he left you?”

  “He said he was going to find some way of getting to Stykkisholmur but that he was going to see the doctor first.”

  “Was Bryngeir ill in some way?”

  “No, it wasn’t a medical visit. I told him the old man’s body was in the house. He told me was going to offer his condolences to Johanna. I asked him to show some respect when he got there.”

  “Did you expect him not to?”

  “Naturally, he was a bit tipsy, but easy enough to handle, although in between he could be quite mischievous.”

  “Did he ever mention the Dane?”

  “No, not to me.”

  “Do you know how he was going to get to Stykkisholmur?”

  “Well, he was going to talk to the islanders who have boats or the small boat fishermen, but I doubt anyone would have been foolish enough to take him that night. The weather was getting worse.”

  “Did he talk about where he would stay on Flatey if he didn’t get to Stykkisholmur?”

  “No. I couldn’t put him up at my place because I don’t have an extra bed in the house, but I told him he could sleep in my barn if he wanted to. I just asked him to be careful with fire.”

  “Do you think he stayed in the barn?”

  “His things were still there when I walked into the barn yesterday morning.”

  “What time did he leave your place?”

  Thormodur Krakur thought a moment. “Let me see…I took the milk over to Reverend Hannes at around eight and went home for dinner. Then I went back up to the shed at around ten to give water to the cows and prepare for the night. He was gone by then.”

  “Didn’t you see him again?”

  “No, not alive.”

  Question twenty-eight: Augurs a lucky journey. First letter. King Magnus and Earl Erling’s fleet anchored near Brottueyri, outside Skipacrook, and the men landed there. As the earl leaped on shore, he fell on his knees. Thrusting both hands into the ground, he said, “A fall augurs a lucky journey.” The answer is “fall,” and the first letter is f.

  CHAPTER 45

  Dagbjartur arrived early at the National Hospital in Reykjavik and asked for Dr. Thorgerdur Fridriksdottir. After a number of enquiries, it transpired that she was in the operating room.

  “I’ll wait,” said Dagbjartur, smiling patiently.

  He had been waiting for three hours when a young woman approached him.

  “I was told you were looking for me,” she said.

  She was wearing a white coat with large splatters of blood on the front.

  “I was just removing some tonsils. There can be a lot of bleeding sometimes,” she added when she noticed he was staring at the stains.

  Dagbjartur smiled awkwardly. “Sorry to disturb you. This won’t take long.”

  “OK. What’s it about?”

  “I believe you know Johanna Thorvaldsdottir?”

  “Yes, we’re friends.”

  “Have you seen her recently?”

  “No. Not this year. She’s been busy taking care of her father. I hear he’s finally passed away now.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Why are you asking me about Johanna?”

  “There was a terrible incident on Flatey and we’re trying to form a picture of the people who live there. It’s a relatively small number of people, so we can get a pretty good idea of each individual.”

  “I see. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Johanna, so I hope none of this will harm her. We met in Copenhagen at the end of the war when we were teenagers and became good friends when she became engaged to my brother.”

  “What kind of a teenager was she?”

  “She was a strange kid because she had been brought up by her father on the move across northern Europe. It took our family many months to break through the shell. Once we had, though, I realized she was an extremely gifted, tender, and fun girl. At first she sounded too much like an adult when she spoke, and her Icelandic was quite funny. Sometimes it was as if she were talking straight from the Icelandic sagas. She wasn’t used to speaking this language with kids her own age. We actually spoke Danish together to begin with because that’s what I was used to when I spoke to my friends in Copenhagen. We some
times still do that for fun.”

  “Have you stayed in contact with her since then?”

  “On and off. After my brother died, she vanished from our family life. She got into a doomed relationship with some guy for a couple of years. She was a year ahead of me in med school, and we caught up a bit once the relationship ended. She was very unhappy during those years but did very well in her studies. I think she saw a shrink for a while.”

  A nurse came running down the corridor. “Thorgerdur, come straight back,” she called. “The boy is starting to bleed again!”

  Question twenty-nine: What cracked with such a loud noise? First letter. Then the earl said to Finn Eyvindarson, “Shoot that man by the mast.”

  Finn answered, “The man cannot be shot if he is not fey. I can break his bow, though.” Finn then shot his arrow, which struck the middle of Einar’s bow just as he was drawing it for a third time, and the bow split in two.

  Then King Olaf said, “What cracked with such a loud noise?”

  Einar answered, “Norway out of your hands, sire.”

  The first letter is n.

  CHAPTER 46

  Back at the vicarage, Frida was filled with indignation at being summoned for an interrogation by the Reykjavik inspectors like this without notice. Hogni had been sent over to the priest and his wife with the request, but the lady had taken it badly. She stood fuming in the hall, clutching her hat between her hands, as Reverend Hannes tried to appease her.

  “Frida dear. This is a perfectly natural request for the authorities to make,” he said pleadingly.

  “Request! We’re clergy, for God’s sake!”

  “Yes, yes, it’s only a formality. They want to talk to everyone on the island.”

  “Couldn’t these officers just show us a little bit of respect and come here in person so that we wouldn’t have to walk over there with everyone gawking at us as if we were common criminals?”

  “These are busy people, dear,” Reverend Hannes tried to explain. “They’re investigating a most hideous crime, you know.”

  Frida’s eyes were beginning to well with tears. “Yes, precisely. So how should we know anything about it?”

  “Now, now, Frida dear,” said the priest, slipping his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “Tell the men we’ll be there at eleven,” he said to Hogni.

  “Eleven thirty, not a second earlier,” said Frida with a sobbing gasp.

  Hogni took this message down to the school, and Grimur changed the order of the interviews to accommodate the priest’s wife’s request. The questioning was running smoothly, and there were no visible signs of the policemen tiring. Most of the people questioned were in with them for ten to fifteen minutes. The islanders accounted for their movements between Sunday night and Monday morning and also provided the names of those who could confirm their testimonies. It all proceeded rapidly and efficiently, and there seemed to be no contradictions in the accounts. The overall picture of how Bryngeir had spent the last two days of his life on the island was beginning to sharpen. It was only on that hour while the mass was going on in the middle of the day that no one could comment on his whereabouts. Everyone had been in the church, except for Dr. Johanna and two visiting fishermen who were lying hungover and asleep in an old house they had rented with others.

  Jon Ferdinand only spent two minutes with the inspectors. Thorolfur simply wrote “senile” across the page and sent him away. Little Nonni was the next to enter and corroborated everything Valdi had said about their movements. They had spent the whole evening at home boiling sea stew.

  The priest and his wife then arrived at the school at eleven thirty on the dot.

  Hogni knocked on the door of the school, stuck his nose inside, and announced their arrival. Stina from the telephone exchange was finishing her statement and had nothing new to add, much to her regret. She remembered that the goodwife from Radagerdi had confidentially told her that the Reykjavik reporter had bragged that he’d solved the Ketilsey mystery. It could also be that she had confided the story to someone else later that evening, she couldn’t quite remember.

  “Let the priest’s wife come in first,” Thorolfur said to Grimur, once Stina had left the room. It was clear to him that most of the inhabitants of Flatey had been privy to the reporter’s secret by Sunday evening.

  Grimur vanished out of the room and then reappeared in the doorway again.

  “The priest’s wife refuses to talk to you without her husband being present,” he said. “I wouldn’t argue with her if I were you. She’s quite adamant,” he added.

  Thorolfur smiled. “Bring them both in.”

  An extra chair was placed in front of the desk.

  “I’m sorry for troubling you,” said Thorolfur with a smile. “We felt we needed to question all the islanders. We feel it’s particularly important for us to talk to the more educated and intelligent members of this community, since you obviously have a clearer perspective on things than some of the local workers around here.”

  Frida seemed thrown by this flattering welcome and decided to remain silent and allow Reverend Hannes to answer the questions.

  “We’re happy to be of any assistance,” he said.

  “Did you meet the reporter this case revolves around?” Thorolfur asked.

  “No, not really. He actually knocked on our door early on Saturday evening, but he’d gone to the wrong house. He was looking for alcohol. I shooed him away. After that we spotted him every now and then, strolling around the village or up the pass. We have such a clear view from our living room window.”

  “Can you put a time to these movements, particularly on Sunday?”

  Reverend Hannes thought a moment. “On Sunday we first saw him at around noon, probably at eleven thirty, when he was coming from Thormodur Krakur’s barn. He prowled around the village a bit after that. Then, of course, we were busy preparing the mass and didn’t see him again until late that afternoon when Benny in Radagerdi escorted him up to Krakur’s shed. Benny then came back on his own at around eight. Krakur brought us his half pot of milk at eight and told us that he had authorized the reporter to sleep in his barn if he needed to. Krakur is a generous man, and people sometimes take advantage of that. He’s also a bit gullible and into spiritism.”

  Reverend Hannes glanced at his wife. “Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Frida dear?” he asked. She nodded.

  “Was there anyone else walking on the pass that evening?” Thorolfur asked.

  This time Frida answered: “Hogni, the teacher, came out from the district officer’s house after dinner at around eight, and the magistrate’s envoy came down at around nine and walked across the village to the interior of the island. Krakur then went back up to the shed at around ten. After that we went to bed and therefore didn’t witness anyone else’s movements.”

  Thorolfur jotted down some notes on his sheet and then asked, “Is there anything else you can think of that might be of help to us in this investigation?”

  “No,” Reverend Hannes said, shaking his head, but Frida nudged him.

  “Don’t you remember?” she whispered.

  “Remember what, Frida dear?”

  She took the initiative. “People here on the island have been gossiping about the fact that the Dane had been our guest and that we were the last people to see him. That’s simply not true, and I want it to be known.”

  “Who saw him last then?”

  “When he left us he was going to go to Doctor Johanna to buy seasickness pills. He was so afraid of being seasick. That’s why he left so early. That means that she was the last person to see him, not us, so you can write that down for the record.” Frida punctuated this statement by tossing back her head and crossing her arms.

  Thorolfur thanked the priest and his wife for the chat, and the couple said good-bye, telling the policemen that they were welcome at the vicarage anytime. They could even stay with them if the school was uncomfortable. Frida had taken a shine to them.

  “We need to t
alk to the doctor,” Thorolfur said to his assistant when the priest and his wife had left. “All our leads end with her.”

  A member of the coast guard crew appeared with an envelope. Thorolfur opened it and read its contents. “Yes, we definitely need to speak to the doctor,” he said, folding the paper again.

  Question thirty: The greatest sorcerer. First letter. On the eve of Yule, Svasi the dwarf came to King Harald Fairhair and, using sorcery, turned his mind to a Finnish woman by the name of Sn?frid. Harald married her and loved her to distraction, blinded by Svasi’s spell, which made her seem like the sweetest woman in the world. They had a son together. When Sn?frid died, a veil made by Svasi was draped over her. It possessed such a powerful spell that King Harald found her corpse so bright and vibrant that he refused to bury her and sat by her side for three winters. Then a wise man suggested the veil should be removed from her body and it was done. The body was rotten and gave off a foul smell. Following this, King Harald was so angry about the spell and all the sorcery that he banned the practice of all magic in his kingdom. The answer is “Svasi,” and the first letter is s.

  CHAPTER 47

  After lunch, Hogni was sent down to the doctor’s house to summon Johanna to an interview. It was still raining and cold. Hogni walked swiftly against the wind, tightly clutching the collar of his jacket under his chin. In less than twenty-four hours, everything seemed to have taken a turn for the worse in Flatey, including the weather. And instead of attending to their seal nets and picking eiderdown, farmers sat at home and waited for the inspectors to track down the monster who had started to kill people.