Daybreak

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  The nurse had wiped blood from the boy’s face and thrown the tissues into a garbage can. Birkir bent down, fished one of them out, and slipped it into a plastic bag.

  “That gives us something to compare with,” he said.

  A cell phone rang, and Gunnar dug his phone out of his pocket.

  “Gunnar speaking,” he said in a loud voice.

  “Cell phones should be turned off in here,” the doctor said irritably, but the detective seemed not to hear her. He just grinned broadly, revealing a prominent gap between his large front teeth.

  “Yes, let’s hear it,” he said.

  His smile quickly disappeared and he covered his free ear with his other hand to better hear the voice on the other end.

  When the call ended, the nurse heard the large detective say quietly to his colleague, “We’ve got to put this on hold and drive up to the Dalasýsla district immediately. To Búdardalur. Someone’s been killed with a shotgun.”

  12:40

  “Left here,” Gunnar said. He grabbed the handle above the door with his right hand to brace himself for the turn and pressed his cell phone to his ear with his left. They were about to reach the intersection at Dalsmynni in Borgarfjördur; the sign ahead indicated that a left turn would lead them to Route 60. Birkir was, as usual, driving—quickly but safely—while Gunnar alternated between talking on the phone and eating the dried fish he had bought at the gas station in Borgarnes, where they had stopped to fill up. In between activities, he felt obliged to give Birkir directions.

  “I know,” Birkir said, braking sharply before taking a tire-screeching left-hand turn. “And I know how to get to Búdardalur,” he added, accelerating out of the turn and onto a straightaway. They raced up an ascent and then onward into the valley. Driving conditions were good; it was bright and dry, if somewhat chilly, and traffic was light. They were in an unmarked squad car, but they had stuck a blue priority light on the roof before leaving. Although Birkir was mostly thinking about the investigation that awaited them, he was enjoying the trip; he rarely got the chance to drive fast over such a distance.

  Gunnar put his phone away and checked his safety belt for the fifth time. Then he divided the rest of the dried fish in two.

  “Want some?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” Birkir replied, and Gunnar stuffed both bits into his mouth at once. The two of them had very little in common, including their eating habits. Gunnar was continually hungry and always snacking, whereas Birkir ate three regular meals a day and nothing in between.

  They drove over the Brattabrekka pass and on through the dales of Middalir. A succession of isolated small farms flashed by on the right; on the left, a rocky stream and the mountain above it flanked the road. Eventually the valley widened on both sides.

  Gunnar’s efforts to get information about the case as they drove had produced few results. They had the name and address of the victim—the sheriff of Búdardalur had provided that when he’d called in for assistance. Forensic specialists had already driven west ahead of them; no doubt they had arrived and were starting their work. Two teams back in Reykjavik, where the victim came from, were looking into his personal history, informing his relatives, and so on. The whole operation was under the command of Magnús Magnússon, the detective superintendent in charge of the Violent Crime Unit at Reykjavik’s police headquarters. Birkir and Gunnar knew that everyone was waiting for them to arrive at the scene and begin their investigation.

  It was almost two o’clock when they neared Búdardalur, and Gunnar called the sheriff’s office for directions to the location, an area next to a remote farm named Litla-Fell. They soon found the turnoff and drove slowly a couple of kilometers along a bumpy dirt road.

  As they rounded a sharp bluff, the farm buildings came into view, five hundred meters or so farther into the valley. The farmhouse itself stood on a beautiful ledge halfway up a hillside clad in low birch scrub that swept gently up to the foot of the mountain behind. At the bottom of the slope were the outbuildings—a jumble of shacks with corrugated iron roofs and turf-and-stone walls. A large pile of manure sprawled in front of one of the shacks, and outside another was a small, dilapidated corral made from rotten bits of wood. The three lambs inside it nuzzled at the enclosure.

  The farmhouse was a steep-roofed, single-story building clad in corrugated iron, which at some point had been painted green and white. Next to the house was a tarred timber storehouse. In the farmyard stood two old tractors and some rusty hay-making machinery.

  Birkir stopped the car and considered the farm. It was as if time had stopped here decades ago and failed to start again, he thought.

  “Valley of time…house of silence,” Birkir murmured, not caring whether Gunnar understood this observation. His partner was used to hearing him utter weird phrases and knew that a reply was not expected. Sometimes Birkir spouted bits of poetry; at other times it was just his own abstract thoughts that came and went. They were never written down.

  “The field’s a bit farther in, I think,” Gunnar said, pointing to a rough track that led off the road. Birkir drove on. Four horses by the side of the track looked up and followed their progress for a moment, then resumed their leisurely grazing. They seemed to be used to people passing this way.

  After a few hundred meters they came across an abandoned vehicle, a Nissan Patrol that had been parked next to the track, at the edge of the hay field. They stopped there for a minute to assess the situation.

  Two more vehicles were parked about a kilometer west of the farm buildings, next to some neglected meadows—a police patrol car and an unmarked van they knew belonged to the detective division’s forensic team. Tall grass growing between the wheel tracks brushed the underside of the car as they continued on toward the other vehicles.

  As they arrived, two men got out of the patrol car and walked toward them. One was a uniformed officer with a beard; the other, striding ahead of him, was a slim man in his sixties wearing a gray suit.

  “You do speak Icelandic, don’t you?” he asked, scrutinizing Birkir.

  “Yes, I speak Icelandic,” Birkir replied wearily, adding, “Admittedly, I occasionally misuse the dative case in the second-and third-person plural, but apart from that my Icelandic is quite passable.”

  The man looked at Birkir suspiciously, seeming not to know what to make of this. Then, having studied the ID badges the pair wore, he introduced himself. “My name is Hákon Einarsson. I am the district sheriff.”

  The uniformed cop standing behind the sheriff gave a quick salute and said loudly, “Good afternoon.”

  “Thank you for coming,” the sheriff said. “Your colleagues have started their investigation.” He pointed toward two white-clad forensic officers crouching over a bump a hundred meters away.

  “What happened?” Gunnar asked.

  The sheriff replied, “It’s a goose hunter. He’s been shot; he must have died instantly.”

  “Accidental shooting?”

  “No, definitely not. At least two shots fired at him. Maybe more.”

  “What was his name again?” Gunnar looked at his notebook.

  The sheriff replied, “His name is Ólafur Jónsson. A lawyer from Reykjavik.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Gudjón, who lives on the farm here at Litla-Fell, found him this morning.”

  “Do you have any more information?”

  “More?” The sheriff thought about this and looked at his feet, uneasy. “Well, there is one thing I think…” He hesitated, unsure of himself. Finally he straightened up and said firmly, “I think you should know that the deceased was the legal owner of this land. He bought it at a court-ordered auction just over two years ago. There was a verbal agreement that the former owner might continue to live here on the farm. Ólafur rescinded that agreement this summer, but old Gudjón has utterly refused to leave the farm and is still residing here, along with his livestock.”

  The sheriff nodded in the direction of a few sheep lying in the
field nearby, chewing their cud. “He’s got nearly a hundred sheep,” he added, scanning the valley as if he were counting. “Ólafur’s legal representative has made a formal request to my office to evict Gudjón from the farm. That matter is being dealt with according to the appropriate procedures, but it was, as I say, indeed the former owner and current occupant of the farm who discovered the body this morning.”

  “So was there actual hostility between them?” Gunnar asked.

  “Yes, well, I think you could say that they were not on the best of terms.”

  “So do you think Gudjón could have done this?”

  The sheriff was flustered. “I hope not,” he said, “but the old man is, apparently, extremely eccentric and hot tempered. I am told that when he was a young man he was known for getting into fights. I have been dreading having to deal with this cursed eviction all fall.”

  “You said that Ólafur had a legal representative acting on his behalf,” said Birkir. “Why didn’t he deal with this matter himself?”

  The sheriff gave a slight shrug. “My understanding is that he was always busy with bigger cases. He had a lot of foreign dealings, apparently.”

  “Have you spoken to Gudjón today?” Gunnar asked.

  “Not really,” the sheriff said. “He called us this morning to report the incident and then met us here at the farm to show us the location. We decided not to pursue further questions since we knew you were on your way. We don’t have much experience with cases like this in our district, as I’m sure you know.”

  Gunnar turned to Birkir. “Let’s go take a look.” He nodded toward the crime scene. “We can talk to Gudjón afterward.”

  They walked along the edge of a ditch toward where the forensic officers were working. They quickly spotted a dead dog, but did not make out the body of the lawyer until they were almost upon it—his camouflage gear blended in with the ground beneath his corpse.

  Gunnar said, “Did you know that color-blind people can’t see camouflage?”

  “Oh, is that a fact?” Birkir replied.

  “Yeah. Color-blind soldiers see their opponents just as plainly whether they’re wearing camouflage or not. That’s why they’re often drafted to the front line.”

  “Do you think that the killer was color-blind, then?”

  “No, not really,” Gunnar answered. “It was just something that popped into my head.”

  “I see,” said Birkir.

  The blood that had collected into a big pool beneath the body was now dark brown and mixed with the earth. The body was missing its left leg, which lay close by. The head was in terrible condition, evidently shot at very close range. The scents of damp soil and blood lingered in the air.

  The sight left Birkir mostly unmoved, which surprised him. Seeing a corpse in this condition was, after all, not an everyday experience for him. It was just that his connection to the dead man felt so impersonal. He knew, however, that this would change over the coming days as the team pieced together all they could find out about this man. Maybe that would lead them to his killer; maybe not.

  They approached one of the two forensic officers, a short woman clad in white disposable coveralls with elastic cuffs, and wearing rubber gloves. They knew Anna Thórdardóttir. Though she was not yet fifty-five, she looked at least seventy, her thin, wrinkled face and tired, dark-ringed eyes bearing witness to forty years of heavy smoking. She was the most experienced member of the forensic team, and though some of her colleagues found her pigheaded, she was, in Birkir’s opinion, the best. He was pleased to see her here. She didn’t often venture far from her laboratory, never mind all the way out in the country.

  She greeted them brusquely with her hoarse smoker’s voice and lit a cigarette.

  “What can you tell us?” Gunnar asked.

  Anna took some deep drags before replying. “There were a number of shots fired here in a small area. Shotgun fire. Some of them hit this guy.” She pointed to the body with her cigarette. “Some were from quite a long range, forty meters or more. The parka took most of those.” She bent down and pointed to some small holes in the garment. “Then one close-range shot took his leg off, from between three and six meters away, I’d guess. We’ll check that more thoroughly later. Finally, he was shot in the head from very close range, less than a meter.” She flicked the ash off her cigarette into a small black plastic canister—the type used to store 35 mm film—which she held in her other hand.

  “Coup de grâce,” said Birkir.

  “Coo de what?” Gunnar asked.

  “Never mind,” said Birkir. “It’s French, I think.”

  “Then he took a souvenir,” Anna said. “Or that’s what it looks like.”

  “How so?” Gunnar asked.

  Anna took a final drag from her cigarette and stubbed it out in the canister. She snapped on its lid and put it in her pocket.

  “Look here,” she said, leaning over the body. She pointed to an irregularly shaped hole in the parka, over the heart. The top layer was missing, exposing the white lining beneath. “The murderer must have cut out this piece from the fabric.”

  “What for?” Gunnar asked.

  “I have no idea,” Anna replied.

  “The hole wasn’t already there?” Birkir asked.

  “No, the whole garment is covered in blood, but there’s none on the lining,” Anna said. “And it looks like a rather new parka; it hasn’t been worn much.”

  Gunnar said, “Maybe he’s taken this as a trophy, like when a hunter takes the tail of a mink that he’s shot.”

  “Maybe,” Anna answered.

  Gunnar asked, “Can you picture the course of events?”

  Anna pointed to the remnants of a ruined stone wall nearby. “That’s where the hunter must have hidden while he waited for the geese. There’s a camping stool there, and a shoulder bag for a shotgun. His decoys are still in the potato patch. It looks as if one of them was hit from long range. The person or persons then fired on the hunter from this ditch and also from the hillside up there.” She pointed. “It was the shooting from the hillside that drove the man from his shelter. The shot that took his leg off must have come from the ditch, also the one that killed the dog. The attacker was either very quick on his feet or there were two of them.”

  “Do you know what kind of shot was used?”

  “Yes, we found some spent shells both in the ditch and on the hill. They’re all the same type: red Federal Premium 12 gauge. We should be able to work out if they all came from the same weapon. If we find a gun, we’ll probably be able to determine whether it’s the right one. The firing pin makes a mark on the primer when you fire. The mark is always the same and it’s distinctive for each gun.”

  “What about the victim? Did he fire his gun?”

  “Yes. There are a few empty shells around the ruin that probably came from him. They are the same type as the shells in his belt: green Remingtons. He also fired three emergency flares from there. Elías recognized their spent shells.” Anna nodded toward her colleague kneeling by the ruin and added, “He says, actually, that nobody uses those flares anymore because they’re bad for the gun barrels. The guy probably didn’t care about that.”

  “Where’s his gun?” Gunnar asked.

  Anna shrugged. “It’s vanished.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Someone needed a shotgun.”

  “Do you think that the killer took it?”

  “Probably.”

  Gunnar looked into the ditch. “Any footprints?” he asked.

  Anna lit another cigarette before answering. “There are no obvious prints, but the grass has been flattened both here in the ditch and behind the boulders where we found the shells. We have asked for a good tracker dog to be sent here. Maybe he can find some tracks leading from here.”

  “Anything else?”

  Anna pointed the cigarette at her colleague, who was on his knees by the stone wall. “We’re gathering up any loose shot to see if they can tell us more abo
ut the weapons. The size and composition of the pellets, for instance, could be significant. Maybe we can guess how many shots were fired.”

  There was a brief silence; all three seemed deep in their own thoughts. Finally Gunnar said, “It’s an odd weapon to use for murder. It’s not easy to kill a man with a shotgun, even with magnum shells. It’s got to be short range. With a rifle you can easily kill from long range.”

  Birkir answered, “It probably shows it wasn’t premeditated. Either that or the killer didn’t have another weapon available.”

  “Then there’s the leg,” Gunnar continued. “You couldn’t possibly inflict an injury like that with ordinary bird shot. And at close range, though the force is much greater, there’s hardly any spread, so it would have just blown a hole through the thigh. The range has to be just right for the spread of pellets to act like the blade of a power saw.”

  “We might have to experiment with similar shot in order to determine the exact range,” Anna said.

  Gunnar looked around. “Whatever. This all demonstrates determined intention,” he said. “We must find out if anyone apart from Gudjón had any grievance with the victim.”

  Anna added, “It looks as if the deceased returned fire without inflicting the slightest wound. There isn’t a trace of the assailant’s blood anywhere he’s been. Of course, his clothing may have fresh pellet holes in it—if you ever find it.”

  She handed them a plastic bag containing a car key, a pocketknife, and a goose whistle. “This is all we found in the guy’s pockets,” she said and returned to her task.

  Birkir and Gunnar watched her for a while as she photographed the body from all angles, and then photographed the severed leg and the dog. They felt confident that she would not miss anything of significance in this place, but they also knew it might take a day or more to finely comb the whole area.

  They turned and walked back to the cars. This far north the sun was already sinking, and there was a chill in the air. The sheriff and the local cop were waiting for them in the patrol car, and Birkir and Gunnar got into the backseat.