Daybreak

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  “We found a number of spent shells left by the Gander in Dalasýsla, and two at Rangárvellir. We’ve established that they’re all of the same type, Federal Premium, and that they were all fired from the same weapon. In the Mýrar killing the murderer fired one shot but we couldn’t find a shell. We do, however, have the pellets and the fragments of the wadding and shot cup that we found in the wound on the body. The range was too short for any significant spread of the shot to have taken place, but long enough for the shot to only partially penetrate the body. We have been trying to put these fragments together to figure out what the make is. Our conclusion is that the shots that hit Ólafur and Fridrik are of the same type—they’re common goose-hunting rounds. The shot that hit Vilhjálmur is also a common goose-hunting round, but of a different make, Hlad Original. This type is produced here in Iceland, and the wadding is easily recognized. Another point of interest is that these shells are the same type as what the witness had in his gun. It’s not possible to verify that the shot that killed the victim came from that weapon, but the only spent shell we found at the scene was from the gun the witness used.”

  The detectives looked at each other.

  “So you think Ragnar murdered his father-in-law?” Magnús asked.

  “I do not draw conclusions,” Anna said, taking a drag on her cigarette. “I report facts. You draw conclusions and work on them. Another thing worth reminding you of is the fact that no patch was cut from Vilhjálmur’s jacket, as happened with the other victims. The business of the patches was not mentioned in the media, so the copycat did not know about it. If, that is to say, it wasn’t the Gander that killed Vilhjálmur.”

  Magnús raised his hand and said, “If this theory is correct, how come Ragnar recognized Hjördís from a picture—knew her name and that she’s a lesbian?”

  Everyone looked at Símon.

  “I don’t know,” Símon said. “He was quite sure about it.”

  Birkir said, “Hjördís has, on the other hand, flatly denied having known Vilhjálmur. It is also very unlikely that she would have been looking for an apartment just now, since she has a very decent home and she’s planning to go to New York soon.”

  “Any other problematic points?” Magnús asked.

  Gunnar replied, “Ragnar didn’t mention that he had fired a shot at the scene until I had checked his gun and brought it up in questioning. The Gander would surely have reloaded if he’d been shot at, and then there’d probably be spent shells on the ground.”

  “Anything else?” Magnús asked.

  Birkir replied, “This solution would explain why we didn’t find any suspicious person in the area after the murder despite extensive searches. That didn’t figure.”

  Magnús nodded. “Right. Let’s take this bit by bit. Motive, intent, opportunity.”

  Gunnar said, “The opportunity is obvious. The intent is surprising. Motive?”

  “Money,” Birkir replied.

  “How so?” Magnús asked.

  “Ragnar and his wife are Vilhjálmur’s sole heirs. Maybe Ragnar didn’t want to wait decades to get their inheritance. Vilhjálmur seems to have been healthy and still active,” Birkir said.

  Magnús said, “If it turns out that this death is not the Gander’s responsibility, then we’ll have to change the whole pattern of our search for connections. We’ll need to reexamine everything we’ve got.”

  “Do we go pick Ragnar up right away and question him again?” Gunnar asked.

  Magnús nodded. “If he is guilty, we’ll need to get a confession from him. The evidence we have is not sufficient to convict him. You’ve got to be clever.”

  Magnús’s phone rang. He picked it up and listened. When he hung up he said, “It was the computer guy. We have information on the Hotmail address at last. It was set up on one of the computers that are for public use at the City Library.”

  Birkir asked, “Are there logs of who uses them?”

  “They’re going to check on that for us.”

  16:45

  Birkir and Gunnar arrived at the house in Fossvogur to find Ragnar outside raking leaves. He was clad in blue work pants, a gray fleece jacket, yellow gardening gloves, and high black rubber boots. He had heaped three small piles of brown leaves on the grass and was working on a fourth. He didn’t look up as they approached, but continued to rake with slow, mechanical movements.

  The detectives stood next to him and Gunnar said, “Good afternoon, Ragnar.”

  “I’m nearly finished,” Ragnar said, still not looking at them.

  “We need to ask you to accompany us to the police station,” Gunnar said.

  “I just need to put the leaves into a bag so they won’t blow away. It won’t take me long.”

  Gunnar looked at Birkir, who nodded.

  A black plastic trash bag lay by one of the leaf piles, which Ragnar began to transfer into the bag.

  “Let me help you,” Birkir said. Bending down, he took the bag and held it open while Ragnar scooped the leaves into it with his hands. With that pile cleared, they went on to the next one, which went the same way. In the end, Birkir had to pack the leaves down into the bag to make room for the last pile. They did all this without saying a word, watched by Gunnar. When the work was done, Ragnar picked up the bag and looked sadly around the garden. “Fall has arrived,” he said.

  “Do you want to change your clothes before we go?” Birkir asked.

  It seemed to take time for this to register, but eventually Ragnar shook his head. “No. My dear Bára’s fallen asleep in her chair. She’ll wake up if I go in. Better go with you just as I am. This won’t take long, will it?”

  “Hopefully not,” Birkir replied.

  “It would be good to get back before she wakes up,” Ragnar said.

  He closed the bag with a knot and took it to the garbage area. Birkir followed him with the rake.

  “We can go now,” Ragnar said.

  Gunnar opened the rear door of their sedan and indicated for Ragnar to get in. He closed the door, went around to the other side of the car, and got in the back next to Ragnar. Birkir drove.

  “This is a beautiful house,” Ragnar said, looking out the rear window as they exited the parking lot. “We’ve lived here for twelve years.”

  No more was said on the way to the police station. Birkir parked the car in the detective division’s space, and they went into the building through the rear entrance. Ragnar took his boots off in the lobby and stood them against the wall. Then he followed them along the corridor in his stocking feet.

  Dóra met them.

  “We’ve received another question,” she said.

  Birkir showed Ragnar into an interview room and waited by the open door.

  “Let’s hear it,” Gunnar said.

  “Who was Buffalo Bill? We’ve got until ten o’clock tonight.”

  “An American buffalo hunter and circus artist of the nineteenth century,” Birkir said.

  “No,” replied Gunnar said. “It’ll be a trick question. That much we’ve learned.”

  He thought for a moment and then asked Dóra, “Did you look on the Internet?”

  “Yeah, there were five hundred thousand pages.”

  “We’ll need help with this,” Gunnar said. He jotted a phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Dóra. “Call this number and speak to Emil Edilon. Say hi from me and tell him the question. Tell him I’ll get in touch later. Don’t worry if he starts saying bizarre stuff. Just ignore him.”

  Dóra made herself scarce, and Gunnar followed Birkir into the interview room. It was sparse—just a table and four uncomfortable chairs, with a two-way mirror on the wall that was visible from the next room. On the table there was a tape recorder and a brown document box marked “Vilhjálmur Arason.”

  Gunnar pulled out a chair and motioned for Ragnar to take a seat. Birkir took the chair opposite Ragnar and switched on the recorder. “Ragnar Jónsson, school teacher, is here for questioning and is hereby informed that his leg
al status is that of a suspect in the investigation of the death of Vilhjálmur Arason on September twenty-fourth last. Present are detectives Birkir Hinriksson and Gunnar Maríuson. Do you understand what it means to have the legal status of a suspect?”

  Ragnar nodded.

  “Can you please say it out loud?” Birkir pointed at the recorder.

  “Yes, I understand,” Ragnar replied.

  “You may refuse to answer our questions, and you may request that an attorney be present.”

  “I know,” Ragnar said.

  “Would you like an attorney to be present?” Birkir asked.

  “No. That’s unnecessary trouble.”

  Gunnar took out his notebook and began. “Our inquiries have revealed that your father-in-law’s murder differed in significant detail from the other goose-hunter homicides we have been investigating. Can you explain that?”

  Ragnar shrugged.

  “Out loud, please.” Birkir pointed at the recorder.

  “No. I can’t explain that.”

  “Please describe for us the killer you saw,” Gunnar said.

  “She was wearing camouflage hunting gear and had blonde hair, I think.”

  “What fucking bullshit is this?” Gunnar bellowed. “When I first talked to you, you said it was a guy.”

  “That’s what I thought I saw.”

  “So why do you say now that it was a woman?” Gunnar rasped.

  Ragnar hesitated before saying, “The policeman that spoke to me yesterday said the murderer was a woman. He was very kind.”

  “And you recognized her from a picture?” Gunnar asked.

  “Um…yes.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I can’t remember. Something ending with ‘dís.’”

  “But you remembered it when the policeman spoke to you yesterday, didn’t you?”

  “No, not to begin with. He told me, and then I remembered it.”

  “Herdís,” Birkir said.

  “Yes, that’s it. Herdís.”

  “Or Hjördís,” said Gunnar.

  “Was her name Hjördís?” Ragnar asked.

  “You haven’t a clue who this woman is, and you’ve never seen her,” Gunnar said. “But let’s talk about the actual shooting. You fired one shot at the gunman. Why?”

  “To frighten him. So he wouldn’t come after me.”

  “Was he likely to do that?”

  “Yes. He came running and aimed his gun at me—I mean, she did.”

  “This is not the description you gave me on Sunday.”

  “No, but I can remember it now.”

  Gunnar threw his hands up in the air. “We’ll be here all day if this bullshit goes on.”

  Ragnar said quietly, “I can’t stay here long. Bára will be waking up soon. She can’t be left alone.”

  Birkir said, “We will be quick if you tell us the truth now.”

  Ragnar looked at Gunnar and then back at Birkir. “I’d like him to leave. He makes me nervous. I can’t think when people yell at me.”

  Gunnar got up and sighed. “I’ll take a break. You want some coffee, Birkir?”

  “Yes, please,” Birkir replied. “Ragnar, would you like some coffee, too?”

  “Yes, thank you. With a little milk, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  Gunnar made a face and went out, slamming the door behind him.

  Birkir said, “Gunnar Maríuson leaves the room. Interview is suspended.”

  He turned off the recorder and leaned across the table.

  “This is just between the two of us,” he said. “We need to find a way to make this easier for all of us.”

  He opened the box on the table and took out an empty shotgun shell in a plastic bag.

  “This is the shell my colleague retrieved from your gun,” he said. “Our forensic people have collected every single fragment of the round that killed your father-in-law: the shot, the wadding, and the shot cup. The range was so short that it all entered Vilhjálmur’s body; most of it stuck there, and what was left went through him and was found on the ground just in front of him. Our forensic team is piecing it all together now under a microscope. Once they’ve done that, we can prove that the shot came from this shell. Then we shall have no further conversation with you, and the case will be sent to the prosecutor. You will be charged with murder. If, on the other hand, you decide to be open with us, we might be able to help you out. Maybe we could establish it was an accident. Involuntary manslaughter. Like in a car crash.”

  Ragnar sank down in the chair. “I can’t tell my Bára that I did it.”

  Birkir held his breath. This was an unexpected surrender, but it wasn’t enough. Ragnar had to keep talking.

  “I’ll tell her it was an accidental shot,” Birkir said, “if you tell me the whole story now.”

  He restarted the recorder.

  There was a long silence, and then Ragnar spoke quietly. “I have always dreamed of having a small single-family home with a sheltered yard where I can make all the gardening decisions for myself—about the flower beds, the rose bushes, and the trees.”

  Ragnar raised his voice. “Where I live now, I always have to go to the other renters in the building to ask permission to do my planting and gardening. Some of the young parents are not pleased; they think my interest in keeping things tidy prevents their children from playing in the yard. I don’t know why they complain. It’s in the building rules that nobody can play soccer on the lawn.”

  Ragnar looked seriously at Birkir as if to emphasize the importance of this homeowners’ association regulation.

  “I see,” Birkir said.

  Ragnar continued. “I think I’d better go back a bit. Bára and I met at the elementary school where I teach. At that time she was working in the children’s cafeteria. I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly taken with her to begin with, but her father owned this fishing company. He was a widower and Bára was his only child. I had decided early on in life that I would marry a woman who was well-off in order to secure a reasonable financial future, and I knew that Bára was due to receive a generous inheritance. So I began to spend time chatting with her in the school kitchen. We then started dating, and subsequently got married. I rather assumed that Vilhjálmur would help us in our times of want, and that bit by bit we would be able to save up enough for somewhere nice to live.

  “You see, Vilhjálmur was very well-off, financially, and also owned a trawler. Neither Bára nor I earned high salaries, and then she had to give up working when she put on all the weight. Her legs couldn’t take all the standing. She has become more or less an invalid, but she has refused to apply for disability pension. It’s a sensitive issue for her. So we’ve had to live off my teacher’s salary, which is not great. Vilhjálmur knew this and yet he never helped us in any significant way. Then, when he was sixty, he retired and sold his company—the boat, his fishing quota, the whole business. He said he was going to use the money as his pension. He gave us a miserly sum toward buying a bigger car, as Bára couldn’t get into our old Golf anymore. I knew that was all we would be getting from him.”

  He fell silent.

  “Tell me what happened last Sunday,” Birkir said.

  “That morning, when we were on our way to the hunting ground, Vilhjálmur was talking about how happy he was that I looked after Bára so well. He said that I was such a good and considerate husband and son-in-law, and that he felt relief that he didn’t have to worry about his daughter. He said he was looking forward to traveling all over the world and leading a comfortable life for the rest of his days. He had worked out how much he would be able to spend each year until he reached eighty. Then he hoped to find a place in a nursing home, unless, of course, Bára and I wanted to offer to have him. He was blathering on about it the whole trip, and I realized that Bára and I would never have our own house—he was going to fritter away all the money. Then we arrived at our destination, and it occurred to me as I walked behind my father-in-law, away from the car,
that it would be incredibly convenient if the killer were to pick him.

  “Then I just sort of held the gun up and kind of aimed it at him thinking that it wouldn’t take much, and then it just accidentally went off and he fell like a log. And I didn’t mean to do it.” Ragnar had begun to weep.

  For a while there was no sound apart from his sobbing; then Gunnar appeared bearing three cups of coffee.

  Birkir said, “Detective Gunnar Maríuson enters the room.”

  Gunnar put the cups on the table.

  “There’s one more thing,” Birkir said. “Why did you try to put the blame on this young woman whom you didn’t know at all?”

  The question seemed to surprise Ragnar. “Well,” he said. “Hadn’t she already committed several murders? Would one more have made a difference?”

  “Maybe not,” Birkir said. “We will have to impound your weapon and your ammunition. Will you consent to that or would you prefer for us to get a warrant?”

  Ragnar fished a key ring from his pocket. “You can go get the gun. It’s in the storeroom at home.”

  He pointed at the keys. “This blue one is the front door key and the yellow one is the storeroom key. It’s labeled two-one. The two stands for second floor and the one stands for apartment number one. I labeled the storerooms myself.”