66 Degrees North

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE SHOP WAS one of several with Til Leigu signs displayed on Laugavegur, meaning ‘For Rent’. Vigdís remembered the location: it had been the site of a high-end boutique, way beyond Vigdís’s pocket. And everyone else’s in Iceland nowadays, she suspected.

She had spotted the blue VW Transporter outside with Gulli Helgason’s name and number on it, parked on a side street a few metres away, the front wheel half a metre outside the marked parking bay. She walked in to the shop. Three men were stripping the walls of bright orange paint. A radio was playing Jay-Z loudly.

‘Gulli?’

One of the three men turned towards her. He was older than the other two, probably in his early thirties, with dark hair cut very short and strong tattooed arms. He would have been quite attractive, if it wasn’t for his belly thrusting out aggressively beneath his painters’ overalls.

The man raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m Detective Vigdís from the Metropolitan Police. I called earlier. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.’

The man laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You’re not a cop.’

‘And why not?’ said Vigdís.

‘It’s obvious. You’re black. You can’t be a black policewoman. So who the hell are you?’

Vigdís fought to control herself. She was used to people doubting her identity, but rarely so blatantly. She pulled out her ID, and thrust it in his face. ‘See that? A black face. My face.’

Gulli raised his hands in mock surrender and then held out his wrists as if he was about to be handcuffed. ‘OK, OK. I’ll come quietly.’

‘Very funny.’ Vigdís turned to the other two younger painters who were watching with grins on their faces. ‘You two, outside. And turn the radio off as you go.’

‘Hey! They’ve got work to do,’ Gulli protested.

‘I said, outside.’

The men looked at their boss and then at Vigdís. They shrugged, turned Jay-Z off, and sauntered out into the street.

Vigdís scanned the room. It had been cleared of everything except dustsheets, brushes and tins of paint, as yet unopened. There was nowhere to sit, so they remained standing. ‘Now, where have you been this past week?’

‘Away. On holiday.’

‘Oh, yes? Alone?’

‘No. With my girlfriend.’

‘And where did you go?’

‘Tenerife. In the Canary Islands.’

‘I see. When did you get back?’

‘Yesterday. We started in here this morning.’

Vigdís pulled out her notebook. ‘All right. I want your girl-friend’s name and address, and details of your flights and which hotel you stayed at.’

Gulli shrugged and gave them to her. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘We’re taking another look at the death of Gabríel Örn Bergsson last January.’

‘But why do you want to know where I was last week?’

Vigdís ignored the question. ‘So, on the twentieth of January your brother Björn stayed with you in Reykjavík?’

‘That’s right. He came down about lunchtime. He wanted to go to the demonstration outside Parliament, so I said he could crash at my place.’

‘Did you go to the demo?’

‘No.’ Gulli snorted. ‘I have no interest in that stuff. A waste of time. And look what happened. We got rid of one lot of politicians and now we have another lot who are just as bad.’

‘Did you see your brother that day?’

‘Yes. I had no work on, it’s hard getting work these days. I let him in the flat. We had lunch together. I gave him a key and he went off to the demo.’

‘And you?’

‘I stayed in my flat. Watched TV. Then I met my girlfriend. I was out all night, didn’t get back till the following morning.’

Vigdís jotted it all down. ‘And then you saw Björn?’

‘Yes. And Harpa. She had spent the night with him. I saw her as she was leaving.’

‘Had you ever seen Harpa before?’

‘No. Never. But I’ve seen her since, of course. Not often, but Björn and she are pretty much an item these days.’

‘And what about Björn? What did he do?’

‘Went back to Grundarfjördur that morning, I think. I went out, looking for work. I don’t remember whether I actually found anything. Probably didn’t. But I told all this to the police at the time.’

Vigdís nodded. He had. And what he had told her just now tallied pretty closely with Árni’s notes.

‘Did Björn say anything about the demonstration that morning?’

‘Yes, he did. He told me all about it.’

‘Did he seem preoccupied? Worried?’

Gulli frowned and shook his head. ‘Nah. I don’t know. I didn’t notice anything, and if I did I can’t remember. Now can I get my lads back to work?’

Vigdís could tell she wouldn’t get much of use out of Gulli without a thorough interview at the police station, and probably not even then. The main thing was to confirm his story about his holiday.

‘Thank you for your help, Gulli, and for giving me so much of your valuable time,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness.

She hurried back to the station to call Iceland Express and check Gulli’s flights. On the street outside she passed a traffic warden, and told her about the front wheel of Gulli’s van. Got to keep the thoroughfares clear.

Magnus tramped along the cycle path by the shore of the bay. The Benedikt Jóhannesson files were stuffed in a briefcase at his side. A gentle breeze coming in from the water tingled his cheeks. The sky was a soft pale blue, and the giant rampart of rock that was Mount Esja glowed softly. There was a smattering of snow along the ridge of its summit, the first of the year.

Magnus needed the air. After leaving the Commissioner’s office, he had gone straight back across the road to police headquarters. He explained to Vigdís what had happened, and extracted a promise from her to keep him informed of what she and Árni turned up. The news that Magnus had been taken off the case seemed to make her even more determined to break it. Magnus was impressed.

As long as they kept their heads down, he thought there was a good chance that she and Árni would make progress. If Baldur didn’t stop them.

Magnus was angry: angry at the Commissioner, angry at Sharon Piper, and what was worse for his emotional equilibrium, angry at himself.

He kept walking as he pulled out his phone and called her.

‘Piper.’

‘It’s Magnus.’

‘No news on Virginie Rogeon, I’m afraid. Her husband still hasn’t checked in with his employer.’

‘Damn! I really needed something firm to tie Ísak into this case.’

‘We’ll get there.’

‘It might be too late.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The National Police Commissioner here got a call from your anti-terrorist unit.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, oh.’

‘Was he upset?’

‘You could say that. I’m off the case.’

‘You’re what? Oh, Magnus, I’m sorry. Did he give you a bollocking?’

‘I don’t know what a bollocking is, exactly, but he was pretty pissed. Sharon, why did you do that when I specifically asked you not to? I knew what would happen. I thought I could trust you.’

‘Oh, come on, Magnus, think about it. I had to do it. If there was any chance at all that you were on to something, I’d look like a right idiot if I hadn’t told people back here. Don’t worry, they’re not taking it too seriously, or else there would be a plane load of them on the way to Reykjavík. They are focusing on the Dutch angle.’

‘Dutch angle?’

‘Yes. A farmer saw a guy the day before the shooting. He was nosing around in the woods from where the shots were fired. The farmer thought he had gone for a pee. They found a hole in the earth big enough to contain a rifle; they assume the man must have been burying it. The man’s motorbike had Dutch number plates.’

‘Did he give a description?’

‘Not much. Just that the guy was wearing a light blue jacket.’

‘What have the Dutch got against your Chancellor?’ Magnus asked.

‘There is a Muslim community in Holland. Although it could just as easily be someone passing through.’

‘Al-Qaeda?’

‘That’s their favourite theory so far. Although Al-Qaeda tends to prefer blowing people up to shooting them.’

‘Interesting.’

‘I am really sorry, Magnus. I appreciate you taking me into your confidence.’

‘Don’t give me that bullshit, Sharon! I trusted you and you screwed me. It’s that simple.’

‘I did what I thought I had to do.’

‘Yeah, right. Well, keep me in the loop. And talk to Vigdís; she’s still on the case at our end. Especially if you do get a firm ID on Ísak. I’m thinking maybe he was preparing the ground in London for someone else. The guy who pulled the trigger.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Sharon. ‘I’ll bear it in mind. Sorry, Magnus.’

‘Yeah.’ Magnus hung up.

Sharon’s contrition took some of the sting off Magnus’s anger. He liked her. What was that word she had used? Bollocking? He’d never heard that one before.

For some reason what rankled most about the Commissioner’s ‘bollocking’ was the crack about Magnus not being a real Icelander. That was because it was partially true. But he knew that even if he had spent his whole life in the country he would still have alerted Sharon to the possibility that Ísak might have been in Normandy. He would always put finding the truth before political niceties, whether he was in Boston or in Iceland.

That was just the way he was.

What was the Commissioner thinking of anyway? Magnus hated it when his bosses talked about the ‘bigger picture’, the ‘political angle’. Justice wasn’t like that. The law wasn’t like that. If someone broke the law, especially if that someone had murdered someone else, then it was Magnus’s duty to bring him to justice. Not just Magnus’s duty, everyone else’s.

Simple. Once politics took precedence over the law, things fell apart. He’d seen it in Boston and now he was watching it in Iceland.

He wondered whether the Commissioner would follow through on his threat to send him back to America. Perhaps that would be a good thing. Perhaps the Commissioner was right, Magnus wasn’t a true Icelander at all. This wasn’t where he belonged: he belonged on the streets of Boston, processing the dead bodies with holes in them.

He could go back to Boston, and Ingileif could go to Germany. That would be good for her. But it would be a shame. He still didn’t know what kind of relationship he had with her. Her explanation that it was because of him that she wanted to stay in Iceland surprised him. And pleased him.

He walked on towards Borgartún, the avenue lined with the gleaming new bank headquarters. Just in front of it, in its own green island surrounded by roads and modern offices, was the Höfdi House. It was an elegant white wooden mansion built at the beginning of the twentieth century, and famous as the meeting place of Reagan and Gorbachev in 1986. It was also the place where Ingileif had asked him to meet her to talk about the case he was working on when he had arrived in Iceland the previous spring. The place where Ingileif changed in his eyes from being another witness to something more.

He realized that in his mind the Höfdi House would always be connected with her.

He crossed the road and sat on the wall outside the house. He pulled out his phone again and called up her number.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

‘Oh, hi, Magnús, I’m with a customer.’

‘OK. Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?’

‘I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m going to the public Icesave meeting in the Austurvöllur square.’

‘You are?’

‘Yes. Don’t sound so surprised. I’ll come to your place when I get back. It might be late. Very late. Got to go.’

That was strange. Typically strange. An exhibition at a gallery or a party for the beautiful people, Magnus could understand. But a political meeting? Although Ingileif shared the average Icelander’s anger at the Icesave bail-out loan, until that moment, she had shown no interest in getting actively involved. And what was that about being late?

Magnus shook his head. What was she really doing? He never really knew where he was with Ingileif. It unsettled him.

He wondered what to do next. He should probably put in an appearance at the police college some time during the day. They wouldn’t be expecting him, but the Commissioner might check up. He had cancelled his teaching for the week, but he had a law class after lunch which he was supposed to attend: he probably ought to show up for that. That was several hours away.

But he couldn’t just walk away from the Óskar Gunnarsson case. And he was intensely curious to read that thick file on the Benedikt Jóhannesson murder. The café on Borgartún where he had met Sibba was close by. He decided to get himself a cup of coffee and look at it more carefully.

Benedikt was murdered between Christmas and New Year 1985, on 28 December, to be precise. He lived on Bárugata, a street in Vesturbaer just to the west of downtown Reykjavík. It was five o’clock in the evening, it had already been dark for an hour and a half, and it was snowing.

Benedikt’s adult son, Jóhannes, had stopped by the house later that evening, and found his father lying in the hallway, dead.

Unsurprisingly, a major investigation was launched, led by one Inspector Snorri Gudmundsson, the current Big Salmon himself. It was thorough, boy was it thorough. Because of the snow, very few people were out and about, and those that were couldn’t see anything. The only person identified near the house at the time acting suspiciously was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. He claimed he was trying to find shelter to light a cigarette. Nothing Snorri could do would shake him from this story.

Forensics produced nothing, although since the case was twenty-five years old the report was much less detailed than Magnus was used to. There were no signs of a break-in, implying perhaps that Benedikt knew his attacker. There were a couple of footprints in the hallway, which was slightly unusual. In Iceland guests would always take off their shoes when they entered a house. Size forty-three. Which was about nine in the US system, Magnus guessed. About average for a man. If, of course, they belonged to the murderer.

The investigation got nowhere, but that wasn’t for want of trying. Snorri was an energetic investigator, and Magnus could guess the pressure he was under. The file was bursting with interviews, including one with the famous writer Halldór Laxness, Magnus noticed. Benedikt had no real enemies, but any rivals were interviewed and alibis checked. There was one notoriously sensitive fellow writer whose most recent book Benedikt had reviewed with heavy irony. The writer claimed he was at home alone reading all evening. Despite his lack of an alibi, and all Snorri’s efforts, there was no proof linking him to the murder.

It turned out Benedikt had had a brain tumour. There was an interview with a doctor at the hospital who had told Benedikt in February of that year that he had only six months to live. Timing a little out, thought Magnus, but not by much. Questions had been asked, but none of Benedikt’s friends or children seemed to know anything about it. He had kept the knowledge to himself.

The tumour must have been quite advanced when he died. Magnus wished he had the pathologist’s report. It was pretty clear from the file that Benedikt had been stabbed, but the search for a knife with a three-inch blade had turned up nothing. With any luck the report would show up on Magnus’s desk in the next day or two.

Snorri had then begun to interview every burglar who had ever been arrested in Reykjavík; a major undertaking that had taken weeks. Magnus was amused to see that Baldur Jakobsson’s name appeared on the bottom of many of the reports of these interviews. There was no mention of any interviews with anyone at Bjarnarhöfn. Why should there be? It was decades since Benedikt had lived at Hraun.

Snorri could not find a single hard lead. No suspects, nothing. Twenty-five years on, the murder of Benedikt Jóhannesson was still a complete mystery.

Magnus tucked the file away in his briefcase, and left the café. There was one more thing he wanted to check about his grandfather.

The National Registry was right on Borgartún. As befitted the very heart of the national bureaucracy, it was the scruffiest building on the street. Magnus had some difficulties with the clerk, who regarded his Boston Police Department badge with scepticism. He still hadn’t got himself an official Reykjavík Metropolitan Police badge, and he wouldn’t until he graduated from the police college. However, the clerk smiled when he mentioned that he was working with Vigdís Audarsdóttir, whom she clearly knew, gave Vigdís a quick call at police headquarters, and then asked Magnus what he wanted.

It took her only a moment to confirm what Magnus had suspected. Although Hallgrímur Gunnarsson of Bjarnarhöfn in Helgafellssveit had a kennitala, or national identity number, he had never been issued with a passport.

Björn ordered himself a second cup of coffee from the counter. This place was expensive. You’d never pay that much for a cup of coffee in Grundarfjördur.

He took it back to the table he had been occupying for the last twenty minutes. He was in the café in the upper reaches of the Pearl, a grey bulbous building squatting on top of Reykjavík’s hot-water storage tanks. It was situated at the summit of a small hill overlooking the whole city. It had been chosen because the approach road up to the building from the main thoroughfare was open and empty. Impossible not to spot a car following you.

It had taken him a little longer to reach Reykjavík in the pickup than on his motorbike, but Björn had driven fast. He tended to drive fast when he was tense. And there was no doubt he was tense. He would soon be face-to-face with Harpa. He hoped he had the courage to see his plan through.

Through the broad expanse of glass he looked west out across to the sea, itself gleaming a pearly grey in the sunshine. In the foreground was the irregular crossed triangle of the runways of the Reykjavík City Airfield. And the spot where Björn had dumped Gabríel Örn’s body nine months before.

But before he faced Harpa, Björn had some people to see. Where the hell were they?

‘Björn! How’s it going?’

Björn felt a heavy pat on his shoulder, and turned to see Sindri and behind him the neat figure of Ísak.

‘Let me get some coffee,’ said Sindri. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’