Death in Dalvik

Seven

He lay on his stomach at the brow of the hill, looking down the valley towards the fjord. A low, flat island floated close to the near shore. The cluster of white buildings that was the village of Dalvík squeezed itself between its mountain and the water, while a large blue trawler edged its way into the harbour.

It was a chilly September morning, but he was dressed for it. Rays of sunshine sprinkled the waters of the fjord, and the river winding down towards it. A tight black ball of moisture was rolling along the valley to the south-west in his direction.

A bit of rain would be good. A lot of rain would be better.

Enough to wash away evidence that he had been here.

Then he saw it. A lone figure on a horse, picking its way up the hillside towards him, at least a kilometre away.

He edged backwards until he was out of sight, and then hurried down the reverse slope along the path. The spot he had picked was in a kind of hollow created by a stream tumbling down the hillside, invisible from anywhere but above, high on the summit. And there was no one up there. Just a pair of ravens circling, their loud croaks echoing off the rocky walls across the valley.

He sat, removed his glasses — they were expensive and he didn’t want to damage them — and grabbed his ankle, allowing himself to slump crookedly against a stone, a small day pack by his side.

He waited.

The horse appeared over the brow of the hill, a short, tough-looking animal with a reddish coat and a thick pale mane. The rider was preoccupied, and took a moment to spot him, even though he was only fifty metres away.

He waved and cried out. ‘Hello!’

The rider saw him, and set her horse down the gentle slope at a fast trot, or rather a weird kind of smooth run he had never seen before.

He winced.

The rider pulled the horse up next to him and said something to him in rapid Icelandic.

‘I’ve hurt my ankle,’ he replied in English. ‘I think I might have broken it.’

The rider jumped off her horse. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she said. ‘Let me take a look.’

‘Thank you.’ He smiled, moved his leg, and then let out a short cry of pain.

The woman crouched down next to him. She was in her forties with thick red hair and a warm, comforting smile. Quite attractive, he thought.

‘Let me take off your boot,’ she said.

As she bent over his foot, he shifted his right hand out from beneath the day pack by his side and swung the knife hard into her stomach.

A moment later, he was hurrying along a path back up the side of the mountain, her riderless horse whinnying as it dashed in the opposite direction towards home.

Eight

‘Want some coffee, Petra?’ Dísa asked. ‘I’ve just made some.’

The girl blinked, pushing back her thick dark hair. She was wearing pyjamas and had just emerged from Jói’s room. It was nearly eleven, but it was a Saturday. Jói was a night owl anyway — he usually worked late into the small hours of the morning, and his girlfriend was happy to do things his way.

Petra was happy pretty much all the time. Dísa envied her. She was Australian of Greek heritage, about Dísa’s age, and had met Jói the year before when she had been a student at the university. She had decided to drop out of Australian uni, stay in Reykjavík and start a career as a barista. This suited her. She didn’t seem to Dísa to do anything when she wasn’t working except lie around next to Jói fiddling with her phone.

Jói seemed just as happy with that arrangement. Petra was attractive in an exotic way for Iceland: large and soft, with olive skin, sleepy black eyes and dark hair.

Dísa was in her first year at the university. She was studying economics and had planned to share a place with Kata, her friend from Dalvík, who had signed up for English Literature. But then Kata’s boyfriend Matti had suggested that he and Kata live together in Reykjavík — he was starting at the same time — and Dísa had released Kata from her obligation to share a flat with her.

Which meant Dísa was stuffed. Jói allowed her to stay with him and Petra in his flat in Gardabaer until she sorted herself out. At least six months of the coronavirus pandemic had kept the tourists away from Reykjavík, removing some of the pressure on housing.

‘You won’t have to put up with me much longer,’ said Dísa. ‘I think I’ve found somewhere.’

‘No worries,’ said Petra. ‘You’re good here.’

Dísa smiled, knowing Petra meant it. It was a lovely modern flat built just before the crash; large, triple-glazed windows looked out over the bay towards the President’s residence on Álftanes. Nice, but not very big. Dísa was occupying Jói’s study, and since he was working from home in the pandemic, fiddling about on his computer with whatever he did for the games company, that was a bit tight all around. Dísa tried to spend as much time as she could at the university. Jói seemed to do most of his work at night in the living room while she was asleep.

‘Thanks, Petra.’

‘Did you say you’d found somewhere?’ Jói said, emerging from his bedroom, yawning.

‘I hope so. I saw a girl last night. She’s offered me a place in her flat. I need to see it first, but it sounds OK. She’s on my course, but I don’t know her very well. She seems nice.’

‘Great,’ said Jói. He gave her his habitual vacant smile. His fair hair coiled in tight curls around his brow and his round cheeks were so pale they were almost translucent. He was twenty-seven, but he had a look of mild innocence about him that made him seem much younger. Dísa sometimes thought he looked like an angel — an angel after a rough night, perhaps.

‘Thanks for letting me crash here,’ she said.

‘No, it’s been good,’ said Jói.

‘Yeah.’ And it had. Dísa had always liked Jói and had resented the way their parents’ domestic arrangements had kept her away from her brother. She hoped the month they had spent together would forge a bond they could keep as adults.

She wasn’t certain how Jói felt about it; her intuition was he felt the same.

Her phone buzzed. She checked it.

‘Hi, Anna Rós,’ she said.

For a moment there was silence. Then the sound of a sob.

Dísa darted a look of panic towards her brother, who was pouring himself a bowl of cereal.

‘Anna?’

‘It’s Mum. She’s dead.’

‘What!’

‘Someone’s murdered her. Stabbed her. I found her out here on the mountain. The police are on their way. It’s horrible! You’ve got to come home, Dísa. You’ve got to come quick!’

Nine

Magnus ladled chunks of lobster and scallops on to the linguine piled high on two plates and carried them to the table.

Tryggvi Thór poured two glasses of Sauvignon from the bottle. ‘This looks great,’ he said.

‘I used to make it back in Boston,’ Magnus said. ‘There was always plenty of lobster around.’

‘You should spend more Saturday nights here.’

‘I might just do that.’

Tryggvi Thór glanced at his lodger. ‘Eygló kicked you out, has she?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ said Magnus. ‘I don’t know. I just want to keep my independence, that’s all.’

‘Because I wouldn’t be surprised if she had kicked you out.’

‘She hasn’t kicked me out.’

‘Kicked yourself out?’

Magnus watched the old man’s alert dark eyes watching him under black eyebrows.

‘Not really,’ said Magnus.

‘Hm.’ Tryggvi Thór slurped up his pasta. ‘You know, I thought I’d be rid of you one of these days. It’s been three years.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Magnus. For most of that time he had spent the majority of his evenings and weekends at Eygló’s place, keeping his stuff in his room at Tryggvi Thór’s house, paying rent, and occasionally showing up, especially when Eygló was travelling for her work. Everyone seemed content with that relationship: Magnus, Eygló, Tryggvi Thór and even Bjarki, who had stayed with him on Álftanes sometimes when Eygló was away.

Or at least he had thought everyone was content. Now he wasn’t so sure.

That morning, Magnus had sent Ingileif a text:

Hi. I hope you are all OK. Any chance I could see Ási some time?

He hadn’t received an answer yet.

His phone rang. He checked it: Detective Superintendent Thelma, head of Reykjavík CID, and Magnus’s boss.

‘Hi,’ he said, putting down his fork. The linguine was good: he hoped he would get to finish it.

‘I want you on the first plane to Akureyri tomorrow morning,’ Thelma said.

‘What is it?’

‘A murder in Dalvík. Female, forty-seven. Doctor at the hospital in Akureyri. Stabbed while out riding this morning.’

‘Isn’t Ólafur the senior investigating officer?’ Ólafur was the inspector in charge of the small CID in Akureyri. Murders were rare in Iceland, and it wasn’t surprising that reinforcements would be sent up from Reykjavík, but Magnus and Ólafur were the same rank, and Magnus knew Ólafur would object to Magnus showing up.

‘Apparently, there is a cryptocurrency angle. Financial Crimes are not interested, so I decided that you are our cryptocurrency expert and I’m sending you. I don’t care what Ólafur thinks, I’d like you to keep an eye on things.’ Thelma didn’t trust Ólafur any more than Magnus did.

‘But I know virtually nothing about cryptocurrencies,’ said Magnus.

‘You know more than any of the rest of us.’

Magnus had eventually arrested the gang behind the bitcoin mining thefts, and it was true that during the investigation he had learned a bit about the cryptocurrency, though he would hardly call himself an expert.

But he definitely wanted to be involved in the Dalvík investigation, so he wasn’t going to argue.

‘All right. I’ll be there.’

He hung up and turned back to his linguine.

‘Was that your boss?’ Tryggvi Thór asked.

‘Superintendent Thelma, yes. Your old buddy.’

‘Huh.’ Tryggvi Thór glared at him under his thick eyebrows. Tryggvi Thór and Thelma pretended not to know each other, although Magnus had once spotted them together. Every now and then Magnus wound him up about it, although he had no idea what their relationship, if any, was. Tryggvi Thór certainly wasn’t going to tell him.

‘I’m going to the north tomorrow. Dalvík. There’s been a murder.’

‘Dalvík? Huh. Stinks of fish.’

Ten

Grandpa was waiting for Dísa in the white terminal building in Akureyri. The instant she saw him she ran to him and threw her arms around him.

She pulled tight; she wouldn’t let him go.

‘Oh Dísa, Dísa,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘I know, Grandpa, I know.’

Eventually, Dísa released him. He took her suitcase and led her out to his car.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Your mother was riding out on Takki on her usual route along the mountainside. She was alone.’ Grandpa sighed. ‘It looks like someone attacked her. Stabbed her with a knife.’ He stared at the road ahead, a tremor running along his jawline. Dísa waited for him to continue. ‘Takki came back to the farm in a right state, without her, so Anna Rós rode out to look for her with Gunni.’ Gunni was a neighbour who kept a horse at Blábrekka. ‘They found her just lying there.’

‘Oh, my God! Poor Anna! Do they know who did it?’

‘Not yet. The place is crawling with police. The inspector in charge is confident they will find the murderer.’

‘Do they think it’s someone local?’

‘They don’t know. They’ve been asking about Thomocoin.’

‘Thomocoin?’

‘I’d like to talk to you about your mum’s Thomocoin later.’

‘Sure,’ said Dísa.

Her phone rang. ‘Hi, Dad.’

‘I heard what happened to Mum,’ said her father’s voice. ‘Jói told me. I can’t believe it.’

‘I know.’

‘Jói said you were going straight up to Dalvík?’

‘I’m in Akureyri now. Grandpa’s just picked me up from the airport.’

‘That’s good. Tell him I’m very sorry for him. And you. And everyone.’

Dísa glanced at her grandfather. ‘Dad says he’s sorry about Mum.’

‘Tell him thanks.’ Grandpa had no time for Dad after the way he had treated Helga, but Dísa knew he would put that behind him, at least for a few days.

‘And how are you?’ said Dad.

‘I don’t know. My brain has just been whirling since I heard. Jói was great. But I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.’

‘It’s good you’re there,’ Dad said. ‘Give Anna Rós a hug from me. And look after her. And yourself.’

‘I will.’

‘I’d better stay away. But let me know when the funeral is; I’ll come to that.’

‘OK, Dad. I love you.’

She didn’t often say that to her father, but God she meant it.

‘I love you too, Dísa.’

It felt good to be back in the kitchen at Blábrekka with her family.

They had had their supper, but they gathered around Dísa as she ate her grandmother’s lamb soup: Grandpa, Grandma, Dísa and Uncle Eggert, Helga’s brother, who worked in the town hall in Akureyri.

Grief had struck them hard. Dísa, her grandparents and her uncle were stunned by it. Anna Rós was shattered. Sadness was alien to her, so it was disturbing for the others to see her face racked with such grief.

Grandma fussed with the soup, with the dishes, with Dísa’s suitcase. Many more times than necessary, she asked the question on everyone’s mind: Who could possibly have done this?

Grandpa said little, but patted Anna Rós’s hand, and then Dísa’s, and then reached for his wife’s but she withdrew it, eager to keep moving.

Uncle Eggert was full of ideas about what the police might or might not do. Unsurprisingly, they had spent the day at the farm and were due to return tomorrow morning. He had watched way too many British crime dramas on TV.

Dísa liked her uncle. While most adults naturally gravitated towards her prettier, bubblier younger sister, Uncle Eggert had always seemed to be more interested in what she was up to. He had played volleyball himself when he was younger, and occasionally he would come and watch her matches, which was more than her mother ever did.

He was a couple of years younger than Helga. He had never liked the farm work he had had to do as a boy, and had escaped to Reykjavík, with a spell in California, before returning to Akureyri. There he had married, started a career in local government, bought a house and produced three children — Dísa’s cousins — the oldest of which was eight. There was long-standing tension between him and Grandpa about the farm and Eggert’s lack of interest in it. Dísa’s theory was that neither one of them was a natural farmer, but at least Eggert realized it. In recent years the tension had thawed, and Eggert had even helped Grandpa with his computer, without which it was hard to run a farm in the twenty-first century.

They had been staring at each other all day, so Dísa’s arrival was an opportunity for a change of subject. They asked her about university and the COVID virus in Reykjavík, how people were responding, how the case figures were beginning to rise again after falling to almost zero, and how she had to wear a mask to lectures — so far, in the pandemic, Icelanders had rarely worn masks. After an early surge in cases in the spring, Iceland had got the virus under control, to the extent that in the summer life had gone on almost as normal, apart from the lack of tourists. Then, in July, the government had let the tourists back in, and with them had come the virus, so that by now in September cases were ticking up.

It gave them all something to do, something to talk about.

At about ten o’clock, Eggert said he should be going home. Grandma and Anna Rós went up to bed, leaving Dísa with her grandfather.

‘Dísa?’ he said. ‘Do you think you could get into Helga’s Thomocoin account? I don’t know how to do it.’

Dísa smiled weakly. ‘Yeah. I set it up for Mum. I know where she keeps her wallet, and I set up her password.’

‘Will you be able to give them instructions? To sell the Thomocoin?’

‘I guess so,’ said Dísa. ‘Is the exchange running yet?’

Dísa had transferred all her bitcoin to Mum three years before. With Fjóla’s help, she had set up a Thomocoin wallet for her mother and used the bitcoin to invest in it. Which had worked out well. The end of 2017 had been a wild ride for bitcoin. The price had doubled to almost twenty thousand dollars in December before crashing off, at one point falling 25 per cent in a single day. The new Thomocoin that Helga had bought had retained its value, and indeed the price had grown slowly but steadily over the following three years.

But in order to convert Thomocoin into real money, there needed to be an exchange through which to sell it.

‘Not yet,’ said Grandpa. ‘The haters are still managing to stall it. But approval from the Icelandic government is very close.’

‘I didn’t know you knew much about Thomocoin,’ said Dísa.

‘I have to,’ said Grandpa. ‘The future of the farm depends on it. And I bought some myself, you know? Not nearly as much as your mother, but enough to make a nice little return.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘A lot of people in town bought it. And Eggert. And some of Helga’s colleagues at the hospital.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Dísa.

‘Oh yes. Mind you, it was good for your mother. She got a cut of all the Thomocoin sold, a kind of commission for herself. Half in Thomocoin, half in bitcoin. Which she used to buy more Thomocoin.’ Grandpa smiled. ‘She had quite a pile.’

Dísa wasn’t sure what to make of Grandpa’s interest in her mother’s crypto-fortune. Anxiety about the viability of the farm was certainly fair enough. But there was a flash of greed in his eyes, the same flash that she had seen occasionally in her mother’s.

And why hadn’t Mum told her that she had been persuading all and sundry to buy Thomocoin?

Dísa suddenly felt very tired. ‘Don’t worry, Grandpa. I’m sure I can get into Mum’s wallet. But I’ll do it later, OK?’

‘OK,’ said Grandpa, relieved.

‘I’m off to bed now.’

Dísa lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of her mother. Her smile. Her unruly red hair. Her infectious laugh. Her warmth. There was something about being hugged by your mother that nothing — no one — could replace.

She tried to think of her first-ever memory of her. Was it in that house in Fossvogur? No, it was being dropped off at nursery and screaming her head off at the fear that she was going to be abandoned. She had sat on her mother’s lap and Mum hugged her. Then Mum had stayed with her as they both watched the other kids playing.

Eventually Mum had left Dísa, and it had been OK because Dísa felt strong.

How old had Dísa been? Three?

The tears came. She sobbed.

Then, later, spent, she waited for sleep to come. But it wouldn’t.

Thoughts of Thomocoin drifted into her consciousness and she hung on to them as a distraction. There wouldn’t be a problem logging into Mum’s wallet, would there? She knew the password for Mum’s cold wallet, and she knew where it should be. Should be. What if Mum had put it somewhere different?

Well, then she knew where Mum had hidden the paper copy of the private key. In a box under a stone at the back of the farm, next to the rock where the hidden people had lived for centuries.

Most farms in Iceland had a family of hidden people living with them, usually in an identified rock or mound. Neither Grandpa nor Grandma put much store in them, but Dísa remembered her great-grandmother had been a firm believer. In fact, just after Mum had been born, a hidden woman had come to her great-grandmother in the night to tell her the new baby should be named Helga.

Helga it was. You didn’t argue with the hidden people. And you certainly didn’t argue with Great-Grandma.

Dísa had suggested the hiding place, remembering what Dad had told her about how he had stashed his private key at his summer house, which was supposed to be inhabited by the local hidden people. She and Mum had selected a stone by the rock where the Blábrekka hidden people lived, and dug a little hole underneath it, together.

Sleep didn’t come.

Dísa got up and went down the landing to her mother’s room, switching on the light. She stood there, silent, her gaze drifting over the bed, the bedside table, the wardrobe. Mum had made the bed that morning, but there was underwear strewn on a chair. And there were photographs. Of Anna Rós, of Grandpa and Grandma. Even of Great-Grandma. And one of Dísa, aged about five, laughing in her mother’s lap.

The cold wallet USB stick should be at the back of the bottom drawer under her mother’s sweaters. Dísa opened it, and felt around. Nothing.

What now? Should she search the whole room? Maybe it would be in the desk by the window?

She couldn’t face it.

The sensible thing to do would be to wait until it turned up somewhere, as it probably would once they started going through Mum’s things. But Dísa didn’t want to wait. And she liked the idea of looking in the secret hiding place she and her mother had dreamed up together for an eventuality like this.

So she pulled on jeans and a sweater, crept downstairs and out of the back door, making sure not to awaken Hosi, the farm sheepdog.

It was a cool, fresh night. The sky was clear, and a three-quarter moon illuminated the mountainside above the farm in a shimmering blue. Dísa stared at it, allowing her eyes to adjust. Blue slope. Blábrekka.

A dim, glimmering curtain of green swished and swayed in the sky above the horizon to the north, over the fjord. She had missed the northern lights in Reykjavík. They were much less visible there with all the ambient light from the city, whereas here in the valley the heavens were dark and clear, and the aurora could perform in all its glory. When there was no cloud, of course.

She knew that the large barn would be full of a warm, seething mass of wool. The week before, Grandpa and the other farmers in the valley had ridden up to the mountain with their dogs to bring the sheep down for the winter. Many would be sent off to the slaughterhouse at Blönduós, but the survivors would be shorn and spend the winter indoors until right after their lambs were born the following spring.

The elves’ rock was fifty metres higher up the slope from the barn, over rough ground. Dísa found the stone, the largest of a group scattered next to it.

Dísa didn’t believe in hidden people but, nevertheless, she felt compelled to announce her intentions.

‘Good evening,’ she said to the stone. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I just need to get something of my mother’s. She died yesterday.’ Dísa looked up and along the hillside to where Anna Rós had found Mum. ‘But you know that, don’t you?’

She listened for a response. There wasn’t one.

For a second she felt foolish. Yet she thought of her ancestors on the farm, going back countless centuries, who had communicated with the hidden people by this very rock.

It wasn’t so dumb.

She knelt down and lifted the flat stone. Underneath was the shallow hole and the clear plastic food-storage box she had watched Mum place there, a folded sheet of paper dimly visible inside.

She carried it indoors.

Back in her bedroom, she flipped open her laptop and logged on to the Thomocoin site, carefully typing out the string of characters of the wallet address and then the private key which her mother had copied out on that scrap of paper three years before.

Wow.

At the current Thomocoin price of $338, Mum’s total holdings were worth $2.6 million!

Wow.

Dísa scrolled over the transaction history. Mum’s initial purchase was there at the Thomocoin launch price of a hundred dollars. So the price had more than tripled over three years. Not a bad result since during that time prices of all the other cryptocurrencies had fallen sharply and had only recently recouped their losses. As Grandpa had said, more Thomocoin had been added to the wallet over the years with the label ‘commission’, and Mum had made a steady series of top-up payments, presumably with the bitcoin she had also received for selling Thomocoin to all her friends.

For a small town, Dalvík contained quite a few wealthy people, Dísa knew. Throughout the twentieth century, it had been a big fishing port, its harbour crammed full of small fishing boats, which meant that when in the 1980s fishing quotas had been granted to every fisherman based on his catch in the year 1983, it had been a bonanza for many of the town’s inhabitants. Over the years, almost all the fishermen had sold their quotas on to the large fishing company which now dominated the town and its harbour. The bright little fishing boats had disappeared, to be replaced by large trawlers fishing the consolidated quotas with brutal efficiency. As a result, Dalvík’s former fishermen had serious money to invest. As did their heirs.

Mum had known them all.

For the first time, Dísa wondered what would happen to all her mother’s money. She didn’t know if Mum had made a will, but she knew that under Icelandic law the children inherited most of it anyway. Which meant her and Anna Rós.

With $2.6 million they should be able to secure the future of Blábrekka.

Yet another tear ran down Dísa’s cheek.

Mum would like that.

The back streets of Dalvík were dead. Which was just how they should be at 1 a.m. in the middle of a pandemic. They had probably been just as dead at 10 p.m., but he wanted to be safe.

He always wanted to be safe.

He was walking uphill out of town towards the ski lift, which was dimly discernible in the moonlight. Behind him the horizon shimmered green — the northern lights. He paused for a moment to admire them, then left the road to skirt the village along the lower slopes of the mountain.

As he approached the church, silhouetted against the fjord, he counted back to figure out which was the house he wanted.

It was large by Icelandic standards, a simple rectangular structure made of concrete with a corrugated metal roof, a double garage and a shed. He had decided to try the shed first, around the side of the house.

It was unlocked. He couldn’t see anything inside, but he avoided risking the flashlight on his phone until he had shut the door behind him.

The shed was full but well organized. A snowmobile took pride of place in the centre, and two sea kayaks leaned against one wall. Shelves stacked with tools, tarpaulins and fishing equipment lined the back wall. Bags of salt, shovels and spades crowded the front wall near the door.

He stood and thought. He needed a good hiding place, but not one that was too good.

His eyes alighted on the kayaks.

Perfect.

He unslung the day pack from his shoulder and took out a plastic bag. He extracted the item with his gloved hands, and dropped it into the kayak, out of sight a little way down from the seat, at about the place where your feet would go.

Then he turned off the flashlight on his phone and slipped out of the shed into the Dalvík night.

Eleven

The aeroplane descended as it approached Akureyri, following a broad valley with mountains pressing in on either side until it passed over a small airport and banked 180 degrees above the town to head back towards the runway at the head of a fjord. Although Akureyri was the largest town in Iceland outside the Reykjavík area, it was tiny by American standards: fewer than twenty thousand souls clustered around a twin-pronged church on a hill at the head of a long thin fjord that pointed due north towards the Arctic Ocean.

Magnus searched for the settlement of Dalvík halfway up the western shore, but it was hidden by a kink in the fjord. He remembered he had stayed there once with his father and little brother on one of their joint trips back to Iceland from Boston when he was a teenager, but he couldn’t recall much about it, except there were a lot of fishing boats.

As the plane landed he checked his phone. One missed call. Eygló.

He considered skipping it, but if he was going to call her back, now was the time to do it, before he became fully embroiled in the investigation.

‘Hi, Magnús,’ she said as she picked up.

‘Hi.’

‘I got your text that you won’t be here tonight. When are you expecting to get back?’

‘Hard to say. You know what it’s like. If we crack the case today, then maybe tomorrow night. But it could be longer, maybe even a week or more.’

‘Oh.’

‘What is it?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Can it wait?’

‘Not really. I got an interesting email on Friday,’ Eygló said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘It was from an English university. Southampton. They want to talk to me about lecturing there.’

‘That’s good.’ Magnus hesitated. ‘Would they want you to move?’

‘Not right away. I can do it on Zoom from next term. But they would like me to move there next academic year, if I get the job. Next September.’

‘I see.’

‘I think I’m going to say “no”, but I wanted to speak to you first.’

‘Would it be good for your career?’

‘Yes. It’s a good university. And it will make the TV documentaries easier to do if I am living close to London.’

‘What about Bjarki?’

‘A couple of years in British schools would be good for him.’

‘Sounds to me like you should at least go for the interview,’ Magnus said. ‘Or talk to them on Zoom or something.’

Silence. Although she was hundreds of kilometres away, Magnus could feel Eygló’s expression. Not good.

‘Eygló? What is it?’

‘Don’t you know what it is?’

Magnus knew. But he didn’t know what to say.

‘Bye, Magnús.’ And she was gone.

Magnus stared out of the aircraft window as it taxied towards the terminal.

On the surface, all was well with his relationship with Eygló. But for almost a year now, she had been signalling she wanted more. She wanted more permanence. She wanted Magnus to actually live with them. She wanted to get married. She wanted to have a child with him.

And he didn’t. Not really.

He didn’t understand his lack of enthusiasm, and neither did she.

After all, he had been searching for permanence for years, for a family, for a place he could call home, and Eygló was offering that. He and she got on well together. She understood him. Small, lithe and sexy, she was undeniably attractive, in an impish way.

He loved her.

Didn’t he?

He said he did.

In which case, why didn’t he leap at Eygló’s suggestion that they build a life together?

Magnus hadn’t given her an answer. He hadn’t even really acknowledged the question. He was hiding from it. Which was why he had spent the first Saturday night in weeks at Tryggvi Thór’s house.

But now Eygló was framing an ultimatum. Did Magnus care whether she went to England? Either he did or he didn’t. And if he did care, what did that mean?

The plane came to a halt and the passengers scrambled to their feet, eager to be released.

At some point very soon Magnus would have to answer that question.

But not now. Now he had a murder to solve.

Árni’s police car roared into Dalvík, lights flashing. Magnus tried not to shut his eyes as kerbs flew by and pedestrians stared. When he had picked Magnus up from the airport, Árni had said it was important to get to Ólafur’s morning briefing in time, but Magnus knew Árni just liked to drive police cars fast. The journey along the flat straight road running along the side of the fjord from Akureyri to Dalvík had been exhilarating.

It had been good to see Árni’s goofy grin again. He wasn’t the world’s greatest detective, but he and Magnus had worked together in Reykjavík for three years, and Árni had once taken a bullet for Magnus, literally, ending up in hospital. He had married, got promoted to sergeant and moved up to Akureyri, his wife’s town. Magnus didn’t see much of him now, although they had worked successfully together three years before on a murder at Glaumbaer a little further west along the north coast, the case on which Magnus had met Eygló.

Árni screeched to a halt outside the police station, a low scruffy white building — little more than a shed — with a green metal roof just back from the harbour. Between car and station, Magnus caught a whiff of fish, just as Tryggvi Thór had predicted. They were late, but only by a couple of minutes.

Inspector Ólafur was taking the briefing. He had been in charge of CID in Akureyri since Magnus had first arrived in Iceland. Now in his late forties, tall and lean, he was one of the old-school Icelandic policemen and had been suspicious of Magnus and his foreign methods when they had worked together in the past.

Magnus doubted he had changed.

Ólafur interrupted himself when he saw Magnus and Árni enter the crowded room. ‘Magnús? I’m surprised to see you here. I was expecting someone from Financial Crimes.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve got me,’ said Magnus.

‘We asked for someone to look into the critto-currency angle.’

‘I can do that.’

Ólafur allowed his furrowed brow to rise a couple of millimetres. ‘Good. I was just running through what we’ve got so far.’

Magnus recognized two of the detectives whom he had worked with on the Glaumbaer case three years before. There were also a number of uniformed officers, presumably from Akureyri as well as the locals from Dalvík and nearby Siglufjördur, and Edda, head of the forensics team in Reykjavík. She would have been called up right away.

Ólafur described how Helga had been found by the victim’s daughter, Anna Rós, and Gunnar Snaer Sigmundsson, a neighbour who stabled a horse at Blábrekka. It appeared that the victim had been stabbed once in the stomach with a large hunting or fishing knife. No sign of clothing removal or sexual assault. Nothing stolen. The only relevant forensic evidence so far was a partial footprint a few feet away from the body. They might learn more that afternoon after the autopsy had been done.

No obvious suspects as yet.

Helga seemed to get on well with her parents at Blábrekka. She had a daughter at home and another at university in Reykjavík. There was an ex-husband in Reykjavík and a stepson. No current relationship, at least none that had emerged yet — an angle which had to be looked into further. Ólafur assigned a detective to interview her colleagues at the hospital.

Only one sighting of anyone on the mountain so far. Gunnar — the neighbour who had found the body — said he had seen someone walking alone down from the mountain towards the road when he had taken his dog for a walk before driving to Blábrekka. He had never got close, and so Gunnar couldn’t give much of a description, apart from the fact that the walker was wearing glasses and a blue woolly hat, and carrying a small backpack.

They needed to find that man. Door-to-door interviews at the scattered houses and farms between Blábrekka and Dalvík. Ólafur would talk to the press. The police would put an appeal up on the local Dalvík Facebook group, which was already buzzing with gossip.

Helga didn’t have enemies, as far as they knew so far. She had, however, sold a ‘critto-currency’, as Ólafur called it, to a number of locals. Thomocoin. It had done very well and a lot of people had made good money out of it, but the police needed to find out more. Which is why Ólafur had asked for help from Financial Crimes.

That with a pointed look at Árni and Magnus.

‘They didn’t want to know,’ said Magnus. ‘That’s why Superintendent Thelma sent me.’

‘Why didn’t they want to know?’ Ólafur asked.

‘That’s a very good question,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ll find out. And I’ll find out more about this Thomocoin. Can Árni help me? I could use some local knowledge.’

Ólafur nodded and doled out tasks for the day.

As the team broke up, Ólafur approached Magnus. ‘Good to have you on board,’ he said with a stiff smile. ‘We can always use help here.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Magnus.

Ólafur nodded. ‘Just remember that I am the senior investigating officer. Don’t do anything without clearing it with me first. Understood?’

‘Of course,’ said Magnus. ‘Árni and I will talk to Helga’s family to get a better idea about her involvement in this Thomocoin. And I’ll see what I can get out of Financial Crimes.’

‘Go do it.’

Twelve

Dalvík was a prosperous little town of well-maintained white houses, schools, playgrounds and kids on bicycles. Its harbour hosted an impressive array of sheds, concrete wharves, trucks and shipping containers. There were few actual fishing boats in port: most of the smaller boats had sold their quotas to the big trawlers long ago.

A large white church with blue trim overlooked the village, and above the church rose a steep boulder of a mountain, the summit of which was bizarrely emblazoned with the number seventeen in last year’s snow.

Blábrekka stood a few kilometres outside Dalvík on the slopes of a broad, green, rather beautiful valley. Magnus was reminded of the famous phrase in Njal’s Saga, one of his favourites, where the great warrior Gunnar decides not to follow Njal’s advice to run away from his farm, despite the danger from his enemies: How fair the slopes are.

It didn’t end well for Gunnar.

The farm had the usual accoutrements: a green ‘home meadow’, half a dozen horses in an adjacent field, a large barn for the sheep to spend the winter in, huge round white plastic bales of hay and bits of machinery scattered around. From a distance, Blábrekka looked prosperous, but at close quarters it was clear there was a lot of work to be done. Paint peeling, broken doors and fences, old harrows rusting, a 1970s Land Rover that wasn’t going anywhere.

Interesting.

They parked next to Edda’s forensics van and a couple of police cars. A woman of about seventy answered the door, small anxious eyes, lines pointing down a mottled red face, her dark hair hanging wildly around her cheeks. She was wearing a traditional patterned lopi jersey with buttons at the top.

She introduced herself as Íris and led them through to the kitchen, where they were greeted by a sheepdog and a tall, bald man, also in his seventies, with a stoop and a matching sweater.

‘Hafsteinn,’ he said. ‘Hafsteinn Eggertsson. I’m Helga’s father.’

His wife fussed about getting Magnus and Árni coffee and some cinnamon rolls, which Árni grabbed unnecessarily quickly.

‘I’m sure you have spoken at length to my colleagues yesterday,’ Magnus began. ‘I’ve come to ask you about Helga’s dealings in Thomocoin. I understand that Helga had invested in it herself, and that she sold it to a number of friends and neighbours?’

‘She did,’ said Hafsteinn. ‘Including me and her brother. But if you want to talk about that kind of stuff, Dísa is the expert. My granddaughter.’

‘I’ll get her,’ said Íris, leaving the room, and a minute later returning with a very tall, nervous-looking girl with light brown hair.

Hafsteinn and Íris seemed proud of their granddaughter, and with good reason. She gave a clear explanation of what Thomocoin was and how she had introduced it to her mother. Then she fetched her laptop, logged into her mother’s wallet, and showed Magnus her holdings.

‘Am I reading this right?’ said Magnus. ‘Two point six million dollars. Not krónur?’

‘Dollars,’ said Dísa.

‘Jesus,’ said Magnus. He turned to Árni. ‘Does Ólafur know she had that much Thomocoin?’

‘We only discovered it last night,’ said Hafsteinn. ‘When Dísa checked. We knew she had a few hundred thousand. Enough to pay off the mortgage on the farm. But not that much.’

‘I have to ask this,’ said Magnus. ‘Who inherits? Did Helga have a will?’

‘I’m due to see our lawyer tomorrow,’ said Hafsteinn. ‘I know she made a will right after the divorce, and I assume she left it all to Dísa and her younger sister, Anna Rós.’

‘Mum was going to use the money to bail out the farm,’ said Dísa. ‘And if I inherit it, that’s what I’ll do with it too. And so will Anna Rós.’

‘And how old is Anna Rós?’

‘She’s sixteen.’

‘She found the body,’ said Árni to Magnus, with knowing emphasis.

Dísa spotted it. ‘You don’t think Anna Rós did this?’ she said with a look of horror. ‘That’s just mad. Totally crazy.’

Árni had picked up the wrong end of the stick and started waving it around the room. ‘No, not at all,’ said Magnus. ‘I know how devastated both you and she must be about your mum. But in a murder investigation everyone gets asked difficult questions.’

He smiled. Dísa was watching him. She seemed to trust him. ‘All right.’

‘Is it easy to sell this Thomocoin?’ Magnus asked. ‘Is it quoted on one of the cryptocurrency exchanges? Coinbase or Binance, for example?’ He had checked his notes on the bitcoin-mining heist on the plane to refresh his memory about cryptocurrency.

‘That’s a very good question,’ said Dísa. ‘The answer is no, or at least not yet.’

‘Any day now,’ said Hafsteinn.

Dísa ignored her grandfather. ‘Thomocoin was launched almost three years ago, in December 2017. They said then they were working on an exchange that would allow investors to sell their Thomocoin for dollars or euros or even krónur, and it’d be ready in, like, a few months. But it still hasn’t been set up.’

‘Why not?’ asked Magnus.

‘They say that the regulators are taking their time.’

‘It’s the haters,’ growled Hafsteinn.

‘Haters?’

‘Yes. The big banks. The central banks. The governments. They all need to keep control of money. Thomocoin scares the crap out of them. If we all use Thomocoin, then who will need dollars? Who will need banks? So they’ve launched a global PR campaign to discredit cryptocurrencies, especially Thomocoin.’

‘What do you think?’ Magnus said, turning to Dísa.

She glanced at her grandfather, who was glaring at her.

‘Maybe,’ she said diplomatically. ‘I know Mum was worried about it. She called me last week to ask me what I thought. To be honest, I haven’t been following Thomocoin that closely. I gave Mum all my bitcoin three years ago. But it is a bit odd that it’s taken so long.’

Hafsteinn snorted.

Magnus wondered where Dísa had got her bitcoin from. Drugs? Very unlikely, looking at her. Bitcoin mining? A relative?

‘The thing is,’ Dísa went on, ‘if there is a problem, it wouldn’t just be for her. I didn’t realize it until Grandpa told me last night, but Mum persuaded all kinds of people in Dalvík to buy Thomocoin.’

‘And at the hospital,’ Hafsteinn added.

‘And if the exchange never materializes, presumably they’ll all be in trouble?’ Magnus raised his eyebrows. Dísa knotted hers.

‘The exchange will happen,’ said Hafsteinn firmly.

‘Did Helga ever say anything about her worries to you?’ Magnus asked the old man.

‘Not really,’ said Hafsteinn.

‘Yes, she did, Steini.’ His wife spoke for the first time. ‘That’s why she went to Reykjavík last week. To speak to Ómar about it.’

‘Ómar?’ Magnus asked.

‘Helga’s ex-husband,’ said Hafsteinn.

‘He was the one who originally told me about Thomocoin,’ said Dísa. ‘A friend of his set it up. I didn’t know Mum came to Reykjavík last week, Grandpa,’ she said to her grandfather. ‘Why didn’t she come and see me?’

‘Flew down and back in the day,’ Íris said.

‘Is he the one you originally got the bitcoin from?’ Magnus asked Dísa lightly.

‘Er...’ Dísa bore the expression, so familiar to Magnus, of an honest person who has just incriminated herself.

‘Never mind,’ he said. Buying bitcoin was still illegal in Iceland, as far as he knew; he wasn’t sure about Thomocoin. But he wanted Dísa’s help and trust, not her confession. ‘Can you give me your father’s details?’

After he had written them down, Magnus asked for the names of people Helga had sold Thomocoin to. Hafsteinn reeled off a list of a dozen names that he knew about, including himself, his son Eggert and Gunni Sigmundsson. Dísa explained that Helga had received a commission from every sale, and that she had in turn bought the Thomocoin from a woman called Fjóla Rúnarsdóttir.

‘Multi-level marketing,’ said Magnus.

‘What’s that?’ Hafsteinn asked.

‘More commonly known as a pyramid scheme. You get a commission on every product you sell to your friends. It could be vitamin supplements. Or cleaning products. Or a new cryptocurrency. Then when your friends sell the product to their friends, you get a cut of their commission on that. So the higher up the chain you are, or the closer to the top of the pyramid you are, the more money you make.’

‘Yes. I think that’s the way it worked,’ said Hafsteinn. ‘Sounds clever to me.’

‘Until eventually, someone ends up with lots of cleaning products and no one to sell it to. Or lots of cryptocurrency.’

Dísa was watching Magnus closely. ‘Maybe Mum was right to be worried.’

‘Did Helga keep a complete list of those names?’ Magnus asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Hafsteinn.

‘She will have done, knowing Mum,’ said Dísa. ‘It’ll be on her computer. You took that yesterday.’

Magnus turned to Árni, who nodded.

‘What about the password to your mother’s Thomocoin account? Can you give us that, please?’

‘It’s called a private key.’ Dísa looked at her laptop, open to her mother’s wallet on the Thomocoin website. ‘Don’t you need a warrant for that?’

‘We’ve got a warrant for her computer,’ said Árni. ‘We can easily extend that to her passwords.’

‘Then do that,’ Dísa said. ‘The thing is, if you’ve got the private key, then you can take all her money. Just like that.’

‘Don’t you trust the police?’ said Árni, bristling.

‘I think it would be smart to have a judge or someone like that involved,’ said Dísa nervously.

Magnus smiled. ‘You’re quite right. We’ll get a warrant. And we’ll ensure that a judge is around when the private key is first used.’

Thirteen

Magnus and Árni headed back to Akureyri to interview Eggert, Helga’s brother.

‘What was all that about the warrant for the private key, or whatever it’s called?’ said Árni as he was driving along the shore of the fjord, only slightly more slowly than he had been going earlier that morning. ‘There’s a good chance our existing warrant will cover it.’

‘Dísa’s right: we need to be careful about that. With the private key, anyone can just transfer the money to their own wallet.’

‘But we’re the police!’

‘There was a big case in the States a few years ago. They took down Silk Road, a kind of eBay for drugs on the dark web. Two separate law-enforcement officers stole bitcoin from Silk Road during the investigation, once they got their hands on the private keys.’

‘But that’s America,’ said Árni. ‘This is Iceland. No one here is going to steal anything.’

‘Probably not,’ said Magnus, although he wasn’t convinced. In his experience Icelanders could become a little complacent about their honesty and probity — until the next scandal came along. ‘Dísa is a very smart girl, and she can be useful to us. The thing is to win her trust. And accusing her little sister of murdering her mother isn’t the best way of going about it.’

‘You always say we should think outside of the box,’ said Árni. ‘Anna Rós found the body. She had the motive. Dísa herself said the farm needed saving.’

‘She also said her mother intended to use the Thomocoin to do it.’ Magnus had indeed once told Árni he should think outside the box. He regretted it; Árni mostly needed to do more thinking inside the box.

From the car, Magnus called Vigdís back in Reykjavík and asked her to interview Ómar, Helga’s ex-husband.

Then he called Sigurjón, a sergeant in Financial Crimes with whom he had worked a couple of times, on Sigurjón’s mobile.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Sigurjón, it’s Magnús Ragnarsson. Sorry to ring you on a Sunday. I’m in Dalvík, working on the murder. Thelma asked me to take a look at the Thomocoin angle.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Sigurjón sounded hesitant.

‘She said you guys didn’t want to know.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Why?’

‘I can give you the official version.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Thomocoin is an unregulated cryptocurrency. As such, it is not the Icelandic authorities’ responsibility. If Icelandic citizens invest in it, it’s entirely their own decision; they can’t expect any help from us if it goes wrong. Once we start investigating, we’re saying we accept responsibility for regulating it, and that’s something we definitely don’t want to do. Orders from the minister.’

‘Which minister?’

‘That’s a good question. It’s not entirely clear. Finance? Justice? The Prime Minister?’

‘Is it going to go wrong?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Has it already gone wrong?’

Silence for a moment. ‘Maybe.’

‘All right. What’s the unofficial version?’ Magnus was glad Sigurjón wasn’t in the office; it would be easier for him to speak out of turn at home.

‘It’s a political hot potato. Some politicians want Iceland to embrace cryptocurrency as tomorrow’s financial technology. Others want to have nothing to do with it. There are certain politicians who are lobbying for Thomocoin to be recognized as an official currency. Other politicians, and my bosses, think we shouldn’t touch it. Especially after the MLATs we’ve received from the FBI.’

MLATs were mutual legal assistance treaty requests for information.

‘What are they investigating?’

‘Thomocoin. An Icelandic national, Skarphédinn Gíslason, who lives in London.’

‘Investigating for what?’

‘The usual. Conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering.’

‘That doesn’t sound good for Thomocoin,’ said Magnus. ‘Or its investors.’

‘No. Or anyone who was supposed to be regulating it. Which is why my bosses don’t want to get involved.’

‘How many Icelanders have bought it?’

‘Don’t know. We’ve heard of a few. But we’re not counting.’

‘Shouldn’t you be? If it’s fraud.’

‘That’s what the Americans say, not us. Some of our politicians still think it’s the future of money. It’s a minefield, Magnús.’

‘OK. I get it,’ said Magnus. ‘But I’m investigating a murder. I need answers.’

‘And I get that.’

‘Have you got the names of the FBI agents who sent the MLAT?’

‘Yeah, but I’d need to log on to the system at the station. They’ll be closed today anyway. I can send you the details first thing in the morning.’

‘Thanks, Sigurjón. That would be great. Investing in Thomocoin isn’t illegal then?’

‘No. That’s precisely what the fuss is about.’

‘But bitcoin is?’ Magnus remembered Dísa had mentioned she used to own some.

‘It’s a grey area. You can own it, but you can’t buy it or sell it under the Foreign Exchange Act. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if they change that. Mining it always has been legal, of course. All the programs chugging away on those servers out by the airport. But you know all about them.’

‘Indeed I do. Thanks, Sigurjón.’ Dísa’s ownership of bitcoin might be a useful stick to prod her or possibly her father with at some point in the future.

‘No problem. I’m sorry we can’t do more. And Magnús?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Let me know what you turn up. Unofficially. I have a feeling our policy is going to change on this all of a sudden, and when it does it would be useful to have a jump on it.’

Fourteen

Eggert Hafsteinsson lived in a house of green concrete up the hill from the police station in Akureyri, with a wife, three kids, a cat and a view through trees to the fjord. He had just taken one of his kids to basketball practice when Árni and Magnus showed up outside his house.

He was long-limbed, with thinning mousy-brown hair and small round spectacles, and he was wearing a disconcertingly bright orange long-sleeved T-shirt.

He led Magnus and Árni through to a living room. The smell of roast lamb for Sunday lunch wafted in from the kitchen. A small, wan woman wearing an apron appeared, introducing herself as Eggert’s wife Karen, and offered coffee.

There were clear signs of distress and concern on Eggert’s face, but he seemed willing to speak to them.

‘How’s it going? Do you have any suspects yet? I thought the first twenty-four hours were the key?’

‘There’s some truth to that,’ said Magnus, not answering Eggert’s first question. ‘We’d like to ask you about Thomocoin.’

‘Do you think that has anything to do with Helga’s murder?’

‘That’s what we want to find out,’ said Magnus. ‘I understand you bought some from her?’

‘Well, not directly from her. From Thomocoin itself. But Helga said she would get a commission. Which was fine with me. I think I get one too if I persuade any of my friends to buy it.’

‘And have you?’

‘No. That’s not my thing.’

‘Why did you buy it?’

‘It seems like a great idea. It was Dísa’s, really. Have you met her? Helga’s daughter?’

Magnus nodded.

‘I think her father Ómar told her about it. He used to be a banker, but he got caught out after the kreppa. I’m not sure exactly what he did, but he ended up in jail for it. Thomocoin is legal, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not illegal,’ said Magnus, remembering his conversation with Sigurjón.

‘How much did you buy?’ asked Árni.

‘A lot,’ Eggert replied. He took a deep breath and lowered his voice, possibly so his wife in the kitchen couldn’t hear. ‘Three million.’

‘Dollars?’ said Magnus, raising his eyebrows.

Eggert laughed. ‘No. Where would I get that kind of money? Krónur. That’s, what, twenty thousand dollars? That’s a lot of money, don’t you agree? I mean, Thomocoin sounds like a good investment, but it’s clearly risky. My investment’s worth nearly sixty thousand dollars now, according to the latest price. So it’s done well.’

There was something about Eggert which reminded Magnus of his niece, Dísa. It wasn’t just the lanky awkwardness and the brown hair; it was also the shy intelligence.

‘Do you have any concerns about it?’ Magnus asked.

‘Thomocoin?’ Eggert paused. ‘Well, it sounds like a good idea to me. Digital currency must be the future, and the blockchain must be the way to go. But they promised there would be an exchange where investors could sell their Thomocoin for real money and that hasn’t happened yet. That’s got to be a question mark.’

‘Did you talk to your sister about the exchange, or lack of it?’

‘Oh yes. Last time was about three weeks ago.’

‘And did she seem concerned?’

Eggert hesitated. ‘Not exactly. But she seemed less confident than she had been.’

‘Did that worry you?’

‘No. I was pleased. I hoped she’d find out what was going on. Why? Should I be worried?’

Magnus didn’t answer that one. ‘Did you ever meet a man called Skarphédinn Gíslason?’

‘Sharp? He’s the CEO of Thomocoin. I knew him when I was working in Reykjavík many years ago, but not since then. I’ve seen him on Thomocoin videos. Impressive guy. He used to work with Helga’s ex-husband Ómar at a bank.’

‘Do you know Ómar?’

‘I did. Back when they were married. I went to their wedding, of course, and I used to go and see him and Helga sometimes when I lived in Reykjavík. He acted the hot-shot banker in those days. But then he went to jail and they got divorced. Now he’s a dumpy bald guy with a dodgy tattoo on his neck. Sad, really.’

‘Were you and your sister close?’ Magnus asked.

‘Not super-close,’ said Eggert. ‘We’re very different people. Although she went into medicine, she always loved the farm. Whereas I hated it.’

‘Why?’

Eggert ran his fingers through his sparse brown hair. ‘When I was about twelve I realized that I would have to spend the rest of my life working on that farm where my father had been born and his father and his father, going outside on freezing winter mornings to wade around in sheep shit. I had no choice, or so my father wanted me to believe. I didn’t like that.

‘And, eventually, I summoned up the courage to tell him. He wasn’t happy. He talked about centuries of inheritance coming to an end. I told him I just didn’t care. We didn’t speak for years, although we get on better now Helga lives at the farm.’ He stopped himself. Looked down at his hands. ‘Lived.’

He looked up and laughed ruefully. ‘I wanted to see the world and make my fortune. I went to university in Reykjavík and spent a year at college in California studying engineering, so that was something, I suppose. Then I got involved in the whole dot-com thing and tried a start-up in Reykjavík. That’s where I met Sharp — Ómar introduced him to me. At one point I thought we were going to hit the big time, but the crash came and it didn’t get anywhere, so I work for the town council now. Recycling. And I only live forty kilometres from Blábrekka. It’s a pretty dull life, but I like it. It’s my choice.’

‘I see,’ said Magnus.

‘So I was pleased when Helga came back to Blábrekka from Reykjavík after the kreppa. It took some of the pressure off me. That’s when Dad and I started talking again. And they have Anna Rós lined up to take over the farm eventually.’

‘Are you happy with that?’ asked Magnus.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, it’s a large farm. It must be worth a lot.’

‘From what I understand, it has an even larger mortgage. Blábrekka is a liability, not an asset.’

‘Did Helga say anything to you about bailing it out?’

‘Yes, she did. She asked me to help out a few years ago, but I said sorry. I mean, the idea of me bailing out Blábrekka is ludicrous.’

‘Was she upset when you refused?’

‘She said she was, but I didn’t believe her. She always knew there was no chance. And then Dísa did some bitcoin trading or something, and suddenly this Thomocoin appeared. Helga said she would use that to save the place.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered.

Magnus raised his eyebrows. ‘You don’t know what?’

‘I mean, she made a fortune with her daughter’s help,’ Eggert said. ‘And now the farm is going to swallow it up. That farm will swallow us all up in the end. She should have kept the Thomocoin. For herself.’

‘Did you tell her that?’

‘I did,’ said Eggert. ‘She wasn’t having any of it.’

‘Do you know how much Thomocoin she had?’

‘No idea. But it must have been a lot if she was going to pay off the bank. She always acted like it was a lot, but I never asked her.’

Magnus wrapped the interview up. ‘Thank you, Eggert,’ he said. He handed Eggert his card. ‘If you do think of anything else that might be useful, give me a call.’

Eggert held the card and stared at it. He was thinking.

Long experience had taught Magnus that when witnesses stared at his card like that they had something else to say.

Árni got to his feet, but Magnus stayed seated.

He waited.

Eggert glanced up from the card, indecision written all over his face.

Magnus smiled gently.

Eggert looked up at the ceiling. ‘My sister told me something once. In confidence. I’ve never told anyone,’ he said. ‘Not even Karen.’

He nodded towards the kitchen where a fan was whirring in a vain attempt to keep the smell of the lamb under control.

‘If I tell you, can you keep it to yourselves?’

‘Probably not, Eggert,’ said Magnus softly. ‘At least not if it’s relevant. But if it is relevant, if it helps us solve your sister’s murder, then you should definitely tell us. Shouldn’t you?’

Eggert took a deep breath and nodded.

‘It was a few years ago,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Maybe 2015? Or 2016? Helga came to see me; she was really upset. It turned out she was having an affair. With a married man, who lived in Dalvík. She had given the man an ultimatum to leave his wife or Helga would finish things between them. The man had called her bluff. She wanted to know whether she should call it off, or just accept the situation.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I didn’t know what to say,’ said Eggert. ‘I more or less said it was her choice.’

‘Did she leave him?’

‘She said she did when I saw her later. Or at least she said it was over. I don’t know which one of them ended it; I suppose it may have been him.’

‘Was it usual for her to discuss that kind of thing with you?’ Magnus asked.

‘No. I’d asked her about boyfriends once or twice since she split up with Ómar and she hadn’t volunteered anything. But it was clear she needed to talk to someone, and I think she may have thought I had guessed they were up to something.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I’d seen them together many years before when she was still living in Reykjavík, holding hands.’

‘That was a bit of a giveaway, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t say anything to her then, I just acted like I hadn’t seen anything.’

‘So the affair started in Reykjavík?’

‘I guess so. The guy was an MP back then, and spent a lot of time down there.’

‘Who is this man?’ Magnus asked.

‘Gunni. Gunnar Snaer Sigmundsson.’

‘The man who found Helga’s body with Anna Rós?’ Árni said.

Eggert nodded. ‘Yeah. Him.’

Fifteen

Dísa sat on the end of Anna Rós’s bed, listening to Taylor Swift and fiddling with her phone. Anna Rós was fiddling with her phone next to her.

Dísa had been in touch with Jói, who had been calmly sympathetic, but she was mostly communicating with Kata at the university in Reykjavík, who was also supportive. Kata said she would definitely be in Dalvík for the funeral, and insisted that they should go back to their original plan of living together — Matti wouldn’t mind.

But now Dísa and Kata were exchanging dumb texts about Beth in The Queen’s Gambit, a TV show they had both fallen for.

Anna Rós had plenty of friends, but Dísa wasn’t sure they were entirely constructive. Lots of hysteria rather than support seemed to be coming her way.

But it was nice to be in her little sister’s bedroom: pictures from Anna Rós’s early teens of boy bands and horses covering most of the wall space.

She heard a car pull up outside and a moment later the deep rumble of a male voice.

‘That’s Gunni,’ Anna Rós said. ‘I should go downstairs and thank him. He was so nice to me yesterday. I don’t know what I would have done if I had found Mum by myself.’

‘I’m glad he was there.’

‘But I don’t really want to see anyone.’

‘Then stay here,’ said Dísa. ‘With me.’

Anna Rós smiled at her sister and went back to her phone, letting Taylor Swift’s tears ricochet between them.

After a few minutes they heard Grandma’s feet on the stairs and a knock at the door. ‘Dísa? Gunni wants to talk to you. It’s about Thomocoin.’

Dísa exchanged glances with her sister, slipped off the bed and went downstairs.

Grandpa was supposed to be a big man about town. Gunni really was a big man about town. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he had square shoulders, a square face, a barrel chest and tough blue eyes. He had grown up a fisherman but, like most of the others, he had sold his trawler and the quotas he had accumulated to the big local fishing company fifteen years before, to become an MP. He had eventually retired from that, claiming he didn’t like to spend so much time in Reykjavík. Ever since Dísa could remember, he had kept a horse at Blábrekka, which he rode occasionally. His current mount was a black stallion called Fálki.

Everyone liked Gunni. But everyone was just a little bit afraid of him.

‘Hi, Dísa.’ He smiled with a mixture of warmth and sadness. ‘I am so sorry about your mother. As is Soffía.’ Soffía was Gunni’s glacially beautiful wife, who never said anything to anyone.

Dísa nodded in acknowledgement.

‘I have some questions about Thomocoin I’d like to ask you. Maybe we can go for a walk?’

Dísa glanced at her grandparents. It would certainly be easier to talk without Grandpa’s true-believer interruptions. And Gunni was a canny businessman — ruthless even. It would be interesting to hear what he thought was going on with the cryptocurrency.

‘All right,’ she said.

They put on their coats and left the farmhouse. Gunni set off along the hillside, towards the spot where he and Anna Rós had found Mum.

‘Do you mind if we don’t go that way?’ said Dísa.

‘No,’ said Gunni. ‘No, not at all.’

They changed direction, walking along the road for a couple of hundred metres until they came to a path down to the river. The air was fresh, but sunlight gently brushed their cheeks. It was good to be outside. The valley was alive with the cries, chirps, peeps and warbles of countless birds. They turned off the road and followed a stream tumbling down to the water meadows below. A pair of wagtails hopped from stone to stone next to them.

‘You may not know this,’ said Gunni. ‘But I bought some Thomocoin as well.’

‘Grandpa told me.’

‘The truth is, I’m a bit worried about it.’

The warmth had gone out of Gunni’s voice.

‘About the exchange?’ said Dísa.

‘Yes. I’m beginning to wonder whether there will ever be an exchange,’ he said. ‘Or if there ever was going to be one.’

‘I’m sure they’re trying,’ said Dísa. ‘They just haven’t succeeded yet.’

‘Are you really sure?’

‘Yeah. I saw Sharp give a presentation at the launch three years ago.’

‘You see, I wonder if Thomocoin is worth anything at all?’

‘Of course it is,’ said Dísa. ‘I checked the price on the screen this morning: three hundred and thirty-eight dollars.’

‘I can check the screen too. But is that a real price? Maybe it’s just a number some guy in Thomocoin makes up?’

‘That can’t be right,’ said Dísa. She thought about it a moment. ‘It must be a real price. It’s the price that investors pay to buy more Thomocoin. If you logged on and bought some today, you would pay three hundred and thirty-eight dollars.’

‘Sure, if I bought some. But not if I tried to sell some.’

‘But that’s only because there isn’t an exchange yet.’

‘Precisely.’

A pair of snipe shot up into the air from tufts of grass in front of them, chirping angrily and zigzagging on sharp, pointed wings. A group of horses trotted across the field on the other side of the stream to check them out: there were as many horse farms as sheep farms in the valley.

They walked on. Gunni was leaving time for Dísa to think. And she was thinking hard.

‘You’re a smart girl, Dísa. You know what I’m saying. If there never is an exchange, if you can never actually sell any Thomocoin, then it isn’t worth anything.’

Dísa wanted to argue, but she did see what Gunni was talking about. She wasn’t sure he was right — but she feared he might be.

‘Did you speak to Mum about this?’ she asked eventually.

‘Yes, I did. A couple of weeks ago. She said she’d go down to Reykjavík to ask your dad about it.’

‘She went, apparently,’ Dísa said. ‘Although she never told me. Did Dad have any answers?’

‘I don’t know. I called her a couple of times, but she didn’t answer. I was planning to speak to her about it yesterday morning when I came up here to ride.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I never got the chance.’

Dísa glanced at Gunni. He looked worried. He also looked angry.

She felt a surge of panic. What if he was right and Thomocoin was a complete con from start to finish? And Dísa had then made her mother buy it? And her mother had encouraged people in the village to buy it too?

‘I believed Helga,’ said Gunni.

‘You don’t think she knew it was a fraud?’ The moment she spoke the words, she regretted them, admitting as they did that there was something rotten about Thomocoin.

‘No. Your mum really did believe in it,’ Gunni said. ‘Which is why I lent her so much money to keep the farm going. And why I invested so much myself.’

‘I knew she borrowed money,’ Dísa said, surprised. ‘But I assumed it was from the bank, not you.’

‘No, it was me. No bank would lend against Thomocoin. But I did. Twenty million krónur. I’ve got notes from her to prove it. And then, when I saw the price going up, I bought some Thomocoin myself.’

‘Not a lot, I hope?’ said Dísa.

‘A lot,’ said Gunni. ‘Three million dollars’ worth. Which is supposed to be worth five million now. But may be worth nothing.’

Dísa could feel herself blushing. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t her fault at all. She had never told Gunni to buy any Thomocoin — she didn’t even know he had. Gunni was a grown-up businessman; he could make his own decisions about investments.

But she could easily believe that Mum had urged him on.

And together with the Thomocoin she was due to inherit, she felt she had inherited her mother’s guilt as well.

They had reached the river, which here paused to form a broad pool among the water meadows. Two swans drifted towards them. They turned and retraced their steps back up the slope towards the farm. From down here, Dalvík was out of sight, but the ever-present island of Hrísey sunned itself out in the fjord.

‘I want the money back, Dísa. I want it now.’

The voice was low and urgent and commanding.

‘What?’

‘I want you to repay your mother’s loan.’

‘But I can’t,’ said Dísa. ‘You know Mum had no cash. That was why she had to borrow from you in the first place.’

‘You have the private key to her Thomocoin,’ Gunni said. ‘Helga told me once she’d told you where it’s hidden. Don’t deny it.’

Dísa considered doing exactly that. But instinct told her the way to beat Gunni wasn’t to lie to him.

She stopped and turned to face him. She was a good six inches taller than him. But he was powerful and used to intimidating men bigger than her. He looked up at her, his square jaw thrust towards her. He took a step forward.

‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

‘In that case, transfer two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Thomocoin to my wallet now.’

Dísa swallowed.

‘No,’ she said.

‘What do you mean, no? Your mother owed me the money. I want it back.’

‘Have you spoken to Grandpa about this?’

‘No. But I will if necessary. I am sure he can be made to understand the right thing to do.’

He probably could, thought Dísa. Grandpa would crumble.

But she wouldn’t.

‘It’s Monday tomorrow. Grandpa is going to see the lawyer about Mum’s estate. I’ll go with him. If you are right and you can prove you lent Mum the money — and I believe you, by the way — then you can talk to the lawyer about how to get it back from the estate. Only then will I transfer the Thomocoin.’

‘But that’s why I’m talking to you now. You could do it just like that.’ Gunni clicked his fingers. ‘On your phone.’

‘No,’ said Dísa, looking right into Gunni’s hard blue eyes. ‘Anyway, why do you want Thomocoin if it’s worthless?’

‘I’ll get what I can take,’ said Gunni. He jabbed a short finger at Dísa’s face. ‘I liked your mother. But if she is responsible for losing me three and a quarter million bucks, I swear I won’t rest until I’ve got it back. From you.’

Dísa kept her voice calm. ‘I understand we owe you the money you lent Mum. But if you decided to buy that much Thomocoin, that’s your problem. Not mine.’

Anger erupted in Gunni’s eyes. He dropped his arm and his fingers clenched into a fist. For a moment Dísa thought he was going to hit her. She wanted to flinch, close her eyes, raise her arm, duck her head, but she didn’t.

She forced herself to stare into that anger.

‘Stupid bitch,’ he muttered and turned on his heel. Dísa swayed as she watched him stride back towards the farm.

She needed to find her mother’s USB stick and put the paper copy of the private key back in its hiding place.

But if Gunni was right — and Dísa feared he was — it wouldn’t matter if all her mother’s Thomocoin was stolen. It was all worthless anyway.

She looked up the valley to Blábrekka, standing proudly on the lower slopes of the mountain. That would be gone.

And it wouldn’t just be Gunni who would lose money. People all over Dalvík had trusted her mother and trusted Thomocoin. Dalvík was a small place and people had long memories. In twenty years’ time, people would pass Dísa in the street and think she was the woman who’d lost them or their family their life savings.

They would be just like Gunni. They wouldn’t forgive.

Why, oh why had her mother been so stupid, so greedy, as to pull in all those other people? All she’d needed to do was sell the bitcoin Dísa had given her, pay down the mortgage and forget cryptocurrencies.

And why borrow money from Gunni, of all people?

Probably because he was the only one who would lend it to her.

Mum had really screwed up. And then left Dísa to clear up after her. For a second, maybe two, Dísa felt a flash of anger towards her mother, followed by a cold wave of remorse.

Mum was dead. Despite that fact taking up all the space in her head, she still couldn’t quite believe it.

A tear leaked out of her eye. Dad had warned her. ‘Don’t tell Helga,’ he had said.

But she had.

It was Dísa’s fault. It was all her fault.

Sixteen

Krakatoa stared at his laptop screen. He was kind of enjoying this. Even though he knew the shit was about to hit the fan big time.

She was good, Tubbyman. She had a real feel for market psychology; she should have been a trader in some bank somewhere — she would have made a fortune. She knew just when to give the Thomocoin investors a little encouragement and when to give them those down days that added the element of danger that kept them playing.

She was the one who set the Thomocoin price every day. Although she went by Tubbyman, she was actually an extremely thin thirty-four-year-old American woman called Jessica who lived in Berlin. Thomocoin was the ultimate ‘working from home’ organization; coronavirus lockdowns had no effect on business. Krakatoa employed people all over the world. He paid them well — in bitcoin usually, or Thomocoin if they preferred. He insisted on knowing who they really were. He also insisted that they should never know who he was, just that he lived in British Columbia and worked odd hours.

And that they should never cross him.

Fifteen hundred seemed steep for doing not much, but Krakatoa could afford it. And he might need Tecumseh to act quickly in the next few days.

He logged into one of the four crypto-exchanges where he held bitcoin and transferred sixty thousand dollars’ worth to Tecumseh’s wallet.

Tecumseh had been an exception to Krakatoa’s employment rules. He had insisted that he wouldn’t tell Krakatoa anything about himself, other than he had served in the German KSK. Which was fair enough.

Krakatoa didn’t believe that Tecumseh had been in the German special forces. He doubted he was even German. But Tecumseh had a high rating and good reviews on the dark web and that was good enough for him.

And so far Tecumseh had provided a good service.

Seventeen

The police station in Akureyri was a miniature version of police headquarters in Reykjavík before they had tarted it up, squatting in its parking lot behind a high, forbidding wire fence. Árni found Magnus a desk, and they set to some serious googling. They needed to find out about Thomocoin and they needed to find out fast.

Thomocoin’s website was slick, a little glitzy, but friendly. ‘Welcome to our community’ was the vibe. Join a band of smart investors all over the globe who could see how the world was changing. Do something good for the countless millions without a bank account and make some money while you are at it. Stay two steps ahead of the game.

Skarphédinn Gíslason, or ‘Sharp’ as he was mostly referred to on the website, was the chief executive, an international banker living in London, ‘originally from Iceland’.

The site boasted that there were over four hundred thousand investors in Thomocoin from all over the world. A ‘white paper’ described the workings of the cryptocurrency in some technical detail. There were pages of investor education, graphs, charts and a number of videos of rousing events where Sharp or the darkly good-looking head of global marketing, Jérôme Carmin, fired up crowds of enthusiastic investors. The graphs looked financial; the videos looked like a cult.

Magnus tried to pin down where Thomocoin was actually located. There seemed to be an address in High Holborn in London, but that didn’t look like a company headquarters. There were occasional references to Thomocoin Holdings SA in Panama.

That figured.

Magnus scanned the section on regulation. This stated in several different ways that Thomocoin was confident it would get approvals to set up exchanges in London, Singapore and Iceland. Apparently, Iceland was the perfect place for the world’s first cryptocurrency as legal tender since it was already almost cashless, and forward-thinking politicians there were eager to promote Iceland as a world leader in digital currencies. Iceland would serve as ‘proof of concept’ for Thomocoin. Once it was seen to work there, it would be rolled out all over the world.

Which explained the pressure Financial Crimes was under.

Given what he had read on the website, Magnus was surprised by how little there was in the international press. There were two interviews with Sharp in major magazines, but that was about it.

‘Got anything interesting, Árni?’

Árni was poking about in the dingier corners of the web, looking for scandal.

‘Not really. There are guys on Reddit forums who think Thomocoin is all a scam, and there are others who say Sharp is a genius. No real evidence one way or another. It all seems to boil down to whether Thomocoin is serious about an exchange or not.’

‘It sounds serious,’ said Magnus.

‘There’s a guy called Krakatoa mentioned in a couple of places. He’s supposed to be the brains behind the operation. There’s some speculation about who he really is. A bunch of Thomocoin true believers think he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the guy who invented bitcoin.’

‘Really?’ said Magnus.

‘Someone else thinks he’s George Soros. Or a Rothschild. Thomocoin is going to take over the world’s banks. Wait a moment! Here’s someone who thinks he’s from Wuhan and he started the coronavirus.’

That’s what you get from looking at the internet, Magnus thought. PR, hype and conspiracy theories.

Magnus’s phone buzzed. A text from Sigurjón. Turned out he had the FBI agent’s details after all. Agent Ryan Malley at the New York Field Office.

Magnus dialled the number and left a message for Agent Malley to get back to him. That probably wouldn’t be until Monday morning New York time at the earliest.

He needed to talk to a real person before then. Someone who might know about Thomocoin as an investor, maybe.

Ollie!

Magnus and his younger brother had been extremely close when they were growing up but had fallen out when it transpired that Ollie had played a part in their father’s death. Ollie had done time as a result of Magnus’s testimony against him in a Massachusetts court.

He had been out of prison for several years now and lived and worked in the Boston area. Or lived and got involved in shady deals in the Boston area.

Putting an ocean between him and his newly released brother had been one of the reasons Magnus had moved back to Iceland three years before, but from the safety of Reykjavík, he had tentatively got back in touch.

And Ollie had tentatively responded.

Thomocoin was just the kind of money-making scheme on the edge of legality that would attract Ollie. And if he didn’t know about it, he would know someone who would.

So Magnus called him.

‘Magnus?’ Ollie’s voice was groggy. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

Magnus checked his watch. ‘Eight-thirty?’

‘On a Sunday! It’s Sunday morning, Magnus.’

Magnus winced. He should have waited another couple of hours.

‘Yeah, sorry, Ollie. How’re you doing?’

‘You woke me up to ask me how I’m doing? I’m sleepy, Magnus, and just a little bit pissed off. How are you?’

‘I’m working on a murder investigation.’

That might impress some people, but not Ollie. ‘Course you are.’

Magnus decided to cut the small talk. ‘And there’s something called Thomocoin involved. A cryptocurrency. Have you heard of it?’

‘Yeah, I heard of Thomocoin. I even looked into it last year.’

‘And?’

‘And it’s a piece of shit.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Classic crypto-Ponzi. They get new investors in to pay off the old investors, or in this case, give them the cash to pay commissions. They make up a price every day on some website. They talk about the coin becoming tradable on an exchange but it never happens. Like I said. A piece of shit.’

‘So how much do you think a Thomocoin is really worth?’

‘Nothing. Zero.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Nothing at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Magnus, I’ve got someone to see to.’

Magnus heard a female giggle and then Ollie was gone.

At least that was clear.

And not good news for Dísa. Or her family. Or the people of Dalvík who had bought Thomocoin through Helga.

His phone rang. Vigdís.

‘Did you see Ómar?’ Magnus asked her.

‘Just finished with him.’

‘And?’

‘He has an alibi for yesterday morning. Spent Friday night with a woman. Bumped into a neighbour on his way home in the morning. He is certain the neighbour will remember.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘“Occasional friend”, Ómar called her. I checked with the neighbour on the way out. She did see Ómar at about nine a.m. Saturday morning.’

‘Pretty much when Helga was killed in Dalvík. Did he say anything about meeting Helga last week?’

‘Yes. They met at the Kaffitár on Borgartún. She wanted to talk to him about Thomocoin. She was worried that the currency would never be approved to trade on an exchange. He said he thought it would, but she wanted him to check with a guy called Sharp. A banker friend of his in London.’

‘Did he do that?’

‘He did, after Helga left. Sharp said that there would definitely be at least one exchange approved by the end of the year, and Ómar called Helga the next day and told her that.’

‘Did she believe him?’

‘Ómar thinks she didn’t. He says she was pretty upset.’

‘Does Ómar believe this Sharp?’

‘He says he does.’

‘Has he invested in Thomocoin himself?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask him,’ said Vigdís.

‘That’s OK. Did he have any idea who might have killed Helga?’

‘No. He seemed genuinely upset about it, though. For what that’s worth.’

Magnus knew what Vigdís meant. In murder cases, most people seemed upset, even the perpetrators. It was unprofessional for a detective to set much store in that. But it was the response you wanted to see from a human being.

‘Thanks a lot, Vigdís.’

‘I’ll send you my report. Say hi to Árni for me.’

‘Vigdís says hi,’ said Magnus to Árni as he hung up. He was relaying the rest of what Vigdís had told him when his phone buzzed again.

A New York number.

‘Inspector Jonson,’ said Magnus, reverting to the American version of his name. His father had been Ragnar Jónsson, which meant that Magnus had been Magnús Ragnarsson in Iceland, but when he moved to America as a kid, his father had simplified his son’s last name to Jonson, and the accent had slipped off ‘Magnús’.

‘Hi. This is Agent Ryan Malley of the FBI. I came into the office this morning to catch up on some stuff and I saw your message.’

Magnus grinned, pleased with Agent Malley’s work ethic. ‘Thanks for getting back to me, Ryan. I’m investigating a murder here in Iceland, and there might be a Thomocoin angle. I know you sent us an MLAT about it recently. Can you give me some details?’

‘Haven’t heard squat from Reykjavik,’ said Malley gruffly.

Magnus had learned from long experience in Boston that the FBI could sometimes be very helpful, and they could sometimes be very unhelpful. It all depended on how you started off with them. And bullshitting them was never a good idea.

‘I don’t think you will hear back from them,’ said Magnus. ‘Or at least nothing useful. Apparently, the whole subject has gotten political here, know what I’m saying? But maybe we can come to an arrangement.’

‘An arrangement?’

‘I tell you things. You tell me things.’ Magnus left unsaid that any information exchanged in this way could not be used as evidence, but he was sure Malley knew that.

‘You speak pretty good English,’ Malley said.

‘I worked for the Boston Police Department for fifteen years,’ Magnus said. ‘Homicide.’

‘Oh really? You know Harry Spaventa, then?’

‘Yeah, I know Harry,’ said Magnus. ‘He retired last year.’

‘He and I worked a case five years back.’ Magnus waited while the FBI agent thought. ‘OK. What do you want to know?’

‘What has Thomocoin been up to? And do you have anything on a guy called Sharp? Skarphédinn Gíslason. He’s the CEO.’

‘Thomocoin is a Ponzi scheme, pure and simple. They use existing multi-level marketing teams to recruit investors. They sell them “Thomocoins” with the promise that the investors will be able to sell their Thomocoins one day at a large profit for dollars or euros or whatever. It’s never going to happen.’

‘Don’t the investors get impatient?’

‘They do. But these guys are plausible, especially Sharp, and a French guy called Jérôme Carmin, who is head of marketing. There’ll come a time, though, when they won’t be able to keep the plates spinning in the air, and then they’ll all come crashing down. And we think that time is pretty soon now.’

‘Are you going to shut them down?’

‘We’ve shut them down in the States. We’re working on a red notice for Sharp and Carmin, but we don’t have the evidence yet. And there’s a guy goes by the name Krakatoa. We don’t know who he is. Sharp is CEO, but he’s just a front man. Krakatoa runs the operation.’ Malley sighed. ‘So that’s why it would be kind of nice if you guys got back to us.’

‘What do you want to know?’ said Magnus.

‘Where Sharp is at. Is he in Iceland?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Magnus. ‘Not that we know of, anyway. I’ve heard he lives in London. I’ll probably need to question him myself.’

‘Can you hold off until we’ve gotten the arrest warrant?’

Magnus could see this getting messy. An Interpol red notice would call for Sharp’s arrest with a view to extradition to the United States. If Sharp was a genuine suspect for Helga’s murder, Magnus might want access to him first, before the FBI had grabbed him. But Sharp wasn’t a suspect yet. The best way of getting the cooperation of the FBI for an interview, if they did succeed in arresting him, was to get his cooperation in first.

‘I’ll do what I can. I’ll ask if anyone knows where Sharp is and let you know. And if we need to interview him, I’ll talk to you first. Can you tell me when you’ve got him?’

‘Sure,’ said Malley. ‘What’s your murder investigation? How’s Thomocoin involved?’

Eighteen

‘I’ve got some bad news,’ Magnus said. He and Árni were sitting opposite Dísa, Hafsteinn and Íris at the kitchen table at Blábrekka.

The family waited, faces strained.

‘It looks as if Thomocoin is a scam. There will never be an exchange.’

‘Oh my God!’ said Dísa.

‘How do you know?’ Hafsteinn asked.

‘I can’t say.’ Magnus was reluctant to let them know that the FBI were suspicious in case Sharp was somehow tipped off. ‘But I have heard it from at least two sources.’

‘So Mum’s Thomocoin is worthless?’ Dísa said.

‘Looks like it,’ said Magnus.

‘It’s the haters,’ said Hafsteinn. ‘The Thomocoin haters. They’ve got to our police now.’ He grabbed his daughter’s hand. ‘Don’t worry, Dísa. Have faith. It’s just a sign that Thomocoin has got them scared.’

Dísa withdrew her hand. ‘But that means all those people Mum sold Thomocoin to will have lost their money too?’

Magnus nodded. ‘We found Helga’s list on her computer.’ Árni produced two sheets of paper with a list of twenty-two names. ‘Do you know these people?’

Árni shoved the list over to the other side of the table.

Hafsteinn picked it up and scanned the list. He nodded. ‘I know at least half of them.’

‘Some of them will be her colleagues at the hospital,’ Íris said. ‘We won’t necessarily know them. But I recognize the Dalvík names.’

‘Are these the amounts they bought?’ Dísa said, leaning over her grandfather’s elbow to look.

Magnus nodded.

‘Gunnar Snaer Sigmundsson bought fourteen thousand?’ Dísa asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘So that’s worth about five million dollars now?’

‘Yes. Gunnar was by far the biggest investor.’ Most of the other investments were for a hundred or two Thomocoin, although there were two purchasers of a thousand Thomocoin each.

‘Gunni?’ said Hafsteinn. ‘He’s a smart guy, that Gunni.’

‘Grandpa!’ said Dísa. ‘Don’t you see? He’s not smart at all! He’s going to lose all that money.’

‘No, he’s not, Dísa, dear,’ said her grandfather.

‘Do you have any reason to think any of these people knew that their investment was worthless?’ Magnus asked.

‘It’s not worthless!’ said Hafsteinn. ‘You may say it is, but I want proof and you haven’t given me any.’

‘All right,’ said Magnus. The old man was correct: Magnus hadn’t offered any proof. And neither, really, had the FBI. ‘But did any of these people have any suspicion that Thomocoin might be worthless?’

Hafsteinn folded his arms and shook his head. ‘No.’

Dísa looked down at her thumbs and bit a nail.

‘Dísa?’ Magnus said gently.

‘Gunni came around here this morning after you left,’ said Dísa. ‘He said he wanted to talk about Thomocoin. We went for a walk.’

Magnus waited. Hafsteinn glared at his granddaughter.

‘He told me he was afraid there would never be an exchange. He said he had told Mum this and that was why she went to Reykjavík to see Dad. To ask him about Thomocoin.’

‘Was Gunni angry?’

‘He is now,’ said Dísa. ‘Very angry.’

Magnus and Árni returned to the police station in Akureyri, where they briefed Ólafur. Ólafur decided to bring Gunni in for questioning the following morning and search his house and computer.

Afterwards, Árni brought Magnus back home for supper.

Árni’s family was chaotic. He had two extremely naughty little daughters, who ran him and his wife ragged. Neither seemed to mind. His wife, a small, round woman named Greta with a long dark fringe, seemed, if anything, to egg them on.

Supper was feeding time at the zoo, pasta flying and tomato sauce splattered everywhere. But the pasta was delicious and they were all having fun. Once Magnus had overcome the temptation to arrest the lot of them for insurrection and riot, he enjoyed himself too.

Eventually, Greta took the kids upstairs for a noisy bath time and stories.

Árni and Magnus stuffed plates into the dishwasher. ‘They’ll be at least an hour,’ said Árni. ‘Would you like a Scotch?’

Árni had a decent Macallan and poured them both a glass.

‘A good day’s work,’ said Árni.

‘It was,’ Magnus agreed. ‘We’ll see what Gunni has to say for himself tomorrow.’

Magnus’s phone buzzed in his pocket. ‘Excuse me,’ he said as he examined the screen.

He smiled.

‘Who is it?’ said Árni.

Magnus glanced at him. ‘Ingileif.’

‘Ingileif? I didn’t know you were still seeing her?’

‘Haven’t seen her for three years. But I asked her if I could meet Ási again, and she said yes. Haven’t seen him for three years, either. He’ll be seven now.’

‘Why wouldn’t she let you see him?’

‘She has her own family now. She thought me seeing him would disrupt it. I guess she has a point. I don’t know. I’m just glad I’m getting to see him. I don’t know why it’s so important to me.’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Árni. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t see my girls.’

‘You’ve done well, Árni. I like Greta.’

‘And she likes you, Magnús, despite all I’ve told he about you.’

Magnus grinned as he sipped his whisky. It was a shame Árni had moved to Akureyri.

‘I take it you are still with Eygló, then?’

Magnus hesitated. ‘Yes.’ He wasn’t sure whether Árni picked up on the hesitation.

‘Now you two really were made for each other. I can imagine the conversations about mud in saga times you must have.’

‘It’s fascinating stuff, Árni.’

‘I’ll bet.’

Suddenly, Magnus wanted to ask Árni his advice. Árni knew how to find a woman, start a family, run around after little kids. Be happy.

Magnus didn’t. But it wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer that was stopping him. He didn’t know the question.

He loved Eygló, he thought. He certainly liked her. He respected her. He was attracted to her. He liked spending time with her. He liked her son.

So what was the damn problem?

Ingileif was the damn problem. Or Ási. Or both of them.

Which was goddamned stupid. They weren’t his family. Ingileif had kept Ási’s very existence from him for four years. If there was a family, it was Ingileif, Ási and her husband Hannes, and Magnus had no part of it.

There was another family beckoning: Eygló and Bjarki.

Why couldn’t he just accept that? Just say yes. Marry Eygló. Move in. Have another kid.

Because somehow that would be dishonest.

How? Why?

Magnus didn’t want to be dishonest with anyone, let alone Eygló.

‘Are you OK, Magnús?’

Magnus finished his whisky. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I ought to head back to my hotel now. Thanks for dinner and the whisky.’

As soon as he got back to his hotel room, he sent Ingileif a text explaining he would love to see Ási but he might not be back in Reykjavík for a few days.

He fell asleep waiting for a response.

Nineteen

Magnus had never conducted an interview with Ólafur before. It was an important one; Gunni was firmly in the number-one-suspect slot. Though technically he was not yet a suspect but a witness, which under Icelandic law meant he didn’t have the right to a lawyer. At least not yet.

The three of them were in the interview room in the Dalvík police station. After the morning briefing, two constables had gone to pick up Gunni. While Gunni was being interviewed, Árni and two uniformed officers were searching his house and seizing his computer.

They had agreed that Magnus would start the interview in a low-key way, and Ólafur would pile on the pressure when he judged the time right.

Magnus started with silence, while he sized up the man opposite him. Gunni was short, compact, powerful, his body tense with barely contained energy. He seemed impatient and angry rather than anxious. Magnus was expecting bluster, maybe even threats — Gunni was a big man in the area and would have big friends.

Gunni glanced from one detective to the other. ‘Well?’ he said, raising thick grey eyebrows.

Magnus paused before speaking. ‘Tell me about Thomocoin, Gunni.’

‘You tell me about Thomocoin,’ said Gunni. ‘Is it a fraud? Are you investigating it? You should, you know.’

Magnus smiled thinly. ‘No. We are investing Helga Hafsteinsdóttir’s murder, and we think Thomocoin may have something to do with it.’

‘And how is that?’

Magnus ignored the question. ‘Have you invested in Thomocoin, Gunni?’ he asked.

‘I have.’

‘How much?’

‘A lot.’

Magnus raised his eyebrows

Gunni sighed and briefly lowered his eyes, as a hint of shame passed through them. ‘I’ve invested over three hundred million krónur.’

‘And how much is that worth now?’

‘According to Thomocoin’s website, it’s supposed to be worth just over five million dollars. So it’s up seventy per cent. If you believe the website.’

‘And you don’t?’

Gunni hesitated. ‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted.

‘I see. Who first told you about Thomocoin?’

‘Helga.’ Gunni described how Helga had enthused about the cryptocurrency. At first, he hadn’t invested himself, but after a year or so, during which time the price had risen steadily and Helga had boasted of her own profits, he had bought some. He had started off small, ten thousand dollars’ worth, but had soon invested more. He had listened to Helga, read the information, watched the videos, done his research. He had believed in it.

‘Did you lend any money to Helga during this time?’

‘Yes, I did. In 2017, maybe early 2018. She needed it to keep the farm afloat.’

‘How much did you lend her?’

‘Twenty million krónur.’

Magnus whistled. ‘That’s a lot of money.’

‘It certainly is,’ said Gunni. ‘But I knew she had at least that much in Thomocoin, so she would be able to repay me.’

‘You must have trusted her?’

‘I do. I did.’

Magnus wasn’t sure whether Gunni no longer trusted Helga just because she was dead, or because she had let him down.

‘You asked me whether Thomocoin is a fraud,’ said Magnus. ‘Do you think it is?’

‘I think it may be,’ said Gunni with defiance.

‘Why?’

Gunni described his growing suspicions that the promised exchange on which it would be possible to sell all the Thomocoin he had accumulated might never be set up, how he had discussed these fears with Helga, and how she had spoken to her ex-husband about it.

‘So let me get this straight,’ said Magnus calmly. ‘You lend Helga twenty million krónur that she’s going to repay once she has sold her Thomocoin. On her advice, you invest a further three hundred million krónur in Thomocoin yourself. And then you discover that all this Thomocoin might be worthless. Which means not only is Helga unable to pay you back, but you have lost it all.’

‘That’s about right,’ said Gunni. ‘And I want it back. If not from Helga, then from her estate.’ His eyes were burning.

‘I bet you do. In fact, I bet you were pretty angry with Helga.’

‘I was.’

Magnus stared at him in silence. He was pleased that Ólafur was content to watch, at least for now.

‘Sure, I was angry with her,’ said Gunni, realizing where Magnus was going. ‘But I didn’t kill her.’

‘Tell me about your relationship with Helga.’

‘She was a neighbour. I’ve known her all her life, since she was a little girl.’

‘A little girl? How much older than Helga were you, Gunni?’

‘About ten years, I think.’

‘I see. But Helga was more than a neighbour, wasn’t she?’

Gunni hesitated. ‘Yes. She was a friend. I’ve stabled a horse at Blábrekka for years. We used to go riding together.’

‘Riding?’ interrupted Ólafur with a sneer. ‘And what kind of riding was that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean were you riding her or was she riding you? Or a bit of both?’

Magnus had to hand it to Ólafur; he did know how to be annoying.

And Gunni was annoyed. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he growled through clenched teeth.

‘Hah!’ said Ólafur with an unpleasant grin. ‘You bet you do. You were screwing each other.’

‘What?’

‘I mean you and she used to have sex together. In Reykjavík when you were a member of parliament down there, and then back here in Dalvík.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘She confided in someone,’ said Magnus. ‘In 2015 or 2016, when she was trying to decide whether to break up with you.’

‘You and she had an affair over many years,’ said Ólafur. ‘And then she broke it off. And you were angry with her. And then the Thomocoin that she told you to buy became worthless and you were even angrier with her. Weren’t you?’

For a moment, Magnus thought Gunni was going to leap over the table, grab Ólafur and pummel him. But Gunni took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. ‘All right. I did have an affair with Helga when she lived in Reykjavík. And then again when she came back north. But I was the one who called it off.’

‘So you say,’ said Ólafur.

Actually, it fitted with what Helga had told Eggert, Magnus remembered.

‘So I say,’ said Gunni. ‘My wife was suspicious. In a small town like Dalvík it’s impossible to keep these things quiet. She guessed I was having a bit on the side, although she didn’t know who with. She told me I had to stop or she would leave. So I promised I’d end it, and I did.’

‘You promised you would end it,’ said Ólafur in disbelief.

‘Yes,’ said Gunni, meeting the detective’s eyes. ‘Helga didn’t like that. She was angry with me, rather than the other way around. But after a frosty few months, we managed to treat each other as friends again.’ He paused. ‘I admit I did feel guilty about it. And that may have been why I lent her the money. I liked her. I like her parents. I like Blábrekka. I didn’t want them to lose it.’

‘When was the last time you had sex with Helga?’ Ólafur barked.

Gunni looked at Ólafur steadily. ‘Four years ago,’ he replied. ‘Not since then.’

‘I don’t believe you!’ said Ólafur, slamming his palm down on the table.

Gunni wasn’t intimidated. He shrugged, his blue eyes firm. ‘It’s true.’

He shook his head. ‘I am angry I lost money because of her. But I’m devastated she died. Devastated. Her poor daughters.’ He looked from Magnus to Ólafur, doubt in his eyes now. ‘I’m angry that someone killed her. In a way, I’m angry with her for being killed. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but I think it’s true. I’ll miss her. I’ll miss her a lot.’

Magnus paused to see if Ólafur would push it further, but the other detective fell silent and nodded to Magnus to continue.

‘All right,’ said Magnus. ‘Take us through again what you did on Saturday morning from when you woke up.’

There was a window when Gunni could just possibly have killed Helga. He had said he had taken his dog for a walk before driving out to Blábrekka; that was when he had claimed to have seen the lone hiker on the mountain. Magnus had begun probing exact timings when there was a knock at the door.

It was Árni. He signalled he wanted to speak to both detectives and he looked excited.

‘What have you got?’ Ólafur asked him in the corridor.

‘A fishing knife. With blood on it. We found it in a kayak in Gunnar’s shed.’

‘Human blood?’

‘Don’t know. I’m getting it checked now. But if it was fish blood on that blade, why would the knife be hidden in a kayak?’