Edge of Nowhere

5

Magnus studied the woman in front of him. They were in the interview room in the police station, with the tape running. Rós had placed her multicoloured woolly hat on the table next to her, letting her red hair fall around her shoulders. Her lips were pursed, her expression tense, but she was also brave, determined, as if she knew she was in for a hard time and had steeled herself to see it through.

In the States, Magnus would have already read her her rights at this stage, but in Iceland they were allowed to question a suspect for twenty-four hours before getting a warrant from a judge, and lawyers were only for those who insisted on one.

Magnus had patiently explained the case against Rós, the testimony of Davíd, her knowledge of engines and auto parts. It seemed pretty convincing to him.

‘So, Rós, you see we know that you sabotaged the construction equipment in the summer. And that you killed Gústi yesterday morning.’

‘But I didn’t,’ said Rós.

‘OK. Then who did?’

‘It was the hidden people,’ she said. ‘I told you that.’

Magnus took a deep breath. Normally the best tactic to frustrate a detective was silence. No one had tried ‘the elves did it’ on him before, and he didn’t like it.

‘Now, Rós. We know that you asked Davíd to leave his post at the yard for half an hour in the middle of the night. Do you deny that?’

‘No,’ said Rós. ‘No, that’s perfectly true.’

‘And do you deny that you crept into the yard when he had left it unguarded?’

‘Of course I do. I was sound asleep. The hidden people came in, just like I told Davíd they would.’

For a second Magnus was tempted to ask why the hidden people cared whether there was a guard around since they were invisible, but he decided against fighting the battle on Rós’s terms.

‘Rós, you and I both know that’s ridiculous,’ he said reasonably.

A thought seemed to have struck Rós. She frowned.

‘What is it, Rós?’

‘Actually, I might have to plead guilty,’ she said.

Magnus sighed. At last! ‘All right. Tell me the whole story.’

‘To conspiracy to cause criminal damage. There is no doubt that I helped the hidden people, I must admit to that. And that’s probably a crime, isn’t it? Can we do a deal? If I plead guilty to that.’

Something snapped. Magnus picked up the papers in front of him and slammed them down on the table. ‘All right! That’s it! No more talk of elves and leprechauns and hidden people.’ He leaned over the table so that his face was only a few inches from the woman, who suddenly looked very scared. He jabbed a finger at her. ‘I know you sabotaged those machines, Rós. And more importantly, I know you killed Gústi. Not many people seem to have liked him, but he was a real live human being and now he’s dead. You may not care about that, but I do. And if you killed him, which I’m damned sure you did, you will go to jail for a long long time.’

Rós’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘I didn’t kill Gústi, I swear I didn’t! I know nothing about his death!’

Magnus felt the rage boiling up in him and he struggled to control it. ‘No, more lies, Rós! You’d better snap out of your fantasy world and into the real one pretty quick. Because that’s where Gústi died — in the real world. And that’s where I live and where the judge at your trial lives. Now, tell the truth for once in your life!’

Tears appeared in Rós’s eyes. ‘I don’t know anything. I promise you I don’t know anything.’

Magnus knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere just screaming at the woman. ‘Come on, Tómas,’ he said.

Tómas mumbled some words into the tape recorder and followed Magnus out of the room.

Magnus took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I don’t know how you stand it here, Tómas.’

‘You had her rattled.’

‘No, she had me rattled. OK. This is what we do. This is now a murder investigation. I’ll call my boss in Reykjavík and then we’ll call the Chief Superintendent in Ísafjördur. We’ll need reinforcements. We’ll get a forensic team up from Reykjavík and a the forensic pathologist to redo the autopsy, if it has even been done yet. Then I want you to go back in there and get all the details you can on where she was yesterday morning. We need warrants for her house and car.’

‘Should we focus on the murder or the criminal damage to the machinery?’

‘Both. We have better evidence for the criminal damage; we should be able to use that to get permission from the judge to hold her for more than twenty-four hours. Then we’ll build up the murder case.’

‘Are we sure she committed the murder?’

‘Not absolutely certain,’ said Magnus. ‘She’s looking good for it, but we need to keep an open mind. And she might have been working with someone else to sabotage the construction equipment as well. Now, we need to make some phone calls.’

It was a busy day. The Chief Superintendent came over from Ísafjördur, with four men to help out. Two of Magnus’s colleagues from Reykjavík, Vigdís and Árni, got on an aeroplane to Ísafjördur to join him, together with a couple of officers from the Forensics team. Magnus wondered what the good citizens of Bolungarvík would make of Vigdís, Reykjavík’s only black detective. They would probably find it easier talking to an elf. But he was sure that Vigdís could cope with it, she had developed a thick skin. But it was Árni, Magnus was more worried about. He had a fertile imagination, and all the talk of hidden people might set him off in all kinds of strange directions.

He was pleased to see them when they arrived at the police station in Bolungarvík.

‘Hey, Magnús. I hear you caught the elf that did it,’ said Vigdís. ‘How did you manage that?’

‘It’s these ultra-modern FBI forensic techniques he’s always telling us about,’ said Árni. ‘They work for invisible people too.’

‘Alibis must be difficult to check out. I mean, when witnesses can’t see the suspects.’

‘Do you want us to do rock-to-rock interviews?’

‘You could start up an Elf Squad when we get back to Reykjavík.’

‘Very funny,’ said Magnus. ‘I was looking forward to some sanity from you two.’

‘From Árni? You must be in big trouble,’ said Vigdís. But the two detectives got down to work with brisk efficiency.

Magnus was less pleased to hear that there were two journalists on the plane with them, one from RÚV, the national TV station, and one from Morgunbladid, the biggest newspaper in the country. Boy, would they love this story.

A full murder investigation was underway, with Magnus in charge. Statements were taken, premises searched. Tómas interviewed Rós again, with Magnus watching quietly, to get her whereabouts the previous morning. She claimed she hadn’t woken until nine o’clock, and since she lived alone that would be hard to verify. They left her in one of the two cells; Magnus decided to postpone interviewing her further until they had collected more evidence.

The doctor in Ísafjördur had done an autopsy in which he determined that Gústi had been killed by blows to the head and chest from falling rocks. But a specialist forensic pathologist from Reykjavík was on his way to give a second opinion.

Information was flowing into the small crowded police station, but as yet, there was nothing that either confirmed or ruled out Rós as Gústi’s murderer. Magnus knew the value of patience; the more information he had to work with the more likely a connection would be made. He decided to step outside to clear his head.

It was early evening, about six o’clock, and it had been dark for a couple of hours. The wind had let up a bit and the sky was clear. Moonlight shimmered yellow and blue on the snow and rock of the great mountain that loomed over the village. Did hidden people live up there as well, Magnus wondered. It would be a great place to look down on their human cousins below and lob a rockfall or two when they saw things that displeased them.

Normally, Magnus would have been happy to be in charge of an investigation, but this one struck him as particularly dangerous. He was reporting to two bosses, the Chief Superintendent in Ísafjördur and Baldur in Reykjavík. That was always bad. But it was the damned hidden people that would be his undoing.

The police hadn’t told the press anything apart from the fact that a woman was helping them with their inquiries. It wouldn’t be long before the two journalists discovered the elf angle, if they hadn’t already. That would bring the case to the top of the national news. It might even get coverage internationally. Everyone would be looking to Magnus to screw up. If the press could get anyone in authority to say anything at all about elves, it would be plastered all over the front page.

That damn woman.

Magnus took a deep breath. Forget the hidden people for a moment, and go back to basics. Although Magnus was at least ninety-percent sure that Rós or an accomplice had been responsible for the sabotage, there was a chance that she hadn’t murdered Gústi. Indeed an accident couldn’t be entirely ruled out, if someone else had left the stuffed polar bear and the money as a gift for the elves rather than as bait for Gústi.

Magnus didn’t really know much about Gústi, apart from what Tómas had told him. Know your victim, or ‘victimology’ as it was sometimes called, was often the key to solving a crime. Magnus remembered the new webcam next to the old computer in Gústi’s bedroom.

He went back into the police station and got the key to Gústi’s house. It took him ten minutes to walk there. He unlocked the door and walked in, wearing forensic gloves as he switched on the light. He would get the forensics guys in there as soon as they had finished with Rós’s house. The room looked much as it had done before, although something was beginning to smell. Old food.

He went through to the bedroom and turned on the computer. It took an age to boot up. No Skype, so that couldn’t be what the webcam was for. Which didn’t surprise Magnus; after all, who would Gústi need to Skype?

But he shouldn’t make assumptions about Gústi’s life. He should keep an open mind.

There wasn’t much on Gústi’s computer. A few old video games. He had an Internet connection. There were a couple of soccer-related sites, and porn. Lots and lots of porn.

But still nothing that he would need a webcam for.

Magnus searched the directory and then found it. A video file, dated two weeks before. The file name was hvalreki.mpg. Hvalreki literally meant ‘beached whale’ in Icelandic, but it was an expression that was still used to mean an unexpected piece of luck. Historically, there was nothing better that could happen to an Icelander than to have a whale wash up on the beach outside his house.

Magnus opened the file and clicked play. The video lasted four minutes and twenty-three seconds. When it was finished, Magnus clicked play again.