The Polar Bear Killing

Chapter three

Vigdís’s head was splitting as she listened to Ólafur summarize the case to the assembled police. She had woken up still clothed, and had barely had time to grab a cup of coffee before staggering off to the police station. The morning briefing had already started by the time she got there, and they all turned as she tried to creep in at the back.

The vodka bottle was half empty on her bedside table where she had left it.

‘Edda, what did you find yesterday?’

Ólafur was addressing the woman in charge of the three-person forensics team that had driven over from Reykjavík.

‘Basically, nothing,’ she said. ‘No casing — the shooter must have retrieved it. No bullet either, which means either the shooter picked that up as well or, more likely, it is still in the victim’s skull. The pathologist should be able to fish it out at the autopsy today.’

Poor Halldór had been sent back to the morgue in Reykjavík for examination.

‘Nothing of interest at the scene?’

‘No. Very difficult to make out footprints on the hard ground up there. There are four cigarette ends and two sweet wrappers, but that’s what you would expect from what’s essentially a tourist site. We’ll send the butts off for DNA analysis. There are a couple of rocks on the far side of the hill from the road — a good place for the shooter to stand. There are several different footprints around there. None of them is clear, and none of them matches either Alex or Martin’s boots. Somebody seems to have been walking a dog.’

‘What about the suspects?’

‘No immediately obvious signs of gunshot residue on them or their clothes. Nor blood. Once again, we’ll send the clothing back to the lab in Reykjavík for closer analysis, but I doubt we will find anything.’

‘How can you know until they have looked?’

Edda didn’t answer. Vigdís knew that Edda and her team were both sharp-eyed and accurate and that she didn’t take well to being bossed around by investigators.

‘Well, go back up there this morning and widen the search area.’

‘Thanks,’ said Edda. ‘Would never have thought of that myself.’

The remark flustered Ólafur. Edda flustered men anyway, even when not in sarcastic mode. She was tall, blonde, cool and beautiful, and she treated lustful police officers with a haughty disdain. Vigdís had tried that approach, but she couldn’t quite pull it off the way Edda could.

The inspector turned to his troops. ‘Anything interesting from the house-to-house? Anyone see the suspects approaching the henge?’

It turned out that there were two people on the northern edge of town who had heard what they thought was a gunshot that afternoon: one thought it was at five o’clock, another at five fifteen. That gave some indication of the time of death, and suggested, but didn’t prove, that if the two suspects had shot Halldór, it had been an hour to an hour and a half before they claimed they had found him. Then there were some desultory reports from the policemen who had been detailed to interview the inhabitants of Raufarhöfn. Nothing interesting.

Ólafur went through Alex Einarsson’s and Martin Fiedler’s statements, and detailed officers to corroborate their movements. Others were asked to search for a gun — none had been found at the farmhouse where they were staying — and to check up on every licensed firearms owner in the town to make sure that their weapons were secure and had not been taken, and to see if they had been fired two days ago.

‘Anything else?’

Vigdís spoke up. ‘We should also get a warrant to seize Martin Fielder’s computer.’ Her voice croaked. It was the first time she had spoken since she had woken up and the hangover was flexing its muscles. She cleared her throat. ‘He said he was online that afternoon. We can check.’ She was surprised the inspector hadn’t mentioned it.

As the group broke up, Ólafur turned to Vigdís. ‘Why were you late?’

‘I’m sorry, I overslept,’ she answered. ‘It was a long day yesterday.’

The inspector didn’t look impressed, which was fair enough. ‘I’m going to hold a press conference now, and then we’ll talk to the suspects again. Maybe a spell overnight will have focused their minds. Then I want you to take them to see the magistrate at Húsavík to issue a warrant to hold them for another week. We’ll get the warrant to seize both their laptops then as well. The prosecutor there is a woman called María. I’ll get her to meet you beforehand so she can prepare.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. Do you have a problem with that? Don’t worry, María will present the case to the magistrate.’

‘But do we have enough evidence?’

‘They are our only suspects.’

‘I’m sorry, but in my judgement we have no evidence,’ said Vigdís.

‘Are you suggesting that we release them?’

‘Yes. We can take Martin Fiedler’s passport and request that he stays in town. Seize his laptop and have it analysed.’

‘Inspector?’ Björn, the young detective, had appeared.

‘What is it?’ said Ólafur, turning towards him.

Björn was with two men. One Vigdís didn’t recognize, but the other she knew all too well. Kristján Gylfason — smooth, silver-haired, and the most expensive criminal lawyer in Iceland.

‘Hello, Vigdís,’ said the lawyer, smiling. ‘Inspector Ólafur. I have been requested by the German Embassy to represent Martin Fiedler. This is Wolfgang Eichert from the embassy.’

Ólafur frowned, but shook Kristján’s hand and that of the young German diplomat, who was wearing a suit underneath his coat.

‘Can I see my client?’ Kristján said.

Ólafur glared at the two men. ‘Wait a moment,’ he replied. ‘I need to talk to the press first.’

Ólafur’s annoyance grew as the morning progressed. Now Kristján was involved, there was no chance of a confession, Vigdís knew, or of Ólafur persuading a magistrate to allow the police to hold him.

During a break in the proceedings, Vigdís asked Ólafur if she could go to Halldór’s house and speak to his family. Ólafur let her go. He had Björn to help him, and she was just a further irritation.

The policeman’s house was only a hundred metres from the station. The door was answered by a girl of about eighteen, short with close-cropped blonde hair and glasses. She had a delicate pointed chin and clear pale skin. Her face seemed to register no emotion as she saw Vigdís.

Vigdís introduced herself. ‘Are you Halldór’s daughter?’ she asked.

The girl nodded. ‘Gudrún.’

‘Can I have a few words?’

The girl led Vigdís through to a tidy living room. Vigdís scanned the photographs. She recognized Halldór from the case photos: a large middle-aged man with the beginnings of a double chin. She had never met him herself. There were some pictures of a younger Halldór with a woman with long dark hair — Halldór’s late wife, no doubt — and plenty of portraits of the woman by herself.

‘Mum,’ said the girl. ‘She died seven years ago. In a car crash. Dad was driving.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Vigdís. ‘For her and for your father.’ Vigdís had broken bad news many times to distraught families, but her heart went out to this girl who was now an orphan. ‘Are you alone? Are any of your family here?’

‘My grandparents and my brother are coming from Reykjavík this afternoon. And the neighbours have been kind. It’s hard to keep them away. But I just want to be alone a bit, actually.’

‘You live here all the time?’ Vigdís asked.

Raufarhöfn was far too small for its own high school, which meant local students would go to boarding school far away. Unless they left school early to get a local job. Gudrún looked too studious for that.

‘I’m in my first year at the University of Iceland,’ Gudrún said. That made her a little older than Vigdís had guessed. Icelandic kids didn’t go to university until the age of twenty. ‘I just got home for the summer holidays three days ago.’

‘Can you tell me about your father? What he was like? What did people in town think of him?’

To Vigdís’s relief, Gudrún was happy to talk. Vigdís let her tell stories about her childhood with her dad that could be of no conceivable use to the investigation, but that relaxed her, gave her comfort.

Halldór had escaped Reykjavík soon after the car accident and had accepted a posting in Raufarhöfn, taking his two children — Gudrún and her older brother Sveinn — with him. There Halldór tried to make a new life and had succeeded. He made friends in the town. He found the policing dull, but he was an enthusiastic member of the search-and-rescue team. A year after he arrived, he had played a big part in the rescue of a farmer who had fallen off a cliff in a snowstorm. That had made him popular in town, and had clearly made Gudrún proud. He was a keen shot; he would go hunting foxes with a couple of the locals, as well as target shooting on a friend’s farm.

The affection of the daughter for her father was obvious, and painful to see.

‘Have you any idea why Halldór was up at the henge? Did he like that spot?’

‘No, he didn’t. I think the henge is cool — it gives the town something to make it unique, and this town needs something. But Dad thought it was just kind of dumb. There are a few people in town who agree with him.’

Which implied that Halldór had probably been lured up there. Either he had seen something suspicious or someone had arranged to meet him. It occurred to Vigdís that Ólafur had not even arranged for Halldór’s phone to be analysed to see whom he had spoken to on the day of his murder.

Gudrún didn’t think Halldór had had any enemies in town, although she knew that some people thought him officious. He kept a closer eye on the law than his predecessor had.

‘How did your father get on with you and Sveinn?’ Vigdís asked.

To Vigdís’s surprise, Gudrún didn’t answer at first. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. Vigdís waited.

‘Dad and I had a wonderful relationship,’ Gudrún said. ‘But Sveinn? That was more difficult.’

‘Why was that?’ Vigdís asked softly.

‘He is three years older than me. He was studying chemistry at the university, but he dropped out last year. He had trouble with drugs.’ Worry flashed in her eyes as she glanced at Vigdís. ‘I’m not sure I should be telling you this since you’re a police officer. But then I suppose he’ll be in your files anyway. He was arrested at least twice. That’s what made Dad really angry: that his son was in trouble with the police. He didn’t say it, but I know he blamed it on Mum not being around, that he hadn’t brought up Sveinn well by himself. Which is completely wrong. Sveinn’s a nice guy, a good guy. He just has trouble with drugs. Lots of good kids have trouble with drugs, don’t they?’

‘They do,’ said Vigdís. She moved over to the collection of photographs on a side table. ‘Is this him?’

There was a picture of Halldór, a younger Gudrún and a teenage boy with curly fair hair standing in a marsh. The boy was holding something.

‘Yes, that’s him,’ said Gudrún, picking up the photograph.

The something the boy was holding was a rifle.

‘Was Sveinn a good shot?’ Vigdís asked.

‘Yes,’ said Gudrún. ‘Not quite as good as Dad. They used to shoot together at a local farm.’

Then she looked at Vigdís in alarm. ‘No. Sveinn didn’t shoot Dad. No!’

Vigdís felt bad about worrying Gudrún over her brother. She left the house and walked down to her car, which she’d parked outside the station.

It would be easy enough to check on Sveinn. According to Gudrún, he was in Reykjavík when his father was shot. That would be easy enough to verify.

She called Magnus at police headquarters.

‘Did they confess?’ he asked.

‘Far from it,’ Vigdís said. ‘A guy from the German Embassy is here with Kristján Gylfason. They’ll be out by lunchtime.’

‘Do you think they did it?’

‘Don’t know. The victim fell out with his son, who is supposed to have been in Reykjavík.’

Vigdís gave Magnus Sveinn’s details and asked him to check up on Gudrún as well.

She knew she should go back into the station and report to Ólafur what Gudrún had told her and ask for instructions. She also knew he would be clutching at anything that could convict the two animal-rights activists. Yet someone should be looking for other suspects.

She decided to drive out to the farm where Halldór had shot the polar bear. No one had done that yet.

The farm was ten kilometres from Raufarhöfn, on a knoll with a lush green meadow sloping gently down to a fast-flowing river. The establishment looked prosperous: tidy round hay bales were piled high alongside a large well-maintained barn for the sheep to winter in. The farmer and his wife were home, and they introduced Vigdís to Anna.

She was about eight, with long hair that was so blonde it was almost white, big blue eyes, and pale skin smeared with red blotches like daubs of paint from a coarse-haired brush. She was still badly upset, both at the death of the polar bear and at Halldór being shot. She wouldn’t say a word to Vigdís; her parents said she hadn’t spoken to anyone about what happened that afternoon.

Vigdís tried to coax something out of her, but the little girl was clearly scared. Vigdís was frustrated by the response of some country people to her black skin, but she understood that she must look strange to the poor girl and so she didn’t push it. As Vigdís was leaving, she had a word with the farmer, whose name was Pétur.

‘I’m sorry about scaring your daughter, but we need to know what happened.’

‘We’re worried about her,’ said Pétur. ‘She has changed totally over the last few days. She is usually so confident, not scared of anything — she wouldn’t be bothered by you in normal circumstances. She has always liked polar bears, so Halldór killing that one made her angry.’ Pétur shook his head. ‘I was just glad. I mean, he saved Anna’s life. Apparently she went over and tried to talk to the bear, according to Halldór. The strange thing is, I was ten kilometres away looking for the bear myself, with my own gun, and all the time it was here.’

‘Halldór told you what happened then?’

‘Yes. He drove up to the farm and saw Anna walking out to talk to the bear. He called her into the car, and she came, but then she ran out again. So he shot the bear through the eye. That must take real nerve.’ The farmer sighed. ‘I owe him everything. And now those animal do-gooders have shot him. The bastards! Poor Gudrún.’

‘We don’t know it was them,’ said Vigdís, although it was clear that local gossips had already condemned Alex Einarsson and Martin Fiedler.

‘Must be,’ said the farmer. ‘No one else around here would kill him. He was a good man, Halldór. But Anna still can’t forgive him.’

‘So there was no one to witness what happened?’

‘Anna sent her little brother indoors, thank God. The old guy over the river saw it. Egill. You could talk to him. But it’s a long way to get there; you have to drive up to the bridge and then back.’

Vigdís decided to talk to the neighbour. It was clear that the killing of the polar bear was an important factor in Halldór’s death, and Vigdís wanted to establish what had actually happened.

Although Egill’s farm was only three hundred metres away directly over the fast-flowing river, it was an eight-kilometre drive up to the bridge and down the other side of the valley. It was a rough drive from the bridge to the farm. On one side of the dirt track the river rushed down towards the nearby sea. On the other side, the Melrakkaslétta stretched northwards through marsh and bog: a patchwork of browns, greens, oranges and yellows, with the low sun glinting off silver-grey ponds. A tough, bleak place to scratch a living. The farm was old and falling apart; the roof of the barn needed fixing. It was obvious that Egill didn’t own any of the fishing rights: just a few chickens and some sheep.

As at most farms, the first one to greet Vigdís was the sheepdog. It skipped over to her car on its three legs, showing unexpected agility for a dog that was clearly past its prime. She wondered how he and his master rounded up the sheep. Maybe they were all old with three legs too.

As she parked her car and bent down to stroke the dog, Egill appeared. He was one of those ancient farmers with beady blue eyes and a face like a lava field under a white beard. He was wearing blue overalls and a woolly hat.

He frowned when he saw her. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am from Reykjavík CID,’ Vigdís said, reaching for her card.

The old farmer clearly didn’t believe her; he took the card and squinted at it. He looked up at Vigdís and then back at the card and started to laugh.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘A blue policeman.’

‘Blue’ was how the Icelanders had traditionally described black people. Ordinarily, being laughed at by an ignorant yokel about the colour of her skin would have raised Vigdís’s hackles, but there was something about the warmth of the chuckle and the sparkle that appeared in those beady eyes that made Vigdís forgive the old man.

‘Come in, my dear, come in!’

The farmhouse was tiny, but the kitchen had an old peat stove in the middle and was really warm. It was also clean, Vigdís was glad to see. The man may be old, but he could look after himself.

He poured Vigdís a cup of thick, muddy coffee and they sat down at the kitchen table. He took off his cap to reveal wispy grey hair and very large ears.

‘So what do you want, my dear? Have you discovered who stole old Bjartur’s leg?’ He began to laugh at his own joke, an alarming rumble, like an approaching earthquake.

‘I am investigating Constable Halldór’s death.’

The laugh stopped instantly. ‘Halldór is dead?’ The old man sat back to take in the news. ‘I didn’t know. I haven’t left the farm for a few days. What happened?’

‘He was shot. Murdered.’

‘No!’ Egill shook his head. ‘Poor man. How can I help you?’

‘I understand that you witnessed him shooting the polar bear last week?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘What happened?’

The old farmer sipped his coffee. ‘It was my fault.’

Vigdís didn’t understand. ‘What was your fault?’

‘That Anna ran up to the polar bear. That was why Halldór had to shoot him.’

‘How do you mean?’

The old man’s many wrinkles rearranged themselves into a smile of surprising warmth and simplicity. ‘Anna and I are good friends,’ he said. ‘It’s important to make friends who are younger than you, you know?’

He stared at Vigdís, demanding her agreement.

‘I am sure it is,’ she said.

‘Anna likes to play on her side of the river and I come down to mine and we talk. I tell her stories. She likes my stories.’

‘I see,’ said Vigdís, stifling her impatience. Shut up and listen, she told herself. If you listen, sometimes you learn something.

‘There was one story she particularly liked. You know I am a newcomer here? I arrived forty-eight years ago. From Grímsey, the island in the north. You know it?’

‘I know it,’ said Vigdís. It was a few kilometres north of Akureyri, bang on the Arctic Circle.

‘There is a famous story from there that I used to tell Anna. Shall I tell you?’

‘Please do,’ said Vigdís, putting down her notebook.

‘One day all the fires went out on the island. It was in the days before matches, and so three islanders had to try to get to the mainland to bring back embers to rekindle them. The sea was iced up, so they had to walk across the ice. One of the men got lost and drifted out to sea on an ice floe.’

The farmer’s face became animated as he spoke. His voice was deep but clear. He was a good storyteller; Vigdís could understand why the little girl liked to listen to him.

‘The next morning, the man was cold and hungry and thirsty, but he was still a long way from land. His ice floe drifted towards another chunk of ice, on which there was a mother polar bear trapped with her cubs. The man was scared, but there was nothing he could do to steer his ice away from the bears. Soon they collided. But the mother polar bear didn’t eat the man: she allowed him to suckle her milk with her cubs and kept him warm. When the man had regained his strength, she swam over to the mainland, with him on her back. He gathered some embers and then returned on her back to Grímsey, and all the fires on the island could be rekindled. The man was so grateful, he gave the bear cow’s milk and two slaughtered sheep, and the bear swam off back to her cubs.’

‘That’s a good story,’ Vigdís admitted.

‘It was Anna’s favourite. Which was why, when Anna saw the polar bear, she wasn’t afraid of it. That’s why it is my fault that she went out to talk to it.’

‘I see,’ said Vigdís. The old guy was probably right. It was best to tell children to be scared of polar bears in this part of the world. ‘Did you see the bear?’

‘Not until I heard the sound of the police car arriving. It was a foggy day, but at that moment the cloud lifted and I saw the bear and Anna and the policeman. I still have good eyesight at distance. I need these for reading.’ He waved an old pair of spectacles that had been lying on the kitchen table, one arm wrapped with tape. ‘I could tell the bear was a youngster and in bad condition. Constable Halldór shouted something and Anna climbed into his car. The policeman took out his rifle from the boot. Then Anna jumped out of the car and started off towards the polar bear. I couldn’t believe it. Why would she do that? Well, I knew why. It was my story.’

At this point Egill paused and stared at Vigdís. His beady little eyes shone with anger. ‘Halldór did nothing to stop her. He had plenty of time to shout to her, or to drag her back, but he didn’t. He just aimed his rifle and shot the bear.’

‘You think he should have got the child back into the car?’

‘Of course!’ Egill seemed suddenly agitated. ‘Halldór need not have shot the bear at all. He could have coaxed the child back into his car and taken her off to the farmhouse. Then he could have called for help and they could have captured the bear and taken it back to Greenland. It was small and weak — it would have been possible to do.’

‘Surely Halldór had to shoot the bear?’ Vigdís said.

‘No, he didn’t. In fact, I think he put Anna’s life at risk so that he could get a good shot. But what if he had missed? Anna would be dead now.’

Vigdís saw the farmer’s point.

‘Did you tell Anna’s parents this?’

‘Yes, I did. But they think I am just an old fool. They wanted to believe Constable Halldór was a hero for saving their daughter. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all. Was he? What do you think?’

Vigdís’s instinct was to prevaricate. But if the old man was right about what he had seen — and he seemed very lucid on the subject — then he had a point. And despite herself, Vigdís did feel sorry for the starving polar bear.

‘Perhaps he wasn’t such a hero after all.’

Egill smiled a small smile of triumph.

‘The next day I went into town and talked to some people in the café at the petrol station. Everyone seemed to think Halldór was a hero. I started trying to explain what I had seen, but no one was listening to me. Except maybe the waitress, Lilja. No one listens to me much anymore apart from her.’ He smiled. ‘And Anna.’