Whale Fjord

Fifteen

Vigdís had gone home early, and Magnus was tidying up his desk ready to follow her when his phone pinged.

It was a text from his brother Ollie back in Boston: a photo of Tosci’s Ice Cream in Cambridge — no comment. They had gone there as kids; Ollie, in particular, loved the place. Magnus could still taste the mint chocolate chip which had been his own go-to flavour.

Magnus selected a bland emoji — he wasn’t very good at emojis — and replied.

Ollie had started sending him the odd joke or picture of places from their childhood. Thirteen years before, when Magnus had finally discovered that Ollie had been indirectly implicated in their father’s murder, Ollie had gone to jail. He had been out for years now, but the brothers had barely spoken. Until Ollie had shown up in Iceland unannounced with a couple of buddies, just after one of the COVID lockdowns was lifted. The group was on their way to London, which had also just opened up, and had decided to travel via Iceland.

Magnus, Ollie and his two friends, Ryan and Cal, together with Vigdís, had gone out for a traditional Friday night on the town in Reykjavík.

It was only the second time Ollie had been back to Iceland since he and Magnus had left as kids to join their father in Boston. Ollie claimed that when his friends had suggested that they stop off in the land of Ollie’s birth, he had thought, why not?

Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps Ollie had welcomed the excuse to see his brother.

A lot of alcohol had been drunk; nothing of any consequence had been said. But Magnus enjoyed spending some time with his little brother having some fun.

It was about 1 a.m. and they were in a crowded bar off Laugavegur. Vigdís had gone to the bathroom — she was as drunk as the rest of them. Ollie’s two buddies had found a pair of women who seemed to find their jokes amusing.

‘Do you think they’ll get lucky?’ Ollie asked Magnus with a grin.

Magnus glanced at the foursome and nodded. ‘I’m sure they’ll get lucky. Unless they fall over before they get the chance.’

Ollie laughed. He took a gulp of his beer and nodded at Vigdís’s empty chair. ‘She’s hot,’ he said.

‘She’s a nice woman,’ Magnus said primly. ‘And a good friend.’

‘She wants you so bad,’ said Ollie.

Magnus snorted. ‘No, she doesn’t. We’ve been working together for years. We know each other too well for that.’

‘Oh yes, she does,’ said Ollie. ‘I can tell. And if I were you, I’d let her.’

‘You do talk shit,’ Magnus said. But for a moment he wondered if Ollie had a point. Then he remembered it was always a mistake to wonder if Ollie had a point. ‘I have a girlfriend, Ollie.’

‘Everyone has a girlfriend. Or a wife. Ryan has a wife and Cal a long-term girlfriend. Doesn’t matter. Especially here, from what I’ve read.’

‘Slurs,’ Magnus slurred.

‘Says you.’

Ollie leaned over and tried to focus on his brother. ‘Do you know at one point I was worth almost ten million dollars?’

‘Crypto?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I thought everyone had lost their shirt on that?’

‘Not everyone. You gotta know when to get in and when to get out.’

‘And you did?’

Ollie grinned and waggled his head. ‘Not quite. But I’m still in the game. Just.’

‘Well, thanks for the warning on Thomocoin.’ Magnus had asked Ollie about the cryptocurrency the year before during an investigation in North Iceland and Ollie, quite curtly, had warned him off it.

‘I was right,’ said Ollie. ‘Wasn’t I? You know it blew up?

‘I did know that,’ said Magnus with a wry smile.

‘You see? I keep my eyes out for you. Just like you did for me.’

Recalling that evening two years before, Magnus felt an unexpected swirl of sentiment towards his little brother.

For years, Magnus had looked after Ollie. Then he had rejected him — they had rejected each other. Ollie’s partial involvement in the death of their father was unforgivable, as was, in Ollie’s mind, Magnus testifying at his trial.

But there were just the two of them.

Perhaps anything was forgivable eventually.

If he and Ingileif did get married, would he invite Ollie to the wedding? Would Ollie come?

The more important question was: should he and Ingileif get married? He had to face up to that one.

His phone rang. It was the front desk: a British woman wanted to see him. She had given her name as Louisa Sugarman.

The Englishwoman whose email address Frída had given him.

Interesting.

A woman in her sixties with short, expensively cut blonde hair was waiting for him. Even though she was wearing the classic tourist garb of rain jacket and jeans, she had poise as she smiled, held out her hand and fixed him with an intelligent and authoritative gaze.

‘Inspector Ragnarsson?’ she said. ‘You sent me an email yesterday saying you had found Kristín Hálfdánsdóttir’s remains. I thought I’d reply in person.’

Magnus raised his eyebrows. ‘Were you in Iceland? I assumed you were in England.’

‘I was. But I jumped on a plane immediately.’

Magnus was intrigued. ‘Well, let’s get us some coffee and you can tell me why.’

He led her upstairs to his desk via the coffee machine. ‘When did you arrive?’ he asked her.

‘Just a couple of hours ago. I dumped my suitcase at my Airbnb and came straight here. I wanted to get you before you went home.’

‘What’s the rush? The poor woman has been dead for eighty years. Why not just send me an email, or call?’

The woman sipped her coffee, examining Magnus with steady brown eyes.

‘Kristín’s death is important to me,’ she said. ‘I want to find answers. And I suspect that the best way to find them is to come here myself to get them.’

‘That’s probably true. But why is this woman so important to you? She must have died many years before you were born. Something to do with your father, Frída said?’

‘That’s right. She was very important to my father. And information has come to my attention since my poor father died that concerns me.’

‘Information about her death.’

‘Information about the death of the man who killed her.’

‘You know who killed her?’

‘I do.’

Magnus studied the woman opposite him. She could be a time-waster. Or a fantasist. She didn’t look like a time-waster or fantasist.

‘What do you do in England, Mrs Sugarman?’ he asked.

‘Louisa, please.’

‘And I’m Magnus. You probably know we always use first names in Iceland.’

‘Are you American? You speak perfect English. American English.’

‘No, I’m an Icelander, but I spent many years there.’

Louisa nodded. ‘To answer your question, I’m retired now. I was a lawyer. Not your sort of law, I’m afraid. Company law.’

‘Which firm?’ Magnus asked.

‘Seabrook Renwick,’ Louisa said.

‘I’ve heard of it.’ That was one of the big ones. Magnus’s old girlfriend Colby had been a corporate lawyer in Boston and he had spent too much time with her ambitious lawyer friends, so he knew a bit about the big international law firms. They never got anywhere near a police station. ‘Were you a partner, by any chance?’

‘I was,’ said Louisa, with a hint of a smile, acknowledging that she was establishing her credibility.

‘You’ve come here to tell me a story,’ Magnus said. ‘So tell it.’

‘My father’s name was Tom Marks. He was a schoolmaster at a small prep school in Yorkshire — that’s a kind of private elementary school. He saw war coming and joined the territorial army. He was shipped off to Iceland shortly after the British invaded in 1940 and was stationed in Hvalfjördur, not too far from the farm at Laxahóll.’

‘Which is where Kristín lived.’

‘That’s correct. He met her. They fell in love. Or at least he fell in love with her. He says she loved him too, and I’ve no reason to doubt that.’

‘He told you this?’

‘Yes. A couple of years after my mother died. It was the late seventies; I had just graduated from university. He wanted to take me on a trip to Iceland with him, so we went for a week. We went to Hvalfjördur. He took me to Laxahóll — he was hoping to see Kristín’s father, Hálfdán, but he had sold the farm a few years before.’

‘Did you both go to Selvík?’

‘Not then,’ said Louisa. ‘But I did go alone a few years ago. That’s when I met Frída.’

‘Sorry. Carry on,’ said Magnus.

‘So, on this trip, my father told me all about a girl he had met during the war, Kristín, how he had loved her and how he hoped to marry her and bring her back to England. This was all well before my mother, of course. Then one day she and her brother disappeared. No one knew why or where they had gone. They were at the farm alone, apart from Kristín’s son who was upstairs in bed. When their father came home, there was no sign of them.’

‘That’s what the police file from the time says,’ said Magnus. ‘But you say you know who killed them?’

‘Yes. Or my father knew.’

‘And who was it?’

‘A British officer. Captain Neville Pybus-Smith.’