Whale Fjord

Sixteen

Magnus recognized the name from the old case file. ‘How did your father know it was him?’

‘He said this Pybus-Smith was obsessed with Kristín. He must have killed her and her brother, who was a communist. Pybus-Smith was in charge of intelligence on the island and he didn’t like communists.’

‘Is that it? Didn’t your father have any evidence?’

‘He had some, I think — I’m not sure exactly what — but it was nothing concrete. He was quite certain, right up to the end of his life.’

‘Didn’t he tell anyone? I mean, he believed this man had killed his girlfriend.’

‘He did try to — I know he spoke to his commanding officer. But he didn’t get anywhere. And that’s where he admitted he didn’t have any proper evidence. It was complicated by the fact that Pybus-Smith was leading the investigation on the part of the British authorities.’

‘That’s right. I read about him in the file. He didn’t find anything.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Louisa sighed. ‘Looking back on it, I can see why Dad’s commanding officer didn’t want to pursue it. It must have sounded as if my father was jealous. And no one would have liked the idea of a British officer killing two civilians. So, without evidence...’

‘No, I can see that,’ said Magnus. He hesitated. Louisa noticed and waited.

Thelma had told him not to tell anyone about the bullet they had found. But this woman deserved to know the truth.

‘Actually,’ he said. ‘There is some evidence now. If I tell you something, can you promise to keep it in strict confidence?’

‘All right.’

Magnus couldn’t decide whether the fact that Louisa was a lawyer meant he could or couldn’t trust her. If he was her client or she had signed a non-disclosure agreement, certainly. But without those?

There was something about this woman: he trusted her. And she deserved to know the truth about her father, just as Magnus had deserved to know the truth about his own father.

‘The bullets that killed them came out of the kind of revolver that was issued to British officers in 1940.’

Louisa sat back. Then she laughed. ‘So Dad was right!’

‘Did you doubt him?’

Louisa winced. ‘Maybe. I mean, perhaps his commanding officer had a point. But this proves it.’

‘Not quite,’ said Magnus. ‘It could have been another British officer. Or an Icelander who had gotten hold of a British weapon. But it certainly makes it much more likely it was Pybus-Smith.’

‘Thank you for telling me, Magnus. I can assure you I’ll keep it confidential.’

‘I’d appreciate it. And it’s interesting to hear your father’s views. But we won’t be opening an investigation. It was all too long ago. Whoever did shoot them is long dead. This Captain Pybus-Smith, for example.’

‘Oh, he’s dead,’ said Louisa. ‘That’s the reason why I flew here to talk to you.’

Magnus raised his eyebrows.

‘Sir Neville Pybus-Smith, as he became, was murdered. Strangled in 1985 at his flat in Kensington — that’s in London.’

‘Did they catch the murderer?’

‘They did. Or they thought they did. A black prostitute called Joyce Morgan. She had been to his house and they had indulged in an S&M session. You know what I mean by S&M? Sadomasochism?’

‘We have that in America too,’ Magnus said with a grin.

‘The police assumed it had gone wrong. She was convicted of murder and was sentenced to life.’

‘Did your father know?’

‘Oh, yes. It was all over the papers at the time. We spoke about it. He admitted to me he was pleased that Pybus-Smith was dead although he knew he shouldn’t have been.’

‘I can understand that.’

‘But the prostitute proclaimed her innocence. She said she’d been framed.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said Magnus. ‘Believe me.’

‘Perhaps. But she had convincing reasons. A journalist called Amanda Wicker became interested in her story and wrote an article about it a few years later. According to her, the police knew that Joyce had left the block of flats before Pybus-Smith had died. But they hid the evidence.’

‘Why?’ Magnus didn’t hide his scepticism.

‘Because the chief inspector in charge of the case had a grudge against her. Joyce had told a corruption investigation she had granted him sexual favours to avoid prosecution.’

Magnus became sceptical of his scepticism. That sounded all too plausible. Mind you, it was also plausible that the hooker had made the whole story up.

‘Who knows?’ he said.

‘Exactly,’ said Louisa. ‘But what I found interesting in the article was that Joyce said she saw two men entering the building when she was leaving it.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘They were speaking to each other in a foreign language.’

Magnus knew where this was going. ‘Which language?’

‘Joyce didn’t know. She said it sounded like Swedish but she wasn’t sure.’

‘So it could have been Icelandic?’

‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’

Magnus narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe. Some kind of revenge for Kristín and Marteinn’s death?’

‘Perhaps. Here. I’ve got a copy of the articles Amanda Wicker wrote.’ She opened her bag and handed Magnus an envelope. ‘They are in there. Oh, and there’s this.’

She handed him an old black-and-white photograph.

It showed a tall, attractive woman in an Icelandic woollen hat with ear flaps, smiling at the camera. She was standing beside a motorcycle.

‘That’s her?’ said Magnus.

‘Yes,’ said Louisa.

‘I can see why your father liked her.’

‘So can I.’

Magnus squinted. ‘Is that Reykjavík in the background? They are just beneath Esja, aren’t they, on Kollafjördur?’

Louisa nodded. ‘We stopped there when we came here on holiday. He showed me the exact spot and the photo. And then there is this.’

She smiled as she handed Magnus an exceedingly battered small book.

‘An Icelandic — English dictionary?’

‘That’s right. Look in the front cover.’

Magnus carefully opened the book. There was a pencilled inscription on the first page in Icelandic:

‘You know who Ari the Learned was?’ Magnus asked with a smile. ‘He wrote the Íslendingabók. Iceland’s first history.’

‘Don’t I just. Dad told me all about him.’

A man after Magnus’s own heart.

He returned the photograph and the dictionary to Louisa.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I must admit this is all very interesting. But I’m not sure what I can do about it. We have a murder in Iceland eighty-three years ago. The only surviving person involved was six at the time. And then another murder in a foreign country nearly forty years ago. My boss would never allow me to spend time on this, even if I wanted to.’

‘A woman went to jail for a murder she didn’t commit.’

‘Possibly. Is she still alive? Is she still in jail? I’m not sure what life sentences actually mean in Britain, but I assume she’s out by now.’

‘I don’t know,’ Louisa admitted. ‘The judge said she should serve a minimum of twenty years, so I assume you’re right. According to the articles, she was thirty-four in 1985, so she would be seventy-something now. And if she didn’t commit the crime, perhaps those two men did? Perhaps they were Icelanders? They could still be alive.’

‘They could.’

‘Look, it’s a question of justice. If that poor woman was wrongly imprisoned by a crooked policeman, then something should be done about it. Even if it is nearly forty years later. Don’t you agree?’

Magnus frowned.

‘I have a slightly overdeveloped sense of justice,’ Louisa said with a smile. ‘Dad always used to say my motto as a little girl was “It’s not fair!” I suppose that’s why I became a lawyer.’

Magnus nodded. ‘That’s why I became a detective.’ In his case, it was because no one had been able to solve his own father’s murder, which had blown Magnus’s life apart when he was twenty. Magnus had eventually succeeded, but it had taken him fourteen years. In that period, as a Boston homicide detective, he had done all he could to bring murderers of other people’s fathers, mothers, daughters and sons to justice.

He was still doing it in Iceland.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But even if the murderer turned out to be an Icelander living in Iceland, this is outside our jurisdiction.’

‘That’s why I came here. Naturally, that’s your answer, and one you would have given me in an email response if I had sent you one. And do you think the Met is going to reopen a case on the suspicion that one of their number framed a prostitute forty years ago? But someone should do something.’

She was right.

‘Shall I talk to your boss?’ she said.

‘No. Don’t do that,’ said Magnus. ‘I guarantee that won’t work.’

‘I plan to speak to that journalist. She was young in the 1990s — she’s still writing. I expect she’ll be interested in this.’

Magnus expected she would too. And if she was, that would produce exactly the kind of furore that Thelma wanted to avoid.

But this competent, down-to-earth British lawyer, whom Magnus was beginning to like, was right. It was a question of justice.

He had eventually found justice for his father. She had a right to find justice for hers.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Officially, I know I won’t be able to help you. But I understand what you’re saying. How long are you in Iceland?’

‘I don’t know. A week? I’d like to go to Kristín’s funeral, if she’s having one. And I’d like to visit Hvalfjördur and maybe Kristín’s son if he’s still alive. You said he was still alive?’

‘He is.’

‘Can you give me his address?’

‘Not without his permission.’ Magnus relented. ‘But it’s not that hard to find someone’s address in Iceland with an online directory if you’ve got the postcode. Especially if I were to tell you I went to see him in Grafarholt — that’s postcode 113. Which I won’t.’ Magnus thought a moment. ‘If you do find him, don’t tell him about the bullet, remember?’

‘I remember,’ said Louisa.

‘All right. Give me your cell phone number and tell me where you’re staying and I will get in touch with you if I find out anything relevant.’ Magnus smiled. ‘And I will ask the questions.’

Louisa returned his smile. ‘I believe you will.’

After he had seen Louisa out of the station, Magnus took a look at the article she had left him.

It was from a British newspaper called The Independent, dated March 1990, with the byline Amanda Wicker.

The article outlined the case much as Louisa had described it. There was more detail on Sir Neville Pybus-Smith, describing him as a seventy-five-year-old merchant banker who was on the board of a couple of large British companies. He had a wife and two adult daughters, one of whom was married to a mildly famous TV actor. Joyce Morgan had been born in Jamaica and arrived in Britain with her parents when she was ten. She had two sons of her own.

Her story was that Pybus-Smith was a regular client, that despite his age he had a penchant for bondage and that she had visited him for a one-hour ‘session’ at eight-thirty on the evening of 12 March 1985. The session had gone without a hitch, she had been paid and she had left at 9.45 p.m. She had seen two men entering the building, speaking some kind of Scandinavian language. Another resident of the building had seen her leave and was able to corroborate the time.

The prosecution at her trial claimed that she had murdered Pybus-Smith at about 9.30 p.m., strangling him, perhaps as part of a sex game gone wrong. The police had been unable to find the two Scandinavian men and doubted their existence.

Joyce had claimed she had been framed. She said she had acted as an informant a couple of years before in a corruption investigation, where she had accused a number of police officers of turning a blind eye to prostitution in exchange for sex. Her arrest for the murder was payback for that. Not just payback, it was sending a message to anyone else who might consider turning on their police protectors.

The prosecution pointed out that the corruption investigation had got nowhere because the evidence from Joyce and others like her had been shown to be baseless. She was only bringing it up now to get off the murder charge. The judge agreed and had ruled Joyce’s claims inadmissible in court.

Amanda Wicker had discovered that there had been a call to a minicab company from Pybus-Smith’s phone at his flat at 9.47 p.m. That phone call had not been mentioned at the trial. Wicker had been in touch with the minicab company, who had told her that Pybus-Smith had indeed booked a cab from his flat to Heathrow the following morning. The driver remembered waiting for him outside and him not showing up.

At the trial, it had emerged that Pybus-Smith had suffered a blow to his head, probably just before he died. This wasn’t explained by the prosecution, and the defence had made little of it — in Amanda Wicker’s opinion they should have. But it didn’t fit with a sex game gone wrong.

The journalist had contacted the police to ask them about the phone call to the minicab company, but they had simply not responded.

Magnus did some hasty googling. There were two more articles in The Independent about the case, the last one, dated January 1991, more or less admitting defeat.

Magnus didn’t know what to make of the articles. The conviction sounded fishy. He had heard that the London Metropolitan Police had had corruption problems in the seventies and eighties, as had many other police departments around the world, including Boston’s. But Joyce Morgan could just be trying it on. And there might be a reasonable explanation for the non-disclosure of the phone call to the minicab firm. Or perhaps the witness who said they saw Joyce leaving the building at 9.45 p.m. had got the time wrong and it had been later. Joyce had killed Pybus-Smith at 9.50 p.m. — after the phone call — and then left.

That didn’t really make sense. If indeed Pybus-Smith had died accidentally, that would imply he had made the call while he was in the middle of whatever sex games he and Joyce Morgan were playing. It seemed extremely unlikely that he would have booked the cab before the sex session had ended.

What if Joyce Morgan was telling the truth? What if those two men were Icelanders? What if they had entered the block of flats at 9.45 p.m. that evening, knocked at Pybus-Smith’s door just after he had called a minicab, and killed him?

Why had they killed him?

Because he had shot Kristín and Marteinn forty-five years before.

Was that too many what-ifs?

Probably. And forty-five years was an awfully long time to wait before taking revenge.

There was no point in asking the London police for the file. He could try speaking to Amanda Wicker. She might have found more evidence that she was unable to publish at the time.

But that would open the can of worms that Thelma wanted to remain closed.

He should speak to Gudni again. At the very least, he should do that.

Tomorrow.