Whale Fjord

Twenty-Five

‘So, you want to speak to me about Neville Pybus-Smith’s murder?’

Amanda Wicker’s dark hair hung down beside a face scored with deep vertical lines. Her lips pointed downwards, giving the impression of a permanent scowl, but her brown eyes were lively. She was appearing by video link on Magnus’s computer, his own image and that of Vigdís in small boxes on the right of the screen. Books were stuffed into the bookshelf behind the journalist higgledy-piggledy, suggesting more than just a backdrop for show.

‘That’s right,’ said Magnus. ‘We’ve read the articles you wrote in 1990.’

‘And why would the Icelandic police possibly be interested in that?’

‘We are investigating a homicide here. We’re not sure, but there may be a link to Pybus-Smith’s murder in 1985.’

‘The mysterious Scandinavians?’

‘Before we go any further, I’d like to keep this off the record.’

‘Why should I talk to you off the record?’

Magnus had been expecting this. ‘We’ve contacted the Metropolitan Police in London, but I’m not confident we will receive any help from them.’

‘You can be confident you won’t.’

‘Quite. But if there is a link between that murder and the one here in Iceland, then it will prove that Joyce Morgan was innocent.’

‘Which would be a great comfort to her,’ said Amanda. ‘I mean that sincerely. But I also mean that I would want to write about it.’

‘OK,’ said Magnus. ‘Here’s what I can do. If the two murders are linked, I’ll give you a heads-up when we make an arrest. You’ll get the press release at the same time the Icelandic media do. But you will be the only one who knows about the 1985 murder. What you do with the information will be up to you.’

Amanda Wicker was thinking, mulling over negotiating strategies.

‘Amanda, I need your help. If my hunch is right, Joyce Morgan is innocent. You care about that: I know you do.’

‘She was finally let out in 2007,’ said Amanda. ‘I never understood why she went down for murder and not manslaughter if it was a sex game gone wrong. The worst thing, the thing that really pains her, is that both her sons are now in prison. She’s convinced that if she had been around when they were growing up, they wouldn’t be in there now. She’s probably right.’

Magnus understood her anger. Prison could run in families: he had seen it many times in Boston and often even in Iceland. And if it was a bent British cop who put the mother in prison, he bore the responsibility for the sons as well.

‘So do we have a deal?’ Magnus asked.

Amanda paused a moment before nodding. ‘We do. What do you want to know?’

‘Firstly, have you been contacted recently by a woman named Louisa Sugarman?’

Amanda shook her head. ‘Never heard of her.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. Who is she?’

‘She’s the murder victim. She was killed some time last night here in Reykjavík. She said she was going to speak with you about Pybus-Smith’s murder. I guess she never got the chance.’

‘No, she didn’t,’ said Amanda, pausing to scribble down the name.

‘What about those two Scandinavians? Can you tell me anything more about them than you put in the article?’

‘I dug out my notes just now after I got your email asking to interview me. There was an older man and a younger man. The younger one was tall and blond. No real description of the older man, apart from he had grey hair.’

‘And they were speaking Swedish?’

‘Joyce had watched a lot of Swedish porn films in her sex work and she said they sounded a bit like the actors in one of those.’

‘Could they have been speaking Icelandic?’

‘Funnily enough, I wondered about that. I knew that Pybus-Smith had been stationed in Iceland during the war. But Joyce couldn’t be sure what language it was. Is there an Icelandic connection?’

Amanda Wicker was an old-school journalist in her sixties. Magnus trusted her to stick to their agreement.

‘There may have been. We think two young Icelanders were shot by a British officer in 1940.’

‘Pybus-Smith?’

‘Someone else. We think.’ Magnus glanced at Vigdís, staring at her own computer at her desk opposite him. ‘We don’t know.’

‘So, this would be some kind of revenge killing? That’s a long time later, isn’t it –1940 to 1985? That’s forty-five years.’

‘That’s true,’ Magnus admitted. ‘I was trying to put together a timeline from your article for the night of the murder.’ He checked his notes. ‘I couldn’t see how it was possible for Joyce to have left the building at nine-forty-five having murdered Pybus-Smith when he made that phone call to the minicab firm at nine-forty-seven.’

‘The police claimed that the witness who saw her leave at nine-forty-five was wrong.’

‘But that still doesn’t add up, unless the witness was wrong by at least half an hour.’

‘No, it doesn’t. And a young detective constable at the time admitted as much to me. He was the one who told me about the call to the minicab company and he corroborated Joyce’s claims that she and other girls had provided sexual favours to the detective chief inspector in charge of the case. He was certain his bosses were out to get her — he heard them say as much. This was all off the record, of course: his career would have been over if they had found out he’d spoken to me. You see, I knew Joyce had been framed. That’s why it was all so frustrating, and why I kept at it.’

‘What happened to the detective constable?’

‘Chief superintendent now. Still a good contact. Still a good copper. The chief inspector who fitted up Joyce Morgan took early retirement in the 1990s before he was forced out of the Met by another corruption investigation. Classic bent-cop move.’

In theory, the young detective constable should have reported what he knew to his superiors rather than going to the press anonymously, but Magnus could understand how hard that would have been back in those days, how small the chances were that anything would result from it apart from the end of the constable’s career. It would be hard even now, as Magnus well knew. He had first been transferred to Iceland to escape the consequences of reporting the tampering of evidence by bent cops in Boston to protect a local drug gang.

‘Can I talk to this chief superintendent?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘What about the bent cop?’

‘Not him either. But that’s because he died ten years ago.’

On Magnus’s computer screen Amanda frowned.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I’ve just remembered. You know Joyce specialized in S&M?’

‘Yes.’

‘We had an interesting conversation about it once. About why these men enjoyed it.’

‘And?’

‘She said there were a variety of reasons. For some of them, either being beaten or doing the beating at boarding school during adolescence inspired their fantasies. For one or two, it was something darker.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Self-loathing. A desire to punish themselves. She had one client who had shot some German prisoners of war in Italy. That was why he wanted her to whip him.’

‘And Pybus-Smith had something similar?’

‘Joyce thought so, from what he said. He was never specific and she didn’t want to ask. But yes, he believed he had done something very bad for which he should be punished.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Do you know what that might be?’

‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘I think I do.’

‘Did you understand all of that?’ Magnus asked Vigdís as Amanda Wicker’s image disappeared from the screen.

He was never sure how good Vigdís’s English was. She refused to speak it but he knew she understood something, more than she let on.

‘I got the gist of it,’ Vigdís said. ‘It makes me wonder whether Gudni was lying about seeing Louisa’s father shooting his mother.’

‘I wonder that too.’

‘And what do you think his son Bjarni looked like in 1985?’

‘I think he looked young and tall.’ Magnus recalled the close-shaved stubble around Bjarni’s scalp. ‘With fair hair.’

‘Which would imply that it wasn’t Lieutenant Marks that Gudni saw shoot his mother.’

‘It was Neville Pybus-Smith.’