Whale Fjord

Three

September 2023

‘Come on, Magnús, get a move on! This is a suspicious death we are investigating.’

Magnus bit into his kleina — a kind of Icelandic doughnut — and stayed resolutely within the speed limit. His colleague, Vigdís, had been impatient when he had stopped for the pastry and a coffee. He navigated the mini-roundabouts around Mosfellsbaer carefully and settled in behind a squat truck laden with construction rubble travelling at fifty kilometres an hour.

‘Now you’re just winding me up,’ said Vigdís.

‘It’s a skeleton, Vigdís. It will wait. God knows how many years it’s waited so far.’

‘Well, neither will we until we get there.’

Normally, Magnus appreciated Icelanders’ impatience to go places fast and get things done, but sometimes it could be exhausting. He was an Icelander himself, of course, but he had been brought up in America and spent the first ten years of his police career in Boston.

‘You’re just worried Edda will get there before us, aren’t you?’

Edda was head of the Forensics Unit. Meticulous and thorough once she was doing her job, she and her team prided themselves on how quickly they could get their van to a crime scene. They loved it when they beat CID.

‘Maybe.’ Vigdís shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ She sipped her own coffee and pulled out her phone. She made a call.

‘Hi, Mum. How is she?’ Vigdís listened. ‘Still asleep. I suppose that’s a good thing. Give me a call when she wakes up.’

‘Is Erla ill?’ Magnus asked.

‘Yes. She’s got a bad cold and so I couldn’t take her to day care.’

‘And you got your mum to look after her?’ Magnus was surprised. Vigdís’s mother was an alcoholic, sometimes recovering, sometimes not.

‘I know.’ Vigdís frowned. ‘She’s been dry since Erla was born. I told her I wouldn’t leave her alone with her granddaughter until she’d been dry a year. And it’s eighteen months. I think.’

‘You think?’

‘Well, she says she’s been dry, but you never know. Not with Mum.’

‘Do you want me to take you back to the station so you can go home?’ said Magnus. ‘This skull isn’t going anywhere.’

Vigdís sighed. ‘No, that’s OK. I was planning to let her look after Erla soon anyway. And it is over a year...’ She hesitated.

‘What?’

‘I was worried she was slurring her words.’

‘We can turn around.’ Magnus repeated his offer.

Vigdís hesitated. ‘No. It’ll be fine. She always sounds as if she’s slurring her words these days. I think it’s the cumulative effect of all that alcohol.’

Magnus and Vigdís had worked together for a long time — over ten years. In some ways, they were both outsiders in the Reykjavík police force. Magnus was the Kani Cop — Kani meant Yank. And Vigdís was black. She was actually genetically more American than Magnus — her father had been a serviceman at the American base at Keflavík — although Vigdís had never met him. Her mother was Icelandic, however, and Vigdís was one of the few Icelanders of her age who didn’t speak English. In Vigdís’s case it was a point of principle: she was fed up with Icelanders assuming she was a foreigner and trying to speak to her in English.

When they reached the Hvalfjördur tunnel, about thirty kilometres north of Reykjavík, where Iceland’s national Ring Road plunged dramatically underwater on its way north, Magnus turned right and drove eastwards along the shore of the fjord. It was one of those Icelandic days where the weather was changing every ten minutes, as rainclouds barrelled in from the Atlantic on strong south-westerly winds, and then barrelled off, leaving sunshine and rainbows behind them. The waters of the fjord, ruffled by the wind, changed with the sky, from blue to green to dark grey and back to blue again.

A dusting of early snow had fallen on the mountains on the northern shore. A bright blue aluminium smelter squatted and scowled in a gap between the fells. Iceland’s abundant geothermal energy made aluminium-smelting feasible, if controversial.

‘God, I hate that plant,’ said Magnus. ‘It ruins a beautiful fjord.’

‘It makes Iceland a twenty-first-century industrial superpower.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Magnus. ‘Don’t tell me you actually like it?’

‘OK. I admit it; I don’t like it.’

‘They could at least paint it a different colour. Maybe camouflage it like they did the warships here during the war.’

‘That’s actually not a bad idea.’

‘You’re welcome.’

After several kilometres, they came to a farm and a road signposted to Laxahóll. A small white Toyota was parked on the gravel next to the sign.

‘Look!’ said Vigdís, pointing out into the water.

Despite its name, there were no whales in Whale Fjord, but Vigdís had spotted half a dozen seals sunning themselves like a string of grey sausages on a group of small seaweed-strewn rocks a few metres from the shore.

‘It figures.’ Magnus nodded towards the GPS screen in the car. ‘That farm’s called Selvík.’ Seal Bay.

He turned right and drove along a narrow, paved road beside a clear river for a few hundred metres before he came to a little gathering of police cars.

And Edda’s forensics van.

‘How does she do it?’ said Vigdís, shaking her head.

Magnus parked next to the police cars under the scrutiny of half a dozen horses who had trotted over to the corner of their paddock to look, their eyes scarcely visible beneath the thick fringe of their manes. The valley broadened out upstream, lush and peaceful, its green meadows dotted with cylinders of white plastic-coated hay. A large, prosperous set of farm buildings and a small white metal church watched over it.

Magnus began to pull on forensic coveralls, gloves and overshoes.

‘Do you really think those are necessary for a skeleton?’ Vigdís said.

‘If you want to show up to Edda’s crime scene without them, that’s your choice.’

‘Good point.’

Once they were suited up, they walked towards some crime-scene tape in front of a gully scored into the side of the valley.

Magnus didn’t recognize the uniformed cop who signed him and Vigdís into the scene — he was from the station in Akranes — but he knew the sergeant, and he knew Edda, of course, who was just getting her equipment ready.

‘You guys do take your time,’ she said, grinning. She was tall, with long legs, and disconcertingly attractive. She had no difficulty keeping detectives in order. Magnus never messed with her.

‘Magnús can’t solve a crime without a doughnut,’ Vigdís said.

Magnus looked at the gully. It was steep and dark and full of rocks and boulders. At the top, near the ridge, were more rocks.

He scowled. ‘That doesn’t look very stable.’

‘It isn’t,’ said the sergeant. ‘The farmer who found the bodies said there had been a rockfall sometime in the last few months after a small earthquake. That may have been what revealed the bodies.’

‘Bodies?’ said Magnus. ‘I thought there was just one.’

‘One skull. Three arms so far. We think we will find a fourth. But we are waiting for forensics to move the rocks.’

‘Be careful,’ said Magnus to Edda. ‘We don’t want to lose anyone to another rockfall.’

‘Don’t worry about us, Magnús,’ Edda said, clearly insulted that Magnus should think she would be anything but careful.

‘Have you seen the skull yet?’

‘Just a quick look. Follow me.’

She led Magnus and Vigdís to a boulder. The skull stared up at them, wedged between fallen stones. Magnus suppressed a shudder and exchanged a glance with Vigdís. Ancient bones should be less disconcerting than a warm dead body. Somehow this one wasn’t.

‘Have you any idea how old it is?’ Vigdís asked Edda.

‘Not yet. Could be anything from two years to two hundred years. Or older, I suppose.’

‘Who found it?’ Magnus asked the sergeant.

‘Two German tourists. They alerted the farmer and he called it in.’

‘And where are they?’

‘Back at the farm. Selvík. It’s just near the turn-off on the fjord road. You passed it on your way here.’

‘OK. Let’s go and talk to them.’

Selvík’s small kitchen was crowded: Magnus, Vigdís, a female officer from Akranes, the two German tourists and the farmer. They could only just fit around the kitchen table.

The kitchen was simple but clean, and warm. An ancient iron range dominated one wall. A couple of intricately worked framed tapestries — images of the farmhouse itself and some pink roses — looked down upon the bright blue-and-white-checked cloth that covered the table. Magnus noticed a flicker of movement at the doorway: a wrinkled grey head appeared and disappeared just as quickly. The creator of the needlework, no doubt.

Magnus started in English with the German couple, Heinrich Lang and Bettina Franke. Theirs was the rented Toyota that Magnus had seen by the turn-off at Selvík. They had parked to go for a little hike.

‘And why did you decide to go into that gully?’ Magnus asked.

‘Oh. It looked interesting,’ said the man. Magnus noticed his girlfriend shift uncomfortably.

The farmer, Jón, snorted. ‘That place is dangerous.’

‘Tell us how you found the skull?’

‘Um. I was taking a photo of Bettina and she noticed it. She screamed. We ran off to get help.’

Magnus glanced at Bettina. These people were hiding something. What?

‘Did you take her photograph with your phone?’ Magnus said.

The German nodded calmly.

‘May I see it?’

His girlfriend stiffened.

‘I’d rather not show it to you,’ Heinrich said, equally calmly.

‘I’d like to see it.’

Heinrich glanced at his girlfriend. ‘Don’t you need a warrant?’

Magnus managed to stop himself from smiling. ‘Technically, we do. And I can get one, if you wish. The very fact you are reluctant to show us the picture makes me suspicious and I know a judge will agree.’

‘Then get a warrant. My photographs are private.’ Heinrich Lang was a small man, but he managed to project an air of arrogance.

Magnus looked at the woman, whose expression betrayed a tense mixture of embarrassment and irritation.

He felt sorry for her. ‘Bettina, would you rather my colleague Vigdís saw the picture? I doubt there is any need for me to take a look.’

The irritation won. The woman turned to her boyfriend and unleashed a tirade of rapid German. His hauteur crumbled, his shoulders slumped and he handed over his phone.

She passed it to Vigdís. ‘It was all Heinie’s idea,’ she muttered angrily.

Vigdís flicked through the photographs, her expression politely serious. She turned to Magnus. ‘Naked,’ she said in Icelandic. ‘She looks cold.’

‘I see,’ said Magnus with a smile of kindness, rather than amusement. ‘It’s possible that we may need these as evidence in an inquiry, but it’s unlikely. I’ll do my best to avoid it if I can. The important thing is you reported it.’

‘No wonder Gerdur was upset,’ said Jón, in Icelandic.

‘Gerdur?’

‘Gerdur of Gerdur’s Hollow. She’s a witch who was buried there three hundred years ago. That’s why no one goes in there.’

Magnus raised his eyebrows. You never knew with these farmers how serious they were about the local superstitions that infested the countryside. This one looked serious.

Jón Sigurdsson was a big man in his fifties, with big broad shoulders and a big overhanging belly. His grey hair was long, wispy and unkempt, as was his sandy beard.

‘When was the last time you went in there?’ Magnus asked.

‘Over a year ago. I avoid it if I possibly can. And if I can’t, I send in Kappi.’

‘Kappi?’

The black-and-white sheepdog pricked up his ears and stuck out his tongue. ‘I see,’ Magnus said. ‘Kappi. And I assume you didn’t see anything last year?’

‘No. But just looking today, I think there’s been another rockfall recently.’

‘Another one?’

‘Yes. There was a big one about eighty years ago. There used to be a cairn at Gerdur’s Hollow, and you were always supposed to add a stone when you went in there. My grandfather forgot once, and a couple of weeks later there was a landslide. The cairn was gone. The whole family has been even more careful since then.’

‘I see,’ said Magnus.

‘Do you think the skull belongs to Gerdur?’ the farmer asked. ‘Could it be that old?’

‘I suppose it could be,’ said Magnus. ‘We will know soon enough. Although it looks like there are two bodies.’

‘Two? I suppose she could have been buried with another witch.’

‘Has anyone else gone missing in this neighbourhood?’ Vigdís asked. ‘More recently? Like in the last couple of years?’

Jón thought. ‘Definitely not that recently. There was a Japanese hiker who got lost on Esja about fifteen years ago. But I’m pretty sure they found his body in the end.’

‘We can check,’ said Vigdís.

‘You can ask my mother about Gerdur if you like. Mum!’ the farmer called out towards the doorway of the kitchen. ‘Mum! Can you talk to the police?’

Within seconds an old lady shuffled into the kitchen. She was unsteady on her feet, and decades of working on a farm had etched her face, but there was nothing unsteady about her blue eyes. All marbles present and correct.

‘Hello,’ she said, with a surprisingly sweet smile. ‘My name is Frída. I am Jón’s mother. I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.’

I bet you couldn’t, thought Magnus. The grey head he had seen earlier belonged to this woman.

‘Tell them about Gerdur, Mum.’

Magnus glanced at Vigdís. Here we go — full-on elf alert. Magnus was ready for elves, trolls, hidden people, witches, ghosts: whatever the superstitious old lady wanted to throw at him. He would listen politely and then turn the subject back to the twenty-first century.

‘Ach, you are such a wuss, Jón. You’re as bad as your father. If there ever was a witch called Gerdur, she’s long dead and no trouble to any of us.’

Magnus couldn’t suppress a grin.

Heinrich rather gallantly got to his feet and the old lady took his seat with another sweet smile. Her bright blue eyes sought out Magnus.

‘If you want to know whose bodies those are, they’re probably the two people from Laxahóll who disappeared during the war.’