by Chris Ould
“No, I’ve still got the dishes to do.”
“Okay, I’ll come through then,” Hentze said, standing up with his coffee. They went back to the kitchen.
“Is Høgni still outside?” he asked, glancing at the back door.
Martha shook her head. “No, he said he was going home. I think he’s frightened of you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because of his father.”
“Oh, yeh. Maybe then.”
Høgni’s father, Símun Joensen, had been a rare Faroese phenomenon; a man who stole and cheated so often that while Høgni was a boy he spent more time in prison than out of it. Finally realising he’d become the default suspect after any burglary on the islands, Símun had gone off to Denmark where the opportunities for a long-term career as a thief were better. He hadn’t been seen since, which was no one’s loss – apart from the Danes’, Hentze supposed.
“So are you okay?” he asked, putting an arm on Martha’s shoulder. She looked tired, he thought: stressed. Perhaps no more than usual with two small kids, though.
“Yeh, I’m fine. How’s Mum?”
“Okay, doing well,” Hentze said. “You could bring the kids over next weekend if you like.”
“Okay, maybe I will.” She leaned her head against him for a moment, then straightened and moved out of his embrace. “If you’re going to be working late I’ll make you a sandwich to take with you. Is lamb from the joint okay?”
“That’d be fine,” he told her, pushing up his sleeves. “But only if you let me do the dishes.”
13
“YOU PEOPLE HAVE TO STOP KILLING EACH OTHER,” FORENSIC examiner Sophie Krogh told Hentze. “Having the highest birth rate in Europe is no excuse. Mind you, I don’t know how that’s possible either. You all go round looking like you only have sex once a year – if you’re lucky.”
“Maybe that’s because we’re too busy killing each other,” Hentze replied flatly.
Sophie Krogh looked at him in the light of the car’s dashboard and seemed to assess whether she might have misjudged her tone.
“Is it a bad one?” she asked.
Hentze shrugged. “No, not so much. Not in that way.”
“So?”
Hentze sighed. “It’s just been a long day, that’s all,” he said, realising it was true. Then he put it aside. “Did they send a pathologist with you?”
“No, not till tomorrow. Anders Toft is on a case in Odense. I don’t know about the others. Maybe away for the weekend.”
“We should have been doctors.”
“Nah,” Sophie shook her head. “Too many sick people. I prefer corpses: they can’t complain. So, tell me where you’ve got to with this one.”
The drive across the island took as long as Hentze needed to give her the relevant details.
* * *
The number of uniform officers guarding the site had been reduced to three when it got dark. Now they helped unload equipment from the minivan while Hentze and Sophie Krogh suited up and went out to have a look at the scene. They each carried powerful flashlights to find their way along the common approach path.
At the stone huts the plastic sheeting Hentze and Dánjal Michelsen had hung over the alcove moved restlessly in the breeze, and Hentze stayed several metres away while Sophie went under it to take her first look at Erla Sivertsen’s body. By Hentze’s reckoning she might have lain there for more than twenty-four hours now, and he hoped Sophie wouldn’t decide to leave things as they were until daylight. That seemed too long.
In an effort to distract himself he took out his phone and made a couple of calls until Sophie re-emerged.
“I think we’ll leave the area search till the morning,” she said. “But if we bring in some lights I think we can deal with the body and the area around it. It’d be too difficult to tent properly without disturbing things, so we’ll get on with it now, before it starts to rain. We should be able to get her out of there in two or three hours unless we find anything unexpected.”
“Okay, good,” Hentze said. “The last scheduled ferry leaves Skopun at ten thirty but I can arrange for the search and rescue boat to take her body to the mortuary when you’re ready.”
“Fine. Are you staying?”
“Do you need me?”
“Not particularly – unless you’re looking for an excuse to pad out your overtime sheet.”
“Not today, no.” Hentze shook his head. They started back to the road. “In that case I’ll leave you to it and see if there’s any new information at the incident room.”
* * *
Fríða’s father, Jens Sólsker, had phoned with the news of Erla Sivertsen’s death as we were finishing dinner. The rest of the meal was a fairly sombre affair; not just because Fríða and Erla had been friends but because the sudden death of anyone you know tends to shake up the jigsaw of things as they were and make you reassess the pieces.
When we’d finished eating Matteus cleared the table and started on the dishes without being prompted by Fríða. For a sixteen-year-old he was a lot less self-absorbed than most of his age, and because he was more used to reading his mother’s mood than I was, I took my cue from him and joined him at the sink, leaving Fríða to make a couple of calls in private.
I did a little jigsaw reassessment of my own while we washed up, but not a great deal. I’d spent an hour or so in Erla Sivertsen’s company and I’d liked her well enough. She’d seemed interesting and engaged, but beyond that it was unknowable now. Maybe I’d been dwelling on other deaths too much recently, or maybe the fact that my job deals with death all the time made it easier to draw down a detached distance. Whatever the case, that’s what I did.
“Do you have any gin?” Fríða asked when she came back to the kitchen. Matteus had gone off upstairs.
“Does it rain here?” I stood up. “I’ll fetch it. Tonic as well?”
She nodded, then changed her mind and said, “I’ll come with you.”
“Oh, okay.”
She called up the stairs as we left, “Matts, I’m going next door for a drink with Jan, okay?”
“Yeh, okay.”
In the guest house I found glasses, poured two drinks and brought them to the sitting room where Fríða had settled in the armchair, legs pulled up under her, staring thoughtfully at the unlit wood burner. I handed her a glass.
“Ger so væl.”
“Takk. Skál.”
“Skál.”
I went to sit on the couch, waiting to see what she’d choose to say.
“So how was your visit with Sofia?” she asked.
“She doesn’t pull her punches, does she?”
“Nei, she’s a tough one.”
She sipped her drink.
“Do you know anything about her background?” I asked. “I mean how she and Signar got together?”
“Not so much. Her family had money – a shop in Runavík, selling supplies to ships – and I think she was in charge by the time she met Signar. And not so young, either. I have heard some people say that she was looking out to find a husband before it was too late, but I don’t know if it’s true.”
“Do you think… Do you know the phrase ‘the power behind the throne’?”
“Yeh, I think so.”
“Do you think that’s what Sofia was? I mean, when Signar was alive.”
She considered that, then nodded. “Yeh, I think it’s possible, yeh. She has always been a strong woman: she knows what she wants.”
I thought so, too. So I wondered if a recently widowed Signar might have seemed like a decent investment and opportunity to Sofia forty-odd years ago. I already knew that he’d bought his own boat at around the same time he’d married Sofia, and from then on his business interests had grown quickly, as well as gaining two sons – Magnus and Kristian – in quick succession. It wasn’t such a leap to think Sofia might have been the moving power behind all that.
“Did you ask her about Lýdia?” Fríða said then. “Tha
t was why you went, wasn’t it?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
So I told her what Sofia had said, boiling it down to the two most salient facts: that Lýdia had attempted suicide about a year after I was born and had been sent to hospital in Denmark as a result, although she’d refused to stay very long.
“I’m guessing,” I said. “But it could fit with her medical record if Ørsted Sjúkrahús was some kind of psychiatric hospital.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Fríða said, then looked at me over the rim of her glass. “So how do you feel about that?”
It was said like a therapist, because that’s what she was, and for a moment I debated whether I wanted to pursue it like that. Half and half. But before I could decide further my phone rang in the kitchen. I stood up. “Do you mind?”
“No, of course.”
Hjalti Hentze’s name was on the screen. “Hey,” I said.
“I’m calling for work,” Hentze said, as if to forestall any misunderstanding. “Have you heard about Erla Sivertsen?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Said in a way that meant he could therefore dispense with the details, and he sounded grateful for that. “We think it’s a suspicious death so you know how it goes now.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You saw her on Friday, is that right?”
I knew why he was asking: he was building a timeline. “Yeah, at the grind,” I said. “After that she gave me a lift back to Tórshavn. That was about half past six. I didn’t see or talk to her again after that.”
“Ah, okay, thank you, that was what I needed to know. And while she was with you did she say anything that might be useful to us?”
I ran back over the conversation, but only briefly. Hentze would only be interested in anything that might have given cause for concern and I already knew there was nothing like that. “No, not that I can think of. We just chatted.”
“Okay, takk,” he said, acknowledging that it had been a slim hope.
“Have you got a time of death yet?”
“No, only that she was last seen yesterday afternoon. Thanks for your help. I’ll let you get back to your evening.”
“Hjalti?”
“Yeh?”
“Statistically, the chances are that she knew the person who killed her – at least who they were. But more likely she knew them quite well.”
“Yeh,” he said flatly. He already knew that.
“Okay. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
“Yeh, I will, but this time it is our headache, I think. Takk fyri, Jan.”
He rang off and I put the phone back on the counter and plugged it into the charger, thinking about Hentze and his dislike of murders. Then I went back to the sitting room.
Fríða was still sitting as I’d left her but she’d finished her drink and when I offered another she said yes, then uncurled herself and followed me to the kitchen.
“It was Hjalti on the phone,” I said, refilling glasses. “About Erla.”
“Does he know any more?”
“Doesn’t sound like it.” And then, because I was curious, “How did you meet her? I mean, were you friends at school or neighbours or…?”
She took her glass and leaned against the counter top. “In the beginning, it was because of Finn. He was her boyfriend while they were at school, but it was always on again, off again: always a drama, you know? For a year, maybe.”
“That’s teenagers, though.”
“Yeh, I guess. But they got together again when Erla went to college in Tórshavn and then they became more serious. They were together for about three years. That was when I got to know her better.”
“Like a big sister?”
“Yeh, maybe.”
“So what happened between them?”
She shrugged, as if it was predictable. “It was what often happens here. The islands aren’t so big, and if you want to…” she hunted for the word – “to expand yourself, you have to leave.”
“Couldn’t Finn have gone with her?”
“I guess, but he wanted to buy a boat and to fish. That’s who he is. Erla’s— She was more adventurous.”
I nodded. “I got that impression.”
“Did you—” She changed her mind halfway through the question. “Had you arranged to see her again?”
That came out of left field. I shook my head. “No. At least only if I wanted to go to a debate the Alliance are having at the Nordic House. Why?”
She shrugged. “I just wondered. I had the idea she might be your type.”
“You think I’ve got a type?”
“Haven’t you?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Someone with a big stick.”
She frowned. “A stick?”
“I’m not much good at reading the signals – the hints. I’m never sure I’m reading them right, so I usually need to be hit over the head to get the message.”
“Is that how your ex-wife did it?”
I laughed. “Not exactly, but it is how she came to be an ex.”
She smiled, but it was more polite than accepting; as if she thought I’d dodged the issue by making a joke. And I suppose I had, in a fashion. I wasn’t sure why: maybe because I knew what Fríða did for a living; or maybe just because opening the door into one personal issue often leads on to others.
Whatever the case, Fríða seemed to see it as a marker of some kind. She took a last sip from her glass then put it aside. “I should get back.”
I saw her to the door and when she’d gone I collected my drink from the kitchen and then sat for a while, thinking about Erla Sivertsen and a couple of what-if kind of thoughts. Too late, though. That sort of thinking always is.
* * *
“So what do we have?” Remi Syderbø asked. There were four of them in the room besides himself: Hentze, Ári Niclasen, Oddur Arge and Kim Stenburg, the uniform inspector for the night shift.
Ári Niclasen spoke up first, as if keen to show that despite his late entry into the investigation he was now up to speed. “We’re still collating details from the interviews with the Alliance people, but basically the last time Erla Sivertsen was seen alive by any of them appears to be at about 15:00 hours yesterday.”
He stood up and moved to the whiteboard. “At around that time her housemate – a Dutch girl called Veerle Koning – says Erla left the house at Fjalsgøta with her camera equipment but didn’t say where she was going. However, she did say not to expect her for dinner. She was wearing jeans, a blue AWCA sweatshirt, red waterproof jacket and a grey hat. As you can see from the photographs of the scene, the jacket and hat are missing. The car she was using is a silver Volvo, registration DA 732. We’re still trying to locate it.”
“Was her camera equipment with the body?” Remi asked, looking to Hentze.
Hentze shook his head. “No, she had no possessions at all. I suspect that was deliberate on the part of her killer, either in the hope of making identification harder, or perhaps as a result of robbery.”
“You think robbery was the motive?” Ári said, not trying very hard to keep scepticism out of his voice.
“No,” Hentze said mildly. “I’m just saying that whoever killed her might also have taken the opportunity to rob her as well. She was a professional photographer, so I assume her equipment would be quite valuable.”
“Or it may still be in her car,” Remi said, acknowledging both points. “It would be good to find that as a priority.”
“I’ve circulated the description to all the patrols,” Kim Stenburg said. “We’ll keep looking overnight and again tomorrow.”
“Good, thanks.” Remi looked back to Hentze. “Is there anything more from the scene?”
“Not so far. Sophie and her team will be there for several hours but I think most of the information will come from the post-mortem.”
“You checked out the man she argued with at Sandur after the grind – Haraldsen?”
“Yeh. At least for the moment he
seems to be in the clear. They did argue when she took his photograph, but it was nothing more serious than that.”
“Despite the graffiti at the scene?” Ári asked. “That clearly points towards someone with a grudge against the Alliance.”
“It might,” Hentze allowed. “But after a public argument with Erla Sivertsen I don’t think Haraldsen would have been stupid enough to draw attention to himself as a suspect like that.”
As soon as he’d used the word “stupid” he knew it had been the wrong thing to do. Ári Niclasen was hyper sensitive at the moment, and now he appeared to take the word as an indictment of his theory.
“Well maybe he is stupid,” Ári said. “Or perhaps he thought it would throw suspicion on other people who don’t like the Alliance. Can we be so quick to dismiss this Haraldsen when we know there was bad feeling between him and the victim?”
“I want to come back to that in a minute,” Remi said, cutting in before Hentze could reply. He turned to Oddur. “What about the IT side? We know she had a cellphone, yes? Even though we don’t have it.”
“Yeh,” Oddur said. “I’ve talked to the service provider and asked for a list of all calls made and received. They weren’t happy about it, being Sunday, but we should have something by the morning. They were able to tell me that the phone is switched off at the moment, though.”
“Okay. What about emails, web posts, that sort of thing?”
“I’ve started going through her emails but there are a lot. So far there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Right. Good. Okay, does anyone have anything else to add? Anything we’ve not covered?”
No one did.
“Then let’s talk about the bigger picture for a moment,” Remi said. “We all know the current situation with regard to the Alliance, and as Ári’s pointed out, the graffiti above the body could – could – indicate that this crime is in some way related to their activities.”
Ári Niclasen nodded when Remi said this, but Remi appeared not to see. “However,” he went on, “I’ve spoken to the Commander and it’s been agreed that we need to keep a tight control over things now. No doubt there are people who will assume that because Erla Sivertsen was a member of the Alliance, her death is somehow related to that. We can’t prevent that idea, but we can avoid reinforcing it. So, outside this room I don’t want any open discussion of the graffiti or any implication that we are linking Ms Sivertsen’s death with her membership of the Alliance. We are not. We are keeping an open mind to all the possibilities. This is what I have told Petra Langley, the leader of the AWCA group here, and she has agreed that, except for a statement acknowledging the death, they will not publish any other comments on their website for at least twenty-four hours. They also realise that the situation won’t be improved by allowing wild speculation, so discretion is in their interests, too. Okay?”