Sea of Stone

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘So you didn’t get given a free ticket then?’ said Aníta.

  ‘No.’ Villi smiled. ‘It was actually really difficult to get a flight.’

  ‘I thought you couldn’t transfer air tickets like that,’ Aníta said. She returned Villi’s smile. His warm brown eyes and deep rumbling voice seemed to her at least to reduce some of the tension around the table. ‘Does Sibba know you are here?’

  Sibba was Villi’s daughter who worked in Reykjavík.

  ‘No. It was all a bit of a rush and I didn’t want to tell her I was coming and then not make it. I planned to call her when I got here. In fact, I should phone her tonight. Tell her what’s happened to her grandfather before she sees it on the news.’

  ‘You can use our phone if you like,’ said Aníta.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Villi. ‘But I’ve got my cell.’ He glanced around the table. ‘Mum is pretty bad, though, isn’t she?’

  ‘She is today,’ said Aníta. ‘This is by far the worst I’ve seen her. She’s been forgetting things increasingly over the last six months, and it sometimes frustrates her. It really annoyed Hallgrímur. But this is the first time she hasn’t realized what’s going on around her.’

  ‘A shock can do that with Alzheimer’s,’ Ingvar said. ‘Shift it on a stage. A shock or an accident.’

  ‘So it is Alzheimer’s, then?’ Aníta asked.

  ‘Probably,’ said Ingvar. ‘It could be mini strokes, it’s difficult to tell the difference. I’m surprised to see her this bad.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything you can do for her?’ said Villi.

  ‘You know I don’t treat my own family,’ said Ingvar.

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Villi. ‘When you can see them falling apart in front of your eyes.’

  Ingvar glared at his brother. ‘I haven’t been here very much over the last few months. And when I have she has seemed no more than forgetful.’

  Aníta thought it was ironic that Villi had to fly all the way over from Canada to look after his mother, when he had a brother who was a doctor twenty kilometres away. But Ingvar liked to keep his distance. As he said, he insisted on not treating any of his family. He left that to his colleague Íris at the St Francis’s hospital in Stykkishólmur. Aníta thought she could understand why. It would be very hard to maintain the conventional doctor–patient balance when the patient was Hallgrímur. And given what Ingvar had said about Magnus’s injuries when he was a boy, maybe he was right to keep his professional distance. Ingvar was usually right.

  Ingvar had scarcely visited Bjarnarhöfn at all over the last year or so, although Gabrielle had come riding with Aníta a few times. Aníta guessed that this was on account of Hallgrímur and possibly Sylvía, rather than Kolbeinn or her. She knew that Gabrielle hated her father-in-law. Aníta had asked Ingvar once why he lived in Stykkishólmur, leaving unspoken the point that it clearly wasn’t because of his family. He said that it was the most beautiful place in the world. It was true that he loved to potter about the islands of Breidafjördur in his little boat, and Gabrielle was enthused by the desolate beauty of the Icelandic countryside.

  ‘Speaking of Sylvía,’ Aníta said, ‘I’d better take her over to the cottage to get her things for the night. She can sleep in Tóta’s room. You can have the spare room, Villi.’

  ‘We should be going,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Thanks for supper, Aníta. It must have been difficult to cook for so many of us in these circumstances.’

  Aníta smiled at her sister-in-law. Ingvar had met her while he was training in Paris. She was a nurse, and had worked in the hospital in Stykkishólmur, although she only covered there occasionally these days. She professed to love the Icelandic countryside, but she missed France, and she and Ingvar had bought themselves a small apartment in Paris four years before.

  ‘We should go riding next week,’ Aníta said. ‘Before lambing starts. Give me a call.’

  After Ingvar and Gabrielle had left, Aníta fetched Sylvía and they went outside to the cottage. It was a dark night, no stars, and the great fell behind the farm was just a looming shape. A light was on inside the one police car that still remained, parked near the cottage. Aníta noticed Magnus’s Range Rover had gone, taken away by the police, presumably. The constable jumped out when he saw Sylvía and Aníta approaching.

  ‘She needs to get her things for tonight,’ said Aníta.

  ‘All right,’ said the constable. ‘But I must be with her while she does it. And she’ll have to point out what she wants and I’ll get it for her. They haven’t finished examining the place.’

  The three of them entered the cottage, took off their shoes and then went through to Sylvía and Hallgrímur’s bedroom. The bed was made, but the room wasn’t quite as neat as Sylvía would have liked it, Aníta thought. The policeman put on gloves as an agitated Sylvía pointed out her nightclothes. She clearly didn’t understand why she was doing this, but at least she didn’t mention her husband.

  ‘Are you here all night?’ Aníta asked the constable as they were leaving. He looked seriously tired.

  ‘No. Just till midnight. We don’t really have the manpower to guard the place all night. But if you see or hear anything, call us right away, won’t you?’

  Aníta took Sylvía back to the farmhouse and got her sorted in Tóta’s room. To be fair to her daughter, Tóta had put her recent awkward attitude on hold. Aníta really appreciated that; she must remember to praise Tóta for it. Although with her prickly daughter, Aníta would have to be careful how she did even that.

  She went back downstairs to find Villi finishing the washing up. One of the dogs, Mey, was awake and watching him closely, hopeful for some scraps.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ said Aníta. ‘Where’s Kolbeinn?’

  ‘Checking the sheep,’ said Villi. ‘He says a ram got in with the ewes last autumn and there’s a chance you might get a few early lambs.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Aníta. Although it seemed to her that Kolbeinn was just trying to dodge washing up. She picked up a dishcloth and began to dry.

  ‘At dinner, when Kolbeinn asked you whether you had seen something, what did he mean?’ Villi asked.

  Aníta glanced at her brother-in-law and could feel herself blushing slightly. ‘Oh, nothing. I don’t know what he meant.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Villi grunted. He looked as if he wanted to pursue the point, but changed the subject. ‘You never told me how you managed to live here so long with my father so close,’ he said. ‘I escaped several thousand miles away, but you lived right next door.’

  ‘It’s true, I didn’t. ’Aníta considered saying something about not speaking ill of the dead, but she realized it was pointless. Everyone in Hallgrímur’s family knew what he was like. Besides which, she trusted Villi, and appreciated the opportunity to be frank. It was good to talk to him.

  ‘It was really hard for the first year of our marriage,’ she said. ‘You might remember they were in the farmhouse then, and Kolbeinn and I were in the cottage. Hallgrímur used to boss Kolbeinn around, boss both of us around, and it drove me mad. You know how Kolbeinn has always been in awe of his father; well, he kept choosing his father over me, and that was unacceptable.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Villi, placing a serving dish on the drainer for Aníta to dry. ‘So how did you put a stop to it?’

  Aníta smiled. ‘I had a little word. I said, “Unless you leave me and Kolbeinn alone, I will take your son away. And there will be no one left to farm Bjarnarhöfn. If you let me run things the way I want to run them, then we’ll stay. Kolbeinn will run the farm, with advice from you, and I will look after you and Sylvía until you both die.”’

  ‘I bet he didn’t like that,’ said Villi.

  ‘Actually, he was OK with it. I think he respected me. And by and large we kept to each other’s side of the bargain.’ She shrugged. ‘He wasn’t all bad, you know. He loved playing with the kids; he was besotted with Tóta. I think his bark was worse than his bite. He had bad moods just l
ike everyone else, but if you stood up to him, he was reasonable.’

  ‘He could never resist a beautiful woman,’ said Villi.

  Aníta glanced sharply at him, and then turned away as she felt herself reddening again. She had to stop this blushing. ‘I’m sure that’s not it.’

  ‘Oh, yes it is. My father fancied you. It was always obvious to me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Aníta, her eyes fixed on the saucepan in her hands. But she knew it was true. She had taken advantage of that fact to establish her own presence at Bjarnarhöfn. And what was wrong with that?

  She wondered whether Kolbeinn had noticed. Probably not. The thought would have shocked her husband so much that he wouldn’t have allowed himself even to conceive it.

  ‘It’s interesting how the three of you coped with him,’ Aníta said. ‘You ran away to Canada, Ingvar stayed close, but avoided him, and Kolbeinn couldn’t break away. Of them all, I think you managed the healthiest relationship.’

  Villi smiled. ‘It’s ironic that it was easier to keep in touch from thousands of miles away. We had some good visits.’

  It was true that when Villi and his Canadian family came over every three or four years for Christmas or in the high summer, the atmosphere at Bjarnarhöfn lifted. And Aníta knew that Villi kept in touch with his parents on the phone.

  ‘Then there was Margrét,’ Villi said. ‘Dad doted on her and she could never quite get away from him.’ He sighed. ‘Dad’s death has sort of brought her back. At least to me.’

  ‘I know how fond you were of her.’

  ‘Oh, I loved her. And she adored me. She used to tag along after me on the farm when we were kids, watching me. She was in her twenties when I left Iceland. She hadn’t started drinking then, although she clearly had a good time down in Reykjavík. Yes, it’s terrible what happened to her. It was all Ragnar’s fault.’

  Ragnar was Margrét’s husband. ‘The affair?’

  ‘With her best friend. That’s what really set her off on the drink. At least that’s what Dad always said.’

  Aníta turned to put some of the dishes away. She found Villi’s presence both comforting and disturbing at the same time.

  Kolbeinn came in and took his boots off. ‘No sign of any lambs, I’m glad to say. Have you two not finished yet?’

  ‘Leave those to dry,’ said Aníta, looking at the remaining pots and pans by the sink. ‘Bedtime.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  VIGDÍS WORKED HARD that afternoon, but at five o’clock she called it a day. Árni and Róbert were coping well, and they were making real progress. Árni was even managing to type with his bad arm. She often had dinner with her mother on Sunday evenings, and she decided to drive straight out to her mother’s flat in Keflavík.

  Vigdís had been brought up in the town. When the Americans had arrived in Iceland during the Second World War, they had decided to build an airbase at the south-western tip of Iceland, near the fishing port of Keflavík. During the 1950s it had grown into a major base for the US Air Force, from which they could keep an eye on Soviet naval movements into the North Atlantic from the Arctic ports of Archangel and Murmansk. Iceland was an unsinkable aircraft carrier anchored at the perfect strategic location.

  Money flowed in, and American soldiers and airmen, and there was plenty of work for the inhabitants of Keflavík. Vigdís’s grandfather was a heating engineer, her grandmother managed a laundry facility, and her mother worked in a shop on the base. Where, at the age of twenty, she had met Vigdís’s father.

  Vigdís knew very little about her father. The mirror told her that he was black. Vigdís’s mother was barely one metre fifty, whereas Vigdís herself was one eighty-five, so Vigdís guessed he was tall. But if Vigdís knew little about him, he knew nothing about her. In fact, he didn’t even know she existed.

  It was unfair, but Vigdís blamed her absent father. For abandoning her and her mother. For being American. And for being black.

  It was difficult growing up a black kid in Iceland, especially if you didn’t have a really good explanation. People assumed she was American herself. It was usual for an Icelander to greet her in a shop in English, although they usually did that only once. Vigdís’s response was to deny her American heritage, to be every centimetre an Icelander. She was one of the few Icelanders her age who didn’t speak good English. But she did have one favourite American movie: White Men Can’t Jump. Vigdís was good at basketball.

  Vigdís’s mother, Audur, had done her best. She had held down a job at the base and brought up Vigdís. She had encouraged her to work hard at school, and been there for her when she was teased. She called Vigdís her ‘blue beauty’ – historically Icelanders were so unfamiliar with black people that they had called them ‘blue’. Audur’s father had coined the phrase, and she liked it, as did the little Vigdís.

  Audur had had a couple of wobbles with drink, including a bad period the previous year, but she seemed to have got a grip on it now. She had always had boyfriends. She was an attractive woman: petite, with a small pointed nose, a sharp chin and short blonde hair. Some hung around for years, some came and went. If they were nasty to Vigdís, they went. Even now Audur was fifty-one, they were nosing around; there might even be one there this evening. Vigdís and her mother hadn’t had dinner together for a couple of weeks, so Vigdís was a little out of touch.

  The weather was brightening over the Reykjanes peninsula as Vigdís headed west towards Keflavík along the main road from the capital to the airport. In about twelve hours’ time, she would be driving along this same stretch of road to see Davíd, as long as his flight wasn’t screwed up by the volcano. Vigdís had been checking the Internet all afternoon. Although flights to Europe were still disrupted, flights between New York and Reykjavík were operating. Davíd was the brother of a friend of Vigdís who had gone to graduate school in America after university, and had stayed there. She had only met him for the first time the previous summer when he had spent a week with his parents in Keflavík. The moment they met she could tell he was interested in her. And she liked him.

  With his work and her work it was difficult to see each other. They were trying, but the truth was they weren’t really succeeding, which was why seeing him now was so important. The scheduled weekend in Paris had been a sort of make-or-break thing. And when Vigdís had put off going for a day because of the case, and then been stranded in Iceland by the volcano, it had almost been broken. Vigdís was pleased David had made a further effort; she didn’t want to lose him.

  She could see the white peak of Snaefellsjökull shimmering just above the horizon, way off to the north. She was struck with a pang of guilt as she thought of Magnus.

  Vigdís liked Magnus and sympathized with him. They were equally mixed up, equally confused, just in different ways. She was biologically half-American, but believed herself to be 100 per cent Icelandic. Magnus was genetically 100 per cent Icelandic, but had spent two thirds of his life in America. Both of them didn’t quite fit into their own country, and both of them found that fact uncomfortable.

  She couldn’t believe Magnus really had killed his grandfather, but things must look bad if the Commissioner had gone to the trouble to appoint a detective from outside Reykjavík to look into the murder. Usually it would have been one of the members of the Violent Crimes Unit, probably Inspector Baldur himself, who would have been assigned to help the local police.

  Vigdís knew that Magnus had family up there in Snaefellsnes, although he had said very little about them. But a couple of nights ago, he had confided to her that he was having problems with his former girlfriend Ingileif, who had left him the previous autumn to go to Germany, but had shown up back in Reykjavík a few days ago. Things had gone well and then not so well, according to Magnus. Ingileif was probably still in Iceland somewhere. It was unlikely that she would have been able to get back to Germany, given the ash cloud.

  Inspector Emil was a smart cop. He would soon realize Magnus was innocent and let him go. In
fact, Magnus was probably driving back to Reykjavík at that very moment.

  Unless Magnus wasn’t innocent. He had quite a temper, and he had witnessed a lot of death in Boston over the years. Murder was perhaps not quite so outlandish to a man who was used to processing homicide victims on a weekly basis. Vigdís knew that there was tension with his Icelandic family, even though she didn’t know precisely what it was. He was a very private man. Vigdís thought she knew him, but did she really?

  She banished the doubts. She knew that Magnus would do anything for her, and for Árni for that matter, and she would do anything for him.

  The airbase appeared on the left, now abandoned by the Americans and used solely as an international airport. She turned off to the right down to the town of Keflavík itself. Her mother’s flat was on the first floor of a low white block. Vigdís rang the bell at the entrance to the building.

  No reply.

  She rang again. There was some disjointed noise and banging over the intercom, then she was buzzed in. She went up the staircase to the first floor. She was expecting to see her mother standing in an open doorway, but the door to her flat was shut.

  Vigdís knocked.

  The door was opened by someone Vigdís didn’t recognize. He was probably in his thirties, with a dark beard and a beer belly sticking out over his jeans. He was holding a can of beer. Vigdís’s nostrils immediately sensed alcohol and the sweet smell of marijuana. And male sweat.

  Sex.

  The man’s eyes opened wide. ‘Hey! Who have we here?’ he said in English. He turned and called over his shoulder. ‘Hey, Audur! A friend has arrived. A gorgeous black friend. My name’s Jerzy,’ he said. ‘What’s yours?’

  Vigdís’s English wasn’t very good and she wasn’t sure exactly what the man had said, but she didn’t like it. ‘Where’s my mother?’ she said in Icelandic, and then pushed past the man. ‘Mum?’

  Her mother was sitting on the sofa with two bottles of red wine in front of her, one empty and one a quarter full. There was one glass. An empty pizza box lay on the dining table. The butt of a reefer drooped in an ashtray.