Sea of Stone

by Michael Ridpath

  Kolbeinn snorted, opened his eyes and grimaced. ‘What is it, Aníta?’

  ‘Amma. Amma was here.’

  He hauled himself on to his elbows and leaned back against his pillow. Aníta could see in the darkness he was blinking.

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘She was in the rocking chair just now. I was talking to her.’

  ‘Well, that’s better than Dad, I suppose.’

  ‘Much better,’ said Aníta. ‘But she said we should leave. First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘She didn’t say. But she made me promise.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kolbeinn cleared his throat. ‘What about the sheep? They’ll be lambing any day soon.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Aníta. ‘But Amma said. I promised.’

  ‘Look, Aníta. Be reasonable. Our livelihood is out there in the barn. We can’t take them with us. We can’t leave them alone. I know you can… see things, but we can’t leave here just like that.’

  Aníta nodded. She knew you couldn’t ask a farmer to abandon his sheep. But she had promised.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll go. Take Tóta and Krissi with me.’

  ‘And leave me by myself? Now, of all times?’

  ‘Villi is here. He can help.’

  Kolbeinn rubbed his face. ‘Aníta, no. Absolutely not. We both have to be here for the lambing. And so do the kids. We need their help. I’m sorry, but no.’

  Kolbeinn never said no to Aníta. But she understood why he was saying no now. And yet. And yet Aníta had ignored her grandmother before with terrible consequences. Kolbeinn didn’t know about that, and Aníta didn’t want to explain it to him.

  ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ she said.

  ‘The first lambs could be here in the morning,’ Kolbeinn replied, and rolled over with a loud grunt, facing away from his wife.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tuesday, 20 April 2010

  EMIL STARED OUT of the window of the tiny office he had been given in the National Police Commissioner’s building. It was another clear day, and he could easily see the tall chimney at Akranes over the bay. The snow across the long ridge of Mount Esja glimmered in the morning sun. He munched one of the two kleinur he had bought on the drive in to Reykjavík, and sipped a cup of coffee.

  His chest felt fine, which was a relief. At breakfast, his wife had hit him with an estimate for the repair of the roof of the new barn, which was more than they could afford. Unless they stopped making the payments on the mortgage. A lot of people were doing that these days, the banks weren’t fore-closing yet, but it was something Emil really wanted to avoid if he could.

  The office was at the end of the corridor that housed the International Department, one floor down from where the Commissioner himself sat. It had been half full of junk: stacked chairs, cables and cardboard storage boxes, but Emil had shoved them all to one side to make a little space for himself. He had a phone, and a computer from which he could log into the police system.

  He heard the door open behind him and a small man with thick silver hair and bright blue eyes bounded into the room. Emil hauled himself to his feet.

  ‘I’ve found you!’ The Commissioner stepped forward and held out his hand.

  Emil shook it and grinned. He had always liked Snorri. ‘You have. Thanks for the office. I needed somewhere to base myself in Reykjavík, and I couldn’t really do it at headquarters.’

  ‘It’s small, but at least there’s a view,’ said the Commissioner. ‘How’s Linda? Still busy with the horses? Is she bringing them in?”

  ‘You mean because of the ash?’ said Emil. ‘So far she’s kept them outside. As long as the wind sticks from the north, we should be OK. But she’s ready to move them if things change.’

  Snorri looked for a free chair, decided against untangling the two in the corner, and perched on the desk. ‘How’s the case going?’

  For a moment Emil hesitated. Baldur had been right: technically Magnus reported directly to the Commissioner, and so technically the Commissioner should be kept out of the investigation. But then Snorri was the boss, the ‘Big Salmon’ as he was known, and more importantly, Emil trusted him.

  ‘Magnús is at Litla-Hraun. I’m building up a case. Still some leads to follow up.’

  ‘Are you sure he did it?’ Snorri asked, watching Emil closely.

  ‘It’s looking that way,’ Emil said.

  Snorri sighed. ‘Pity. I liked him. And I liked what he was doing here. But if he did murder his grandfather, make sure you put him away. The case against him has to be watertight.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Emil.

  ‘I know I can rely on you,’ said Snorri. ‘Keep Kári informed.’ Kári was the senior prosecutor. ‘And let me know if you need more resources. It’s difficult without using Metropolitan Police officers, but I could get Inspector Thorsteinn from Keflavík involved.’

  With that he bustled out.

  Emil appreciated that the Commissioner had made the effort to come and find him, rather than summoning him upstairs to his office. He was a good guy, Snorri. But he had been bearing a message: don’t screw this up.

  He checked his watch. Nearly eight o’clock. Time to call Stykkishólmur.

  Adam, Björn, Rúnar and Edda were all gathered in the conference room they were using as an incident room at the police station in Stykkishólmur. They were on a speakerphone.

  ‘I hear Magnús confessed?’ Rúnar said.

  ‘Yes, to his girlfriend, Ingileif,’ Emil said. ‘I’ve got a signed statement from her.’

  ‘Have you gone back to Magnús?’ Rúnar asked. ‘See what he had to say about that?’

  ‘No,’ said Emil. ‘I’ll leave him stewing in Litla-Hraun for a while. I don’t want him or anyone else to find out what Ingileif told us. I’d like to build the case against him and then confront him with overwhelming evidence.’

  ‘OK, so what do we do next?’ said Adam.

  ‘We focus on Magnús’s brother and the schoolteacher. I don’t know what they were doing up in the Snaefells Peninsula, but I’m sure they haven’t told us the whole truth. Any luck with the Hvalfjördur tunnel cameras?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was Björn’s voice. ‘Jóhannes’s car came through at 8.06. Magnús an hour and a half later at 9.40. The timings match their accounts.’

  ‘All right,’ said Emil. ‘We need to find the connections between the three of them and Hallgrímur’s murder. Did they know what Magnús was going to do? Did all three of them plan it? Maybe one of the two of them killed Hallgrímur after all? We pull them in and make them sweat for twenty-four hours. See what they tell us. I’ll take Jóhannes, since he is here in Reykjavík. Adam, you go find Ollie; see what you can get out of him. I might have a go with him myself after I have interviewed Jóhannes.’ That would mean another long drive up to Stykkishólmur, but it would be worth it. In all this, Ollie was probably the weakest link. ‘Anything on the Hallgrímssons?’ he asked. ‘How do their alibis hold up?’

  ‘Ingvar’s alibi holds for Sunday morning,’ said Adam. ‘Two witnesses at the harbour.’

  ‘What about the other two?’

  ‘I checked with the basketball coach,’ said Björn. ‘The boy Krissi was there on Sunday.’

  ‘And his dad?’

  ‘I assume he must have been, or else how would Krissi have got there?’

  ‘Don’t assume. Check. What about Villi?’

  ‘We know he drove direct to Bjarnarhöfn from Keflavík Airport,’ said Adam.

  ‘Do we know when his flight landed?’ said Emil.

  ‘Er. No,’ said Adam.

  ‘OK. Check that and double-check it with the airline.’ Emil wasn’t surprised at the young detectives’ slips. They were inexperienced and the focus of the investigation was on Magnus. But he knew from experience that if you only saw what you expected to find in an investigation, you missed vital leads. ‘Edda, anything more from the crime s
cene?’

  ‘Nothing from the murder scene. But the cottage fire looks like arson. Pretty amateurish arson.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. A curtain was soaked in cooking oil in the kitchen, and some papers were soaked in more oil and scattered around and set alight in the living room. The irony is that cooking oil is a lousy accelerant. It was the living-room sofa that really got things going.’

  ‘Cooking oil isn’t an accelerant? I didn’t know that,’ said Emil.

  ‘Neither did whoever set the fire,’ said Edda. ‘Which isn’t really surprising; most people would think it was. But in fact some of the curtain didn’t even burn. I can’t think why anyone would pour cooking oil on a curtain unless they thought it would start a fire.’

  ‘No,’ said Emil. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘It must have been Sylvía,’ Adam said.

  ‘The question is, did she know what she was doing? She’s very confused.’

  ‘Shall I go ask her?’ Adam said.

  ‘No, not yet. She’s not going anywhere. We’ll need to be very careful about an interview. We should do it in the police station with a psychologist and a lawyer present. If Sylvía is prosecuted, it will all turn on what state of mind she was in when she set the fire.’

  ‘I’ll organize it,’ said Adam.

  ‘Bring in Ollie first,’ said Emil.

  As Emil hung up, there was a knock at the door and a tall black woman entered. Emil had only spoken to Vigdís once or twice, but she was Reykjavík’s most easily recognizable detective.

  ‘Hi, Vigdís, thanks for coming in. If you can extract a chair, please sit on it.’

  Vigdís untangled a chair from the corner and pulled it up to Emil’s desk.

  ‘Kleina?’ Emil offered her his second pastry, and when she shook her head, took it himself. ‘So. Tell me about Magnús.’

  ‘No, you may not come in.’

  The deputy governor of Litla-Hraun was a tall man with kind eyes and a soft voice. They were in the car park just outside the high prison fence, and he was standing between Ingileif and the pedestrian turnstile just to the side of the vehicle gate.

  ‘I want to see the governor,’ Ingileif said. ‘I demand to see him.’

  ‘He is a she,’ said her deputy. ‘And she is not here. It won’t make any difference. Magnús is in solitary confinement. He is not allowed any visitors apart from his lawyer. And the police.’

  ‘But I’m his girlfriend! I have a right to see him.’

  The big man shook his head. ‘I am sorry, Ingileif. You don’t. It’s that simple.’

  Ingileif tried to push past him, but he was unmoveable. She felt tears spring to her eyes. The man was so big! She stood in front of him and shoved hard at his chest. He raised his arms but didn’t budge.

  ‘Why don’t you leave now?’ he said, so softly it was almost a whisper.

  ‘Fuckwit!’ Ingileif muttered and turned on her heel. She ignored her car and stomped off towards town. Her cheeks were burning and she was breathing heavily. She was so angry. Didn’t they realize she had to talk to Magnus? She absolutely had to.

  It had never occurred to her that they wouldn’t let her in. She had been prepared to wait, all day if necessary, that was why she had driven down there so early, but she hadn’t been prepared to be turned away. She had things to explain to Magnus. Things he had to hear.

  Until that moment she had done a very good job of keeping calm. She knew Magnus was in a bad situation, but she trusted him to get himself out of it. With her help. She felt guilty about how she had treated him, about what she had said. But somehow she had thought that if she could only show him how much she cared about getting him out of there, if they could discuss what she could do to help him, it would be all right.

  It was partly seeing the prison itself. The place where he would spend many years of his life if things went wrong. It would destroy him.

  She didn’t want Magnus destroyed. She couldn’t let him be destroyed. She had to do something for him, anything.

  The small town of Eyrarbakki ran along a road just parallel to the sea. A hundred years before, it had been the foremost trading port on the south coast; farmers would travel for days to trade there with Danish merchants. Many of the old houses from that period survived, prosperous by Icelandic standards of the time, clad in red, blue and green painted corrugated metal. Between the road and the sea ran a three-metre-high grassy bank, a defence against wind and tide.

  The town was quiet, with only the occasional car passing Ingileif, carrying someone off to work somewhere. She dodged a bunch of nine-year-old girls meandering across the road on bikes on their way to school. She cut up between two houses on to the sea wall, the highest land for miles around. The sky was clear and there was a gentle breeze coming in from the ocean. Over to the east she could see the plume of the volcano stooping and stretching southwards. Only the week before, Magnus had been up there, investigating a crime. A raven, sitting on the bright blue metal roof of one of the houses, croaked at her.

  She checked her phone for Vigdís’s number and found it.

  ‘Hi, Vigdís, it’s Ingileif.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  Vigdís sounded flat, Ingileif thought, as flat as Ingileif felt.

  ‘How is the evidence against Magnús?’ This was Ingileif’s way of asking whether Vigdís had heard about Magnus’s confession to her.

  ‘Not good,’ said Vigdís. ‘I have just been talking to the investigating detective. They seem to think they are building a strong case.’

  ‘Has Magnús himself said anything?’

  ‘From what I understand he’s refusing to talk,’ said Vigdís. ‘Why, do you have some more information?’

  It sounded as if the fat detective, for whatever reason, hadn’t told Vigdís about Magnús’s confession. Good.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Ingileif. ‘But is there anything I can do to help?’

  Vigdís sighed. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Any news from the detective in America about the lab results?’

  ‘Nothing. He’s not giving us anything without an official request. Which is a pity. I think that’s our most promising line of inquiry. At any rate, it’s about the only one we’ve got.’

  ‘Can I try and speak to him?’ Ingileif asked.

  ‘I don’t see how that will help,’ Vigdís said. ‘Sibba, Magnús’s lawyer, called him and even she didn’t get anywhere.’

  ‘What was the guy’s name again?’ Ingileif asked.

  ‘Jim Fearon,’ Vigdís said. ‘But really, there’s no point, Ingileif. Just leave it to us.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ingileif. But as she walked back to her car through Eyrarbakki, Ingileif had no intention of just leaving it to them.

  *

  Vigdís walked out of the Police Commissioner’s building and turned left to where she had parked her car, further along the shore of the bay. Her conversation with Emil had depressed her. Although he hadn’t been specific, it was clear that he was pretty certain of Magnus’s guilt. He wasn’t on a fishing expedition; he already had good evidence. Vigdís had been happy to tell him all she could about Magnus, on the theory that the more of the truth Emil knew, the more likely he would be able to figure out that Magnus was innocent.

  If he really was innocent.

  It was all very well for Ingileif to offer to help, but there was nothing she could do. She would just have to live with her guilt. Vigdís was beginning to worry that there was nothing any of them could do.

  The morning had started off early and badly. She had woken at five and when she checked her computer she saw Davíd’s flight had been cancelled. Again. While she was speaking to Emil she had received a text message from him to call her.

  She paused, staring out over the bay towards Mount Esja, and selected his number. It was probably only five in the morning his time, but so what? She had had to wake up that early herself.

  ‘Hello?’ His voice was thick with sleep.

 
; ‘Hi, Davíd. I can’t believe your flight was cancelled again! Why was that? Most of the other flights from America are getting through.’

  Davíd sighed. ‘The airspace is clear. But apparently all the planes are in the wrong place. It’s going to take days to sort it out.’

  Vigdís swallowed. She hardly dared to ask her next question. ‘Can you come tomorrow?’

  ‘No,’ said Davíd. ‘No, I’m sorry, Vigdís. I’ve got a meeting on Thursday back in New York I can’t miss. It didn’t really make sense to fly over today, and it makes no sense at all tomorrow.’

  Vigdís couldn’t say anything.

  ‘Vigdís?’

  ‘Yeah. Yes, sorry. OK. I get it. We’ll talk later.’

  She hung up. Couldn’t he cancel his damned meeting? Use the volcano as an excuse? From what she heard on the news the whole world had been disrupted by the volcano, so why couldn’t he disrupt his piddling little meeting?

  She knew she wasn’t being fair. It was she who usually cancelled, changed plans, missed trips.

  She had to face it – she and Davíd were never going to make it. She would end up like her mother: fifty, alone, picking up fat Polish guys ten years younger than her. Except she wouldn’t have a daughter to scream at her.

  What now? She couldn’t really cry off work any longer. She may as well turn around and head back to Hverfisgata and the police station. She called Árni.

  ‘What’s up, Vigdís?’

  ‘Davíd’s flight was cancelled. Again,’ Vigdís said.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I think I’ll come in this morning,’ she said. ‘I just spoke to Emil. It doesn’t look good for Magnús.’

  ‘Did he tell you about the confession?’

  ‘Confession? What confession?’

  ‘There’s a rumour going around that Magnús confessed to the murder. To Ingileif. She told the Dumpling about it yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Ingileif?’ Vigdís thought back to her phone call a few minutes earlier and Ingileif’s request to do anything she could to help. ‘I don’t believe it! The bitch.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JÓHANNES STOOD IN front of the class of thirteen-year-olds and put everything he could into his performance. His ability to transfix a group of teenagers with his readings from the sagas was legendary. Despite that, or in his view because of it, he had been given the sack the week before. The principal was a slave to the national curriculum; Jóhannes wanted to set his pupils free to delight in their nation’s great literature. The principal was a moron.