“When I’d finished packing my things into the case and was on my way out, Bryngeir asked me to hang on a moment and talk to him. He said he wanted to tell me about when he saw me for the first time. He’d read my article about the ambiguous Sarcastic Halli in the school magazine, as I’ve already mentioned. It was some kind of sexual turn-on for him to think that an eighteen-year-old high school girl could have written a text like that. He tracked me down at the school and decided on first sight that I had to be his. The fact that I had a boyfriend spoiled his plans a bit, but he found a way around it. He saw to it that Einar was invited to join the Jomsviking Society, and when the initiation meeting came up, he gave out loads of alcohol. So the kids were all extremely drunk by the time it was Einar’s turn to kneel under the sword. Bryngeir waited, prepared, behind his back, and just as Einar was about to dodge the swing of Kjartan’s sword, as was the tradition, Bryngeir kneed him and pushed him back under the blow. Einar died instantly, and the second half of the plan with me was easy once the boyfriend was no longer in the way. This is something Bryngeir just wanted to tell me for the fun of it, as a farewell gift, and even though I thought I was ready for anything, I couldn’t handle it. I tried going to the police, but I was just being hysterical in their opinion, and Bryngeir convinced them that I was just trying to wreak revenge on him for having broken up our relationship. It was his word against mine, and he was always very persuasive with everyone he was talking to. I should probably count myself lucky that I wasn’t charged and convicted for perjury. I can’t describe how I felt after that. Every single memory of our four-year relationship felt like a hideous rape. I went back to the psychologist again, and through years of therapy, he managed to teach me a way to free myself of the torment. The wound is obviously still there, but I don’t allow it to take a grip on me anymore and ruin my life.”
Johanna sank into a brief silence, took another sip of water, and then continued without looking at the policemen: “The strange thing is that I continued studying medicine. Bryngeir was right about one thing. It was easy for me to learn this profession, and one of the ways I found for clearing my mind was to totally immerse myself in my studies. But I was no longer studying to be a brain surgeon and studied psychiatry instead.”
Johanna was quiet again and stooped over the table. Finally she continued: “A few years after I broke up with Bryngeir, my father applied for a post at the university. When they decided to give him the job and notified him, the devil spotted yet one more opportunity. Bryngeir had been kicked out of university early on and fancied himself as some kind of journalist. I had, of course, told him everything about my father when we lived together, and he wrote a very twisted article about Dad’s abrupt departure from the Arnamagn?an Institute. It was then felt that it was undesirable for an old Nazi sympathizer to be teaching at the university, and the offer of the post was withdrawn. My father saw the last opportunity of a lifetime vanish into thin air. He drank relentlessly for half a year and eventually ended up in an asylum for the chronically medically ill.”
Johanna signaled that her story was over.
“But what’s a psychiatrist doing working as a local doctor all the way out here?” Lukas asked.
“By the time I’d finished my postgrad, my father had been diagnosed with incurable cancer. I wanted to nurse him myself, but also had to work to cover our living expenses. I therefore decided to apply for the first easygoing local doctor post that became available. By sheer coincidence it happened to be here in Flatey, and that suited us down to the ground. I’d never been here before and never imagined that this place would somehow be connected to my life through the Flatey Book. We’ve been comfortable here. I’m good at my job, and I was able to give my father the medication that kept him in a reasonable mental balance. As the cancer spread, he also had to follow a precise palliative treatment. He welcomed death in the end.”
“How did you react when you met Bryngeir here?”
“I didn’t meet him and had no idea that he was here until District Officer Grimur asked me to come to the churchyard to examine the body. I was quite surprised.”
“Quite surprised?”
“Yes. Bryngeir had always been fascinated by this ancient tradition of carving blood eagles on the backs of one’s enemies. I thought it was an odd coincidence to see him in that state.”
“So you were familiar with wounds of this kind?”
“I’d never seen them before, but the descriptions in the Flatey Book stood out in my memory. It was pretty clear what had happened.”
“A witness claims that Bryngeir intended to visit you the night before he was murdered.”
“He didn’t. I actually wasn’t at home, so I don’t know if he tried to get into the house.”
“Where were you that night?”
“I went out for a walk and went to the library to read.”
“Did you meet anyone there?”
“Kjartan came by.”
“How long were you in there?”
“Quite a long time. Until the early hours of the morning, actually.”
“That long? What were you both doing?”
“I told Kjartan about the Flatey Book.”
Grimur stuck his head into the classroom.
“Sorry, Thorolfur, but I can’t find the magistrate’s envoy.”
“You can’t find the magistrate’s envoy?” Thorolfur snapped in a temper.
“No, he seems to have vanished,” Grimur answered, bewildered. “I’ve been to most of the houses and sent messages to the others.”
“Did you go into the doctor’s house?” Thorolfur asked.
“Yes, but there was no one there.”
Thorolfur turned to Johanna. “Do you know anything about Kjartan?”
“Yes, he visited me this morning and I invited him to take a hot bath. There’s a bathtub in the house, the only one on the island. He then had a lie-down. This whole case has become a bit too much for him and he had problems sleeping. He managed to fall asleep, and he was still asleep when Hogni collected me earlier. I couldn’t bring myself to wake him up. He must have woken up and gone somewhere.”
Thorolfur eyed her with suspicion. “I hope you haven’t done anything to him.”
She suddenly stood up. “Is this how this is going to continue? Do you think I tied him to a pole, maybe, and ripped out his intestines or something like that?”
She marched to the door.
Thorolfur signaled Lukas to follow her and then looked at Grimur. “What did she mean?”
Grimur shrugged. “She might be referring to the killing of Asbjorn Prudi.”
“The killing of who?”
“It’s in the Flatey Book.”
“That bloody book again? How is this murder described?”
Grimur thought about it. “I don’t know the whole book off by heart like my friend Sigurbjorn does, but let me see. I browsed through it not so long ago. Asbjorn, Virfill’s good son, ended up in the hands of Brusi the giant. Brusi opened Asbjorn’s belly, grabbed his intestines, and tied them to an iron pole. Then he led Asbjorn in circles around the pole until all his guts were wrapped around it. While this was going on, Asbjorn recited many long poems. Finally he died with great honor and valiance. Later Ormur Storolfsson killed Brusi the giant and carved a blood eagle on his back, but you know all about that now.”
Grimur ended his speech and shrugged again. Thorolfur shook his head. “I just hope the magistrate’s envoy still has all his intestines inside him.”
Question thirty-four: The most mutilated but healed. Second letter. Following the death of holy King Olaf, there were many stories of miracles that were attributed to him being invoked, and the priests who wrote the Flatey Book conscientiously collected them. The most mutilated man was Richard the priest. Einar and his servant broke his legs and dragged him into the woods. Then they wrapped some rope around his head and tightly tied his head and torso to a board. Einar then took a wedge and placed it on the priest’s eye, and the
servant who stood beside him struck upon it with an axe, causing the eye to fly out of its socket and land on the board. He then placed a pin on the other eye and struck it so that the wedge sprang off the eyeballs and tore the eyelid loose. They then opened his mouth, grabbed his tongue, and sliced it off, and then untied his hands and head. As soon as the priest regained consciousness, he slipped the eyeballs back into their place under the eyelids and pressed them with both hands as hard as he could. The men then asked the priest if he could talk. The priest made a noise and attempted to speak. Then Einar said to his brother, “If he recovers and the stump of his tongue starts to grow, I’m afraid he will get his speech back again.” Thereupon they seized the stump with a pair of tongs, drew it out, cut it twice, and the third time to the very roots, and left him lying there half dead. It had taken a lot of power to heal those wounds, but thanks to the intercession of the good King Olaf, the priest was restored to full health, even though he had been so badly mutilated. The answer is “Richard the priest,” and the second letter is i.
CHAPTER 51
At four o’clock that afternoon, Gudjon and Hogni finished making a casket for Bjorn Snorri Thorvald. It lay on two trestles in the small workshop behind the Radagerdi farm, ready to be transported to the doctor’s house. The two carpenters scrutinized their work as they brushed the sawdust and shavings off their clothing. Hogni snorted some snuff, and Gudjon lit a cigarette. It was a fairly rudimentary casket made of smoothened unpainted pine planks with a brass cross on the lid, precisely as the deceased had prescribed. Bjorn Snorri had talked it over with Gudjon several months earlier and, in fact, had asked him to get working on it straightaway, but Gudjon wouldn’t hear of it. He could make a decent casket for his neighbor if it was needed, but it would be out of the question to start making it before the person in question was definitely dead. Anything else would have been inappropriate and disrespectful to the Lord.
It was still raining, but it was warm when Thormodur Krakur arrived in his Sunday attire, towing his handcart. The three men carried the casket out of the workshop and placed it on the cart. Then they walked across the island pulling the cart behind them.
Inspector Lukas and a crew member from the ship stood outside the doctor’s house.
“Johanna is obviously under house arrest,” Hogni whispered heavyheartedly.
They carried the casket into the house and all the way into the living room where Bjorn Snorri’s corpse had been laid out on the bed, newly washed and dressed in a white tunic. A white linen ribbon had been wrapped around his head to lock his jaw into place and keep his mouth closed. Three white candles flickered on a bedside table. Johanna Thorvald and Reverend Hannes were in the room as they arrived, and received them.
The casket was placed on the floor by the side of the body, and Johanna placed a white quilt inside it and a pillow at the head. The three men then helped to lift the twisted body and place it in the casket.
Reverend Hannes stepped forward and said a farewell prayer to the house, after which the gathering recited an “Our Father” and sang a short psalm. Finally, they all drew a cross over the body, the quilt was drawn over the deceased’s face, and the lid was placed on the casket. Gudjon took a hammer and firmly sealed the lid with some nails.
Hogni and Gudjon carried the casket between them out of the house and placed it on the cart. Thormodur Krakur lifted the handles of the cart and started to pull it away. Johanna and Reverend Hannes walked behind him, followed by Hogni and Gudjon and finally, at a considerable distance, Lukas, the police inspector, and his assistant from the coast guard ship.
As they walked, Hogni pondered the deceased. He and his daughter had lived in the house for about two years. Last year Bjorn Snorri had been mobile enough to take walks around the island and speak to people. Everyone knew he had come to Flatey to die, and that made some of the islanders slightly awkward with him. But everyone could see that he was a very intelligent and educated man with an insatiable eagerness for knowledge. He asked people exhaustive questions about their professions and deeds and kept notes in a little diary. Eventually, though, he came out less and less, until finally he just stayed indoors, confined to his medical bed. From then on it was the islanders who visited him at the doctor’s house and told him stories. Mostly they were tales about accidents and losses at sea from the past decades and centuries, which had been preserved in people’s memories, and Bjorn Snorri lapped it all up with a smile on his lips and a grateful glow in his eyes. And now Hogni started to wonder if these stories could be found in writing somewhere. Some of these incidents were probably recorded in the annals, but who knew if any written record had been kept of the actual stories that lay behind them and had been orally passed down from generation to generation. Perhaps this invaluable knowledge was dying with every individual who passed away on the islands, including Bjorn Snorri himself. He had undoubtedly written countless pieces about his area of research, but didn’t the main bulk of knowledge always go unrecorded? Or was it just that the dead hadn’t disappeared, but simply moved on, slightly ahead of us? Would he himself one day get a chance to learn something from Bjorn Snorri in some other place?
They arrived at the church, and Hogni and Gudjon lifted the casket as Thormodur Krakur opened the door. They carried the coffin inside and placed it on trestles in the middle of the floor. Then they walked outside again.
Johanna said good-bye and immediately headed back to her house, accompanied by Inspector Lukas and his assistant, while the others lingered in front of the church, enjoying the mild weather and the view.
“Is that what I think it is? Do I see a man waving from the islet of Kerlingarholmur?” said Thormodur Krakur, peering south across the strait where it was now high tide. Hogni looked in the direction the deacon was pointing and saw a man standing on the edge of the shore waving with both hands.
“That wouldn’t be the magistrate’s envoy roaming on the skerry?” Hogni asked. “They were looking for him earlier today.”
Gudjon grinned. “He’s worse than the sheep. What’s he doing roaming over there?”
“I’ll go get him,” said Hogni. “Sigurbjorn’s old boat is down there on the shore. You can give me a hand pushing her into the sea.”
Question thirty-five: The price of the king’s axe. Sixth letter. The king held an axe that was inlaid in gold and had a shaft that was enveloped in silver with a large silver band embedded with a precious stone. Halli kept staring at the axe. The king noticed this immediately and asked Halli if he liked it. He answered that he did.
“Have you ever seen a finer axe?”
“I don’t think so,” said Halli.
“Would you submit yourself to sodomy for this axe?” asked the king.
“No,” said Halli, “but I can understand why you want to sell it for the same price that you paid for it.”
“So it shall be, Halli,” said the king. “Take it and make the best use of it; it was given to me as a gift and therefore I shall give it you.” Halli thanked the king.
The answer is “sodomy,” and the sixth letter is y.
CHAPTER 52
Hogni, Gudjon, and Thormodur Krakur found the little boat lying overturned on a patch of grass above the shore to the south of the church. Carefully turning it over, they discovered two oars underneath it. Grabbing the boat, the men then gently eased it into the sea and pushed it. Hogni climbed on board with the oars and ensured that the boat was not leaking. Then he rowed vigorously across the strait, while his companions remained on the shore.
A shamefaced young man stood on a rock at sea level as Hogni approached. Kjartan stepped onto the boat when Hogni reached him, and they immediately turned back.
“Thank you for fetching me. I’m so lucky you spotted me out here,” said Kjartan.
“You probably would have survived,” Hogni answered, unable to suppress a smile. “The tide will be going down again pretty soon, so you could have walked back the same way you came.”
“You’re probably
right. I was a bit taken aback when I realized how high the tide had grown in the strait. The strip was almost dry when I walked out there. I just wanted to take a look at the birdlife. Then, when I was going to turn back, I saw the tide was coming in and I didn’t have the guts to waddle across. I didn’t know how deep it was.”
“You did the right thing to wait,” Hogni answered. “There’s quicksand around here and some steep drops on the way.”
“I just hope no one was starting to worry about me.”
“The police were asking for you. They’ll certainly be relieved to see you again.”
Question thirty-six: Killed by a serpent. First letter. King Olaf Tryggvason went with his men to Raud the Strong’s farm and broke in. Raud was seized and tied up, and his men were killed or arrested. The king offered to have Raud baptized, but Raud answered that he would never believe in Christ and uttered many blasphemies. Raud was then tied to an iron bar and a round pin of wood was shoved between his teeth to force his mouth open. The king then ordered a snake to be placed in Raud’s mouth, but the snake refused to enter it. A red-hot iron was then used to force the serpent in. The snake slid into Raud’s mouth and down his throat to his heart and then gnawed its way out his left side. Raud then died. The answer is “Raud,” and the first letter is r.
CHAPTER 53
D istrict Officer Grimur and Inspector Thorolfur were alone in the school when Kjartan arrived, breathless after rushing there. Hogni came in right behind him.
“I’m sorry,” said Kjartan. “I seem to have gotten lost.”
Grimur appeared to be relieved to see him again in one piece, but Thorolfur had a sullen air.
“Hogni’s promised to call off the search,” Kjartan continued.
“Where’ve you been all day?” Thorolfur asked.
“When I left here,” Kjartan answered, “I got my bag and walked across the island to visit Johanna, the doctor. She invited me to take a bath in her house. After that I lay down for a bit and I must have fallen fast asleep, because when I woke up she was gone. I found it a bit uncomfortable lying there in a deserted house with the corpse of an old man, so I went out for a walk on the southern shore just to look at the birds and think. I walked quite far out from the island and didn’t think of the rising tide.”
The Flatey Enigma Page 22