Daybreak

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  “Can you tell us any more about the deceased?” Gunnar asked.

  “I understand that he was quite wealthy and enjoyed the outdoor life a lot,” said the sheriff. “It seems he was planning to knock down the old farm buildings and build a summerhouse here.”

  The patrolman added, “I was told he was going to bring in a bucket loader to demolish these shacks as soon as he evicted the occupant. Can’t see what the hurry was, just before winter.”

  “What can you tell us about this court-ordered auction of the land?” asked Gunnar.

  The sheriff replied, “That in itself is a tragic story. Old Gudjón is a widower. He has one daughter, whose son lives here with his grandfather and goes to the local school. The daughter lives in Reykjavik. Her life’s been a struggle. She married an American before she was twenty and had the boy with him. Apparently they lived in various places in the United States until they divorced and she moved back to Iceland. She then bought a small convenience store in Reykjavik with her new boyfriend, and I understand they did quite well when they started out. Old Gudjón helped them by underwriting some loans, which shouldn’t have been a problem except that her boyfriend hit the bottle and cleared out, having by then squandered large sums that should have been used to pay loan installments, sales taxes, and so on. After this everything went downhill. The daughter couldn’t pay her debts and the creditors were ruthless; she lost everything and the guarantees were called in. Old Gudjón had no money to pay the debts, and the banks issued a distraint warrant.”

  “Was there no room for negotiation about this?” Gunnar asked.

  “A younger man would probably have found a way to finance a composition settlement, but Gudjón just ignored it. It was as if he thought the problem would just go away.”

  “Was nobody able to help him?”

  “I tried everything in my power. I even got him a lawyer, but the old man wouldn’t let him in the house.”

  “What happened then?”

  “The court ordered a forced auction; I managed to postpone the execution a few times to give Gudjón a chance to put his affairs in order, but it made no difference, and in the end the auction took place. There were some unpaid mortgage debts, as is common among farmers, and those loan companies sent their lawyers to bid for the land against Ólafur, who represented the principal claimants; they were only interested in covering their own losses and were happy to sell the land to Ólafur at what was a very low price. There was nothing leftover for the old man.”

  “Were no local people interested in the property?”

  It was the patrolman who replied. “No. This is not good farmland. The hay fields are small and impractical, difficult to work with machinery, and there’s not much else you can do here. The buildings are falling apart, and it’s remote. It’s mainly of interest to hunting enthusiasts from the city, although it’s so far away that not many would be interested.”

  “What will happen to the old man when he has to leave the farm?” Gunnar asked.

  This time the sheriff replied. “The local authority is looking into that. He will probably get a place in a nursing home if he can be persuaded to accept it. But the boy is going to be a problem, as is the daughter; the farm is still her registered domicile, and I understand she has been living here from time to time. The community will probably have to find a solution to their problems, too.”

  15:00

  The time had come to speak to the occupant of Litla-Fell, and Birkir and Gunnar decided to walk back to the farm so they could assess the surroundings as they went. They followed the track down to the dirt road, which had shallow ditches on both sides full of yellowing grass; beyond them were small, tussocky hay fields where a few sheep grazed.

  They met a vehicle coming from the direction of the farm, an old Ford Econoline with big wheels, marked as a school bus. They stepped aside, and as it drove past, they caught sight of the driver’s inquisitive gaze and the faces of the children pressed against the side windows.

  They watched until it disappeared beyond the bluff.

  “The grandson must be back from school, then,” Gunnar said and walked on.

  Birkir stopped and looked back toward the old bit of ruined wall.

  “This is a very peculiar murder, it seems to me,” he said.

  Gunnar stopped, too, waiting for more to come. Birkir finally continued. “If you were planning to kill a man with a shotgun, how would you go about it?”

  “As I said before, I wouldn’t use a shotgun. I’d use a rifle.”

  “Why not a shotgun?”

  “A shotgun is for killing small animals at short range. You use a rifle to kill people.”

  “Right. What if you only had a shotgun at hand?”

  Gunnar thought for a moment. “A shotgun is a very powerful weapon at short range but it’s useless at a long distance. If I were going to kill a man with a gun like that, I’d shoot him in the belly from the shortest possible distance. Then in the head.”

  “Why go for the stomach first?”

  “That’s the easiest place to hit him. And he wouldn’t defend himself after that if he was also armed.”

  “I see. But what if he was alert and expecting danger?”

  “Then I would sneak up to him as close as possible to reduce the range. And I’d use slugs rather than pellets, if I could.”

  “Slugs?” Birkir said. He had handled a shotgun and learned to load it and fire a few shots, but he wasn’t particularly familiar with this kind of hunting gear.

  “A slug is a shell with a single large bullet instead of many small pellets. You can kill a polar bear with it at long range.”

  “So that’s a theory we must consider. The lawyer must have had reason to be wary of the attacker. That’s why he tried to defend himself. They must have known each other.”

  “Why?”

  “If a stranger approaches you as you’re hunting geese out here in the sticks, your first thought isn’t that he’s here to shoot you, even if he’s carrying a weapon. Not unless you’re involved in something very shady, or you know that this particular person means to do you harm.”

  Gunnar shrugged. “Maybe this was someone who also wanted to shoot geese here without a license. Maybe the lawyer meant to just shoo the guy off his newly acquired land, and the confrontation ended up taking a nasty turn. It wouldn’t be the first time that two guys have fought over good hunting grounds, although these things don’t usually end in a bloody gunfight.”

  “That’s also a valid theory. We’ll see.”

  They were quiet as they walked the last length of the dirt road that led steeply up to Litla-Fell. A few minutes later they found themselves in the farmyard.

  An old man stood by the wall of an outhouse, skinning the carcass of a fat lamb. He had tied its back legs to the lifting boom of an old tractor and hauled it up to a convenient height. The head of the animal lay on the ground, and blood dripped from the carcass’s headless neck into an old steel bucket. To the side was a wooden tub containing the entrails. Several dogs had been shut out of the way in the outhouse, where they could be heard barking.

  A young boy stood beside the tractor, watching Gunnar and Birkir approach; they stopped a suitable distance from the slaughter. They could smell entrails, blood, and raw meat. Not unlike the smell from the dead man, only considerably stronger.

  The old man did not look up from his labors. Obviously tall and strong at some time in the past, he was now shrunken, with bent shoulders, a crooked back, and bowed legs. He wore rubber boots, brown wool pants, an old and worn traditional wool sweater, and a light-brown cap.

  “Good afternoon,” Birkir said.

  The man squinted at them and then resumed his work.

  “Are you a Greenlander?” he asked Birkir, who had now moved closer.

  “I can be a Greenlander if necessary.”

  The old man looked at him suspiciously. “Greenlanders are good people,” he said. “They understand life.”

  “Well,” Birk
ir said. “Then I’m probably not a Greenlander.”

  “We’re from the Reykjavik detective division,” Gunnar said impatiently. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Ask away, but make it quick. You can see I’m busy,” the old man said. He dried the bloody knife on a leg of his pants and took a small whetstone from his pocket.

  “You’re the one who found the body, aren’t you?”

  The old man spat at the stone and began to rub the blade of the knife against it. “Yes.”

  “When did you find it?”

  “This morning.”

  Gunnar and Birkir moved closer, and the old man looked up from his work. His face was peculiarly pale, he had a gray beard, and his red-rimmed eyes were bloodshot and rheumy; a trail of spittle, black from tobacco, dribbled from one corner of his mouth.

  “What time was that?” Gunnar asked.

  “Just after nine.” The old man looked toward the sun. “It’s after three now, isn’t it?”

  Gunnar looked at his watch. “Yes, fifteen minutes past.”

  “I don’t wear a watch; I can’t read it without my glasses. But I can see things in the distance fairly well,” the old man said.

  “How did you find the body?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What were you doing out there?”

  “Seeing if he was all right, of course.”

  “Were you beginning to wonder about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He’d been out there much longer than usual.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “How do I know? Do you think I’m deaf? The damn shooting woke us up this morning, there’s such an echo here against the fell. I assumed he’d found a lot of geese because there was such a racket. It went on a long time.”

  “When was this?”

  “At dawn. But he just stayed out there.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “No, perhaps not. But there’d been more shots than usual. He doesn’t usually hang around. He’ll take three or four birds in the morning flight and then make himself scarce. He knows I don’t like all this shooting because it frightens the animals.”

  “Does he look in here on the farm to ask for permission to shoot?”

  “He doesn’t need to, I guess.”

  “How did you know he hadn’t left?”

  “He leaves his car here, down below the road. I can see it’s still there.” He pointed to the Nissan. “The school bus arrived here at seven thirty as usual to pick up young Gutti, my grandson here. That was when I first saw the car. Then I was seeing to the sheep for about an hour and a half, but when I came out of the shed, I saw the car hadn’t been moved.”

  “Was that when you went to look for the man?”

  “Yes. None of my business, of course, but I did go out to look for him.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Well, I saw what had happened and I came back to call the sheriff.”

  “Did you touch anything at the scene?”

  “I only touched Ólafur and realized he was stone cold. So he had been dead some time. Half his head was blown off and the leg, too. I reported this to the sheriff.”

  “Did you see a gun?”

  “No, there was no gun there.”

  Birkir now took over the questioning. “Were you aware of any traffic here this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear Ólafur arrive?”

  “No.”

  “When did you hear the shots?”

  “I just told you. They woke me at dawn.”

  “At what time?”

  “I didn’t look at the clock. Perhaps it was getting on toward seven. I got up and made porridge for the kid. He had to go to school.”

  “How many shots were there?”

  “I didn’t count them.”

  “Would you say you heard more or fewer than five?”

  “More.”

  “More or fewer than ten?”

  “More.”

  “Twenty?”

  “More.”

  “Thirty?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you see any emergency flares?” Gunnar asked.

  “Did I see what?”

  “The deceased seems to have fired some emergency flares. They give off a bright red light.”

  “We didn’t look outside during the shooting. I was still in bed.”

  “Have you got a gun yourself?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What sort of a gun?”

  “I’ve got an old side-by-side. I use it on vermin.”

  “Have you ever shot geese?”

  “Only when there was nothing else to eat. It’s not proper food.” The old man turned back to the carcass, wielding his knife.

  “May we have a look at your gun?” Gunnar asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “What right have you got to see it?”

  “We can get a warrant.”

  “You’d better get one, then,” the old man said. He turned and took two steps toward them, pointing his knife at Gunnar, and said, “I’ll tell you this here and now, my friend: I will not let go of my gun, however much you try to get it. A man must have the means to kill himself.” He lowered the knife and added, “In case they bring the bulldozers in and start to demolish all this.”

  15:40

  Birkir unlocked the Nissan with the key fob and opened the front passenger door. The car seemed to have been cleaned recently, both inside and outside; it was spotless. On the backseat lay a full thermos of coffee and a wrapped sandwich. The glove compartment contained a cell phone; an opened cigarette pack; and a leather billfold containing a few bills, a number of credit cards, and a receipt from a self-service gas station.

  “He filled the tank at Ártúnshöfdi a little before four this morning,” Birkir said.

  “He must have allowed two hours to get here, then,” Gunnar said. “He would have wanted to arrive before six to be sure to catch all of the morning flight.”

  “But why did he leave the vehicle so far from where he planned to settle in?”

  Gunnar was opening the tailgate. “He knew exactly what he was doing. Geese are so set in their ways, and the flocks that come here know the surroundings. A car in the wrong place can scare them away.”

  He scanned the vehicle’s cargo area. Two large coolers occupied most of the space; they were empty and more or less clean, with some reddish-brown stains indicating they were containers for game. There was also a large kennel strapped to the floor; inside it was a bag of dog food and a bowl.

  “It doesn’t look like a felony murder,” Birkir said. He took the cell phone out of the glove compartment and checked the recent calls log.

  “The last call is to a foreign phone number,” he said.

  He wrote the numbers down in a notebook, put the phone into a bag, and labeled it with the case number.

  Gunnar looked longingly at the sandwich on the backseat.

  “We should have brought provisions,” he said.

  Birkir looked up toward the highway. “The killer must have arrived by car and left it somewhere nearby. After the attack he would have returned to it on foot and then driven back up to the main road and turned one way or the other. Maybe someone will remember having seen him.”

  Gunnar shook his head. “We passed a few cars after we left Route 1 at Borgarfjördur, but I don’t remember anything about them. Do you?”

  “No,” Birkir admitted. “All the same, we’ll have to talk to all the people who live on farms nearby. They may have noticed something unusual.”

  Gunnar looked around. The nearest farms could be seen in the distance, too far off for him to detect the presence of cars or people. “The Búdardalur cop can do that. He knows the area. The local guys will have to put some work into this investigation.”

  “So, what’s our next move?” Birkir asked.

  “This vehic
le needs to be transported back south. Arrangements are already in place to collect the body. We need to have a look at the old man’s shotgun; we’ll talk to the sheriff about that when we get a moment.”

  After some thought, Birkir asked, “What’s our opinion of the old farmer?”

  “He’s got to be at the top of the list of suspects.”

  “Do you think he’s strong enough to pull off a shooting like this one?”

  “Maybe the old man could manage to shoot a few rounds, but I wouldn’t put money on him having a lot of stamina. Perhaps there were two of them. Perhaps the boy helped him.”

  Birkir looked at Gunnar and shook his head.

  Gunnar added, “I mean, before he went to school this morning.”

  “I don’t think so,” Birkir said.

  Gunnar took out his cell phone and looked at the screen. “There’s a signal here,” he said and dialed.

  While his partner talked on the phone, Birkir walked around the car and then along the dirt road, away from the farm. He examined the side of the road carefully, looking for tire marks. If someone had arrived here by car, they would have had to turn around somewhere; the road was so narrow it seemed inevitable that impressions would be visible in the soft earth. He continued up as far as the exit off the highway.

  Gunnar had fetched their car and now drove up behind him.

  “Nothing here,” Birkir said as Gunnar rolled the window down.

  “Magnús is going to send a truck to pick up the Nissan,” Gunnar said. “He said that Dóra and Símon have spoken to the family. Ólafur was apparently married to a younger woman but also had children from two previous marriages. The team also stopped by his office. There will be a briefing when we get back to town this evening.”

  A black car from a funeral parlor approached from the south; the driver pulled over and looked at them questioningly. Birkir nodded toward the turnoff and said, “You’ll have to wait a bit; the forensic team is still at work.”

  17:30

  Twilight was descending when a small station wagon appeared on the road below Litla-Fell and eventually made its way to a stop beside the patrol car. A tall uniformed cop got out, greeted Birkir cheerfully, and opened the hatchback to reveal a metal cage. The large yellow Labrador inside it got up awkwardly from its bed and yawned.