The Polar Bear Killing

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘You made it!’

  ‘This is not an easy place to get to. I ended up flying to Akureyri and borrowing one of their cars to drive the rest of the way.’

  ‘At least the weather’s not too bad this time of year,’ she said. ‘The town can be completely cut off in winter.’

  Magnus scanned the tiny police station. Two uniformed policemen were also working in there. They nodded a greeting to him.

  ‘Is Ólafur here?’

  ‘He’s gone for a run. He could be ages. That man is super fit.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ Magnus asked.

  Vigdís glanced quickly at the officers around them. ‘Old school.’

  ‘Well, since he isn’t here, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?’

  ‘All right,’ said Vigdís. ‘Do you want to take a walk? See the sights of Raufarhöfn?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve been cooped up in the car for three hours.’

  So they left the police station and strolled through the town towards the harbour. The wind had died down, the evening sun was on their faces, and it was almost warm. They found a wall by the harbour. In front of them a fisherman was loading a very large net on to a very small boat.

  ‘What happened, Vigdís?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was just stupid.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know that either. I was free of worrying about Mum for a few days. I was lonely.’ Vigdís really didn’t want to mention the drink. She was too ashamed. ‘It feels like you are a long way from real life out here. I was so stupid.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Magnus. They sat in companionable silence for a moment. ‘It’s the kind of stupid thing I would do.’

  Vigdís smiled. ‘That’s no recommendation, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Magnus. ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘My career is screwed now.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Has Ólafur made an official complaint to Thorkell yet?’

  ‘Not yet, but he will. He’s told Baldur, and Baldur will tell his cronies. I don’t think he has told any of the other police officers here.’

  ‘That’s something,’ said Magnus.

  Vigdís snorted. She would be a laughing stock back in Reykjavík once everyone found out. ‘It is the kind of thing you would do, isn’t it?’

  Magnus nodded. ‘Is he a nice guy, at least?’

  ‘Martin? I think so. That is if he isn’t a cop killer after all.’

  Magnus frowned, as if struck by a thought. ‘Does he speak Icelandic?’

  ‘No,’ said Vigdís.

  ‘Do you speak English to him? Or are you a secret German speaker?’

  ‘He speaks English to me,’ said Vigdís. ‘And I sort of reply back.’

  ‘Sounds like a perfect relationship.’

  ‘I know,’ said Vigdís. ‘It’s ridiculous. But I do sort of like him. I am such an idiot.’

  Magnus smiled at her. It wasn’t that he disagreed with her; her idiocy was incontrovertible. But he was on her side. They both knew he could be an idiot from time to time too.

  They watched the fisherman tidy up the net and lock the boat cabin. He nodded to the two detectives and headed back to the warmth of his home. Presumably he would be out at sea again early the next morning.

  ‘OK,’ Magnus said. ‘Tell me about the case.’

  Vigdís was glad to go over the investigation with Magnus; it straightened it all in her mind. Magnus listened quietly for the most part, just asking the odd question to clarify things.

  ‘So there we are,’ she finished. ‘If the ballistics report comes back tomorrow with confirmation that Halldór was shot by his own rifle, we have pretty much got Gudrún.’

  Magnus sat silently, his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat.

  ‘Magnús?’ Vigdís said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you think it will? Confirm that the bullet came from Halldór’s rifle?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vigdís. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘You said Gudrún denied killing her father,’ he said at last. ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘At the end of her rope. She just broke down. She answered our questions quietly, with tears streaming down her cheeks. It was hard to read her: I couldn’t tell whether she was upset because of all the pressure of the last few days, or whether she couldn’t face what she had done. Inspector Ólafur was sure she was guilty.’

  ‘And what about you? What was your instinct?’

  Vigdís hesitated. She wanted to believe that Gudrún was guilty. She wanted to believe that Martin was innocent. But… ‘My instinct? I’m not sure.’

  Magnus looked at her steadily. He raised his eyebrows. ‘I know you, Vigdís. Not being sure isn’t your style.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think your gut feel is that she’s innocent and you don’t want to admit it.’

  ‘Magnús, that’s ridiculous! We are detectives. We deal in evidence.’

  ‘We deal in people,’ said Magnus. ‘It takes a certain kind of daughter to shoot out the eye of her father. I’ve met one or two of that kind of woman in America. But none in Iceland that I can think of.’

  ‘So are you saying Martin or Alex shot him? Or Sveinn? He wasn’t even in Raufarhöfn.’

  ‘No.’ Magnus was quiet for a couple of minutes, staring at the fishing boats bobbing gently by the quayside. Vigdís let him think. ‘Has it rained since Halldór was murdered?’

  ‘No,’ Vigdís said.

  ‘Good,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ll go to bed now. I won’t wait for Ólafur – I’d like to delay talking to him if I can. But we’ll meet downstairs in the hotel lobby at five tomorrow morning to take a look at the crime scene. I think I’d like to find out a bit more before I report to him.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Vigdís led the way up the hill towards the henge, her long legs making easy work of the slope. The sun had already been up for a while, and the air was full of the sound of birds busy with whatever birds do that early in the morning.

  ‘You know they laid this out according to the ‘Völuspá’, the first poem of the Poetic Edda?’ Magnus said.

  Vigdís’s only reply was to let out something between a moan and a grunt.

  ‘Apparently, there’s a path bearing the name of each of the dwarfs mentioned in the poem. All seventy-two of them.’

  ‘I bet you know all their names,’ said Vigdís.

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Magnus.

  ‘When did you read all this stuff?’

  ‘When I was a kid at high school.’

  ‘In America?’ Magnus had moved to Boston from Iceland when he was a kid.

  ‘Yes.’

  They carried on in silence for a few moments.

  ‘Magnús?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did your friends in America think you were a little weird?’

  ‘Thanks, Vigdís.’

  Although forensics had finished with the scene, police tape still flapped in its own geometric circle within the henge. Vigdís pointed out the spot where Halldór had been shot, and the two rocks down the hill from where it was possible his killer had stood. While there was a clear view of the gate where Halldór had been found, the rocks were on the other side of the hill from the road, out of sight.

  Magnus examined the ground and then made his way down the hill along a half-trodden path, criss-crossing twenty or thirty metres on either side. He paused every time he came to a patch of exposed mud. After ten minutes or so he halted.

  ‘Vigdís!’

  She came over. ‘Found some dwarf footprints?’

  Magnus pointed to a patch of mud next to a puddle. ‘Look.’

  Vigdís looked. ‘I see tracks.’

  ‘Look more closely. And count.’

  Vigdís looked again. ‘Jesus!’ she said, standing up. ‘Well, well, well.’

  ‘Do you have any spare spent .22 bullets or casings among the evidence?’ Magnus asked. ‘Doesn’t matter which g
un they are from.’

  ‘We have a few from the range Halldór used back at the station.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Bjartur! Quiet!’

  The old farmer came out to meet Magnus and Vigdís, wearing blue overalls and a woolly cap. The sheepdog, the Icelandic breed with a red and white coat and a curled tail, hopped over to them on its three legs.

  Vigdís was right: the skin under Egill’s beard was criss-crossed with crevasses and fault lines.

  He broke into a smile of welcome when he recognized her. ‘The blue policewoman! Come in, come in! I have a little coffee but no cakes, I’m afraid.’

  Before they entered the house, Magnus glanced across the river towards the more prosperous farm on the other side. The view was clear and uninterrupted.

  ‘So that’s where the polar bear was shot?’ he said.

  The farmer frowned and nodded. ‘Yes. It was a cruel day.’

  They sat at a table in the cosy kitchen and Egill took off his hat. His ears were massive, flapping straight out from his head, and sprouting white hairs like some kind of polar mammoth. He poured a small quantity of thick gritty liquid from a thermos into two cups. There wasn’t enough for himself.

  ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting visitors.’

  Magnus sipped the coffee and tried hard not to grimace.

  ‘Do you know who murdered Halldór yet?’ Egill asked Vigdís.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Vigdís.

  ‘Yes,’ said Magnus.

  Vigdís glanced at him quickly. And so did Egill. The bright blue eyes focused on Magnus under bushy eyebrows.

  Magnus produced a clear plastic bag, inside which was a small brass-coloured metal object.

  Egill’s eyes turned to the bag.

  ‘Did you know, Egill, that our scientists can examine a rifle and determine whether it was the one that fired this bullet? With 100 per cent accuracy.’

  Egill shook his head, still concentrating on the bullet. His left hand fiddled with one of his ears, pulling it out even further from his head.

  ‘We’ve come to ask you for your rifle,’ Magnus said slowly. ‘So our scientists can examine it. See if it was the weapon that fired the bullet that killed Halldór. Can you fetch it for me?’

  Egill didn’t move. He stared at the bullet. Then looked up at Vigdís and Magnus. He sat back in his chair.

  ‘You know I told you about that polar bear in Grímsey? The man the bear saved was one of my ancestors.’

  ‘It may be wrong to shoot polar bears,’ Magnus said quietly, ‘but it’s very wrong to shoot people.’

  ‘That policeman risked Anna’s life just so he could get the credit for killing a bear,’ Egill said, his eyes suddenly on fire. ‘So he shot the bear through the eye, but that was just because the bear was moving slowly.’ He leaned forward. ‘If the bear had charged – and it could easily have charged – then it would have been almost impossible to hit it with that accuracy. If he had hit the bear in the chest or the neck with a .22, Anna would be dead now. So I couldn’t understand why everyone was treating the man like a hero when he had almost killed a child.’

  ‘How did you get him up to the henge?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘I spoke to him on the telephone. I told him what I had seen. Said I needed to talk to him and suggested we meet at the henge by one of the stone gates there. I made him think I was going to blackmail him. I waited a short distance away from the henge and shot him. Through the eye. He was standing still.’

  ‘You had your dog with you, didn’t you?’ said Vigdís. ‘We saw the tracks from its three paws in the mud on the way up the hill.’

  ‘Yes, he comes everywhere with me,’ said Egill. ‘Couldn’t leave him behind.’

  ‘I think you had better show us where you keep your rifle,’ Magnus said.

  Egill nodded. He bent down and scratched the ears of the dog at his feet. The animal rolled on to his side, so that the rear right stump where his leg had once been was visible. His tail thumped the kitchen floor.

  ‘Sorry, Bjartur, old fellow. I’m going to have to leave you now. Perhaps Anna will look after you.’

  For the first time, a tear appeared in the old man’s eye.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Magnus stood under the newly hewn arch of the Arctic Henge and looked down at the little town of Raufarhöfn waking up.

  A series of clouds were gathering over the Melrakkaslétta plain, preparing an assault on the stone circle. It was chilly this early in the morning.

  Only a few feet away from him, Halldór had stood and waited for a bullet to thud into his brain, fired from the rifle of a mad old man. Halldór may have been wrong to shoot the polar bear. He was definitely wrong to risk the little girl’s life. But Magnus hated cop killers. Always.

  He saw a police Skoda drive the short distance out of town and park at the foot of the low hill on which the henge stood. A lone man got out and began to jog up the hill. Ólafur.

  He paused about a hundred metres away. ‘Magnús!’ he yelled.

  Magnus stepped forward. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Come down here!’

  ‘I want to show you something!’

  ‘I said, come to me!’

  Magnus shrugged and trotted down the hill slope. Ólafur looked wary, glancing from side to side.

  ‘You know Halldór was killed coming to a meeting like this right here?’ he said.

  Magnus held up his hands. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that. But I do want to show you something.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report to me when you got in last night?’ Ólafur was not happy.

  ‘It was late and I had had a long journey,’ said Magnus. ‘Come and look at this.’ He led Ólafur around the hill to where the dogs’ footprints were.

  ‘It’s a dog,’ said Ólafur.

  ‘A three-legged dog,’ said Magnus.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, Egill, the neighbour of the little girl Anna who saw Halldór shoot the polar bear, has a three-legged dog.’

  Ólafur stood up and looked up the hill to the henge. The rocks from where the shooter may have fired at the police constable were not far away.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I think you should take a photograph of these tracks before that rain cloud gets here,’ Magnus said, pointing towards the Melrakkaslétta.

  Ólafur grunted and then pulled out his phone and took photographs.

  ‘You know we have a suspect?’ he said. ‘Halldór’s daughter. We are just waiting for ballistics confirmation from Reykjavík.’

  ‘Which will say that the bullet was not fired from Halldór’s rifle.’

  Ólafur frowned. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it was fired from Egill’s gun – the farmer who owns the dog. He confessed about half an hour ago.’

  Anger flashed across Ólafur’s face. ‘Where is Vigdís?’

  ‘She is waiting at Egill’s farm with him. Waiting for you to go and arrest him.’

  Ólafur frowned. ‘Why hasn’t she arrested him? Why haven’t you?’

  ‘Me?’ Magnus smiled. ‘Oh, I think I arrived too late to have any effect on the case. Vigdís is a very good detective, as you know. Between the two of you, you cracked it.’

  Ólafur’s frown deepened. He examined Magnus with suspicion. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Vigdís told me that as she was sitting looking at the sea, she was joined by Martin Fiedler. Apparently you were running by and you thought you saw them kissing!’ Magnus gave a dry laugh. ‘She doesn’t know him; they don’t even speak the same language! But I’m sure you were mistaken. You were moving; it was a bit of a distance away.’

  ‘I know what I saw,’ Ólafur said.

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ said Magnus. ‘Look, Ólafur. I have worked with Vigdís for several years. She is a very good detective. She doesn’t deserve to have her career ruined. It would be humiliating for you if people thought I had turned up here and solved the case in a couple of hours before I
had even spoken to you. I have no wish to humiliate you, Ólafur.’

  Ólafur looked at the dog prints in the mud. ‘How did the forensics people miss that?’

  ‘I was looking for signs of a three-legged dog,’ Magnus said. ‘Kids like Gudrún don’t shoot their fathers, however angry they are with them. But crazy old men with a soft spot for little girls and polar bears? Maybe. He seemed the most likely of all the people Vigdís told me about.’

  Ólafur sighed. ‘All right.’ He stared out towards the cliff at the mouth of the harbour. ‘I was running fast. It had been a long day and Vigdís was far away. I must have been mistaken. I’ll tell Baldur that.’

  ‘Good,’ said Magnus. He checked his watch. ‘You may just have time to get to Egill’s farm and arrest him before your morning meeting.’

  ‘Hey, aren’t you going the wrong way?’

  Vigdís and Magnus were in her car, leaving Raufarhöfn, with Magnus driving. Magnus had left his vehicle behind for one of the Akureyri officers to drive back to their station. Magnus had turned left rather than right out of the hotel car park. South.

  ‘I thought we would go the long way round,’ he said. ‘It’s more scenic.’

  ‘You’re nuts,’ Vigdís said. ‘It took me nine hours to get here around the ring road to the north. It’ll take days the other way via Höfn and Vík.’

  ‘Relax, Vigdís,’ Magnus said. ‘I didn’t tell anyone in Reykjavík what time we were leaving. Did you? And it’s beautiful scenery this way.’

  ‘We’re not going to some saga site, are we? You want to stop off and see where Njáll got burned or something?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Magnus. ‘Or that iceberg lagoon.’

  Vigdís frowned. ‘If you hadn’t just saved my arse, I’d demand that you stop and let me out.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s always a pleasure to help you.’

  ‘Huh!’

  They drove out of town and rounded a bend.

  ‘Ah, a hitchhiker,’ said Magnus. ‘Let’s stop.’

  ‘Let’s not,’ said Vigdís.

  ‘The poor guy is stranded in the middle of nowhere.’ Magnus slowed.

  ‘Oh, Christ! It’s Martin! Martin Fiedler. Speed up, Magnus! We can’t take him.’