‘We think he was struck over here,’ said Baldur, pointing towards the desk. There were signs of fresh scrubbing on the wooden floor, and a few inches away, two chalk marks surrounded tiny specks.
‘Can you do DNA analysis on this?’
‘In case the blood came from the murderer?’ Baldur asked.
Magnus nodded.
‘We can. We send it to a lab in Norway. It takes a while for the results to come back.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Magnus. In Boston the DNA lab was permanently backed up; everything was a rush job and so nothing was. Somehow Magnus suspected that the Norwegian lab might treat its neighbour’s lone request with a bit more respect.
‘So we think that Agnar was hit on the back of the head here as
he was turning towards the desk. Then dragged out of the house and dumped in the lake.’
‘Sounds plausible,’ said Magnus.
‘Except …’ Baldur hesitated. Magnus wondered if he was wary about expressing doubts in front of his boss.
‘Except what?’
Baldur glanced at Magnus, hesitating. ‘Come and look at this.’ He led Magnus through to the kitchen. It was tidy, except for an open bottle of wine and the makings of a ham and cheese sandwich on the counter.
‘We found some additional specks of blood here,’ Baldur said, pointing to the counter. ‘They look like high-velocity blood spatter, but that makes no sense. Perhaps Agnar hurt himself earlier. Perhaps he somehow staggered in here, but there are no other signs of a struggle in here at all. Perhaps the murderer came in here to clean himself up. Yet if that were the case, you would expect the spatters to be much bigger.’
Magnus glanced around the room. Three flies were battering the window in a never-ending attempt to get out.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘It’s the flies.’
‘Flies?’
‘Sure. They land on the body, gorge themselves, then fly into the kitchen where it’s warm. There they regurgitate the blood – it helps them to digest it. Maybe they wanted some of the sandwich for dessert.’ Magnus bent down to examine the plate. ‘Yes. There’s some more there. You’ll be able to see better with a magnifying glass, or Luminol if you have any. Of course it means that the body must have been lying around in here long enough for the flies to have their feast. But that’s only fifteen, twenty minutes.’
Baldur still wasn’t smiling, but the Commissioner was. ‘Thank you,’ was all the inspector could manage.
‘Footprints?’ asked Magnus, looking at the floor. Footprints should show up well on the polished wood.
‘Yes,’ said Baldur. ‘One set, size forty-five. Which is odd.’
It was Magnus’s turn to look puzzled. ‘How so?’
‘Icelanders usually take their shoes off when they enter a house. Except perhaps if they are a foreign visitor and don’t know the customs. We spend as much time looking for fibres from socks as footprints.’
‘Ah, of course,’ said Magnus. ‘Anything in the papers on the desk?’
‘It’s mostly academic stuff, essays from students, draft articles on Icelandic literature, that kind of thing. We need to go through it more thoroughly. There was a
fartölva
which the forensics team have taken away to analyse.’
‘Sorry, what is a
fartölva
?’ asked Magnus, who was unfamiliar with the Icelandic word. He knew the difference between a halberd and a battleaxe, but some of the newer Icelandic words threw him.
‘A small computer you can carry around with you,’ explained Baldur. ‘And there is a diary with an entry; it tells us who was here last night.’
‘The Commissioner mentioned an American,’ Magnus said. ‘With size forty-five feet, no doubt?’ He had no idea what that was in US shoe sizes, but he suspected it was quite large.
‘American. Or British. The name is Steve Jubb and the time is seven-thirty yesterday evening. And a phone number. The number is for the Hótel Borg, the best hotel in Reykjavík. We’re picking him up now. In fact, if you’ll excuse me, Snorri, I have to go back to headquarters and interview him.’
Magnus was struck by the informality of Icelanders. No ‘Sir’, or ‘Commissioner Gudmundsson’. In Iceland everyone called everyone else by their first names, be it a street sweeper speaking to the president of the country, or a police officer speaking to his chief. It would take a little getting used to, but he liked it.
‘Be sure to include Magnús in the interviews,’ the Commissioner said.
Baldur’s face remained impassive, but Magnus could tell that he was seething inside. And Magnus couldn’t blame him. This was probably one of Baldur’s biggest cases of the year, and he would not appreciate doing it under the eyes of a foreigner. Magnus might
have more experience of homicides than Baldur, but he was at least ten years younger and a rank junior. The combination must have been especially irritating.
‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Árni to look after you. He’ll drive you back to Headquarters and get you settled in. And by all means come and chat to me about Steve Jubb later on.’
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ Magnus said, before he could stop himself.
Baldur’s eyes flicked towards Magnus, acknowledging the evidence of this faux pas that Magnus wasn’t a real Icelander after all. He called over a detective to escort Magnus, and then left with the Commissioner back to Reykjavík.
‘Hi, how are you doing?’ said the detective in fluent American-accented English. ‘My name’s Árni. Árni Holm. You know, like the Terminator.’
He was tall, painfully thin, with short dark hair and an Adam’s apple that bobbed furiously as he spoke. He had a wide friendly grin.
‘
Komdu saell
,’ said Magnus. ‘I appreciate you speaking my language, but I really need to practise my Icelandic.’
‘All right,’ said Árni, in Icelandic. He looked disappointed not to be showing off his English skills.
‘Although I have no idea what “the Terminator” is in Icelandic.’
‘
Tortímandinn
,’ said Árni. ‘Some people call me that.’ Magnus couldn’t resist a smile. Árni was on the weedy side of wiry. ‘OK, not many, I admit,’ said Árni.
‘Your English is very good.’
‘I studied Criminology in the States,’ Árni replied proudly.
‘Oh. Where?’
‘Kunzelberg College, Indiana. It’s a small school, but it has a very good reputation. You might not have heard of it.’
‘Uh, I can’t say I have,’ said Magnus. ‘So where to next? I’d like to join Baldur for the interview of this Steve Jubb.’
T
HE FIRST THING
Magnus noticed was that Steve Jubb wasn’t American. He had some kind of British accent, from Yorkshire, it transpired; Jubb was a truck driver from a town called Wetherby in that county. He was unmarried, living alone. His passport confirmed he was fifty-one.
Magnus and Árni were watching the interview on a computer screen down the hall. All the interview rooms in Reykjavík police headquarters were installed with tape recorders and closed-circuit television.
There were four men in the interview room: Baldur, another detective, a young Icelandic interpreter and a big, broad-shouldered man with a beer belly. He was wearing a denim shirt open over a white T-shirt, black jeans and a baseball cap, under which peeked thin greying hair. A neat little grey beard on his chin. Magnus could just make out the green and red swirls of a tattoo on his forearm. Steve Jubb.
Baldur was a good interviewer, relaxed and confident and more approachable than he had been with Magnus earlier. He even smiled occasionally, an upward twitch of the corners of his lips. He was using the traditional cop’s technique, taking Jubb backwards and forwards through his story. Trying to get him to slip up on the details. But it meant Magnus was able to catch up on what Jubb had done that evening.
The interview was slow and stilted; everything had to be translated back and forth by the interpreter. Árni explained that this
wasn’t just because Baldur didn’t speak good English – it was a requirement if anything said in the interview was to be admitted in court.
Jubb had plenty to explain, but he explained it well, at least at first.
His story was that he had met Agnar on a holiday to Iceland the previous year and had arranged to look him up on this trip. He had hired a car, the blue Toyota Yaris, and driven out to Lake Thingvellir. Agnar and he had chatted for a little over an hour and then Jubb had driven straight back to the hotel. The receptionist remembered his return. Since her shift ended at eleven, his timing was corroborated. Jubb hadn’t seen anything or anyone suspicious. Agnar had been friendly and talkative. They had discussed places in Iceland that Jubb should visit.
Jubb confirmed that he had drunk Coca-Cola and his host red wine. He had kept his shoes on in the summer house: his shoe size was ten and a half under the UK measurement system. Jubb wasn’t sure what that was in Continental sizes.
After half an hour of this Baldur left the room and found Magnus. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘His story holds up,’ Magnus replied.
‘But he’s hiding something.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘I think so too, but it’s tough to tell from in here, I can’t really see him. Can I speak to him face-to-face? Without the interpreter? I know anything he tells me won’t be admissible, but I might loosen him up. And if he lets something slip, you can zero in on it later.’
Baldur thought for a moment and then nodded.
Magnus wandered into the interview room and took the chair next to Jubb, the one that had been occupied by the interpreter. He leaned back.
‘Hey, Steve, how’s it going?’ Magnus said. ‘You holding up OK?’
Jubb frowned. ‘Who are you?’
‘Magnus Jonson,’ Magnus said. It seemed natural to slip back into his American name when he was speaking English.
‘You’re a bloody Yank.’ Jubb’s Yorkshire accent was strong and direct.
‘Sure am. I’m helping these guys out for a spell.’
Jubb grunted.
‘So, tell me about Agnar.’
Jubb sighed at having to repeat his story yet again. ‘We met a year ago in a bar in Reykjavík. I liked the bloke, so I looked him up when I came back to Iceland.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘This and that. Places to visit in Iceland. He knows the country pretty well.’
‘No, I mean what did you talk about that made you want to see him again? He was a university professor, you’re a truck driver.’ Magnus remembered Jubb’s unmarried status. ‘Are you gay?’ Unlikely, but it might provoke a reaction.
‘Course I’m not bloody gay.’
‘Then what did you talk about?’
Jubb hesitated, then answered. ‘Sagas. He was an expert, I’d always been interested in them. It was one of the reasons I came to Iceland.’
‘Sagas!’ Magnus snorted. ‘Give me a break.’
Jubb shrugged his broad shoulders and folded his arms over his belly. ‘You asked.’
Magnus paused, assessing him. ‘OK, I’m sorry. Which one is your favourite?’
‘The
Saga of the Volsungs.’
Magnus raised his eyebrows. ‘Unusual choice.’ The most popular sagas were about the Viking settlers in Iceland during the tenth century, but the
Saga of the Volsungs
was set in a much earlier period. Although written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, it was a myth about an early Germanic family of kings, the Volsungs, who eventually became the Burgundians: Attila the Hun had a role in the story. It wasn’t one of Magnus’s favourites, but he had read it a few times.
‘OK. So what was the name of the dwarf who was forced to give his gold to Odin and Loki?’ he asked.
Jubb smiled. ‘Andvari.’
‘And Sigurd’s sword?’
‘Gram. And his horse was called Grani.’
Jubb knew his stuff. He might be a truck driver, but he was a well-read man. Not to be underestimated. ‘I like the sagas,’ Magnus said with a smile. ‘My dad used to read them to me. But he was Icelandic. How did you get into them?’
‘My grandfather,’ Jubb said. ‘He studied them at university. He used to tell me the stories when I was a lad. I was hooked. Then I found some of them on tape and I used to play them in the wagon. Still do.’
‘In English?’
‘Obviously.’
‘They are better in Icelandic.’
‘That’s what Agnar said. And I believe him. But it’s too late for me to learn another language now.’ Jubb paused. ‘I’m sorry he’s dead. He was an interesting bloke.’
‘Did you kill him?’ It was a question Magnus had asked all sorts of people during his career. He didn’t expect an honest answer, but often the reaction the question provoked was useful.
‘No,’ said Jubb. ‘Of course I bloody didn’t!’
Magnus studied Steve Jubb. The denial was convincing, and yet … The lorry driver was hiding something.
At that moment the door opened and Baldur burst in, followed by the interpreter. Magnus couldn’t conceal his irritation; he thought he was beginning to get somewhere.
Baldur was clutching some sheets of paper. He sat at the desk and laid them in front of him. He leaned over and turned a switch on a small console by the computer. ‘Interview recommences at eighteen twenty-two,’ he said. And then, in English, staring at Jubb: ‘Who is Isildur?’