Sea of Stone (36 page)

‘The blood spatter, or lack of it, worries me, and so does the entry wound. But Baldur has a point. How could someone get to this soft sand and murder Villi without leaving a trace?’

‘Could they have brushed away their tracks?’ Emil said.

‘Difficult to do. Especially difficult to do without Edda noticing,’ said Magnus. ‘She’s good.’

He stared at the lake. Behind it rose the steep sides of the
mountains that ran along the spine of the Snaefells Peninsula. Stone, moss, streams and, higher up, snow. Hallgrímur had taken him and Ollie fishing here a few times when they were boys. Ollie had hated it, and in truth Magnus didn’t enjoy it much. They had caught a few trout, though.

But they hadn’t driven down this track. They had parked around the corner somewhere, out of sight of where they now were.

‘Come on,’ said Magnus. He led Emil at a brisk pace down to the side of the lake at a point further to the west of the crime scene. Rain began to fall, just a few drops. Emil panted to keep up with Magnus.

‘See how shallow it is here?’ Magnus said. And indeed the sand slid gently down under the water. ‘It would be very easy to wade a few feet out in the lake, pulling a body behind you.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Emil. ‘But from where?’

‘Here, I’ll show you,’ Magnus said. Further along the shore the frozen lava jutted out into the lake like the tower of a medieval walled city. There was only a narrow strip of sand a couple of metres wide at that point. Magnus led Hallgrímur round the rock and there, out of sight of Villi’s Peugeot and the rest of the crime scene, was a small beach at the end of a very rough track.

‘Careful,’ said Magnus. ‘Follow my footsteps.’ There were two sets of fresh tyre tracks. And where the tracks halted, footprints. A mess of footprints, leading down to the lake edge. Magnus moved carefully towards the point where the footprints stopped, examining the sand. He noticed a small brown stain. And another. And a shred of something pink that was probably brain tissue.

The rain was coming down harder now. In a couple of minutes most of the evidence would be gone.

Magnus turned and ran back around the lava battlement. ‘Edda! Get your camera!’ he shouted. ‘Quick!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

M
AGNUS AND EMIL
stood back and watched Baldur direct operations. To be fair to the inspector, he was quick to appreciate what Magnus’s discovery meant. Someone else had driven down to the lake, met Villi there, shot him with the rifle from close range, and dragged his body around the lava promontory to stage a suicide, returning the same way. He had then driven Villi’s car round to where he had dumped the body and left the vehicle on hard rock, where no footprints would show. It had almost worked.

In the meantime there was evidence to be preserved from the rain. The bloodstains, the footprints and, in particular, the two sets of tyre marks: Villi’s and those from the murderer’s vehicle.

Vigdís paused by Magnus and Emil. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Did you know it wasn’t suicide before you got here?’

‘I didn’t know,’ Magnus said. ‘Villi could have chosen suicide as the easy way out. On the other hand, this kind of thing can be staged.’

‘By whom?’ Vigdís asked. ‘And why?’

‘To tidy things up,’ Emil said. ‘If we had bought the suicide, Villi might have been blamed for everything. Hallgrímur, Ragnar, Benedikt. The real killer would have got away with it.’

‘If that’s right, it suggests that Villi didn’t murder those people,’ Magnus said. ‘Or at least not all of them.’

‘And it’s likely that whoever shot him also shot Aníta,’ Vigdís added. ‘By the way, it can’t be Kolbeinn. I got a call from Árni in Reykjavík who says Kolbeinn is at the National Hospital with
his wife. And Aníta said something interesting. Something about a postcard she had discovered under Sylvía’s bed at the farm. From Villi. She thinks it might be important.’

‘Important enough to be shot for?’ Emil asked.

‘You could go and see,’ said Vigdís.

Magnus glanced at Emil. ‘I don’t think anyone would miss us here,’ he said.

It took them ten minutes to get to the farm. Tóta let them in, surprised to see her cousin Magnus.

‘Have you heard anything about Mum?’ she asked.

‘She’s conscious,’ Magnus said. ‘She spoke to a policeman earlier this morning.’

‘That’s good,’ said Tóta, but the worry didn’t leave her face.

Neither Emil nor Magnus told Tóta about her uncle Villi. There would be time enough for that.

‘Can you show us Amma’s room?’ Magnus asked.

‘She was sharing with me in my room, but she’s not here any more. She’s gone to stay with Uncle Ingvar.’

‘Can we take a look?’

Tóta showed them her room. Magnus checked under the bed. ‘Did she leave a box here?’ he asked.

‘No. I know the one you mean, though. She took it with her.’

‘Thanks,’ said Magnus, and he and Emil left the girl, Magnus feeling guilty that they still hadn’t told her about Villi.

It was raining as they hurried through the farmyard back to Emil’s car. They sat in the vehicle and stared out across the meadows to the little church where the first murder had taken place only three days before.

‘Villi’s dead. Hallgrímur’s dead. Kolbeinn is in Reykjavík. I was talking to you in cosy Stykkishólmur police station,’ Magnus said. ‘So that leaves one person who could have shot Aníta.’

‘Who?’

‘Ingvar.’

‘Ingvar?’ Emil rubbed a chin. ‘He was seeing a patient at a farm somewhere at the time of the shooting.’

‘Was the alibi checked out?’

‘Vigdís was going to check it this morning,’ said Emil.

‘Give her a call,’ suggested Magnus.

Emil pulled out his phone. Magnus leaned over so that he could hear both sides of the conversation.

‘Hi, Vigdís. It’s Emil.’

‘Did you find the postcard?’ Vigdís said.

‘Sylvía took it with her to Ingvar’s house,’ Emil replied. ‘We have a question about Ingvar’s alibi for when Aníta was shot. Did it check out?’

‘Not very well,’ said Vigdís. ‘I went up to the farm earlier this morning. It’s over towards Grundarfjördur, only about seven or eight kilometres from Bjarnarhöfn. The farmer is ancient, well over eighty. His wife was the one Ingvar was visiting. She is bedridden with lung cancer; I don’t think she has long to live. The husband was definite that Dr Ingvar had visited them in the last couple of days, but at first he thought it was on Monday. Then he changed his mind to Tuesday, and said it was some time in the morning. His wife had no idea. He’s unreliable; a defence lawyer could easily drive a truck through his statement. And rightly so, the old bastard.’

‘You don’t like him?’

‘He called me a monkey. A police monkey. He thought it was funny. I know some of these people have never seen a black person before, but that’s no reason not to treat me like a human being.’

‘Nice,’ said Emil.

‘It’s Ingvar, isn’t it?’ said Vigdís.

Emil glanced at Magnus, who nodded. ‘It’s looking that way,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll go along to Ingvar’s house now.’

Ingvar lived in a neat blue house with a white metal roof in the middle of Stykkishólmur, on the old main street that sloped down to the harbour. Gabrielle answered the door. The doctor wasn’t at home, but Sylvía was. She was in the living room,
knitting. She looked out of place among the doctor’s stylish furniture; a solid countrywoman perched on the edge of an expensive leather armchair. Outside was a view over brightly painted rain-swept roofs to the fishing boats bobbing in the harbour.

‘Hello, Magnús,’ Sylvía said. To Magnús’s surprise, she gave her grandson a small smile.

The two detectives sat next to each other on a white leather sofa. Magnus glanced at Emil, who nodded.

‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid, Amma.’ Magnus could feel Gabrielle tensing. Sylvía frowned. ‘Villi is dead. He was shot at Swine Lake this morning.’

The news seemed to physically strike Sylvía. She reeled backwards, dropping her knitting needles. She brought her fist to her mouth and bit it. Villi was her eldest son. Magnus wanted to put his arm around his grandmother, but couldn’t quite bring himself to. Even in her grief, Sylvía’s demeanour said ‘hands off’.

‘My God,’ said Gabrielle. ‘You police must really catch the man who is doing all this. Who is next? Ingvar? Sylvía? Me? I want this house protected.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ said Emil. ‘Although we are using every man available to try to solve this case.’

‘Well, you are not doing a very good job of it,’ said Gabrielle.

‘Amma?’ Magnus said softly. ‘Amma? I have a question for you.’

Sylvía blinked at her grandson. Her mouth was open, her face white. But she knew him and she knew what he was saying.

‘Aníta said you had a postcard from Uncle Villi to Afi in the box under your bed. Can we see it? I think it might be important.’

‘Snooping in my things, was she?’ Sylvía said.

‘Yes. We think it might be why she was shot,’ Emil said.

‘It might be,’ said Sylvía. She hesitated, pursing her lips, gathering scrambled thoughts. Her eyes focused, brightening. ‘You know, Magnús, you were the best of the bunch after all. Hallgrímur said so, when you were a boy. I think he actually
liked the way you stood up to him, at least at first. But when you went off with Ragnar he took it as a betrayal. Which makes no sense. You were only twelve.’

‘And you, Amma? What did you think of me going?’

The old woman sighed. ‘I didn’t think anything of it. That’s what I did then. I didn’t think.’

The room was silent. Gabrielle was listening intently to her newly awakened mother-in-law.

‘I’ve changed now. Too late, but I’ve changed.’ She looked directly at Magnus. ‘It was our little church at Bjarnarhöfn that did it. Strange, it had been standing there for over sixty years of our marriage, and I had ignored it, but one day I was cleaning it and I was tired and I just sat there. It was peaceful. I looked at the cross and the old Dutch painting, and I began to think. I felt brave enough to think.’

‘Think about what, Amma?’ Magnus asked.

The old lady smiled. ‘About everything. About our family. About you, Óli, my sons. Margrét. And about my husband. I thought a lot about my husband.’ She chuckled. ‘I even started going to the church at Stykkishólmur and praying. Can you imagine me, Magnús, praying?’

She got to her feet. ‘So the answer is yes, I can show you the postcard.’

She left the living room and they heard her making her way up the stairs.

‘This is extraordinary,’ Gabrielle said. ‘This is the best I have seen her since Hallgrímur died. It’s as if the news of Villi’s death has unscrambled her brain. Is that possible?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Emil. ‘My father had Alzheimer’s, and although he had good and bad days, he never made this much of a recovery.’

Sylvía returned within a couple of minutes, clutching an envelope. She passed it to Magnus. The envelope sported a United States stamp and was addressed to Hallgrímur Gunnarsson in block capitals. Although the postmark was smudged, Magnus could make out the year: 1996. Inside was a postcard. The
picture was of Harvard Yard in Cambridge. Magnus flipped it over and read:

Magnus glanced at his grandmother. ‘You know what Villi means when he says, “I still think it was wrong”, don’t you?’

Sylvía didn’t respond. She was waiting for Magnus to say it. So he did.

‘He’s talking about my father’s murder.’

She nodded. ‘I think he is.’

‘When did you find this?’

‘Only a couple of weeks ago. I went through Hallgrímur’s old papers. There was this and some other letters from Villi to him over the years. The card is in Villi’s writing, but the address is disguised in block capitals, so I wouldn’t recognize it when it came in the post, presumably.’ She sighed. ‘I wasn’t really surprised. I had seen all this going on in front of my eyes for years. This was just proof of what I had denied to myself.’

Gabrielle stood up and looked over Magnus’s shoulder to read the card. ‘But it mentions Ingvar. It says he was in Boston with Villi!’

‘When my father was murdered,’ Magnus said.

‘That can’t be right,’ said Gabrielle.

‘Can you remember where he was that summer?’ Magnus asked her.

‘No, not specifically. He used to go to the occasional conference in those days. And a couple of those were in the United States. Florida. New Jersey. I don’t remember Boston.’

‘Do you keep your old passports?’ Magnus asked. ‘In those days they stamped entry and exit dates, I think.’

Gabrielle nodded. ‘Yes. They are all in a drawer in our bedroom.’

‘Can you dig out Ingvar’s from that time?’ Magnus asked.

Gabrielle hesitated. ‘I’m not sure I should.’

‘Look, we can get a warrant for it if we need to,’ said Emil. ‘But if your husband was never in the US when Ragnar was murdered, the old passport will prove it.’

‘All right.’ Gabrielle left the room.

‘So what happened?’ asked Emil.

‘Ingvar travelled to the United States to murder my father,’ Magnus said. ‘No doubt with Hallgrímur’s encouragement. It looks as if Villi was a reluctant accessory.’ He hesitated. ‘And it also looks as if my brother knew about it. It was Villi’s job to make sure he kept quiet.’

Magnus fought to control the anger that he could feel erupting within him. All those years when Magnus had been trying so desperately hard to figure out what had happened to his father, Ollie knew. It was unbelievable. But he could think about that later. Right now he had to keep his thoughts together, his mind clear.

‘Did you know all this, Amma?’

‘I slowly came to realize it,’ she said. ‘It was only when I found that postcard that I was absolutely sure.’

‘So why didn’t you tell the police?’ Emil asked.