Michael Ridpath - 66 Degrees North

‘Does it bother you?’ said Magnus.

‘No, of course not. I think that dive suits you perfectly. Just don’t try and drag me in there. Do you like scallops?’

‘I do.’

‘That’s lucky.’

‘Um. How did you get in here, Ingileif?’

‘Katrín let me in. Oh, by the way, did you meet Tinna? Cute, isn’t she?’

‘Um. Possibly,’ said Magnus. He wasn’t quite sure what he thought about Ingileif talking herself into his house without asking him.

‘I’ve been invited to a party on Friday night. Jakob and Selma. Do you want to come?’

‘Is he the little guy with the big nose?’

‘More of a big guy with a little nose. You have met him. They are two of my best clients.’

Ingileif ran a fashionable gallery. Ran it very well. Her clients were some of the wealthiest citizens of Reykjavík, beautiful people, who owned beautiful art and dressed beautifully. They were all perfectly friendly to Magnus, but he didn’t fit. For a start he didn’t have the right clothes, there was not a designer T-shirt or a designer suit in his wardrobe. His two favourite shirts were by LL Bean, but he didn’t think that counted, and neither did his suit from Macy’s. The main thing, though, was that all these people had known each other since they were kids.

‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. ‘I expect I’ll have work to do on the Óskar Gunnarsson case.’

‘OK,’ Ingileif said. She didn’t seem bothered. She never seemed bothered that she went out without him.

He never quite knew where he stood with her. But it was kinda nice when she showed up in his home, right in the middle of his life, unannounced, uninvited.

She glanced at him. ‘You know, these scallops can wait.’

Magnus smiled as he looked down at Ingileif. She was snuggled under his arm, her head resting on his chest, her blonde hair bunched up under his chin. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep. He noticed the familiar little nick above one of her eyebrows. There was a small smile on her own lips.

‘I fit very nicely in here,’ she said. ‘Am I just the right size, or are you?’

‘I guess we both are,’ said Magnus. ‘We fit.’

‘We do.’

It was true, Ingileif was one of the good things about Iceland, a reason to stay. Magnus had had a girlfriend in the States for several years, a lawyer named Colby. She was smart, she was attractive and she knew what she wanted. And what she wanted was for Magnus to quit the police force, go to law school, get a decent job and marry her. That wasn’t what Magnus wanted, which is why they had broken up.

That and the fact that Colby didn’t like being shot at by hoodlums with semi-automatic rifles on the streets of Boston.

Ingileif seemed to have no intention of marrying him, or changing him. They had met in his first week in Iceland, she had been a witness and then a suspect in the murder case he had worked on. They had gone through a lot together. Like Magnus, her father had been killed when she was a child. Magnus had discovered how that had happened, a discovery that had been very difficult for Ingileif to take.

He had supported her, talked to her, understood her pain, helped her come to terms with it, or at least accept that she could never completely come to terms with it. It was a bond between them.

She shifted in his arms. ‘So, have you solved Óskar’s murder yet?’

‘Not yet,’ said Magnus.

‘That’s pathetic. You’ve had all day.’

‘It might take me more than a day,’ Magnus said.

‘Even for CSI Magnús?’

‘I think you mean CSI Boston?’

‘Do I? I never watch those programmes. But I bet I can solve your crime.’ Ingileif disentangled herself from Magnus and sat up in bed. ‘Give me your clues.’

‘It doesn’t really work like that,’ said Magnus. ‘We haven’t found an Icelandic connection. The murderer probably lives in London. That was where Óskar was killed, after all.’

‘Huh. Well, have you sorted out Óskar’s sex life?’

‘Do you know about Óskar’s sex life?’

‘Not personally, you idiot. But I have come across him. Kamilla, his wife, or rather his ex-wife, was one of my clients. Nice woman. Pretty. A bit dull.’

‘Vigdís interviewed her,’ Magnus said. ‘She didn’t think there was much animosity there now.’

‘Probably not,’ said Ingileif. ‘But there was for a bit. Especially when María was involved.’

‘María?’

‘Yes. She’s an old friend of mine. And she was Óskar’s girlfriend for a couple of years. She was the reason he got divorced. She’s married now, to someone else, but she can tell you all about him.’

‘Hmm.’ Sexual jealousy as a motive for murder was one of the old favourites. Ingileif was right, they should probably find out more about Óskar’s lovers, at least the ones who lived in Iceland.

‘I’ll call her now,’ Ingileif said. ‘We can meet up.’

‘Vigdís can interview her tomorrow.’

‘What do you mean? She’s my witness,’ said Ingileif, rolling out of bed to dig out her mobile phone. ‘Isn’t that the technical expression?’

‘Not exactly.’

Ingileif held up her finger to shush him. ‘María? Hi, it’s Ingileif. Hey, I wanted to talk to you about Óskar. It must be terrible for you.’

Five minutes later Ingileif had fixed up for Magnus to go to María’s house to interview her the following morning. Ingileif was pleased with herself. ‘We’ll have this solved in no time,’ she said. ‘So who did you see today?’

‘My cousin, Sibba,’ Magnus answered.

‘Is she a witness?’

‘No. But she was acting as a lawyer for Óskar’s sister.’

‘Wait. You mentioned her before. She’s the cousin on your mother’s side, isn’t she?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s right.’

‘The one who told you about your father screwing your mother’s best friend?’

‘Yes.’ Magnus’s voice was hoarse. ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it? I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I don’t want to think about it.’

‘OK,’ said Ingileif, and squeezed his hand.

But Magnus was thinking about it. Until the age of eight Magnus had had an idyllic childhood. His mother taught at school, his father at the university and he and his brother Óli played in the garden of their little house with its bright blue corrugated metal roof, only a short distance from where Magnus was living now in Thingholt.

But then things had changed, changed horribly. His father had announced he was leaving to go to a university in America. His mother, alone in charge of the boys, began to drink. The two boys were sent to stay with their grandparents on their farm at Bjarnarhöfn on the Snaefells Peninsula. That period of his life Magnus had blanked from his memory, but he knew that the scars were still there, buried deep under his skin.

The scars were more obvious in the case of Óli. He had never really recovered from his time at the farm.

Then one day their mother killed herself in a car crash. She was drunk. Finally, the two boys’ father, Ragnar, came over from America to rescue them and take them back with him to Boston. Magnus was twelve, Óli ten.

As Magnus had grown up and begun to understand more about alcoholism, he had developed his own way of making sense of his parents’ lives. His mother, his alcoholic mother, not the beautiful woman he dimly remembered from his childhood, was the villain, his father the hero.

That was until he had bumped into Sigurbjörg in the street four months before. She had shattered Magnus’s idea of history by telling him that his father had had an affair with his mother’s best friend. That’s what had driven her to drink. That’s what had caused him to run away to America. That’s what, ultimately, had led to her death.