Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

Suzy and Tom were standing next to a camera on a tripod, which was pointing towards the old wooden building. Ajay was holding a boom mic which stretched out towards Eygló and a balding middle-aged man, who was wearing a snazzy pink hooped scarf jauntily tied. The local constabulary were attending the scene to preserve order from the crowds, which consisted of two eight-year-old girls, one with a purple bike and one with a pink one. Magnus recognized the policeman by his magnificent black moustache, Páll, the constable from the neighbouring town of Grundarfjördur.

Páll saw Magnus and Vigdís and started to approach them with a grin, before a look from Magnus stopped him. He returned to keep an eye on the crowd of watchers, which had doubled in size since a couple more schoolgirls had arrived on bikes.

‘You’ve come a long way out of your way,’ said Suzy.

‘I know, but it’s a nice drive,’ said Magnus. ‘Where’s Einar?’

‘He’s gone off for a wander. He said he would be back in ten minutes, but that was half an hour ago.’

‘Shall we go and look for him?’ said Vigdís in Icelandic.

‘He doesn’t know we are here?’ Magnus asked Suzy. He had spoken to her only ten minutes before.

‘No. No one does. I didn’t want to interrupt things. Hopefully this will be the last take of the day. He went to look at the church. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Do you mind if we just get this done?’

It was more of an order than a request. Magnus glanced up at the white church, which was set a little above the town. It was an extraordinary combination of white and grey planes and triangles, graceful in its way. He couldn’t see Einar.

‘We’ll wait,’ said Magnus. ‘Do you mind if we watch?’

He sauntered over to Constable Páll and his little group of schoolgirls and greeted him.

‘I’m going to be questioning a man named Einar Thorsteinsson in a few minutes. Tall guy, late thirties, scrappy beard. We will probably take him to the police station.’

‘All right,’ said Páll. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Thanks. And watch the guy we question. It would be a stupid thing to do, but he might try to make a run for it.’

Magnus returned to Suzy.

‘Roll, Tom,’ she said. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Eygló!’

In front of the old warehouse, Eygló took some deep breaths. She spotted Magnus and Vigdís and a look of alarm passed over her face, but only for a second. A few more deep breaths until she was composed again. She smiled.

‘This is the old warehouse in Ólafsvík where merchants came from Denmark and elsewhere to store their goods and to pay their customs duty. The warehouse is only a hundred and fifty years old, but merchants have been coming to Ólafsvík for much longer than that. In fact Ólafsvík was the first town in Iceland to be chartered as a port by the Danish Crown — until 1944 Iceland was a colony of Denmark.’

Magnus wasn’t wearing headphones and so he could only just hear what Eygló was saying fifty feet away. But there was something about her voice that thrilled him. Vigdís was listening too.

‘Back in the fifteenth century, traders came here from all over Europe, but especially from England. And for centuries before that, Ólafsvík had been one of the main ports for the Greenland trade.’ Eygló paused. ‘Greenland was an important source of ivory from walrus tusks, and — even more lucratively, and more secretly — of a product which was prized all over Europe.’

Another pause for effect. Eygló cocked her head, tightened her lips, raised the corners of her mouth slightly, preparing her viewers for a surprise.

‘Unicorn horn. The long straight single tusk of the narwhal was imported to Iceland from Greenland, whereupon it became magically transformed into the horn of the unicorn, and was sold on to the courts of Europe for a fortune. So the people of Ólafsvík knew Greenland and its Norse settlers well.’

Eygló turned to the middle-aged man. ‘This is Professor Marco Beccari of Princeton University, the author of Thought, Light and New Worlds, which has revolutionized historians’ views on the exploration and conquest of the Americas. So, Professor Beccari, did Columbus discover Iceland?’

The professor grinned and raised his eyebrows, as if surprised by the question. He paused for thought. ‘I suppose you could say in a way he did. At least for the Italians and perhaps the Spanish and Portuguese. He visited here in 1477 on an English ship from Bristol, and in a later letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain he is at pains to describe the country as if he was introducing it to people who had never heard of it. He didn’t call it Iceland, but “Thile” after the mythical land of Thule. He seems to have spent several months here; in fact there is a legend that an Italian nobleman stayed at Ingjaldshóll for the winter, not far from Ólafsvík. The Italians did not know very much about the far north. Neither Italian nor Portuguese ships were permitted to make port in Iceland, which could have been the reason for Columbus’s voyage on an English vessel. He writes about exploring the seas to the north of Iceland.’

‘Did he find any evidence of a route to America?’ Eygló asked. She was looking deeply at the professor, hanging on to his every word. He had a powerful physique and a powerful voice: he spoke clearly and with authority, an authority which seemed to grow under Eygló’s gaze. His accent betrayed only a trace of Italian, mixed with British and American tones.

‘He may well have done. In his letter he says little about what he learned in Iceland, but he does mention a man and a woman from China of extraordinary appearance washing ashore in Galway in Ireland on two tree trunks. These were presumably two Inuit from Greenland or Northern Canada in a kayak.’

‘But we have no evidence that Columbus learned anything of the sagas of Erik the Red and the Greenlanders while he was in Ólafsvík?’

‘We didn’t, until very recently,’ said Beccari. ‘But it turns out that the letter to Ferdinand and Isabella was not the only one he wrote about his voyage to Iceland.’

‘Cut!’ said Suzy. ‘That was perfect, Marco. How’s the sound, Ajay?’

Ajay gave the thumbs up.

‘Is that in the can, Tom?’

Tom nodded.

‘OK. Let’s do the reverses before we wrap for the day.’

Magnus was fascinated by what Eygló and the professor had said. After his conversation with Federico Trapanese, he was pretty sure what letter the professor was referring to.

His thoughts were interrupted by Vigdís. ‘There he is!’

Magnus turned to see the tall figure of Einar striding towards them. He glanced at Páll and nodded. Páll slipped away from the girls, who were still staring at the little show in front of them.

Einar was about thirty yards away before he saw Magnus and Vigdís. He stopped, bowed his head and turned around. Right into the burly, uniformed figure of Páll.

Magnus and Vigdís hurried over.

‘Einar. I’d like you to accompany us to the police station. We have some questions we need to ask you.’

Ólafsvík police station was manned by only one officer, Constable Ívar, with the occasional help of Constable Páll. It boasted a tiny interview room and two cells. Einar lounged back in his small wooden chair in the interview room, affecting a casual diffidence. But he was tense.

And so he should be.

Magnus and Vigdís were seated on the other side of the table.

‘Tell us about Carlotta, Einar,’ Magnus began.

Einar said nothing.

‘Tell us how you met her.’

Nothing.

‘Greenland?’

Magnus and Vigdís waited. They knew how to wait.

Eventually Einar nodded; he knew they knew. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I first met her in 2011 on a dig I was supervising. In south-west Greenland. She was an undergraduate student from Padua...’