Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

‘What about later?’ asked Magnus. ‘Did you sleep with Carlotta after Greenland?’

The question of why Einar hadn’t told him all this before could wait. First he wanted to get as much out of him as possible.

Einar nodded. ‘I suppose you could call it an affair, but it was more like an occasional relationship. Every now and then we would meet up. I was at York University in England then and she was in Padua. Sometimes we would meet in York, sometimes France. We went to Amsterdam once, and Zurich. Venice. Never Iceland.’

‘I see,’ said Magnus. ‘And how long did this affair continue? Or was it still going on when she died?’

Einar’s cool crumbled. He closed his eyes and breathed in. When he opened them again, they were moist. ‘It...’

He stopped. Took a breath. Opened his mouth. Closed it again. Swallowed. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ he said.

Magnus and Vigdís waited for Einar to regain his composure.

‘No. It only lasted a year. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. It turned out she knew about Carlotta. She told me to stop and I stopped.’

‘Completely? You didn’t sleep with her at all after that?’

‘No. I mean...’ Einar winced and closed his eyes again, as if ashamed to admit the truth. ‘Yes. Once. In Paris last year. But just the once.’

‘Was Carlotta happy with that? With “just the once”?’

‘Not really,’ Einar said. ‘But I had promised my wife.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Vigdís. Vigdís had a negative view of men’s honesty when it came to women, born of harsh experience.

‘I’m telling the truth,’ Einar said. ‘But please don’t tell Rósa about the Paris thing. She doesn’t know and I don’t want her to find out.’

‘You should have thought about that before you slept with Carlotta again,’ said Vigdís. Magnus was happy to let her needle Einar.

‘I know I should!’ said Einar, slamming his palm on the table. The sudden outburst took the two detectives by surprise.

‘Look, I’m sorry. I know I should have told you all this before. I know I made a mistake, but I am going to rectify that now.’

‘You certainly should have told us straight away,’ said Magnus. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I panicked,’ Einar said. ‘I didn’t want Rósa to find out I had been seeing Carlotta. And I thought you might suspect me of killing her.’

‘Indeed we might,’ said Vigdís.

‘Indeed we do,’ said Magnus. ‘What was Carlotta doing in Iceland?’

‘She came to see me,’ said Einar.

‘So she could sleep with you?’ said Vigdís.

‘No!’ Einar glared at Vigdís. The needling was working. He fought to control himself. ‘No. She came across something in Italy last year: a letter about Columbus and his visit to Iceland. She approached me about it in Paris when I was presenting a paper at the Sorbonne — that was the one and only night we slept together again. We’ve been corresponding about it since then, but a couple of weeks ago she said she wanted to talk to me about a new development face-to-face.’

‘Did you meet in Reykjavík?’

‘No. I was determined to avoid seeing her in the flesh.’ Einar winced at his own choice of words. ‘I said we should discuss it over the phone, but she insisted on meeting up. In the end I relented, but I said definitely not Reykjavík. She could come up to Saudárkrókur where we were filming.’

‘But she saw you in Glaumbaer?’

‘Yes. That wasn’t part of the plan. She just wanted to...’

‘To what?’ said Magnus.

‘Tease me. Tempt me. I don’t know.’

‘So then what happened?’

‘I told her to go away so that the others wouldn’t suspect anything. We were supposed to meet in Saudárkrókur at nine-thirty that evening. She said she would have to make it ten-thirty.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘No.’

‘And you didn’t ask?’

‘Not at that point. I wanted her to leave me alone. We were standing in front of the church and I knew the others would see us and ask about her, and in fact Eygló did.’

‘So none of them knew who she was?’

‘No.’ Einar shook his head. ‘Carlotta and I had agreed to keep her name out of it. The others knew about the Columbus letter, of course, but they didn’t know about Carlotta’s involvement. Or that she had been a member of the dig in Greenland.’

‘I spoke to the guy who found the Columbus letter this morning.’

‘Federico Trapanese? Is he here in Iceland?’

‘No, he’s in Italy; I spoke to him on Skype. Is that the new evidence Professor Beccari was talking about?’

‘Yes. It proves that Columbus was told about the Vinland sagas, and it includes sailing directions to a Viking settlement in America.’

‘Which one?’ said Magnus.

‘We think it’s Nantucket.’

‘Nantucket? Isn’t that where you said the wampum you found came from?’

‘Precisely.’

‘No wonder Carlotta was excited by the letter.’

‘Yes. Not only did it show that Columbus knew about America before he discovered it, but also that Gudrid made it as far as Nantucket.’

‘So that’s why you think Hóp is in Nantucket?’

‘That’s right,’ said Einar.

Magnus remembered the US immigration entry stamp the police had found in Carlotta’s passport. Boston. Boston was the nearest international airport to Nantucket.

‘Did you go there yourself? Last October?’

‘Yes,’ said Einar, clearly puzzled at how Magnus knew.

‘With Carlotta?’

Einar nodded. ‘Yes, with Carlotta. But we didn’t sleep together that time, I promise.’

‘What did you do?’

‘It was Carlotta’s suggestion. We wanted to see where the Vikings might have settled on Nantucket. We found an old woman there, a historian who happened to have written a book about Gudrid the Wanderer. She knew the lagoon mentioned in the Columbus letter. We are featuring it, and her, in the documentary.’

Einar’s anxiety deepened. ‘I never told Rósa Carlotta came with me. Or Eygló or the others.’

‘You wanted to keep it a secret?’ said Vigdís.

‘Yes. In case my wife got the wrong idea.’

Vigdís looked at him pityingly.

‘Back to Monday night,’ said Magnus. ‘What happened at ten-thirty?’

‘We were supposed to meet outside the church in the church square in Saudárkrókur. I got there a little early, maybe ten-twenty-five. Carlotta didn’t show. I waited until after eleven, and then went back to the hotel. I texted her to ask where she was, but there was no reply.’ Einar swallowed. ‘And then, the next morning, I saw her dead behind the church at Glaumbaer. I panicked. I’m ashamed to say my first thought was I didn’t want my wife to find out that I had been seeing her.’

‘Why not?’ said Vigdís.

‘In case she thought we were sleeping together.’

‘Which would have been a reasonable assumption.’

Einar shrugged. ‘Yeah. That’s my point.’

‘That’s really not a good reason for not telling us about your relationship with her,’ said Magnus.

‘In fact, it’s a really bad reason,’ said Vigdís.

‘Yes. I know that. I’ve been kicking myself all day. I can’t believe she’s really dead. Even though I saw her body lying there, I couldn’t believe it was her.’ He blew air out of his cheeks. ‘I’m glad I’ve got the chance to clear things up now.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Vigdís again.

‘Except things are not really clear, are they?’ said Magnus.

‘What do you mean?’ said Einar.

‘Did you kill Carlotta?’

‘No!’ said Einar. ‘Of course not! I’ve told you, I...’ Einar hesitated. ‘I didn’t exactly love her. But I was very close to her. Why would I want to kill her?’