Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

‘According to the sagas, Gudrid and her husband Thorfinn sailed south from their base in Vinland to somewhere called Hóp. For decades historians have speculated where this was, but now we know.’

She paused, cocked her head in that way she had, smiled conspiratorially at the camera and imparted her secret. ‘Nantucket.’

Now she was walking up the short garden path of a grey shingle cottage, smothered in a riot of purple, red and yellow flowers.

She paused at the door. ‘This is the house of Professor Nancy Fishburn, a long-term resident of Nantucket and the author of a book on Gudrid the Wanderer. Let’s see if she can help us identify where Gudrid, her husband and their band of adventurers landed a thousand years ago.’ She rapped on the door knocker.

Next Eygló was perched on the edge of a sofa in a cosy sitting room, facing an old woman sitting erect in an armchair, her face criss-crossed with tiny wrinkles, her eyes twinkling with a lively intelligence and wry amusement. The camera lingered on a glass-fronted bookcase of ancient volumes secure behind a metal grill. A scholar’s living room; given the bookcase, a wealthy scholar.

Magnus was taken by the old lady immediately, as was Eygló, who displayed her customary fascination with her interview subjects.

‘Professor Fishburn, did you ever think that Gudrid could have ventured as far as Nantucket?’

‘Scholars have always known that the Vikings may have strayed at least as far south as Cape Cod,’ Nancy Fishburn said. ‘But there was no evidence until very recently that they ever landed on Nantucket. A few years ago archaeologists discovered wampum from Nantucket at Erik the Red’s farmhouse in Greenland, and now there is this letter.’

‘It’s pretty clear that Columbus is referring to Nantucket,’ said Eygló. ‘There are no other islands that match this description that are out of sight of land. Given that, where on Nantucket do you think the lagoon of Hóp might be?’

‘There are a couple of lagoons on Nantucket,’ said Nancy. ‘But from this description, the most likely place is Sesachacha Pond. It’s just a few miles north of here.’

Then Eygló and Nancy were outside, this time with Einar, standing by some reeds in front of a round expanse of water, about half a mile wide. Although she was leaning on an elegant walking stick, Nancy looked sprightly.

‘This would be an ideal spot for the Vikings to settle,’ Nancy said. The camera panned to a low hill covered with scrub. ‘Up there, the ground rises to give them a view of any approaching attackers. There is also fresh water. There is no self-sown wheat — which was probably wild rice — nor grapevines here today, but there may well have been a thousand years ago when the climate was warmer.

‘And over there, behind that sand dune, is the sea.’ Here the camera showed a narrow barrier of sand, perhaps ten feet high, bordering the pond to the east. A red and white lighthouse guarded one end of the dune, and a cluster of summer houses the other. ‘In the millennium since the Norsemen arrived, the sand and the shore will have been shifted by tides and storms. It is very likely that there could have been access to the sea as described in Christopher Columbus’s letter.’

‘So this is Hóp?’ Eygló asked. ‘This is where Gudrid and her husband Thorfinn landed a thousand years ago? Lonely Europeans clinging to the edge of a hostile continent?’

Nancy Fishburn flashed an amused smile. ‘Almost certainly, yes.’

‘And did they come into contact with the existing inhabitants?’

‘They did indeed. Soon after they landed at Hóp the Norsemen were approached by the locals, whom the Norse called “Skraelings”. The Skraelings loved the Greenlanders’ cloth, and traded it for fur pelts. A friendly relationship had built up between the Europeans and the Native Americans, until one day the Vikings’ bull escaped and charged the Skraelings, who fled.

‘All was quiet for three weeks, until a large war party reappeared in canoes. Presumably from the sea over there.’ Nancy gestured towards the sand dune again. ‘They fired arrows at the Greenlanders and then shot a mysterious black object from the catapult, which landed with a terrifying sound. The Greenlanders ran for it.

‘Now, Gudrid wasn’t the only woman on this expedition. There were several others, including Freydís, Erik the Red’s ambitious daughter, who had become a bitter enemy of Thorfinn and Gudrid.

‘Freydís was eight months pregnant at this point. She emerged from her tent and yelled at the Viking warriors to stand their ground, but they took no notice. So Freydís picked up a sword from one of the dead Norsemen, turned to face the Skraelings, ripped open her dress and bared her breast. She beat her chest and screamed at them.

‘They fled.

‘But after that, the Greenlanders decided that the threat from the local Skraelings was too great, and so they abandoned Hóp and headed north back to Keel Point and Leif’s Booths.’

‘Done!’ said Vigdís with a final triumphant tap on her keyboard. ‘I’m going to the hotel. What about you?’

‘Good idea,’ said Magnus, closing the video and turning off the computer.

‘What shall we do about him?’ Vigdís pointed to the cell door, where Einar was languishing.

‘Let him go. I’ll tell him not to leave town. We can decide what to do with him in the morning.’

‘Why not make him sweat it out?’ said Vigdís. ‘He may have more to say after a night in the cells.’

Magnus shook his head. ‘We need to find out more before we lean on him. We’ll take him back to the hotel, and get his phone and laptop.’

Constable Ívar looked relieved that he didn’t have to spend the night in the police station watching over Einar. He had secured a couple of rooms for Vigdís and Magnus at the only hotel in Ólafsvík, which was just a few metres from the police station. It was where the TV crew was staying.

They unlocked Einar. His face remained impassive as Magnus told him he should stay in Ólafsvík the following morning until the police gave him permission to leave town. For a moment Magnus thought Einar was just playing it cool, until he saw Einar’s eyes.

They were dull, almost dead.

Magnus met Vigdís in the lobby of the hotel the next morning, and they walked the short distance to the police station together.

‘Guess who I just saw?’ Vigdís said, grinning.

‘Who?’

‘Einar. Coming out of the room next to mine.’

‘And what’s so special about that?’

‘It’s Eygló’s room.’

‘Huh,’ said Magnus. ‘That is special.’

The local constables Ívar and Páll were already at the station. Magnus and Vigdís joined them around a speakerphone and they were patched in with Árni, Jón Kári and the other investigators in Saudárkrókur and with Edda in Reykjavík. It wasn’t ideal: it would have been better if Magnus had been there with the rest of the team in the north. He probably should have delegated the interview in Ólafsvík with Einar to another detective.

Who was he kidding? If there was a key interview to be done, then he was going to do it, no matter what the procedures said.

He started off by summarizing his interviews with Einar, Eygló and Professor Beccari the day before. Árni had checked with the receptionist in the Hótel Tindastóll who confirmed that she had seen Einar leave the hotel some time around ten, and return about an hour later. She had gone off duty at midnight, so it was in theory possible that Einar had left the hotel after then, but his alibi up until at least 11 p.m. was solid. She had seen Tom leave the hotel, but she hadn’t seen any sign of Eygló or Suzy after they returned from dinner and she couldn’t remember seeing Ajay go out for his pizza, nor could she remember Tom’s return. She wasn’t at the desk the whole time and even when she was, she had taken a number of phone calls; she couldn’t be certain of noticing and remembering every movement in and out of the hotel.