Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

The barman and a drinker at the bar in Saudárkrókur remembered Tom’s visit that evening, although the pizza place was unsure about Ajay.

The autopsy had been performed on Carlotta the afternoon before. There was nothing surprising about the results. She was in good health; there were no signs of a struggle. Her only injury was a single hard blow to the head with a blunt object. Time of death was probably between 7.30 p.m. and midnight, although it was just possible that she had been killed after that: rigor and body temperature were inaccurate indicators. The body definitely had not been moved far after death, although it could have been dragged behind the church immediately.

So in theory it was just about possible that Einar could have left the hotel in Saudárkrókur after midnight, driven to Glaumbaer, met Carlotta there and killed her. But it was extremely unlikely. Why would Carlotta meet him there in the middle of the night? And there had been that other sighting of the unidentified man at ten o’clock. That tallied with Carlotta rearranging her rendezvous with Einar from nine-thirty to ten-thirty; perhaps she had another meeting with someone else at Glaumbaer earlier that evening: the man with the silver car.

On the earlier side of the window they now knew that Carlotta had been seen on the shore of the fjord looking at Drangey at eight-thirty, meaning she couldn’t have got back to Glaumbaer until at least nine.

Edda made her report. Forensic evidence had turned up nothing. Or rather, it had turned up a lot, but nothing that yet had any significance. There were multiple faint fingerprints on Carlotta’s car, which is what you would expect from a rental vehicle. Eliminating them would be a nightmare involving the staff at the rental company and the previous renters, most of whom would be foreign tourists who had probably returned to their own countries.

A number of items had been recovered from Glaumbaer and the churchyard; once again, not surprising for one of the tourist attractions in the area. No signs of blood on the ground in the vicinity.

They had been able to deduce from the faint tyre prints that the tyres on the silver car the girl had seen were Michelin CrossClimate, which could be fitted to a wide range of vehicles. The impressions were good enough to confirm a match with whatever vehicle had been parked there, if they could find it. Magnus would check Einar’s Toyota but he was not hopeful.

They had not heard anything new from Italy, either from Sergeant Tacchini or from the University of Padua about Carlotta’s email account. This was frustrating. There was no doubt that Carlotta’s emails would be illuminating: they would have alerted the police to her relationship with Einar. And although the Icelandic phone companies were cooperative, they hadn’t yet been able put together a schedule of calls to and from Carlotta’s phone, with locations.

‘So, do we arrest Einar?’ said Jón Kári.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Magnus. ‘We don’t have the evidence. And his alibi is good.’

‘He did lie to us about Carlotta,’ said Vigdís.

‘He said he was worried we would suspect him,’ Magnus replied. ‘And he didn’t want his wife to find out he had been seeing her.’

‘That doesn’t sound good enough to me. A murder inquiry is serious. Most innocent people would have admitted they knew the victim right away.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Magnus. ‘His wife sounds the jealous type; if it was going to get him in trouble with her, he might have kept quiet. It would have been the wrong thing to do, but people make bad choices. Plus, we know he was in Saudárkrókur when Carlotta was killed.’

‘He could have gone to Glaumbaer later on,’ said Árni.

‘Highly unlikely,’ said Magnus.

‘OK. I admit he probably didn’t do it,’ said Vigdís. ‘But he’s holding something back from us. And if we lock him up and let him stew for a few days thinking he’s on a murder rap, he may decide to tell us.’

This was the classic difference between the way the police in Iceland and the United States worked. The US had much stricter laws about eliciting confessions and their admissibility, and most suspects were told by lawyers to say nothing. Even when you got a confession, the defence lawyers would concentrate on undermining it; a case relying solely on a confession was a weak case indeed. So Magnus was used to building a case without any help from the suspect, sometimes without the suspect even knowing he was a suspect. Magnus knew detectives who would even avoid asking the suspect whether he was guilty during the investigation.

Things in Iceland were different. There it was possible to take a suspect, throw him into solitary confinement for a couple of weeks, and then persuade him to confess. So Magnus wasn’t surprised that some of his colleagues wanted to lock Einar up, although he was a little surprised that Vigdís was one of them.

But he was in charge of this investigation. ‘We let him go,’ he said. ‘You may well be right that he’s still holding out on us, Vigdís, but we need to find out more about him and about Carlotta.’

‘OK,’ said Vigdís. ‘But we can’t let him go to Greenland.’

‘Let’s see how the investigation develops,’ said Magnus.

‘What about Ajay?’ said Árni.

‘What about him?’

‘He has no good alibi — the pizza place can’t remember him. He was supposedly lurking in his room with a book. He seems to have been introduced to the project late in the process; he didn’t know any of the others.’

‘Doesn’t than make him less likely?’ said Vigdís.

‘He could have been hired by someone,’ said Árni.

‘To do what?’ Magnus asked.

‘To kill Carlotta.’

‘You mean a hit? Who would have hired him?’

‘An enemy of Carlotta’s from Italy.’

‘He’s only twenty-one,’ said Vigdís.

‘There are plenty of twenty-one-year-old Asians in Britain who want to kill people.’

‘So you think a Mafia boss recruited a jihadi to off a twenty-six-year-old student?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Árni. ‘I just think we should keep an open mind.’

Magnus knew Árni was appealing to him: he had always encouraged Vigdís and Árni to look for new angles. Árni’s stereotyping of Italians and British Asians could hardly have been called open-minded, but on the other hand they shouldn’t dismiss the idea that the motive for Carlotta’s death might lie in Italy. Magnus did wonder again how it was that Árni had been promoted to detective sergeant and not Vigdís.

‘OK. Check whether the anti-terrorist people in Britain know anything about him,’ he said.

Magnus doled out tasks for the team for the day. ‘Now, get to work everyone.’

Vigdís turned off the speakerphone.

‘I really don’t think Einar could have got to Glaumbaer and back in time to kill Carlotta,’ Magnus said.

‘OK,’ said Vigdís. ‘But Eygló could.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She doesn’t have an alibi after they got back to the hotel. We know she and Einar are sleeping together.’

‘Do we?’

‘I just saw him leave her room this morning!’

‘They deny it.’

‘Of course they do. Just like they denied knowing Carlotta.’

‘And why would Eygló kill Carlotta?’ Magnus asked.

‘Jealousy?’ Vigdís said. ‘Carlotta is an old girlfriend. Or perhaps Eygló and Einar cooked up the plan together.’

‘And how did she get to Glaumbaer?’

‘Einar’s RAV4. Or maybe she got the keys to the Land Cruiser somehow.’

‘What about the man in the silver car?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Vigdís. ‘Perhaps he had nothing to do with it.’

Magnus didn’t want to think that Eygló had killed Carlotta. He didn’t even really want to believe that she had slept with Einar. But a lot of what Vigdís said made sense. It was better than Árni’s Ajay theory.