Майкл Ридпат: The Wanderer

Einar noticed Eygló’s disquiet and guessed the reason for it. ‘Oh, Eygló,’ he said. ‘They are only birds. Everyone pays far too much attention to ravens.’

Eygló considered arguing with him, but actually she found his cynicism comforting. Einar believed he was in total control of his world; maybe she could learn something from him.

As usual Tom the cameraman didn’t join them. He had gone off to find himself a more comfortable dive where the food would be cheaper and the beer more in evidence. He and Suzy had worked together for years, and Suzy had told Eygló and Einar not to take it personally. Tom was a loner, a former nature cameraman who just liked to be by himself. Or perhaps with a puffin.

Tom’s surliness was difficult for Ajay, the shy young sound man. He was only twenty-one, a film-school student at a university in London doing a summer internship with Moorhen Productions. Tom was good at teaching Ajay his trade, but left the poor guy to fend for himself when not working. Eygló felt sorry for him, and had invited him to join her and the others, but Ajay had refused. Eygló hadn’t pushed it.

‘I looked through today’s rushes with Tom,’ said Suzy. ‘We definitely must try again tomorrow.’

‘Will you need me to do my bit again?’ asked Einar.

‘Absolutely.’

‘So it’s Snaefellsnes tomorrow night and we fly to Greenland on Friday?’ It was Monday; they had three days left filming in Iceland.

‘That’s the plan,’ said Suzy. Gudrid had been brought up on the Snaefellsnes peninsula in West Iceland, and then had sailed to Greenland, following the outlawed Erik the Red. They would be filming at Brattahlíd, Erik the Red’s farm on the south-west corner of the island, and a couple of other places in Greenland in which Gudrid had spent some time. Eygló had only visited Greenland once before, and she was eager to return.

Then there was the trip to Italy to look forward to. After a few years in Glaumbaer, Gudrid had taken herself off on a pilgrimage to Rome. Which meant Eygló had to go there too, with Suzy and Tom, of course, but not Einar. Roman archaeology was not his thing. Eygló had never been to Italy; she wondered what kind of hotel she would be put up in there.

The restaurant was full of tourists — everywhere was in Iceland in the summer — and they had to wait to order. When the waitress finally arrived, Suzy asked for a bottle of Pinot Grigio with their food. Going on previous experience, that would be the first of two or three. Einar ordered foal, probably just to wind Suzy up, but the Englishwoman didn’t seem to notice.

‘Oh, I just got an email,’ she said. ‘Good news. Marco Beccari is going to join us on Snaefellsnes.’

‘Well done!’ said Eygló. Even Einar nodded his approval.

Marco Beccari was one of the few truly world-famous historians. An Italian, he had written an influential and highly readable book reassessing the late Renaissance and its effect on the New World. He was now a professor at Princeton, and his presence on their TV programme would give it credibility.

Because The Wanderer wasn’t just a rehash of well-known facts about Gudrid. It contained a theory, and evidence, that would cause the world to rethink what it believed about the discovery of America.

Without Professor Beccari, the theory would be just another wild hypothesis. With him, the academic world would have to sit up and take notice. And the television audience would too.

Suzy left the restaurant a little early, complaining of an incipient migraine she wanted to nip in the bud. Eygló and Einar followed later, and Eygló went up to her room. There wasn’t much else to do in Saudárkrókur, and they were waking up at six the following morning to head back to Glaumbaer.

Eygló checked her phone, and saw that her earlier tweets had somehow roused the ire of Hailey from Oakland who was convinced that all Vikings were rapists and was shocked that Eygló wouldn’t accept that their ‘queens’ were in fact victims. Eygló entered the fray with gusto, thumbs flying over her phone’s screen.

She paused to draw her curtains, and as she did so, she noticed a figure hurrying away from the hotel towards the church square. Einar. What’s he up to? she wondered. But she was just glad he hadn’t knocked on her door. Maybe he had changed after all.

Suzy’s app proved correct: the weather was beautiful the next day. They arrived at Glaumbaer at seven, a couple of hours before the museum opened. The sun was well above the horizon, having set for only a few hours at this time of year. The air was crisp after the previous night’s rain, and there was a smell of cow manure coming from the twenty-first-century farm over the road.

Suzy decided to start where they had finished the day before, and Eygló repeated her words as she trod through the damp grass of the churchyard, following her own shadow in the sunshine. All around her birds sang and squabbled. She tried not to think of Einar’s cynicism as she spoke; Gudrid was real to her, so real Eygló felt she knew her.

She turned to face Tom, and as she did so she thought she caught something in her peripheral vision, by the back of the church. But she prided herself on her professionalism and the lack of retakes she required, and so she kept talking.

‘Cut,’ said Suzy as Eygló finished her last sentence. ‘How does that look, Tom?’

As Suzy and Tom examined his camera, Eygló turned to focus on the object she had seen. It was a pair of legs, clad in jeans, stretching out from behind the church.

She walked towards the legs, anxiety building. Could someone have picked this spot to bed down for the night? A tourist who was lost or drunk or both?

Or was it something else? Something worse.

It was.

A small, simple apse of corrugated metal stuck out from the back of the church, and behind it a young woman lay splayed on the grass, face inches from the corner made by the apse and the wall, the back of her head a bloody mess.

Eygló screamed.

Magnus cursed, swerved and hit the horn as a black BMW X5 roared past him through the fog. After five years away, he was back in the land of elves and idiot drivers.

He was on that famous stretch of road through a patch of lava on the way to Álftanes that had been diverted around a couple of rocks inhabited by the local hidden people, so as not to disturb them. Álftanes was a small town on a headland just outside Reykjavík, and Magnus had been called out to a report of an assault on a householder who had surprised a burglar. It was not the most serious of crimes, but then there were not that many serious crimes in Reykjavík. In fact, in the month he had been back, Magnus had investigated precisely none.

He approached a large brown wooden house — large by Icelandic standards anyway — that stood on a small point apart from its more modern one-storey concrete neighbours, facing out into grey folds of fog and sea. The flashing lights of two police cars and an ambulance pierced the mist. As Magnus pulled up behind one of the police cars, two paramedics climbed into the ambulance and it drove off.

Magnus didn’t recognize the uniformed police constable at the door to the house. He introduced himself. She appeared to have heard of him — it seemed that every police officer in Iceland had, despite Magnus’s recent absence from the country.

‘The victim is Tryggvi Thór Gröndal,’ she said. ‘Seventy-one. He was hit on the head and knocked unconscious. He’s a stubborn bastard. Refused to go to hospital and he declines to press charges.’

‘Why?’

I don’t know,’ said the constable with frustration. ‘Claims the attack was nothing. See if you can get him to change his mind.’