Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

‘No. I saw her myself. She was lying on her bed, fully clothed. She was in her eighties; her granddaughter said she had been feeling ill. Elderly tourists die sometimes. Exactly like this.’

‘Didn’t it strike you it was odd she was fully clothed?’

The manager shrugged. ‘No. She had been dressed when she came down to breakfast with her granddaughter. She was having a lie-down afterwards.’

‘Any signs of a struggle? Bruises on her skin? Had the furniture been moved?’

‘Not that I noticed.’

‘Has the room been cleaned yet?’

‘Yes. But no one stayed in it last night. It will be booked for tonight, though.’

Damn. There would still be plenty for forensics to work on, but the most obvious evidence would have been tidied up or taken to the laundry.

‘Cancel the booking. The room is now a crime scene.’

‘A crime scene! What, you think she was murdered?’

‘I think she might have been.’

The manager winced. Magnus could see what he was thinking. Murders might add a frisson of excitement for the guests, but they were not good for business.

Tough.

‘Is her granddaughter still here?’

‘Yes. I think she’s in her room now. Her father is flying in tomorrow to sort things out.’

‘Can I speak to her?’

As the manager went to fetch the girl, Magnus instructed Vigdís to get on to headquarters for reinforcements to establish a crime scene, and to the morgue to get the autopsy done as soon as possible. She should warn the forensic pathologist to look for any sign of homicide when he did the autopsy.

‘It could be a natural death,’ said Vigdís tentatively.

‘I know,’ said Magnus. ‘But we need to work on the assumption that it isn’t.’

Magnus met Nancy’s granddaughter in the manager’s office. Kelly Fishburn looked younger than her twenty-one years, short, blonde, with chubby pale cheeks and red eyes. She seemed briefly comforted by Magnus’s familiar American accent, but that only lasted a few moments, once she heard why he wanted to see her.

‘You really think Grammy was murdered?’

‘We are not certain, but we think so, yes.’

‘But why? Like, who would do something like that? Nothing was stolen, was it?’

‘We think it may have something to do with the TV documentary being made about Gudrid the Wanderer. Do you know anything about that?’

Magnus could see from Kelly’s expression she did know something.

‘Kelly?’

‘Oh! I know Grammy wouldn’t want me to tell anyone.’

‘You have to, Kelly. She’s dead. We need to find out why.’

‘And you really think it might have something to do with her death?’

‘An Italian tourist was murdered a few days ago in the north of the country. On the same day and at the same place as the TV crew were filming.’

‘Oh my God! I saw that on the Reykjavík Grapevine .’ The Reykjavik Grapevine was an English-language website and newspaper.

‘We believe she met your grandmother in Nantucket last year, with an Icelandic archaeologist. So, yes, I do think they might be connected.’

‘OK.’ Kelly took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I do know about that documentary. That’s why we came to Iceland: so Grammy could meet with the TV crew.’

She told Magnus what Nancy had said about the wampum in Greenland and the Columbus letter being a hoax, and how Nancy had brought Kelly to Iceland with her to try to straighten things out, although she had told Kelly at the time they were just going for a vacation.

‘Do you know who specifically your grandmother was meeting on Thursday morning in Snaefellsnes?’

‘No. She didn’t say. I did speak with Eygló the presenter myself in Nantucket after she had interviewed Grammy a couple of weeks ago. I told her my dad had thought that maybe Grammy had planted the wampum herself. But I was like, it’s a joke; I thought it was a joke.’

‘Do you know what whoever your grandmother met was planning to do with the information?’

‘It sounded like they were going to ignore it.’

‘Really?’ Magnus’s eyebrows shot up. ‘And your grandmother was going to let them?’

Kelly squirmed in shame, presumably on the old lady’s behalf. ‘Yes. She said it was their call. I guess she was relieved it wasn’t going to come out.’

‘And you? What did you think?’

Kelly hesitated. ‘Well, she was wrong, wasn’t she? They were all wrong. But it wasn’t up to me. She swore me to secrecy.’

‘Why did she tell you?’

‘She said someone needed to know. Someone young. She didn’t actually say it, but I know she didn’t want to die without passing the secret on. She was very old — eighty-seven, I think. In some ways I was flattered she told me. But actually I wish I’d never known. And now I’ve told you.’

‘You had to,’ said Magnus gently. ‘You didn’t have any choice.’

Kelly nodded unhappily.

‘Did Nancy ever mention Carlotta Mondini?’

‘She was the tourist who was murdered?’

Magnus nodded.

‘No. I told her what I had seen on the news site at dinner the night we got back here. She said that Glaumbaer was where Gudrid ended up in Iceland, but I didn’t really make any connection with the documentary.’

‘Did she?’

‘I don’t know.’ Kelly thought for a moment. ‘Maybe. She went quiet, come to think of it. And actually, when she told me about the Icelandic archaeologist tracking her down last year, I think she said he had an assistant with him. Was that her? ’

‘Probably.’

Magnus asked more questions about Kelly’s conversation with Eygló in Nantucket, about the timing of Nancy’s meeting at the Hótel Búdir in Snaefellsnes, and what she and Nancy had done the morning of Nancy’s death. Kelly suggested that it was possible Nancy had been trying to get her out of the way while Nancy met someone; after all that was what she had done in Snaefellsnes.

The someone who may have killed her.

Kelly had no idea who that someone might be.

Magnus finished with Kelly and emerged from the manager’s office into a hotel buzzing with policemen. He went up to Nancy’s room, which was already crawling with Edda’s people under the bright lights they had set up. There was plenty to do; staff and guests had to be questioned to see if they had seen anything strange or had recognized Einar or any others of the TV crew. Nancy had died a couple of hours before the crew would have checked in at the City Airport for their flight to Greenland.

Magnus spoke to the district medical officer on the phone, who confirmed he hadn’t noticed anything suspicious, but who sounded understandably embarrassed that he had missed something and should have called the police.

Magnus then called the forensic pathologist, Gudjón, directly, asking him to look for signs of asphyxia or needle punctures, which were the two least visible methods of killing. Internal bleeding from a blow or straightforward poisoning might also be hard to spot initially, but would show up clearly in a thorough autopsy. Gudjón said he would set to work within the hour.

It was at times like this Magnus appreciated the Icelanders’ willingness to get on with things.

Magnus was still at the hotel when Gudjón called back three hours later.

‘Asphyxia,’ he said. ‘No obvious sign of the cause, but given it’s a bedroom, we can assume a pillow over her face.’

It was what Magnus had expected. Smothering with a pillow was the classic MO to murder an old person. They were often not strong enough to resist, and, as in Nancy’s case, the result was a dead elderly victim who looked as if she had expired in her sleep.

‘Any sign of a struggle?’

‘None that I can see. And I’ve looked pretty closely.’