Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

‘Threatening her?’ said Magnus. ‘Threatening her how?’

Ajay repeated what he had heard: Tom warning Eygló that the filming of this documentary was vital to Suzy, and that Eygló should keep her mouth shut. Or else what had happened to Carlotta might happen to her.

‘Did Tom ever talk about Rósa?’

‘No, I don’t think so. In fact, I never saw him speak to her. He isn’t very talkative.’

‘I’ve noticed,’ said Magnus. ‘You didn’t think to tell us this before?’

‘No,’ said Ajay, looking unhappy. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m a bit scared of Tom myself. Could he have killed Carlotta?’

Magnus returned to the hotel and found himself a nice bench on a little deck outside, ordered a beer, and watched the sun set. It was cool, but the sky was still clear, and he was wearing his coat. The brown, dusty runway stretched out in front of him, and behind that the fjord slunk southwards, a thoughtful milky blue. Magnus was fascinated by the stately icebergs lined up in its central channel, drifting oh-so-slowly up towards the head of the fjord. Which seemed to be the wrong direction: maybe they were being pushed somehow by the glacier disgorging them into the neighbouring fjord, or maybe it was the wind or the tide. The bergs were a subtle mix of gleaming, slippery white and translucent blue. One looked like a sculpture of a motorboat, and another was in the shape of a fist with its middle finger raised towards Erik the Red’s farm at Brattahlíd on the far shore.

Or maybe it was raised at Magnus, the modern Icelandic interloper.

Magnus didn’t feel the euphoria of a case closed. Although Paulsen was doing all the right things, they weren’t there yet. Einar looked a broken man: in the space of a week he had lost his lover, his wife and, when the hoax was made public, his career. At this point Magnus couldn’t tell if it was grief or remorse that was crushing him, but he suspected that if Einar had killed Rósa, he would soon confess. Maybe Paulsen was coaxing a confession at that very moment.

Magnus frowned. Maybe not.

As for Nancy’s murder, it looked as if Einar had no alibi, and it was quite possible Rósa didn’t either — Vigdís was checking. It was most likely that one or other of them had killed Nancy, having found out somehow that she was going to blow the whistle on the hoax. If Einar confessed to Rósa’s murder, he may well tell the police which of the two of them had killed Nancy.

But there were a lot of loose ends. It didn’t quite make sense.

‘Hi.’ Magnus turned to see Eygló holding a large glass of wine. ‘May I join you?’

‘Sure.’

She sat down. She looked out over the water towards Brattahlíd. ‘Is that iceberg giving us the finger?’

‘I was wondering that myself.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. You know, I was really looking forward to coming to Greenland, but I think this will be my last time. This has been a shitty week.’

Eygló looked very small as she sat hunched up in her jacket opposite him, small and pale. And yet there was a toughness there that was absent from Einar.

‘Yeah,’ said Magnus.

‘Of course, it was a worse week for Rósa. You know she told me she was going to die?’

‘What!’

‘Yes, yesterday. We had done some really bad takes, and Suzy had called it off for the day. I was sitting on the hill overlooking Brattahlíd, talking to Professor Beccari, and then Rósa showed up and sat herself down right next to me. She said she was going to die soon and I could have Einar. She meant cancer — apparently her breast cancer has come back with a vengeance. But maybe she knew someone would kill her.’

‘Did she seem afraid?’

‘Of the cancer? Or of someone else?’

‘Of either,’ Magnus said.

‘No,’ said Eygló. ‘No; she was a brave woman. She seemed determined, though. I told her I didn’t want Einar, but I don’t think she believed me.’

‘You told Inspector Paulsen all this, presumably?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Eygló. ‘I’m getting pretty experienced at giving interviews to the police.’ She sipped her drink. ‘At least this time no one thinks I killed anybody.’

‘Ah,’ said Magnus. His automatic response was to justify his and Vigdís’s suspicions as being an inevitable part of a professional investigation. But he knew it was no fun being a suspect in a murder inquiry. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We got that wrong.’

At least his interview with her in the classroom that afternoon had been short and straightforward.

Eygló nodded, accepting his apology. ‘You know, I was afraid myself when Rósa showed up on the plane at Reykjavík.’

‘What were you afraid of?’ Magnus asked.

‘Einar had told me that she knew about us spending the night together in Ólafsvík. What an idiot!’

‘You or him?’

‘Good question. Both of us. I shouldn’t have let him stay. I’m too soft on Einar, I always have been. And he definitely shouldn’t have told Rósa about it. For someone who is naturally so sneaky he does have these fits of random honesty, especially where she is concerned.’

‘And you thought she was jealous?’

‘I knew she was jealous. The question is what she would do about it. I didn’t know whether she had somehow killed Carlotta, or got her killed. Have you figured that one out yet?’

Magnus hesitated before replying. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, I thought she might do the same to me. And then it was her that wound up being killed. Which makes me feel bad.’

‘Why?’

‘You know. Thinking bad thoughts about her. I suppose the Greenlandic police think Einar killed her?’

‘He was wandering around somewhere in Narsarsuaq when she was murdered, and the rest of you were at Brattahlíd.’

‘Do you think Einar killed her?’

‘It’s certainly a possibility worth exploring,’ said Magnus. ‘And he may well have killed Nancy Fishburn as well.’

‘Oh, you’re such a policeman!’

‘I try,’ said Magnus with a smile.

‘Well, I know he didn’t kill Rósa.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘He loved her too much.’

‘They had had a long and emotional argument. People sometimes lose their heads after those. Especially with people they love. I’ve seen it many times, sadly.’

‘Yes, but not the way Einar loved her. She loved him too.’

‘She seemed like a tough woman to me.’

‘That’s a big part of why he loved her. Einar manipulates women: he manipulated me. But she was different from the others; he never could control her. He would escape her for a bit, but then she would reel him back. Always. She was in charge; her power over him gave him a sense of security that he couldn’t get from another woman. Look, if they hadn’t loved each other so much, they would have split up years ago.’

Over the years, Magnus had cleared up several murders in Boston where a man had killed his wife. Marital tension, a loss of temper, drink. Mostly the husbands had had a violent past, but not always. Often they loved their wives. But it was true; they weren’t really like Einar.

He didn’t answer.

‘And if he knew she was going to die soon, why murder her anyway?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. Because he didn’t.

Eygló sipped her wine thoughtfully.

‘I expect it doesn’t matter much now,’ she said. ‘But there is a Greenlandic archaeologist working at a site in the next fjord west of here, Anya Kleemann. She was on the dig with me and Einar and Carlotta in 2011. She told me that Carlotta had been in touch with her recently asking about the wampum. Very recently, like in the last couple of months or something.’