Майкл Ридпат - The Wanderer

She answered.

‘Kelly, it’s Inspector Ragnarsson. How are you doing?’

‘All right, I guess. My dad’s here now, which is great.’

‘Good. I have a question for you. Did your grandmother say that her friend Emilio placed the Columbus letter in the Vatican Secret Archives himself?’

There was a pause. ‘I assume it was him, but I really can’t remember. I’m sorry.’

That was disappointing. ‘Do you think Emilio or your grandmother might have known a man named Marco Beccari?’ Magnus asked. ‘He would have been about twenty, twenty-five at the time.’

‘I don’t know. Let me ask my dad. He’s right here.’

Magnus heard Kelly’s voice repeating his question. Then a man’s voice appeared on the phone.

‘This is John Fishburn, Kelly’s father. My mother knew Marco Beccari. So did, I as a matter of fact. I remember him when we were both kids. And of course Emilio knew him.’

Magnus felt foolish. He was missing something. ‘Why is that?’

‘Because Marco Beccari is Emilio Beccari’s son.’

Yep. He had missed that.

But Carlotta hadn’t.

Magnus thanked Kelly’s father and hung up. He and Eygló looked at each other. ‘Did you get that?’ Magnus asked her.

‘Yeah, I heard it,’ said Eygló. ‘So Beccari knew all along the letter was a hoax.’

‘Because his father had asked him to plant it in the Vatican Secret Archives.’

‘That would really screw him if it came out.’

‘You mean because of his reputation?’

‘Absolutely. It would all be over. There would be a massive scandal; the press would love it. He’d be fired from Princeton, no one else would hire him, no one would publish his books; it would be total humiliation. If the world finds out this is a hoax, it’s going to be bad for Einar and me, but it will be so much worse for him. We were duped; he was a perpetrator. And he has much further to fall than we do.’

‘He struck me as quite a proud man,’ said Magnus.

‘Very.’

‘He would be totally destroyed.’

The conclusion was obvious, and Eygló voiced it. ‘Does that mean Beccari killed Carlotta? To shut her up?’

‘It may well do,’ said Magnus, thinking it through. ‘We know Rósa was at Glaumbaer when Carlotta was killed. Rósa told Einar that she discovered the body, and that just before then she saw a man take something out of Carlotta’s car, and later saw him leave via the folk museum. Einar didn’t seem to believe she really saw anyone, and we didn’t either. But perhaps it was true.’

‘That man was Marco Beccari. And he killed Carlotta.’

‘Before she had a chance to meet Einar at Saudárkrókur as she had arranged. Do you know whether Beccari was in Iceland then?’

Eygló frowned. ‘No. He agreed to take part in the shoot at Ólafsvík at the last minute. Carlotta was killed on Monday, and we met Beccari in Ólafsvík on Wednesday. I’ve no idea when he flew into Iceland. Could have been before Monday, couldn’t it?’

‘We can check with the airlines,’ said Magnus.

‘All right.’ Eygló furrowed her brow. ‘But if Rósa did see Beccari at Glaumbaer, wouldn’t she have recognized him?’

‘Hm. Depends whether she had ever seen him before.’

Eygló’s eyes opened wide. ‘I think she only met him for the first time on the plane to Greenland.’

‘And she recognized him then,’ Magnus said. ‘He figured it out, and killed her.’

‘But wouldn’t she just have told the police?’ Eygló asked. ‘Called you in Iceland?’

‘Maybe she was intending to,’ said Magnus. ‘Or maybe she wanted to confront Beccari herself. So she agreed to meet him in the Blomsterdalen.’

‘That would be stupid.’

‘Depends on what she wanted to say. She was a cool customer.’

‘She certainly was,’ said Eygló. ‘She never gave the impression that she recognized Beccari, but then she would be quite capable of hiding that if she wanted to.’

‘And she didn’t tell Einar.’

‘That’s not necessarily surprising.’

‘Let me check something,’ Magnus said as he pulled up Vigdís’s number on his phone, turning away from Eygló.

As he was waiting for her to pick up, a ewe trotted into sight from behind some rocks, a black lamb almost her size close behind her. Both animals stared at him. He stared back. The lamb lost its nerve and darted back and forth, not sure whether to run for it or to stick close to Mom. The ewe ambled away.

Vigdís answered just as her phone was switching to voicemail. ‘Hi, Vigdís,’ Magnus said without preamble. ‘Can you check something for me? Can you find out when Professor Beccari arrived in Iceland last week? He will have rented a car. We need to know the registration, and whether it was caught on camera travelling north through the Hvalfjördur tunnel before Carlotta was murdered.’

Vigdís grasped the implication of Magnus’s question immediately. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I am.’

Silence.

‘Vigdís?’

‘I was thinking about Rósa’s phone records you sent me. There was a US number I recognized from Carlotta’s records.’

‘Beccari?’

‘That’s right. Hold on.’ Magnus could hear the taps of Vigdís’s keyboard as she looked something up on her computer. ‘Here it is. Rósa and Beccari spoke for nine minutes at twenty-one-fifty-two Greenland time on the twenty-fifth. That’s Saturday night.’

‘The evening before Rósa was killed. Beccari would already have left them in Narsarsuaq. He would have been in Qaqortoq.’

‘You can get the Greenland telecoms company to check the location.’

‘Good idea,’ said Magnus. ‘Thanks, Vigdís. And let me know as soon as you get anything on the Hvalfjördur tunnel.’

Magnus hung up and relayed his conversation to Eygló.

‘So Rósa and Beccari could have been arranging to meet?’ Eygló said.

‘They could have been. In which case either Beccari never left Narsarsuaq, or, more likely, he got a helicopter back that day just to meet her at the Blomsterdalen.’

‘I still think she would have been stupid to meet him somewhere quite so isolated. Rósa wasn’t that dumb.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Magnus. ‘Air Greenland will have the details if he did fly there and back. Time to call Inspector Paulsen.’

Paulsen didn’t answer so Magnus left a message on her voicemail. He and Eygló set off at a brisk pace on the track towards Brattahlíd. They had only been going for ten minutes before Paulsen called back.

‘Sorry, Magnus,’ she said. ‘I was just interviewing a French tourist. He is adamant that he saw Einar on Signal Mountain between twelve-fifteen and twelve-forty-five yesterday afternoon. No doubts about the ID — he had seen Einar with Eygló and Suzy before at breakfast at the hotel. Definitely the same guy. And if Einar was on Signal Mountain at that time, there was no way he could have had time to walk to the Blomsterdalen, murder his wife and get back to Narsarsuaq when we met him at two-fifty. And there was not enough time earlier that morning after he had returned from Brattahlíd. So we’ve lost our only suspect.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Magnus. ‘I think I’ve got another one for you.’

Paulsen and Magnus went straight from the airport at Qaqortoq to the hotel, with a local constable in tow. While Magnus had been making his way over the fjord to Narsarsuaq, Paulsen had checked with Air Greenland. Beccari had indeed made a day trip by helicopter from Qaqortoq to Narsarsuaq the day before, arriving at eight-fifteen and leaving at two. He had had time to meet Rósa in the Blomsterdalen and kill her. He was booked on a flight out from Narsarsuaq to Reykjavík later that afternoon. Paulsen and Magnus could have waited for him to show up at Narsarsuaq, but they had decided to go straight to Qaqortoq and arrest him there.