Michael Ridpath: The Polar Bear Killing

Which implied that Halldór had probably been lured up there. Either he had seen something suspicious or someone had arranged to meet him. It occurred to Vigdís that Ólafur had not even arranged for Halldór’s phone to be analysed to see whom he had spoken to on the day of his murder.

Gudrún didn’t think Halldór had had any enemies in town, although she knew that some people thought him officious. He kept a closer eye on the law than his predecessor had.

‘How did your father get on with you and Sveinn?’ Vigdís asked.

To Vigdís’s surprise, Gudrún didn’t answer at first. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. Vigdís waited.

‘Dad and I had a wonderful relationship,’ Gudrún said. ‘But Sveinn? That was more difficult.’

‘Why was that?’ Vigdís asked softly.

‘He is three years older than me. He was studying chemistry at the university, but he dropped out last year. He had trouble with drugs.’ Worry flashed in her eyes as she glanced at Vigdís. ‘I’m not sure I should be telling you this since you’re a police officer. But then I suppose he’ll be in your files anyway. He was arrested at least twice. That’s what made Dad really angry: that his son was in trouble with the police. He didn’t say it, but I know he blamed it on Mum not being around, that he hadn’t brought up Sveinn well by himself. Which is completely wrong. Sveinn’s a nice guy, a good guy. He just has trouble with drugs. Lots of good kids have trouble with drugs, don’t they?’

‘They do,’ said Vigdís. She moved over to the collection of photographs on a side table. ‘Is this him?’

There was a picture of Halldór, a younger Gudrún and a teenage boy with curly fair hair standing in a marsh. The boy was holding something.

‘Yes, that’s him,’ said Gudrún, picking up the photograph.

The something the boy was holding was a rifle.

‘Was Sveinn a good shot?’ Vigdís asked.

‘Yes,’ said Gudrún. ‘Not quite as good as Dad. They used to shoot together at a local farm.’

Then she looked at Vigdís in alarm. ‘No. Sveinn didn’t shoot Dad. No!’

Vigdís felt bad about worrying Gudrún over her brother. She left the house and walked down to her car, which she’d parked outside the station.

It would be easy enough to check on Sveinn. According to Gudrún, he was in Reykjavík when his father was shot. That would be easy enough to verify.

She called Magnus at police headquarters.

‘Did they confess?’ he asked.

‘Far from it,’ Vigdís said. ‘A guy from the German Embassy is here with Kristján Gylfason. They’ll be out by lunchtime.’

‘Do you think they did it?’

‘Don’t know. The victim fell out with his son, who is supposed to have been in Reykjavík.’

Vigdís gave Magnus Sveinn’s details and asked him to check up on Gudrún as well.

She knew she should go back into the station and report to Ólafur what Gudrún had told her and ask for instructions. She also knew he would be clutching at anything that could convict the two animal-rights activists. Yet someone should be looking for other suspects.

She decided to drive out to the farm where Halldór had shot the polar bear. No one had done that yet.

The farm was ten kilometres from Raufarhöfn, on a knoll with a lush green meadow sloping gently down to a fast-flowing river. The establishment looked prosperous: tidy round hay bales were piled high alongside a large well-maintained barn for the sheep to winter in. The farmer and his wife were home, and they introduced Vigdís to Anna.

She was about eight, with long hair that was so blonde it was almost white, big blue eyes, and pale skin smeared with red blotches like daubs of paint from a coarse-haired brush. She was still badly upset, both at the death of the polar bear and at Halldór being shot. She wouldn’t say a word to Vigdís; her parents said she hadn’t spoken to anyone about what happened that afternoon.

Vigdís tried to coax something out of her, but the little girl was clearly scared. Vigdís was frustrated by the response of some country people to her black skin, but she understood that she must look strange to the poor girl and so she didn’t push it. As Vigdís was leaving, she had a word with the farmer, whose name was Pétur.

‘I’m sorry about scaring your daughter, but we need to know what happened.’

‘We’re worried about her,’ said Pétur. ‘She has changed totally over the last few days. She is usually so confident, not scared of anything — she wouldn’t be bothered by you in normal circumstances. She has always liked polar bears, so Halldór killing that one made her angry.’ Pétur shook his head. ‘I was just glad. I mean, he saved Anna’s life. Apparently she went over and tried to talk to the bear, according to Halldór. The strange thing is, I was ten kilometres away looking for the bear myself, with my own gun, and all the time it was here.’

‘Halldór told you what happened then?’

‘Yes. He drove up to the farm and saw Anna walking out to talk to the bear. He called her into the car, and she came, but then she ran out again. So he shot the bear through the eye. That must take real nerve.’ The farmer sighed. ‘I owe him everything. And now those animal do-gooders have shot him. The bastards! Poor Gudrún.’

‘We don’t know it was them,’ said Vigdís, although it was clear that local gossips had already condemned Alex Einarsson and Martin Fiedler.

‘Must be,’ said the farmer. ‘No one else around here would kill him. He was a good man, Halldór. But Anna still can’t forgive him.’

‘So there was no one to witness what happened?’

‘Anna sent her little brother indoors, thank God. The old guy over the river saw it. Egill. You could talk to him. But it’s a long way to get there; you have to drive up to the bridge and then back.’

Vigdís decided to talk to the neighbour. It was clear that the killing of the polar bear was an important factor in Halldór’s death, and Vigdís wanted to establish what had actually happened.

Although Egill’s farm was only three hundred metres away directly over the fast-flowing river, it was an eight-kilometre drive up to the bridge and down the other side of the valley. It was a rough drive from the bridge to the farm. On one side of the dirt track the river rushed down towards the nearby sea. On the other side, the Melrakkaslétta stretched northwards through marsh and bog: a patchwork of browns, greens, oranges and yellows, with the low sun glinting off silver-grey ponds. A tough, bleak place to scratch a living. The farm was old and falling apart; the roof of the barn needed fixing. It was obvious that Egill didn’t own any of the fishing rights: just a few chickens and some sheep.

As at most farms, the first one to greet Vigdís was the sheepdog. It skipped over to her car on its three legs, showing unexpected agility for a dog that was clearly past its prime. She wondered how he and his master rounded up the sheep. Maybe they were all old with three legs too.

As she parked her car and bent down to stroke the dog, Egill appeared. He was one of those ancient farmers with beady blue eyes and a face like a lava field under a white beard. He was wearing blue overalls and a woolly hat.

He frowned when he saw her. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am from Reykjavík CID,’ Vigdís said, reaching for her card.

The old farmer clearly didn’t believe her; he took the card and squinted at it. He looked up at Vigdís and then back at the card and started to laugh.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘A blue policeman.’

‘Blue’ was how the Icelanders had traditionally described black people. Ordinarily, being laughed at by an ignorant yokel about the colour of her skin would have raised Vigdís’s hackles, but there was something about the warmth of the chuckle and the sparkle that appeared in those beady eyes that made Vigdís forgive the old man.