Michael Ridpath: The Polar Bear Killing

‘Come in, my dear, come in!’

The farmhouse was tiny, but the kitchen had an old peat stove in the middle and was really warm. It was also clean, Vigdís was glad to see. The man may be old, but he could look after himself.

He poured Vigdís a cup of thick, muddy coffee and they sat down at the kitchen table. He took off his cap to reveal wispy grey hair and very large ears.

‘So what do you want, my dear? Have you discovered who stole old Bjartur’s leg?’ He began to laugh at his own joke, an alarming rumble, like an approaching earthquake.

‘I am investigating Constable Halldór’s death.’

The laugh stopped instantly. ‘Halldór is dead?’ The old man sat back to take in the news. ‘I didn’t know. I haven’t left the farm for a few days. What happened?’

‘He was shot. Murdered.’

‘No!’ Egill shook his head. ‘Poor man. How can I help you?’

‘I understand that you witnessed him shooting the polar bear last week?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘What happened?’

The old farmer sipped his coffee. ‘It was my fault.’

Vigdís didn’t understand. ‘What was your fault?’

‘That Anna ran up to the polar bear. That was why Halldór had to shoot him.’

‘How do you mean?’

The old man’s many wrinkles rearranged themselves into a smile of surprising warmth and simplicity. ‘Anna and I are good friends,’ he said. ‘It’s important to make friends who are younger than you, you know?’

He stared at Vigdís, demanding her agreement.

‘I am sure it is,’ she said.

‘Anna likes to play on her side of the river and I come down to mine and we talk. I tell her stories. She likes my stories.’

‘I see,’ said Vigdís, stifling her impatience. Shut up and listen, she told herself. If you listen, sometimes you learn something.

‘There was one story she particularly liked. You know I am a newcomer here? I arrived forty-eight years ago. From Grímsey, the island in the north. You know it?’

‘I know it,’ said Vigdís. It was a few kilometres north of Akureyri, bang on the Arctic Circle.

‘There is a famous story from there that I used to tell Anna. Shall I tell you?’

‘Please do,’ said Vigdís, putting down her notebook.

‘One day all the fires went out on the island. It was in the days before matches, and so three islanders had to try to get to the mainland to bring back embers to rekindle them. The sea was iced up, so they had to walk across the ice. One of the men got lost and drifted out to sea on an ice floe.’

The farmer’s face became animated as he spoke. His voice was deep but clear. He was a good storyteller; Vigdís could understand why the little girl liked to listen to him.

‘The next morning, the man was cold and hungry and thirsty, but he was still a long way from land. His ice floe drifted towards another chunk of ice, on which there was a mother polar bear trapped with her cubs. The man was scared, but there was nothing he could do to steer his ice away from the bears. Soon they collided. But the mother polar bear didn’t eat the man: she allowed him to suckle her milk with her cubs and kept him warm. When the man had regained his strength, she swam over to the mainland, with him on her back. He gathered some embers and then returned on her back to Grímsey, and all the fires on the island could be rekindled. The man was so grateful, he gave the bear cow’s milk and two slaughtered sheep, and the bear swam off back to her cubs.’

‘That’s a good story,’ Vigdís admitted.

‘It was Anna’s favourite. Which was why, when Anna saw the polar bear, she wasn’t afraid of it. That’s why it is my fault that she went out to talk to it.’

‘I see,’ said Vigdís. The old guy was probably right. It was best to tell children to be scared of polar bears in this part of the world. ‘Did you see the bear?’

‘Not until I heard the sound of the police car arriving. It was a foggy day, but at that moment the cloud lifted and I saw the bear and Anna and the policeman. I still have good eyesight at distance. I need these for reading.’ He waved an old pair of spectacles that had been lying on the kitchen table, one arm wrapped with tape. ‘I could tell the bear was a youngster and in bad condition. Constable Halldór shouted something and Anna climbed into his car. The policeman took out his rifle from the boot. Then Anna jumped out of the car and started off towards the polar bear. I couldn’t believe it. Why would she do that? Well, I knew why. It was my story.’

At this point Egill paused and stared at Vigdís. His beady little eyes shone with anger. ‘Halldór did nothing to stop her. He had plenty of time to shout to her, or to drag her back, but he didn’t. He just aimed his rifle and shot the bear.’

‘You think he should have got the child back into the car?’

‘Of course!’ Egill seemed suddenly agitated. ‘Halldór need not have shot the bear at all. He could have coaxed the child back into his car and taken her off to the farmhouse. Then he could have called for help and they could have captured the bear and taken it back to Greenland. It was small and weak — it would have been possible to do.’

‘Surely Halldór had to shoot the bear?’ Vigdís said.

‘No, he didn’t. In fact, I think he put Anna’s life at risk so that he could get a good shot. But what if he had missed? Anna would be dead now.’

Vigdís saw the farmer’s point.

‘Did you tell Anna’s parents this?’

‘Yes, I did. But they think I am just an old fool. They wanted to believe Constable Halldór was a hero for saving their daughter. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all. Was he? What do you think?’

Vigdís’s instinct was to prevaricate. But if the old man was right about what he had seen — and he seemed very lucid on the subject — then he had a point. And despite herself, Vigdís did feel sorry for the starving polar bear.

‘Perhaps he wasn’t such a hero after all.’

Egill smiled a small smile of triumph.

‘The next day I went into town and talked to some people in the café at the petrol station. Everyone seemed to think Halldór was a hero. I started trying to explain what I had seen, but no one was listening to me. Except maybe the waitress, Lilja. No one listens to me much anymore apart from her.’ He smiled. ‘And Anna.’

Vigdís returned to town to find Ólafur in a very bad mood. Neither Alex nor Martin Fiedler had confessed. In Martin’s case that wasn’t very surprising with his hotshot lawyer sitting next to him. The German Embassy official and the lawyer had protested vigorously, and Ólafur’s telephone conversation with María, the Húsavík prosecutor, had not gone well. She was young and inexperienced, and unwilling to stand up to Kristján. But Ólafur had to admit that the real problem was that Vigdís was right: they had no real evidence. That just pissed him off more.

He knew one or either or both of the tourists were guilty — there was nobody else and neither of them seemed to care about a policeman’s life as much as a polar bear’s. Inspector Ólafur was determined not to let them get away with it, especially the smart-arsed German. It would just require a bit of patience. The trouble was, Ólafur was not a patient man.

Alex Einarsson had driven their hire car out of town on the long journey back to Reykjavík. He lived with his parents and assured the police that he would be contactable there. Martin Fiedler remained stranded in Raufarhöfn, and Ólafur had taken custody of his passport. Detective Björn had been despatched to Húsavík to get the warrant to search the two men’s computers.

Vigdís told Ólafur what she had discovered about Halldór’s family and the shooting of the polar bear, but Ólafur didn’t listen closely. If it didn’t help him build a case against the German, it didn’t interest him.