Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

“Thanks, that’s enough,” Thorolfur interrupted. “Where did he go after he left you?”

“He said he was going to find some way of getting to Stykkisholmur but that he was going to see the doctor first.”

“Was Bryngeir ill in some way?”

“No, it wasn’t a medical visit. I told him the old man’s body was in the house. He told me was going to offer his condolences to Johanna. I asked him to show some respect when he got there.”

“Did you expect him not to?”

“Naturally, he was a bit tipsy, but easy enough to handle, although in between he could be quite mischievous.”

“Did he ever mention the Dane?”

“No, not to me.”

“Do you know how he was going to get to Stykkisholmur?”

“Well, he was going to talk to the islanders who have boats or the small boat fishermen, but I doubt anyone would have been foolish enough to take him that night. The weather was getting worse.”

“Did he talk about where he would stay on Flatey if he didn’t get to Stykkisholmur?”

“No. I couldn’t put him up at my place because I don’t have an extra bed in the house, but I told him he could sleep in my barn if he wanted to. I just asked him to be careful with fire.”

“Do you think he stayed in the barn?”

“His things were still there when I walked into the barn yesterday morning.”

“What time did he leave your place?”

Thormodur Krakur thought a moment. “Let me see…I took the milk over to Reverend Hannes at around eight and went home for dinner. Then I went back up to the shed at around ten to give water to the cows and prepare for the night. He was gone by then.”

“Didn’t you see him again?”

“No, not alive.”

Question twenty-eight: Augurs a lucky journey. First letter. King Magnus and Earl Erling’s fleet anchored near Brottueyri, outside Skipacrook, and the men landed there. As the earl leaped on shore, he fell on his knees. Thrusting both hands into the ground, he said, “A fall augurs a lucky journey.” The answer is “fall,” and the first letter is f.

Dagbjartur arrived early at the National Hospital in Reykjavik and asked for Dr. Thorgerdur Fridriksdottir. After a number of enquiries, it transpired that she was in the operating room.

“I’ll wait,” said Dagbjartur, smiling patiently.

He had been waiting for three hours when a young woman approached him.

“I was told you were looking for me,” she said.

She was wearing a white coat with large splatters of blood on the front.

“I was just removing some tonsils. There can be a lot of bleeding sometimes,” she added when she noticed he was staring at the stains.

Dagbjartur smiled awkwardly. “Sorry to disturb you. This won’t take long.”

“OK. What’s it about?”

“I believe you know Johanna Thorvaldsdottir?”

“Yes, we’re friends.”

“Have you seen her recently?”

“No. Not this year. She’s been busy taking care of her father. I hear he’s finally passed away now.”

“How did you meet?”

“Why are you asking me about Johanna?”

“There was a terrible incident on Flatey and we’re trying to form a picture of the people who live there. It’s a relatively small number of people, so we can get a pretty good idea of each individual.”

“I see. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Johanna, so I hope none of this will harm her. We met in Copenhagen at the end of the war when we were teenagers and became good friends when she became engaged to my brother.”

“What kind of a teenager was she?”

“She was a strange kid because she had been brought up by her father on the move across northern Europe. It took our family many months to break through the shell. Once we had, though, I realized she was an extremely gifted, tender, and fun girl. At first she sounded too much like an adult when she spoke, and her Icelandic was quite funny. Sometimes it was as if she were talking straight from the Icelandic sagas. She wasn’t used to speaking this language with kids her own age. We actually spoke Danish together to begin with because that’s what I was used to when I spoke to my friends in Copenhagen. We sometimes still do that for fun.”

“Have you stayed in contact with her since then?”

“On and off. After my brother died, she vanished from our family life. She got into a doomed relationship with some guy for a couple of years. She was a year ahead of me in med school, and we caught up a bit once the relationship ended. She was very unhappy during those years but did very well in her studies. I think she saw a shrink for a while.”

A nurse came running down the corridor. “Thorgerdur, come straight back,” she called. “The boy is starting to bleed again!”

Question twenty-nine: What cracked with such a loud noise? First letter. Then the earl said to Finn Eyvindarson, “Shoot that man by the mast.”

Finn answered, “The man cannot be shot if he is not fey. I can break his bow, though.” Finn then shot his arrow, which struck the middle of Einar’s bow just as he was drawing it for a third time, and the bow split in two.

Then King Olaf said, “What cracked with such a loud noise?”

Einar answered, “Norway out of your hands, sire.”

The first letter is n.

Back at the vicarage, Frida was filled with indignation at being summoned for an interrogation by the Reykjavik inspectors like this without notice. Hogni had been sent over to the priest and his wife with the request, but the lady had taken it badly. She stood fuming in the hall, clutching her hat between her hands, as Reverend Hannes tried to appease her.

“Frida dear. This is a perfectly natural request for the authorities to make,” he said pleadingly.

“Request! We’re clergy, for God’s sake!”

“Yes, yes, it’s only a formality. They want to talk to everyone on the island.”

“Couldn’t these officers just show us a little bit of respect and come here in person so that we wouldn’t have to walk over there with everyone gawking at us as if we were common criminals?”

“These are busy people, dear,” Reverend Hannes tried to explain. “They’re investigating a most hideous crime, you know.”

Frida’s eyes were beginning to well with tears. “Yes, precisely. So how should we know anything about it?”

“Now, now, Frida dear,” said the priest, slipping his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “Tell the men we’ll be there at eleven,” he said to Hogni.

“Eleven thirty, not a second earlier,” said Frida with a sobbing gasp.

Hogni took this message down to the school, and Grimur changed the order of the interviews to accommodate the priest’s wife’s request. The questioning was running smoothly, and there were no visible signs of the policemen tiring. Most of the people questioned were in with them for ten to fifteen minutes. The islanders accounted for their movements between Sunday night and Monday morning and also provided the names of those who could confirm their testimonies. It all proceeded rapidly and efficiently, and there seemed to be no contradictions in the accounts. The overall picture of how Bryngeir had spent the last two days of his life on the island was beginning to sharpen. It was only on that hour while the mass was going on in the middle of the day that no one could comment on his whereabouts. Everyone had been in the church, except for Dr. Johanna and two visiting fishermen who were lying hungover and asleep in an old house they had rented with others.

Jon Ferdinand only spent two minutes with the inspectors. Thorolfur simply wrote “senile” across the page and sent him away. Little Nonni was the next to enter and corroborated everything Valdi had said about their movements. They had spent the whole evening at home boiling sea stew.