Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

Kjartan pondered this wisdom. It reflected a belief in predestination that might have been be useful to resort to when your life was turned upside down, but he still preferred to live by other laws. He pulled out his pocket notebook and scrutinized the picture he had drawn in Ketilsey. “Lund had probably managed to complete the solution on Ketilsey, and since he had nothing else to write with, he used the pebbles to form the missing word from the poem. Lucky wasn’t the name of a boat.

“I feel slightly ashamed because I almost caused an uproar today by connecting Sigurbjorn in Svalbardi’s boat to Gaston Lund’s death. And then I was going to claim that Gudrun in Innstibaer was the mother of Lund’s child and that their son had been involved in this case. It was a good job District Officer Grimur brought me to my senses and made me hold my tongue.”

“Yes, a good job he did. Gudrun’s son is not Gaston Lund’s son. The child that Gaston Lund did his best to disown is another man altogether,” said Johanna.

Grimur, Kjartan, and little Nonni walked across the village together, and Grimur woke up his wife. She got up to prepare some food and also fetched a snack from an old cake box. The boy then stayed in the district officer’s house with Ingibjorg, while Grimur and Kjartan continued on down to the moored boats.

Both men were silent, lost in separate thoughts. They boarded the boat, and Grimur started the engine. The sound of the motor seemed abnormally loud as it broke the stillness of the morning. Even the birds in Hafnarey were silent just before dawn.

Grimur headed to the west of the island, passing the new pier and the coast guard ship and skerries.

Finally Grimur spoke: “How did it occur to you to ask the boy if he had any binoculars?”

Kjartan hesitated a moment before answering. “It was a hunch. On Thursday when we went to collect the body in Ketilsey, we spotted the boy on the shore below the croft. I saw he was holding something up to his eyes that glistened. It occurred to me that they might be binoculars. Then I remembered that Lund had been carrying some binoculars and a camera in his luggage that were never found. I knew there could be a connection there somewhere. That’s why I asked the boy.”

Grimur nodded. “I think it’s becoming quite clear then. Professor Lund delayed for too long at the doctor’s house and lost track of time. He thought he had enough time to go to the library, but when he finally got down to the pier the mail boat had already left. He could probably still see it sailing south. He now badly needed to get to Stykkisholmur and from there south to Reykjavik because he had a flight to catch to Copenhagen. Old Jon Ferdinand and the kid were on the pier with the boat, and Lund managed to communicate to them that he needed to get to Stykkisholmur. He must have insisted and been pushy enough to make the old man sail off with him. But I think it had been many years since Jon Ferdinand had sailed all the way to Stykkisholmur. He must have forgotten himself on the way and headed for Ketilsey, since that was the route he was most used to sailing. Lund saw nothing strange about this, because Ketilsey is to the southeast, which could have been the sailing route to Stykkisholmur, as far as a stranger was concerned. The boat then ran out of fuel close to Ketilsey and they rowed to the landing slip. Lund must have gone on land to look for inhabitants and get some help, while Jon Ferdinand waited on the boat. After a while, Jon Ferdinand completely forgot that he had a passenger. All he can think of is that he’s out of fuel in Ketilsey and has to get home. Then a southerly breeze picks up and there’s no time to waste, so he hoists the sail and heads home for Flatey. Lund is left stranded on the island, and we know how the story ends.”

Kjartan said nothing but nodded. This was also how he had imagined the course of events.

The rocks of Ketilsey glistened in the morning sun as they approached. Then they saw a black boat drifting about a kilometer west of the island. As they drew closer to it, they saw Jon Ferdinand standing by the engine bay, staring vacantly at the sea and shivering in the cold. A dark stain ran from the crotch of his trousers down his thigh.

“He’s soiled himself,” Grimur uttered in a low voice. The old man sat down on the thwart as they arrived and seemed to be totally oblivious to their presence. Grimur stretched out to grab the hawser on the other boat and tied it to the back of his own. Then he continued to sail on to Ketilsey at full speed. They spotted Valdi long before they reached the island. He was standing on its highest point, waving his sweater. Then he came running down to the slip. He was crying with rage.

“What the fuck were you doing, Dad, leaving me like that?” he yelled as soon as they were within earshot.

“Take it easy, Valdi. Your father is incapable of answering that question,” said Grimur as he let his boat drift toward the slip. “Just hop on board and tell us what happened.”

Valdi clambered on board, and Grimur carefully backed the boat away from the shore. As soon as they had reached a short distance from the island, he turned on the motor again and dragged the Ystakot boat up by their side. Grimur held a hand out to Jon Ferdinand and helped him to step between boats. He sat the old man on the thwart and draped his jacket over his shoulders. Grimur then headed toward home at full speed, towing the Raven behind them. Jon Ferdinand sat transfixed on the thwart, staring blankly at the backwash. Every now and then he called out in his raucous old voice: “Where are the nets, lads?”

Valdi struggled to recover and said in a tremulous voice, “The stupid old fool just abandoned me on the island.”

Grimur silently nodded, as Valdi continued in his quivering tone: “We were checking out the eider duck’s nests and collecting down, and then I suddenly noticed that he was back on the boat. I thought he was just putting down some eggs or a bag of down so I wasn’t really watching him, but then I heard him turn on the motor. I ran down then, but he’d already untied the moorings and gone off by the time I got to the slip. He didn’t even look back. No matter how loudly I cried out, he just stared into empty space, as if he were the only person in the world. Then I heard the motor die, and since then the boat’s been drifting back and forth here for almost twenty-four hours. No matter how much I yelled, he didn’t seem to hear me.”

Grimur took out the picnic box and gave the father and son something to eat, and little else was said on their journey back to Flatey.

As they approached the island toward noon, they saw a flag flying at half-mast in front of the church and people on their way to the cemetery.

“They’re burying the late Bjorn Snorri,” said Grimur. “It was supposed to be a quiet affair before the coast guard ship sailed south with the inspectors and the prisoners, but that’s all changed now, thank God.”

The district officer steered his boat past the coast guard ship and over to the end of the pier. Little Nonni was standing on it all alone, and every now and then he ran back and forth a few steps. They tied the boat to the pier and climbed the steps.

“Take your father home, Valdi,” said Grimur, “and try to all have a bit of a rest.”

Grimur and Kjartan watched the three generations of men walking up the slope without glancing back, and then Grimur turned his gaze to the coast guard ship.

“I need to talk to the inspectors,” he said wearily.

“Gaston Lund’s visit to Iceland last fall was not his first visit to this country. He came here in the summer of 1926 with a few of his buddies from the University of Copenhagen. They were young and lively men and got up to all kinds of things during their two-week stay in Iceland. They followed the Njal saga’s trail in the south, and the upshot of it all was a pretty young country girl from Rangarthing ended up pregnant, and Gaston, who was still just a student at the time, was the father. A boy was born, and the mother moved with him to Hafnarfjordur. The child was registered as ‘Gestsson,’ or guest’s son, which wasn’t an unusual name in those days for children whose fathers hadn’t stuck around with their mothers for long. But there was more behind this name, because the professor’s Christian name, Gaston, was also the German word for guest: ‘gast.’ This young boy grew up with his mother, without any reproaches to his father. His mother told him his father was a cultured man from a respectable family and highly regarded by the Danish king. The boy was proud of him and became a big fan of all things Danish and anything connected to the king. Then, in the summer of 1936, Professor Lund came to Iceland again, as part of the delegation that accompanied King Christian X, and his name appeared in the Icelandic press. The mother took the boy to go and meet Gaston Lund where he was staying at Hotel Borg with the intention of introducing them to each other. That was the sole purpose of her visit and nothing more. But Lund took it very badly, claimed the woman was mentally unstable, and categorically denied any knowledge of the boy. He had the mother and son forcibly and shamefully thrown out of the hotel. It was a terrible shock for a young and impressionable soul, and it marked the boy for life. He had always been brought up with the myth of a father who mixed with kings and queens abroad and held far too important a post to be able to spend time with him and his mother. The boy’s self-esteem had been shattered in an instant, and the mother changed from being a proud, independent, driven woman to a grumpy bundle of nerves who had been deprived of the only recognition she needed in life. Ten years later she died of TB. Her son’s name was Bryngeir Gestsson. We lived together as a couple for a while, and I know he also had a vast impact on your life, too. But Lund didn’t dare to come back to Iceland until last summer, and he tried to avoid any further encounters with the mother of his child and the boy by concealing his identity.”