Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

Grimur’s predictions about the doctor’s arrival proved to be correct. They did not have to wait long before a woman dressed in dark clothes appeared beyond the graveyard. She took the shortest route between the graves toward them.

“I knew we could count on her,” Grimur said with a twinkle of admiration in his eyes. “Johanna Thorvald never keeps you waiting in this district if she can help it.”

Johanna was around thirty, with a pale complexion and long dark hair tied at the back in a ponytail. She wore glasses, jeans, and a black coat, and she held a small briefcase in one hand and a paper bag in the other.

“Thank you for coming over, Johanna,” said Grimur.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, barely glancing at them.

The three men looked at each other. Finally Grimur answered: “You could maybe take a brief look at the man in the casket. See if he has anything in his pockets or whether he has any distinctive features. Anything that might give us some indication of who he is.”

“I can do that if one of you is willing to write the notes.”

Grimur looked at Kjartan. “Isn’t that your job?”

“Yes, probably,” Kjartan replied.

Johanna took a thin plastic coat out of the paper bag and put it on. It included a hat, which she placed and tightened around her head. Finally, she placed a white surgical mask over her face and slipped her hands into some rubber gloves.

“Ready?” she asked Kjartan.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s start.”

They walked into the church. Kjartan stopped five steps away from the casket and took out his notebook and pen. Johanna placed her open briefcase on one of the pews and loosened the latches on the casket.

Some flies appeared as soon as she lifted the lid, but they didn’t seem to have much life left in them and soon tumbled to the floor. The mixture Grimur had sprayed inside the casket had clearly done its job.

For a long moment Johanna stood motionless by the casket, staring at its contents in silence.

“A male judging by the clothes,” she finally said.

“Yes, we know that much,” Kjartan answered.

She glanced at him. “It doesn’t matter what you know. You just write down everything I say. This will be my report to the Directorate of Health.”

Kjartan seemed taken aback. He hadn’t realized the investigation had actually started.

Her eyes continued to linger on Kjartan a moment.

“I remember you from high school,” she said finally.

He gave a start and suddenly looked up, but he was unable to distinguish any expression behind her mask. He could not place her face. She must have been in a lower year, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment and then gazed down into the casket.

“ Corpus decompositium,” she said.

“I’m sorry?” Kjartan didn’t understand Latin.

“The body is decomposed,” she said.

That’s pretty obvious, Kjartan thought to himself, but he said nothing and just jotted it down on the page.

Johanna firmly gripped the parka and trousers and turned the body over in one swift move. A few additional flies woke up with the shift and flew out of the casket.

“No remains of skin or flesh on the face, nor in the eyes,” said Johanna, taking some implement out of her bag, which she used to loosen the skull’s clenched jaw.

“No cavities in the teeth, but worn. Some gold fillings. A man well into his middle age and wealthy enough to be able to afford a good dentist.”

She examined the skull under the hood.

“Remnants of gray hair.”

She walked to the other end of the casket and scrutinized the shoes. “Sturdy leather hiking shoes. Lace missing on right shoe.”

Next she examined the hands. “No rings on his fingers.”

She loosened the parka around his throat and unzipped it.

“Quality parka with a rust-free zipper. Seems to be a foreign label; color: dark green.” She peered into one pocket and then fetched some tongs and a small envelope in her briefcase. “In the outer pocket there are several small shells, mussels, small starfish, remains of…sandworm, I think.” She placed it all in the envelope as soon as she extracted it from the pocket.

“The deceased may have eaten some of this to stave off hunger. Need to examine this in the autopsy. Test for shellfish poisoning, if possible.”

She examined the inside of the parka. “No internal pockets on the parka. Wearing a brown woolen cardigan under it. No visible labels on the cardigan. Side pockets. A leather wallet in the right pocket.” She removed the wallet with her tongs, placed it in a small envelope, and took it over to Kjartan. “Here, take a look.”

He opened the wallet and counted several banknotes and coins. He counted: “Seven thousand two hundred and fifty-two crowns and fifteen cents.” There was nothing else in the wallet, and he left the money in it.

“That’s a lot of money to be carrying around,” he said.

Johanna looked into the other pocket of the cardigan. She took out a small folded piece of paper with her tongs and handed it to Kjartan. He unfolded the note and examined some words that had been written with a pencil, and then he read them out loud: “This book belongs to me, Jon Finnsson, and was a gift from my departed father’s father, Jon Bjornsson, as can be verified, and was personally given to me by my departed father and is cherished in their memory.” The handwriting was clear and legible.

Kjartan pondered the note. Below it another hand had written “folio 1005.” On the back of it thirty-nine letters were written out in three rows of meaningless text.

O S L E O Y I A R N R Y L

E M H O N E A E N W T L B

A U R M L E Q W T R O N E

The note had been ripped out of a perforated copybook, a small sheet with blue lines and narrow spacing. He placed the note in the envelope with the wallet, which he in turn slipped into his pocket.

“So we’ve got a name to go on, Jon Finnsson,” Kjartan said. “This is some kind of a book inscription, but a rather old-fashioned use of words.”

“Some of the islanders are a bit old-fashioned,” said Johanna.

She finished searching through the pockets but could find nothing else.

“Under the cardigan a light brown cotton shirt and green foulard. Quality clothes, it seems.”

“Could he be a local from these islands?” Kjartan asked.

“Very unlikely,” she answered. “He would have been missed. No one’s isolated enough here to be able to disappear without questions being asked after two or three days. Then there’s the clothing that doesn’t quite fit the islanders’ style.”

“A foreigner maybe?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea about that,” she said. “But this’ll have to do for now. We’ll send him to Reykjavik like this. They’ll be able to investigate it better down there.”

She placed the lid on the casket and locked it firmly. Then they walked outside.

“Is Jon Finnsson a name that rings any bells?” Kjartan asked the three men waiting outside.

“In what context?” Grimur asked.

Kjartan took out the note and read them the text.

Grimur and Hogni stared blankly at each other, but Thormodur Krakur tilted on his toes and puffed up his chest. “I know who this Jon Finnsson is.”

“Who is he?” Kjartan asked.

“That’s Jon Finnsson, the farmer in Flatey, the one who delivered the Flatey Book to the bishop of Skalholt, Brynjolfur Sveinsson. It was the bishop who sent the book to the king, wasn’t it?”

The deacon looked around with a triumphant air.

“But that was in the autumn of 1647,” Grimur added.

Thormodur Krakur continued: “Those words are written at the beginning of the Flatey Book and were copied in that note. It’s actually quite peculiar that the only person who inscribed this book was the person who allowed it to leave the family.”