Or at least he had thought everyone was content. Now he wasn’t so sure.
That morning, Magnus had sent Ingileif a text:
Hi. I hope you are all OK. Any chance I could see Ási some time?
He hadn’t received an answer yet.
His phone rang. He checked it: Detective Superintendent Thelma, head of Reykjavík CID, and Magnus’s boss.
‘Hi,’ he said, putting down his fork. The linguine was good: he hoped he would get to finish it.
‘I want you on the first plane to Akureyri tomorrow morning,’ Thelma said.
‘What is it?’
‘A murder in Dalvík. Female, forty-seven. Doctor at the hospital in Akureyri. Stabbed while out riding this morning.’
‘Isn’t Ólafur the senior investigating officer?’ Ólafur was the inspector in charge of the small CID in Akureyri. Murders were rare in Iceland, and it wasn’t surprising that reinforcements would be sent up from Reykjavík, but Magnus and Ólafur were the same rank, and Magnus knew Ólafur would object to Magnus showing up.
‘Apparently, there is a cryptocurrency angle. Financial Crimes are not interested, so I decided that you are our cryptocurrency expert and I’m sending you. I don’t care what Ólafur thinks, I’d like you to keep an eye on things.’ Thelma didn’t trust Ólafur any more than Magnus did.
‘But I know virtually nothing about cryptocurrencies,’ said Magnus.
‘You know more than any of the rest of us.’
Magnus had eventually arrested the gang behind the bitcoin mining thefts, and it was true that during the investigation he had learned a bit about the cryptocurrency, though he would hardly call himself an expert.
But he definitely wanted to be involved in the Dalvík investigation, so he wasn’t going to argue.
‘All right. I’ll be there.’
He hung up and turned back to his linguine.
‘Was that your boss?’ Tryggvi Thór asked.
‘Superintendent Thelma, yes. Your old buddy.’
‘Huh.’ Tryggvi Thór glared at him under his thick eyebrows. Tryggvi Thór and Thelma pretended not to know each other, although Magnus had once spotted them together. Every now and then Magnus wound him up about it, although he had no idea what their relationship, if any, was. Tryggvi Thór certainly wasn’t going to tell him.
‘I’m going to the north tomorrow. Dalvík. There’s been a murder.’
‘Dalvík? Huh. Stinks of fish.’
Ten
Grandpa was waiting for Dísa in the white terminal building in Akureyri. The instant she saw him she ran to him and threw her arms around him.
She pulled tight; she wouldn’t let him go.
‘Oh Dísa, Dísa,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘I know, Grandpa, I know.’
Eventually, Dísa released him. He took her suitcase and led her out to his car.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Your mother was riding out on Takki on her usual route along the mountainside. She was alone.’ Grandpa sighed. ‘It looks like someone attacked her. Stabbed her with a knife.’ He stared at the road ahead, a tremor running along his jawline. Dísa waited for him to continue. ‘Takki came back to the farm in a right state, without her, so Anna Rós rode out to look for her with Gunni.’ Gunni was a neighbour who kept a horse at Blábrekka. ‘They found her just lying there.’
‘Oh, my God! Poor Anna! Do they know who did it?’
‘Not yet. The place is crawling with police. The inspector in charge is confident they will find the murderer.’
‘Do they think it’s someone local?’
‘They don’t know. They’ve been asking about Thomocoin.’
‘Thomocoin?’
‘I’d like to talk to you about your mum’s Thomocoin later.’
‘Sure,’ said Dísa.
Her phone rang. ‘Hi, Dad.’
‘I heard what happened to Mum,’ said her father’s voice. ‘Jói told me. I can’t believe it.’
‘I know.’
‘Jói said you were going straight up to Dalvík?’
‘I’m in Akureyri now. Grandpa’s just picked me up from the airport.’
‘That’s good. Tell him I’m very sorry for him. And you. And everyone.’
Dísa glanced at her grandfather. ‘Dad says he’s sorry about Mum.’
‘Tell him thanks.’ Grandpa had no time for Dad after the way he had treated Helga, but Dísa knew he would put that behind him, at least for a few days.
‘And how are you?’ said Dad.
‘I don’t know. My brain has just been whirling since I heard. Jói was great. But I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.’
‘It’s good you’re there,’ Dad said. ‘Give Anna Rós a hug from me. And look after her. And yourself.’
‘I will.’
‘I’d better stay away. But let me know when the funeral is; I’ll come to that.’
‘OK, Dad. I love you.’
She didn’t often say that to her father, but God she meant it.
‘I love you too, Dísa.’
It felt good to be back in the kitchen at Blábrekka with her family.
They had had their supper, but they gathered around Dísa as she ate her grandmother’s lamb soup: Grandpa, Grandma, Dísa and Uncle Eggert, Helga’s brother, who worked in the town hall in Akureyri.
Grief had struck them hard. Dísa, her grandparents and her uncle were stunned by it. Anna Rós was shattered. Sadness was alien to her, so it was disturbing for the others to see her face racked with such grief.
Grandma fussed with the soup, with the dishes, with Dísa’s suitcase. Many more times than necessary, she asked the question on everyone’s mind: Who could possibly have done this?
Grandpa said little, but patted Anna Rós’s hand, and then Dísa’s, and then reached for his wife’s but she withdrew it, eager to keep moving.
Uncle Eggert was full of ideas about what the police might or might not do. Unsurprisingly, they had spent the day at the farm and were due to return tomorrow morning. He had watched way too many British crime dramas on TV.
Dísa liked her uncle. While most adults naturally gravitated towards her prettier, bubblier younger sister, Uncle Eggert had always seemed to be more interested in what she was up to. He had played volleyball himself when he was younger, and occasionally he would come and watch her matches, which was more than her mother ever did.
He was a couple of years younger than Helga. He had never liked the farm work he had had to do as a boy, and had escaped to Reykjavík, with a spell in California, before returning to Akureyri. There he had married, started a career in local government, bought a house and produced three children — Dísa’s cousins — the oldest of which was eight. There was long-standing tension between him and Grandpa about the farm and Eggert’s lack of interest in it. Dísa’s theory was that neither one of them was a natural farmer, but at least Eggert realized it. In recent years the tension had thawed, and Eggert had even helped Grandpa with his computer, without which it was hard to run a farm in the twenty-first century.
They had been staring at each other all day, so Dísa’s arrival was an opportunity for a change of subject. They asked her about university and the COVID virus in Reykjavík, how people were responding, how the case figures were beginning to rise again after falling to almost zero, and how she had to wear a mask to lectures — so far, in the pandemic, Icelanders had rarely worn masks. After an early surge in cases in the spring, Iceland had got the virus under control, to the extent that in the summer life had gone on almost as normal, apart from the lack of tourists. Then, in July, the government had let the tourists back in, and with them had come the virus, so that by now in September cases were ticking up.