But now Eygló was framing an ultimatum. Did Magnus care whether she went to England? Either he did or he didn’t. And if he did care, what did that mean?
The plane came to a halt and the passengers scrambled to their feet, eager to be released.
At some point very soon Magnus would have to answer that question.
But not now. Now he had a murder to solve.
Árni’s police car roared into Dalvík, lights flashing. Magnus tried not to shut his eyes as kerbs flew by and pedestrians stared. When he had picked Magnus up from the airport, Árni had said it was important to get to Ólafur’s morning briefing in time, but Magnus knew Árni just liked to drive police cars fast. The journey along the flat straight road running along the side of the fjord from Akureyri to Dalvík had been exhilarating.
It had been good to see Árni’s goofy grin again. He wasn’t the world’s greatest detective, but he and Magnus had worked together in Reykjavík for three years, and Árni had once taken a bullet for Magnus, literally, ending up in hospital. He had married, got promoted to sergeant and moved up to Akureyri, his wife’s town. Magnus didn’t see much of him now, although they had worked successfully together three years before on a murder at Glaumbaer a little further west along the north coast, the case on which Magnus had met Eygló.
Árni screeched to a halt outside the police station, a low scruffy white building — little more than a shed — with a green metal roof just back from the harbour. Between car and station, Magnus caught a whiff of fish, just as Tryggvi Thór had predicted. They were late, but only by a couple of minutes.
Inspector Ólafur was taking the briefing. He had been in charge of CID in Akureyri since Magnus had first arrived in Iceland. Now in his late forties, tall and lean, he was one of the old-school Icelandic policemen and had been suspicious of Magnus and his foreign methods when they had worked together in the past.
Magnus doubted he had changed.
Ólafur interrupted himself when he saw Magnus and Árni enter the crowded room. ‘Magnús? I’m surprised to see you here. I was expecting someone from Financial Crimes.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got me,’ said Magnus.
‘We asked for someone to look into the critto-currency angle.’
‘I can do that.’
Ólafur allowed his furrowed brow to rise a couple of millimetres. ‘Good. I was just running through what we’ve got so far.’
Magnus recognized two of the detectives whom he had worked with on the Glaumbaer case three years before. There were also a number of uniformed officers, presumably from Akureyri as well as the locals from Dalvík and nearby Siglufjördur, and Edda, head of the forensics team in Reykjavík. She would have been called up right away.
Ólafur described how Helga had been found by the victim’s daughter, Anna Rós, and Gunnar Snaer Sigmundsson, a neighbour who stabled a horse at Blábrekka. It appeared that the victim had been stabbed once in the stomach with a large hunting or fishing knife. No sign of clothing removal or sexual assault. Nothing stolen. The only relevant forensic evidence so far was a partial footprint a few feet away from the body. They might learn more that afternoon after the autopsy had been done.
No obvious suspects as yet.
Helga seemed to get on well with her parents at Blábrekka. She had a daughter at home and another at university in Reykjavík. There was an ex-husband in Reykjavík and a stepson. No current relationship, at least none that had emerged yet — an angle which had to be looked into further. Ólafur assigned a detective to interview her colleagues at the hospital.
Only one sighting of anyone on the mountain so far. Gunnar — the neighbour who had found the body — said he had seen someone walking alone down from the mountain towards the road when he had taken his dog for a walk before driving to Blábrekka. He had never got close, and so Gunnar couldn’t give much of a description, apart from the fact that the walker was wearing glasses and a blue woolly hat, and carrying a small backpack.
They needed to find that man. Door-to-door interviews at the scattered houses and farms between Blábrekka and Dalvík. Ólafur would talk to the press. The police would put an appeal up on the local Dalvík Facebook group, which was already buzzing with gossip.
Helga didn’t have enemies, as far as they knew so far. She had, however, sold a ‘critto-currency’, as Ólafur called it, to a number of locals. Thomocoin. It had done very well and a lot of people had made good money out of it, but the police needed to find out more. Which is why Ólafur had asked for help from Financial Crimes.
That with a pointed look at Árni and Magnus.
‘They didn’t want to know,’ said Magnus. ‘That’s why Superintendent Thelma sent me.’
‘Why didn’t they want to know?’ Ólafur asked.
‘That’s a very good question,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ll find out. And I’ll find out more about this Thomocoin. Can Árni help me? I could use some local knowledge.’
Ólafur nodded and doled out tasks for the day.
As the team broke up, Ólafur approached Magnus. ‘Good to have you on board,’ he said with a stiff smile. ‘We can always use help here.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Magnus.
Ólafur nodded. ‘Just remember that I am the senior investigating officer. Don’t do anything without clearing it with me first. Understood?’
‘Of course,’ said Magnus. ‘Árni and I will talk to Helga’s family to get a better idea about her involvement in this Thomocoin. And I’ll see what I can get out of Financial Crimes.’
‘Go do it.’
Twelve
Dalvík was a prosperous little town of well-maintained white houses, schools, playgrounds and kids on bicycles. Its harbour hosted an impressive array of sheds, concrete wharves, trucks and shipping containers. There were few actual fishing boats in port: most of the smaller boats had sold their quotas to the big trawlers long ago.
A large white church with blue trim overlooked the village, and above the church rose a steep boulder of a mountain, the summit of which was bizarrely emblazoned with the number seventeen in last year’s snow.
Blábrekka stood a few kilometres outside Dalvík on the slopes of a broad, green, rather beautiful valley. Magnus was reminded of the famous phrase in Njal’s Saga, one of his favourites, where the great warrior Gunnar decides not to follow Njal’s advice to run away from his farm, despite the danger from his enemies: How fair the slopes are.
It didn’t end well for Gunnar.
The farm had the usual accoutrements: a green ‘home meadow’, half a dozen horses in an adjacent field, a large barn for the sheep to spend the winter in, huge round white plastic bales of hay and bits of machinery scattered around. From a distance, Blábrekka looked prosperous, but at close quarters it was clear there was a lot of work to be done. Paint peeling, broken doors and fences, old harrows rusting, a 1970s Land Rover that wasn’t going anywhere.
Interesting.
They parked next to Edda’s forensics van and a couple of police cars. A woman of about seventy answered the door, small anxious eyes, lines pointing down a mottled red face, her dark hair hanging wildly around her cheeks. She was wearing a traditional patterned lopi jersey with buttons at the top.
She introduced herself as Íris and led them through to the kitchen, where they were greeted by a sheepdog and a tall, bald man, also in his seventies, with a stoop and a matching sweater.
‘Hafsteinn,’ he said. ‘Hafsteinn Eggertsson. I’m Helga’s father.’
His wife fussed about getting Magnus and Árni coffee and some cinnamon rolls, which Árni grabbed unnecessarily quickly.