‘Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t say anything to her then, I just acted like I hadn’t seen anything.’
‘So the affair started in Reykjavík?’
‘I guess so. The guy was an MP back then, and spent a lot of time down there.’
‘Who is this man?’ Magnus asked.
‘Gunni. Gunnar Snaer Sigmundsson.’
‘The man who found Helga’s body with Anna Rós?’ Árni said.
Eggert nodded. ‘Yeah. Him.’
Fifteen
Dísa sat on the end of Anna Rós’s bed, listening to Taylor Swift and fiddling with her phone. Anna Rós was fiddling with her phone next to her.
Dísa had been in touch with Jói, who had been calmly sympathetic, but she was mostly communicating with Kata at the university in Reykjavík, who was also supportive. Kata said she would definitely be in Dalvík for the funeral, and insisted that they should go back to their original plan of living together — Matti wouldn’t mind.
But now Dísa and Kata were exchanging dumb texts about Beth in The Queen’s Gambit, a TV show they had both fallen for.
Anna Rós had plenty of friends, but Dísa wasn’t sure they were entirely constructive. Lots of hysteria rather than support seemed to be coming her way.
But it was nice to be in her little sister’s bedroom: pictures from Anna Rós’s early teens of boy bands and horses covering most of the wall space.
She heard a car pull up outside and a moment later the deep rumble of a male voice.
‘That’s Gunni,’ Anna Rós said. ‘I should go downstairs and thank him. He was so nice to me yesterday. I don’t know what I would have done if I had found Mum by myself.’
‘I’m glad he was there.’
‘But I don’t really want to see anyone.’
‘Then stay here,’ said Dísa. ‘With me.’
Anna Rós smiled at her sister and went back to her phone, letting Taylor Swift’s tears ricochet between them.
After a few minutes they heard Grandma’s feet on the stairs and a knock at the door. ‘Dísa? Gunni wants to talk to you. It’s about Thomocoin.’
Dísa exchanged glances with her sister, slipped off the bed and went downstairs.
Grandpa was supposed to be a big man about town. Gunni really was a big man about town. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he had square shoulders, a square face, a barrel chest and tough blue eyes. He had grown up a fisherman but, like most of the others, he had sold his trawler and the quotas he had accumulated to the big local fishing company fifteen years before, to become an MP. He had eventually retired from that, claiming he didn’t like to spend so much time in Reykjavík. Ever since Dísa could remember, he had kept a horse at Blábrekka, which he rode occasionally. His current mount was a black stallion called Fálki.
Everyone liked Gunni. But everyone was just a little bit afraid of him.
‘Hi, Dísa.’ He smiled with a mixture of warmth and sadness. ‘I am so sorry about your mother. As is Soffía.’ Soffía was Gunni’s glacially beautiful wife, who never said anything to anyone.
Dísa nodded in acknowledgement.
‘I have some questions about Thomocoin I’d like to ask you. Maybe we can go for a walk?’
Dísa glanced at her grandparents. It would certainly be easier to talk without Grandpa’s true-believer interruptions. And Gunni was a canny businessman — ruthless even. It would be interesting to hear what he thought was going on with the cryptocurrency.
‘All right,’ she said.
They put on their coats and left the farmhouse. Gunni set off along the hillside, towards the spot where he and Anna Rós had found Mum.
‘Do you mind if we don’t go that way?’ said Dísa.
‘No,’ said Gunni. ‘No, not at all.’
They changed direction, walking along the road for a couple of hundred metres until they came to a path down to the river. The air was fresh, but sunlight gently brushed their cheeks. It was good to be outside. The valley was alive with the cries, chirps, peeps and warbles of countless birds. They turned off the road and followed a stream tumbling down to the water meadows below. A pair of wagtails hopped from stone to stone next to them.
‘You may not know this,’ said Gunni. ‘But I bought some Thomocoin as well.’
‘Grandpa told me.’
‘The truth is, I’m a bit worried about it.’
The warmth had gone out of Gunni’s voice.
‘About the exchange?’ said Dísa.
‘Yes. I’m beginning to wonder whether there will ever be an exchange,’ he said. ‘Or if there ever was going to be one.’
‘I’m sure they’re trying,’ said Dísa. ‘They just haven’t succeeded yet.’
‘Are you really sure?’
‘Yeah. I saw Sharp give a presentation at the launch three years ago.’
‘You see, I wonder if Thomocoin is worth anything at all?’
‘Of course it is,’ said Dísa. ‘I checked the price on the screen this morning: three hundred and thirty-eight dollars.’
‘I can check the screen too. But is that a real price? Maybe it’s just a number some guy in Thomocoin makes up?’
‘That can’t be right,’ said Dísa. She thought about it a moment. ‘It must be a real price. It’s the price that investors pay to buy more Thomocoin. If you logged on and bought some today, you would pay three hundred and thirty-eight dollars.’
‘Sure, if I bought some. But not if I tried to sell some.’
‘But that’s only because there isn’t an exchange yet.’
‘Precisely.’
A pair of snipe shot up into the air from tufts of grass in front of them, chirping angrily and zigzagging on sharp, pointed wings. A group of horses trotted across the field on the other side of the stream to check them out: there were as many horse farms as sheep farms in the valley.
They walked on. Gunni was leaving time for Dísa to think. And she was thinking hard.
‘You’re a smart girl, Dísa. You know what I’m saying. If there never is an exchange, if you can never actually sell any Thomocoin, then it isn’t worth anything.’
Dísa wanted to argue, but she did see what Gunni was talking about. She wasn’t sure he was right — but she feared he might be.
‘Did you speak to Mum about this?’ she asked eventually.
‘Yes, I did. A couple of weeks ago. She said she’d go down to Reykjavík to ask your dad about it.’
‘She went, apparently,’ Dísa said. ‘Although she never told me. Did Dad have any answers?’
‘I don’t know. I called her a couple of times, but she didn’t answer. I was planning to speak to her about it yesterday morning when I came up here to ride.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I never got the chance.’
Dísa glanced at Gunni. He looked worried. He also looked angry.
She felt a surge of panic. What if he was right and Thomocoin was a complete con from start to finish? And Dísa had then made her mother buy it? And her mother had encouraged people in the village to buy it too?
‘I believed Helga,’ said Gunni.
‘You don’t think she knew it was a fraud?’ The moment she spoke the words, she regretted them, admitting as they did that there was something rotten about Thomocoin.
‘No. Your mum really did believe in it,’ Gunni said. ‘Which is why I lent her so much money to keep the farm going. And why I invested so much myself.’
‘I knew she borrowed money,’ Dísa said, surprised. ‘But I assumed it was from the bank, not you.’
‘No, it was me. No bank would lend against Thomocoin. But I did. Twenty million krónur. I’ve got notes from her to prove it. And then, when I saw the price going up, I bought some Thomocoin myself.’
‘Not a lot, I hope?’ said Dísa.