He knew she’d screw up. That’s why he had given the bitcoin to Dísa. Even at fifteen, she was a better bet than Helga.
Helga.
He had loved her passionately. Even when he had gone to jail and she had ditched him, he’d loved her. Even just before the crash when everything was going so well and he had started that stupid affair with Bryndís at the bank, he had loved her. Bryndís was another mistake.
Helga had stopped loving him, he knew that. And that had been his fault. He knew that too.
Dísa wanted him to atone for all those mistakes. And he’d like to if he could. But he had very little money himself. And he had no chance of persuading Sharp to cough up.
His best bet — Dísa’s best bet — was to hope that Sharp could conjure something out of nothing with the Icelandic government.
He felt alone. He wanted Helga. The old Helga he had fallen in love with, not the more recent one who demeaned and dismissed him, who knew him for what he really was.
A loser.
Sitting on the rock, looking out over the valley she had grown up in, he felt a tear run down his cheek. And then another.
For three minutes he sobbed.
It felt good.
Then he slid off the rock and headed back to the farmhouse to fetch Jói and take him back to Reykjavík.
Twenty-Two
Magnus’s expenses from his trip up north didn’t add up. No matter how hard he stared at the damn screen, 4,500 krónur were missing. He knew from bitter experience that he had to make the numbers add up eventually.
Fudging expenses was a major crime in CID.
His phone rang. He picked it up. ‘Magnús.’
‘It’s Jón from the front desk. I’ve got a young lady here who wants to see you. Dísa Ómarsdóttir.’
‘I’ll come down.’
Dísa looked tired and washed-out. And angry.
Magnus led her up to CID via the coffee machine and sat her down next to his desk. She responded to his attempt to chat with one-word answers. He gathered that she had returned to Reykjavík the day before, after her mother’s funeral.
Magnus was sympathetic. His father had been murdered when he was about her age. He had been tired, washed-out and angry too.
‘All right,’ he said with what he hoped was an encouraging smile. ‘What can I help you with?’
‘I want you to arrest Mum’s murderers,’ said Dísa.
‘We’ve done that,’ said Magnus. ‘Gunnar Snaer Sigmundsson is in custody. My colleagues in Akureyri are building a good case against him. They are confident of a conviction.’
The DNA analysis of the blood on the knife found in Gunni’s shed had come back with a match for Helga. There was a window of about an hour when Gunni was supposedly walking his dog when he just about had time to get up the mountainside and kill her. Motive wasn’t completely clear yet, but Ólafur’s strategy was to let the suspect stew in solitary confinement in prison at Hólmsheidi until they had gathered overwhelming evidence against him and then use that to get him to confess.
‘I don’t mean Gunni. I mean the people who really killed Mum. The people behind Thomocoin.’
Magnus nodded. He noticed Dísa’s northern accent was more obvious here in Reykjavík than it had been when he had seen her in Dalvík. ‘I see. But we’re not even sure that Thomocoin is the reason Gunni killed your mother.’
‘Of course it is. What other motive might there be?’
Dísa was staring hard at Magnus, daring him to answer.
Magnus paused. This was one of the things he hated most about murder investigations: revealing victims’ secrets to their families.
He didn’t have to tell Dísa. He could wait until she found out at the trial. But it was inevitable she would find out, eventually.
Magnus had been in her shoes. Nearly twenty-five years before, his father had been murdered in the house in which they were staying in a small town on the shore south of Boston. The police had got nowhere. Magnus, a college student at the time, had demanded answers. There were none. He had tried to solve the case but hadn’t got anywhere himself. Until, that is, he became a policeman and thirteen years later was transferred to Iceland.
Where the key to his father’s death had been lying all the time.
He remembered the kindly local detective — Jim Fearon was his name — who had patiently answered Magnus’s questions. And eventually, over a decade later, had helped him find the answers.
So he decided to answer Dísa’s.
‘You probably don’t know this,’ said Magnus, ‘but it looks like your mother had an affair with Gunni. In the past.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Dísa. She looked angry rather than surprised; she must have heard gossip. Despite her protests, she was really asking Magnus for confirmation.
‘Your mother confided in someone a few years ago. And when we confronted Gunni with it, he admitted it.’
‘I still don’t believe you.’
‘That’s your choice,’ said Magnus. ‘But it is another possible motive.’
Dísa breathed in. ‘Was this so-called affair still going on when she died?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Magnus. ‘Gunni says it finished in 2016, and at the moment we have no reason to doubt him. We’re still working on it.’
‘So why would that make him kill her?’
‘The truth is we don’t know the motive. Yet.’
‘Yes, you do,’ said Dísa. ‘It’s staring you in the face! Thomocoin. Gunni bought millions of dollars of Thomocoin from Mum and it’s all worthless. So he was pissed off and he killed her. It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘That may turn out to be the motive,’ said Magnus patiently. ‘But for the moment, we don’t know.’
‘Have you shut down Thomocoin yet? Have you arrested the people behind it? Sharp? Jérôme? The Swiss guy with the pointy beard?’
‘No, we haven’t.’
‘Why not? It’s a massive fraud. My family and Gunni aren’t the only people to lose money from Thomocoin. Half of Dalvík has. And there will be loads of people in Reykjavík who have lost money too. What are you doing about it?’
‘Thomocoin hasn’t gone bankrupt yet.’
‘Yet? Why wait until it does?’
Magnus decided to give Dísa an honest answer. ‘It’s political, Dísa. There are people in Iceland who want Thomocoin to succeed. There are others who think it will fail but don’t want to take responsibility for it. I know that in some other countries Thomocoin is being investigated seriously. But not in Iceland. I’m sorry.’
‘Which countries?’
‘I can’t say. It’s an ongoing investigation. But one of them is big.’
‘But not here?’
‘Not here. I’m sorry.’
Dísa leaned back in her chair, her face torn with anger and frustration. Tears were forming in her eyes, but she controlled them.
‘These people lied to me. They lied to my dad, to my mum, to Gunni, to lots of other people. And they are still lying. My mother died as a direct result. My grandparents are going to lose the farm that has been in their family for five hundred years. And you’re not going to do anything?’
Magnus could see her point. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’
‘Sharp is in Iceland. Did you even know that?’
Magnus shook his head.
‘He had the nerve to show up at Mum’s funeral. He says he’s seeing the Central Bank in Reykjavík today. You could go and arrest him.’
‘I can’t arrest him. I have nothing to arrest him for.’
‘You do! He’s stolen millions of krónur from tons of people. And he killed my mum!’
‘I’m sorry, Dísa...’
The contempt on Dísa’s face struck Magnus. She just shook her head, stood up and left.