There should be no reason why he would ever need to go there either. But it was a necessary insurance policy. There were too many stories of idiots who had lost access to millions in bitcoin because they had mislaid or forgotten their private key and hadn’t made a paper back-up. It was estimated that 20 per cent of all the bitcoin outstanding had been lost forever in that way.
He plugged his cold wallet into his computer to check his bitcoin balance, before transferring in some bitcoin from one of the exchanges.
He blinked. That couldn’t be right.
Zero. A big fat zero.
The wallet should have had nearly two thousand bitcoin in it.
His fingers flew over the keyboard as he checked recent transactions.
One thousand nine hundred and sixty-two bitcoin had been transferred out of his wallet the previous day.
He sat and stared. The blood seemed to be seeping out of his body. He couldn’t breathe.
He had lost twenty million dollars. Twenty million!
‘Fuck!’ he shouted. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’
Who could have broken into his bitcoin wallet?
There was only one person.
KRAKATOA: Where are my bitcoin?
Krakatoa waited. What if Lawrence wasn’t online? Even though there was no point, Krakatoa repeated his question.
KRAKATOA: Get back to me. This is urgent. I don’t know what’s going on. Where are my bitcoin?
Still no reply. Krakatoa paced around his desk, swearing under his breath. What was he going to do now?
LAWRENCE: What do you mean, where are your bitcoin?
KRAKATOA: They’ve gone. They’ve all gone from my cold wallet.
LAWRENCE: Have you been hacked?
KRAKATOA: I can’t have been. You are the only person who knows where my cold wallet paper back-up is. Unless you took them?
LAWRENCE: Of course I didn’t take them.
Krakatoa was about to repeat his question with a threat attached to it when he forced himself to calm down.
KRAKATOA: OK. Can you check your wallet?
LAWRENCE: All right. brb.
Krakatoa waited. It was only three minutes, but it seemed to be an hour.
LAWRENCE: They’ve gone. My bitcoin have gone.
KRAKATOA: All of them?
LAWRENCE: Yeah. I had three point one. Have all yours gone too?
KRAKATOA: Yes. All of them.
LAWRENCE: How much did you have?
KRAKATOA: A lot. Everything. Almost everything.
LAWRENCE: Someone must have hacked it. How could they have done that? I thought these private keys were secure?
KRAKATOA: They are. Nobody hacked it. If we have both been cleaned out, it means that someone got hold of both our private keys. And there’s only one way they could have done that. Find our cold wallets.
LAWRENCE: At the summer house?
KRAKATOA: That’s right.
LAWRENCE: But that’s impossible.
KRAKATOA: Is it? Have you told anyone where you hid the cold wallets?
LAWRENCE: Of course not.
KRAKATOA: Are you sure?
No reply. There was only one explanation. Lawrence had told someone. Unless he had stolen Krakatoa’s bitcoin himself, and that was something Krakatoa found hard to believe.
Maybe he should believe it.
A message flashed up.
LAWRENCE: I did tell someone. Sort of.
KRAKATOA: Who?
LAWRENCE: Dísa.
KRAKATOA: What! Why did you do that?
LAWRENCE: It was back when I gave her the bitcoin. I was explaining how she needed a cold wallet. I think I mentioned where I kept mine. Something about the hidden people watching over it.
KRAKATOA: Why the fuck did you do that?
LAWRENCE: I don’t know. It was just a joke. Anyway, Dísa wouldn’t steal from me. It can’t be her. Must be a hacker. Wait. Someone’s at the door. Got to go.
Thirty
Ómar was not what Magnus had expected. Rather than a smooth banker, a mini-Sharp, he was faced with a pale, dumpy, balding man with a scrappy goatee, a Viking-rune dangling from his ear and half a neck full of ink.
‘Inspector Magnús.’ He held out his warrant card. Ómar examined it distractedly. ‘May I come in?’
Ómar blinked. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, all right.’
Ómar’s flat was small but tidy. Magnus sat on a beaten-up sofa, while Ómar took an armchair. The furniture had a second-hand IKEA vibe, with a touch of dumpster-rescue chic. Magnus guessed Sharp’s apartment in London looked very different.
There were a few framed photographs scattered about the room. One of Dísa on a volleyball court, her brows knitted in concentration. And another of a group of five people standing in front of a lake. Two adults, one of which was Helga and the other a much slimmer, more confident version of the man sitting opposite. Magnus recognized Dísa again, gawky and shy, and the pretty little blonde girl who must be Anna Rós. The boy, with his own blonde curls, was no doubt Ómar’s son from his first marriage.
Ómar followed Magnus’s eyes and scowled. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m investigating your ex-wife’s murder,’ said Magnus.
‘Oh. All right.’
‘First, please accept my condolences.’
‘Thank you.’ Ómar looked exhausted. Worried.
‘I’d like to ask you about Thomocoin,’ Magnus went on.
‘And I’m not going to tell you.’
That surprised Magnus. ‘This is a murder investigation, Ómar. You have to help me.’
‘I thought you’d caught the murderer,’ said Ómar. ‘Look. I’ve been in jail; I know how you guys operate. I don’t say anything about my financial circumstances without a lawyer present. And my financial circumstances include Thomocoin. And if you want to throw me in Building Number One at Litla-Hraun again, I’m fine with that. I could use the peace and quiet.’
Building No. 1 at Litla-Hraun was where suspects used to be held in solitary confinement pending trial. It had sometimes been used by the Icelandic police as a tool to extract confessions. They threw them in the new prison at Hólmsheidi now.
‘Your daughter believes that Thomocoin is responsible for Helga’s death.’
‘Well, she’s wrong.’
‘She might be. But I have no way of knowing that unless I find out more about Thomocoin myself.’
‘Do you think Sharp killed her?’ said Ómar. ‘Because that’s crazy. It was this guy Gunni.’
‘Do you know him?’ Magnus asked. ‘Gunni?’
‘No. Never met him. But Dísa told me a little bit about him.’
‘Did she tell you he was a big investor in Thomocoin? And that he believed that his Thomocoin was worthless?’
‘Yes, she did. And I think he was the one who got Helga worried. I told your colleague, the black woman, that Helga came down to Reykjavík to ask me about the exchange. Until then I had no idea she was involved in Thomocoin at all.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That it was all going to be fine as far as I knew. Sharp had it all under control.’
‘And does he?’
‘Ask him.’
Ómar was drawing the lines. He seemed happy to talk as long as the discussion didn’t involve his own investments. Magnus had gathered from Dísa that Ómar had invested in bitcoin several years ago, probably offshore, which was probably illegal, hence his reluctance to discuss it.
‘Did you know Gunni had an affair with Helga?’
‘No. Am I supposed to care? We were divorced nearly ten years.’
‘Before the divorce. When you lived in Reykjavík. And he was an MP.’
That caught Ómar’s attention. ‘I don’t believe you.’