‘Yes. That’s right,’ Árni said.
‘Well, that didn’t happen, did it?’
‘No. But wait a minute, Magnús! Have you just been to see Gunni?’
‘Yes. In Hólmsheidi.’
‘Does Ólafur know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Jesus! He is going to go ballistic.’
‘I expect so. Don’t tell him, will you, Árni?’
‘All right. But he will find out.’
‘I know. I’ll deal with it.’
Dealing with it meant talking to Thelma. Right away.
She looked up at him over her reading glasses as he entered her office.
‘Any progress?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I think so.’ Magnus took a seat.
‘Tell me.’
Best to get it out quickly.
‘Gunnar Snaer Sigmundsson didn’t kill Helga. Helga and Kata’s deaths are connected. The connection is Dísa and Thomocoin.’ Best also to sound certain. Give Thelma any room for doubt and she would grab it and stuff it down his throat.
‘What! I hope you’ve got evidence for this.’
‘I have. One. The knife was planted in Gunni’s garage. There is no reason why he wouldn’t have cleaned Helga’s blood off it before hiding it there. Árni has uncovered a report of a man prowling around Gunni’s house the evening after the murder.
‘Two. Gunni didn’t have time to get to the scene of the crime to murder Helga. If he did somehow run there and back quickly enough he would have had to have known the precise time she would be there. What actually happened was that the killer lay in wait for Helga.
‘Three. I have just spoken to Gunni in Hólmsheidi. He was very convincing to me. He didn’t kill Helga.’
‘You went to Hólmsheidi? You didn’t tell me you were going to do that.’
‘Just now, this morning. You suggested I check to see if there is a link between Gunni and Kata. There isn’t, by the way.’
‘What does Ólafur say about all this?’
‘Ólafur is convinced Gunni is guilty.’
‘I bet he is.’ Thelma frowned. ‘Assuming for a moment that Gunni didn’t kill Helga — and I haven’t heard enough yet to believe he didn’t — what has Thomocoin to do with it?’
‘There’s an obvious link between the death of Helga and the death of Kata, and that’s Dísa. Thomocoin has dominated Dísa and her mother’s life in the last month or so. Her family have lost everything, including the farm that has been theirs for generations. We know Helga wasn’t killed by a former lover. We know Kata wasn’t killed in a random sex attack. Both murders must have been committed by a professional. They were hits.’
Magnus paused. ‘I got a call last night from a district attorney’s office in North Carolina. They are investigating a murder which they believe may have been committed by a professional killer under instructions from someone called Krakatoa, who supposedly runs Thomocoin.’
He looked Thelma in the eye. ‘The connection is Thomocoin.’
Thelma’s eyes were blazing. ‘Magnús. I told you to leave Thomocoin out of this. I was clear; I was explicit. It’s a political nightmare. But more important, much more important, if I tell you not to do something, I have to trust you not to do it! Now get out and don’t bother me with these idiotic theories. And if you have screwed up the prosecution of Gunnar, I’ll discipline you. It’ll be back to Sergeant Magnús.’
Magnus sat there.
‘I said go!’
‘I know you did,’ said Magnus. ‘I spoke to Tryggvi Thór last night.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘I know you and he are covering something up. I don’t know what it is, and I’ve told him I won’t ask any more. But I did ask him whether I could trust you. He said I could.’
Thelma opened her mouth and then closed it.
‘You’ve got a choice here, Thelma. If you spend a minute thinking through what I’ve just said, you’ll see I’m right. You know I’m right. Two women have died and we need to do all we can to find their killers. That’s what we do. Isn’t it?’
The fire in Thelma’s eyes had hardened. But she was listening.
‘Politically it’s a disaster. I get that. All kinds of ministers I don’t know will be upset. Ólafur will be really upset — I would be if I was him and another cop trampled all over my investigation. But we shouldn’t care about that, you and I. We should find the killer and the people who paid him, and we should arrest them.
‘If you don’t want me to do that, and you want me to walk out of here, I will. And I’ll just keep walking.’
Thelma swung her artificial leg out from under her desk and paced over to the window.
Magnus waited.
She turned. She looked grim, but Magnus could tell she had made up her mind. ‘All right. So what do we do next?’
‘The link is Dísa,’ said Magnus. ‘She knows what the connection between Thomocoin and the murders is but she’s not telling us. So we pull her in and we make her talk.’
Thelma nodded.
‘Whoever set up Gunni must have known about Helga’s affair with him. Which means it was someone who knew Helga well. It could be her ex-husband. There’s her brother, Eggert — he was the one who told us about the affair. She has a stepson, Jói: we should talk to him. Ideally, we should talk to Sharp, who is Thomocoin’s boss, but he’s supposed to be in Panama.’
‘And Gunni?’
‘I suggest you go and talk to Gunni. Apologize to him. See if he has any further ideas.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. He has been locked up for over two weeks for something he didn’t do. That shouldn’t have happened. He used to be an MP so he’ll have powerful friends. You’re the expert on the politics, but I’d have thought we want him on our side. And if you do this quickly, he might be happy. If we continue to pursue him and the judge throws the case out — which he will do — we will look really bad.’
Thelma sighed. ‘There’s something I don’t get about the Thomocoin angle, Magnús. I see why Helga would be a victim. Or Dísa. But why Kata? What’s her link to Thomocoin?’
‘Dísa, I suppose,’ said Magnus, feeling secure enough now to allow some doubt into his reply. It was a good question, and one he hadn’t answered yet.
‘Dísa was her friend. Was Kata working with Dísa on Thomocoin? Helping her?’
‘Not that we’ve heard,’ said Magnus.
‘Then why would someone want to kill her?’
It was the right question. And as Thelma asked it, the answer came to Magnus. ‘It’s a warning. To Dísa. Someone has threatened her. To keep quiet, or to get her to do something. Which is why she’s hiding something from us. She’s scared.’
Thelma nodded. ‘Well, go find her then. Find out what she’s hiding. Now.’
Forty-Seven
Dísa drove fast on the empty road north — no tourists. She appreciated the time to think, to force her mind into some kind of order.
Helga had died. Kata had died. There was a chance she would die too, no matter how careful she was, and that scared the hell out of her. But she was determined not to panic.
Yet, for once she felt that she had gained some kind of control of the situation. She had a plan. She had asserted her will against her father. She had no illusions that Krakatoa wouldn’t be after her once the five o’clock deadline had passed and he hadn’t received his bitcoin.
Who was Krakatoa anyway? Perhaps Sharp. Or perhaps some nameless evil genius in a bedroom in Moscow or San Francisco or some other far-flung place, who had crept into Dísa’s life through the internet.