‘You didn’t happen to see him this morning, did you, about six-thirty?’
‘No. I left very early to go to a meeting in Patreksfjördur. My husband might have done. He often takes the dog out about then.’
She led Magnus to her front door and opened it. ‘Hi!’ she yelled.
‘Mama!’ came the answering cry, and much scampering of feet as two children, a boy and a smaller girl cannoned into her, quickly followed by a black Labrador. She fussed over them and introduced them to Magnus. The boy was called Pétur, and was aged seven, the girl, Lára, was four and the dog was called Prins. The girl in particular was angelic, with curly hair so fair it was almost white, bright blue eyes and a wide smile. Clearly her mother’s daughter.
Magnus became aware of a presence further down the hallway. The kids let go of their mother and stood still. Eyrún’s smile changed down a gear from joy to something else. Compassion perhaps. Or impatience. Or both. Even the dog’s tail stopped wagging.
‘This is my husband, Davíd.’
Magnus held out his hand to the dark-haired man with a scrappy beard who was staring at him. He was lean with a square jaw and high cheekbones. His eyebrows were knitted together in a twisted furrow in the shape of a question mark, which gave him a pained expression. An uncomfortable couple of seconds passed before he took Magnus’s hand and shook it briefly.
‘Darling, this is Sergeant Magnús, the detective from Reykjavík I told you about. I’ve invited him to dinner.’
‘Good, good,’ said Davíd.
‘You didn’t happen to see Arnór this morning when you were taking Prins for a walk, did you?’ Eyrún asked.
‘Yes,’ said the man.
Magnus smiled encouragingly at him. ‘Oh, good. What time was that?’
‘About six-twenty. He was loading up his pickup truck. When I came back ten minutes later he was still at it.’
‘Are you sure of the time?’ Magnus asked.
‘Quite sure.’ He turned on his heel and disappeared into a room off the hallway and shut the door.
‘Yes, well,’ said Eyrún, clearly a little embarrassed by her husband’s brusqueness. ‘That would make sense. Davíd has a routine — he takes the dog out for ten minutes about the same time every day. So he probably did get the time right.’
‘That’s very useful,’ said Magnus. Very useful indeed. It meant there was no chance that Arnór was two kilometres away starting a rock fall.
‘Come through and join me in the kitchen,’ said Eyrún. ‘It’s only spaghetti, I’m afraid. Would you like some wine?’
Magnus sat at the dining table while Eyrún poured out two glasses of red wine and busied herself at the stove. While on the outside the house looked like any other in Bolungarvík, inside it was furnished in the ultra cool minimalist fashion of the most stylish houses in the capital. The furniture looked Danish and expensive, and Magnus recognized an abstract seascape at least six-foot wide that adorned one white wall. Magnus’s former girlfriend had run a gallery in Reykjavík, until she had disappeared to Hamburg a couple of months before, and although hers wasn’t Magnus’s world, some of it had sunk in.
‘Do you think Gústi was murdered? Couldn’t it just have been an accident?’
‘It could have been,’ said Magnus. ‘But we found some objects at the scene, buried under the rocks.’
‘What kind of objects?’
‘A stuffed toy. A lamp. Some money.’
‘Strange,’ said Eyrún. ‘What were they doing there?’
‘Could have been bait,’ said Magnus. ‘Or possibly some weird gift for the hidden people. Either way, Gústi went over to take a look.’
‘And started the landslide?’
‘Or had it started for him,’ said Magnus.
Eyrún shuddered. ‘Speaking of the hidden people, I saw you talking to Rós.’
‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘She had a lot to say.’
‘Some people in the village listen to her, but I think she’s a fraud,’ said Eyrún. ‘Or she might be kidding herself, as well as everyone else. There was an old lady who lived here called Sigga who people were convinced was a seer. You know, could see into the future?’
‘And could talk to the hidden people?’
‘That too. She died about a year ago. She was a sweet old woman, and everyone treated her with enormous respect. I think Rós saw herself as her disciple. She claims that Sigga taught her things. Personally, I doubt it. All the dreams about the hidden people started just after Sigga died: I put them down to attention seeking. Although the construction equipment really did break down. It drove the company nuts.’
‘Well, I was very polite to her,’ said Magnus. ‘With luck she’ll leave the investigation alone now.’
‘It was she who insisted on that apology ceremony on Sunday. She somehow managed to get the pastor involved. I had to be there, as Mayor. You know Gústi tried to ruin it? Drove a digger right into the crowd. I had to persuade him to leave. Gústi didn’t have much time for Rós or the hidden people.’
‘I bet he didn’t,’ said Magnus.
Eyrún shouted to her husband and children and they all gathered around the dinner table. She chatted to her children about school and nursery and Magnus talked basketball with Pétur. Throughout all this, her husband ate silently at one end of the table, the question mark etched permanently into his brow. Eyrún and the kids ignored him, although Magnus was very aware of his presence.
Eventually, Eyrún let the children leave the table and poured Magnus and herself another glass of wine. Her husband wasn’t drinking.
‘Nice kids,’ said Magnus to Davíd.
Davíd grunted in response.
‘Thank you,’ said Eyrún. ‘They seem to have adjusted pretty well to life in Bolungarvík.’
‘And you?’ Magnus asked.
Eyrún glanced at her husband, who didn’t respond. ‘It’s been harder than we expected. Summer was great: there are some gorgeous places around here, and we are well out of the rat race. But the winter is difficult. And the wind blows in from the Atlantic, it never stops. You think the weather in Reykjavík is bad, you should try Bolungarvík. What about you? Tómas called you the “Yankee detective”. Do I detect an American accent?’
Magnus knew that he had established a bit of a reputation for himself in his eight months attached to the Icelandic police force, but he hadn’t realised it had reached as far as Bolungarvík.
‘I hope not,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m working on losing it. Yeah, I was born in Reykjavík, but I’ve lived in Boston for a while. And I do find it difficult to adjust to Iceland. On the one hand I feel that I am finally back in my home country, on the other I feel like a foreigner. Everyone seems to know each other, they all have their in-jokes. Maybe I am more of an American than I realised.’
‘Why did you go to America in the first place? Followed your parents?’
‘My father. He was a university lecturer in mathematics and he got offered a job in Boston. At first, I stayed here with my mother and grandparents. When she died, my brother and I went over to join my dad in America.’
Magnus found himself talking about the difficulties of being an Icelandic adolescent in an American high school, how speaking Icelandic with his father and reading the sagas were the only link to his home country. Then he told Eyrún about his father’s murder in a small town on Boston’s south shore and his determined but unsuccessful efforts to solve the crime when the police couldn’t. How he had joined the Boston Police Department as a result, rather than going to law school.
Eyrún was a good listener. She refilled the wine glasses, emptying the bottle. Although Magnus glanced at her husband at first, who was listening impassively, he soon forgot he was there. Magnus was relaxing in the company of an elegant, beautiful woman in this little piece of über cool Reykjavík.