‘How can you be sure?’ asked Vigdís.
‘He was shot through the eye. Four days ago, he shot a polar bear through the eye. You cannot tell me that is a coincidence. So we know the motive. And there were two foreigners who showed up in town who were very angry about the polar bear. This isn’t Reykjavík; we don’t have a couple of hundred thousand people to choose from. It can only be them.’
Vigdís really didn’t like the complacent Icelandic assumption that it must be the foreigners who had committed the crime, but in this case she had to admit it had some logic. They would need to find some real evidence, though, if they were going to keep the two men in custody for more than twenty-four hours.
‘When the interpreter comes do you want to join me interviewing the German? Good cop, bad cop?’ Ólafur smiled. ‘I’ll be the bad cop.’
There was a small interview room in the police station. In it were crammed Ólafur, Vigdís, the interpreter — who was a middle-aged schoolteacher from Húsavík named Sonja — and the suspect, Martin Fiedler. He had curly light brown hair, a neatly trimmed reddish beard and soft brown eyes. He seemed, to Vigdís, patient rather than angry.
Bad cop went first.
‘Did you shoot Constable Halldór?’ Ólafur asked in Icelandic. He then waited while the question was translated into English — Martin Fiedler had opted for that language rather than German. The interpreter spoke both.
‘No,’ he said calmly.
‘You are aware that he shot a polar bear through the eye four days ago?’
‘I’m aware of that,’ said Martin.
‘Do you approve of that?’
‘No. Not at all. I think it was totally unnecessary. The Icelandic government should have shot the bear with a dart gun and returned it to Greenland.’
‘All right. And do you think Constable Halldór deserved to die for killing the bear?’ The detective’s eyes were burning with anger.
‘Of course not,’ said Martin. ‘I don’t believe in violence against people any more than I believe in violence against animals. He should have been arrested for a criminal act and tried. But not shot. No.’
‘Your friend Alex said that he should have been shot.’
‘Well, Alex is wrong,’ said Martin. ‘But before you ask, Alex didn’t shoot the policeman.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he was with me all afternoon.’
‘And where was that?’
‘At the farm we were staying in. We returned from a drive along the shore at about lunchtime. We thought the young bear that had been shot may have been with its mother. But if it was, we didn’t find her. We were disappointed; we were supposed to fly back to Reykjavík the next day. So we hung out in our room for a couple of hours. Then, later on that afternoon, we saw the fog had cleared and so we decided to go up to the henge to see what we could see. That’s when we saw the body.’
‘But no one saw you at the farm?’
‘Apparently not. Gústi — that’s the farmer — was off somewhere, and so was his wife.’
Halldór had been found by the two men at six-thirty. Halldór had last been seen in town at four-thirty, heading north out of town in his car. During that two-hour break, the two men had no alibi apart from each other.
‘You have a criminal record, don’t you? Two months in jail in England last year for breaching the peace and assaulting a police officer during a protest at an animal-testing laboratory.’
‘I didn’t assault the police officer,’ said Martin, still calm. ‘But I didn’t defend myself. I wanted to go to jail.’
‘Why didn’t you defend yourself?’ said Ólafur.
The German smiled. ‘Solidarity with the cause. With the others who were arrested with me.’
‘So is that why you shot Constable Halldór? Solidarity?’
‘I didn’t shoot him,’ said Martin.
‘You did shoot him!’ said Ólafur. He stood up, leaned over the desk and began shouting. ‘You killed him because he shot the polar bear! That’s why you hit him through the eye, just like he shot the bear! Admit it!’
Vigdís watched her colleague getting nowhere. The German was remarkably self-possessed. Although he was in a foreign country and accused of such a serious crime, he seemed to be handling the situation very well. Part of the effect of Ólafur’s yelling was dispelled by Sonja’s careful translation, but the bad cop stuff wasn’t working.
Eventually Ólafur turned to Vigdís. It was her turn.
‘Why did you come to Iceland?’ she asked.
Martin turned towards her, his soft brown eyes assessing her. As always when people first met her, Vigdís could tell he was trying to decide what to make of her. No one knew what to make of a black Icelander, especially other Icelanders.
‘I heard about the polar bear shooting. Then I saw that there was a chance that there may be another bear at risk. I thought it would be cool to fly out here to try to save it.’
‘Heard? How did you hear?’
‘Online. A Facebook group. We keep one another informed about what’s going on.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Cruelty to animals. Protests. Torture in labs. When people are needed to make a noise to help animals.’
‘What was the name of this group?’
Martin hesitated. ‘Animal Blood Watch,’ he said eventually.
‘And they told you about the polar bear?’
‘They asked for volunteers to come to Raufarhöfn. In the end it was just Alex and me. It’s a long way and it’s expensive.’
‘How did you afford it?’
‘I have some money. My father left me some when he died.’
Vigdís examined the German. He returned her gaze. He wasn’t afraid; more curious about her. She enjoyed talking to him, hearing his calm, considered replies. She hated the idea of shooting polar bears on sight as well. Other countries found ways of tranquilizing them — in Canada it was an offence to kill a polar bear, even if it was attacking you. If Martin Fiedler really had killed the police constable, then he deserved everything the Icelandic state could throw at him, but already Vigdís didn’t believe he had.
But she shouldn’t let her bias slant the investigation. She wondered what Magnus would do. Get as complete a statement as he could of everything the two men were doing, and then check it for holes — that would be his answer.
She looked at her notes. ‘When you say “hung out in our room”, what were you doing?’
For the first time, the German looked mildly embarrassed. ‘Alex was reading a book. And I was playing a computer game.’
‘What was the book?’ Vigdís asked.
‘Something about the Rainbow Warrior.’
‘And the computer game?’
Martin Fiedler looked uncomfortable. ‘Call of Duty,’ he admitted.
Ólafur leaped on it. ‘That’s a bit violent for someone who believes in peace and love and veggie burgers, isn’t it?’
Martin regained his composure. ‘It’s a cool game. I enjoy it.’
‘So people killing people is OK, but people killing animals isn’t?’ There was a note of triumph in Ólafur’s voice.
‘They are not real people, Inspector. It’s pixels killing pixels. I’m cool with that.’
Vigdís thought a moment. She had seen her colleagues playing Call of Duty at the station. ‘Who were you playing with? The computer?’
‘No. I was playing online,’ Martin said.
Vigdís made a note. Then she got Martin to take her through everything he had been doing since he arrived in Raufarhöfn, despite the frustration of her superior officer, who insisted on lobbing random accusations at Martin whenever he got bored.