‘You know what, Emilio? One letter isn’t enough. If we are going to make people believe that this is real we need context. Another piece of evidence.’
‘What, you want me to forge another document?’ said Emilio. ‘Isn’t one enough for you?’
‘Not a document, no. Something else. An artefact, ideally from the Viking period. Nancy, what other evidence would make historians believe that this letter is true?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nancy. ‘I don’t like this idea. If people really are dumb enough to believe Emilio’s letter, then a whole bunch of historians are going to be wasting a lot of time looking in the wrong direction.’
‘What if we promise to reveal it’s a fake one year after it’s discovered?’ Emilio said. ‘Any historian who is stupid enough to believe that it’s real deserves to lose a few months’ work.’
‘I don’t want to be linked to this,’ said Nancy. ‘My reputation will be ruined.’
‘We’ll reveal it anonymously,’ said John.
Nancy hesitated. She knew what Emilio and John was suggesting was not just unprofessional, it was wrong. But it was also exciting.
She really didn’t want to kill the idea.
‘What if we implicated that woman you are always talking about?’ said Emilio. ‘What’s her name? Gudrid. You’re always saying she doesn’t get enough attention. If we did this right, we could get her the attention she deserves.’
‘That’s not the kind of attention I meant,’ Nancy said.
‘All publicity is good publicity,’ said John.
Emilio smiled at Nancy, the full broad grin. He reached over and placed his hand on hers. She felt a jolt, almost like an electric shock, that made her want to pull back, but, like an electric shock, she couldn’t.
Nancy glanced at her husband. He wanted to do this so badly.
And so did she.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you.’
They stayed in the back yard late into the night, drinking, eating, talking, planning.
And then they went to bed.
Emilio arranged for the letter to be inserted in the Vatican Secret Archives. The following summer, Nancy and John travelled to Greenland, the remains of an old string of hard-shell clam wampum that they had dug up over by Eel Point in their luggage.
After Gudrid returned from Vinland she had stayed with her father-in-law Erik the Red at Brattahlíd — Gudrid had been married to Erik’s son Thorstein before Thorfinn Karlsefni. The site had been excavated in the 1930s, and Nancy knew that the trenches they had dug then were still open.
The difficulty with planting new archaeological material was placing it in the correct ‘context’, the layer of soil that represented the appropriate era. Finds from Gudrid’s time would be in the deepest layer. It would be tricky to insert the wampum shells that deep without disturbing the contexts above, and impossible to ensure that the shells were all placed in the correct context. But during the 1930s excavation, the contexts would have become jumbled up.
So one evening, when there was no one else around, they were able to insert the wampum shells laterally in the side of the trench, so that anyone finding them would think they had been disturbed but not discovered by a previous generation of archaeologists.
Then they waited. And waited. They had assumed that the letter and the wampum would be found within a few months. But the proposed excavation of Brattahlíd scheduled for the following year was cancelled, and the volume in which Emilio had placed the letter was just not taken out of the Vatican Library.
A week after Nancy and John received a letter from Emilio announcing he was intending to move the letter to another book next time he was in Rome, they got some bad news. Emilio had had a heart attack at his home in Tuscany. He was dead.
Six months later, John had a stroke, which crippled him. A year after that another stroke killed him.
By that stage, Nancy regretted the whole thing. Once Emilio and John were gone, the hoax had no point. Nancy just forgot it.
And then in 2011 she read about the discovery of the Nantucket wampum in the paper. She had told herself that if anything was discovered, she would announce to the world that it was a fake. But by that stage she was already over eighty. She told herself she didn’t have the energy, but truthfully, she didn’t have the courage. She might have written a letter to the archaeologists who discovered the wampum if the consequences had just stayed in Greenland and one or two universities. But the find had caused great excitement in Nantucket among the Historical Association, and if Nancy had admitted John and she had planted it, it would have ruined their reputations. John’s reputation in particular; she cared about John’s reputation.
When an Icelandic archaeologist and his Italian assistant had tracked her down the year before as a local historian and an expert on Gudrid, she decided to go along with their questions and pretend that the wampum and the letter were real. She missed John, and she missed Emilio. The hoax was their legacy, and she thought she might as well enjoy it for them. By that stage she was in her mid eighties. What the hell, she thought, she was going to die soon anyway.
Then the archaeologist had returned with a film crew in tow and she had agreed to be interviewed. She could almost see Emilio’s broad grin as she answered the Icelandic woman’s questions at Sesachacha Pond, hear John’s familiar chuckle.
But then, after the crew had packed up and left the island for Canada and Leif’s Booths, the guilt had set in. Although she had thought the archaeologist arrogant, she had liked Eygló; the hoax, when it was discovered, and it surely would be discovered, would ruin her career. Who knew how many historians would be sent off on wild goose chases?
So Nancy had decided to travel to Iceland to tell them the truth.
Twenty-One
Over Vigdís’s objections, Magnus allowed the filming to go ahead on Snaefellsnes, but over Suzy’s objections he refused to allow the crew to leave for Greenland without permission from the police. He had persuaded Einar to give up his computer and phone and he and Vigdís had driven back to Reykjavík with them for analysis.
As they were entering police headquarters, Árni called.
‘What have you got?’
‘Nothing from the phone companies yet,’ said Árni. ‘But I had an idea.’
Magnus’s heart sank a few inches. That was not normally a good sign.
‘I checked with the Hótel Tindastóll. They have free Wi-Fi, but you have to log in every time you use it, and their system monitors usage by room and records every time a guest signs in.’
‘Really? Did you check Eygló?’
‘I did. She logged into the system at eight-oh-two and again at ten-oh-eight. And then once again at eleven-forty-one.’
‘So that pretty much means she must have been in her room when she says she was?’
‘She didn’t have time to drive to Glaumbaer, kill Carlotta and return.’
‘What about Einar?’
‘Einar logged on at seven-fifty-nine and then again at eleven-twelve.’
‘When he came back from the church square. That’s consistent with his story too. And the others?’
‘Suzy, Tom and Ajay all logged on around eight, right after they had checked in. But none of them were on Wi-Fi afterwards.’
‘OK, Árni. Good work. Any news on Ajay from Britain?’
‘That’s going to take a while,’ Ajay said.
There was something in Ajay’s voice that Magnus recognized of old. It was the sound of Árni screwing up.
‘Árni?’
Árni sighed. ‘The British cop promised he would look, but he did point out that Ajay was a Hindu name, if that was any help.’