Do the honest, straightforward thing. Tell everyone right away, and let them decide what to do. Because if Nancy Fishburn had planted the wampum, the sooner they knew it, the better.
She waited for Einar to pause for breath and interrupted. ‘That girl Kelly told me something very interesting in the bar...’
They took the ferry off the island the following afternoon, to Hyannis on the mainland. The plan was to drive from there north to Canada to film other locations that Gudrid had probably visited.
Eygló leaned over the railing at the stern, watching the ship’s wake thread its way through the harbour crowded with fishing boats and sleek motor cruisers. The picture-postcard town of Nantucket, with its tall whaling-captain’s houses and its white spires, receded at five knots. She thought of the Icelandic equivalents, fishing villages like Grindavík or Ólafsvík, pretty in their own way, but lacking the reek of wealth that emanated from Nantucket and had done so for centuries. In the nineteenth century this had been generated by whale oil harvested from all over the world’s oceans; now it came from money skimmed from the global financial markets by the prosperous men in baseball caps and red shorts holed up in those magnificent houses picketing the shoreline.
‘That was a good start, Eygló,’ said Suzy. ‘Let’s hope the weather is as sunny in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.’
‘Have you checked the forecast?’ Eygló asked.
‘Tom has. There’s a storm coming through there now, but it might have cleared by the time we film. But we could be OK, even if it hasn’t. A bit of grey moodiness would contrast nicely with the sunshine here. Show how tough the journey must have been for Gudrid and the others.’
‘Have you thought any more about what Nancy Fishburn’s granddaughter told me?’ Eygló wanted to make the most of Einar’s absence to discuss it. In the car the previous evening, and at dinner, he had been adamant that Kelly was wrong, and it seemed that Suzy had been happy to believe him.
‘Yes, I have. I know Einar’s view, but we have to check it out. So I drove out to Siasconset this morning and tracked down Kelly — she is working in the village store.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She was mortified. She said she hadn’t meant you to take her seriously, she was a bit drunk. She said you had got the wrong end of the stick; her father was kidding. He does that all the time. She pleaded with me not to ask her grandmother about it directly; I think Kelly is a little scared of her.’
‘Probably justified,’ said Eygló. ‘I can see how a retired university professor would not want people to think she had planted archaeological evidence.’
‘So can I.’
‘So you are sure she didn’t plant it?’
‘I’m sure Kelly doesn’t really think she did,’ said Suzy.
It wasn’t quite the same thing, but Eygló let it go. It was good enough.
They were now passing the spit of sand that marked the edge of the outer harbour and were in open water. The ferry felt much more stable than the sailing boat of the day before.
‘I’m glad you told us, though, Eygló. The only thing worse than cancelling the project because it all turned out to be a massive hoax would be not cancelling it and getting caught. That would be a real disaster.’
Eygló smiled. ‘Cancelling would be bad,’ she said. Her TV presenting career was taking off. The last thing she wanted was for it to crash. Then her life would be crap again.
‘Yes,’ said Suzy. She sighed. ‘I really need The Wanderer to work.’
‘Viking Queens worked, didn’t it?’
‘Yes. Brilliantly. And we made a lot of money. But we overextended ourselves on another project, about women and the Crusades. It was big: the BBC were backing it, and a major US network. It was expensive: actors, CGI, travel all over the Mediterranean. Then A Cross in the East came out on a cable network in the US and flopped big time. The US network pulled out and the woman who had commissioned it at the BBC quit to join Netflix. The BBC paid us, but it wasn’t nearly enough to cover all our costs, and the programme never aired.’
Eygló winced.
‘I had broken the golden rule of television production: don’t commit money you don’t have. We had ploughed in the profits from Viking Queens and then some on the basis it would be an international hit.’
She glanced at Eygló and saw her worry. ‘We’ll be OK. You’ve probably noticed we’re doing The Wanderer on a shoestring.’
They seemed to be staying in nice hotels and flying all over the North Atlantic, but it was true there were fewer people involved on location than there had been on Viking Queens. Then there had been an assistant producer and a professional sound man rather than a student, and usually a couple of local fixers wherever they went, and lots more equipment. It was a tighter crew this time, which actually made things easier, at least as far as Eygló was concerned.
‘The BBC are definitely behind this, as are the Canadian network, and once we’ve made it I’m sure I can get the History Channel interested in the States. As long as we get this in the can by the beginning of October, we will be fine.’
No wonder Suzy seemed a little tense, Eygló thought. But she was competent and Eygló had witnessed how she got things done, how she overcame every obstacle.
They would be fine. The Wanderer would be finished by the beginning of October.
Twenty-Four
Eygló, Suzy, Beccari, Tom and Ajay left Einar in Ólafsvík as they drove the ten kilometres further along Snaefellsnes to the isolated church of Ingjaldshóll. The site of the church dated back to settlement times, when a Viking named Ingjaldur chose that hill on which to build his farm. The current incarnation of the church dated from the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was supposedly the first concrete church in Iceland.
It was a lonely spot. Inside was a modern mural of Christopher Columbus, who local legend insisted had spent the winter of 1477 there. It was somewhere to film, a visual backdrop from which to expound the more compelling evidence from Christopher’s letter to his younger brother Bartholomew. This, Professor Beccari did with some skill and enthusiasm. When the programme was broadcast, there would be a swift cut to the letter itself in the Vatican. In reality it would be three weeks before they were in Rome, filming the letter itself in the Vatican Secret Archives.
Eygló had come to accept that there was a certain amount of hanging around whenever filming was involved, and she killed ten minutes by walking down the little road from the church. She was still badly shaken by her interview that morning. On the one hand, what should she expect if she withheld information from the police? They were only doing their jobs, and it was hardly surprising if they were not impressed with her lies about knowing Carlotta. Similarly, she couldn’t really expect them to believe the truth, which was that nothing had happened between her and Einar the night before. How could he have been so stupid as to let the black detective see him leaving her room? How could she be so stupid as to let him stay the night?
But while she had been prepared for the possibility that there might be consequences for covering for Einar, it had never occurred to her that they would suspect her of killing Carlotta. That really was ridiculous. She would have expected more from Magnus. She had thought he had an air of calm competence about him; that was obviously incorrect. Another man misjudged.
A spasm of panic clutched at her chest. Common sense told her that the police would soon recognize their error. But they did make mistakes. There were miscarriages of justice, innocent people sent to jail.