Get a grip. Focus on the documentary. Trust the police to find who really had killed poor Carlotta. Pray it wasn’t Einar.
She turned and climbed back up the hill. Tom and Ajay were packing up their equipment.
She wandered over to them. The weather wasn’t bad for filming: small clouds scudded across the pale blue sky, propelled by a firm breeze from the west. From the spot Tom had chosen, the white church with its classic red roof stood tall and strong on its knoll, while behind it the dormant Snaefellsjökull volcano slumbered under its blanket of ancient ice, glistening in the sunshine. The perfect backdrop: a classic Icelandic landscape at its most beautiful.
‘Hi, Tom,’ said Eygló.
‘Hi,’ said Tom. Eygló wasn’t expecting more. Tom never said very much of anything, but he was an expert in the companionable silence. Once you knew it wasn’t just you he avoided conversation with, then you didn’t take his silence personally.
He was small, with a full, light brown beard, and thick hairy legs — he habitually wore baggy shorts, no matter what the weather. He was in his mid forties, Eygló guessed, and she thought he came from the north of England; his accent sounded familiar from her time in York. He was tough and resourceful and seemed more comfortable outdoors than in. More than once she was surprised to hear him speaking English rather than Icelandic — he could easily have been an Icelander.
‘Can I carry anything?’ she asked.
‘That’s OK,’ he said, slinging a heavy camera bag over one shoulder and the tripod over the other. It was incredible how much Tom could carry while still walking rapidly. Ajay struggled along behind with his smaller load.
They set off together towards Suzy’s rented Land Cruiser in the church car park.
‘Greenland tomorrow, with any luck,’ Eygló said. ‘If the police let us go. Suzy has tried pulling strings at the Ministry of Culture.’
‘Suzy will fix it,’ said Tom. ‘She always does.’
‘Have you ever been? To Greenland?’
‘Only to the north. I used to do mostly nature stuff. I did a documentary on walruses once, about ten years ago. No green in sight. Unlike where we are going.’
Eygló was surprised by Tom’s relative chattiness, and thought she would make the most of it. ‘Did you see any polar bears?’
‘Just one. In the distance. I got a reasonable shot of it.’
‘Why did you switch from nature?’
‘I was “between jobs”, had been for some time, and I needed the money. So I did some work for Suzy: a short documentary about monks in Ireland. I enjoyed it; I’ve always liked history. And Suzy and me work well together.’
‘You certainly do.’
For half a minute it seemed as if Tom had run out of things to say, but then he spoke.
‘Ajay heard you talking to that professor. At lunch.’
‘Oh really?’ Ajay must have pretty good hearing, Eygló thought. He had been sitting a few metres away, but then the room had been empty. And he was a sound guy after all.
‘You need to be careful,’ Tom said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘About talking down this project. About scaring the professor. We are committed now, all of us. Even if the wampum is a fake, or the Columbus letter, it’s too late to do anything about it now.’
‘But if they are fakes, we have to be honest about it.’
‘Oh no we don’t,’ said Tom. His voice was firm.
‘But we have our reputations to think about. Our integrity.’
Tom stopped and looked straight at Eygló. ‘You are not listening to me. We don’t think about that. We make this film. And then we broadcast it.’
Suddenly his voice had an undertone of threat to it, which took Eygló aback. She had been expecting problems from Professor Beccari or Suzy, but not from Tom.
‘Are you worried about losing your job?’ she said. ‘Can’t you just get something else? Go back to nature programmes?’
‘It’s not me, it’s Suzy. She watches my back; I watch hers.’
‘She told me that she had overextended herself,’ said Eygló. ‘That she had to make this programme by the end of October.’
‘She might not have said that her house is in danger of being repossessed. And that her little jerk of a husband is threatening to leave her if that happens. And take the kids with him.’
‘No, she didn’t say that.’ In fact Eygló hadn’t appreciated what Suzy was telling her: that the failure of The Wanderer would be more than just a professional setback, it would be disaster. Under the circumstances, Suzy was behaving with admirable calmness. For a moment Eygló wondered whether a husband who ran off with the kids when the going got tough was a husband worth keeping, but she knew lots of women who did their best to hang on to bad men. Eygló, at least, had been able to cut them loose, whenever she lumbered herself with one.
‘I’ll be careful,’ she said. ‘But if I discover that the wampum was planted by that old lady, I will have to say something.’
‘No you won’t.’ Tom’s blue eyes were staring hard at Eygló. ‘That’s my point, you won’t.’
Eygló felt the anger rise up inside her. ‘Or what?’
‘Look what happened to Carlotta.’
‘What!’ The anger mixed with a sudden dash of fear. ‘Did I hear you right?’
‘I think so,’ said Tom.
‘Are you saying Carlotta was killed because she was about to expose the Columbus letter?’
‘Or the wampum.’
‘How do you know that?’ Eygló asked.
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
Was it? Eygló thought. Not necessarily. How could Tom be so sure?
‘Was it you? Was it you who killed Carlotta?’
Tom turned on his heel and strode off rapidly towards Suzy and Beccari who were standing beside the car.
‘Tom!’ Eygló called after him.
But Tom didn’t answer.
Twenty-Five
Magnus was quite correct: Vigdís was not happy about letting Einar and Eygló go to Greenland. Magnus was grateful it was only a short drive from police headquarters to Borgartún, where Einar’s wife Rósa was a partner in a small law firm, but it was long enough for Vigdís to give him her opinion.
Borgartún was Reykjavík’s answer to Wall Street, a long straight road that ran along the bay. It had flourished in the noughties, when glossy bank headquarters had bloomed, along with lesser but equally glossy buildings housing accountants, lawyers and the other services ancillary to the great credit boom that afflicted Iceland then. During Magnus’s last stint in Reykjavík after the crash of 2008, the heart had been ripped out of the area, as the banks were renamed and For Rent signs sprouted everywhere. But now it looked prosperous again.
Magnus and Vigdís pulled into a car park outside a small sleek building of soft brown stone and black glass. Rósa’s firm was on the first floor. One of those dark-haired Icelandic beauties with clear skin and clear blue eyes smiled from behind a desk and greeted them. Magnus introduced himself and Vigdís, and said they wanted to see Rósa on a personal matter. Unfazed, the receptionist showed them into a small conference room with a view across Borgartún to one of the banks that had risen from the ashes and was flexing its rediscovered financial muscles.
Magnus looked down at the Range Rovers and the BMWs cruising the street below. ‘Are we going to go through all this again, Vigdís? Surely we must have learned something?’
‘I’m not sure we have,’ said Vigdís. ‘I bet all those cars were paid for on credit. I still haven’t got over the last mess: my mortgage is just as big as it always was.’
Magnus didn’t have a mortgage. He didn’t even own a bed. He still hadn’t moved his stuff into Tryggvi Thór’s place. He had yet to find a property ladder, let alone step on its first rung. What had he done with his life? Ten years before he had been living in the Back Bay of Boston with a successful lawyer who worked in an office much like this. And now? Not a lot of progress had been made.