‘You didn’t? I’ve been here a month. I would have thought you would have heard by now.’
Ingileif glanced at Vigdís. ‘Are you back with the police?’
‘Yes. Permanently this time.’
‘Oh.’
Magnus couldn’t mistake the lack of enthusiasm in that monosyllable.
Neither could Ingileif. ‘Sorry. I mean, great! Boston didn’t work out?’
‘Not really.’ Magnus grinned hesitantly. ‘I still can’t figure out whether I’m an Icelander or an American.’ It was something he and Ingileif had discussed frequently while he was living here the last time.
‘You didn’t get in touch?’
‘No,’ said Magnus simply. He wanted to explain that he had been afraid to even see her. That he didn’t trust himself or her not to rekindle a relationship that had been so destructive for both of them before.
‘Oh,’ she said again. It was five years since Magnus had seen her, and she had changed. Her face was more lined, her blonde hair a little longer. And despite her apparent enthusiasm to see him, Magnus sensed an air of weary sadness about her that was new. But the little nick in her left eyebrow that he remembered so well was still there.
‘Are you still working in the gallery?’
‘Yes. Business is picking up. And I’m doing some interior-design work for people. And there is Ási.’
Magnus looked down at the small red-haired boy who was staring straight back at him with piercing blue eyes.
He squatted down so he was level with boy, the boy’s eyes peering over the low wall between them. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘My name is Magnús. How old are you?’
‘Hello,’ said the boy, still staring straight at him. ‘I’m four. How old are you?’
Magnus grinned. ‘I’m forty-one. And a half.’
He stood up. ‘Named after his grandfather? That’s good.’
Ási was short for Ásgrímur, the name of Ingileif’s father, a doctor who had died on a mountainside many years before — murdered. It was, indirectly, the reason Magnus and Ingileif had met.
‘Yeah,’ Ingileif said. ‘We must be going. We’re off to meet Hannes; he works along here.’
‘Hannes?’
‘My husband.’
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten.’
Ingileif smiled quickly and pulled her son down the street. The little boy twisted to look at Magnus again, and then, feeling the tug on his arm from his mother, turned away.
Back at the station some progress had been made. They now had the call history and location of every call Carlotta had made while she was in Iceland. There were not many of them. There were only two Icelandic numbers: Einar and the hotel in Blönduós in which she had stayed. There was a US number and texts to and from a couple of Italian numbers, which the Italian police would check out. She had made no calls, even to Einar, on the day of her death; they had all been made from Reykjavík in the few days before.
They also had a more limited analysis of where Eygló’s phone had been on the night of Carlotta’s murder. It had never left Saudárkrókur after eight o’clock.
Magnus handed over Einar’s laptop and phone to Computer Forensics, who would mirror it and return it to him, before analysing it. Forensics had checked the tyre prints of Einar’s RAV4, and they didn’t correspond with those found on the farm track where the girl on the bike had seen the man get into his car.
Sergeant Tacchini had reported back. He had driven to Padua himself and spoken to a number of Carlotta’s friends there, including a former boyfriend. Naturally, they were devastated to hear about her death. A couple of close girlfriends had heard of Einar, but knew little about him except that he was an Icelandic archaeology professor and that Carlotta was very keen on him. They knew about the discovery of the wampum in Greenland, but Carlotta didn’t seem to have told anyone about the Columbus letter. Her friends said she had been excited about the trip to Iceland; they put it down to seeing Einar again.
Her supervisor spoke highly of Carlotta. She had always been enthusiastic about the Vikings — she had been the only undergraduate from Padua to go on the dig to Greenland, and the only graduate to go to Sweden. The supervisor had never heard Carlotta speak about Einar Thorsteinsson, and indeed had never heard of him herself.
There was no sign of any enemies in Padua, or of any involvement in drugs or any other criminal activity. No one could think why anyone would want to kill their friend.
The university bureaucracy were still waiting for the appropriate authorizations from a judge to release details of Carlotta’s email account, but through her friends Tacchini was able to forward screenshots of Carlotta’s posts on her Facebook page going back several years. Vigdís started working through them. Magnus gave Tacchini the two Italian numbers Carlotta had texted, and Tacchini promised to check them out.
Árni called to say that the Akureyri police had had a breakthrough in the rape case, and had just made an arrest — a thirty-one-year-old hospital porter named Gudni Fridriksson. They would ask the suspect about Carlotta, and his whereabouts on the night Carlotta was murdered.
Vigdís followed up with the British police and the London hotel, who promised to get back to her within twenty-four hours. Icelandair confirmed that Rósa had indeed flown from Keflavík out to Heathrow on Sunday evening.
A man from the Italian Embassy showed up, demanding on behalf of Carlotta’s parents to know how the investigation was going. Magnus told him there were still plenty of leads to follow, trying to project a calm confidence he didn’t quite feel, but it seemed to satisfy the diplomat.
Árni and his team were busy interviewing tourists, in particular Italian tourists, in the area of Saudárkrókur, but without any success. There were no more leads from locals at Glaumbaer either.
They weren’t yet stuck, but they were heading that way.
Twenty-Seven
Eygló got back to her tiny apartment in Kópavogur just before six, in time to make Bjarki his dinner. Bjarki was playing Football Manager; he had ditched Fifa, which had been his favourite computer game for years. He said Football Manager was more of a challenge, but it seemed less sociable than the other game.
Eygló had given up trying to ration gaming time years ago. Bjarki always seemed to get his homework done one way or another. He was actually doing quite well at school.
‘Hi!’ she shouted.
‘Hi!’ he replied, his gaze never leaving the screen. He was a little small for his age, slim and quick, and pretty good at football, which was still what seemed to matter at his age.
‘So I hear that Arsenal guy is going to Chelsea?’
‘He’ll never do that,’ Bjarki said. ‘He wants to play for Liverpool — at least he’ll get a place in the team with us. I just hope we don’t overpay like we did for that Egyptian guy from Roma. What we need now is a really good defender.’
Eygló didn’t argue; on matters to do with the valuation of soccer players, Bjarki was the undisputed king. It was comforting to know that if he ever screwed up his exams and failed to get to university, at least he could still become the manager of an English Premier League football club.
She thought of asking him how school had been, or his stay with her sister Andrea while she had been away, but there was no point. And she knew from her sister that he had been fine. He would be staying with her other sister, Soffía, for the next ten days while Eygló was in Greenland. That would be fine also: there were two younger cousins who idolized Bjarki, and Soffía thought he was a good influence on them.
Eygló owed her sisters, big time.
She grabbed some sausages out of the fridge and started to make a salad.