‘OK, I’ll do that. Did you see our suspects get on the plane to Greenland?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Magnus. ‘Plus one other. Rósa.’
‘Rósa? Didn’t you stop her?’
‘I couldn’t, not without arresting her. She is a lawyer; she knows the rules.’
‘What the hell was she doing?’
‘She says she needs to spend time with her husband. It’s been a difficult few days for them. It’s just about plausible.’
‘Huh!’ said Vigdís. ‘Oh, by the way. Thelma wants to see you.’
Magnus met Thelma in the corridor, walking rapidly towards her office with that unique gait of hers. It wasn’t exactly a limp, more a flick as she propelled her artificial left leg in front of her right, giving her a slight roll, as if she was on the deck of a ship. She could do it at an impressive speed, and indeed she didn’t usually waste much time going from A to B.
She took her place behind her desk. ‘How is the Carlotta case going?’
Magnus repeated what Árni had told him about the Italian tourist in Dalvík.
Thelma seemed pleased. ‘Are you going back to Saudárkrókur, then?’
‘Maybe,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ll see how Árni gets on.’
‘And you let Einar and Eygló get on the plane to Greenland?’
‘I saw them off at the airport. They are in the air right now.’
‘Good,’ said Thelma. ‘If the Akureyri suspect firms up, we would have looked bad keeping them here.’
‘I still think Einar is involved somehow,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m just not sure how.’
‘Keep me informed. And I want a word with you about that guy you mentioned yesterday, Tryggvi Thór.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I asked around. It turns out he was thrown out of the police in 1996 for corruption.’
‘I know, I looked at his file. There is very little in it apart from that the charges against him were dropped.’
‘Yes, they dropped the charges, but he was as guilty as hell. They didn’t want a court case because it would have looked bad. But he was drummed out and it was suggested that he leave the country. I hear he went to Africa.’
‘And came back last year.’
‘I also hear that he lives in Álftanes, and that you are his new lodger.’
How the hell did she know that?
‘He was the old man who was attacked on Tuesday,’ Magnus said. ‘I met him then and he offered me a place to stay until I am sorted.’
‘Haven’t you found somewhere yet? You’ve been here a month.’
‘I did, but it fell through.’
‘Well, I suggest that you don’t stay with a bent cop, especially not Tryggvi Thór. It doesn’t look good.’
Magnus raised his eyebrows. Thelma was watching him steadily. She meant it; it was a warning.
Maybe she was right. Cops don’t like bent cops; Magnus certainly didn’t. He had come across a couple in Boston, had a bad run-in with one of them. The question was: Was Tryggvi Thór really a bent cop? It was a question Magnus didn’t have the time to answer.
‘Did you tell Thelma I was staying with Tryggvi Thór?’ Magnus asked Vigdís when he had escaped Thelma’s office.
‘No.’
‘I wonder who did. She’s just warned me off him.’
‘Bloody typical. Poking her nose into your personal life. What right has she to say who you live with?’
Magnus had forgotten how much Vigdís didn’t like Thelma.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Magnus.
‘Novel approach.’
‘There is definitely something wrong with the Nantucket theory.’
‘Oh, Magnús! Don’t tell me. You stayed up late last night reading The Saga of the Clueless Viking and discovered Gudrid and Thorfinn actually landed on the South Pole.’
‘No, listen, Vigdís. I’m serious.’
‘OK,’ said Vigdís. ‘I’m listening.’
Magnus repeated what Eygló had told him at the airport.
Vigdís was doubtful. ‘If Suzy checked it out and the girl said it was a joke, it was probably a joke.’
‘Yes, but Nancy Fishburn wrote a book about Gudrid. And she just happens to live on Nantucket. And she visited the place in Greenland where the wampum connecting Gudrid to Nantucket was found.’
‘If she’s a fan of Gudrid, it’s not surprising she went to Greenland,’ said Vigdís. ‘The only coincidence is that she lives in Nantucket herself. And I’m not sure that’s that big a coincidence.’
‘How’s this for a coincidence? Carlotta found the wampum. Carlotta was working on the Columbus letter. Carlotta is now dead.’
Vigdís was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘Let’s say this old lady cooked up a hoax. So what?’
‘It would be bad news for the people making the documentary: Einar, Eygló and Suzy. It would be a public humiliation.’
‘Maybe. But would that be enough for them to murder someone? I mean, they would have to cancel the documentary. They might lose some money. But bad things like that happen to people all the time and they don’t kill for it. None of them seems unbalanced: a bit intense maybe, a bit stressed, but not killers. Plus, they all have alibis for that night, don’t they? They were in Saudárkrókur eating dinner together.’
Vigdís shook her head. ‘I think it has something to do with Rósa and Einar. It’s a classic love triangle gone wrong. Jealous girlfriend, jealous wife, scheming husband.’
‘You yourself said they all have alibis. Look, it’s a lead,’ said Magnus. ‘And someone needs to follow it up. I’d like to talk to her.’
‘Good luck getting Thelma’s approval for you to fly to Nantucket,’ said Vigdís. ‘That really would be a wild goose chase.’
Vigdís was right. ‘I know, I know. But I’ll see if I can get a detective there to ask questions.’
Magnus didn’t know any police officers in Nantucket himself, but he made some calls to his former colleagues in Boston, and was soon speaking to a detective in the Nantucket PD, who agreed to go out to Siasconset and interview Nancy Fishburn.
That evening, back at Tryggvi Thór’s house in Álftanes, Magnus pulled down The Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Erik the Red from his collection and read them through.
When he came to the descriptions of the mysterious lagoon at Hóp, Magnus recalled the pond in the footage from the TV documentary. Even if it turned out that Gudrid, Thorfinn and their crew had not landed there, there was still some similar lagoon somewhere along the north-east coast of North America that they had visited a thousand years ago. Magnus marvelled at the idea of a handful of Europeans clinging on to the edge of a vast continent in ad 1000.
Gudrid really was an extraordinary woman. To have journeyed so far and seen so much of the world, so long ago. She had travelled from Iceland to America and back again. Magnus had travelled from America to Iceland and back. And now he was trying to put down roots in Iceland for the second time.
Gudrid had been married three times, and had given birth to her own son in a foreign land. Magnus might have a son in Iceland, then again he might not. It was all probably a result of Vigdís’s lively imagination. And even if Ási was Magnus’s son, would Ingileif acknowledge the fact? Magnus hoped she would. Part of him hoped too that it might bring them back together; perhaps she still cared for him?
Magnus sighed and closed his book.
He and Ingileif were not good for each other; he knew that now.
Thirty-Three
Tryggvi Thór pulled out into the centre of the road and overtook four tourist busses in a row ahead. Four! All heading to the Blue Lagoon, and it was still only nine o’clock in the morning. He was on the road to Grindavík from Reykjavík, seeking isolation. On either side stretched the barren black lavascape of the Reykjanes peninsula, scored with treacherous gullies and crevasses where baked stone had cooled and cracked, Ahead a pillar of steam rose from the power station that fed the artificial lagoon.