He opened his eyes. He was cold, and his head hurt. Again. His face was pressed hard on to cold stone, a rough edge biting into his cheek.
With an enormous effort he commanded his neck muscles to lift his head a centimetre and his brain exploded in pain. He let his head fall again on the stone.
He could see the gaping entrance to the half-submerged stone dwelling from where his attacker must have pounced. Behind it a deep white cloak of fog smothered everything.
He had to move. No one would come this way, especially not in this weather. So much for his idea of escaping the tourists. There were all kinds of places he could have gone for a walk where a gaggle of Chinese tourists and their guide would have found him. But not here. Not at Selatangar.
He tried again to heave himself to his feet. He tried three times, and finally he was standing, one hand clasping the stone wall of the hovel.
He felt dizzy and he felt nauseous.
He took one step along the path back to the car park.
He took another.
Then he collapsed.
Thirty-Four
Magnus woke that morning to find an email from the Nantucket detective. He had visited Nancy Fishburn’s house in Siasconset, but she was not at home. Her next-door neighbour said she was away on vacation with her granddaughter.
In Iceland.
That was interesting. It looked as if he would have a chance to speak to her himself after all.
He and Vigdís dialled up Saudárkrókur for the morning case meeting. The news from the north was not encouraging. The Italian tourist, Dario Anzalone, was in the police station at Saudárkrókur protesting his innocence and doing it convincingly. He claimed he had been out late that night trying to catch the northern lights — tricky in August — and that he always looked wound up. He was certainly behaving like a wound-up kind of guy. More to the point, he was travelling around Iceland by bus, so he had no independent means of transport to get him all the way from Dalvík to Glaumbaer and back in the late evening. The police had been unable to identify any connection between Carlotta and Anzalone, but they were still working on it.
Magnus told the others about Nancy Fishburn being in Iceland; none of them sounded much interested by the news. Magnus could feel that they didn’t think the subject of the documentary had much relevance to Carlotta’s death. But they were professionals; they knew every lead had to be followed up. And Magnus was the boss.
Magnus and Vigdís got to work on the hotels. It didn’t take long. Within twenty minutes Vigdís had something.
‘Good and bad news,’ she said.
‘You’ve found Nancy Fishburn?’
‘Yes. But she’s dead.’
It took Magnus and Vigdís five minutes to get to the hotel. The manager met them in the lobby and took them through to his office, where he explained that the old lady had died in her sleep the day before. He was a neat man in his late thirties, with close-cropped fair hair. He looked competent: concerned, rather than distraught.
‘Did the district medical officer see her?’ Magnus asked
‘Yes. Right away. He pronounced her dead. An ambulance came and took her away. To the morgue presumably.’
‘So he didn’t spot anything suspicious?’
‘No. I saw her myself. She was lying on her bed, fully clothed. She was in her eighties; her granddaughter said she had been feeling ill. Elderly tourists die sometimes. Exactly like this.’
‘Didn’t it strike you it was odd she was fully clothed?’
The manager shrugged. ‘No. She had been dressed when she came down to breakfast with her granddaughter. She was having a lie-down afterwards.’
‘Any signs of a struggle? Bruises on her skin? Had the furniture been moved?’
‘Not that I noticed.’
‘Has the room been cleaned yet?’
‘Yes. But no one stayed in it last night. It will be booked for tonight, though.’
Damn. There would still be plenty for forensics to work on, but the most obvious evidence would have been tidied up or taken to the laundry.
‘Cancel the booking. The room is now a crime scene.’
‘A crime scene! What, you think she was murdered?’
‘I think she might have been.’
The manager winced. Magnus could see what he was thinking. Murders might add a frisson of excitement for the guests, but they were not good for business.
Tough.
‘Is her granddaughter still here?’
‘Yes. I think she’s in her room now. Her father is flying in tomorrow to sort things out.’
‘Can I speak to her?’
As the manager went to fetch the girl, Magnus instructed Vigdís to get on to headquarters for reinforcements to establish a crime scene, and to the morgue to get the autopsy done as soon as possible. She should warn the forensic pathologist to look for any sign of homicide when he did the autopsy.
‘It could be a natural death,’ said Vigdís tentatively.
‘I know,’ said Magnus. ‘But we need to work on the assumption that it isn’t.’
Magnus met Nancy’s granddaughter in the manager’s office. Kelly Fishburn looked younger than her twenty-one years, short, blonde, with chubby pale cheeks and red eyes. She seemed briefly comforted by Magnus’s familiar American accent, but that only lasted a few moments, once she heard why he wanted to see her.
‘You really think Grammy was murdered?’
‘We are not certain, but we think so, yes.’
‘But why? Like, who would do something like that? Nothing was stolen, was it?’
‘We think it may have something to do with the TV documentary being made about Gudrid the Wanderer. Do you know anything about that?’
Magnus could see from Kelly’s expression she did know something.
‘Kelly?’
‘Oh! I know Grammy wouldn’t want me to tell anyone.’
‘You have to, Kelly. She’s dead. We need to find out why.’
‘And you really think it might have something to do with her death?’
‘An Italian tourist was murdered a few days ago in the north of the country. On the same day and at the same place as the TV crew were filming.’
‘Oh my God! I saw that on the Reykjavík Grapevine.’ The Reykjavik Grapevine was an English-language website and newspaper.
‘We believe she met your grandmother in Nantucket last year, with an Icelandic archaeologist. So, yes, I do think they might be connected.’
‘OK.’ Kelly took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I do know about that documentary. That’s why we came to Iceland: so Grammy could meet with the TV crew.’
She told Magnus what Nancy had said about the wampum in Greenland and the Columbus letter being a hoax, and how Nancy had brought Kelly to Iceland with her to try to straighten things out, although she had told Kelly at the time they were just going for a vacation.
‘Do you know who specifically your grandmother was meeting on Thursday morning in Snaefellsnes?’
‘No. She didn’t say. I did speak with Eygló the presenter myself in Nantucket after she had interviewed Grammy a couple of weeks ago. I told her my dad had thought that maybe Grammy had planted the wampum herself. But I was like, it’s a joke; I thought it was a joke.’
‘Do you know what whoever your grandmother met was planning to do with the information?’
‘It sounded like they were going to ignore it.’
‘Really?’ Magnus’s eyebrows shot up. ‘And your grandmother was going to let them?’
Kelly squirmed in shame, presumably on the old lady’s behalf. ‘Yes. She said it was their call. I guess she was relieved it wasn’t going to come out.’