‘And you? What did you think?’
Kelly hesitated. ‘Well, she was wrong, wasn’t she? They were all wrong. But it wasn’t up to me. She swore me to secrecy.’
‘Why did she tell you?’
‘She said someone needed to know. Someone young. She didn’t actually say it, but I know she didn’t want to die without passing the secret on. She was very old — eighty-seven, I think. In some ways I was flattered she told me. But actually I wish I’d never known. And now I’ve told you.’
‘You had to,’ said Magnus gently. ‘You didn’t have any choice.’
Kelly nodded unhappily.
‘Did Nancy ever mention Carlotta Mondini?’
‘She was the tourist who was murdered?’
Magnus nodded.
‘No. I told her what I had seen on the news site at dinner the night we got back here. She said that Glaumbaer was where Gudrid ended up in Iceland, but I didn’t really make any connection with the documentary.’
‘Did she?’
‘I don’t know.’ Kelly thought for a moment. ‘Maybe. She went quiet, come to think of it. And actually, when she told me about the Icelandic archaeologist tracking her down last year, I think she said he had an assistant with him. Was that her? ’
‘Probably.’
Magnus asked more questions about Kelly’s conversation with Eygló in Nantucket, about the timing of Nancy’s meeting at the Hótel Búdir in Snaefellsnes, and what she and Nancy had done the morning of Nancy’s death. Kelly suggested that it was possible Nancy had been trying to get her out of the way while Nancy met someone; after all that was what she had done in Snaefellsnes.
The someone who may have killed her.
Kelly had no idea who that someone might be.
Magnus finished with Kelly and emerged from the manager’s office into a hotel buzzing with policemen. He went up to Nancy’s room, which was already crawling with Edda’s people under the bright lights they had set up. There was plenty to do; staff and guests had to be questioned to see if they had seen anything strange or had recognized Einar or any others of the TV crew. Nancy had died a couple of hours before the crew would have checked in at the City Airport for their flight to Greenland.
Magnus spoke to the district medical officer on the phone, who confirmed he hadn’t noticed anything suspicious, but who sounded understandably embarrassed that he had missed something and should have called the police.
Magnus then called the forensic pathologist, Gudjón, directly, asking him to look for signs of asphyxia or needle punctures, which were the two least visible methods of killing. Internal bleeding from a blow or straightforward poisoning might also be hard to spot initially, but would show up clearly in a thorough autopsy. Gudjón said he would set to work within the hour.
It was at times like this Magnus appreciated the Icelanders’ willingness to get on with things.
Magnus was still at the hotel when Gudjón called back three hours later.
‘Asphyxia,’ he said. ‘No obvious sign of the cause, but given it’s a bedroom, we can assume a pillow over her face.’
It was what Magnus had expected. Smothering with a pillow was the classic MO to murder an old person. They were often not strong enough to resist, and, as in Nancy’s case, the result was a dead elderly victim who looked as if she had expired in her sleep.
‘Any sign of a struggle?’
‘None that I can see. And I’ve looked pretty closely.’
‘Could the body have been moved?’
‘You mean: Was the victim smothered elsewhere in the room and moved to the bed?’
‘That’s what I was thinking.’ If Nancy met someone in her room, she would have been more likely to be sitting in the chair than on her bed.
‘Hard to say. There are no signs of it, but it’s possible if it was done gently.’
‘OK, thanks, Gudjón.’
‘I’ll write up my report when I get the toxicology results back. And I’ll call you if I find anything else of interest.’
There was no doubt about it. Nancy Fishburn had been murdered.
Thirty-Five
Magnus returned to headquarters to report to Thelma. The short drive back from the hotel gave him a welcome few minutes of peace to think. There must be a link between Carlotta’s death and Nancy Fishburn’s. He didn’t yet know whether Carlotta had discovered that the whole Nantucket Viking thing was a hoax, or how. But assuming she had, who would suffer enough from her discovery to kill her? And then to kill Nancy Fishburn?
Einar? Eygló? Suzy Henshaw? They would all bear some loss if the project fell through. But enough to kill for?
And which one of them had met Nancy and decided to go ahead with the documentary regardless? Or was it all of them?
Magnus needed to speak to them, but they were all in Greenland.
Vigdís was waiting for him. He could tell she had something.
‘What is it?’
‘I was thinking about Rósa,’ Vigdís said. ‘You know I haven’t been happy about her and Einar?’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘I remembered that the confirmation from Icelandair only explicitly mentioned that Rósa had taken the flight out to London.’
‘OK.’
‘So yesterday I asked them to check the return flight. They got back to me just now, and it turns out that although Rósa had checked in online the evening before, she didn’t show. She wasn’t on the plane.’
‘Did she get an earlier flight?’ Magnus’s heartbeat quickened.
‘Not with Icelandair, no. But I checked with WOW air and she got a flight first thing on Monday morning from Gatwick Airport with them. It arrived at Keflavík at ten-thirty.’
‘Plenty of time to get to Glaumbaer for the evening.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Check the cameras at Hvalfjördur,’ Magnus said. Hvalfjördur was a deep fjord on the Ring Road from Reykjavík to the north. It was a bottleneck, only possible to avoid with a hundred-kilometre detour. There was a tunnel under the fjord, and a camera at the exit, recording every car that drove through.
Einar, Eygló and now Rósa. They were all in Greenland together.
Magnus had to go to Greenland; they couldn’t wait for them all to return to Iceland.
Thelma was unhappy about the cost, but she accepted there was no choice, especially when Magnus pointed out that the reason all their suspects were out of the country was that the Ministers of Culture and Justice had leaned on Thelma to let them go.
Getting to Greenland was not easy. The next direct flight from Reykjavík didn’t leave for a couple of days, and Magnus couldn’t wait that long. So he booked himself on to a flight to Copenhagen that evening, and another from there to Narsarsuaq in Greenland in the morning.
Álftanes was on the way to Keflavík Airport. Magnus grabbed an overnight bag and left a note for Tryggvi Thór, who was out.
He was at the gate, standing in line to board, when his phone rang.
‘Vigdís?’
‘I’m glad I caught you. We’ve just heard back on the Hvalfjördur cameras. Rósa’s car came through the tunnel at one-seventeen p.m. on Monday afternoon. One occupant. And then it returned heading south at four-thirty-seven a.m. on Tuesday morning.’
‘Well done, Vigdís!’
That put Rósa very much in the frame.
‘And there is something else.’
‘Yes?’
‘Tryggvi Thór was found unconscious again. At Selatangar, along the coast from Grindavík. He was lucky, a French tourist stumbled on him in the fog.’
‘Was he attacked?’
‘We don’t know yet; he might well have fallen. It looks as if he had gone for a hike there. Róbert is at the hospital checking it out.’
The queue for boarding was shuffling forward and Magnus was getting very close to the gate.