‘And what did she say?’
‘To be fair to her, she was upset. She understood. I asked her what she was planning to do, and she said she would leave it up to me. She said she was very sorry; it was her duty to tell me what she had done, but it was up to me to decide what to do. She would keep quiet.’
‘And you decided to ignore it all, and carry on making the film?’
Suzy nodded. ‘Basically, yes. What choice did I have?’
‘Didn’t you think it would come out eventually?’
‘It might have done. But as long as I had been paid I would survive. And maybe I would seem like the innocent victim, as long as Nancy kept quiet. I am an innocent victim.’
‘“As long as Nancy kept quiet”?’ Magnus said. ‘She’s quiet now.’
‘Oh no,’ said Suzy, her voice gaining strength. ‘I know what you are doing now. You’re going to blame me for killing her!’
‘Did you?’ said Magnus.
‘No! No way.’
‘Where were you between nine a.m. and eleven on Friday morning?’
Suzy paused. ‘That was the morning we flew here, wasn’t it? I met up with the others at our hotel. The Centrum in Reykjavík. We met at eight-thirty for breakfast to discuss what we were going to do in Greenland. We talked for about three hours. Then we went back to our rooms and packed, and I got a taxi with Tom and Ajay to the City Airport. We got there a bit over an hour before the flight left — just after twelve-thirty I would guess.’
Magnus did some calculations. Kelly had first knocked on Nancy’s door at about eleven that morning. The Hótel Centrum was near the Parliament downtown, about a kilometre away from Nancy’s hotel in Thingholt. If the others confirmed Suzy’s story, then Suzy hadn’t killed Nancy. And it did agree with what Einar had told him.
‘The hotel staff at the Centrum would remember it,’ Suzy said. ‘We kind of took over the dining room.’
‘What about Einar?’
‘Einar wasn’t there. I had asked him to come along, but he didn’t show up. He sent me a text saying he had things to do. I was pissed off with him and told him so.’
‘Had you told anyone else about what Nancy had said about the hoax?’
‘No.’
‘Einar? Eygló? Professor Beccari?’
‘No. None of them. And certainly not Beccari. Eygló had had some suspicions in Nantucket; she had spoken to Nancy Fishburn’s granddaughter who had had some doubts about the wampum, but I managed to convince Eygló that they were blown out of proportion.’
‘Did you have your own doubts?’
‘I was worried, yes. But I couldn’t afford to have doubts.’
She turned away from Magnus and stared at a poster on the wall showing a brightly coloured map of Denmark, with a piglet grinning at its centre. Her shoulders slumped.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s the end of Moorhen Productions. It’s all over.’
She pursed her lips. ‘This is going to be a nightmare. I’m going to have to call my husband. I deserve it, though. When Nancy told me it was all a hoax I should have called the whole thing off right then. Then maybe she would still be alive.’ She paused. ‘Who do you think killed her? And what has Rósa’s death got to do with this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. ‘But I will find out.’
Magnus spoke to Tom next and then Eygló. Tom was surly and uncommunicative, beyond confirming that he, Suzy, Eygló and Ajay had met at the Hótel Centrum the morning Nancy was killed.
Eygló was distraught to hear that Nancy had been killed. ‘I really liked her,’ she said. ‘She was very smart and her book on Gudrid is great. Who did it?’
Everyone had the same question. Magnus didn’t have the answer.
Eygló was also devastated to hear that the letter and the wampum were fakes, although — as Magnus knew — she had suspected it.
Last up was Ajay. He had less at stake in the success of The Wanderer than the others, but he was overwhelmed by the murders taking place around him. He corroborated the others’ story about the Friday morning meeting, but as Magnus dismissed him, he hesitated.
‘What is it, Ajay?’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said. ‘But when we were filming in Iceland, I overheard Tom talking to Eygló. We were carrying our equipment back to the vehicle, and she joined us. It sounded to me like he was threatening her.’
‘Threatening her?’ said Magnus. ‘Threatening her how?’
Ajay repeated what he had heard: Tom warning Eygló that the filming of this documentary was vital to Suzy, and that Eygló should keep her mouth shut. Or else what had happened to Carlotta might happen to her.
‘Did Tom ever talk about Rósa?’
‘No, I don’t think so. In fact, I never saw him speak to her. He isn’t very talkative.’
‘I’ve noticed,’ said Magnus. ‘You didn’t think to tell us this before?’
‘No,’ said Ajay, looking unhappy. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m a bit scared of Tom myself. Could he have killed Carlotta?’
Forty-Two
Magnus returned to the hotel and found himself a nice bench on a little deck outside, ordered a beer, and watched the sun set. It was cool, but the sky was still clear, and he was wearing his coat. The brown, dusty runway stretched out in front of him, and behind that the fjord slunk southwards, a thoughtful milky blue. Magnus was fascinated by the stately icebergs lined up in its central channel, drifting oh-so-slowly up towards the head of the fjord. Which seemed to be the wrong direction: maybe they were being pushed somehow by the glacier disgorging them into the neighbouring fjord, or maybe it was the wind or the tide. The bergs were a subtle mix of gleaming, slippery white and translucent blue. One looked like a sculpture of a motorboat, and another was in the shape of a fist with its middle finger raised towards Erik the Red’s farm at Brattahlíd on the far shore.
Or maybe it was raised at Magnus, the modern Icelandic interloper.
Magnus didn’t feel the euphoria of a case closed. Although Paulsen was doing all the right things, they weren’t there yet. Einar looked a broken man: in the space of a week he had lost his lover, his wife and, when the hoax was made public, his career. At this point Magnus couldn’t tell if it was grief or remorse that was crushing him, but he suspected that if Einar had killed Rósa, he would soon confess. Maybe Paulsen was coaxing a confession at that very moment.
Magnus frowned. Maybe not.
As for Nancy’s murder, it looked as if Einar had no alibi, and it was quite possible Rósa didn’t either — Vigdís was checking. It was most likely that one or other of them had killed Nancy, having found out somehow that she was going to blow the whistle on the hoax. If Einar confessed to Rósa’s murder, he may well tell the police which of the two of them had killed Nancy.
But there were a lot of loose ends. It didn’t quite make sense.
‘Hi.’ Magnus turned to see Eygló holding a large glass of wine. ‘May I join you?’
‘Sure.’
She sat down. She looked out over the water towards Brattahlíd. ‘Is that iceberg giving us the finger?’
‘I was wondering that myself.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. You know, I was really looking forward to coming to Greenland, but I think this will be my last time. This has been a shitty week.’
Eygló looked very small as she sat hunched up in her jacket opposite him, small and pale. And yet there was a toughness there that was absent from Einar.