She sighed. ‘It was too good to be true.’
‘What?’
‘These documentaries. My new life. You know, I thought I was good at it.’
‘You are good at it,’ said Magnus.
Eygló shook her head. ‘I’m just a talking head. A blonde talking head. A short blonde talking head.’
‘No. No!’ Magnus was surprised at the vehemence of his insistence. ‘You really get what it was like to be a Viking a thousand years ago. And you make it seem fascinating; and important. I was glued to Viking Queens.’
Eygló smiled. ‘Yeah. But you are a bit of a history nerd, aren’t you, Inspector Magnús?’
Magnus grinned. ‘OK, that’s true. But that means I know a bit about it. I’m your target audience. And you hooked me.’
Eygló looked as if she was about to make some barbed comment, but then she smiled shyly. ‘Thanks.’
‘So don’t give it up.’
‘I’ll have no choice. Suzy will go bankrupt. Everyone will know Einar and I fell for a hoax, and I’ll never get any job related to archaeology in Iceland again.’
‘Can’t you try your luck in Britain?’
‘After Brexit? They probably wouldn’t let me in. And the States won’t be any easier these days.’
‘Don’t give up, Eygló.’
Eygló sipped her wine. ‘At least I’ll still have Bjarki. And he will still have Liverpool Football Club.’
‘Is Bjarki your son?’
‘Yeah. He’s eleven. He’s a straightforward guy. You can rely on him.’
‘Lucky you,’ Magnus said.
‘Yeah. Do you have children, Magnús?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know!’ Eygló raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you know how bad that sounds?’
Magnus grinned sheepishly. ‘Doesn’t sound good, does it?’
‘So what is it? A kid in every port?’
‘Not quite. I saw my ex-girlfriend a few days ago. And she had this little boy with her. Ási.’
‘And she said he was yours?’
‘She hasn’t said anything. I didn’t ask. I didn’t even think about it, but afterwards my partner, Vigdís, said there was a similarity. And the age matches up.’
‘Not much of a detective, are you?’
‘Er. No,’ said Magnus. ‘But Vigdís is pretty good.’
‘So, are you going to talk to her? Your ex?’
‘Do you think I should?’
‘Of course you should! You might be a crap detective, but you’re a lucky man. Seriously, kids might be inconvenient, but when the world treats you like shit, sometimes that’s all you’ve got.’
‘Maybe you’re right. But I think you are underestimating my detection skills.’
‘I’ll rethink that as soon as you finally figure out that Einar didn’t kill Rósa.’
A police car drew up in front of the hotel and Paulsen jumped out. ‘Hey, Magnus, come on!’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Qaqortoq. Bring your bag. We are taking Einar into custody there. And I’d like you to talk to the prosecutor in the morning.’
Forty-Three
It was a dramatic hop from Narsarsuaq to the town of Qaqortoq. The sun had set, but the three-quarters moon had already risen, bathing the rock, water and icebergs in an eerie grey-blue tinge. The great Greenland icecap ran out of steam a few miles north-east of Narsarsuaq, and from there fingers of fjords stretched twenty miles down to the Atlantic. Water and land became a tangle of grey, black and silver, except that everywhere there were shards of ice glinting in the water, some as big as ships. Magnus was fascinated by them.
Paulsen was sitting next to him on the left side of the helicopter facing outwards. Einar was in cuffs on the central seats at the back, wedged between two police officers. Magnus could feel how keyed up Paulsen was by the excitement of the investigation. Magnus was impressed: she seemed to be doing a good job of organizing resources in difficult circumstances. He had been involved in a number of cases in rural Iceland — Carlotta’s murder being a typical example — and they were tricky. Because of the sparseness of the population, and hence the tiny numbers of local police, expertise had to be drafted in from long distances. In Iceland, this often involved much driving; in Greenland it involved helicopters. Lots of them. Thelma would have hated the expense.
But despite Paulsen’s efficiency, or perhaps because of it, Magnus was feeling sidelined. That was fair enough when it came to Rósa’s murder, but not Carlotta’s nor Nancy Fishburn’s. It now looked likely that Rósa had murdered Carlotta in Glaumbaer, but that still had to be properly investigated and evidence gathered; it wasn’t good enough for Paulsen to assume it just because she needed to support her own theory about Rósa’s death.
There were other possibilities. Tom perhaps. Or Einar himself.
But Tom and Einar had alibis for the night of Carlotta’s murder.
What about Suzy? She had supposedly gone to bed with an incipient migraine that evening. She could have driven out to Glaumbaer; she had the keys to the rental car. And she certainly had a motive for shutting Carlotta up if she realized that Carlotta was going to expose the whole documentary as a hoax.
Maybe Suzy. Maybe Suzy and Tom working together?
And then there was Nancy Fishburn’s death. That was still a mystery.
Within twenty minutes, the helicopter scooted up and over a looming mountain to reveal a giant cruise ship glimmering in the moonlight. Right next to it, as if anchored, crouched an iceberg, almost as big, its centre hollowed out by some celestial hand. Little yellow lights spilled over the hillside facing the two vessels.
Qaqortoq.
The helicopter lowered itself on to a helipad jutting out from a rock thirty feet above the sea. As soon as the aircraft touched down, Paulsen grinned at him and undid her seatbelt. Magnus grinned back, but he wasn’t happy to be this far from the investigation.
He could feel the stubbornness kicking in.
When Eygló got back to her room at the hotel in Narsarsuaq, she flopped on to her bed and closed her eyes, her phone lying impotently beside her. Facebook could wait. She had nothing to tell her followers except she was a loser.
Her life was going to be crap again.
Why had she ever thought it would be anything else? Suzy, Viking Queens, The Wanderer, all had seemed too good to be true. And that was because they were. How could she or Einar have ever believed in the wampum? And as for Professor Beccari, if he was such a goddamned all-important genius, he should have figured out that the letter from Christopher Columbus to his brother was a forgery.
It was such a shame! Because the story of Gudrid was a great one anyway, and one she would love to have told. They hadn’t needed the Nantucket angle. They had been greedy: greedy for fame, greedy for the excitement of discovery, the thrill of the new theory. Treasure hunters who had discovered fool’s gold. And all Eygló had really wanted to do was share her love for her heroine with other people. If they had only stuck to that.
Oh, well. She had lived a crap life before. She would live one again.
She was pretty sure Liverpool were in the Champions League that year; maybe they would win it! Eygló smiled. That would make Bjarki happy.
She glanced at the tupilak she had bought him from the hotel gift shop, sitting on her bedside table. It was kind of creepy: a small carving of a Greenlandic monster made from caribou antler. She liked to buy Bjarki little souvenirs from the places she went, and he dutifully lined them up on his bookshelf, but she was having second thoughts about this one. Too creepy.
She threw it in the bin.
She had to speak to him. She just prayed that Rósa’s death hadn’t made it to the RÚV television news yet, or that if it had, Bjarki hadn’t seen it.