He was on his laptop when she called him up on Skype. She recognized his cousin’s bookshelf behind his head, lined with thick volumes of Harry Potter in Icelandic.
‘Hi, Mum. Did you see that guy didn’t go to Chelsea after all? He’s coming to Liverpool! What did I tell you?’
‘No, I missed that,’ said Eygló, smiling broadly. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? I haven’t had a chance to watch much news here.’
‘You’ve got keep up, Mum,’ said Bjarki. ‘We still need a defender, though, probably two, and there’s not much time until the transfer window closes. I’m worried we’re buying too many midfielders.’
‘That could be a problem.’
‘I wonder if they ever play Football Manager? They would make so much better decisions if they did.’
For a wonderful ten minutes, Eygló was immersed in Bjarki’s world, which was almost entirely one of football. He didn’t ask about Greenland once. Ordinarily, Eygló would have been a little put out by her son’s lack of interest in her life, but not just then.
There was a knock at her door. ‘I have to go, darling,’ she said. ‘Goodnight. Speak to you tomorrow.’
‘’Night, Mum.’
She closed Skype and, still smiling, walked across her bedroom and opened the door.
Then, and only then, did she remember she shouldn’t have. Because there was Tom.
She tried to shut the door in his face, but he was too quick. Within a couple of seconds, he was in her room with the door closed behind him.
She stepped back. Why the hell had she let him in? She should have stopped for a moment to think who would be knocking on her door at ten o’clock at night. Talking to Bjarki had lowered her guard.
‘Leave, Tom. I didn’t invite you in here.’
Tom was wearing a grey T-shirt and shorts. He wasn’t tall, but he was taller than Eygló. And he had muscles — large biceps and rippling hairy forearms. She knew he was strong: she had seen him lugging around prodigious amounts of equipment.
Tom took a step towards her. She took two steps back.
‘The cops have discovered it was all a hoax,’ he said.
‘I know. They told me.’
‘How did they know that?”
‘Uh. I think the old lady’s granddaughter told them.’
‘And why do you think that that Icelandic cop Magnus asked her about it?’
Eygló swallowed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘When he interviewed me this afternoon he said he had had reason to suspect the wampum was a fake. Now, why would he think that?’
Eygló opened her mouth to scream, but Tom was quick. She found herself pinned against the wall, with his hand over her mouth. ‘No screaming. No screaming, Eygló, or I hurt you.’
Eygló could feel the rough strength of Tom’s hand against her face, his fingers on her cheeks. His blue eyes were ablaze with anger. His nostrils flared millimetres away from her face, and she noticed a tiny spot of snot stuck to a hair sticking out where it shouldn’t. This close up she could see that Tom had suffered from acne when he was a kid, and he hadn’t shaved for a day or two. Droplets of stale beer tickled her nostrils.
‘OK, if I let you go, will you keep quiet?’
Eygló didn’t answer.
‘Well?’ He tightened his grip on her mouth.
She was terrified. What would he do to her? She nodded.
He pushed her on to the bed and stood over her.
‘You spoke to that American policeman in Iceland, didn’t you?’ he demanded.
She tried to answer, but she couldn’t. He looked furious. What would he do to her?
She had to answer. She nodded again.
‘Why?’ It wasn’t exactly a shout, more of an urgent growl. ‘I told you what would happen if you spoke to the cops.’
He had. Oh, God, he had.
Wait a minute. Eygló’s brain cleared. What was he going to do to her?
She tried to say something.
‘What?’
She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘You didn’t kill Carlotta, did you?’
This threw Tom for a moment. ‘I could have done.’
‘No you couldn’t,’ said Eygló, sensing a chink in what she was beginning to realize was Tom’s bravado. ‘Very few people kill other people. At least not these days.’ They had in Viking times, she had to admit, if only to herself. If they were in a saga, she would indeed be dead now. But they were not. They were in a hotel room in the twenty-first century and Tom was a cameraman, not a gangster.
‘I warned you,’ said Tom. ‘I told you that if this series gets pulled, Suzy will go to the wall. I’m not prepared to let that happen.’
‘What is it with you and Suzy, Tom?’
Tom’s face flushed under his beard. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? There’s nothing between us. I’ve known Suzy a long time; we just look after each other, that’s all.’
‘Well, it’s happened, Tom,’ said Eygló. ‘This little town is crawling with cops. If you hurt me, I’ll tell them and you’ll end up in jail.’
‘No you won’t.’
‘Yes I will.’ Eygló held his eyes. She would tell them if he touched her. And now she knew and he knew he wasn’t going to hurt her.
‘Sit down, Tom.’ She nodded towards the only chair in the room, tucked under a desk.
Tom hesitated, and then pulled out the chair and sat on it.
‘This is going to be really bad for all of us. But the problem isn’t that the hoax has been discovered: that was always going to happen. The problem is that we believed it in the first place. That’s Einar, that’s me, that’s Professor Idiot Beccari. And that’s Suzy. That’s why we’re in this mess. Because we all made a mistake. A big mistake.’
‘I never believed any of it,’ said Tom.
‘Then why didn’t you say anything?’ said Eygló. ‘Why didn’t you tell Suzy what you thought?’
Tom didn’t answer, but he reddened.
‘You can keep up your silent, brooding jungle-man pretence if you want, but then you have to take responsibility for what happens when you don’t speak up. Don’t you?’
Tom’s blush deepened. He breathed in through those flared nostrils. He was listening.
‘Look, I’m really sorry for the mess Suzy is in. I hope she finds a way out of it. But I’m not sorry I tipped off Magnus. It would all be so much worse if this came out when the programmes aired.’
‘If you had only—’
‘No, Tom,’ said Eygló gently. ‘No. They would have uncovered it anyway. Or someone would have done.’
That was too much for Tom. He glared at Eygló, stood up and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Forty-Four
A police car picked up Magnus from his hotel just before eight o’clock the following morning, and drove him down the hill to the police station. It was only about a quarter of a mile, and Magnus would rather have walked.
The sunshine of the previous day had gone, and a low cloud was pressing down on the mountaintops above the little town. But despite the gloom, Qaqortoq had a jolly appearance, certainly much jollier than its Icelandic counterparts. Unlike an Icelandic fishing village with its houses of white and grey concrete or metal siding, the houses here were made of a brightly coloured imported wood: mostly red, but also blue and yellow. A harbour was dominated by the shape of the mighty cruise liner and its almost-as-mighty pet iceberg.
The car drove down to a small square with a silent fountain in its centre and an old low wooden building, similar to the Pakkhúsid in Ólafsvík, guarding the corner next to the water. This, it transpired, was the police station.