Meltwater (36 page)

Baldur knew where this was heading. Sure enough, the Bishop had seduced her, or forced himself on her, Baldur wasn’t sure which, and neither was the girl. He flicked forward through the pages. Much of the rest of the journal was taken up with the details of sex sessions with the Bishop and what they all meant. The girl’s confusion was all too clear: Soffía was becoming more and more desperate. Baldur turned to the end of the journal.

The last page was as he suspected. On 13 November 1994 she decided she could carry on no longer.

There were a lot of people Baldur should call. He decided to call Magnus.

It took Magnus less than fifteen minutes to get to Grafarholt.

Baldur was standing outside the entrance of Ásta’s apartment block.

‘Thanks for waiting for me,’ said Magnus.

Baldur shrugged. ‘I thought you should be here.’ He held up the journal in his gloved hand. ‘This is going to make a lot of people unhappy.’

Magnus was desperate to read the journal for himself, but he knew that would have to wait. ‘The Bishop of Iceland? That’s the Big Salmon of the whole Church, right? There’s only one bishop?’ Iceland had an established national Church, which was Lutheran. Almost all Icelanders were nominally members, although few attended services every Sunday.

‘That’s right. This one died a couple of years ago. There was a big scandal in 1996 when two women went public with their complaints that he had sexually harassed them. He went after them, claimed they were delusional, pressed charges for defamation against them.’

‘
He
accused
them
?’

‘Fortunately, the prosecutor dropped the charges. But the Church crushed the girls. One of them had to leave the country.’

‘And had he harassed them?’

‘What are you saying?’ said Baldur. ‘A bishop in the Church of Iceland? You should be ashamed of yourself for even asking the question.’

Baldur’s expression was deadpan, but Magnus was pretty sure he was being ironic. ‘Anyone else come forward?’

‘There were rumours. But after what had happened to the first two women, if there were any others, they were reluctant to speak out.’

‘So no hard evidence?’

‘Until now,’ said Baldur, tapping the journal with his gloved finger. ‘And if this girl really did kill herself like she said she was going to . . .’

‘All hell will break loose. Árni’s checking the records now. Shall we go and see our friend Egill?’

The pastor was standing anxiously outside the church, talking to curious neighbours, and watching the forensics people at work.

Baldur led him into his office in the church, a small room with a computer, a filing cabinet and a shelf full of religious texts. Wonky, highly coloured images of Jesus at work looked down at them, produced by someone who fancied himself as a twenty-first-century Icelandic El Greco, no doubt.

Egill sat behind his desk, picked up a pencil and began to fiddle with it. Magnus and Baldur took two chairs opposite.

‘What did you say Ásta wanted to talk to you about?’ Baldur asked.

‘Her career,’ the pastor said uncertainly. ‘Her next job.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No, I’m not,’ squeaked the pastor. He was clearly an honest man, Magnus thought. He was such a bad liar.

‘Have you seen this before?’ Baldur said, opening up the diary and showing it to Egill.

The pastor reached out to take it.

‘Don’t touch it!’ Baldur snapped. ‘It’s evidence.’ Baldur was still wearing his blue gloves.

The pastor whipped back his hand as if it had been burned. ‘No, I’ve never seen it before.’

‘Ásta didn’t show it to you? Last night?’

‘No,’ said Egill. He looked afraid now. ‘No, she didn’t. Is it hers? Am I in it?’

Baldur frowned. ‘No, it isn’t hers, as you know very well.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Egill, a bit bolder now. ‘Then whose is it?’

‘A girl called Soffía. She would be a woman now. If she were still alive.’

Egill looked confused. ‘Was she a friend of Ásta’s?’

‘Probably,’ said Baldur. ‘Are you sure you have never heard of her?’

‘Quite sure,’ said Egill.

Magnus believed him. ‘Did Ásta ever talk about a friend of hers who worked for the Bishop? Not the current one, the old one.’

‘No,’ said Egill. ‘No, she didn’t.’

‘Or someone who had been sexually harassed by the Bishop?’

Egill’s mouth opened. He slumped back in his chair. ‘Is that what that journal says?’

‘It certainly does,’ said Baldur. ‘It looks like the old pervert is going to be nailed after all. Just a pity he isn’t around to see it.’

‘He wasn’t a pervert,’ said Egill without conviction.

‘Wasn’t he?’

Egill didn’t answer. ‘What are you going to do with it?’ he said.

‘Read it. Transcribe it. It’s evidence in a murder inquiry.’

Egill sat forward. ‘You don’t think Ásta’s death had something to do with that, do you?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘But that would mean . . . That would mean that someone in the Church had her killed to shut her up. That’s not possible!’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Baldur. Magnus was beginning to suspect that the inspector wasn’t a regular on Sundays at his local church.

‘No, it isn’t!’ said Egill, finally summoning some conviction. ‘It certainly isn’t possible.’

‘We can’t leap to conclusions quite yet about who killed Ásta,’ Magnus said. ‘But the fact we found this in Ásta’s room suggests that there might be a link to her death. Doesn’t it?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ said Egill.

‘Well, we do,’ said Magnus. ‘So Ásta didn’t mention this at all in her conversation with you last night?’

‘No,’ said Egill.

‘Even indirectly?’

Egill thought a moment. ‘No. No, she didn’t.’

‘Or at any time in the past few weeks?’

Egill shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Do you believe that information given to a priest in confidence should remain confidential?’ Magnus asked.

‘Yes,’ said Egill slowly. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Even when that information relates to a crime?’

Egill took a deep breath. ‘Um. Yes, I do.’

‘Is that what you are doing in this case?’ Baldur asked. ‘Respecting confidential information?’

Something in Egill hardened. He leaned forward and looked both Magnus and Baldur in the eye, each in turn. ‘Ásta never mentioned anything about this woman and the Bishop to me. Is that clear? That’s all I have to say.’

‘I believe him,’ said Magnus as he and Baldur stood outside the church.

‘You what?’ Baldur exclaimed. ‘That guy’s lying. He’s lying through his teeth. It was a good move to press him on the confidentiality question. He’s lying because he thinks he has to, but he’s still lying. And I’m going to bust him and any other damned priest who tries to cover this up.’

Magnus didn’t argue. He agreed with Baldur that the pastor was hiding something; he just didn’t think it was to do with Soffía’s journal.

‘You know, he could even have done it himself,’ Baldur said. ‘Ásta comes to talk to him about how shocked she is to read that their Bishop was a pervert. He realizes she is going to spill the beans and so he decides to shut her up right away.’

‘You’re not serious?’ said Magnus.

‘Maybe,’ said Baldur. ‘I’m certainly going to bear the possibility in mind.’

A uniformed constable approached them. ‘Got something from one of the neighbours.’

‘Tell me,’ said Baldur.

‘She lives in Ásta’s building on the ground floor. She saw a man sitting in a car outside one of the other blocks when she came home last night. He was just staring at the pastor’s block. She went to take the dog out half an hour later, and he was still staring. She thought it was slightly odd.’

‘What time was this?’

‘About eight-fifteen when she first spotted him, eight-forty-five when she took the dog out.’

‘How long was she out with the dog?’ Magnus asked.

‘Just ten minutes. She didn’t notice him get out of the car, or the car drive off.’

‘Did she see Ásta go into the church?’

‘No.’

‘Did you get a description?’ Baldur asked.

‘Very vague. She couldn’t really see him. He was wearing a woolly hat. I showed her the artist’s impression of the man who attacked you, but she couldn’t say one way or the other.’

‘What about the vehicle?’

‘Silver. A car. She has no clue about cars.’

‘But not a black Suzuki Vitara?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Thanks, Villi,’ said Baldur. He turned to Magnus. ‘Perhaps it’s not the same guy who has been after Erika?’

‘Or perhaps he has a new car,’ Magnus said. Baldur’s pastor theory was looking less likely too, he thought.

Baldur’s phone rang. It was Árni, Magnus could tell. Baldur wrote down an address.

‘Soffía?’ he asked after Baldur had hung up.

‘No record of any female named Soffía committing suicide in 1994. But they did get a call from a woman named Berglind in Kópavogur who saw the news about Ásta. She says she gave Ásta something before she died. She wouldn’t say what it was over the phone.’

‘That’s the address?’

‘Yes. And it was clear from her journal that Soffía lived in Kópavogur.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

K
ÓPAVOGUR WAS A
suburb to the south of central Reykjavík. Berglind lived on a quiet road in a single-storey detached house with a small garden. It almost looked American: it reminded Magnus of a 1960s ranch house in a middle-class suburb like Medford, where Ollie lived. Berglind herself was a blonde woman of about sixty. The house was tidy and very clean. It had once held a family, but it now seemed empty.

She had coffee ready and poured Magnus and Baldur a cup.

‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, the words tumbling out. ‘I was stunned to hear about Ásta. She was a wonderful girl. Her mother will be devastated. She’s a good friend of mine and she just lives down the road, but I haven’t had the courage to go and see her yet. You see . . .’

‘Yes?’ said Magnus.

Berglind sighed. ‘I didn’t really want to make it public, but I feel I should now, given what’s happened to Ásta.’

‘Are you talking about this?’ said Baldur. He showed her the journal in a clear evidence bag.

Berglind nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

‘Was Soffía your daughter?’ Baldur asked. His voice was low, and although Baldur didn’t really do sympathy, he was pretty close.

‘Yes, she was. She died in 2002. She was only twenty-six. It wasn’t until just before last Christmas that I found this. She had hidden it in a closet in her bedroom. I found it under some of her old school notes in a box. I should have thrown them out years ago, but I couldn’t bear to.’

‘Two thousand and two?’ said Baldur. ‘I thought she died in 1994?’

‘Oh, no. You read the last page of her journal, then?’

Baldur nodded.

‘She did try to kill herself. Sleeping pills. But I discovered her before it was too late and took her to hospital where they pumped her stomach. She was eighteen at the time, working for the Bishop in the school holidays.’

Berglind shook her head. ‘I had no idea why she did what she did until I read the diary. She just suddenly changed. Dropped out of school. Went travelling to America. Got a job in Los Angeles. She never told me what it was, but I found out after she died.’

A tear ran down the woman’s face.

‘How did she die?’ Magnus asked, but he knew the answer.

‘Drug overdose. I flew over there. Saw where she had been living. What she had been doing.’

‘Is that her?’ Magnus asked. There was a photograph of a shy girl of about seventeen with glasses. But she was pretty. Magnus was sure that in a porn movie or on Hollywood Boulevard she could be made to look sexy. He decided not to ask her mom any more about her job. ‘And you think her experiences with the Bishop prompted all this?’

‘I know it did,’ said Berglind, her voice cold.

‘Why did you give the journal to Ásta?’

‘I wasn’t sure what to do with it,’ Berglind said. ‘I wanted to publicize it, but because of what eventually became of Soffía I was wary of going to the press, or the Church, or the police. I didn’t want the authorities to drag Soffía’s name through the dirt. I saw what had happened to those two poor girls who did speak out.’

Baldur nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘So I talked to Ásta’s mother, who is one of my best friends. She told me about Freeflow and said that Ásta and Viktor knew a lot about it. I trusted Ásta; I wasn’t sure about Viktor. So I went to her with it. She thought if we put it up on Freeflow’s website no one in Iceland could ever take it down.’

‘What was her reaction to the diary?’