Meltwater (8 page)

‘I see what you mean,’ said Magnus. He was still finding it hard not to stare. Even wrapped up in forensic overalls over a heavy snow jacket she looked gorgeous. Ridiculous. If you worked in Iceland you just had to get used to working with women like Edda.

Or like Ingileif. Funny how he kept on thinking about her in the strangest places.

‘OK, I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you turn up anything.’

He retraced his steps to the police jeeps where Ásta was waiting for him together with the local Hvolsvöllur cops.

‘You got a call on the radio,’ one of them said. ‘Inspector Baldur from Reykjavík. He wants to talk to you. Channel seventeen.’

Baldur was head of the Violent Crimes Unit and kind of Magnus’s boss. ‘Kind of’ because actually Magnus reported directly to the National Police Commissioner and was ‘attached’ to Baldur’s department. Baldur was a cop of the old school, suspicious of new foreign methods. Although he was ten years older than Magnus and held a higher rank, he had significantly less experience of homicide investigations. He knew that, as did Magnus and the Police Commissioner.

A recipe for trouble. Which, Magnus suspected, was on its way. Especially since Baldur wanted to avoid the Hvolsvöllur police channel and switch to a more private frequency.

‘Good morning, Baldur.’

‘What the hell happened last night, Magnús? I’ve had the Commissioner on the phone. Apparently Árni assaulted an MP.’

‘Viktor isn’t pressing charges, is he?’ Magnus said.

‘No. Not this time. But he’s very angry. And he has lots of powerful friends.’

‘Did he say why he isn’t pressing charges?’

‘No.’

‘Because he slugged Árni himself. And accused me of being a CIA spy. And called Vigdís a “nigger”. And I tell you if he does that again, I’ll slug him myself.’

‘But she is a “nigger”, isn’t she?’

Magnus took a deep breath. They were speaking Icelandic and Magnus had used the English word, as of course had Viktor. Baldur’s English was poor and his cultural sensitivity even worse. Even so, it seemed to Magnus that Baldur should stand up for his officers.

‘I want Árni off the case,’ Baldur said.

‘I’m telling you, it wasn’t his fault,’ said Magnus. Not entirely true, but someone had to stand up for Árni, and it clearly wasn’t going to be Baldur. Árni had a reputation for incompetence, but he was keen and he was loyal and he had once saved Magnus’s life, and that was good enough for Magnus. ‘If he’s off the case, I’m off the case.’

There was a pause on the radio. ‘We’ll discuss it later. Anything at the crime scene?’

‘Forensics will give it a thorough going over, but I doubt they will find anything. The victim died of a stab wound to the stomach. Has the press release gone out, do you know? It would be good to find the snowmobilers and the couple in the other jeep.’

‘It has. And Chief Superintendent Kristján is doing a press conference at nine o’clock.’

‘We need a warrant to search the Freeflow house in Thórsgata. And their computers. Especially their computers.’

‘Vigdís is going to talk to Rannveig as soon as she gets in.’ Rannveig was the assistant prosecutor in Reykjavík. She would need to take a warrant to the judge at the District Court on Laekjargata. It shouldn’t be a problem: from Magnus’s limited experience, judges in Iceland were quite cooperative about that sort of thing.

‘OK,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m on my way back to Reykjavík.’

He hung up. The two policemen who had stayed on the glacier overnight were ready to go back to Hvolsvöllur, and so Magnus asked them to give Ásta and him a lift. He would pick up his own vehicle from outside the police station.

The priest’s face was pale, her expression thoughtful.

‘I hope none of the information you refused to give us would help us find Nico’s killer,’ said Magnus. ‘Because otherwise you are going to feel very guilty for a very long time.’

Ásta glanced at Magnus quickly and climbed into the jeep.

CHAPTER SIX

‘“E
ARL HÁKON STAYED
at Hladir that winter. He became great friends with Vermundur and treated him well, since he knew he came from a distinguished family out in Iceland.

‘With the earl were two Swedish brothers, one called Halli and the other Leiknir. They were big strong men, bigger and stronger than any other men in Norway or elsewhere. They used to go berserk, and when they got themselves into that state they were not like other men, but like mad dogs who feared neither fire nor steel
.”
’

Jóhannes Benediktsson glanced up at his class of thirteen-year-olds as he turned the page. He had them transfixed, every one of them. He read
The Saga of the People of Eyri
to his Icelandic class of this age every year. And every time he remembered how his own father had read the saga to him so many times when he was young, especially this passage. For Jóhannes’s father Benedikt had been brought up on a farm in the Snaefells Peninsula where the saga had taken place, indeed the very farm where Vermundur’s brother had taken charge of the two berserkers back in Iceland a thousand years before.

The lava field between the two brothers’ farms was called the Berserkjahraun, and Benedikt had had all sorts of stories to tell about it.

Jóhannes might just be a middle-aged man in a nondescript classroom in modern grey Reykjavík, but he could bring some of the magic of that ancient time into the lives of his mobile-phone-toting, PlayStation-and-Facebook-obsessed city kids.

The bell rang for break. They didn’t move. Jóhannes was tempted to continue, but it was best to keep up the suspense. He snapped the book shut with his customary flourish. The class groaned.

As he followed his students out of the classroom, Jóhannes was surprised to see Snaer, the head of the Icelandic Department, waiting for him in the corridor.

‘Reading
The Saga of the People of Eyri
again?’ he said.

Snaer was fifteen years younger than Johannes and fifteen centimetres shorter. ‘Were you spying on me?’ Jóhannes answered, his brows knitting in disapproval.

‘I thought we had discussed this,’ said Snaer.

‘Oh, we have, we have,’ said Jóhannes. ‘On numerous occasions.’

‘Well, it looks as if we need to discuss it again,’ said Snaer, leading Jóhannes back into his classroom and shutting the door behind him. He took up a position in front of the teacher’s desk and turned towards the older man. The break-time chatter of adolescents interspersed with the regular thud of a football seeped in through the window.

‘You know that the syllabus requires you to teach
Njáll’s Saga
and
Laxdaela Saga
to this age group. Those are possibly the two greatest sagas in the Icelandic language. So why can’t you teach them?’

‘Because they are in baby talk,’ said Jóhannes.

‘They are simplified, perhaps, but they convey the essence of the originals. Much more than the essence.’

‘Baby talk,’ said Jóhannes.

‘But thirteen-year-olds can’t understand the originals. I have been teaching them for nearly twenty years, and I know they can’t.’

‘And I’ve been teaching them for over thirty years, and I know they can,’ said Jóhannes. ‘You spied on me just now. You saw my class. They love that saga. There’s something for everyone: love, honour, fighting, murder, treachery, ghosts, witchcraft; everything a teenage child could possibly want. Sure, at first they might find it hard to follow, but they learn. They learn quickly, and that’s the point.’

‘I admit you have a good reading voice. But why don’t you read them
Njáll’s Saga
?’

‘I won’t read them anything in baby talk.’

‘Even though it is laid down in the National Curriculum?’

‘Even then.’

Snaer glared at him. ‘I also understand that you have been teaching Form Ten that Halldór Laxness is a lightweight.’

‘I have been teaching them to think critically. Just because he won a Nobel Prize it doesn’t mean everything he wrote is perfect. And the arrogance of the man! He took it upon himself to make up his own rules for how Icelandic should be spelled, he thought our Viking ancestors were all vulgar brutes, and’ – here Jóhannes pulled himself up to his full height – ‘he thought we should wash more. Why should I be told how often to have a bath by that communist?’

Snaer closed his eyes. Jóhannes waited. It was true that they had had this conversation before, three months before, shortly after Snaer was promoted to head of department. And indeed Jóhannes had had the same discussion with all three of Snaer’s predecessors over the years.

The fact was that Jóhannes was a brilliant teacher of Icelandic literature. And language for that matter. Three of his former pupils held positions in the Faculty of Icelandic at the University of Iceland; another one had won the Icelandic Literature Prize the year before. He inspired people to love their country’s language. And when push came to shove, all heads of department respected that.

Except, perhaps, Snaer.

The younger man cleared his throat. ‘You have probably heard the rumours that with the government spending cuts the school is going to have to reduce its teaching staff by ten per cent?’

‘No. I don’t listen to staffroom tattle,’ Jóhannes said, lying. Of course he listened to staffroom tattle.

‘The Principal has told me that we need to lose one member of staff from this department. He and I have discussed it, and we feel that as the teacher who is the least willing to embrace what the school is trying to do, indeed what the government is trying to do to raise educational standards—’

Jóhannes couldn’t contain himself. ‘Raise standards? Lower them more like.’

Snaer ignored him. ‘—that you should be the one to leave.’

Suddenly Jóhannes realized what Snaer was saying. No one had ever called his bluff before. ‘You can’t be serious?’

‘I am serious. The Principal is waiting to talk to you in his office now. Unless you want to change your mind? If you could be persuaded to teach what you are supposed to teach, you could be a very good educator.’

‘Educator! What kind of a word is that?’ Jóhannes demanded.

‘Just because your father was a novelist—’

‘A great novelist!’

‘A novelist. It doesn’t mean that your position is untouchable.’

‘What about the younger members of staff? Why get rid of your most experienced person?’

‘You mean someone like Elísabet? She’s young, she’s hardworking, she’s enthusiastic, she teaches what she’s supposed to teach and does it well.’

Jóhannes’s indignation subsided a touch. ‘I know. I taught her when she was a pupil here.’ Elísabet had been teaching at the school a year and a half, and she was popular with staff and pupils. She had a genuine love of Icelandic.

‘And she will no doubt go on to teach many fine educators herself. Unless I fire her today, of course.’

‘It’s all the illiterate bankers’ fault,’ Jóhannes grumbled. ‘If they hadn’t got the country into this mess there wouldn’t be these cuts.’

‘You mean if someone had just taught them about a couple of berserkers raging around a lava field a thousand years ago, everything would be different?’

‘It may have been,’ said Jóhannes defensively.

‘Well, it’s a bit late now. You and I have an appointment with the Principal.’

Jóhannes left the Principal’s office and headed straight for the car park. The Principal had been more polite than Snaer, more respectful, but his message was clear.

Jóhannes’s career as a teacher at that school was over.

He had offered to give Jóhannes the rest of the day off, and Jóhannes had accepted. He needed to get out of the school right away.

As he drove the couple of kilometres from the school to his home in Vesturbaer, Jóhannes’s brain was in turmoil. His bluff had been called as he should always have known one day it would be. Why should he be the only teacher in Iceland who got away with ignoring the National Curriculum? Sure, there were famous people in the Icelandic literary world whom he had taught as schoolchildren, but would they really care about what happened to him? ‘I thought old Jóhannes had already retired,’ would be their response.

Jóhannes was only fifty-five, but people thought he was older. He was physically fit, big, lean and erect with a shock of thick white hair and a craggy face, but he behaved like someone ten years older. He wore tweed jackets and a tie, he smoked a pipe; he was from another era.

He pulled up in front of his house in Bárugata. It was a big house for a teacher, on a street that had been popular in the old days with sea captains, since from the upper storeys of its buildings you could look down the hill to the Old Harbour. He had grown up there; his parents had lived and died there, and after his father’s death he had inherited it. The house was built for families and for a few years Jóhannes had brought his own family to live there, until his wife had left him, taking their children with her. Why, Jóhannes had never quite understood.

A big house for a lone teacher. A very big house for a lone unemployed teacher.