Authors: Michael Ridpath
There was no doubt that the right thing to do was to tell the police. But if she did that, Gabrielle would never forgive her. If Ingvar was guilty, that wouldn’t matter, but if he was innocent, which he probably was, it most certainly would. Maybe there was a way of informing the police anonymously? The police always used anonymous informants on TV. But that was in London or New York; she wasn’t sure her anonymity
could be preserved successfully in somewhere as small as Stykkishólmur.
She left the barn, the two dogs at her heels. She had lots to do, but she wanted to check how Grána was. She had left the mare earlier that morning sweating in the paddock on the other side of the farm close to Cumberland Bay. She crossed the yard. The forensics van was parked outside the burned-out cottage; a technician in overalls was taking photographs of the exterior of the building. A couple of hundred metres out in the lava field, along the dirt road approaching the farm, she saw a group of cars parked precariously along the verge and half a dozen people staring towards her, some with equipment, held back by a policeman and some tape.
The press.
She was glad the police had kept them off the farm; she really didn’t want to speak to them.
Villi was in the yard, standing by the pickup, looking lost. He waved to her. She couldn’t help smiling when she saw him, and waved back a little too enthusiastically. She went over to him.
‘Do you know where the fence posts are? Kolbeinn needs a couple of new ones. They seem to have moved since the last time I saw them thirty years ago, which isn’t really surprising.’ He laughed his deep rumbling laugh.
‘Just in that shed behind the tarps,’ Aníta said, pointing behind him. ‘There’s a whole pile.’
‘I looked in there, but I must have missed them,’ said Villi. ‘Thanks.’ He moved up close to her, too close, and touched her arm. For a moment she met his warm brown eyes. Then she broke away from him and hurried off towards the horses’ paddock.
Why had she done that? Smiled at him? Let him come so close? Why had he come so close? They had agreed to keep their distance. And until now Villi had done so. He hadn’t visited Iceland for four years.
He was in his sixties, for God’s sake, and she was nearly fifty; this teenage flirtation was so stupid!
Yet for three days, four years before, it had meant everything to her.
It was August. Villi had just retired from the Canadian mining company that had employed him for twenty-five years, and had agreed to teach a semester at Reykjavík University. He had arranged to stay for a week at Bjarnarhöfn before term started. But, as he was driving there from the airport, Kolbeinn was taking their father in the other direction to hospital in Reykjavík for an emergency heart operation.
Villi decided to stay one night at Bjarnarhöfn with Aníta and the children and his mother, and then go down to Reykjavík the following afternoon to see his father in hospital. Aníta had been pleased to see him; she had always liked him and his company made a nice change. His mother, as usual, had seemed almost indifferent.
After lunch, Villi had asked if he could ride one of the horses up the fell. Aníta offered to come with him.
It was a gorgeous August afternoon, warm with only the slightest of breezes. As their horses climbed the flank of the fell behind the farm, they could see for miles: the bluish grey mountains of the West Fjords on the other side of Breidafjördur, the extraordinary yellow, brown and green towers of volcanic rock thrown up around the Berserkjahraun, Swine Lake lapping against the cliffs of rumpled lava, and over to the east the scattered white buildings of Stykkishólmur.
They talked. And talked. Aníta was very happy with her life on the farm, and her friends around Stykkishólmur. She had never regretted turning her back on the tumult of her life in Reykjavík, but she suddenly found herself craving the conversation of a wider world. Villi had a raft of fascinating stories to tell about his adventures with the mining company. And he was interested in her. Not in her life at the farm, but the time she had spent in Reykjavík, playing her flute, working in the record shop. She found herself talking about the series of unsuitable men who had invaded her life back then. Unsuitable, but interesting, dangerous even. She told Villi things she had never told
Kolbeinn, both because he had never asked and because she had never wanted to.
Villi was a lot like Kolbeinn: honest, dependable, strong. But he was smarter. And, amazingly, he seemed to understand her better.
They arrived back at the farm to hear that Hallgrímur wouldn’t need to be operated on after all and would be returning to Bjarnarhöfn the following day, so Villi decided to stay on. The next morning, Aníta suggested another ride, with a picnic. Villi asked her to bring her flute. Sylvía ignored them.
The weather held. They went further and higher than they had the previous day, to a sheep’s byre near the summit of the fell. Beside it was a grassy hollow with a view across the mountains to the peak of Snaefellsjökull itself. They sat and ate their sandwiches facing the beautiful white dome of snow with its tiny rock question mark right at the summit.
Aníta played her flute. It was at least a year since she had last picked up the instrument, and it took a few minutes to warm up. But she played Telemann, her favourite composer, and was amazed how she could remember the notes. Villi sat and listened, smiling at her. His smile did something to her playing. Her heart sang in time to the music.
Eventually she put down her flute. He reached over and kissed her. They made love, their naked skin chilled by the gentle breeze, but caressed by the sunshine. A pair of golden plovers peeped their support.
Afterwards, as she lay in his arms, she ran her hands over his chest, so similar yet so different to Kolbeinn’s.
‘You know, I’ve never done that before,’ she said.
‘Of course you have,’ said Villi.
‘No, I mean had sex with another man. Since I married Kolbeinn.’
Villi didn’t reply. He just stroked her hair.
‘You know it doesn’t feel wrong. Up here, it doesn’t feel wrong.’
But it
was
wrong, and it certainly felt wrong when Kolbeinn
returned with Hallgrímur the next day. Villi and Aníta did a really good job of treating each other naturally, with casual amiability. Aníta was certain Kolbeinn had not noticed anything. Sylvía? Who knew about Sylvía? She seemed to treat Villi with mild disapproval, but that was no change from when he had first arrived. No one knew how much Sylvía saw of what went on around the farm. No one knew because Sylvía never told anyone anything. Secrets were safe with Sylvía.
Aníta managed to get hold of Villi alone a couple of hours before he left. They walked down to the little church. She could see in his eyes that he sensed her emotions.
‘That was about the best afternoon of my life,’ Villi said.
Despite her resolution to be stern with him, Aníta couldn’t help but smile.
‘But I know it shouldn’t happen again,’ Villi went on. ‘I understand that. I’ll keep my distance. It will be very difficult for me, but I will do it. I don’t want to ruin your life.’
‘Thank you,’ said Aníta. She felt an urge to kiss him, but resisted it. Her fingers twitched with the desire to touch him, to hold his hand, but she clenched them. He
did
understand, she knew it. And she was relieved.
To Kolbeinn’s dismay, Villi never came up to the farm again the whole time he was in Reykjavík, although Hallgrímur drove down to see him once, leaving Sylvía behind. It was easier, when Villi wasn’t around, not exactly to forget what had happened, Aníta could never do that, but to keep it in a compartment, somewhere way up there on the fell, where it could stay safely out of her life. She was appalled at herself for sleeping with her husband’s brother. But she knew she could never have betrayed him with anyone from the area. It was only because Villi came from a different country, a different continent, that she had been able to do it.
Sometimes, Aníta took Grána up the hill to that spot to remember. But she had never played her flute since.
She stood by the paddock and Grána trotted over to see her.
The mare seemed much calmer, yet still relieved to see her mistress. Aníta whispered nothings in her ear and patted her neck.
‘Aníta!’
She turned to see the fat detective waddling over towards her, with a shorter, younger man at his elbow.
‘Aníta, can we have a word?’
Emil accepted the cup of coffee offered to him and sat down at the kitchen table at Bjarnarhöfn. Whereas the previous day the kitchen had smelled of baking, that morning it smelled of bleach.
He was out of breath and his heart was beating unnaturally fast. The out-of-breath thing he was used to, but the heart worried him. He wondered whether he should be drinking caffeine. But one cup of coffee couldn’t do any harm. Coffee was one of the few things not on the long list of items his doctor had given him to avoid.
After the morning’s conference, he had driven down to Borgarnes, a small town halfway between Stykkishólmur and Reykjavík, to the court where a judge was hearing his application to hold Magnus in custody during the investigation. There were no difficult questions, and Magnus himself had said nothing. He hadn’t even wanted his lawyer to attend. The police now had twenty-one days to gather evidence before they would have to appear before a judge again. In the meantime Magnus had been sent on to the prison at Litla-Hraun, where he would be held in solitary confinement.
There were still some cakes left, and Emil took one. Adam, sitting beside him, notebook at the ready, abstained. As Emil chewed, he examined the two women opposite him. Sylvía was clearly distressed. Her small brown eyes were staring at him and Adam with a mixture of fear and bewilderment. That didn’t surprise Emil. Aníta, too, seemed to be suffering under the strain.
‘Delicious,’ said Emil, wiping his lips. Aníta smiled distractedly in acknowledgement. ‘Now, do either of you recognize this?’
Emil gave a brief nod to Adam, who pulled out a clear plastic envelope containing the silver earring.
Sylvía leaned forward, studied the earring and shook her head.
Aníta glanced at the envelope quickly and then at Sylvía. ‘You recognize it, Sylvía! Kolbeinn gave it to you a few years ago.’ She turned to the detective. ‘I know, because I bought them in Reykjavík.’
‘Are you sure you don’t recognize it, Sylvía?’ Emil asked as gently as he could.
The old lady glanced at him with panicked eyes and shook her head again.
Aníta frowned. ‘I’m afraid Sylvía is still very upset, Emil. I don’t think she is thinking very clearly.’
Sylvía turned to her daughter-in-law with a scowl and then stared again at the earring, fascinated.
‘Sylvía, we found this earring in the church yesterday morning. Do you know how it got there?’
Sylvía raised her eyes to the detective and shook her head quickly.
‘Sylvía goes into the church quite a lot,’ said Aníta. ‘She cleans it, but she also goes in there to pray. She has done for the last couple of years. She could easily have dropped her earring there. The other is probably in her bedroom, if it hasn’t been destroyed by the fire.’
‘We will check,’ said Emil. ‘Now, Sylvía, I would like you to give us a hair sample.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Sylvía.
‘A policewoman will cut just a tiny bit of your hair. Will you let her do that for us, please? We found some white hairs in the church as well, and we want to see if they are yours. Or they might be your husband’s.’
‘Hallgrímur never went to church,’ said Sylvía.
‘That’s where he was found, Sylvía,’ Emil said. ‘Dead.’
Sylvía shook her head. ‘Hallgrímur doesn’t go to church. He will be back soon.’
‘Do you really need to take the sample?’ Aníta asked. ‘You can see how upset she is.’
Emil nodded. ‘We do. We can’t force her to give it, but it would really help us if she did. I’ll send a policewoman in in a moment. I would be grateful if you could persuade her to cooperate.’
He turned to Sylvía. He hated to ask her more questions, but he had to try one more time. ‘Sylvía. How did the fire start last night?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sylvía. ‘Hallgrímur was coming home late and he hadn’t had his dinner, so I had to cook it for him. I was cooking dinner when the kitchen caught fire. I don’t know why. And Hallgrímur still hasn’t come home.’
Emil sighed. Sylvía’s testimony was clearly unreliable anyway, whatever she said. But they had to ask the questions and write down the answers.
He drank the last of his coffee. Aníta and the two dogs followed him out of the farmhouse while Adam went off to find a female officer. Forensics technicians were bustling in and around the fire-damaged cottage.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Aníta said as they walked across the farmyard to Emil’s car. ‘You can see she isn’t thinking clearly at all. That earring is definitely hers.’
‘Will you be able to look after her?’
Aníta shrugged. ‘I think she should be somewhere else. This place clearly upsets her now. Ingvar said he would come over and take a look at her. Maybe she can go and stay with him.’
‘If she does say anything to you about the fire, or about Hallgrímur, will you let me know?’ said Emil.
Aníta nodded. Emil was about to get in the car when he registered the hesitancy in Aníta. The suppressed agitation. She was weighing up whether to tell him something.
He stood still.
‘Aren’t you leaving?’ she said after a few moments.
‘I’m waiting,’ said Emil.
‘For what?’
‘For you to tell me something.’ He raised his eyebrows.
Aníta blushed slightly. Fiddled with the edge of her sweater. Made a decision. ‘Gabrielle came over to see me this morning,’ she began. ‘It probably has nothing to do with your investigation, but I feel I should inform you anyway. Just don’t say it was me that told you. She said something interesting about Ingvar and Hallgrímur…’
Sigurbjörg Vilhjálmsdóttir, or Sibba as she was known to her friends and family, was preoccupied as she drove over the high heath to the south-east of Reykjavík. Pylons marched over the snow-spattered lava field towards a geothermal plant, crouching under a wrinkled mountain, belching billows of steam into the cold air. It was a clear day with pale blue sky and low sunshine dazzling off the streaks of snow.