Authors: Michael Ridpath
Sylvía looked at him steadily, but didn’t reply.
‘The Alzheimer’s was all a sham, wasn’t it?’ Emil said. ‘It was just a means of covering up what you knew. And was that why you started the fire?’
Sylvía put her hands together on her lap and stared ahead. You could almost feel the stubbornness spreading through the room.
Gabrielle returned, clutching a bright blue Icelandic passport with the corner clipped.
‘I haven’t looked,’ she said, handing the passport to Magnus.
Magnus flipped through the pages. ‘Here we are. “U.S. Immigration. 210 Newark. July fourteenth 1996.”’
Gabrielle’s eyes opened wide. ‘Newark is in New Jersey, isn’t
it? That must have been the conference there I was telling you about. It’s not Boston.’
‘You can easily get to Boston from Newark on the Amtrak,’ Magnus said. ‘Or hire a car. Or fly.’
‘Yes, but that’s not proof that Ingvar actually did it,’ Gabrielle said.
‘You were living here in 1985, weren’t you?’ Magnus said. ‘I remember seeing you at Bjarnarhöfn when I was a kid.’
Gabrielle frowned and nodded. ‘Yes, we moved here in 1980. But that’s hardly suspicious, is it?’
‘And is your husband left- or right-handed?’
‘Right,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Just like everybody else. So what?’
‘So you are saying Ingvar killed Benedikt Jóhannesson?’ Emil asked Magnus.
‘And my father. With Hallgrímur’s encouragement. And he shot at Aníta. And he killed Villi this morning.’
‘What about Hallgrímur?’ Emil asked.
‘Probably him too,’ Magnus said.
‘No!’ Gabrielle protested. ‘You are making too many assumptions here!’
‘Shush, Gabrielle,’ Sylvía said. ‘They are right, my dear. I’m afraid you are married to an evil man. Just like me. You must accept it. Don’t deny it like I did for so long.’
‘Ridiculous!’ exclaimed Gabrielle.
‘Where is your husband now?’ Emil asked her.
‘At the clinic, I think.’
Emil pulled out his phone and called the station.
CHAPTER THIRTY
T
EN MINUTES LATER
Emil and Magnus pulled up outside the hospital car park. Detective Björn had come from the police station to sit with Gabrielle and Sylvía to make sure that neither of them warned Ingvar. Emil had taken Gabrielle’s mobile phone. The four members of the Viking Squad were in their van outside the hospital.
Emil turned to Magnus. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing dragging you around everywhere with me, but it’s been useful so far.’
‘I can’t go in with you, can I?’ Magnus said.
‘No. I’d like to leave you here. Will you give me your word you won’t run?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good. But I’d better cuff you. I hope you understand.’
Magnus did understand. Emil grabbed some handcuffs from the boot of the car and secured them on Magnus’s wrists. Then he took one of the Viking Squad with him into the hospital, leaving the others in the van outside.
They were out in five minutes. The squad member ran to the van, and in a few seconds it was speeding up the hill. Emil waddled out at a slower pace. He opened the car door on Magnus’s side.
‘Not there?’ Magnus asked.
‘He told his receptionist he was going to see that farmer’s wife with lung cancer again.’
‘That makes sense,’ said Magnus. ‘Especially if he was actually at Swine Lake. He could well have gone straight on to the farm to establish his alibi. Are we going?’
‘No,’ said Emil. ‘If he’s there, they’ll bring him in. But he might well not be. And I want to think.’
‘Never a bad thing to do.’
Emil unlocked Magnus’s cuffs. ‘Walk with me.’
Magnus climbed out of the car and stretched. It had stopped raining and the grey clouds had been tugged like a torn curtain eastwards, leaving a clean blue sky. A breeze blew in from the sea. They walked slowly down to the harbour.
‘We still don’t know who killed Hallgrímur,’ Emil said.
‘Ingvar’s alibi is solid?’
‘I think so. My detective Adam checked it out. The harbour-master here and two others saw Ingvar working on his boat all Sunday morning.’
‘Which leaves?’
‘You, Magnús.’ Emil frowned at him. ‘It still leaves you. You were at Bjarnarhöfn when Hallgrímur was killed. No one else was, except maybe Tóta. It’s conceivable that Aníta could have doubled back from riding, but I don’t see why she would want to kill the old man. But you had a motive. And everything we learn makes that motive stronger.’
‘I didn’t kill him, Emil.’
‘Help me here, Magnús. You’ve got to do better than that.’
‘Are we going to see the harbourmaster now?’
‘I am,’ said Emil.
The harbourmaster’s office was on the quay by the harbour itself. Emil left Magnus and went in. Magnus waited outside and watched him through a large window, chatting with a bearded man in his fifties.
Magnus understood what Emil meant. In his position, he would conclude that Magnus was the only suspect as well.
He gazed around the harbour at the fish factories, the harbour wall, the tall island of basalt that acted as protection from the sea, the big ferry waiting to go out to the island of Flatey and the West Fjords beyond, the host of little boats and, back up the hill, the brightly coloured houses of the town.
You couldn’t actually see the space-age church of
Stykkishólmur from the harbour, but it was up there, behind the convent and the hospital from where they had just come.
The spark of half a thought ignited in his brain.
Emil emerged from the harbourmaster’s office. ‘You didn’t run,’ he said.
Magnus grinned. ‘I wondered why you didn’t cuff me.’
‘There is nowhere to go,’ Emil said. ‘But if you had run, I would have known you were guilty.’
‘Not much I can say to that,’ said Magnus. ‘Any holes in the harbourmaster’s statement?’
‘No. Ingvar was definitely at his boat between ten-thirty and eleven-forty-five on Sunday, and possibly longer. That’s his boat there.’ Emil pointed to a jaunty little craft about fifty yards from the harbourmaster’s office. ‘Which still leaves you.’
Magnus took a deep breath. His half thought was growing. ‘What about my grandmother?’
‘Sylvía? What about her? You don’t think
she
killed her husband.’
‘You said she wasn’t at the farm. Where was she? At church?’
‘Yes,’ said Emil. ‘At church here in Stykkishólmur.’
‘Are you sure?’
Emil frowned. He pulled out a notebook. ‘Yes. She did go to the service. It starts at ten-thirty. Apparently she was a little late.’
‘How late?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Emil. ‘But that little old lady can’t have been strong enough, surely?’
‘I remember her being a very strong middle-aged lady,’ Magnus said. ‘And Hallgrímur was a very old man.’
‘With leukaemia,’ said Emil. ‘Blood tests at the autopsy showed he had undiagnosed leukaemia. So he would have been physically weak.’
‘Shall we go up to the church?’ Magnus suggested.
The vicarage wasn’t far from the large white church with its swooping bell tower, and the pastor was in. She was a plump, dark-haired woman of about thirty-five who knew who Sylvía was, and had noticed her arriving late at the service.
‘How late?’ Emil asked.
The woman concentrated. ‘I remember the hymn we were singing. That would have been about forty-five minutes in.’
‘So that would have been when? Eleven-fifteen?’
‘Yes, about that,’ said the pastor.
‘That’s not “a little late”,’ said Emil. ‘That’s very late.’
The pastor nodded. ‘I do remember something else.’
‘What was that?’
‘Sylvía was flustered. She’s usually so calm, almost cold. But she seemed in a bit of a rush. And she spilled some hymn books as she came in. That’s why I remember it.’
‘Did you speak to her afterwards?’
‘No. She did stay in her seat praying for quite a long time after the service. Everyone else had gone and I went to talk to her. When people pray, there’s often a reason. But she didn’t really answer me, and left. That’s fine. I’m here if my congregation wants me, but I don’t want to get between them and God.’
‘Thank you,’ said Emil.
They left the vicarage. Emil paused by his car and pulled out his notebook. ‘OK, so let’s look at the timings. You called in finding the body at eleven-twenty-nine.’ Emil hesitated. ‘I believe you told us that you made the call right away. I’m not asking you to change your statement right now. But for these purposes, what time can we assume is the latest that Hallgrímur was alive?’
‘I got to Bjarnarhöfn twenty minutes before that. So that would have been about eleven-ten,’ Magnus said. ‘And I didn’t see Sylvía’s car, so if she left the farm, it would have been before then.’
‘And we know that Hallgrímur was alive at ten-twenty-five, because that’s when the phone records say that Ollie called him.’
‘So Sylvía
could
have killed him just after that and left by eleven o’clock. It would take her about twenty-five minutes to half an hour, I would think, to drive from the farm to the church here.’
‘So if she left a little before eleven, she could have got here at about eleven-fifteen?’
‘She could.’
The two detectives stood in silence.
‘My grandmother can be quite stubborn,’ said Magnus. ‘Shall I talk to her? I think she might tell me what happened.’
The hostility in Ingvar’s house was palpable. Björn answered the door. Sylvía was still in her place on the edge of the armchair knitting. And Gabrielle was pacing up and down, glaring.
‘Have you arrested him?’ she asked.
‘Not yet,’ said Emil. ‘He wasn’t at the clinic. But we will pick him up shortly.’
‘You are making a dreadful mistake, you know,’ said Gabrielle. ‘And I want some proper protection. This man you left me with doesn’t even have a gun. I don’t know how you can call yourselves policemen when you don’t carry guns. If this were France, at least he would be armed.’
Magnus had sympathy with Gabrielle’s point of view, but kept quiet.
‘We do have firearms in the area,’ Emil said. ‘In the meantime, would you mind leaving us alone with Sylvía for a few minutes, please, Gabrielle? Björn will keep you company.’
‘Keep me company? Watch over me, more like,’ Gabrielle muttered. She turned to the young detective. ‘Come on. Let’s go outside. Have you got a cigarette?’ Björn reached inside his jacket pocket. ‘And don’t listen to her lies about my husband!’
Emil and Magnus took their seats.
‘Poor woman,’ said Sylvía. ‘She can’t believe what she knows is true.’
‘Amma?’ Magnus said. ‘I have a question for you.’
Sylvía put down her knitting for a moment. Magnus noticed she was working on the chest of a traditional
lopi
sweater. He wondered who it was for. Tóta, perhaps?
‘What is it, dear?’
She used the word
elskan
, a word used by grandmothers all over Iceland through the centuries to speak to their grandchildren. Except Magnus could not remember his grandmother ever using it for him.
All Magnus’s professional instincts were screaming at him not to do what he was about to do. In America, it would be fatal to a case not to warn a suspect of their rights. A confession wrought from a confused old lady without a lawyer or a warning would never stand up in court. In Iceland the rules were different and, of course, Magnus needed to clear his own name. But still the policeman in him felt that he was taking advantage of a vulnerable suspect.
But he was also a son and a grandson. And he needed to find out the truth about his family.
‘Amma. Why were you late for church on Sunday?’
Sylvía was silent for a moment. ‘Your grandfather was correct, Magnús, dear. You were the brightest one in the family. You and perhaps your mother. Ingvar always thought he was so clever, but I was never convinced.’
‘Amma?’
Sylvía looked out of the window into the small back yard, where puffs of cigarette smoke were hovering over Gabrielle and the detective. She sighed.
‘I was… detained at the farmhouse.’
‘What happened, Amma?’
Sylvía glanced at Magnus and at Emil, who had slid out a notebook.
‘The phone rang. I was in the bedroom; Hallgrímur was in the living room doing his Sudoku. I came through to answer it, but Hallgrímur had already picked it up. I could tell it was Óli. Hallgrímur glared at me. I knew he didn’t want me to hear, so I went back into the bedroom and picked up the phone in there.’
Sylvía licked her lips, remembering. ‘Óli can scarcely speak Icelandic and neither Hallgrímur nor I speak much English, so the conversation was difficult. I think I heard someone prompting Óli in the background, an Icelander, but Hallgrímur didn’t seem to notice. Anyway, Óli said that he wanted to meet Hallgrímur immediately, or he would speak to the police about Ragnar’s murder and the murder of Benedikt from Hraun. He said he knew that Hallgrímur and Villi were
involved in both murders. He wanted Hallgrímur to meet him along the cliffs at Hellnar.
‘It took a few minutes for Hallgrímur to understand what Óli was saying, but in the end he agreed to meet Óli at Hellnar. They hung up. I waited a couple of minutes and then went through to the living room.’
Magnus and Emil listened closely, Emil scribbling in his notebook.
‘I think I must have made some noise at the end of the conversation, because Hallgrímur was staring at me when I came in. “Did you hear that?” he asked me.
‘I should have just said “no”, or said I had heard something but didn’t understand it. That had been my reaction our whole married life. But something snapped.’
Sylvía’s speech was quickening and colour was appearing in her cheeks.
‘I mean, I had heard my husband virtually admit that he had been involved in murdering two people. I suspected it already – you’ve seen the postcard. I just couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard what I had just heard. I was suddenly angry,
so
angry. I had let him get away with his wickedness for years. So I started yelling. I called him a murderer. I told him he was an evil, evil man and he would go to hell. I told him he had made our family evil – Villi, Ingvar, Óli. I told him God would judge him and he couldn’t hide from that.’