The Polar Bear Killing (7 page)

Now Gudrún looked up. She nodded miserably.

‘Did you think we wouldn’t find out?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

‘Did you talk to Martin and Alex when they got here?’ Vigdís asked.

‘No,’ said Gudrún. ‘I didn’t want them to know that I was Foxgirl. That I was the daughter of the man who had shot the polar bear. And I didn’t want Dad to find out that I had been in touch with them. So I kept quiet.’

‘Does anyone know that you are Foxgirl?’

‘My friends at the university. And a couple of people around here.’

‘Sonja Jósepsdóttir? The teacher in Húsavík?’

‘Yes. She would know who I am.’

‘But not Martin Fiedler and Alex Einarsson?’

‘No. And definitely not Dad.’

‘So what did you argue with your father about?’ Ólafur asked.

‘Him shooting the polar bear.’ Gudrún shook her head. ‘I know him. He wanted the glory. He wanted to be the one who shot the bear. In Bolungarvík in the West Fjords they have a stuffed polar bear in the museum. Dad would have loved that. A little museum
with a stuffed polar bear “shot by Constable Halldór Sveinsson”.’ She shuddered. ‘Horrible.’

‘And what did he say when you criticized him?’

‘He said that he had to shoot the bear to protect the little girl. But that’s not what really happened. Lilja in the petrol station told me that the farmer next door saw the whole thing. Dad wasn’t saving the little girl; he was using her as bait to shoot the bear. With a .22! He could easily have missed and then the girl would be dead. All for his vanity!’

Then Gudrún put her hand to her mouth and began to sob. ‘Listen to me, blaming him. He’s dead now! And I hated him just before he died. He and I loved each other. Why did it have to end like that? With a fight? I want him back. I want Mum back.’

Ólafur and Vigdís watched the girl break down in front of them. Vigdís glanced at Ólafur. He nodded.

‘Gudrún?’ she said gently. ‘Did you shoot your father?’

The girl stopped sobbing and she looked at Vigdís with incredulity. ‘What?’

‘Did you shoot your father?’

‘He was shot with a .22 rifle,’ said Ólafur. ‘Your father owned a .22 rifle. You know how to shoot it.’

‘I thought those two activists who came shot him? I thought you had arrested them?’

‘We can send your father’s gun for analysis. We can see if the bullet we found in your father’s skull was fired from the gun. If you shot him, we will find out.’

‘But I didn’t shoot him!’ said Gudrún. She looked at both detectives, her face a mixture of misery, confusion and fear. ‘I didn’t shoot him,’ she said much more quietly. ‘Oh, my God! You really think I shot my father, don’t you?’

‘We know you had an argument with him,’ said Ólafur. ‘We know that you were angry about the polar bear and the little girl. We can check the rifle.’

‘Check it then!’ said Gudrún, and then she started to sob. ‘This doesn’t make any sense. I remember what Dad told me about all this. I won’t say anything more to you without a lawyer.’

And she didn’t.

They needed to get Halldór’s rifle to Reykjavík for ballistics analysis as fast as possible. Ólafur persuaded the coastguard to lend them one of the helicopters they had been using to look for the polar bear, and one of Edda’s forensic technicians took the bagged-up rifle and hitched a lift to Reykjavík.

They kept Gudrún in the cell overnight – her father’s police cell. With luck they would hear back within twenty-four hours and then charge her.

‘We’ve done just about all we can for today,’ said Ólafur later. ‘I’m going for a run.’

‘I’ve still got some paperwork to finish up,’ said Vigdís. ‘If you’ll let me.’

Ólafur glanced at the other two policemen working at their desks. ‘Come outside with me, Vigdís.’

She followed him out to his car.

‘Well done,’ Ólafur said. ‘That was good work. I’m glad I listened to you.’

‘So am I,’ said Vigdís dryly.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but when this is over, I will have to submit an official report to Chief Superintendent Thorkell. I will tell him you played an important part in the investigation. But what you did was totally unacceptable. If Martin Fiedler had in fact killed Halldór, you would have ruined any chance of securing a conviction.’

‘I know,’ said Vigdís. She had been sure that Martin was innocent. She was also sure that Ólafur was right: she had acted unprofessionally. She couldn’t expect anything else from Ólafur; she had only herself to blame.

‘
H
i, Vigdís!’

Vigdís looked up from her paperwork to see the large familiar figure of Magnus grinning at her. She grinned back.

‘You made it!’

‘This is not an easy place to get to. I ended up flying to Akureyri and borrowing one of their cars to drive the rest of the way.’

‘At least the weather’s not too bad this time of year,’ she said. ‘The town can be completely cut off in winter.’

Magnus scanned the tiny police station. Two uniformed policemen were also working in there. They nodded a greeting to him.

‘Is Ólafur here?’

‘He’s gone for a run. He could be ages. That man is super fit.’

‘What’s he like?’ Magnus asked.

Vigdís glanced quickly at the officers around them. ‘Old school.’

‘Well, since he isn’t here, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?’

‘All right,’ said Vigdís. ‘Do you want to take a walk? See the sights of Raufarhöfn?’

‘Sure, why not?’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve been cooped up in the car for three hours.’

So they left the police station and strolled through the town towards the harbour. The wind had died down, the evening sun was on their faces, and it was almost warm. They found a wall by the harbour. In front of them a fisherman was loading a very large net on to a very small boat.

‘What happened, Vigdís?’

‘I don’t know. I was just stupid.’

‘But why?’

‘I don’t know that either. I was free of worrying about Mum for a few days. I was lonely.’ Vigdís really didn’t want to mention the drink. She was too ashamed. ‘It feels like you are a long way from real life out here. I was so stupid.’

‘Yeah,’ said Magnus. They sat in companionable silence for a moment. ‘It’s the kind of stupid thing I would do.’

Vigdís smiled. ‘That’s no recommendation, is it?’

‘No,’ said Magnus. ‘Definitely not.’

‘My career is screwed now.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Has Ólafur made an official complaint to Thorkell yet?’

‘Not yet, but he will. He’s told Baldur, and Baldur will tell his cronies. I don’t think he has told any of the other police officers here.’

‘That’s something,’ said Magnus.

Vigdís snorted. She would be a laughing stock back in Reykjavík once everyone found out. ‘It
is
the kind of thing you would do, isn’t it?’

Magnus nodded. ‘Is he a nice guy, at least?’

‘Martin? I think so. That is if he isn’t a cop killer after all.’

Magnus frowned, as if struck by a thought. ‘Does he speak Icelandic?’

‘No,’ said Vigdís.

‘Do you speak English to him? Or are you a secret German speaker?’

‘He speaks English to me,’ said Vigdís. ‘And I sort of reply back.’

‘Sounds like a perfect relationship.’

‘I know,’ said Vigdís. ‘It’s ridiculous. But I do sort of like him. I am
such
an idiot.’

Magnus smiled at her. It wasn’t that he disagreed with her; her idiocy was incontrovertible. But he was on her side. They both knew he could be an idiot from time to time too.

They watched the fisherman tidy up the net and lock the boat cabin. He nodded to the two detectives and headed back to the
warmth of his home. Presumably he would be out at sea again early the next morning.

‘OK,’ Magnus said. ‘Tell me about the case.’

Vigdís was glad to go over the investigation with Magnus; it straightened it all in her mind. Magnus listened quietly for the most part, just asking the odd question to clarify things.

‘So there we are,’ she finished. ‘If the ballistics report comes back tomorrow with confirmation that Halldór was shot by his own rifle, we have pretty much got Gudrún.’

Magnus sat silently, his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat.

‘Magnús?’ Vigdís said. ‘What is it?’

‘Do you think it will? Confirm that the bullet came from Halldór’s rifle?’

‘Yes,’ said Vigdís. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘You said Gudrún denied killing her father,’ he said at last. ‘How did she seem?’

‘At the end of her rope. She just broke down. She answered our questions quietly, with tears streaming down her cheeks. It was hard to read her: I couldn’t tell whether she was upset because of all the pressure of the last few days, or whether she couldn’t face what she had done. Inspector Ólafur was sure she was guilty.’

‘And what about you? What was your instinct?’

Vigdís hesitated. She wanted to believe that Gudrún was guilty. She wanted to believe that Martin was innocent. But… ‘My instinct? I’m not sure.’

Magnus looked at her steadily. He raised his eyebrows. ‘I know you, Vigdís. Not being sure isn’t your style.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think your gut feel is that she’s innocent and you don’t want to admit it.’

‘Magnús, that’s ridiculous! We are detectives. We deal in evidence.’

‘We deal in people,’ said Magnus. ‘It takes a certain kind of daughter to shoot out the eye of her father. I’ve met one or two
of that kind of woman in America. But none in Iceland that I can think of.’

‘So are you saying Martin or Alex shot him? Or Sveinn?
He
wasn’t even in Raufarhöfn.’

‘No.’ Magnus was quiet for a couple of minutes, staring at the fishing boats bobbing gently by the quayside. Vigdís let him think. ‘Has it rained since Halldór was murdered?’

‘No,’ Vigdís said.

‘Good,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ll go to bed now. I won’t wait for Ólafur – I’d like to delay talking to him if I can. But we’ll meet downstairs in the hotel lobby at five tomorrow morning to take a look at the crime scene. I think I’d like to find out a bit more before I report to him.’

V
igdís led the way up the hill towards the henge, her long legs making easy work of the slope. The sun had already been up for a while, and the air was full of the sound of birds busy with whatever birds do that early in the morning.

‘You know they laid this out according to the ‘Völuspá’, the first poem of the
Poetic Edda
?’ Magnus said.

Vigdís’s only reply was to let out something between a moan and a grunt.

‘Apparently, there’s a path bearing the name of each of the dwarfs mentioned in the poem. All seventy-two of them.’

‘I bet you know all their names,’ said Vigdís.

‘Not all of them,’ said Magnus.

‘When did you read all this stuff?’

‘When I was a kid at high school.’

‘In America?’ Magnus had moved to Boston from Iceland when he was a kid.

‘Yes.’

They carried on in silence for a few moments.

‘Magnús?’

‘Yes?’

‘Did your friends in America think you were a little weird?’

‘Thanks, Vigdís.’

Although forensics had finished with the scene, police tape still flapped in its own geometric circle within the henge. Vigdís pointed out the spot where Halldór had been shot, and the two rocks down the hill from where it was possible his killer had
stood. While there was a clear view of the gate where Halldór had been found, the rocks were on the other side of the hill from the road, out of sight.

Magnus examined the ground and then made his way down the hill along a half-trodden path, criss-crossing twenty or thirty metres on either side. He paused every time he came to a patch of exposed mud. After ten minutes or so he halted.

‘Vigdís!’

She came over. ‘Found some dwarf footprints?’

Magnus pointed to a patch of mud next to a puddle. ‘Look.’

Vigdís looked. ‘I see tracks.’

‘Look more closely. And count.’

Vigdís looked again. ‘Jesus!’ she said, standing up. ‘Well, well, well.’

‘Do you have any spare spent .22 bullets or casings among the evidence?’ Magnus asked. ‘Doesn’t matter which gun they are from.’

‘We have a few from the range Halldór used back at the station.’

‘Perfect.’

‘Bjartur! Quiet!’

The old farmer came out to meet Magnus and Vigdís, wearing blue overalls and a woolly cap. The sheepdog, the Icelandic breed with a red and white coat and a curled tail, hopped over to them on its three legs.

Vigdís was right: the skin under Egill’s beard was criss-crossed with crevasses and fault lines.

He broke into a smile of welcome when he recognized her. ‘The blue policewoman! Come in, come in! I have a little coffee but no cakes, I’m afraid.’

Before they entered the house, Magnus glanced across the river towards the more prosperous farm on the other side. The view was clear and uninterrupted.

‘So that’s where the polar bear was shot?’ he said.

The farmer frowned and nodded. ‘Yes. It was a cruel day.’

They sat at a table in the cosy kitchen and Egill took off his
hat. His ears were massive, flapping straight out from his head, and sprouting white hairs like some kind of polar mammoth. He poured a small quantity of thick gritty liquid from a thermos into two cups. There wasn’t enough for himself.

‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting visitors.’

Magnus sipped the coffee and tried hard not to grimace.

‘Do you know who murdered Halldór yet?’ Egill asked Vigdís.

‘Not yet,’ said Vigdís.

‘Yes,’ said Magnus.

Vigdís glanced at him quickly. And so did Egill. The bright blue eyes focused on Magnus under bushy eyebrows.

Magnus produced a clear plastic bag, inside which was a small brass-coloured metal object.

Egill’s eyes turned to the bag.

‘Did you know, Egill, that our scientists can examine a rifle and determine whether it was the one that fired this bullet? With 100 per cent accuracy.’

Egill shook his head, still concentrating on the bullet. His left hand fiddled with one of his ears, pulling it out even further from his head.