Edge of Nowhere (3 page)

Magnus wrote the words down. ‘And did she mention Gústi by name?’

‘No,’ said Rós. ‘But she wanted me to tell everyone in town that if construction went ahead on the tunnel, there would be trouble. Nobody took any notice, of course, even after all their equipment was broken. So they built the tunnel anyway. I hoped that the apology we gave the hidden people on Sunday would have worked, but it obviously didn’t.’

‘Obviously not,’ said Magnus. ‘What was this apology?’

‘We had a little ceremony, a lot of the people in Bolungarvík came, including the pastor. He said a prayer. It was an important thing to do.’

‘I see that,’ said Magnus. He spent another ten minutes asking Rós about the hidden people and their habits, before finally putting his pen down. He had two sides of notes on his pad. ‘OK, thank you for coming forward, Rós,’ said Magnus.

The red-haired woman smiled, in her stride now. ‘Not at all. I’m glad the police are finally listening to me.’ Her eyes flicked to Tómas sharply.

‘One other thing,’ Magnus said. ‘Did you ever leave anything out for the hidden people?’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘A gift of some kind,’ said Magnus.

‘A stuffed polar bear, for instance?’ said Tómas. Magnus concealed his irritation: that was a detail he wanted to keep to himself. Now everyone in Bolungarvík would know. Until then, Tómas’s actions had been very professional, but Magnus had forgotten that the constable wasn’t a detective.

‘Did you find one where Gústi was killed?’ Rós asked.

‘Did you leave anything for them?’ Magnus repeated.

‘No,’ said Rós.

‘Do you know anyone else who might have?’

‘There are a lot of people in town who are angry on behalf of the hidden people,’ she said. ‘It could have been anyone.’

‘Why a polar bear?’ Magnus asked. ‘Do the hidden people here like polar bears?’

‘That’s a ridiculous question,’ said Rós. ‘I’ve no idea.’

Magnus smiled apologetically. ‘Thanks again, Rós. And next time you see your hidden woman, ask her her name, will you?’

‘Why did you take her so seriously?’ Tómas asked, after Rós was safely out of the police station.

‘To shut her up, mostly,’ said Magnus. ‘And her friends. If the hidden people are as popular in town as you say they are, we could waste a lot of time dealing with people who want us to take them seriously. Now they know we do.’

‘You don’t believe any of this crap, do you?’ said Tómas.

‘Don’t you?’

‘Of course not. I was brought up in this town and I’ve heard it all my life. That woman is a nutcase. There aren’t any hidden people here or anywhere else. It’s only because we are all stuck in the middle of nowhere that it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve heard about you. You lived in America, didn’t you? Don’t tell me you believe her.’

‘I spent twelve years working as a cop in Boston, and you’re right I didn’t come across any elves there,’ said Magnus. ‘I was in Homicide; elves would come under Narcotics.’

Tómas smiled.

‘I was also curious about the bear,’ Magnus said. ‘I thought she might have put it there.’

‘It’s the kind of whacko thing she’d do,’ said Tómas.

‘By the way, when we are interviewing someone together, leave the disclosure of information to me,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s always good to hold some details back.’

Tómas blushed. ‘Oh. Oh, I see. I’m sorry.’

‘We still have the ribbon,’ said Magnus. ‘I wonder what that was for?’

Tómas thought a moment. ‘So Gústi could see the white bear in the snow?’

‘Possibly,’ said Magnus. ‘But why a polar bear?’

‘They are popular in this town,’ the constable said. ‘There’s a stuffed one in the Museum. It was shot north of here when it arrived from Greenland on an ice floe. It’s very famous.’

‘Of course,’ Magnus couldn’t help smiling. He was getting used to Icelanders craving attention. Even in this far corner of this remote island, there was something of world renown. There had to be. It wasn’t quite as strange as the Penis Museum in the small town of Húsavík further to the east, but a polar bear was better than nothing. ‘Sorry, Tómas. Let’s take a quick look at Gústi’s house and then pay a visit to Arnór.’

3

Gústi’s house was little more than a run-down shack on the edge of town next to the river. For someone involved in the construction industry, he had spent very little time on his own dwelling. Outside, paint was peeling on the concrete walls and the roof was rusting. Inside, there was a hole in the ceiling.

Tómas had the key he had taken from Gústi’s body. Magnus and Tómas walked slowly through the small house, made up of two bedrooms (one little more than a closet), a kitchen, a living room and bathroom. It was clear that Gústi’s wife was long gone. The bed was unmade, there were coffee cups and the signs of an early breakfast by the sink. The surfaces in the bathroom were covered in a layer of brown scum.

Gústi liked vodka. There were four bottles in the house, three of them empty. He also liked Manchester United. The posters tacked to the walls showed teenage enthusiasms; a programme from a match against Blackburn Rovers at Old Trafford ten years before had pride of place in his bedroom, next to a giant poster of a semi-naked Icelandic model Magnus had never heard of.

Magnus poked around: bills; payslips from the construction company; fishing gear; lots of tools, many of them in bad condition; an old desktop computer with an ancient screen in the bedroom; no notes of any interest; an address book, in which most of the dialling codes were local. Magnus checked the room for photographs. Icelandic homes were full of family photographs; Icelanders had large families and usually everyone had to be represented. But not in Gústi’s house.

‘Where is his wife?’ asked Magnus.

‘In Ísafjördur,’ said Tómas. ‘With his kids.’

‘Any other family in town?’

‘Just a brother. They didn’t really get on.’

Magnus grunted. They should interview the wife. Spouses were always suspects, even long-gone ones. Although somehow Magnus suspected no one was going to inherit very much from Gústi.

Magnus went back into the bedroom. He glanced at the computer. Next to it was a small stand-alone webcam. Magnus picked it up. It looked new, certainly newer than the other equipment.

‘Tómas, can you get a warrant for us to impound the machine?’ he said.

‘Why don’t we just check it out now?’ said the constable, reaching for the on switch.

‘No,’ said Magnus. ‘If this does become a murder investigation we need to be sure that evidence is gathered by the book.’ Back in Boston too many cases had gone wrong because someone somewhere had screwed up the chain of evidence.

‘Are you sure? I’ll have to go to the magistrate in Ísafjördur.’

Magnus glanced again at the webcam. ‘Best do it,’ he said. ‘After we have seen Arnór.’

They found Arnór at the harbour next to a small blue fishing boat named
Bragi
. He was wrestling with a net. He was a broad-shouldered man of about forty, unshaven, with dark thinning hair. He had the rock-hard face of a man who had spent a couple of decades battling the North Atlantic.

He stood up and wiped his hands on his overalls. ‘I heard about Gústi,’ he said. ‘I expected a visit from you. Come on board.’

He led them into the boat’s small cabin and they sat on benches crammed around a little table. It was only marginally warmer than the quay outside.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ Arnór said.

Magnus took out his notebook. ‘You appreciate I have to ask you some questions.’

‘I just told you – I didn’t kill him. That’s really all you need to know.’

‘Tell me what you did this morning. From when you woke up.’

Arnór stared at Magnus. Magnus stared back. The fisherman rolled a cigarette and lit it. He had big strong hands, and he looked as if he was about to crush the roll-up as he held it between thumb and forefinger. He took a deep drag. Magnus waited. Eventually Arnór spoke. ‘The alarm went off at six. I got dressed, loaded some tackle on to my pickup, checked the computer and went down to the café at the harbour. Had breakfast with some of the guys.’

‘What time was that?’ Magnus asked.

‘About seven, I guess. I’m not sure.’

‘And who was there?’

Arnór gave Magnus and Tómas five names, all of which were known to Tómas.

‘Who else lives with you?’ Magnus asked.

‘My wife and two kids.’

‘Did they see you get up?’ Family members could always lie, of course, but then they could also tell the truth.

‘Nah. Whenever my wife hears the alarm she just rolls over. She doesn’t start work until nine. And the kids don’t get up for school until after seven. I’m often up early and they just ignore me.’

‘OK,’ said Magnus. ‘Now tell me about Gústi.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ repeated Arnór.

‘That may be so, but you didn’t like him?’

‘He was a bastard. A lying, sneaking bastard.’ Arnór launched into a long disquisition on what a lying, sneaking bastard Gústi had been since the days when they had both been to school together. Magnus let him talk.

‘What happened last Saturday?’ he asked when Arnór had eventually finished. ‘You two had a fight. Why?’

‘Haven’t I given you enough reasons why?’ Arnór asked.

‘Yes, but why last Saturday in particular?’

Arnór took a drag on his cigarette. ‘There was a guy from Grindavík in here last week. Helgi. We don’t know each other well. He was in the café and I was talking to him, just chatting, you know. A couple of other guys were there as well. We were talking about quotas and me being busted last year. I mentioned my suspicions that Gústi had told someone in the ministry lies about me. Anyway, Helgi said his brother worked in the ministry and that he knew that the tip-off had come from someone living in Bolungarvík. It was proof that it was Gústi. Not that I needed it, I’d known all along, but Gústi had always denied it.’

Arnór was scowling. ‘The ministry investigated me, you know. They cleared me in the end, but if they had found me guilty it would have been all over for me. I can barely keep
Bragi
afloat as it is. A ban or a fine would have been the last straw.’

Magnus nodded. If Arnór had taken any loans out on his boat, he would be suffering from the credit crunch like most other Icelanders. It wouldn’t take much to put him out of business.

‘So I confronted him. We were both drunk. We both ended up outside. Trouble was I was too far gone to do him real damage. And then Tómas locked us up.’

‘Do you deny you threatened to kill Gústi?’ Magnus asked.

Arnór frowned. ‘No I don’t. And to be honest, that evening I felt like it. But not the next morning. And not this morning, either.’

Magnus examined the fisherman closely. He sounded convincing, but there was no doubt he had a motive.

‘Are you arresting me?’ Arnór asked.

‘No,’ said Magnus. ‘Not as long as you promise to stay in port tomorrow.’

‘I was planning to go out fishing tomorrow morning,’ said Arnór. ‘Just for the day.’

‘Got the handcuffs, Tómas?’ Magnus said.

Tómas reached for his belt.

‘All right, all right,’ Arnór grumbled. ‘I’ll be around tomorrow if you need me.’

‘Arnór?’ Magnus asked.

‘Yes?’

‘If you didn’t kill Gústi, do you have any idea who did?’

‘Sure,’ said Arnór.

‘Who?’

The fisherman grinned. ‘Got to be the hidden people, hasn’t it? They hated Gústi even more than I did.’

Magnus and Tómas checked with three of the local fisherman who had had breakfast with Arnór. They confirmed that he had come in at about seven, as did the owner of the café. Then the two policemen went on to Arnór’s house. His two teenage daughters were back from school and claimed they had heard nothing that morning, but their mother was still working at the petrol station.

It took less than five minutes to get there. Arnór’s wife was a small, businesslike woman with her dark hair tied up neatly in a bun, who confirmed that she had no idea when her husband had woken up. As a fisherman’s wife she had long ago learned to roll over in bed when the alarm went off, but she assured Magnus that although her husband hated Gústi he was incapable of killing him or anyone else.

There was no doubt that Magnus and Tómas’s questions rattled her, as they should. Arnór could have got up at six and left the house just before seven as he claimed. Or he could have left much earlier.

If it was Arnór who had started the landslide at just before six-thirty, there was time for him to return to town and the harbour for breakfast with his buddies. Just.

Things did not look good for the fisherman. Magnus and Tómas decided to ask some more questions the following morning, and then bring him in.

Tómas drove off to Ísafjördur to get the warrant from the magistrate there to search Gústi’s computer and also Arnór’s house and boat, leaving Magnus at the police station. He spent half an hour writing up his notes. He had almost finished when there was a knock at the door.