Frikki handed her the money. ‘Nice to see you,’ he said.
‘And you.’
‘Who was that?’ Magda asked as they left the bakery. Frikki and she spoke a mixture of English and Icelandic to each other, and Magda could understand Icelandic reasonably well. ‘You Icelanders never introduce people!’
‘Sorry. It’s a woman I met last winter during the protests. I haven’t seen her since then. Her name is Harpa.’
‘What was that about the police?’ Magda asked.
‘Nothing,’ Frikki said.
‘What do you mean, “nothing”?’ Magda said. ‘I could see it was something.’
Frikki hesitated. A dozen different stories flashed across his brain, but he didn’t want to lie to Magda. Then again, he didn’t want to tell her the truth either.
‘There was some trouble after the demonstrations. The police asked some questions.’
‘What kind of questions?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Magda,’ Frikki said.
‘OK,’ Magda shrugged, although Frikki could tell she wasn’t happy. They got into the car. ‘Let’s go. And I will try to save this pastry for when we get to the beach.’
On the long drive back to Reykjavík Magnus thought about what Unnur had said. She had been quite convincing that his grandfather was actually glad that Ragnar had been caught in an affair with her. Yet there was no doubt that Hallgrímur must have disliked Ragnar intensely.
Could his grandfather really be responsible for his father’s death?
Hallgrímur would have been in his sixties when Ragnar was stabbed in Duxbury. Magnus knew he was still farming actively at that age, and he would have been fit and strong enough to stab Ragnar. Especially in the back. The medical examiner’s report was etched on Magnus’s brain. The first stab wound was probably taken in the back, with the two subsequent ones in the chest, after Ragnar had fallen. This, together with the lack of any sign of a break-in, suggested that Ragnar had not felt threatened by whoever had called on him that day. It also meant that the murderer did not have to be big and strong enough to overcome him.
Stabbed in the back. Yes, Magnus could imagine Hallgrímur stabbing someone in the back.
But was Hallgrímur in the United States at the time? Magnus had never checked on that specific point. His grandfather seemed embedded in Bjarnarhöfn, part of the soil. Magnus could scarcely imagine him travelling as far as Reykjavík, let alone Boston. When he had visited Iceland himself just after his father’s death, there had been no mention of any travel to America. That was something he would have to check up on. Since 2001 he was sure US Immigration records would show everyone who had come into the country. But Ragnar was killed in 1996.
There should be a way of checking it out.
It didn’t quite feel right, though. Magnus knew that Hallgrímur was a cruel and vindictive man. For that reason he could imagine the pleasure that the old man would have felt at the discovery of Ragnar’s affair, even if it hurt his daughter. It was true that when his father had come back to Iceland to retrieve Magnus and Óli, the two men had had almighty rows; in the heat of the moment Magnus could just about imagine Hallgrímur killing his father then.
But eight years later? It didn’t feel right.
The key thing would be to figure out whether Hallgrímur was in the States at the time. If he was, that would be pretty conclusive.
But Magnus had the strong feeling he was heading up yet another blind alley. A blind alley with his grandfather at the end of it.
His spirits lifted as he drove south. The sun was setting to the west, burnishing the endless silver flatness of the Atlantic. The hillsides glowed. As he emerged from the tunnel under the Hvalfjördur, with Mount Esja looming above him, his phone rang.
‘Magnus?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Sharon Piper.’
Magnus could detect the excitement in her voice.
‘Hi, Sharon, did you get back OK?’
‘I went straight into the station. I’ve been checking the interview notes. You remember Óskar had a Venezuelan girlfriend, Claudia Pamplona-Rodríguez?’
‘Yes.’
‘When she was interviewed, she mentioned a woman coming around to the house in Kensington once over the summer. She thinks some time in July. An Icelandic woman. She wanted to speak to Óskar in private, so they went into the living room with the door shut. It only took about a quarter of an hour. Afterwards the woman came out looking angry and left. Óskar didn’t seem too bothered.’
‘Let me guess. The woman was tall and thin with dark curly hair?’
‘You’ve got it. In her thirties. Quite attractive. Or attractive enough for Claudia to be suspicious.’
‘You don’t have a photo of Harpa, do you?’
‘No, but if you send me one I can get Claudia to ID her.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HARPA LOOKED NERVOUS as she sat in the interview room. One hand was tugging and twisting the curls in her hair.
Magnus had called Vigdís, who was still on duty, and asked her to bring Harpa in and take her photograph. A copy had already been sent by e-mail to Piper in London.
Magnus and Vigdís had hatched a plan for the interview.
‘Hi, Harpa, thank you for coming in,’ Magnus said. ‘Have you been offered some coffee?’
Harpa shook her head.
‘Would you like some?’
‘No thank you.’ Harpa glanced at both detectives suspiciously. ‘Why am I here?’
Magnus smiled. ‘We’ve got a couple more little questions to ask you. Things come out in an investigation like this, and we have to go back and check them out with witnesses. Sorry, but that’s just the way it works.’
Harpa seemed to relax a bit. ‘OK. What do you want to know?’
‘Have you travelled abroad in the last few months?’ Magnus asked.
Harpa didn’t answer right away. At that moment, Magnus was sure that Harpa was the woman that Claudia had seen. Magnus and Vigdís waited expectantly.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I went to London in July. Just for a couple of days.’
‘Ah, I see. And why did you go?’
‘Oh, you know, shopping.’
‘Shopping?’ Magnus raised his eyebrows. ‘That might have made sense a year ago. But now? Everything is so expensive abroad now, isn’t it? And you can’t have very much money or you wouldn’t be working in a bakery. In fact how many weeks’ wages did the trip cost?’
‘It’s true. It was expensive,’ Harpa said. ‘But I needed a holiday really badly.’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Magnus.
‘What did you buy?’ Vigdís asked.
‘Oh, um, nothing in the end,’ Harpa said, trying to sound casual. ‘You are right. I hadn’t realized how expensive things are there until I was actually in the shops.’
‘Did you visit any friends?’ Magnus asked.
‘Er. No,’ said Harpa.
‘So you didn’t see any other Icelanders?’
Harpa glanced at the two detectives. Magnus could see that she understood the trap. She didn’t know how much they knew. How far she would have to tell the truth in order to avoid being caught out.
‘I did see one Icelander,’ she said, carefully.
‘And who was that?’ Magnus asked innocently.
‘Óskar,’ Harpa said. ‘Óskar Gunnarsson.’
‘Huh.’ Magnus didn’t mention the fact that Harpa had left that information out of their previous discussions. Not yet. ‘And what did you talk with Óskar about?’
‘Er, well, I don’t remember. I suppose I was a bit lonely in London and I wanted to see an old friend.’
‘And how long did you spend with him?’
‘Twenty minutes. Half an hour. He was busy, he had somewhere to go.’
She must have figured out that Claudia had seen them together.
Magnus leaned forward. ‘How much money did you ask him for?
‘What? I, er, I didn’t ask him for money.’
‘Yes you did, Harpa. How much? A million krónur? Ten million? Perhaps something every month?’