Sometimes Magnus wondered whether she was seeing other men. He had asked her once and she had denied it and got angry at him for even thinking it. But he was still suspicious. Perhaps that was because he was a cop, always suspicious.
He dispelled those uncomfortable thoughts from his mind and opened the novel Unnur had given him, Moor and the Man. He decided to read chapters one and two before getting on to chapter three.
It was about a family recently arrived in Reykjavík in 1944. The war and the British and American occupation of Iceland had brought wealth to the country. The man of the title was a young farm labourer named Arnór from an unspecified area of the countryside who had moved to Reykjavík looking for work. The book was well written and the story had gripped Magnus by the time he turned to chapter three, a flashback to Arnór’s childhood.
It was spring, and Arnór and his best friend Jói from a neighbouring farm crept into the barn to play in the hay, something they were strictly forbidden from doing. They heard rustling and grunting. At first they thought that some large animal had found refuge there, or perhaps a tramp. As they crept nearer they recognized the sounds as human, and not just human, but coming from their parents. Arnór’s father was making love to Jói’s mother, the farmer’s wife, right there in the hay.
The two boys ran away without being seen.
A month later, the boys were playing by a secluded lake some distance from the farm. They were on their way home when Arnór realized he had forgotten his knife and returned to the lake. He saw Jói’s father the farmer rowing out from the shore of the tarn, a large sack visible at the bow of the boat. When he reached the middle he paused and shipped his oars. With a fair bit of heaving and cursing, he rolled the heavy sack out of the boat and into the water.
Arnór returned home. His father was late back from a trip to the local town. When he failed to return home that night, his mother raised the alarm. Arnór’s father was never seen nor heard from again. The theory was that he had fled to America, but if he had, he never sent word back to Iceland. And Arnór never told anyone what he had seen.
Magnus closed the book. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said in English.
Unnur had claimed that Hallgrímur’s father had killed Benedikt’s father, Jóhannes, who was the farmer at Hraun. If the episode in the novel was based on that, that would mean that Benedikt and Hallgrímur were the two small boys, and Jóhannes’s body was in a nearby lake: either Swine Lake or perhaps the lake next to it, Hraunsfjardarvatn.
Magnus hadn’t heard anything about a neighbour being murdered, or even disappearing. But if it had happened when his grandfather was a child, that would have been in the 1930s. Neither had he heard about a writer living nearby, there certainly wasn’t one there during Magnus’s four-year stay in the 1980s. But Benedikt could easily have moved away years before.
Ingileif paused in her playing. She had noticed the stunned expression on Magnus’s face.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked.
Magnus held up the cover of his book.
‘Oh, I’ve read that. It’s not bad. I like him.’
‘I’ve never read anything he wrote until now.’
‘He’s quite good. A bit like Steinbeck, but not that good. I’ve read most of his books, I think. Why the sudden interest? And why the “Jesus Christ”?’
Magnus told Ingileif about his visit to Unnur. He felt slightly guilty about not mentioning it to her before, but she seemed to understand, and she didn’t dwell on what Unnur had said about her affair with his father, for which Magnus was grateful.
‘I remember that chapter,’ Ingileif said. ‘So this woman thinks that the guy who killed Benedikt’s father was your great-grandfather?’
‘That’s right. Gunnar was his name.’
‘Do you remember him? Was he still alive when you were at Bjarnarhöfn?’
‘No, he had been dead a long time. I don’t know very much about him. Apart from how he died.’
‘And how was that?’
‘Have you heard of Búland’s Head?’
‘It’s on the Snaefells Peninsula somewhere, isn’t it? I’ve never been there.’
‘That’s right. It isn’t too far from my grandfather’s farm. It’s one of those places that has a bunch of folk tales attached to it. The road from Grundarfjördur to Ólafsvík runs along its edge. It used to be very narrow, and it’s still pretty scary, or it was in the nineteen eighties. Apparently my great-grandfather slipped and fell. He was riding his horse.’
‘But no one told you about him being suspected of killing anyone?’
‘No. But then my grandparents would be hardly likely to tell me. As you know, I lived with my father from the age of twelve and he never spoke about my mother’s family. Do you know anything about this guy Benedikt Jóhannesson?’
‘A bit. He wrote in the sixties and seventies. I think that might have been one of his last books.’
Magnus checked the front of the book. ‘Copyright 1985.’
‘There you are. Actually, he died about then. I think he might have been murdered. I’m sure he was. Hold on, let’s google him.’
Ingileif grabbed her laptop and after a certain amount of fiddling about they were on the Icelandic Wikipedia entry for Benedikt Jóhannesson. Born 1926, died 1985. He was born and brought up on a farm on the Snaefells Peninsula. He studied Icelandic at the University of Iceland and lived in Reykjavík. He published a dozen novels, the last of which was Moor and the Man, and several collections of short stories.
‘Those are quite good,’ said Ingileif. ‘I think I prefer them to the novels, although they are not as popular.’
They read on. ‘Look at that!’ exclaimed Ingileif, pointing to the section headed Death.
Magnus was a couple of lines behind her; he skipped a bit, and read the section. ‘Jeez.’
In 1985 Benedikt Jóhannesson was found murdered at his home in Reykjavík. The crime was never solved, but the police assumed it was a burglar.
‘There you are, Mr Detective,’ said Ingileif. ‘There’s something to get your teeth into.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
August 1942
HILDUR’S BACK ACHED as she raked up the hay. Her brother Benedikt was twenty metres away, laying low the tall lush grass with rhythmic sweeps of his scythe. Hildur glanced up towards Bjarnarhöfn Fell. A black cloud was gathering on the other side of the mountain, preparing to pounce. They had only harvested half of the home field, and time was running out if they were to get all of it in for the winter. Cutting the hay was the easy part. The difficulty was drying it and then keeping it dry. A row of haycocks behind her testified to their efforts so far.
She saw a figure on a horse picking its way along the Berserkjagata through the lava field. Hallgrímur. He was eighteen and although not tall, he was broadening out. Some of the younger girls in the region even found him attractive, much to Hildur’s disgust. She was surprised to see him pause as he passed her younger brother. Usually the two of them ignored each other.
‘Hello, Benni!’
Benedikt paused and straightened up. ‘Hello, Halli.’
‘What are you bothering to get the hay in for? I thought you’d sold the place?’
‘The new owner will need to feed his sheep this winter just like we do.’
‘Huh. He’s from Laxárdalur, isn’t he? Can’t he bring his own hay?’
Benedikt shrugged at the stupidity of the remark and made as if to go back to work.
‘I hear your mother has bought the clothes store in town?’ Hallgrímur said.
‘That’s right.’
‘So you will be selling ladies’ underwear?’
‘I’m going to school in Reykjavík. The Menntaskóli.’
‘That’s a bit of a waste of time, isn’t it? But I suppose your mother won’t need you at home any more once she sells the farm.’