‘Not yet. I was waiting for you.’
Magnus nodded. ‘Good. We’ll talk to him.’
‘Also, I couldn’t help wondering why Gústi climbed up here. Right in the path of a potential rock fall.’
‘Was this where he was planning to install the netting?’
‘No. That was supposed to be a few metres lower down.’
Magnus surveyed the scene. ‘It’s a good question. Any answers?’
Tómas shook his head.
‘A very good question.’
‘Anything else that made you suspicious?’
‘Well ...’ The constable hesitated.
‘Show me where the hidden people live,’ said Magnus.
Tómas smiled sheepishly. ‘They are all over the place. One of their dwellings is said to be there, right where Gústi was going to plant the netting.’ He pointed to a smooth rock that jutted out from the hillside.
‘Didn’t like to be messed with, huh?’ Magnus said.
‘Neither did Arnór,’ said Tómas. ‘And he’ll be a whole lot easier to interview.’
Magnus grinned. ‘Good point. I know you searched the area thoroughly, but I think I’ll take another look.’
Magnus spent twenty minutes poking about the scene with Tómas as the light drained off the mountainside. They saw nothing suspicious, but Tómas’s question bothered him. Why had Gústi climbed up to that spot? Magnus stood next to the generator, where Gústi must have been working and stared at the place where he had been crushed.
‘Come on,’ he said to Tómas.
He took Tómas’s powerful flashlight and led him up to the slide. He scrabbled across the rocks, sending several stones crashing down to the road below.
‘Careful!’ said Tómas.
‘Help me,’ said Magnus as he began to push boulders away a few metres beyond where Gústi’s body had lain. ‘He must have seen something and been climbing up towards it. If he did, that something is under these stones.’
It took them half an hour to find the thing, or rather things. There was a small hurricane lamp, its glass smashed. A stuffed bear, a polar bear to be precise, with a red ribbon tied around its neck. And a fold of several thousand kronur in notes.
‘Bait,’ said Magnus. ‘We’ve found the bait.’
They photographed and bagged the bear, the lamp and the banknotes. Tómas called Gústi’s boss to tell him to clear the road, but they left the tape around the immediate crime scene. Magnus climbed into Tómas’s police Jeep, and the constable drove them back to the village.
‘You were right to be suspicious,’ Magnus said.
‘Do you really think the bear was bait?’
‘Could well be,’ said Magnus. ‘Gústi arrives at the site, sees a light and a teddy bear, goes a bit closer, sees the banknotes, goes to pick them up and he’s just where the murderer wanted him. If it was bait, it worked.’
‘Could it be anything else?’
‘Possibly.’ Some elf-related weirdness, Magnus thought but didn’t say. The less said about elves in this investigation, the better. ‘Tell me about Gústi. And this guy Arnór.’
‘Gústi worked for the local construction company, Bolungarvíkur Engineering. They do road maintenance, minor building works, they build the odd house. Knock things down. It’s not high tech, but the quality of their work is pretty good. He’s lived here all his life. Used to be married, but it ended in disaster about ten years ago. Two kids that Gústi sees as little of as he can. No one much likes him, or trusts him. In a community this size it’s bad not to be trusted. He works hard, so they tolerate him, but that’s about it.’
‘I’m impressed with your knowledge.’
‘I know people in the town,’ said Tómas. ‘It’s unavoidable.’
It was not yet completely dark and they were getting closer to Bolungarvík. On their left Magnus spotted a sign for a golf course, although all he could see was a flattish area of snow. As they drew nearer, the mass of the mountain reared up above the tiny village, wrinkles of grey rock peeking out beneath the snow. It looked as if it might crush the human habitation at any moment. And given what Magnus had heard about landslides, that possibility didn’t seem too far fetched.
They passed a white church with a small red steeple standing alone on a knoll and crossed the bridge over a river into town.
Eyrún was right, Bolungarvík would not win any architectural prizes. Square blocks of white concrete, much of it peeled away by the Atlantic winds. Most of the roofs were classic Icelandic red corrugated metal, with the odd lime green specimen thrown in.
‘And Arnór?’
‘He’s a fisherman. Small-time, struggling. Same age as Gústi; they’ve been enemies since school. Things got out of hand last year when someone gave the Ministry of Fisheries a tip-off about Arnór cheating on his quota. That’s a big deal, as I’m sure you know.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘The Ministry investigated, didn’t find enough evidence to prosecute Arnór, but they warned him. Arnór was sure that Gústi had tipped the Ministry off. They had a fight outside the local bar last Saturday night: it had been a long time in coming. I slung them into the two separate cells at the station for the night — although when they began screaming at each other, I let Gústi go.’
‘Death threats?’
‘And the rest. Arnór swore he would kill Gústi that very day. And then leave him on the mountain for a troll to sodomize him.’
‘Nice.’
‘Didn’t see any evidence of troll-rape back there,’ said Tómas. ‘You can usually spot the signs.’
Magnus laughed. He missed the black humour of the Boston homicide cops. He liked Tómas.
They pulled up outside a flashy white block made of concrete, glass and wood, that might in fact win an architecture prize. It was the municipal building: town hall, mayor’s office, police station, post office all in one.
A woman was waiting for them outside the entrance. She was in her forties, short, with long red hair spreading out underneath a brightly striped woolly hat.
She approached Magnus as soon as he was out of the police car. ‘Are you the detective from Reykjavík?’
‘Not now, Rós,’ said Tómas. ‘We are busy.’
‘But I have some information for the detective,’ Rós said. ‘About Gústi’s death.’
‘Well, come back tomorrow morning and I’ll take a statement from you,’ said Tómas.
‘No, that’s all right,’ said Magnus. ‘Rós, is it?’
The woman nodded. She had a broad friendly face with big brown eyes.
‘My name is Sergeant Magnús. Come in and you can tell me what you have to say.’
The three of them sat in the police station’s small interview room, and once Rós had been furnished with a cup of coffee, Magnus took out a pen and pad. With her hat off, Rós’s flaming red hair spread out over her shoulders. ‘It’s the hidden people. They killed him.’
‘I see,’ said Magnus, in as serious a tone as he could muster. He wrote down the words ‘hidden people’ on his pad in big letters and underlined it. ‘And why do you think that?’
‘They told me they would.’
‘Really?’ Magnus said. ‘How?’
‘In a dream. Well, in several dreams over the last few months. They are very unhappy about their homes being destroyed. You know they live in the rocks on this side of the tunnel?’
Magnus nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve just been to see where Gústi was killed. Tómas pointed out their home.’
‘That’s just one of their dwellings. There are many more, or there were, before they were blown up to make the tunnel.’
‘And the hidden people are unhappy about this?’
‘You can say that again. At first they told me they would break the construction company’s machines. Which they did. But the company couldn’t take the hint. So now someone has been killed.’