Far North - Michael Ridpath [128]
VIGDÍS LOOKED AT the nineteen-year-old boy opposite her. His eyes were rimmed with red and he looked miserable.
He hadn’t talked after his night in the cells, and Vigdís was surprised. She had done her best to coax something out of him, to make him feel good about confessing to whatever he wanted to confess to. She had mentioned Gabríel Örn, Sindri, Björn and Harpa. Nothing.
Ingólfur Arnarson. Nothing.
Then Árni had tried. His histrionics, including a bit of shouting at Frikki and banging on the table had been, quite frankly, embarrassing. For a moment Vigdís thought that she had exchanged a half-smile of amusement with Frikki, but then it was gone. She fervently hoped that they wouldn’t have to play back the videotape. There was no doubt about it: Árni watched too much TV.
There was a knock at the door and one of the duty constables from the front desk appeared. ‘Vigdís? There’s someone to see you.’
Vigdís left Árni to it and followed the constable into an adjoining interview room. There sat a dark-haired woman of about twenty.
‘I am Magda, Frikki’s girlfriend,’ she said in English.
Vigdís remembered that Árni had mentioned a girlfriend when he had picked Frikki up from his mother’s house. ‘Do you speak Icelandic?’ Vigdís asked.
‘A little. Can I talk to him?’
‘I’m afraid not. We are interviewing him in relation to a very serious incident.’
‘Please. Just for five minutes.’
Vigdís shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. But perhaps you can help. Do you know anything about the death of Gabríel Örn in January this year?’
Magda shook her head. ‘I was in Poland then.’
‘Has Frikki spoken to you about it?’
Magda hesitated. There was silence in the small interview room. Vigdís waited. She could almost see the wheels turning in Magda’s head as she tried to come to a decision.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, he has. But it is better if he talks to you directly about it.’
‘I agree,’ said Vigdís. ‘But he won’t.’
‘Let me talk to him, then,’ said Magda. ‘Alone.’
Vigdís considered it. As a rule, it was best to keep witnesses separate, pin down the differences in stories, prevent them from conferring. But this case was different. She nodded.
Ten minutes later Magda knocked on the door of the interview room. Vigdís opened it.
‘Frikki wants to talk,’ Magda said.
Vigdís was sitting at a table at the back of the coffee shop on Hverfisgata, just a few metres from the police station. At moments like this, outside the police station, Magnus had trouble remembering she was Icelandic and not American. An attractive black woman in jeans and a fleece, she could easily be one of the detectives from the Boston Police Department.
After seeing Ingileif he had walked the streets aimlessly. He had nowhere to go: he couldn’t face the classroom at the police college, and it was clear Baldur wouldn’t welcome him at the station. His thoughts bounced between Ingileif and the Óskar Gunnarsson case. Both depressed him. He came up with no great ideas about either problem.
There seemed an inevitability about Ingileif’s decision. The case involving her father’s death in the 1990s had been very painful for her. Although it had brought Magnus and her together, he could see how she associated him with it. He could understand how she might want to run away. Start again somewhere new. She was doing what she felt she had to do.
But the Óskar Gunnarsson case was different. Although he had been sidelined, he was confident that he was right.
And he could never let a case go.
So when Vigdís had called him on his cell phone, he had hurried to the café.
‘What have you got?’ he asked her.
‘Frikki talked.’
‘The night in the cells did its stuff?’
‘More his girlfriend. She persuaded him.’
‘And?’
‘And you were right. Gabríel Örn’s death wasn’t suicide.’
‘Who killed him? Björn?’
‘Possibly Frikki. Probably Harpa.’ Vigdís explained everything that Frikki had told her. About the night in January. The drinking at Sindri’s flat. Harpa calling Gabríel Örn, tempting him out. The scuffle, Harpa hitting him over the head. And the plan to cover everything up, a plan which