Far North - Michael Ridpath [29]
‘What time was all this?’ Magnus asked.
‘I don’t know. Midnight? One? Two? I told your colleague at the time.’
And my colleague didn’t write it down, Magnus thought.
‘OK. And where did you go with Björn?’
‘Back to his brother’s place,’ said Harpa. ‘And what happened then you can guess.’
‘Did you see the brother?’
‘I did, but not till the following morning. I saw him on my way out.’
‘And what time was that?’
‘No idea. Can’t remember. But as I was walking home – I walked the whole way, I do remember that – I started thinking about the text Gabríel sent me. It worried me. I dithered a bit, but once I got home I rang the police.’
The story was possible, unlikely, but possible. But there was one thing that made no sense to Magnus. ‘Why did you suddenly call Gabríel Örn? You just told me why you hated him, for what seem to me to be perfectly good reasons.’
‘Er…’ Magnus waited, as Harpa struggled. It seemed to him that she was trying to remember something, rather than figure something out, as if the key thing for her was to repeat what she had said before rather than to come out with the truth.
‘I suppose I still loved him,’ she said.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Magnus. ‘He’d behaved appallingly to you.’
‘Yes,’ Harpa said. ‘But I was a bit drunk, I had never been with a man since Gabríel Örn, I was nervous, scared even. I felt guilty.’
Magnus shook his head. ‘I don’t believe any of this.’
‘I don’t care what you believe!’ Harpa cried. ‘I don’t know what I believe, now. After Gabríel’s death everything changed. I can’t remember why I loved him, I can’t remember how I felt towards him then. The man I loved killed himself! Yes, I hate him. Yes, sometimes I love him. And sometimes I feel guilty. I don’t know why, but I do.’ She fought to control herself. ‘Now I have no idea why I called him. I was a different person then.’
That, Magnus could believe. It was difficult to imagine how a normal woman would feel if her former boyfriend killed himself, no matter how horrible he had been to her. He knew it wouldn’t be logical; it wouldn’t be consistent.
But everyone was making an assumption here, an assumption that Magnus was not entirely happy with.
‘Harpa,’ Magnus leaned forward, facing her over the kitchen table, ‘do you think there is a chance that Gabríel Örn’s death wasn’t suicide?’
‘No,’ said Harpa. ‘No chance at all. It was suicide. It must have been. You investigated it.’
‘Did Gabríel Örn have any enemies?’ Magnus asked. ‘Apart from you, that is?’
‘What are you insinuating?’
‘I’m just asking a question.’
‘A lot of people didn’t like Gabríel Örn. He was scum, basically.’
‘And the world’s better off without him?’
‘No!’ said Harpa, looking close to tears now. ‘No! Not at all! You are twisting my words. His death was dreadful, as was Óskar’s. Now why don’t you go out and find out who killed them?’
‘Them?’ said Magnus with half a smile.
‘Him, damn you! Óskar! And don’t try to trick me, it doesn’t prove anything. Now please go.’
‘Your instincts were right, Árni,’ Magnus said as they drove back downtown. ‘No wonder she didn’t want her father to stay. She’s not telling us the truth.’
‘I thought so. Do you think we should have kept him there?’
‘No, she would just have clammed up completely,’ Magnus said. ‘Árni, you must take more detailed notes. What you’ve got on that interview in January is useless. You must write down the specifics. That’s how you catch people out, when they get the details wrong.’
‘It didn’t seem important at the time,’ said Árni. ‘We were just going through the motions. The Big Salmon was clear that this was suicide and nothing more.’ The Big Salmon was Snorri Gudmundsson, the National Police Commissioner. ‘Also, I was tired. I was in that demo too, you know, but I was the one having skyr thrown at me. They pulled in everyone, including the guys from CID, we did sixteen-hour shifts