Far North - Michael Ridpath [62]
And in that farm down there, right now in the twenty-first century, lived Hallgrímur, Magnus’s grandfather.
Magnus shook his head. How could he, a fit thirty-three-year-old who had got through many a tough situation, be afraid of an old man in his eighties?
But it wasn’t just the man. It was the memories.
Magnus looked over to the right, beyond the mole that was Helgafell, to Stykkishólmur, a white splatter of dots by the sea. Among those dots somewhere was Unnur Ágústsdóttir with answers to other questions.
But in the meantime, he had to find Björn.
*
Grundarfjördur was twenty kilometres further west along the coast from the Berserkjahraun. It was a compact fishing village of white houses, a church and large sheds dedicated to processing fish, squeezing around a crescent-shaped harbour. Behind it a heath of browned grass and waterfalls led up to mountains. To one side, thrusting out of the sea, was a tower of green-and-grey hooped rock known as Kirkjufell or Church Fell.
Björn’s house was a small one-storey affair on the western edge of town, right by the shore, in the shadow of the rock.
No one was at home. His neighbour said that she hadn’t seen Björn for a couple of days.
Magnus drove back to the harbourmaster’s office. The harbour-master, a tall man with thinning sandy hair and glasses, knew Björn Helgason well. Over a cup of coffee he explained that Björn had sold his boat a few months before to pay off his loans, and now crewed for other captains either in Grundarfjördur, Stykkishólmur or some of the other ports along the north coast of the peninsula. There were three fishing companies in town that Magnus should try.
This he did, without success. As far as they knew, Björn was on none of their boats.
Damn! It was a risk of course, it was always a risk to interview a suspect without calling ahead first to ensure they were there, but it was a risk Magnus often took. He liked to catch them by surprise. You could tell a lot from the look on a guilty man’s face when he answered the door to the police when he hadn’t been expecting them.
Magnus dropped in on the local police station, a brown wooden building just behind the harbour. There he met an affable constable in his forties with a full moustache, named Páll. Another cup of coffee. It was clear that Páll was excited by a visit from the Reykjavík Violent Crimes Unit, although he pretended not to show it. He knew Björn well, of course. Although not from Grundarfjördur originally, Páll had been stationed there for ten years and he liked the place.
Times were tough, though, for the fishermen, both the independent operators and the fishing companies with their fish factories in town. Too much borrowing. Even here, two hundred kilometres from Reykjavík, people had borrowed too much. It was those damn bankers and that arrogant son-of-a-bitch Ólafur Tómasson.
Magnus humoured the constable as he went through the traditional kreppa litany, and asked him to keep an eye out for Björn over the next few days. He left Páll his number, and told him that he wanted to see Björn in connection with Óskar Gunnarsson’s murder.
Then, after stopping at a café in town for a late lunch, Magnus decided to take a slight detour to Stykkishólmur. Perhaps Björn was working on a boat out of there. And if he wasn’t? Well, Magnus might drop in on Unnur.
Magnus sped through the Berserkjahraun without glancing left towards his grandfather’s farm. A little further on a sea eagle heaved itself into the air, its distinctive white tail fanned out behind it, and beat a path towards a knoll. This little hill, a familiar sight from the farm at Bjarnarhöfn, was only two hundred feet high and was known as Helgafell, or Holy Mountain.