Far North - Michael Ridpath [77]
Páll grunted.
They got to their vehicles, Magnus’s Range Rover parked next to Páll’s police car outside the wooden police station.
Ingileif was waiting. She had that air of barely suppressed excitement that Magnus knew well.
‘Good interview?’ she asked.
‘OK, I guess,’ said Magnus. ‘What is it?’
‘Páll, isn’t it?’ said Ingileif, giving the constable her best smile.
‘That’s right.’
‘I assume the town library isn’t open on Sundays?’
‘No.’
‘But you know the librarian?’
‘Yes. She’s my wife’s cousin.’
‘Is there any chance that you could get her to open it up for us?’
Páll glanced at Magnus. ‘Why?’
Ingileif looked at Magnus, her eyes shining. ‘When I was wandering around, I remembered something. A Benedikt Jóhannesson short story. I think it’s called something like “The Slip”. I need to show it to you.’
‘Is this police business?’ Páll asked Magnus.
‘No,’ Magnus said.
‘Of course it is!’ said Ingileif. ‘It’s about a murder. At Búland’s Head, fifty years ago.’
Páll raised his eyebrows. ‘I can’t get the library open for you, but my wife is a keen reader of Benedikt’s. She’s from around here, and he used to live over by the Berserkjahraun. We’ll see if she’s got the book you want.’
The policeman’s house was on the edge of town: it took all of five minutes to drive there. His wife’s name was Sara, and she did indeed have a copy of Benedikt Jóhannesson’s short stories. Eagerly, Ingileif found “The Slip”. It was only five pages.
She skimmed it and then began to read out loud. A boy was riding a horse along a cliff. He met the man who had raped his sister riding the other way. They squeezed past each other and the boy gave the other man’s horse a shove. Man and horse fell into the sea below.
‘Well?’ said Ingileif, her eyes shining.
‘You think Benedikt pushed my great-grandfather into the sea at Búland’s Head?’
‘Don’t you?’
Magnus glanced at Páll and his wife and their poorly concealed expressions of curiosity. He had blurted out his family’s secrets in front of these strangers without thinking, but it would be useful to learn if there was any local gossip that might cast some more light on those events. So he explained how his great-grandfather had died, and also the chapter in Moor and the Man that suggested that Gunnar had killed Benedikt’s father.
‘I remember that,’ said Sara. ‘It caused a little local scandal when that book came out. I was about fifteen at the time, I remember my parents discussing it. The mysterious disappearance of the farmer at Hraun was still talked about around these parts, even though it had happened fifty years before. And Benedikt’s book hinted at a solution, one that the locals noticed right away. He was murdered by his neighbour. And that was your great-grandfather?’
‘Yes. He lived at Bjarnarhöfn. I hadn’t heard anything about it until recently.’
‘And then of course Benedikt himself was murdered soon afterwards. But that was down in Reykjavík. I don’t think they ever caught whoever did it.’
‘Were there any rumours of a local connection?’
‘No, certainly not. That’s the kind of thing that happens in the big city, isn’t it? Nothing to do with people from around here.’
‘And nothing about Gunnar’s death on Búland’s Head?’
‘No. There were occasional accidents up there, especially in the old days before the road was improved. And of course there were lots of stories about trolls throwing people into the sea.’
‘I bet,’ said Magnus.
‘Are you investigating all this?’ Páll asked Magnus.
‘Only in a personal capacity,’ Magnus said. ‘It’s not official police business by any means. But thank you, Sara, for letting us look at your book. And please keep this to yourselves.’
Magnus knew he couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure of their discretion, but Páll was a policeman and they seemed decent enough.