Vigdis pulled out her badge. ‘My name is Detective Vigdis Audarsdottir of the Metropolitan Police, and this is my colleague, Magnus Ragnarsson. We have some questions for you relating to the murder of Agnar Haraldsson.’
The smile disappeared. ‘You’d better sit down.’ The woman led them to a cramped desk at the back of the gallery and they sat on two small chairs. ‘I saw something about Agnar on the news. He taught me Icelandic literature when I was at the university.’
‘You saw him recently,’ Vigdis said, checking her notebook. ‘On the sixth of April, at two-thirty?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Ingileif, her voice suddenly hoarse. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I bumped into him in the street, and he asked me to drop in on him some time at the university. So I did.’
‘What did you discuss?’
‘Oh, nothing, really. My design career, mostly. This gallery. He was very attentive, very charming.’
‘Did he say anything about himself?’
‘Not much had changed really. He had married again. He said he had two children.’ She smiled briefly. ‘Difficult to imagine Agnar with kids, but there you are.’
‘You come from Fludir, don’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ said Ingileif. ‘I was born and brought up there. Best farmland in the country, biggest courgettes, reddest tomatoes. Can’t think why I ever left.’
‘Sounds like quite a place. It’s near Hruni, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Hruni is the parish church. It’s three kilometres away.’
‘Did you meet Agnar at Hruni on the afternoon of the twentieth of April?’
Ingileif frowned. ‘No, I didn’t. I was in this shop all day.’
‘It only takes a couple of hours to drive there.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t go there to meet Agnar.’
‘He met someone in Hruni that day. Doesn’t it strike you that it’s a bit of a coincidence that he should go to Fludir, the village where you grew up?’
Ingileif shrugged. ‘Not really. I have no idea what he was doing there.’ She forced a smile. ‘This is a small country. Coincidences happen all the time.’
Vigdis looked at her doubtfully. ‘Is there anyone who could confirm that you were in the shop that afternoon?’
Ingileif thought a moment. ‘That was Monday, wasn’t it? Disa in the boutique next door. She dropped in to borrow some tea bags. I am pretty sure that was Monday.’
Vigdis glanced at Magnus. He realized that she was holding off on pushing Ingileif directly on her relationship with Agnar, and so he decided on a different tack. They could always come back to Agnar later. ‘You had a brother, named Isildur, who died young?’
‘Yes,’ said Ingileif. ‘It was several years before I was born. Meningitis, I think. I never knew him. My parents didn’t speak about him much. He was their first child, it hit them badly, as you can imagine.’
‘Isn’t Isildur an unusual name?’
‘I suppose it is. I hadn’t really thought about it.’
‘Do you know why your parents gave him that name?’
Ingileif shook her head. ‘No idea.’ She seemed nervous and was frowning slightly. Magnus noticed a V-shaped nick above one of her eyebrows, partly hidden by her fringe. Her fingers were fiddling with an intricate silver earring, no doubt designed by one of her colleagues. ‘Except that Isildur was my great-grandfather’s name, I think. On my father’s side. Maybe my dad wanted to honour his own grandfather. You know how names recur in families.’
‘We’d like to ask your parents,’ Magnus asked. ‘Can you give us their address?’
Ingileif sighed. ‘I’m afraid they are both dead. My father died in 1992, and my mother last year.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Magnus said, and he meant it. Ingileif appeared to be in her late twenties, which would mean she had lost her father at about the same age Magnus was when he lost his mother.
‘Were either of them fans of the Lord of the Rings?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Ingileif. ‘I mean, we had a copy in the house so one of them must have read it, but they never mentioned it.’
‘And you? Have you read it?’
‘When I was a kid.’
‘Seen the movies?’
‘I saw the first one. Not the other two. I didn’t really like it. When you’ve seen one orc you’ve seen them all.’
Magnus paused, waiting for more. Ingileif’s pale cheeks blushed red.
‘Have you ever heard of an Englishman named Steve Jubb?’
Ingileif shook her head firmly. ‘No.’
Magnus glanced at Vigdis. Time to get back to Ingileif and Agnar. ‘Ingileif, were you having an affair with Agnar?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Ingileif replied angrily. ‘No, absolutely not.’
‘But you found him charming?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. He always was charming, and that hasn’t changed.’
‘Have you ever had an affair with him?’ Magnus asked.
‘No,’ said Ingileif, her voice hoarse again. Her fingers drifted up towards her earring.
‘Ingileif, this is a murder investigation,’ Vigdis said slowly and firmly. ‘If you lie to us now then we can arrest you. It will be a serious matter, I can assure you. Now, once more, did you ever have an affair with Agnar?’
Ingileif bit her lip, her cheeks reddening again. She took a deep breath. ‘OK. All right. I did have an affair with Agnar when I was his student. He was divorced from his first wife then, it was before he remarried. And it was hardly an affair, we slept together a few times, that was all.’
‘Did he finish it, or did you?’
‘I suppose it was me. He did have a real magnetism for women then, in fact he still had it when I last saw him. He had this way of making you feel special, intellectually interesting as well as beautiful. But he was sleazy, basically. He wanted to sleep with as many girls as he could just to prove to himself what a good-looking guy he was. He was deeply vain. When I saw him the other day he tried to flirt with me again, but I saw through it this time. I don’t mess around with married men.’
‘One last question,’ said Vigdis. ‘Where were you on Friday evening?’
Ingileif’s shoulders lowered marginally as she relaxed, as if this was one difficult question she could answer. ‘I went to a party for a friend who was launching an exhibition of her paintings. I was there from about eight until, maybe, eleven-thirty. There were dozens people there who know me. Her name is Frida Josefsdottir. I can give you her address and phone number if you want.’
‘Please,’ said Vigdis, passing her her notebook. Ingileif scribbled something on a blank page and handed it back.
‘And afterwards?’ asked Vigdis.
‘Afterwards?’
‘After you left the gallery.’
Ingileif smiled shyly. ‘I went home. With someone.’
‘And who would that be?’
‘Larus Thorvaldsson.’
‘Is he a regular boyfriend?’
‘Not really,’ said Ingileif. ‘He’s a painter: we’ve known each other for years. We just spend the night together sometimes. You know how it is. And no, he’s not married.’
For once in the conversation, Ingileif seemed completely unembarrassed. So did Vigdis for that matter. She obviously knew how it was.
Vigdis passed the notebook across again and Ingileif scribbled down Larus’s details.
‘She’s not a very good liar,’ Magnus said when they were back out on the street.
‘I knew there was something going on between her and Agnar.’
‘But she was convincing that that was all in the past.’
‘Possibly,’ said Vigdis. ‘I’ll check her alibi, but I expect it will hold up.’
