and quizzed him about the case. He told her about missing Bjorn at Grundarfjordur and about Harpa’s visit to Oskar in London. He mentioned nothing about Unnur.
After dinner he called Sharon Piper in London to tell her about the interview with Harpa. Unsurprisingly, Harpa had said nothing once her lawyer had arrived, and following Baldur’s instructions Magnus had let her go. Magnus also told Sharon about Isak, the student at the London School of Economics who had had an argument with Harpa the night Gabriel Orn had died. Sharon agreed to talk to him.
When he had finished the call, Ingileif picked up her cello. She was still quite a serious player and practised almost every day. Magnus liked to listen to her, or to read while she was playing. She started on one of her favourites, a piece by Brahms. Magnus knew that whenever he heard that particular piece in future he would think of her.
It was all very domestic. And yet there were things that Magnus didn’t understand about Ingileif. They were not ‘in a relationship’ in the American sense of the word. Ingileif came and went as she pleased, made her own plans. Magnus wasn’t quite sure what his role in her life was. Should they spend time together at the weekend? Should he ask her what she was doing? What
Sometimes Magnus wondered whether she was seeing other men. He had asked her once and she had denied it and got angry at him for even thinking it. But he was still suspicious. Perhaps that was because he was a cop, always suspicious.
He dispelled those uncomfortable thoughts from his mind and opened the novel Unnur had given him,
It was about a family recently arrived in Reykjavik in 1944. The war and the British and American occupation of Iceland had brought wealth to the country. The man of the title was a young farm labourer named Arnor from an unspecified area of the countryside who had moved to Reykjavik looking for work. The book was well written and the story had gripped Magnus by the time he turned to chapter three, a flashback to Arnor’s childhood.
It was spring, and Arnor and his best friend Joi from a neighbouring farm crept into the barn to play in the hay, something they were strictly forbidden from doing. They heard rustling and grunting. At first they thought that some large animal had found refuge there, or perhaps a tramp. As they crept nearer they recognized the sounds as human, and not just human, but coming from their parents. Arnor’s father was making love to Joi’s mother, the farmer’s wife, right there in the hay.
The two boys ran away without being seen.
A month later, the boys were playing by a secluded lake some distance from the farm. They were on their way home when Arnor realized he had forgotten his knife and returned to the lake. He saw Joi’s father the farmer rowing out from the shore of the tarn, a large sack visible at the bow of the boat. When he reached the middle he paused and shipped his oars. With a fair bit of heaving and cursing, he rolled the heavy sack out of the boat and into the water.
Arnor returned home. His father was late back from a trip to the local town. When he failed to return home that night, his mother raised the alarm. Arnor’s father was never seen nor heard from again. The theory was that he had fled to America, but if he had, he never sent word back to Iceland. And Arnor never told anyone what he had seen.
Magnus closed the book. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said in English.
Unnur had claimed that Hallgrimur’s father had killed Benedikt’s father, Johannes, who was the farmer at Hraun. If the episode in the novel was based on that, that would mean that Benedikt and Hallgrimur were the two small boys, and Johannes’s body was in a nearby lake: either Swine Lake or perhaps the lake next to it, Hraunsfjardarvatn.
Magnus hadn’t heard anything about a neighbour being murdered, or even disappearing. But if it had happened when his grandfather was a child, that would have been in the 1930s. Neither had he heard about a writer living nearby, there certainly wasn’t one there during Magnus’s four-year stay in the 1980s. But Benedikt could easily have moved away years before.
Ingileif paused in her playing. She had noticed the stunned expression on Magnus’s face.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked.
Magnus held up the cover of his book.
‘Oh, I’ve read that. It’s not bad. I like him.’
‘I’ve never read anything he wrote until now.’
‘He’s quite good. A bit like Steinbeck, but not
Magnus told Ingileif about his visit to Unnur. He felt slightly guilty about not mentioning it to her before, but she seemed to understand, and she didn’t dwell on what Unnur had said about her affair with his father, for which Magnus was grateful.
‘I remember that chapter,’ Ingileif said. ‘So this woman thinks that the guy who killed Benedikt’s father was your great-grandfather?’
‘That’s right. Gunnar was his name.’
‘Do you remember him? Was he still alive when you were at Bjarnarhofn?’
‘No, he had been dead a long time. I don’t know very much about him. Apart from how he died.’
‘And how was that?’
‘Have you heard of Buland’s Head?’
‘It’s on the Snaefells Peninsula somewhere, isn’t it? I’ve never been there.’
‘That’s right. It isn’t too far from my grandfather’s farm. It’s one of those places that has a bunch of folk tales attached to it. The road from Grundarfjordur to Olafsvik runs along its edge. It used to be very narrow, and it’s still pretty scary, or it was in the nineteen eighties. Apparently my great-grandfather slipped and fell. He was riding his horse.’
‘But no one told you about him being suspected of killing anyone?’
‘No. But then my grandparents would be hardly likely to tell me. As you know, I lived with my father from the age of twelve and he never spoke about my mother’s family. Do you know anything about this guy Benedikt Johannesson?’
‘A bit. He wrote in the sixties and seventies. I think that might have been one of his last books.’
Magnus checked the front of the book. ‘Copyright 1985.’
‘There you are. Actually, he died about then. I think he might have been murdered. I’m sure he was. Hold on, let’s google him.’
Ingileif grabbed her laptop and after a certain amount of fiddling about they were on the Icelandic Wikipedia entry for Benedikt Johannesson. Born 1926, died 1985. He was born and brought up on a farm on the Snaefells Peninsula. He studied Icelandic at the University of Iceland and lived in Reykjavik. He published a dozen novels, the last of which was
‘Those are quite good,’ said Ingileif. ‘I think I prefer them to the novels, although they are not as popular.’
They read on. ‘Look at that!’ exclaimed Ingileif, pointing to the section headed
Magnus was a couple of lines behind her; he skipped a bit, and read the section. ‘Jeez.’
In 1985 Benedikt Johannesson was found murdered at his home in Reykjavik. The crime was never solved, but the police assumed it was a burglar.
‘There you are, Mr Detective,’ said Ingileif. ‘There’s something to get your teeth into.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
August 1942
HILDUR’S BACK ACHED as she raked up the hay. Her brother Benedikt was twenty metres away, laying low the tall lush grass with rhythmic sweeps of his scythe. Hildur glanced up towards Bjarnarhofn Fell. A black cloud was gathering on the other side of the mountain, preparing to pounce. They had only harvested half of the home field, and time was running out if they were to get all of it in for the winter. Cutting the hay was the easy part. The
