The Wanderer, page 20
‘There’s nothing going on between the three of us!’ Eygló interrupted sharply.
‘All right,’ said Suzy. ‘But you just stay here for a couple of minutes, and I’ll go back and tell Rósa to take herself away. Einar too. What about Beccari?’
‘No. No, he’s fine,’ said Eygló, who had a feeling that the professor was on her side.
‘OK, he stays. And then you’ll come back, and we will try again. And this time, you will do it as well as I know you can.’ Suzy took Eygló’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘OK?’
Down here, by the stream, out of sight of the others, Eygló could feel Suzy’s confidence in her give her strength. She nodded.
Suzy turned and climbed up the small slope over the lip of the gully.
Eygló stood by the stream and took some deep breaths. The brook babbled loudly and half a dozen wagtails bobbed and darted around her. Somewhere in the distance some twenty-firstcentury farm machinery rumbled. A gentle scent rose up from the wildflowers, mixing with a touch of twenty-first-century cow manure. It was a rare cloudless day, another reason Suzy was keen to get as many scenes in the can as she could.
Gudrid would have come down to this very stream to fetch water, to wash clothes. Eygló grinned. Perhaps to escape her in-laws.
Eygló could do this. She was ready.
But when she climbed up the slope, Suzy was speaking to a small group of people gathered around an old Land Rover and a pickup truck down by the road.
‘Eygló!’ Suzy called. ‘Over here!’
As Eygló approached the group she could tell they were archaeologists: the clothes, the facial hair, the spectacles, the doughty muddiness of them. The smallest of the group, an Asian-looking woman with long shiny dark hair, smiled when she saw Eygló.
‘Hi, Eygló. I don’t know if you remember me? Anya? Anya Kleemann.’
‘Yes, I do remember you!’ said Eygló with a smile. ‘You were on the dig with us here back in 2011.’ She was a Greenlander of about Eygló’s age doing a PhD at Aarhus University in Denmark, as far as Eygló could remember.
‘That’s right. I heard you were going to be filming here.’
‘You look like you’ve come from your own excavation somewhere?’
‘Tasiusaq. It’s just a few kilometres over the hill that way.’ She pointed northwards. ‘In the next fjord. A thirteenth-century farmhouse.’ She gave a shy smile. ‘It’s my first dig as supervisor.’
‘Cool.’
‘I thought Viking Queens was brilliant, by the way,’ Anya said.
‘Thanks,’ said Eygló. ‘It was Suzy’s idea. She produced it.’
‘And now we’re doing Gudrid the Wanderer,’ said Suzy.
‘Great subject,’ said Anya. She looked over to the meadow under which lay the ruins of the Brattahlíd longhouse. ‘Presumably you are talking about the wampum?’
‘Of course,’ said Suzy. ‘Were you there when it was found?’
‘I was,’ said Anya. ‘But it was an Italian girl who found it. Carlotta, isn’t that right, Eygló?’
Eygló nodded. She could tell Anya had spotted the change in her and Suzy’s expression. But Eygló didn’t want to explain, not in front of Suzy.
Fortunately, Suzy took charge. ‘I’m afraid Carlotta died recently. She was murdered. In Iceland.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Anya. ‘That’s dreadful. What happened?’
‘The police are trying to figure it out,’ said Suzy. ‘And not doing a very good job of it.’
‘My God.’ Anya looked stunned. ‘I didn’t know her well – I only met her on that dig, but I liked her. That’s horrible.’
Eygló nodded. It was. It was definitely horrible.
‘You know she contacted me a couple of weeks ago? Out of the blue, really. I hadn’t heard from her since the dig. It was about the wampum.’
Please shut up, thought Eygló. A few days before she would have been eager to hear what Anya had to say about why Carlotta wanted to talk to her about wampum, but now Eygló just wanted to change the subject.
As did Suzy. ‘Would you excuse us, Anya?’ she said. ‘We are on a tight schedule, and I need my archaeologist back.’
‘We should get going,’ said Anya. ‘Are you staying at the hostel in the village?’
‘No. In the hotel over in Narsarsuaq,’ said Eygló. ‘We’re there for a couple of days.’
‘Well, maybe we’ll come over and have a drink with you one evening?’
‘That would be great,’ said Eygló.
‘Einar Thorsteinsson is with us,’ said Suzy.
‘I remember Einar,’ said Anya. ‘I thought he and Carlotta had a thing going?’
Oh Christ, thought Eygló. This just gets worse. ‘Einar’s wife is here as well,’ she said.
Anya got it. ‘OK. See you later.’ And with that she and her troupe drove off back towards the village.
‘Ready?’ There was a hint of worry in Suzy’s glance; Eygló wasn’t sure whether she was afraid that Eygló had been put off her stride, or that Eygló had noticed that Suzy had shut down any conversation about the wampum.
Eygló nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’
But as she waded through the grass back to the ruins of the chapel, she couldn’t help thinking about what Anya had said. Carlotta had wanted to speak to her about the wampum. Eygló assumed that Carlotta had doubts and had communicated them to Anya. The police back in Iceland should be told. But Eygló sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them, and she wasn’t going to follow her original plan of quizzing Einar about the find either.
She took up her position by the outline of the tiny chapel. She stared down at the grass and the yellow flowers – buttercups, she thought – and took a couple more deep breaths, trying to force herself back to Gudrid and Erik and Thjodhild, Erik’s wife who had built the church.
She flinched as Tom approached, waving a light meter near her face. ‘You’ve been a good girl, haven’t you?’ he said softly. ‘No more questions about the wampum being planted?’
‘No,’ said Eygló. ‘No, I promise you.’ She was glad Tom hadn’t been there to listen to what Anya had told them, but he would no doubt hear it from Suzy, one way or another.
‘Excellent,’ Tom said. ‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.’ He winked. ‘Just get this take right, eh?’
He returned to his camera.
But his words, which he had meant to be comforting, wrenched Eygló crashing back to the twenty-first century. She thought of Carlotta, who had spent several months at this very spot and whom she had seen lying lifeless behind the church at Glaumbaer less than a week before. She thought of Rósa and her jealousy of Carlotta and now of Eygló herself. And she thought of Tom, only a few metres away from her.
She was destined to spend the next ten days with Tom and Rósa. There was no escape in Greenland – you couldn’t even drive from one settlement to the other.
She was trapped. She was scared. She was so very scared.
The fear, the awfulness of Carlotta’s death, overwhelmed her. She burst into tears.
‘Cut!’ Suzy said, her voice tense with frustration. ‘That’s all for today. We’ll try again tomorrow.’
CHAPTER 37
AQQALUK SAID IT would be an hour before the speedboat arrived to carry them back across the fjord to Narsarsuaq and their hotel, so Eygló wandered away from the others in search of solitude. There was an outcrop of red rocks just behind the village, on which perched a statue of Leif Erikson, and Eygló headed for it. As in Reykjavík, he was depicted staring towards America. Halfway there.
She sat on the grass at his feet and looked out over the water. A parade of small icebergs lay in the channel, drifting slowly up the fjord from where they had calved from the glacier out of sight just around the headland to her right. She had felt isolated in Iceland many times before, but this was a new kind of isolation. Brattahlíd was not connected to anywhere by road, except a couple of farms in the next fjord. She could easily see the dusty runway and buildings of Narsarsuaq on the other side of the water. That had been an American airbase built during the Second World War, and heavily populated with servicemen during the Cold War. Now it was a plain of dust, drab buildings and fuel tanks, surrounded by rocky hillsides and water. Oddly, it served as one of the two international airports into Greenland.
The nearest town was Qaqortoq, thirty kilometres down the fjord towards the sea, and only reachable by boat or helicopter. That place only had five thousand inhabitants.
And just out of sight, behind the rock faces to the north and east, the second largest icecap in the world heaved, pushed and slowly slid, stretching back for thousands of kilometres towards the North Pole.
It may have seemed a place of safety to Erik the Red, but it certainly didn’t to Eygló.
She heard the panting of someone climbing up the hill to her left, and she tensed. She hoped it was Einar and not Tom or Rósa, but she was relieved when Professor Beccari’s bald head and pink scarf appeared.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’ he asked.
‘No, please do,’ said Eygló. ‘It’s quite a view.’
The professor squatted down beside her. He was wrapped up warmly, even though it was fourteen degrees, hot for Greenland. His pink scarf peeked out of his windcheater.
‘You’ll be OK tomorrow,’ he said.
‘I hope so,’ said Eygló. ‘I feel so unprofessional!’
Beccari grinned. ‘It is your unprofessionalism that is your secret. Don’t lose it.’
‘Thank you,’ said Eygló. Although she had always wanted to be taken seriously as a proper academic, she knew Beccari was right.
‘It’s probably the shock of the murder of that poor woman. You were the one who found the body, weren’t you?’
Eygló nodded. ‘It was a shock. It still is.’
‘Is that why everyone is so miserable?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, it’s not just you. It’s Einar and his wife. What’s she doing on this trip? It seemed like he wasn’t expecting her to come, and he doesn’t seem happy that she’s here.’
‘I don’t think he is,’ said Eygló. It was true: Einar looked absolutely miserable.
‘I don’t know how to put this,’ Beccari said, ‘and of course it’s none of my business, but it seems as if there is the classic tension between a man, his wife and a – how shall I say? – a beautiful female friend.’
‘That’s me, right?’ said Eygló.
Beccari shrugged and waggled his hand in what Eygló assumed was an assenting motion.
Damn right it was none of his business, she thought. It was clear that despite his august status, Professor Beccari was a natural gossip who had spotted sources of tension and wanted to find out more. But at least he was being honest in his curiosity.
‘It’s not that straightforward,’ she said. ‘There is nothing going on between me and Einar. There might have been once, many years ago, but not now.’
‘Does Rósa understand that?’ Beccari asked.
‘Not sure,’ said Eygló. ‘I’ve seen you talking to her in the last couple of days. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I feel she is sad and she is angry, but I haven’t asked her why. She is an intelligent woman. Well read. And she knows her history. I enjoy talking to her.’
Rósa was very intelligent, and could be charming if she wanted to. She was also unlikely to be overawed even by someone with Professor Beccari’s ego.
‘I wish she would just go back to Iceland,’ Eygló said.
Beccari didn’t answer.
‘It’s good to have seen where this wampum was found,’ Beccari said. ‘Einar was very convincing that it was real.’
‘Einar is convincing.’
‘But is he right?’ Beccari asked. ‘You seemed to have had your own doubts earlier?’
‘No, not really doubts,’ said Eygló. Certainly while she was in Greenland she was not going to question the wampum, or the letter. She was going to remain a true believer and get out of Greenland alive.
Beccari looked at Eygló closely, and then smiled. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
They sat in silence for a minute or two.
‘I think I will leave this evening,’ he said.
‘Don’t go.’
Beccari raised his eyebrows in surprise.
‘It’s good to have you here,’ Eygló said. Although it was hard to imagine Professor Beccari actually protecting her, the presence of someone unconnected with the madness of Carlotta and her death was reassuring. With him around, she just felt safer.
‘I’ve seen what I came for: Brattahlíd. And I would like to see a couple of other places in Greenland before I go back to the States. I’ll take the helicopter to Qaqortoq this evening and stay there. It sounds interesting.’
Eygló had visited the town once on her previous trip to Brattahlíd. It was picturesque on the surface, a jumble of multicoloured houses tumbling down three hillsides to the sea, but she had remembered sensing an undercurrent of bored desperation.
‘Yeah, it’s pretty,’ she said. ‘But we are heading up to the Western Settlement once we have finished here. You would enjoy that.’
‘I don’t have time for that, and you must admit your colleagues are not very congenial travel companions at the moment. Good luck with the rest of the filming. I am sure you will be brilliant.’ He reached over to pat her hand, and then stood up to leave.
Eygló let him go. There were still twenty minutes till the boat left, and she wanted solitude.
‘Eygló?’
She turned in panic as she recognized the voice. It was Rósa. Where the hell had she come from?
Rósa sat down next to her, right next to her so they were almost touching. Rósa was a big woman. Eygló tensed.
‘Eygló. We need to talk.’
CHAPTER 38
VIGDÍS MADE HER way to Ward Three of the National Hospital in Reykjavík. She was very familiar with the layout; a police officer was a regular visitor to hospitals one way or another. She asked at the nurse’s station which bed was Tryggvi Thór’s.
She was busy with all the activity following Nancy Fishburn’s murder and she didn’t have time for this. Fortunately, the hospital wasn’t far from the hotel where Nancy had died, and so she could slip away for half an hour. The crime scene was being processed, witnesses were being interviewed, reports were being written, but Magnus was right: all the answers lay in Greenland.
As she approached his bed, she saw a man she recognized standing next to it. He was in his fifties, tall, with close-cropped brown hair turning to grey and a thin red beard: Jakob Ingibergsson, the famous businessman who had cut quite a dash before the financial crash, and whose companies were still operating.
Tryggvi Thór obviously had friends in high places.
The businessman saw her hovering, and said a swift goodbye to Tryggvi Thór before leaving, ignoring her as he brushed past her.
Tryggvi Thór’s head was bandaged and a large rose of purple blood vessels blossomed on his cheek. Sharp brown eyes stared out at her from his ravaged face.
‘You’re Vigdís, aren’t you?’ he said before she had a chance to introduce herself. ‘Magnús’s pal?’
‘That’s right,’ said Vigdís.
‘I don’t know what you’re doing here. I told your colleague it was just an accident.’
‘Magnús asked me to check up on you. Can I sit down?’ Vigdís indicated the grey plastic chair next to his bed.
‘No.’
Vigdís sat on it anyway. It was still warm from the millionaire businessman’s arse. Magnus had warned her Tryggvi Thór would be difficult. She was sure she could handle him.
‘Róbert told me that you slipped and fell,’ she said, taking out her notebook. ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened?’
‘I slipped and fell.’
Vigdís gave him one of her ‘don’t bullshit me’ looks. She had several. ‘You expect me to believe that? Only a few days after you were attacked at home?’
‘Yes, I do.’ They stared at each other for a couple of moments. ‘OK. I don’t remember exactly what happened. I think I must have fainted as a result of the head injury earlier this week, and I hit my head as I fell.’
Vigdís had to admit that sounded plausible.
‘You have to admit that sounds plausible,’ said Tryggvi Thór with a hint of a smile.
‘You would have died if that tourist hadn’t found you,’ said Vigdís.
The shadow of the smile dissolved. ‘I know. I was lucky.’
‘You might not be as lucky next time.’
Tryggvi Thór didn’t respond.
‘Magnús is concerned about you.’
‘Magnús should mind his own business. Now please leave.’ Vigdís sat there watching him.
A minute passed.
‘OK. If you’re not going to leave, tell me what it’s like being a black Icelander.’
Vigdís rolled her eyes. ‘You have got to be kidding! That’s none of your business.’
‘Neither is my head injury any of yours.’
‘It is my business if someone is trying to kill you,’ said Vigdís. ‘Actually, I don’t care too much about that, but I know Magnús does.’
‘Is he honest?’ Tryggvi Thór asked.
‘Of course he’s honest! He’s a policeman.’
Tryggvi Thór snorted. ‘I used to be a policeman. You and I know they are not all honest.’
‘Yes, you would know that since you got drummed out of the force for corruption.’
‘Well?’ said Tryggvi Thór.
Vigdís sighed. ‘Yes. Yes, Magnús is honest. Irritatingly, inflexibly honest.’
Tryggvi Thór smiled. ‘And you?’
Vigdís refused to respond to his smile, even though she wanted to. She nodded. ‘Yes. I’m honest too. Almost as bad as him.’
‘Good,’ said Tryggvi Thór. ‘I think I believe you.’
Vigdís snorted.
‘The reason I asked you what it was like being a black Icelander, Vigdís, is that my daughter is black. Very black: about the same shade as you.’
