The Fire Pit E-Book

Chris Ould

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

"A winner for fans of both Scandinavian and British procedurals... a complicated tangle of secret motivations that fans of Henning Mankell and Elizabeth George will appreciate." BOOKLIST (starred review) on THE BLOOD STRANDIn the wake of a dying man's apparent suicide, the skeleton of a young woman is discovered on a windswept hillside. Detective Hjalti Hentze suspects that it is the body of a Norwegian woman reported missing forty years earlier, while a commune occupied the land, and whose death may be linked to the abduction and rape of a local Faroese girl.Meanwhile British DI Jan Reyna is pursuing his investigation into his mother's suicide. But as he learns more about her final days, links between the two cases start to appear: a conspiracy of murder and abuse spanning four decades. And as Hentze puts the same pieces together, he realizes that Reyna is willing to go further than ever before to learn the truth…

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Chris Ould and Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Faroese Pronunciation

Prelude

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE FIRE PIT

Also by Chris Ould and available from Titan Books

The Blood Strand

The Killing Bay

THE FIRE PIT

A FAROES NOVEL

CHRIS OULD

TITAN BOOKS

The Fire Pit

Print edition ISBN: 9781783297085

E-book edition ISBN: 9781783297092

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: February 2018

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2018 Chris Ould

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Jens Jensen,

Per Skov Christensen

and Henning Munk Plum,

without whom these books would be much poorer.

Stora takk fyri, og tak.

FAROESE PRONUNCIATION

THE FAROESE LANGUAGE IS RELATED TO OLD NORSE AND Icelandic and is spoken by fewer than eighty thousand people worldwide. Its grammar is complicated and many words are pronounced far differently to the way they appear.

Ø is a “ur” sound, and the Đ or ð is usually silent, so Fríða would be pronounced Free-a. V is pronounced as a w, and j as a y, so Hjalti is pronounced “Yalti”.

PRELUDE

Denmark, August

IN THE SUMMER HEAT OF MID JUTLAND, THOMAS FRIIS DROVE IN his shirtsleeves, his suit jacket hanging from the hook in the back of his Volvo estate. Rather than put on the air conditioning he preferred to travel with the window down, enjoying the warm, buffeting air. He had a day’s leave, although he hadn’t told this to his wife, whom he’d left at home in Aarhus with their two sons. If the boys had known about his day off the only destination on the cards would have been Legoland, which was definitely not on Friis’s agenda.

Thomas Friis was thirty-four, a kriminalassistent grade 2 with Aarhus CID. In the department he knew he was regarded as something of an oddity; not in an especially bad way – he was a decent detective, after all – but mostly because he was someone who chose not to try to fit in. He was a book man, people said: always investigating by the book, by the numbers; always in a good suit, shoes polished daily, clean-shaven every morning. In other words, dry, intellectual, dull.

As the GPS showed he was nearing his destination Friis checked his rear-view mirror and slowed on the quiet country lane. As far as the eye could see on either side of the road there were fields of tanned wheat, gracefully following the soft undulating contours of the low hills, occasionally scarred by twin tracks of a tractor’s passage.

On the verge up ahead he saw the small wooden sign beside the mailbox – “Karensminde” – and at the entrance to the farm track he pulled in and brought the Volvo to a stop. In front of him the track went down a slight incline, unbounded by fences between it and the wheat fields, and after five or six hundred metres it ended at a solitary house out of sight of the road. It was bordered on two sides by tall, dark-green poplars, perhaps planted as a windbreak or to give shade.

Friis took all this in for a moment then reached for the thin manila file on the passenger seat. Inside it was Niels Jesper Kruse’s three-page statement, and although Friis had exactly the same document on the laptop beside him he preferred the portability and ease of reading from paper.

I got to the house at about eleven thirty in the morning and as I turned in at the top of the track I saw a white van down by the house, next to Helene’s car. It was facing towards me and I didn’t recognise it. I couldn’t tell if there was anyone in it so I waited for a few seconds to see if it was going to move and come up the track, but when it didn’t I drove on. I went fairly slowly because there had been ice on the roads that morning.

Looking at the track now, Friis had the same view that Niels Kruse had had seven months ago. In January the fields would have been empty, of course, and the poplars would have been leafless, but neither of those factors would have affected the view of a white van parked beside the house. Okay then, Friis could move on. He let the Volvo roll forward, and stopped in the gravelled turning area in front of the house.

There was a stillness in the warm air when Friis got out of the car. Off to his right there were two small, wooden outbuildings, both black tarred, while the house itself was clad in white boards with yellow paint on the window frames. It looked well kept and neat, despite the fact it had been unoccupied since the winter.

I parked near the van. It had a sign on the side, something like Sørensen Cleaning; I think that was it. I thought Helene must have called someone in to do the carpets or something so I didn’t think it was odd. I went to the house and in through the front door and I called out because I didn’t see anyone.

There was no answer and I couldn’t hear anything so I went to see if Helene was in the kitchen. She wasn’t there, but there was a broken bowl on the floor and while I was looking at that I heard the van starting up outside. I went back to the hall and saw the van driving off very quickly and that was when I began to think something wasn’t right. So I looked in the sitting room for Helene and Maja – I looked in all the downstairs rooms, calling out – and then I went upstairs. That’s when I found them.

There hadn’t been a problem getting the keys from the real-estate agent and Friis used them now, opening the white-painted front door as Niels Kruse had done.

Inside, the trapped air was warm and smelled vaguely of wood and of dust. The hall, like the rest of the house, was now empty of furniture and personal possessions. Only the carpets, curtains and blinds remained in place, doing something to stifle the sound of Friis’s footsteps in the otherwise echoing space.

Holding his laptop before him, Friis visited each room on the ground floor, looking from the photographs of the house as it had been found by the technical team to the rooms as they were now. In a few places marks in the carpets showed where a piece of furniture had been, but beyond that the house had been returned to a blank canvas, awaiting the imprints of a new owner.

Having examined the ground floor, Friis took the curved staircase upwards. Upstairs the rooms had also been stripped bare, and in the master bedroom there was new, untrodden carpet, still smelling of lint. The original carpet had been disposed of, along with its blood stains. Helene Kruse had bled for some time before she died from the knife wound to her stomach.

I found Helene first. She was on the floor beside the bed in our— in the main bedroom. There was… There was a pool of blood and… I knew she was dead. I just stood there in shock. I couldn’t move. Then I remembered Maja and I went to her room and that’s where I found her. She was on her bed, lying very straight – you know, not like she was asleep but stiff, like a doll. She didn’t have any clothes on and at first I thought she was dead, too. But then I realised she was breathing. I could just see her chest moving, so I went to her and tried to wake her up but she wouldn’t respond. She was unconscious and nothing I did made any difference so that’s when I called for an ambulance and the police. That was the first time I thought that was what I should do. I don’t know why I didn’t think it straight away, when I saw Helene, but I didn’t.

The daughter’s room – Maja’s – was across the landing from the master bedroom. There were still traces to show where the posters of pop stars and Maja’s drawings had been stuck to the walls, and from the window seat in the dormer there was a pleasant view across the fields. The room would have been a nice one for a young teenage girl to have as her own, but as he looked round Friis became certain that it was also the place where the second murder would have occurred – the one the killer had set out to commit from the start.

Maja had still been unconscious when she had arrived in the emergency department and the general consensus was that she had been drugged. Blood samples were taken and a thorough examination showed no physical injuries and no indications of rape or sexual assault. After two hours she started to come round and within six she was fully coherent and aware, although confused and very distressed when told what had happened to her mother.

Helene Kruse was confirmed dead at the scene and the next day the results of the post-mortem showed that she had been stabbed once without signs of resistance. The cause of her death was blood loss and the technical analysis of the scene showed she had not moved or been moved after incurring the wound. This led to the conclusion that Helene, like Maja, might also have been drugged, but subsequent lab analysis could find little evidence to show what sort of drug had been used. Either the compound had been metabolised in the bodies of the two victims or had naturally broken down in a short space of time.

And exactly how the drug had been administered was another puzzle. There were no puncture wounds on Helene or Maja’s bodies to indicate injection and Maja had no memory of events from that morning. However, both she and Helene had had milk with their breakfasts and both had recently drunk orange juice, which led to the suspicion that one of these liquids might have been spiked.

Tests on the cartons and other food in the refrigerator eventually came back negative, but as someone who might have induced his wife and daughter to unwittingly ingest a drug, Niels Kruse became the prime suspect in the hours immediately after the killing. The fact that he’d been separated from Helene for six months – albeit on apparently good terms – also brought him under suspicion until witness statements and data from his cellphone established beyond doubt that he could not have been at the house for more than five minutes before calling for help.

And that conclusion left the Billund CID with precisely no other viable leads. Technical could find no useful trace evidence of anyone else in the house; the white van marked Sørensen Cleaning couldn’t be identified, and no matter how deeply the investigating officers dug into the private lives of Helene and Maja they could find no one with even a tenuous motive to do them harm. After six months, the best they could come up with was the theory that this attack had been the work of a stranger who had somehow talked his way into the house, overpowered and/or drugged mother and daughter and then been disturbed by the arrival of Niels Kruse. It was a conclusion that satisfied no one, but unless a witness or informant came forward with new information it was all they had.

After about five minutes in Maja’s room, Thomas Friis closed his laptop and went back downstairs. He didn’t believe anyone would come out of the woodwork to help Billund CID solve the case. What he did believe – what he was practically certain of now – was that there was nothing at all unprepared about the crimes at the Kruse house. They hadn’t happened by chance, the acts hadn’t been hurried and whoever had committed them had been forensically aware to the point of obsession. This, Friis was convinced, all went to show that the crimes at the house had been meticulously planned over weeks and probably months.

And this planning and forethought wasn’t the only element that fitted the patterns in the cases Friis had been collecting over the last eight years. Maja Kruse was thirteen at the time of the attack, which placed her at the lower end of the age range of victims he was interested in, but even so she fitted all the other criteria. She was physically adolescent, slim, tall, had blond hair and didn’t wear glasses or have dental braces. She also had a familiar pattern to her family background: one absent parent, a relatively isolated home and a quiet, somewhat introverted social life. In other words, Maja Kruse came from a predictable household and had a largely predictable life. If Friis was correct, then all this meant that – had she died – Maja Kruse would have been the eleventh murder victim of one man.

Outside in the heat and warm breeze, Friis walked round the house to the sound of the poplars. He looked at a copse of trees perhaps half a kilometre away on a small hillock and he examined the view from the house towards the road, going back inside and looking again from the master bedroom window. In all he spent about forty minutes in this manner before he got back in the Volvo and left.

Once he’d dropped off the house keys with the real-estate agent he set off back towards Aarhus. On the main road there was a sign for Billund, and beneath it to Legoland. It made him feel guilty for letting his obsession win out over his children and he made up his mind that next time – on his next day of leave – he’d take them somewhere to make up for it. But not Legoland.

1

Faroe Islands, September Saturday/leygardagur

ON THE HILLSIDE BELOW THE LAST REMAINING HOUSE AT MÚLI, Hjalti Hentze waited. There was a light rain in the air, not yet heavy enough to make a noise as it landed on the various pieces of plastic sheeting around the stone wall of the sheepfold.

“You people have to stop killing each other,” Sophie Krogh said, somewhat muffled.

“Yeh, you keep saying that,” Hentze told her.

“Well, you keep on finding bodies.”

“This one’s hardly anything to do with us, though, is it?” Hentze said. “I mean, it’s not recent. Jan Reyná thinks it’s been there for a decade at least.”

“And he’s an expert is he?” Sophie asked, somewhat drily.

Hentze didn’t say anything. It was hard to have a conversation with someone’s backside, which was effectively what he was doing. Sophie Krogh was on her knees, her head down by the hole in the base of the wall, peering in with the aid of a torch.

Finally she wriggled backwards on the plastic sheet, then stood up.

“So what do you think?” Hentze asked, glad to finally be face to face again.

Sophie assessed the circular wall. “There are definitely remains in there still. We’ll assume that they’re human, given the skull was found nearby, so we’ll have to dismantle the wall by hand. There’s always a chance that something else is in the stones above the body – or below it, come to that.”

“So you’ll call in a team?”

Sophie shook her head. “We’re busy enough as it is. No, I’ll do the extraction myself if you can find me some muscle to help move the stones.”

“How many people?”

“A couple should do. More than that and you risk missing something or just get in each other’s way.”

“Okay, I’ll find a couple of guys who don’t mind labouring on Sunday. Any idea how long it’ll take?”

She looked at the wall, then the sky. “A day – probably. Depends what I find. It’s too late to start now, though, and she’s not going anywhere, so I’ll record things as they are, then we can start first thing tomorrow.”

“So you agree with Reyná that it’s a female?”

“Based on the skull, yeh, I’ll give him that. But you’ll need to have Elisabet Hovgaard confirm it when we have all the bones. Do you have any sort of tent we can put up while we work?”

“I’ll find something.”

“Okay, tak. And you never know, if you’re lucky she’ll turn out to be a hundred years old and then you can forget it.”

Hentze shook his head. “I’m never that lucky,” he said, then looked away as a waterproof-clad figure strode up the hillside towards them. She was a young woman in her twenties, red hair spilling out from her hood and her face flushed with the exertion.

“Hi, hi,” she said, panting.

“This is my friend Katrina,” Sophie said. “She wanted to see the islands so she flew out with me for a couple of days.”

“It can’t be much of a holiday for you if Sophie’s working,” Hentze said. “Aren’t you bored?”

“Actually, I think it’s really interesting,” Katrina replied. “I mean, I get to see what Sophie does all day. I think that’s exciting.”

“Exciting? Oh, well, yes, I suppose so,” Hentze said, but he saw Sophie roll her eyes slightly as she turned to take a camera from a flight case on the ground.

“Is it okay to look at the burned-out house?” Katrina asked then. “It’s not a crime scene or something?”

“No, you can look,” Hentze said, “but don’t go too close. The whole thing’s unstable.”

“I’ll be careful,” Katrina said. And to Sophie, “Meet you at the car?”

“Yeh, give me five minutes.”

Katrina set off up the hill at an enthusiastic pace and Hentze turned to Sophie with a questioning look.

“What?” Sophie said.

“I was just thinking that you know how to show your girlfriend a good time.”

Sophie drew a sigh. “To be honest, I wish she’d stayed in Tórshavn to look at the shops or something.”

“Oh? I thought this was a new and exciting romance. Isn’t that what you said the other day?”

“Yeh, well, that was then and this is now,” Sophie said gloomily. “I barely get to go for a piss on my own. It’s claustrophobic.”

“Ah, well, there’s no one as enthusiastic as a new convert,” Hentze said drily. “Didn’t you say that, too?”

“Okay, go ahead and make fun,” Sophie said. “I probably deserve it.”

“Yeh, I think so,” Hentze said. “For five minutes, at least.”

Sophie gave him a look, then lifted her camera to take some photographs of the site. “So what’s the story behind all this?” she asked, changing the subject. “There was a fire and a guy was found dead, is that right?”

“Yeh, his name was Justesen,” Hentze told her. “He owned this land. He was also an alcoholic and terminally ill, so it looks like he hanged himself and his final cigarette burned the place down.”

“And this?” Sophie asked, gesturing at the hole in the partly dismantled wall.

“We’re only guessing, but at the moment I think Justesen uncovered the body – well, the skull anyway – before he died. Maybe it was some sort of act of contrition; not wanting to kill himself and leave her in an unknown grave. We don’t know.”

“Well he might have had the decency to do the job properly and take down the whole wall,” Sophie said, snapping a last photo of the hole. “Some people have no consideration.”

“No, no, that’s true,” Hentze said seriously. “But still, I expect if you give her the chance, Katrina will be only too glad to lend you a hand. Shall I ask her?”

“Don’t you bloody dare,” Sophie said. “Otherwise you might find yourself under your own pile of rocks.”

* * *

An hour later Hentze drove without hurry along Yviri við Strond, past the heliport and a new care home for the elderly that was nearing completion. The traffic wasn’t heavy and over the waters of Nólsoyarfjørður it was a flat, grey afternoon.

Remi Syderbø’s car was in the parking lot at the back of the police station and as he pulled in beside it Hentze was glad to see that the extra vans – shipped in from Denmark to deal with the anti-whaling protests – had gone. Good.

Inside, the ground floor and stairwell were quiet. It would be busier later for the night shift, but Hentze’s days of policing Tórshavn on a Saturday night were long gone. It wasn’t something he missed.

Reaching the third floor he found the CID corridor practically deserted; a subdued stillness that reminded him of the atmosphere after last year’s big storm had finally passed. Thirty-six hours of almost hurricane-force winds and heavy rain had stretched everyone to the limit, responding to emergencies as they arose, never certain what was going to happen next. It wasn’t until the winds slackened and the phones gradually stopped ringing that they had finally started to believe that the worst might be over.

Hentze hoped that they were experiencing a similar, slow return to normality now. It was almost two days since the explosion at the harbour and the arrests across the islands, and one day since the Danish security service had finally confirmed that the emergency was over and there was no further threat. Although there was still some dispute about jurisdiction in the case, the terrorists – a term Hentze disliked – had been transported to Denmark to be held on remand in a high-security facility. The Danes were citing national security as a reason to indict the suspects in Copenhagen, while the Faroe Islands’ Prosecutor argued that the group should face a judge in Tórshavn.

It came down to politics, really, and unless he missed his guess, Hentze believed that having stood on principle for a while, the Faroese Prosecutor would “reluctantly” cede jurisdiction to Denmark. Better that than have the brouhaha of a large and complex prosecution eating up resources, followed by a trial dragging on for weeks or months. None of the accused were Faroese, so what did it matter where they were tried?

The one exception would be Lukas Drescher, who would undoubtedly be returned to stand trial for the murder of Erla Sivertsen. That was as it should be, but it wouldn’t be for six months at least, and more likely closer to a year.

Hentze didn’t bother to go to his own office but instead went along to Remi Syderbø’s door where he knocked perfunctorily before going in. He was expected.

The only light in the room was from the reading lamp on Remi’s desk. He was casually dressed and had his head on his hand as he read through a sheaf of papers, but he put them aside when Hentze walked in and waved him to a chair.

“So what does Sophie think?” Remi asked, standing up to come round the desk and take the second leather armchair.

“She agrees that it isn’t a recent death,” Hentze told him. “Which we could tell, so…”

“So there’s no rush to find answers.”

Hentze shook his head. “I don’t think so. Sophie reckons it’ll take a day to extract the remains so I’ll talk to Hans and get a couple of his people to help shift the stones, starting tomorrow. Then it’ll just be a matter of waiting for forensic results and going from there.”

“You still think there’s a link between the body being disturbed and the man – what was his name? Justesen? – who hanged himself in the house?”

“It’s only a theory,” Hentze said. “But it seems very coincidental if there isn’t some link. It was Justesen’s land after all.”

“So you’re still happy to oversee the case?”

“Sure, of course. At least until Ári comes back.”

“Yes, well, I need to talk to you about that,” Remi said. He took a moment, seemingly to try to formulate a diplomatic way to frame what he wanted to say next. In the end, though, the task seemed either too difficult, or perhaps just unnecessary. He pushed his glasses back on his nose. “This is strictly between us,” he said.

“If you say so,” Hentze agreed.

“Okay. Then you should know I’ve extended Ári’s sick leave. He was signed off for a week because of his injury but I’ve added another week’s leave. It hasn’t been fully worked out yet because there needs to be some reshuffling, but when he does come back he’ll be moving to the Prosecutor’s office with responsibility for liaison with Denmark over the terrorism cases. To fill the gap, I’d like you to move up a grade.”

Hentze made to speak, but Remi held up a hand. “Yeh, yeh, I know. Temporarily. I know you don’t want the job, but someone has to step in or I can’t do this. And you’d be doing Ári a favour as much as anything else. If he comes back here, I think— Well, let’s just say things might be difficult. But the move to the Prosecutor’s office allows him to save face.”

“I suppose so,” Hentze said: acknowledgement and acceptance. It was possibly the worst kept secret in CID that Ári Niclasen had lost the confidence and support of most of those working under him. To be fair, the events of the last few weeks could hardly have been anticipated, but even so Ári hadn’t reacted well when the tensions around the whaling protests had been exacerbated by Erla Sivertsen’s murder and the subsequent bombing conspiracy. After responding in the way that Ári had to all that, it was hard to see how he could simply return to his job as if nothing had happened.

“Would I have to change offices?” Hentze asked.

“Would you want to?”

“Probably not, given that it’s only a temporary move.”

“Okay, stay in your broom cupboard then,” Remi said. “I don’t care as long as we get back to some kind of normality as quickly as possible. So, you’ll step up?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Thank you. I think it’s best all round.”

Remi shifted then, as if he’d finally put something distasteful aside. “So, as acting inspector you should also know that I’ve been in discussion with Petra Langley from the Alliance. It’s been agreed that there will be no more anti-whaling protests.”

“She agreed or was told?”

Remi blurred the distinction with a gesture. “The Prosecutor is willing to acknowledge that the people being held on terrorism charges were not representative of the Atlantic Wildlife Conservation Alliance. In exchange, Petra Langley accepts that any further protest action by AWCA could be unnecessarily provocative. They planned to leave in a couple of weeks anyway so they’ll wind up their operation early, leaving a few observers for any grinds that take place.”

Another way to save face, Hentze thought. Still, it was all for the best. Perhaps now they could get back to normality, as Remi wanted.

“Okay then,” Hentze said. “So, if that’s all sorted out, do you have any objection if I bring Annika Mortensen on to the CID team?”

“Annika? Isn’t she on sick leave because of her injuries from the explosion?”

“Yes, but I’d like to give her the opportunity to come back if she wants to. And since we seem to be playing musical chairs at the moment anyway…”

“Okay, whatever you think,” Remi said with an air of finality. “I’ll leave it to you.” He stood up and went back to his desk.

“Are you staying?” Hentze asked, getting to his feet.

Remi nodded and glanced at his watch. “Rosa invited the grandkids over for the afternoon.”

“But unfortunately Grandpa got called in to work?”

“Just for another hour or so, until they’ve worn themselves out.”

“No wonder we have a bad name with our wives,” Hentze said. “Even the weekends aren’t safe any more.”

2

Monday/mánadagur

I AWOKE, TENSED UNTIL I KNEW WHERE I WAS AND THEN LAY still for a while, until my pulse slowed. When I looked at the time on my phone it was 4:50 but I knew I was too awake to sleep again now.

Downstairs my packed bag was on the floor of the sitting room. I went to make coffee and some toast from the last of the bread. Outside it was still very dark and there was the faint noise of rain on the windows. Beyond that – perhaps – I thought I could pick out the sound of the waves on Leynar’s black beach. It was high tide, I knew without thinking.

I’d grown very used to this place and thought I might miss it, although maybe what I’d miss most was the fact that living in Fríða’s guesthouse gave me the feeling of being detached from real life; from the need for decisions or action. It couldn’t last, but maybe that was as it should be. We might be cousins, but I couldn’t live off Fríða’s hospitality forever. She’d done enough over the last few weeks; it was time to go back.

After eating I had a shower and dressed. By the time I’d done that I noticed that there were lights on in Fríða’s place. She was a naturally early riser – usually coming back from a run just as I raised the blinds – but today I’d beaten her to it, albeit not out of choice.

At the table I sipped another coffee and opened my iPad to a magazine article Tove Hald had translated from Danish. I’d read a couple of paragraphs when there was a knock on the door and when I called out Fríða came in. She was in running gear, her blonde hair tied up and back to accommodate a head torch on a sweatband.

“I saw the light was on,” she said, with a touch of concern. “You know we don’t need to leave for more than an hour?”

“Yeah, I know, but I was awake so…” I shrugged and then, to deflect the subject, I gestured to the iPad. “I was just catching up on my reading. Tove sent me an article from a Danish magazine called Provokation. It’s about Rasmus Matzen and the commune movement. He talks a bit about the Colony commune at Múli and why it didn’t succeed. Apparently it was hard to grow food there and the weather wasn’t what they expected.”

“It never is,” Fríða said drily. “But you have to come here to know that. Are you still thinking you’ll go to Denmark to see him, to ask if he remembers your mother?”

I put the iPad aside. “I think so. Maybe at the end of the week. And Hjalti Hentze has asked a colleague in Copenhagen if she’ll let me look at the police report on Lýdia’s suicide.”

“So you’ve talked to Hjalti about Lýdia?”

“A little.”

“Good,” she said with a nod.

“Why good?”

“Because he reads people well,” Fríða said matter-of-factly. Then, “And it won’t be a problem for you to go?”

“Not for me, no.”

From her expression I could tell that she thought I’d dodged the question – which I had – but my interview with the Directorate of Professional Standards was set for tomorrow and once it was done the cards could fall as they liked. I wasn’t sure how much I cared about the outcome any more – not enough to talk about it, anyway – so I picked up my mug and stood up.

“Coffee?” I asked.

Fríða shook her head and straightened up. “Nej, takk. I still want to run – just a short one,” she added. “Twenty minutes, then a shower and we can go.”

“It’s still dark,” I pointed out. “Listen, why don’t you run later? I’ll call a taxi instead. I don’t want to mess up your day.”

“The dark doesn’t matter,” she said, as pragmatic as ever. “I have my torch and the road’s very smooth. No, I’ll go now and we can leave for Vágar in an hour, okay?”

I knew better than to argue, so I didn’t and later we drove to the airport as the sky started to pink up and the rain slackened off to a drizzle.

In the car park Fríða hugged me and kissed my cheek before getting back in her car, pulling away as I towed my bag across the wet tarmac to the terminal building. From then on whatever mixed feelings I had about leaving this place were gradually subsumed by the practicalities of travel, and then by the slow widening of distance – both real and imagined.

3

UNDER THE STARK MORTUARY LIGHTS ELISABET HOVGAARD surveyed the bones from the sheepfold at Múli, now laid out in skeletal order. They had been cleaned and the accreted dirt had been collected, filtered and sampled for lab analysis in Denmark. What was left was only human, and all the more naked for that, Hentze thought.

“It’s a long time since I had to do this,” Elisabet said, assessing the layout of the bones as if Hentze was responsible for setting her an unwelcome test of anatomical knowledge. “But for our purposes I don’t suppose it matters so much whether I’ve got metacarpals and metatarsals in the wrong place. What’s most to the point is that we seem to have everything accounted for.” She looked towards Sophie. “You did a good job.”

At the end of the stainless-steel table Sophie Krogh took a final photograph of the skeleton’s clavicle, then lowered the camera to look at its screen.

“It was easier because she hadn’t been buried,” Sophie said. “At least not by much; the ground’s pretty stony. My guess is they tried to dig a grave but then thought it would be easier – maybe quicker – just to dump rocks on top.”

“And then build a sheep shelter?” Hentze asked, with only the slightest hint of scepticism.

“Well, it would be one way to make it less obvious that it was a grave site,” Sophie said. “Also less chance of it being disturbed later on.”