REYKJAVÍK,
SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 0415 GMT
‘There have been some
funny goings on here,’ observed the scruffily dressed detective in
his early fifties, surveying Kristín’s flat.
Just before midnight
the police had received a phone call from a man in the
neighbourhood reporting a young woman in a distressed state who had
burst into his family home, demanding to use their phone and
speaking incoherently of murder – presumably at her house – before
borrowing some clothes and vanishing. He had not intended to report
the incident and it was more than three hours before he made up his
mind to do so, largely at his wife’s urging. Although he did not
say as much, he was rather ashamed of himself for having let such a
thing happen to his family.
The police took a
statement and checked the phone’s display to identify the number
called by the mysterious woman. No one was home at the
corresponding address but on investigation they discovered that the
house-owner had a daughter. Her age seemed consistent with the
description of the woman who had forced her way into the family’s
home; she also lived in the same neighbourhood and this was deemed
sufficient grounds to dispatch two officers. No one answered when
they knocked on the door of the flat, located in a two-storey
maisonette. The occupants of the upstairs flat said they had been
out all evening.
Noticing a small hole
in Kristín’s door, conceivably made by a bullet, the police called
a locksmith. When they entered the flat the first thing they saw
was a body lying slumped on the desk.
The detective stood
over the man’s body, inspecting the contents of his wallet.
According to his business card his name was Runólfur Zóphaníasson
and he was involved in ‘Import–Export’. Apart from that his wallet
contained a driving licence, some money, a sheaf of restaurant
receipts, and debit and credit cards. The detective glanced around
the flat: the furniture appeared to be in place, all the pictures
hung straight on the walls, nothing on any of the surfaces seemed
to have been disturbed, and there was no sign of any weapon. The
body might just as well have fallen from the sky. Cautiously
straightening the man up, he examined the bullet wound in his
forehead and the gun in his hand.
‘Strange angle, don’t
you think?’ he asked his colleague, who was younger and a good deal
better dressed. ‘If you were going to shoot yourself in the head,
would you aim straight at your forehead?’
‘I’ve never given it
any thought,’ his colleague replied.
‘And if he did hold
the gun up to his forehead, shouldn’t there be signs of scorching
or powder marks? Or blowback on his forearm?’
‘So you don’t think
it was suicide, despite the note on the computer?’
‘According to his
driver’s licence, the man lives on the other side of town, in
Breidholt. If you were going to kill yourself, would you go to
someone else’s house to do it?’
‘Why do you keep
asking me how I would do it if I was going to commit suicide?’ the
younger detective asked, running a hand down the handsome tie that
complemented his suit exactly. ‘Is it secret wishful
thinking?’
‘Not secret enough,
obviously,’ replied the older man, who in contrast was wearing a
torn jumper and battered hat. ‘This Kristín who lives here, what
does she do?’
‘Lawyer with the
foreign ministry.’
‘And Runólfur here
was in the Import–Export business, whatever that means. There’s no
sign of a struggle, and the upstairs neighbours say they weren’t at
home. Still, it’s a small gun. It wouldn’t have made much
noise.’
‘You’re the firearms
expert.’
‘Indulge me, if you
will, in my attempted reconstruction,’ the elder officer said,
ignoring his colleague’s jibe. ‘If you were going to kill yourself,
would you shoot a bullet through the front door
first?’
‘Let’s see, the door
was open. He must have meant to shoot himself in the head but
missed and the bullet entered the door. After that he aimed
straight at his forehead to be sure of hitting it. Something like
that?’
‘So he shot himself
with the door of the flat open?’
‘Looks like
it.’
‘This is one of the
most cack-handed suicides I’ve ever seen. Why shoot himself here?
Was he involved in a relationship with this Kristín?’
‘I imagine Kristín
would be in a better position to answer that than I
am.’
‘I suppose we’d
better put out a wanted notice. But don’t say anything about her
being a suspect in a murder inquiry, only that we need to speak to
her.’
‘Is it really
conceivable that a government lawyer could have killed this
man?’
‘If I were going to
murder someone, I’d go for a salesman every time,’ the older
detective replied, carefully scrutinising the hole in the man’s
forehead.