The Polar Bear Killing Read Online Free PDF

days. She is usually so confident, not scared of anything – she wouldn’t be bothered by you in normal circumstances. She has always liked polar bears, so Halldór killing that one made her angry.’ Pétur shook his head. ‘I was just glad. I mean, he saved Anna’s life. Apparently she went over and tried to talk to the bear, according to Halldór. The strange thing is, I was ten kilometres away looking for the bear myself, with my own gun, and all the time it was here.’
    ‘Halldór told you what happened then?’
    ‘Yes. He drove up to the farm and saw Anna walking out to talk to the bear. He called her into the car, and she came, but then she ran out again. So he shot the bear through the eye. That must take real nerve.’ The farmer sighed. ‘I owe him everything. And now those animal do-gooders have shot him. The bastards! Poor Gudrún.’
    ‘We don’t know it was them,’ said Vigdís, although it was clear that local gossips had already condemned Alex Einarsson and Martin Fiedler.
    ‘Must be,’ said the farmer. ‘No one else around here would kill him. He was a good man, Halldór. But Anna still can’t forgive him.’
    ‘So there was no one to witness what happened?’
    ‘Anna sent her little brother indoors, thank God. The old guy over the river saw it. Egill. You could talk to him. But it’s a long way to get there; you have to drive up to the bridge and then back.’
    Vigdís decided to talk to the neighbour. It was clear that the killing of the polar bear was an important factor in Halldór’s death, and Vigdís wanted to establish what had actually happened.
    Although Egill’s farm was only three hundred metres away directly over the fast-flowing river, it was an eight-kilometre drive up to the bridge and down the other side of the valley. It was a rough drive from the bridge to the farm. On one side of the dirt track the river rushed down towards the nearby sea. On the other side, the Melrakkaslétta stretched northwards through marsh and bog: a patchwork of browns, greens, oranges and yellows, with the low sun glinting off silver-grey ponds. A tough, bleak place to scratch a living. The farm was old and falling apart; the roof of the barn needed fixing. It was obvious that Egill didn’t own any of the fishing rights: just a few chickens and some sheep.
    As at most farms, the first one to greet Vigdís was the sheepdog. It skipped over to her car on its three legs, showing unexpected agility for a dog that was clearly past its prime. She wondered how he and his master rounded up the sheep. Maybe they were all old with three legs too.
    As she parked her car and bent down to stroke the dog, Egill appeared. He was one of those ancient farmers with beady blue eyes and a face like a lava field under a white beard. He was wearing blue overalls and a woolly hat.
    He frowned when he saw her. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I am from Reykjavík CID,’ Vigdís said, reaching for her card.
    The old farmer clearly didn’t believe her; he took the card and squinted at it. He looked up at Vigdís and then back at the card and started to laugh.
    ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘A blue policeman.’
    ‘Blue’ was how the Icelanders had traditionally described black people. Ordinarily, being laughed at by an ignorant yokel about the colour of her skin would have raised Vigdís’s hackles, but there was something about the warmth of the chuckle and the sparkle that appeared in those beady eyes that made Vigdís forgive the old man.
    ‘Come in, my dear, come in!’
    The farmhouse was tiny, but the kitchen had an old peat stove in the middle and was really warm. It was also clean, Vigdís was glad to see. The man may be old, but he could look after himself.
    He poured Vigdís a cup of thick, muddy coffee and they sat down at the kitchen table. He took off his cap to reveal wispy grey hair and very large ears.
    ‘So what do you want, my dear? Have you discovered who stole old Bjartur’s leg?’ He began to