“What about this Sigurdur? Do you know his history?” Hrefna asked, trying to get the historian back on track.
“I remember Siggi well. I lived in the same part of town.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t involved in the murder?”
Yngvi laughed again. “Siggi from Brekkustígur was bloody good-looking and a great ladies’ man. He was always having affairs with other men’s wives. The night the murder was committed he was in bed with a respectable skipper’s wife in Bárugata. Everybody except the coppers knew this, and Siggi was too much of a gent to tell them.”
“So this Diddi is Sigurdur’s son?” Hrefna asked.
“Yes, he was born after Siggi died, and was named for his father. It was a dreadful accident.” Yngvi fell silent, and the smile left his face.
“Carry on with the story,” Hrefna begged.
Yngvi smiled again. “Yes, well, here was Ella with me, and Diddi was sitting at the next table. I couldn’t resist it, of course, and introduced them. It transpired that neither of them had heard the whole story of old Siggi’s incarceration, so I told them some things about it. Since then, they have been inseparable,” Yngvi concluded, laughing heartily.
“What do you mean?”
“They are sweethearts. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“If they are in love, then it is indeed wonderful.”
“I just love being an agent of destiny in people’s lives. There was for instance—”
“Is it anything to do with this case?” Hrefna interrupted.
“No, not in fact, but—”
“Then I don’t want to hear it,” Hrefna scolded.
“Oh, well,” Yngvi replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“What can you tell me about this Diddi?”
“His name is Sigurdur and he’s, of course, Sigurdsson. He plays the guitar and writes songs; he’s a bit of a troubadour, you know, like Bob Dylan, ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and all that. Lives in a commune in the Old Town—I can’t remember the name of the street, but I can describe the house to you.”
“You don’t need to. I think I know who he is now.”
Diary VIII
January 5, 1923. A letter has arrived from the Norwegian expert. He thinks that the price for 4 locomotives and 30 carriages is now 746,000 kr. These are top quality locomotives with the latest modifications. Machines and tools for the workshop are included…
March 5, 1923. The national budget has been announced. There is no allocation for the railroad apart from my remuneration. Roads, on the other hand, get 377 thousand krónur…
May 30, 1923. The papers publish many articles attacking the railroad. The anger is dreadful. I am of a mind to abandon the whole business and emigrate. Elizabeth tries to give me courage…
February 20, 1924. Yet another budget that ignores the railroad. Construction projects are at an absolute minimum; they allocate just enough for basic maintenance and hardly that. New road legislation is on its way…
August 26, 1924. It is Elizabeth’s thirtieth birthday today. We gave a big party…
March 13, 1925. Ísafold mentions that this year sees the centenary of the railways; on September 27, 1825, the first publicly subscribed railway train ran between Stockton and Darlington in England. Is it not time for Icelanders to make use of this invention, nearly a hundred years behind other nations…
March 15, 1925. Elizabeth told me she is going to have a baby…
When Marteinn joined the detective division, Egill had taken him under his wing. Although their age difference was more than twenty years, they had similar views on most issues and found working together easy. Marteinn was, nevertheless, not always happy with the way his partner set about dealing with other people, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that they were all either former or future jailbirds.
Marteinn had decided at the age of ten that he wanted to be a policeman, and he was not one for changing his mind. When his peers grew their hair and objected to NATO and the police because it was the in thing, he had his hair cut short and wore a suit and a tie. He enrolled in an American correspondence course on law enforcement, and as soon as he was old enough, applied to the police force. He was initially taken on in the traffic division, and sent to the police academy, where he earned top marks in the final exam. On his first day at work, he issued a whole book of tickets, setting a record. His superiors, however, were less than impressed with this young man’s ambitious nature, and at the first opportunity, shifted him over to the detective division, where he came into his own—though, unlike everyone else there, he missed the uniform.