Michael Ridpath: 66 Degrees North

Same MO. Same killer. No doubt about it.

It never ceased to amaze Magnus how criminals stuck to the same modus operandi, whether they be small-time car thieves, or the most cunning serial killers. There was something about the routine, the familiarity of doing things exactly the same way they had been done before, which seemed to help them deal with situations of maximum stress.

He could imagine the killer, whoever he was, ringing the bell at the house in Duxbury, wearing gloves, greeting his father and entering the hallway. Perhaps he always planned to wait until his father turned his back on him, just as Benedikt had done ten years before. Then he would stab him once, and finish him off with two more stabs to the heart. It had worked before. It would work again.

There was only one man Magnus could think of who was linked to both Benedikt and to Ragnar.

Hallgrímur. Magnus’s grandfather, Ragnar’s father-in-law and Benedikt’s childhood playmate. And the man who lived at the farm just across the lava field in front of him.

Magnus knew that the police investigation hadn’t touched his grandfather. Why should it, when Benedikt had moved to Reykjavík decades before his death?

Magnus tried to remember if his grandfather was right- or left-handed. He couldn’t visualize him writing, but he could remember being hit. The old man had favoured his left fist, he was pretty sure. But there was a more obvious problem. The USCIS had confirmed that Hallgrímur had not visited the States in the summer of 1996. More importantly, Hallgrímur didn’t even have a passport.

So where was Hallgrímur on 28 December 1985, the afternoon Benedikt was murdered?

That would have been Magnus’s second Christmas at Bjarnarhöfn. The time when Sibba and his uncle and aunt had visited from Canada. But Magnus couldn’t possibly remember his grandfather’s every movement that December.

There was a definite pattern. A family feud, fit for the Saga of the People of Eyri , starting with the death of Jóhannes, Benedikt’s father in the 1930s, moving on to Gunnar plunging off a cliff in the 1940s, and then to the stabbing of Benedikt in the 1980s. Could Ragnar’s death in the 1990s somehow be connected to this feud? Magnus couldn’t see how. Yet.

He looked up from the report, over the lava field to the white buildings around the farm, and the darker dot of the church.

If he was going to stay in Iceland, what would he do about Bjarnarhöfn? Would he continue to run away from it? Or would he face up to it?

Anger swept through him. The tension of the previous few days overwhelmed him. Ingileif, his grandfather, the hunt for the killers of Óskar Gunnarsson, the stabbing of Björn, his own escape from death.

He took a decision. He didn’t want to think about it: it was something he had to do while he had the anger to see it through.

He put his foot down and sped through the lava field, turning off on the road to the farm.

He passed the hollow where the two berserkers were buried and in a moment he was approaching the familiar cluster of buildings. It should have been a beautiful spot, the imposing fell with the waterfall pouring down its flanks, the little wooden church, the sun setting in pink streaks on the ocean.

But Magnus could feel a heavy blanket of dread descending upon him.

He didn’t want to run into his uncle Kolbeinn. He remembered Sibba saying that their grandfather no longer lived in the main farmhouse, so Magnus drew up outside one of the two smaller houses.

He got up out of the car. Through the window he could see a man bent over a newspaper in a sitting room. His face was obscured as he worked at the crossword, but Magnus could see it was an old man. And he could see he was holding his pen in his left hand.

He rang on the bell. Then he knocked. Loudly.

‘All right, all right!’ He heard the familiar voice, gruff but perhaps a touch frailer than he remembered. ‘Give a man a chance. Patience! Patience!’

Magnus knocked louder.

The door was opened by an old man in a green shirt. His face was wrinkled with the erosion of a thousand gales. The corners of his mouth pointed downwards. His small blue eyes burned angrily.

‘Magnús?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Didn’t I see you here a couple of days ago?’

‘You did.’

‘Well, what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to give you a message.’

‘And what makes you think I wish to hear it?’

The man might be in his eighties, but Magnus felt his power. He was struggling to control the situation, the conversation, Magnus himself. Magnus could almost feel himself shrinking, back to the proud but scared twelve-year-old he used to be.

‘I don’t know how my father died. And I don’t know how Benedikt Jóhannesson died. But I do know you had something to do with both their deaths. And I am going to find out what.’

‘Is that your message?’

‘No, my message is don’t die before I do find out. Because you are going to pay, old man. I am going to make sure you pay.’

Hallgrímur’s face reddened as he puffed out his chest. ‘Who the devil do you think you are?’

Magnus wasn’t listening. He spun on his heel, jumped into his Range Rover and turned it around to face Reykjavík.

He would be back.

Icelanders like to say that the people who bankrupted their country number no more than thirty. Óskar Gunnarsson is intended to represent one of these thirty, but not any specific individual.

Similarly, the characters in the book who held prominent political positions, such as Prime Minister of Iceland or the British Chancellor of the Exchequer during the crisis, do not represent the individuals who held those positions in reality. And indeed any similarity between other characters and real people is coincidental.

I should like to thank a number of people for their help. Nic Cheetham and Pétur Már Ólafsson my British and Icelandic editors, Oliver Munson my agent, Richenda Todd, Liz Hatherell, Tom Bernard, Toby Wyles, Karl Steinar Valsson, Anna Margrét Gudjónsdóttir, Sigrún Lilja Gudbjartsdóttir, Ármann Thorvaldsson, Ída Margrét Jósepsdóttir, Alda Sigmundsdóttir, and Lara Gillies. It is a challenge, but an enjoyable one, to write about a country which is not your own. If there are any errors, they are all mine.

Lastly, I should like to thank my wife Barbara and my children for their patience, support and encouragement.