Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

‘He can’t be very pleased about his nephew getting shot up.’

‘He’s not. But he doesn’t blame you. And if he blames me, he’s not saying.’

‘What about Baldur? I’m sure he would love it if I went back to the States and never came back.’

‘You leave Baldur to me.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. He had assumed that he would be done with Iceland within a matter of days. And he had assumed he would be very happy with that state of affairs.

‘You’re coming back,’ said the Commissioner, getting to his feet. ‘You have a moral obligation. That’s important to me, and I think that’s important to you.’

As Magnus watched the Commissioner leave the room, two thoughts were uppermost in his mind.

The first, the most insistent, was whether he should indeed stay in Iceland.

The second, lower key, nagging, was that he wasn’t as sure as the Commissioner that the case was solved.

Ten minutes later, Baldur prowled into the room.

‘What are you doing here?’ he growled when he saw Magnus.

‘It’s where I work. At least for now.’

‘We don’t need spectators here. Have you made your statement?’

‘Last night.’

‘Then go home and stay home where we can get hold of you if we need you to add to it.’

‘Have you found the Reverend Hakon?’ Magnus asked.

‘Not yet. But we will. He can’t get out of the country.’

‘Have you looked at Stong? Or Alfabrekka?’

‘Why should we do that?’

‘We know that the ring has an enormous influence over Hakon. He’s a strange man, a romantic in his way. Where would he run to? I’m sure you’re watching all the obvious places, the airports, his relatives if he has any. But he might go somewhere that’s important to the ring. Somewhere like Stong. Or the cave where the ring was originally found. I think the map Dr Asgrimur drew is still in my car.’

Baldur just shook his head. ‘If you think I am going to divert scarce resources into the middle of nowhere to satisfy your idiotic notions of what a ring “thinks” then…’ He trailed off in frustration. ‘Forget it. Go home.’

But Magnus didn’t go home. He signed out a car and drove out towards Gaukur’s abandoned farm at Stong. The further east he drove the worse the weather became. A grey damp cloud had settled on Iceland, and he was driving through it. Even once he dropped down from the lava fields on to the broad plain around Selfoss, visibility was poor. Horses looked miserably out of sodden fields towards the road. Every now and then a church or a farm would loom out of the mist on a little knoll.

There was certainly no sign of Hekla, not even as he turned up the road that ran along the banks of the River Thjorsa.

He had no idea whether he really would find anything at Stong or Alfabrekka. But he sure as hell didn’t want to hang around Reykjavik doing nothing. He had tried to put himself inside the pastor’s strange mind. It was difficult to do, he couldn’t pretend that he understood the man, but he thought his hunch wasn’t bad as hunches went.

He thought about the Police Commissioner’s request that he stay on in Iceland. It was more of a command, really.

He was sure that once back home he could persuade Williams to let him remain in Boston. But the Commissioner’s appeal to Magnus’s sense of honour was shrewd. The Icelandic police had provided him with sanctuary. One of them had almost given his life to save Magnus’s. The Commissioner had a point; he did owe them.

When he had first arrived in Iceland he had immediately felt the urge to return to the violent streets of Boston. But perhaps Colby was right, what kind of life was that, anyway? Solve one murder, look for the next. A frantic, never-ending search to discover who he was, to make sense of his past, of his father’s murder, of himself.

There was a good chance the answers to those questions didn’t lie in Boston, but here, in Iceland. If he wanted, he could try to continue running away from his Icelandic past, from his family. But he would be running away from himself. He would spend his life running, moving from dead body to dead body in the South End. Perhaps if he stayed in Iceland for a couple of years he could begin to answer those questions, to find out who he really was.

And even who his father was. For the last few days he had successfully crammed Sigurbjorg’s disclosure that his father had been unfaithful to his mother back into its box. But it wouldn’t stay there quietly for the rest of his life. That knowledge was part of him now. Just like his father’s murder, it would haunt him.

Although he was driving through a short straight stretch of road, Magnus braked.

His father’s murder.

That puzzle had tormented him wherever he went, whatever he did. The police hadn’t found the murderer and neither had he, no matter how hard he had tried. But perhaps they had all been looking in the wrong place. Perhaps he should look in Iceland.

As soon as he thought of the idea, Magnus tried to dismiss it. He knew how much anxiety pursuing that line of thought would cause him, how he could become swallowed up in yet more fruitless investigation. But the idea, once thought, couldn’t be unthought.

His mother’s family hated his father and now he knew why, Sigurbjorg had told him. They blamed him for destroying her. They wanted revenge.

The answer was in Iceland. The answer to everything was in Iceland.

*

Petur watched the small team of Poles go at his car, scrubbing, washing, polishing. He had overcome the urge to pay them double to do a good job; he didn’t want them to remember him. The fact his BMW four-by-four was white helped. It meant it was easier to spot any dirt they left. He decided that he would go at it himself once they had finished.

Petur usually kept a cool head, but he had almost missed the dirt. If the police had stopped by his apartment the night before and impounded his car, their forensics people would have been able to tell where he had been the previous afternoon.

And the problem with a white BMW four-by-four was that it stuck out, even in the land of expensive four-by-fours. Inga had certainly noticed it: his eyes had met hers for a fraction of a second as he had sped past her the day before.

Which was why he had called her mobile immediately and asked her not to mention it.

He hoped she hadn’t said anything. He hoped to God she hadn’t said anything.

Searching for comfort, his hand closed around the object stuck deep in the warm pocket of his coat.

A ring.

The ring.

But Ingileif hadn’t told anyone. She had been surprised when she had seen Pesi driving up the Thjorsardalur, she couldn’t think of any reason why he should be there. But her instinct was not to mention it to Magnus. She didn’t know why.

She told herself it wasn’t important, and indeed, why should it be important? But she didn’t go the further step of asking herself why, if it wasn’t important, she hadn’t said anything.

She was frustrated by Magnus’s behaviour. She liked to think that she had a pretty down-to-earth view of sex and relationships. Despite what Magnus implied, she didn’t jump into bed with every man she fancied. There might be the odd night with Larus, but everyone knew there was nothing in the odd night with Larus. Or everyone in Reykjavik did anyway.

She had liked Magnus. And she had trusted him. Then suddenly he had pulled a girlfriend out of nowhere and more or less called her a slut.

Jerk.

The problem with the sudden deterioration in their relations was it made it more difficult for her to find out from Magnus whether Hakon really had killed her father, or indeed whether it was Tomas. She thought it unlikely that it was Tomas, but she didn’t know.