Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

‘Why not?’

‘Because he was with me that weekend. In Reykjavik. He was singing in the Hallgrimskirkja with the village choir. I went to listen. We stayed with my sister in Reykjavik that Saturday night.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, I’m quite sure. We didn’t get back until Sunday evening. I can remember seeing Hakon when we arrived home. He had only just got back from the hills. He was in a terrible state.’ She smiled at Ingileif. ‘You see. My son is innocent!’

The three men were squashed into Axel’s car, parked a hundred metres down the road from the house which Ingileif had entered. Axel was at the wheel, Isildur was in the back, and Gimli was in the passenger seat, a computer opened on his lap. With expense no object, Axel had planted four bugs on Ingileif when he had broken in in the small hours of the previous night. One in her bag, one in her coat, one in her studio bedroom – that had been the trickiest – and one in the car. The bug in the car doubled as a tracking device, and the location of the car was flashing on the GPS map on the computer.

The tracker had allowed them to follow Ingileif at a safe distance all the way from Reykjavik to Hella. They had driven by the house at which she had stopped and then parked out of sight. The bug in the coat was transmitting loud and clear, but in Icelandic, through a receiver which was plugged into the laptop. Axel mumbled half-translations as he listened, but they were frustratingly incomplete.

When Axel started muttering about a ring, Isildur couldn’t contain his impatience to find out more, but Axel refused to explain further, not wanting to miss any of the conversation.

As soon as Ingileif left the house, Isildur asked Axel for a translation.

‘Shouldn’t we follow her?’ said Axel.

‘We can catch her up later. The tracker will show us where she is. I want a full translation, and I want it now!’

Axel pulled the computer off Gimli’s lap and tapped some keys. The conversation was recorded on the computer’s hard drive. He went through the whole thing slowly and methodically.

Isildur was beside himself with excitement. ‘Where’s this church?’ he demanded. ‘The place where the ring is hidden?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Axel. ‘The nearest church to Hella is a place called Oddi. It’s not far.’

‘It sounds like they were neighbours when Ingileif was young,’ said Gimli. ‘This Hakon is obviously Tomas Hakonarson’s father. Do we know where he was born? Where he grew up? Or for that matter where Ingileif grew up? It might not have been Hella. It sounded to me as if this Erna woman had moved out, or moved away.’

‘Google him,’ said Isildur. ‘You got Google in Iceland, right?’

‘Google who?’

‘Tomas Hakonarson. If he’s a big star in this country, there will be a bio on him somewhere.’

Axel called up the search engine, tapped out some words, clicked and scrolled. ‘Here he is. He was born in a village in the West Fjords, but was brought up in Fludir. That’s not too far from here.’

‘Well, let’s go to Fludir church, then!’ said Isildur. ‘Get a move on!’

Axel handed the laptop back to Gimli and started up the car.

‘Hruni is the nearest church to Fludir,’ said Axel. ‘This man must be the pastor of Hruni.’ He grinned.

‘What’s so special about that?’

‘Let’s just say it fits.’

As Magnus drove up the valley of the Thjorsa towards Mount Hekla, lurking behind the cloud somewhere to the south-east, the landscape became progressively bleaker. Grass gave way to black rock and mounds of sand, like the detritus of a massive abandoned coalfield. The river flowed past the rounded lump of stone several hundred feet high known as Burfell, home to trolls in the old folk tales. Just beyond, the road crossed a smaller river, the Fossa, a tributary of the Thjorsa, but still powerful, and Magnus came to a junction and a sign. Well, two signs. One said Stong. The other Road Closed.

Magnus turned. It wasn’t a road. It wasn’t even a track. There were twists, turns, steep hills, sharp drops. At one point the road was nothing but black sand. Mist swirled around Magnus as he cajoled his car through the blackened terrain. Below and to the left, the Fossa surged. Fingers of snow reached down from the mountains above, and indeed the road would have been completely impassable a couple of weeks earlier, before the snow had melted. Once or twice, Magnus debated turning back. But of course Hakon’s four-wheel-drive would have had an easier time of it.

Then he rounded a bend and saw it. The red Suzuki. It was parked on a brief stretch of road fifty feet above the river. Magnus pulled up next to it and checked the plate. Definitely the Reverend Hakon’s vehicle.

He turned off his engine and climbed out of his car.

The damp air hit his nostrils. After the whine of his own car engine and the clanking of stones and rock against the chassis, everything seemed quiet, damply quiet. Except there was a low roar, the sound of water rushing by below.

Somewhere in the fog a duck quacked. Odd to hear the sound of a living thing in that landscape.

Magnus walked over to the Suzuki. Empty. He tried the door handle. Unlocked. No keys in the ignition.

He looked around. Visibility was only a couple of hundred feet. He couldn’t see Hakon. Mist swirled around the pinnacles of twisted lava all about Magnus, odd grotesque shapes, volcanic gargoyles. Under his feet was black grit and chips of obsidian, rock melted into black glass deep within the earth and then spewed out on to the very spot where he stood.

Perhaps Hakon had abandoned the car here to walk on to Stong on foot? A possibility, Magnus could not see far enough along the road to evaluate its quality. But Hakon was an Icelander and he was driving a four-wheel-drive. He was unlikely to give up that easily.

The man was crazy, Magnus knew that. He could have set out on a long hike to God-knows-where over the bleak landscape. To the cave near Alfabrekka, perhaps? To Mount Hekla? He could be away for days.

Magnus looked around the Suzuki for footprints. There were some, but they were muddled. He moved away from the vehicle in expanding circles, but the ground was too hard to betray which direction Hakon might have gone. He did find something of interest, though.

Tyre marks. About thirty feet away from the Suzuki on a small patch of soft ground. Another car had parked there. But when?

Magnus had no idea of the last time it had rained at that particular spot. It had been beautiful in the Thjorsardalur when he and Ingileif had driven to Alfabrekka the previous day. It was possible that it might not have rained since then. Or it could have rained twenty minutes before.

He debated whether to drive on to Stong. He recalled the abandoned farm from his childhood. It lay in a small patch of green by a stream. But first he had to report what he had seen to Baldur.

He pulled out his phone. No signal, which was hardly surprising. And there wasn’t a police radio in the car.

So he decided to drive back towards the main road until he found a signal to make the call.

After a bone-shattering two kilometres, his phone, which he had placed on the seat beside him, began to ring.

He pulled over and picked it up. He couldn’t drive with only one hand on that road.

‘Hi, Magnus, it’s Ingileif.’

‘Hello,’ said Magnus, wary, yet pleased that it was her.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘It’s just I heard on the radio this morning that there had been a shooting. A police officer was in hospital. An American had been arrested. I assumed one of the two was you.’

‘Yeah, it happened right after I went to your place last night. My partner Arni was shot. I got the guy who did it.’