Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

‘And he was after you?’

‘He was after me.’

There was a brief silence. Then Ingileif spoke again. ‘I’ve just been to see Erna, Tomas’s mother. She lives in Hella.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘She is sure that Tomas didn’t kill my father. He couldn’t have been there. He was singing with the village choir in the Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik that weekend.’

‘Or so she says. She is his mother, remember?’

‘That can be checked, though, can’t it? Even seventeen years later?’

‘Yes, it can,’ admitted Magnus. Ingileif was right. It was an unlikely lie. ‘What did she say about Hakon?’

‘She’s certain that he didn’t kill Dad either. But she doesn’t have any evidence.’

‘I think we can safely ignore that,’ Magnus said.

‘I suppose so,’ said Ingileif. ‘But she did sound convincing. She also told me where Hakon hides the ring.’

‘In the altar in the church?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Tomas told me yesterday.’

‘Have you found him? Hakon?’

Magnus looked back up the road. ‘No. But I did find his car a few minutes ago. On the road to Stong. He must have gone on a hike or something. Or met someone. I found another set of tyre tracks nearby.’

There was silence at the other end of the phone. For a moment Magnus thought the connection had been dropped. The signal was still poor. ‘Ingileif? Ingileif, are you there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. Bye, Magnus.’

And she was gone.

Petur was under his car, wiping the chassis with a cloth. He had driven home from the car wash, grabbed a cloth and a bucket and then parked in a residential street a kilometre away. He didn’t want his neighbours to see him washing his car so carefully.

His phone, stuffed in his jeans pocket, rang. He rolled out from under the BMW and answered it.

‘Pesi? It’s Inga.’

He scrambled to his feet. He need to gather his wits for this conversation.

‘Inga! Hi! How are you?’

‘Why didn’t you want me to say I saw you yesterday?’

‘You were with that big cop, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes. We had just been to see the sheep farmers who went to look for Dad with Hakon. Pesi, I am pretty sure that Dad was killed. It wasn’t an accident.’

Petur realized she had given him the opportunity to go on the offensive. ‘I thought we had agreed to leave all that alone,’ he said. ‘Why were you talking to the cops about it? What could it achieve?’

‘Pesi, where were you going yesterday?’

Petur took a deep breath. ‘I can’t say, Inga. I’m sorry. Don’t ask me any more.’

‘That won’t do, Pesi. I need to know what’s going on here. Were you going to meet Hakon? On the road to Stong?’

‘Look, where are you now?’

‘Just outside Hella.’

‘OK. You’re right. You do deserve an explanation. And I’ll give you one, a full one.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Not over the phone. We need to do this face to face.’

‘OK. I’ll be back in Reykjavik this afternoon.’

‘No, not here. You remember where Dad used to take us for picnics? The spot he said was his favourite place in Iceland?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, meet me there. In, say, an hour and a half.’

‘Why there?’

‘I often go there, Inga. It’s where Dad is. I go there to talk to him. And I want him to be there when I talk to you.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Ingileif would know that such sentimentalism was unlike Petur, but then she also knew how much their father’s death had affected him.

‘OK. An hour and a half.’

‘See you then. And promise me you won’t say anything to the police. At least until after I’ve had a chance to explain things.’

‘I promise.’

Now he had a signal, Magnus called Baldur.

‘I’ve found Hakon’s car,’ he said, before the inspector had a chance to hang up on him.

‘Where?’

‘On the road to Stong. There’s no sign of him. And it’s too misty to see very far.’

‘Are you there now?’ barked Baldur.

‘No. I had to go back down the road a couple of kilometres until I could get a signal to call you.’

‘I’ll send a team up to look at it.’

‘And to search for him,’ said Magnus.

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘Why not? Have you found him?’

‘Yes. At the bottom of the Hjalparfoss. A body was discovered there by a power worker half an hour ago. A large man with a beard wearing a clerical collar.’

Hjalparfoss was a waterfall only a kilometre or so from the turn-off to Stong. Magnus had seen a sign to it. The powerful river below him, the Fossa, flowed into it.

‘He could have jumped,’ said Baldur.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Magnus. ‘I saw tyre tracks next to the Suzuki. He was pushed.’

‘Well, don’t go back to the scene,’ said Baldur. ‘I don’t want you taking any further part in this investigation. I’m on my way to Hjalparfoss and you had better not be there when I arrive.’

Magnus felt the urge to snap back. He had had the hunch that Hakon had driven to Stong. He had found the car. But he held his tongue.

‘Glad I could be of assistance,’ he said, and hung up.

Well, almost held his tongue.

It would take Baldur at least an hour, probably more like two to get to Hjalparfoss from Reykjavik, which gave Magnus plenty of time.

He drove steadily down the track to the main road. The foot of Burfell emerged eerily out of the mist ahead. The turn-off to Hjalparfoss was a much better track, but still through black heaps of rock and sand. After a few hundred metres, the waterfall itself appeared, two powerful torrents of water divided by a basalt rock, tumbling into a pool. A police car with lights flashing was parked down by the bank of the river below the waterfall, and a small group of three or four people were clustered around something.

Magnus parked next to the police car and introduced himself. The officers were friendly and stood back to let him take a look at the body.

It was Hakon, all right. Badly battered by his journey down the river and over the waterfall.

Magnus looked at the pastor of Hruni’s fingers.

They were bare.

Magnus drove back towards Reykjavik. The Thjorsa, which had sparkled the day before, flowed broad and ominously grey down towards the Atlantic Ocean.

This changed things. This definitely changed things.

It looked very much as if someone had killed Hakon. It wasn’t Tomas, he was locked up safe and sound. So who was it?

Steve Jubb and Lawrence Feldman?

Since he had arrived in Iceland, Magnus had heard about a lot of people who had suffered sudden death over the years. Not just Agnar and now Hakon. But also Dr Asgrimur. And even Ingileif’s stepfather.

Too many in such a peaceful country to be a coincidence.

Another fall. Another drowning.

Dr Asgrimur had fallen to his death. That was supposed to be an accident. Agnar had been hit over the head and then drowned. Even Ingileif’s stepfather had fallen into Reykjavik Harbour, hitting his head and drowning.

That was it. It was that death that had raised doubts at the back of Magnus’s mind earlier when he was talking to the Commissioner.

It was a classic MO, a modus operandi, a means of killing for which a murderer showed a preference. Even the smartest killers often stuck to the same familiar method.

There were only two people who were linked to all these deaths. A brother and a sister. Petur and Ingileif.

Magnus dismissed Ingileif. But Petur?

He had alibis. He was at high school in Reykjavik when his father had died. But perhaps he had been able to get out that weekend without anyone knowing? Perhaps he was the hidden man that the old farmer had seen? He was supposed to have been in London when his stepfather had been killed, but he could easily have flown back to Reykjavik for a couple of days without anyone knowing. If he had heard of what the man had done to his sister, Birna, he might have been moved to take revenge. Especially if he had killed before.