Michael Ridpath: Where the Shadows Lie

That would explain his own presence at the waterfall. It would be close enough to the truth that he could carry it off.

He fiddled with the ring on his finger. They would almost certainly arrest him, and it would be hard to describe how he came to have the ring in his possession. Much better to hide it somewhere before he raised the alarm.

But he was getting ahead of himself. As long as he managed to explain things properly to Inga, she would understand him, she would realize he had had no other choice.

Wouldn’t she?

Magnus and Steve Jubb sped through Fludir and into the farm-land beyond, dotted with domed greenhouses and emitting spirals of volcanic steam. The road soon ran alongside the Hvita, in full spate.

‘I’ve been a daft bugger,’ Jubb said. ‘Somehow I thought that Agnar croaking had nothing to do with me. I knew I was innocent but I hoped I could keep the existence of the saga and the ring secret. Seemed worth it then.’

‘I thought you had killed the professor,’ said Magnus.

‘I know you thought that. But I also knew I hadn’t. And I guessed you’d figure that out in the end.’

‘Have you had any dealings with Petur at all?’

‘Never,’ Jubb said. ‘I hadn’t met the bloke till the other day when I saw him with Lawrence Feldman. That man is weird, by the way. Clever. Rich. But weird.’

‘And you’re not?’ said Magnus.

‘There’s nothing wrong in being a Lord of the Rings fan,’ Jubb said defensively. ‘What is wrong is when you let it blind you to what’s going on in the real world.’ He looked around at the extraordinary countryside flashing through the mist around them. ‘Although sometimes I find it hard to believe that this country is part of the real world.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Magnus’s phone rang. Vigdis.

‘I can’t find Petur at his house or at Neon. They haven’t seen him there all day – they don’t know where he is. I’m just going to check the other two clubs.’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Magnus. ‘He’s heading to Gullfoss. He’s going to meet his sister there. And then he’s going to kill her.’

‘Are you sure?’

Magnus hesitated. How sure was he? He had made mistakes earlier in this investigation. ‘Yeah, I’m sure. Can you call in a SWAT team? What do you call it – the Viking Squad. The cloud’s probably too low for a helicopter, but the sooner they get here the better.’

‘We’ll never get the Viking Squad approved,’ said Vigdis. ‘I will call Baldur. But you and I both know what he’s going to say.’

‘Damn it!’ Magnus knew Baldur would ignore his request. ‘Can you come yourself, Vigdis?’

A pause. ‘All right. I’m on my way.’

‘And bring a weapon.’

‘I’ll be there as quick as I can. Unarmed.’ She hung up.

‘Careful!’ Steve Jubb flinched as he shouted the warning.

Magnus nearly swerved off the road as he took a bend too fast with only one hand on the wheel. As they were moving north, the road was already deteriorating. Stones slammed against the floor of the car like so many bullets.

‘She’s stopped at Gullfoss!’ Jubb said, staring at his screen.

After careering over some foothills, they descended to cross a narrow gorge at a small suspension bridge and then found themselves on a better road speeding across flat moorland into the fog.

Petur saw the familiar figure of his sister emerge from the gloom over the lip of the hollow. She walked in the same way she had when she was a girl – her coat was even the same colour. It brought back memories of those family picnics, before everything had been ruined. At twelve Inga had been really quite pretty, even when wearing her earnest glasses, but she had always been overshadowed by the stunning Birna. Petur felt a sudden surge of affection for his little sister.

She wouldn’t let him down. She couldn’t possibly let him down.

He raised a hand to greet her.

‘Why the hell are we meeting here?’ she said, shivering.

‘It’s the right place,’ said Petur gravely. ‘It’s the right place to talk about Dad.’ This wasn’t starting well.

‘What I want to know is what you were doing driving up to Stong yesterday. They found Hakon’s car, you know. And his body at the bottom of Hjalparfoss.’

‘I’ll tell you about that. But I want to tell you about Dad first.’

‘My God!’ said Ingileif. ‘You know how he died, don’t you?’

Petur nodded, meeting her eyes. They were anxious, questioning, but also angry.

‘I was with them that weekend. With the pastor and Dad.’

‘I thought you were at school.’

‘I know. Dad wanted me to come with him on the expedition. He was convinced they would find the ring. I was in two minds about it. As I told you, I was dead against them taking the ring – I remembered Grandpa’s warnings. But in the end, he persuaded me.

‘The trouble was, Mum had forbidden it. So we didn’t tell her. I took the bus to Hella from Reykjavik and they picked me up there.’

‘So Mum never knew?’

‘No.’ Petur shook his head. ‘We camped out on the hills and then the next morning we got to the cave. It wasn’t really a cave, more of a hole in the lava. It took us three hours to find it, but it was Dad who discovered it. He was so excited!’

Petur smiled at the memory. ‘And who can blame him? It was amazing. There was this ring, covered in a small film of dust. It’s not that it was shining or anything, you had to rub it to tell it was gold. But there was the proof that Gaukur’s Saga, this story that had been passed down by all of our ancestors for all those years, was actually true.’

‘But you and Dad always thought it was true, didn’t you?’

‘We believed,’ said Petur. ‘We had faith. But anyone who has to believe or have faith rather than simply knowing, always has doubts. And to have those doubts dispelled… Amazing.

‘So I was caught up in the whole thing. But after a few minutes I told Dad we had to put it back. I talked about all the evil it would bring the world, how Grandpa had told me to make sure that Dad never took it. We had a major row. Dad looked to Reverend Hakon for support and he got it. I even tried to grab the ring off him, but he pushed me to one side.

‘I had kind of ruined everything,’ Petur said. ‘They walked on together and I followed twenty metres behind, sulking, you could say. Then the weather got bad. It was sunny one moment, the next it was snowing.

‘I saw my chance. Dad was in front, the pastor next and then me. I slipped past the pastor and tried to grab the ring from Dad: I knew which of his coat pockets it was in. My plan was to run off into the snow and replace it in the cave. I was pretty sure I could outrun them in the snowstorm and they would soon give up.

‘So Dad and I rolled around in the snow, then I pushed him and he fell, hitting his head on a rock.’ Petur gulped. The tears came into his eyes. ‘I thought I had knocked him out, but he was dead. Just like that.’

‘Oh, don’t give me that! You pushed him over a cliff! He was found at the bottom of the cliff.’

‘I didn’t, I swear it. It was only a fall of a couple of metres. It was just the way he hit his head. On his temple – right here.’ Petur tapped his own shaved skull.

‘So how do you explain the cliff?’

‘Reverend Hakon saw what had happened. He took charge. I was a wreck after I saw what I had done. My mind was a blank. I couldn’t say anything, I couldn’t think anything. Hakon knew it was an accident. He told me to go, run away, pretend I was never there. So I ran.

‘He pushed Dad over the cliff. Oh, he was dead then, that’s for sure, the autopsy people got that wrong when they said he was alive for a few minutes. But Hakon covered for me.’