‘Have you looked at Stöng? Or Álfabrekka?’
‘Why should we do that?’
‘We know that the ring has an enormous influence over Hákon. 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 Stöng. Or the cave where the ring was originally found. I think the map Dr Ásgrímur 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.’
B
UT MAGNUS DIDN’T
go home. He signed out a car and drove out towards Gaukur’s abandoned farm at Stöng. 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 Thjórsá.
He had no idea whether he really would find anything at Stöng or Álfabrekka. But he sure as hell didn’t want to hang around Reykjavík 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 Sigurbjörg’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, Sigurbjörg had told him. They blamed him for destroying her. They wanted revenge.
The answer was in Iceland. The answer to everything was in Iceland.
*
Pétur 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.
Pétur 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 Pési driving up the Thjórsárdalur, 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 Lárus, but
everyone knew there was nothing in the odd night with Lárus. Or everyone in Reykjavík 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 Hákon really had killed her father, or indeed whether it was Tómas. She thought it unlikely that it was Tómas, but she didn’t
know
.
She did know someone who would. Tómas’s mother.
Her name was Erna, and Ingileif trusted her. She was a small woman with blonde curly hair, who had originally come from a village in the West Fjords where she had met Hákon when he had been serving as a priest there. Ingileif remembered the way Erna used to look up to her husband, not just literally, for Hákon was almost half a metre taller than his wife, but also how she seemed to submit to his will. But Erna was basically an honest, kind, sensible woman who had ensured that Tómas hadn’t grown up an emotional wreck. It must have taken a lot of courage for her to leave her husband when she did, but it was definitely a wise decision.
She would know which of her son or her husband had killed the doctor. She would know.
So Ingileif drove her old Polo out to Hella, a town about fifty kilometres to the south of Flúdir, which is where she knew Erna lived with her second husband.
The drive was unpleasant in the fog, but at least there wasn’t much traffic on the road. She listened to the news on the radio, hoping for more information about Tómas, or possibly the arrest of the Reverend Hákon. There was none of that. But there was something about shots being fired in 101, a policeman being wounded and taken to hospital and an American citizen being held by the police.
For a moment, a dreadful moment, Ingileif thought that the policeman was Magnus. But then they named him as Detective Árni Holm and she breathed again.
She was absolutely sure Magnus was involved somehow, though. Perhaps he was the American citizen they had locked up.
Hella was a modern settlement that lined the bank of the West Ranga river, the next one along after the Thjórsá. Ingileif had looked up Erna’s address from the national phone-directory website: her house was a single-storey building only thirty metres from the river, surrounded by a green garden. Ingileif had no idea whether Erna would be out at work, after all most Icelandic women had a job, but when Ingileif rang the doorbell, Erna answered.
She recognized Ingileif immediately and ushered her in. Erna’s blonde hair was still blonde, but dyed nowadays, and she had put on weight. But her blue eyes still twinkled when she saw Ingileif, although they swiftly clouded again with worry. ‘Have you heard the dreadful news about Tómas?’ she said, as she busied herself in the kitchen organizing coffee.
‘I have,’ said Ingileif. ‘You can hardly miss it. It’s all over the papers. Have you seen him?’
‘No. The police won’t let me. I’ve spoken to his lawyer on the phone. She says that the police don’t have enough evidence to prove anything. I didn’t even know he
knew
this Agnar fellow. Why on earth would he murder the man? The lawyer said that it all had something to do with a manuscript the professor was trying to sell. Here, Ingileif, let’s go through and sit down.’
The sitting room boasted a large picture window opening out on a view of the river, barely visible through the mist. Ingileif remembered that Erna’s husband was a manager in one of the local bank branches. He had obviously done well. Ingileif wondered, in the way that Icelanders had since the
kreppa
, whether the man had granted himself a hundred per cent mortgage in the boom times.
‘It has to do with our family, Erna. And with your husband.’
‘Oh. I feared as much.’
‘The manuscript is an old saga that had been in my family for generations.
Gaukur’s Saga
. Did Hákon ever mention it to you?’
‘Not directly. But that’s what he spent so much time discussing with your father, isn’t it?’
‘That’s correct. And when my mother died at the end of last year—’
‘Oh, yes, I’m so sorry about that. I would have gone to the funeral if I could.’
‘Yes. Well, after she died, I decided to sell the saga, through Professor Agnar. And the police think that it was for this saga that Agnar was killed.’
‘I see. But I still don’t understand what this has to do with Tómas.’
Except that Ingileif could see in Erna’s face that she was beginning to understand.
‘It all goes back to my father’s death.’
‘Ah. I thought it might.’ Erna was wary now.
‘I’m sure that the police will ask you questions about it soon. Perhaps today,’ said Ingileif. ‘And I promise I won’t tell them what you tell me.’ This promise was easier to make now that Magnus had made an idiot of himself. ‘But I want to know what happened to my father. I
need
to know.’
‘It was an accident,’ said Erna. ‘Hákon witnessed it. A terrible accident. There was a police investigation and everything.’
‘Did your husband tell you what he and my father were doing that weekend?’
‘No. He was very secretive about all that, and frankly I wasn’t interested. They were researching something, I’ve no idea what.’
‘Did he ever mention a ring?’
‘A ring? No. What kind of ring?’
Erna seemed genuinely puzzled. Ingileif took a deep breath. The questions were going to get more painful, there was no way of avoiding it.
‘It was a ring that was mentioned in
Gaukur’s Saga
, the manuscript the professor who was murdered was trying to sell. You see,
the police believe that my father and your husband found the ring that weekend.’
Erna frowned. ‘He never mentioned it. And I never saw a ring. But it is just the kind of thing that would fascinate him. And there was
something.
Something hidden in the altar in the church. I saw him sneak in there several times.’
‘Did you ever look to see what it was?’ Ingileif asked.
‘No. I told myself that it was none of my business.’ Erna shuddered. ‘But the truth is I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to know. Hákon had rather unconventional interests. I was scared about what I might find.’
‘The police think that my father may have been killed for the ring,’ said Ingileif.
‘By whom?’ said Erna. ‘Not by Hákon, surely?’
‘That’s what they think.’ Ingileif swallowed. ‘That’s what I think.’
Erna looked shocked. Shock turned to anger. ‘I know that my ex-husband is eccentric. I know that all sorts of strange stories are told about him in the village. But I am absolutely sure he didn’t kill your father. Despite all his fascination with the devil, he wouldn’t kill anyone. Ever. And …’
A tear appeared Erna’s eye.
‘And?’
‘And your father was the only true friend Hákon ever had. Sometimes I think, well I
know
, that Hákon was fonder of him than of me. He was quite broken up by your father’s death. It almost destroyed him.’ She sniffed and dabbed her eye with her finger. ‘He started behaving even more strangely, neglecting his parish duties, listening to Tómas’s dreadful music. He became impossible to live with after that. Impossible.’
Ingileif realized she would get no further on the subject of Hákon. She would leave grilling Erna to the police. She still thought Hákon had killed her father, but she was convinced that Erna didn’t, and she didn’t feel the need to argue with her.