Where the Shadows Lie (43 page)

That was another effect of the ring on people. It persuaded them to suspend their normal critical faculties, to believe the unbelievable. Pétur smiled. The irony that the pastor had fallen for the same ruse that had done for Gaukur a thousand years before pleased him.

Pétur stood, staring at the waterfall, and thought of his father. This place really did remind him of that sunny period before things had gone so wrong. Perhaps what he had said to Inga was true. Perhaps their father really was present.

Pétur shuddered. He hoped not. He wouldn’t want his father to witness what might happen to Inga if she didn’t promise to keep quiet.

Pétur wondered what the police would think when they found the pastor’s body, or more likely his car. An accident? Suicide perhaps?

That was an idea. If the worst came to the worst, and Inga ended up in the waterfall, Pétur could claim she had killed herself. He had received a call from her. She was distraught, upset by feelings of betrayal at trying to sell
Gaukur’s Saga
. She told him that she was going to Gullfoss. He feared suicide, and drove up to try to stop her. But he was just too late. He saw her jump.

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 Flúdir and into the farm-land beyond, dotted with domed greenhouses and emitting spirals of volcanic steam. The road soon ran alongside the Hvítá, 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 Pétur 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. Vigdís.

‘I can’t find Pétur 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 Vigdís. ‘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, Vigdís?’

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.

P
ÉTUR 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. Pétur 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 Pétur 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 Stöng yesterday. They found Hákon’s car, you know. And his body at the bottom of Hjálparfoss.’

‘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?’

Pétur 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 Reykjavík and they picked me up there.’

‘So Mum never knew?’

‘No.’ Pétur 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!’

Pétur 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 Pétur. ‘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 Hákon 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,’ Pétur 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.’ Pétur 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.’ Pétur tapped his own shaved skull.

‘So how do you explain the cliff?’

‘Reverend Hákon 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. Hákon 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 Hákon covered for me.’

Ingileif put a hand to her mouth, her brow knitted in anguish. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘So you were the elf the old sheep farmer saw?’

‘Elf?’ Pétur frowned.

‘Never mind.’

Pétur smiled at his sister. ‘It’s true. I killed Dad. But it was a mistake. A dreadful, horrible mistake. If Hákon were alive he could tell you that.’ He took a step forward. Took his sister’s hands in his. Looked in her eyes – horrified, shocked, confused. ‘Can you forgive me, Inga?’

Ingileif stood stunned for a moment. Then she backed off.

‘It wasn’t murder, Inga. Surely you understand that?’

‘But what about Aggi? And the pastor? Did you kill them as well?’

‘Don’t you see, I had to?’

‘What do you mean, you had to?’

‘As you know by now, Hákon took the ring. When Agnar went
to see him, he guessed he had it. He accused Hákon of killing Dad and taking the ring. Hákon threw him out, of course, but then Agnar approached Tómas, tried to get him to act as an intermediary. He tried to blackmail Hákon through him.’

‘But what did all this have to do with you?’

‘Hákon had been good to me. He had kept me out of the police investigation completely. Until then, I had no idea what had happened to the ring, I had tried so hard not to think about it, or to ask questions about it, but it didn’t exactly surprise me that Hákon had taken it from Dad. So, in the end, Hákon called me. He explained what was going on, that it looked like he would have to tell the truth about what had happened to Dad, unless I did something.’

‘Did what?’

‘He didn’t say. But we both knew.’

‘Oh, my God! You
did
kill Aggi!’

‘I had to. Don’t you see, I had to?’

Ingileif shook her head. ‘Of course you didn’t have to. And then you killed Hákon?’

Pétur nodded. ‘Once his son was in jail and the police were after him, I knew the truth would come out.’

‘How could you?’

‘What do you mean, how could I?’ Pétur protested, with a flash of anger. ‘You were the one who insisted on putting
Gaukur’s Saga
up for sale. If it hadn’t been for that, all would be well.’

‘That’s bullshit. Yes, I made a mistake. But I had no idea what would happen. It was you! You who killed them!’ Ingileif took a step back. ‘OK, maybe you killed Dad by accident, but not the other two. Hang on – did you kill Sigursteinn as well?’

Pétur nodded. ‘You have to admit he deserved it after what he had done to Birna. I flew back from London, met him in Reykjavík, bought him a few drinks.’

‘And he ended up in the harbour?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Who are you?’ Ingileif said, her eyes wide. ‘You’re not my brother. Who are you?’

Pétur closed his eyes. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s this.’ He took his hand out of his pocket. Showed her the ring on his finger. ‘Here. Take a look.’

He slipped it off and handed it to her. It was his last chance. Maybe the ring would corrupt his sister just like it had corrupted him, his father, Hákon and all the others.

Ingileif stared at it. ‘Is this it?’

‘Yes.’

She closed her fist around it. Pétur felt an urge to grab it, but resisted. Let her have it. Let it do its evil magic with her.

‘So, what are you going to do?’ Pétur asked.

‘I’m going to the police,’ Ingileif said. ‘What did you think I would do?’

‘Are you sure?’ said Pétur. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Of course I am,’ Ingileif said. She glared at her brother. In addition to fear and shock, there was hatred there now.

Pétur’s shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes. Oh, well. The ring was going to have its way. He had been foolish to think that this could end any other way.

He took a step forward.

M
AGNUS PASSED A
tour bus on its way out as he screeched into the parking lot. It was almost deserted. Two cars were parked next to each other – a big SUV and a much smaller hatchback, with a third a few feet away.