Authors: Michael Ridpath
With his work and her work it was difficult to see each other. They were trying, but the truth was they weren’t really succeeding, which was why seeing him now was so important. The scheduled weekend in Paris had been a sort of make-or-break thing. And when Vigdís had put off going for a day because of the case, and then been stranded in Iceland by the volcano, it had almost been broken. Vigdís was pleased David had made a further effort; she didn’t want to lose him.
She could see the white peak of Snaefellsjökull shimmering just above the horizon, way off to the north. She was struck with a pang of guilt as she thought of Magnus.
Vigdís liked Magnus and sympathized with him. They were equally mixed up, equally confused, just in different ways. She was biologically half-American, but believed herself to be 100 per cent Icelandic. Magnus was genetically 100 per cent Icelandic, but had spent two thirds of his life in America. Both of them didn’t quite fit into their own country, and both of them found that fact uncomfortable.
She couldn’t believe Magnus really had killed his grandfather, but things must look bad if the Commissioner had gone to the trouble to appoint a detective from outside Reykjavík to look into the murder. Usually it would have been one of the members of the Violent Crimes Unit, probably Inspector Baldur himself, who would have been assigned to help the local police.
Vigdís knew that Magnus had family up there in Snaefellsnes, although he had said very little about them. But a couple of nights ago, he had confided to her that he was having problems with his former girlfriend Ingileif, who had left him the previous autumn to go to Germany, but had shown up back in Reykjavík
a few days ago. Things had gone well and then not so well, according to Magnus. Ingileif was probably still in Iceland somewhere. It was unlikely that she would have been able to get back to Germany, given the ash cloud.
Inspector Emil was a smart cop. He would soon realize Magnus was innocent and let him go. In fact, Magnus was probably driving back to Reykjavík at that very moment.
Unless Magnus wasn’t innocent. He had quite a temper, and he had witnessed a lot of death in Boston over the years. Murder was perhaps not quite so outlandish to a man who was used to processing homicide victims on a weekly basis. Vigdís knew that there was tension with his Icelandic family, even though she didn’t know precisely what it was. He was a very private man. Vigdís thought she knew him, but did she really?
She banished the doubts. She knew that Magnus would do anything for her, and for Árni for that matter, and she would do anything for him.
The airbase appeared on the left, now abandoned by the Americans and used solely as an international airport. She turned off to the right down to the town of Keflavík itself. Her mother’s flat was on the first floor of a low white block. Vigdís rang the bell at the entrance to the building.
No reply.
She rang again. There was some disjointed noise and banging over the intercom, then she was buzzed in. She went up the staircase to the first floor. She was expecting to see her mother standing in an open doorway, but the door to her flat was shut.
Vigdís knocked.
The door was opened by someone Vigdís didn’t recognize. He was probably in his thirties, with a dark beard and a beer belly sticking out over his jeans. He was holding a can of beer. Vigdís’s nostrils immediately sensed alcohol and the sweet smell of marijuana. And male sweat.
Sex.
The man’s eyes opened wide. ‘Hey! Who have we here?’ he said in English. He turned and called over his shoulder. ‘Hey,
Audur! A friend has arrived. A gorgeous black friend. My name’s Jerzy,’ he said. ‘What’s yours?’
Vigdís’s English wasn’t very good and she wasn’t sure exactly what the man had said, but she didn’t like it. ‘Where’s my mother?’ she said in Icelandic, and then pushed past the man. ‘Mum?’
Her mother was sitting on the sofa with two bottles of red wine in front of her, one empty and one a quarter full. There was one glass. An empty pizza box lay on the dining table. The butt of a reefer drooped in an ashtray.
‘Hey, Vigdís!’ her mother said. ‘Have a drink with us.’ She pulled herself to her feet and tottered over. She stretched upwards towards Vigdís’s ear. At least she was fully clothed. ‘And don’t tell him you are my daughter. He doesn’t know how old I am.’
Vigdís scowled.
‘Do you want a drink?’ the man said in English. ‘You speak real good Icelandic.’ He placed one hand on Vigdís’s arse.
Vigdís brushed it off. ‘Mum. We were supposed to be having dinner together.’
‘That’s OK,’ said her mother. ‘I can call for more pizza. And don’t call me “Mum”.’ The last in a ridiculous stage whisper.
Vigdís fought to control the tears. She hadn’t seen her mother like this for at least a year. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.
‘Oh, stay,’ said the guy, this time in Icelandic.
Vigdís turned to him. Forced a smile. ‘Hey. Come here,’ she said. She took his hand and led him out of the flat into the hallway.
With a look behind him to Audur, the man followed.
He was a strong guy, a barrel chest and biceps showing beneath his T-shirt. But he wasn’t ready for Vigdís. Once they were outside, she shut the door to the flat, spun round and pinned him up against the wall. She whipped out her ID.
‘I’m Detective Vigdís Audardóttir,’ she said. ‘Listen, you Polish fuckwit. If I see you anywhere around my mother again, I’ll bust you for possession, or having sex with a pensioner, whichever carries the longest stretch. Do you hear me?’
She wasn’t sure how much Icelandic the man really understood, but he gulped and nodded.
‘Good,’ said Vigdís. She let him go and tripped him so he fell to the floor. Her cheeks burning as she ran down the stairs and out to her car.
She sat behind the driving wheel and banged it. ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ she exclaimed. And the tears rolled.
It was late, but Aníta couldn’t sleep. She was lying in the big wooden bed in her bedroom, with Kolbeinn snoring gently beside her. The bedroom had once been Hallgrímur’s, and his father’s before him. There were some signs of Hallgrímur still in the room: a photograph of him fishing with a young Kolbeinn, and even one of his wedding day with Sylvía, she unrecognizable in the traditional
skautbúningur
– embroidered black jacket and long skirt with a tall white headdress and veil. Hallgrímur had the glare of an awkward bastard even on his wedding day.
Aníta had done her best to make the room hers, mostly by adding her grandmother’s things: some framed tapestries, a photograph of her grandmother’s own farmhouse thirty kilometres away just beyond Stykkishólmur, a rocking chair and even a small spinning wheel.
Aníta had been only one year old when her grandmother died, but nevertheless Aníta felt she knew her. Felt she knew her well.
She had dug out copies of
Moor and the Man
and the collection of Benedikt Jóhannesson’s short stories, of which ‘The Slip’ was one. She read ‘The Slip’ first. It was only five pages long, but it conveyed the permanent simmering rage that the teenage boy felt towards his neighbour, and the sudden realization as he was passing the man on the cliff path that revenge was possible. Not just possible, inevitable. Could that neighbour have been Gunnar, who had slept in that very room seventy years before? It seemed to Aníta it could.
She turned to
Moor and the Man
, which was set in Reykjavík during the war, but included flashbacks to a rural
childhood somewhere in the countryside.
Chapter three
was well thumbed; someone in the house had read it many times. And it was as Jóhannes had described: two boys witnessing one of their fathers committing adultery with the other’s mother, and then later watching the cuckolded father dumping a heavy sack into a lake.
Aníta closed the book and turned off the light. She lay down beside her husband but couldn’t get to sleep. Thoughts of Hallgrímur and Jóhannes and the goings-on at Bjarnarhöfn all those years ago swirled around her head.
And Villi.
Half an hour passed. Or perhaps it was an hour. She thought she could hear voices. She lifted her head from the pillow and listened.
Voices. Coming from downstairs.
Kolbeinn was in bed with her. Which meant it must be Villi. But who else was with him?
She got up and pulled back the curtain to check outside. The thick grey cloud was shredding. An almost full moon peeped through it, scattering pale sparkles on to the fjord. To the north she could see the green aurora slinking over the mountains of the West Fjords. The little church was clearly visible in the moonlight, as was the police tape fluttering at its entrance. They must have moved Hallgrímur’s body by now, surely. Aníta shuddered.
It didn’t feel like it.
Soon he would be brought back to the little churchyard and laid next to his ancestors, to his father Gunnar and his daughter Margrét. Maybe one day Aníta would join them. She shivered again.
The farmyard was empty, but she could still hear the voices.
Kolbeinn was asleep. She considered waking him, but decided against it. Just in case.
She went out on to the landing and slowly descended the staircase. The door to the kitchen was open. The only light inside came from the moon. She saw the silhouette of a small boy. Smaller than Krissi. Was it Krissi?
The voices were clearer. One of them she recognized.
‘Go to bed now, boy. You heard nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing.’
Aníta stood completely still. What should she do? Scream? Grab the boy?
She felt fear. Not so much her own fear as the fear of the small boy. Was it Krissi?
He had moved out of her vision now, but a familiar figure had stepped forward.
Hallgrímur.
His face was illuminated by a flickering orange glow. He seemed to notice her for the first time and glared.
Then he turned towards where the boy had been and hissed, ‘To bed, if you know what’s good for you.’
‘Stop!’ Aníta shouted and ran forward into the kitchen. ‘Hallgrímur, stop!’
But he wasn’t there. Neither was the boy.
‘Krissi?’ she called out in a loud whisper.
And then she saw the glow. The orange glow.
Fire.
Hallgrímur’s cottage was on fire. And outside it, standing only a few metres away, was Sylvía.
‘Kolbeinn!’ Aníta shrieked. She ran back to the staircase. ‘Kolbeinn! The cottage is on fire! Come quick!’
Stopping only to pull on her boots by the door, she ran outside. The glow came from the window facing the farmhouse, which itself was out of sight of her bedroom. It lit up the small figure of Sylvía, her short white hair sticking up, staring, mesmerized.
‘Stand back, Sylvía!’ Aníta said, grabbing the old woman and pulling her back. The fire was intensifying in front of her eyes. The first signs of smoke curled along the edges of the window.
‘Hallgrímur needed his dinner,’ Sylvía said. ‘He hasn’t had his dinner yet.’
Aníta paused just for a second. What the hell was the old woman on about? She didn’t have time to figure it out. She ran
back to the farmhouse to meet Kolbeinn emerging from the doorway.
‘You get the hose!’ she shouted. ‘I’ll call the fire service!’
And she rushed into the house and dialled 112.
CHAPTER TEN
January 2010
T
HE PLANE BANKED
low over the town of Cohasset on its approach to Boston’s Logan airport. Magnus stared down at the snow-covered trees; he had read about the major dump the previous week. From the air, New England looked like a massive forest, extending as far as the eye could see; nothing like the neat patchwork of towns that appeared on the map, which in the real world were marked only by the round water towers on their stilts sticking high up above the trees.
So many trees! God, it was good to see them.
Magnus had felt no desire to cross-country ski in Iceland, but the clear blue sky, the glistening snow and all those trees made him want to put on a pair as soon as he landed.
The plane banked again, and lined up towards the runway squatting in Boston Harbor. The city stretched out to the left of the aircraft. The neighbourhoods where he had spent so many years cataloguing the dead bodies, getting to know the victims, figuring out who had killed them and why. A homicide investigation was like a process of reincarnation. First you found a body. Then you found its name. Then he or she became a murder victim. Then she became a person, a real person with a job, a family, hopes, fears, friends, lovers, faults. And enemies. And you began to work for that person, for that person’s family. You had to find who had killed her and why.
And when you did find the killer, and the evidence against
him, and you did the paperwork right and he went to court and then to jail, it wasn’t over. There was always another body. Another victim to get to know.
This cycle had become Magnus’s life the moment he had joined the homicide unit seven years before. He could never get enough of it. And he was good at it – there were very few unsolved cases. If there was no evidence, he would keep looking. If the witnesses wouldn’t talk, he would find a way to crack them.
Of course there was one unsolved murder. There was always the one unsolved murder. It might have happened before he joined the department, but it had pursued him throughout his career as a policeman.
Murder in Iceland was different. Magnus had been lucky: he had been involved in a handful of fascinating cases since he had arrived in the country nine months before. But the population was small, barely three hundred thousand people in the whole nation, handguns were banned, and serious crime was rare, at least when compared to a big US city. That was good for Iceland’s citizens, but frustrating for Magnus. Three murders a year was not enough; it didn’t take long for him to feel like climbing the walls.
That was part of the reason why he had decided to take a couple of vacation days to return to the States. He had been transferred to Reykjavík in a hurry, partly at the request of Iceland’s Police Commissioner, but also because he had become a witness in a nasty police corruption case involving a Dominican drug gang. There had been a couple of attempts on his life, and his boss, Deputy Superintendent Williams, had grabbed at the chance to get him safely out of the country.