Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘And how did he take that?’
‘He was furious. With me. With Ollie. He shut himself away with his math. It was all very unpleasant. And then someone killed him.’
‘And you’ve no idea who?’
Kathleen flashed her green eyes at Magnus. ‘No, Magnus, I have no idea who killed him. Ollie was at the beach; I was with the air-con guy. And if you think I hired someone to kill him, which, by the way, your detective friend seemed to believe for a day or two, you’re wrong. I felt trapped, but there was an easy
way out. Divorce. I had done it before – I knew how. We hadn’t discussed it, but we would have done. I’m sure if your father hadn’t died we would have been divorced within a year.’
‘Do you remember seeing any Icelanders around in the days before my father died?’
‘Icelanders?’ Kathleen was surprised by the change in tack. ‘No. What sort of Icelanders?’
‘My mother’s family, perhaps?’
Kathleen shook her head. ‘No. Ragnar hated the whole lot of them, didn’t he? And he didn’t have much of his own family left. I never saw any of them.’ She sipped her wine. ‘I mean, he had a couple of Icelander friends in Boston. You might remember them. Gylfi at Boston College. That guy who worked at one of those biotech companies on Route 128, Haraldur, I think his name was? A couple of others he saw occasionally. I didn’t have much to do with them.’
Those weren’t the kind of Icelanders Magnus meant. He examined the woman whom he had hated so much for so long.
He still hated her.
He put down his glass of wine. ‘I’ve got to go, Kathleen. I doubt we will see each other again.’ He stood up.
‘You don’t like me, do you?’ Kathleen said.
Magnus shook his head. ‘No, I don’t.’
For a moment there was something close to sympathy in his stepmother’s eyes. Then it vanished.
‘Well, you’d better fuck off then.’
Magnus sat in his car on Stanton Street in Medford. He had been there for two hours. It was dark and it was quiet. His feet were beginning to feel cold, so he turned on the engine. What would he do if Ollie didn’t come home at all? His brother could easily be out with some woman all night. Magnus had decided not to give Ollie advance warning of his presence in Boston. He wanted the conversation that he knew would ensue to take place face-to-face, not over the phone from Iceland.
It had begun to snow, gently.
Two figures approached along the sidewalk, a man and a woman. Even though he couldn’t see the man’s face, Magnus could tell from his walk that it was his brother. The woman’s arm was hooked through the man’s. They were both wrapped up in coats and hats.
They stopped outside a small white clapboard house and Ollie opened the door. Magnus gave them five minutes, then rang the bell.
‘Hey, Magnus!’ Ollie said, his face splitting into a huge grin when he saw his brother. ‘What the hell are you doing here, man?’ He gave Magnus a hug. Magnus couldn’t help smiling.
‘Come in, come in,’ Ollie said.
Magnus followed Ollie into the familiar ground-floor apartment. He had stayed there himself a couple of times, most noticeably when the Dominican gangsters had been after him the year before. A blonde woman was sitting on the sofa. Very pretty. Very young.
‘Hey, Brandy, this is my brother Magnus.’
‘Hey,’ said the girl, giving Magnus a sulky glance. She didn’t seem overexcited by the company.
‘Hi, Brandy,’ said Magnus.
‘Can I get you a beer?’ said Ollie. ‘I got Sam Adams.’
‘Great,’ said Magnus, taking the armchair.
‘Brandy, could you get us some beers, please?’
The girl went to do as she was told.
‘How old is she?’ whispered Magnus as the girl headed through to the kitchen.
‘Old enough,’ said Ollie. ‘Believe me.’
‘Tenant?’ Magnus knew that Ollie owned a few properties that were rented by students at Tufts, the university just up the hill from his street.
‘Tenant’s best friend,’ Ollie replied. ‘So what are you doing back in Boston? You got your old job back?’
‘Just here for a couple of days. Checking in with headquarters. Thought I’d drop by.’ The girl returned with three bottles of beer and an opener. ‘Is it OK if I stay the night?’
Ollie glanced at the girl, whose sulky expression deepened. ‘Sure. You got a car out there?’
‘Yeah. My stuff’s in the trunk. I’ll bring it in later.’
‘How come you didn’t call?’ Ollie asked, turning back to Magnus. But there was a hesitancy in his tone, which suggested he could guess the real answer.
‘Wasn’t sure of my plans,’ said Magnus.
‘Huh,’ said Ollie.
Magnus cracked the beer and took a swig. It was good.
‘So, where you been today?’ Ollie asked, with the look of someone who had a fair idea of the answer.
Magnus drew in his breath. ‘Duxbury.’
‘Duxbury, huh? Now why would you want to go there?’
The girl on the sofa was watching the two brothers carefully. She had noticed the tension rising.
‘I had a chat with Sergeant Detective Fearon. You remember him?’
‘Oh, man! Can’t you just leave all that alone?’
‘He told me something very interesting.’
‘What?’ Ollie framed the question in a tone that suggested he didn’t want to know the answer.
‘That you slept with our stepmother.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’
The girl roused herself. ‘You slept with your stepmother?’
‘It was thirteen years ago,’ said Ollie. ‘I was just a kid.’
‘And that makes it better? Isn’t that, like, incest? Yuk.’
‘Yeah, yuk,’ said Magnus.
‘Hey, I think I’ll leave you two guys to chat about old times,’ said Brandy. ‘Later, Ollie. Maybe.’
Ollie let her go.
‘Nice girl,’ said Magnus.
‘Magnus, what the fuck are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to tell you I am going to ask questions. About Dad’s murder. Back in Iceland and here.’
‘Oh, man! We’ve been through this before.’
‘What, are you afraid I’m going to discover something unpleasant? Like you banging our stepmother?’
‘Yes! Yes, Magnus. You’ll drag it all up. Me sleeping with Kathleen. Dad getting killed. Kathleen having her affair. And then you’re going to bring up Grandpa and all that family of weirdoes. Mom’s death. God knows what else.’
‘Maybe it’s time to face it,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve held off for years for your sake, but I can’t do it any more. I’ve got to know who killed Dad. Don’t you understand that, Ollie? It’s been eating me up ever since it happened. It’s the one big enormous unresolved issue that is destroying my whole life.’
‘Magnus, you’re strong,’ said Ollie. ‘You know that and I know that. And believe me, I appreciate it. You’ve helped me out so many times in the past. I need your strength.’
Magnus was quiet, watching his younger brother.
‘But I’m not strong, Magnus. Never have been. Of course I’m ashamed of screwing Kathleen. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve done in my life, and God knows there are a lot of those. You know what’s behind all this, Magnus, for you and for me?’
‘Yeah. Dad’s death.’
Ollie shook his head. ‘No. It’s Afi.’ Magnus noted that his brother used the Icelandic name for their grandfather, rather than the American ‘grandpa’, which they had slipped into soon after they arrived in the States.
‘Afi screwed me up. Screwed us both up. It was him who messed up Mom.’
‘Yeah, and I have a strong suspicion that he was behind Dad’s murder as well,’ said Magnus. ‘That’s why I need to find out more. And if he was responsible, he should pay, even if he is in his eighties.’
Ollie sighed. ‘You know it was about this time last year when that psycho came round here, looking for you? Put a gun in my mouth.’
‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that.’
‘Well, I don’t doubt you are used to hit men sticking guns in your mouth, but I’m not. It shook me up. I did a few more drugs than I should of. I got drunk. I let things slip.’
Magnus nodded. He wasn’t surprised. But that familiar feeling
of guilt which was always lurking somewhere at the back of the room whenever he was talking to his brother was beginning to slink out into the open.
‘Then a girlfriend told me I should go and see a shrink again. I said no, but she made me. So I went to this therapist. She spent the summer trying to get me to tell her about Afi and the farm and I spent the summer trying not to. Then you called up last September all excited because you had found some Icelandic links to Dad’s death. You remember that?’
Magnus nodded. ‘I do. But then you asked me not to investigate any more, and I said I wouldn’t.’
‘And thank you for that. It helped. Even so, things got weird back here. But it turned out this shrink knew what she was doing. I’ve started talking to her about Bjarnarhöfn. And you. And Dad. In fact, I saw her this afternoon.’
‘Does it help?’
Ollie nodded. ‘Yeah. I think for once in my life I might finally be getting my shit together. And that’s big for me. I think I’m a pretty successful guy, really, but when things are going right, I screw them up, like I was doing it on purpose. Like in 2007, I could have sold all my properties for a big gain, but what did I do? I turned down the offer and borrowed money to buy more. I
knew
it was dumb, but I did it anyway. And that’s what my shrink said to me. I won’t let myself succeed.’
‘So what are you saying?’ said Magnus. ‘If I don’t back off you’ll take drugs again? Or are you saying that I’m responsible for your greedy real-estate investments?’
Ollie took a sip of beer and looked at his brother coolly. ‘No. I’m saying that I was on the edge, but now things are going well. I’m saying if you leave me alone to work on this, I can straighten myself out. And then you won’t have to pick up the pieces any more. Here you are, trying to avenge Dad. But think what he would have done, what he would want
you
to do. It’s your call.’
Magnus was facing the familiar situation. He, the strong, competent one, was being manipulated by his brother’s uselessness.
But it had to stop. He had made the decision that it had to stop. He just had to go through with it.
‘Ollie. When I get back to Iceland I am going to ask more questions. I’m going to find out whether Afi was behind Dad’s death, and if he wasn’t, I’m going to find out who was.’
‘Please,’ said Ollie.
Magnus stared at his brother. And shook his head. ‘No. Sorry, Ollie. No.’
Ollie closed his eyes. ‘In that case, fuck off. Just get the hell out of here.’
Magnus was about to say sorry again but stopped himself. It was time to stop saying sorry. He drained his beer, stood up and left.
He didn’t go back to the car, but walked up the hill towards the university campus. Snowflakes were falling steadily. A thin layer of slush lay on the salted sidewalk, but on the verges soft new snow gently refilled the footprints that had been formed over the previous few days. There was scarcely anyone around.
That was twice in a few hours he had been told to fuck off by members of his family. He genuinely didn’t care about Kathleen. And he had expected trouble from Ollie.
He was glad Ollie was getting somewhere with a therapist. Their father had sent him along a couple of times when Ollie was a teenager, but he had never really cooperated and so had achieved nothing. Ollie was probably right: their grandfather was behind his psychological problems. And although Ollie said that Magnus was stronger than him, there was no doubt that Magnus had his own issues. His obsession with his father’s death went way beyond a natural desire to see justice done. It wasn’t even revenge. Magnus wasn’t really sure what it was. An attempt to restore order to his world? Some kind of guilt he felt towards his father, or his mother, or even Ollie?
A therapist would have a field day. If Magnus ever let one near him. Oddly, the one person who had gotten closest to understanding his obsession was Ingileif, and now she was gone.
He hoped that by solving the crime, he would deal with the
problem once and for all. That was what was driving him on; that was what drove him to do his day job of solving one homicide after another. But would it? The thought that it might not, that even if he knew who had killed his father and brought whoever it was to justice he still wouldn’t be able to sleep easily, scared him.
Unlike Ollie, Magnus had always admired his father. Even when the boys had been abandoned at Bjarnarhöfn, Magnus had known that Ragnar would return for him, and he had. Ragnar had read the sagas aloud to Magnus every night; they had enjoyed those tales of medieval murder and revenge together. The saga heroes who sought justice for their relatives were Ragnar’s heroes, as well as Magnus’s.
And yet.
And yet Magnus knew that although his father was very proud of him, he wasn’t worried about him, he was worried about Ollie. He had always been worried about Ollie, from when he had hauled the damaged little boy over to Boston, probably even to when he had discovered eight years later that his son was sleeping with his wife.
He had never said it, but Magnus knew that his father blamed himself for how Ollie had turned out. If Ollie really could sort himself out, once and for all, then his father would be happy. And if Magnus helped him do it, then he would be proud of his eldest son.
But was Ollie really sorting himself out? Could he ever sort himself out? Wasn’t he just a lost cause?
Magnus stopped and turned around. He was close to the summit of the small hill, with Tufts University buildings around him. Through the snowflakes he could see the lights of Cambridge and, beyond that, the city of Boston glowing softly through the flakes.
Ollie was a lost cause as soon as Magnus gave up on him. There
was
no one else.
Magnus blinked as a flake fell in his eye. He stood still, letting the decision he was making wash over him. He knew what his father would want him to do.
He pulled out his phone and selected Ollie’s number.
‘Yeah?’ his brother answered.
‘You win, Ollie,’ Magnus said. ‘I’ll quit asking questions. But on one condition. You keep seeing that therapist.’
Magnus could hear his brother exhaling. There was silence for moment.
‘Thanks, bro,’ Ollie said. ‘Thanks.’