Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘No, nothing. He is letting me stew while he builds a case. He knows I’ll say nothing anyway.’
‘I’ve been in touch with Vigdís,’ Sibba said. ‘She has offered to help.’
‘I know. I told her not to,’ said Magnus.
‘Why?’ Sibba asked.
Magnus hesitated, considering his answer. ‘She’s better off staying out of it. I don’t want to bring her down with me.’
‘She doesn’t care. I get the impression she would do almost anything for you.’
‘Precisely. Is Davíd here? Her boyfriend?’
‘No. His flight was cancelled again.’
‘Poor Vigdís.’
Sibba nodded. ‘She did tell me that a detective called Jim Fearon from Duxbury called Árni a few days ago to say that he had some lab results for you.’
Magnus leaned forward, and for the first time Sibba saw interest flickering in his eyes.
‘Really? Did he give them to Árni?’
‘No. Fearon insisted on talking to you directly. Then Árni called him back and said you were in jail. Fearon said in that case he would only release the results through official channels.’
‘Árni said what! Why did he do that?’
Sibba shrugged. ‘I think he thought Fearon would be more likely to tell him the results.’
‘Idiot!’
‘I called Fearon myself. Said I was your lawyer. No dice. We only get the results the official way or not at all.’
‘Yeah, I’m not surprised. Fearon is actually retired, so he
probably shouldn’t have seen the results himself. He will have gotten a buddy to request them for him. So now he’s trying to cover himself and his buddy.’
‘So the question is, should we go through official channels? I could tell Emil I knew the results existed. Then he could send an Interpol blue notice. The Duxbury police would probably release them. I’ve no idea how long it would take.’
Magnus mulled it over.
‘Of course, as a defence lawyer I’m wary of asking for evidence when I don’t know where it will lead,’ Sibba said.
‘Meaning?’ Magnus asked.
‘Meaning will it incriminate you?’
Magnus didn’t answer her, or at least didn’t answer that question. ‘Thinking about it, we don’t tell Emil, at least for now. I’d love to know what those results are, but don’t forget if the Icelandic police do get them they are not required to disclose them to us until the three weeks from my arrest are up. And I doubt very much that Emil would disclose them. So let’s wait a couple of weeks. Then maybe we tell him.’
‘Are you sure?’ Sibba asked.
Magnus nodded.
‘This is so frustrating, Magnus. Here I am supposed to be defending you, but you won’t give me anything to go on!’
‘I know,’ said Magnus. ‘And I’m sorry. But I’m not saying anything. Not to the police, and not even to you.’
Aníta tightened the girth under Sól, the horse that Gabrielle liked to ride. She checked her watch: it was twenty past nine. Gabrielle was late, but then Gabrielle was always late. Aníta didn’t mind. She was nervous about the call she had just made to the police. She knew it was the right thing to tell them about the postcard of Sylvía’s she had found the night before. She wasn’t sure herself what it meant. That was part of why she had called them. She would rather they figured it out than her. She was afraid of what would emerge.
She heard a car approaching along the dirt track to the farm and saw it was Gabrielle’s. The press had gone. It had been sensible after all to talk to them the day before; now they had no reason to hang around at the farm. She could tell from the morning paper that they were still interested in the case, but they were bugging the police in Stykkishólmur. Luckily the volcano had kept the story off the front page.
Gabrielle pulled up close to the horses. Aníta was surprised to see that she wasn’t wearing her riding boots. Then she saw her face.
Gabrielle was not happy.
‘Aníta!’ she said. ‘You told the police, didn’t you?’
Aníta stepped away from Sól to face her sister-in-law. This was going to be difficult.
‘Yes. Yes I did, Gabrielle. And I’m sorry.’
‘What do you mean, you are sorry? I
asked
you not to tell anyone!’ Gabrielle looked over her shoulder towards the cottage where forensics technicians were still at work, and a police constable was reading the paper in his car. They were too far away to hear anything, but Gabrielle lowered her voice to an angry whisper anyway. ‘When I said, “Don’t tell Kolbeinn”, I didn’t mean, “Do tell the police”.’
‘I know. But the more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was important evidence. I
had
to tell them. And I asked them not to say where the information came from when they spoke to Ingvar. Did they tell him it was you?’
‘No. But whatever you may think about Ingvar, he’s no dummy. He knew it was me. And he was angry. I can’t say I blame him. I trusted you and you let me down.’
‘But if he’s innocent, it won’t matter.’
‘Of course he’s innocent, you fool! It turns out that Hallgrímur lost all the money that Ingvar made him. So there’s nothing! We’ll have to sell the flat in Paris after all.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. Look, Gabrielle, I really am sorry. Do you want to come riding with me after all?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Gabrielle turned back to her car, muttering something in French.
Aníta watched Gabrielle’s car speed out of the farmyard, scattering a couple of chickens on the way. One of the forensics technicians stopped and stared, then turned towards Aníta. The policeman had put his newspaper down to see what was going on.
Aníta guessed that it was as much the fact that there was no money left as Aníta’s betrayal that had upset Gabrielle. Of course Gabrielle was correct; Aníta had been foolish to expect the police to keep the source of their information from someone as smart as Ingvar. But she still thought she had done the right thing. She just should have figured out a better way of doing it.
And what about the postcard she had found? What trouble would that cause? More, probably. Well, that was their problem, the whole damned family’s, including Gabrielle.
Aníta unsaddled Sól, but decided to take Grána out herself. Marta didn’t hold quite the terror that she had the day before. The woman in the lava field might be creepy, but she wouldn’t actually hurt Aníta.
Sylvía emerged from the chicken shed and stared at her. Aníta waved, but the old woman’s expression didn’t change. Thank God Ingvar had finally promised to come and fetch his mother that afternoon.
As she hoisted herself up on Grána, Aníta thought about the old woman and the postcard. She wasn’t surprised that Sylvía had hoarded it and not told anyone about it. There was a lot that Sylvía must have seen over the years that she hadn’t talked about. From when her own children were small. From when Magnus and Óli were staying at the farm. Other things that Aníta couldn’t even guess at.
Aníta had noticed a change in Sylvía in recent years. A slow change. It had coincided with Sylvía beginning to attend church. She had always shown up for the occasional service at the little church at the bottom of the farm, but a couple of years before she had begun to go to the big church at Stykkishólmur, at first every couple of months or so, and then more frequently. Aníta also occasionally found her just sitting in the Bjarnarhöfn
church, staring at the old altar painting, the one of the Last Supper that was supposed to have been given by grateful Dutch sailors who had been shipwrecked nearby. Was she praying? Or just thinking? Was there a difference? Aníta didn’t know.
During that time Aníta got the impression that Sylvía was trying to become more involved in the family around her. She seemed a little less aloof. It was partly because of that that Aníta had decided to pass on the enigmatic message from her grandmother: ‘Open your eyes and see what is in front of you.’ Aníta had no idea what it meant, but Sylvía had. And she had taken it seriously, not doubting Aníta for a moment.
Sylvía had known Aníta’s grandmother when she was alive. She had spoken very little about her, but she did say that she was always worth listening to. That she knew things.
Aníta and Grána headed along the edge of the lava field. Which brought Aníta back to the warning she had received the night before. The instruction to leave Bjarnarhöfn first thing in the morning. It was already past that time.
How could she ignore such an explicit warning? But on the other hand, how could she follow it? Kolbeinn was right: there was a barn full of pregnant ewes to think about.
Aníta passed the point where she had seen Hallgrímur’s mother the previous day. There was nothing; just a pair of ravens wheeling among the twisted fingers of lava. It was a clear day and she could see over the Berserkjahraun to the farm of Hraun on its knoll. The family who had lived there for the last seventy years had had nothing against the inhabitants of Bjarnarhöfn, but the family before that? The family of Jóhannes, and Benedikt and the other Jóhannes?
She
had
to persuade Kolbeinn to let her go. Perhaps she should speak to Villi about it. He had disappeared somewhere in his rental car after breakfast. Aníta hadn’t told him about her grandmother, but she was sure that he would take her seriously. But then there was Sylvía’s postcard. She couldn’t really trust Villi until she understood what that really meant. She couldn’t trust any of them.
Fear clutched at her chest.
What was she thinking? She had to do what her grandmother had instructed her. She had to leave. She had to leave now!
She turned Grána around. The mare seemed to sense her mistress’s rising panic and skittered over to one side away from the lava field. Then a rock embedded in the slope of the fell behind them erupted in a spurt of lava fragments. An instant later Aníta heard a sharp crack that echoed off the stones. She recognized the sound of a rifle shot.
Grána surged forward and Aníta bent low, letting the mare go her own way. Something hit her chest so hard it almost knocked her out of the saddle, just as she heard another crack. There was no pain, yet she could feel the strength seeping out of her. She just had to hang on, hang on until Grána got back to the farmyard. Hang on…
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
O
LLIE HEADED NORTH-EAST
out of Stykkishólmur, keeping a sharp eye out for rocks and skerries, and also giving a wide berth to other boats. He was wearing a fleece on top of a cotton shirt, but he was cold out on the water. He gritted his teeth. Time to be a tough Icelander. Or even a tough New Englander, for that matter.
The engine was powerful, and the skiff made good speed, but Ollie didn’t want to open the throttle all the way in the slight chop. He headed for the nearest bunch of the ‘countless islands of Breidafjördur’, hoping to put some of them between himself and the town. After about half an hour he slipped behind a strip of grass and rock. There was another island, and another. In the distance he could see the mountains behind Stykkishólmur, and also hills from some other chunk of mainland in the opposite direction. He had no map. He had no idea where he was.
He came to what seemed to be a slightly larger island, with a small hill at its centre. A single house stood cold and alone a few yards inland. The building looked derelict and uninhabited.
Ollie found an inlet, out of the line of sight of the open water, slowed the engine right down and nosed the boat in among some rocks. He jumped out and heaved the skiff up to the stony shore. There was nothing to tie the painter to, so he dragged the boat over the stones. It was hard work, and God knows what damage he was doing to the hull, but he had no choice if he didn’t want the boat to drift off at high tide. It wasn’t completely hidden, it was impossible to hide a boat on a mostly flat, treeless island,
but at least it was only visible from a channel between two islands, and then only at a certain angle of approach.
With the engine off, Ollie could hear the seabirds: whistles, whoops and chuckles. They swooped and flitted, eager, busy, ignoring him.
His feet and ankles were wet and cold. In fact, all of him was cold. He walked over the grass to the small house. It was more of a cabin, really. It had a rusted metal roof and wind-bleached grey wooden walls. The door sported a large padlock, but the window right next to it was broken.
He climbed in. There were two rooms downstairs – a kitchen and a living room – and some simple furniture. The stairs themselves looked dodgy, so Ollie didn’t try them. There was an old rug on the floor. Ollie wrapped himself in the rug against the cold and sat on the floor, wondering what the hell he was going to do next.
After they failed to find Ollie at the hotel, Adam and Páll drove slowly around the centre of Stykkishólmur, looking out for him wandering around. After twenty minutes or so, Adam decided to go on to see Aníta at Bjarnarhöfn, leaving Páll and another constable to extend the search for Ollie. At this stage, Adam still thought Ollie was out somewhere for a walk. There were only a finite number of places he could go without transport.
The sky was clear and the visibility good as Adam reached the Berserkjahraun and turned off towards Bjarnarhöfn. The sun glinted off the snow on the fell above the farm and the sharp ridge of mountains along the backbone of the peninsula. The lava field itself was quiet, although there was a vehicle of some kind pulled over a hundred metres or so in from the road to Grundarfjördur. Some movement caught his eye, and Adam spotted a horse bolting along the edge of the lava towards the farm.
A riderless horse.
Adam put his foot down, spraying stones on all sides as he sped towards the farm. The horse beat him to it. As Adam
careered into the farmyard he noticed the forensics van and a police car parked outside the cottage. He scanned the fields and saw Kolbeinn carrying a fence post across one of them.
Adam was driving his own car, which was not too robust, but he swerved into the open gate of the field and drove towards Kolbeinn, flashing his lights and hooting his horn. Kolbeinn dropped the post and jogged towards him.
Adam rolled down his window. ‘There’s a horse back there, loose without its rider! I saw it galloping in from the lava field.’