Damn! Where the hell was she?
He looked around, searching for inspiration. An old man in dungarees and a flat cap was pottering about in the next door garden.
Magnus hailed him. ‘Good morning!’
‘Good afternoon,’ the man corrected him.
‘Have you seen Ingileif?’ Magnus was quite sure that in a village the size of Flúdir, the man would know who Ingileif was, even if she hadn’t lived there herself for years.
‘You just missed her.’
‘How long ago?’
The man stood up straight. Stretched. Took his cap off, displaying spiky grey hair. Examined Magnus. Put his cap back on. Scratched his chin. He wasn’t necessarily that old, but from his face, Magnus could tell he had spent decades outside in the cold and rain. And he wasn’t rightly sure whether to help this stranger.
‘How long ago did she leave?’ Magnus repeated.
‘I heard you. I’m not deaf.’
Magnus forced a smile. ‘I’m a friend of hers. It’s urgent I find her.’
‘About ten minutes ago,’ the man replied eventually. ‘She didn’t stay long.’
‘Which way did she go?’
‘Couldn’t say for sure.’
‘What kind of car does she drive?’ Magnus asked. He had no clue himself.
‘Seems to me,’ the man said. ‘If you are her friend, you would know that.’
Magnus fought to control his impatience. ‘This might sound melodramatic, but I believe she’s in danger. I really need to find her.’
The man just grunted and turned back to his yard.
Magnus leaped over the fence, grabbed the old man’s arm and twisted it behind his back. ‘Tell me what kind of car she drives or I’ll break it!’
The man grunted in pain. ‘I won’t tell you anything. Dr Ásgrímur was a good friend of mine, and I’m not going to help anyone harm his daughter.’
‘Goddamn Icelanders!’ Magnus muttered in English and threw the man to the ground. Stubborn bastards the lot of them.
He climbed back in his car. Where to? If she had driven back to meet Pétur in Reykjavík Magnus should have spotted her – he had kept an eye out for her among the drivers he had met coming the other way. There wasn’t much to the north of Flúdir. But to the east was Hruni. Perhaps she had gone there. Either to meet Pétur, or to look for the ring.
The turn-off to Hruni was just to the south of the village. He sped the three kilometres in two minutes. As he expected there was a police car in the car park in front of the church, with a single officer reading a book in the front seat.
The book was
Crime and Punishment
. The policeman had nearly finished.
He recognized Magnus and greeted him.
‘Have you seen Ingileif Ásgrímsdóttir?’ Magnus asked. ‘Blonde woman, late twenties?’
‘No. And I’ve been here since eight this morning.’
‘Damn!’
‘Did you hear they think they’ve found Hákon’s body?’ the constable said.
‘Yeah, I’ve seen it, at the bottom of Hjálparfoss. He’s dead, there’s not much doubt about that. But I’m worried about Ingileif. I think whoever killed the pastor is after her.’
‘I’ll radio in if I see her.’
‘Can you call me on my cell?’ Magnus said, giving the constable his number.
‘You could ask those guys back there.’
Magnus turned. A car was parked by the side of the road over-looking the church and the rectory.
‘Who are they?’
‘Three men. One Icelander and two foreigners. I asked them what they were doing, they didn’t have an answer, or not one that made any sense.’
Feldman and Jubb, Magnus thought. ‘They’re waiting for you to leave so they can search the church,’ he said. ‘But thank you, I’ll go speak with them.’
He drove up to the car. There was a small Icelander in the driver’s seat, with Jubb next to him and Feldman in the back. They looked distinctly uncomfortable to see Magnus.
Magnus got out of his own vehicle and approached theirs. The Icelander wound down his window.
‘Hello, Lawrence, Steve,’ Magnus said in English, nodding to the two foreigners.
‘Afternoon, officer,’ said Lawrence from the back seat.
‘And you are?’ Magnus asked the Icelander.
‘Axel Bjarnason. I’m a private investigator. I’m working for Mr Feldman.’
‘To do what?’
Axel shrugged.
‘He’s helping us with some research,’ Feldman said.
Magnus was about to tell them they were wasting their time, the church had been thoroughly searched and there was no ring there, when he thought better of it. Let them spend all day on this godforsaken heath in the mist.
‘Have any of you seen Ingileif Ásgrímsdóttir?’ he asked.
Axel’s expression of patient disinterest didn’t change. But he didn’t answer the question. Jubb frowned.
‘No, officer, we haven’t,’ Feldman said. ‘At least not today. We tried to speak with her yesterday, but she wasn’t real excited to see us.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Magnus. ‘If you do see her, let me know.’ He scribbled his number on to a piece of paper torn from his note-book and gave it to Feldman. ‘The pastor has just been found. Murdered. I’m pretty sure the guy who did it is after Ingileif right now.’
Feldman took the card. ‘We’ll be sure to call you,’ he said.
Magnus turned to look at the church, squatting beneath the crags in the mist. A raven descended out of the cloud and landed by the side of the road a few feet ahead. It strutted along, eyeing the two cars.
‘Enjoy your day,’ Magnus said, and jumped back into his vehicle. He sped off down the hill back to the main road.
He must have missed her coming the other way. Reykjavík. His best bet was Reykjavík.
S
TEVE JUBB WATCHED
the cop’s car disappear over the hill. ‘You know this isn’t right.’
‘What isn’t right, Gimli?’ Feldman said.
‘For a start, my name isn’t Gimli, it’s Steve.’
‘We discussed this before. We should use our nicknames.’
‘No, Lawrence. My name isn’t Gimli, it’s Steve. Your name isn’t Isildur, it’s Lawrence. This isn’t Middle Earth, it’s Iceland.
Lord of the Rings
isn’t real, it’s a story. A bloody good story, but a story none the less.’
‘But Gimli, the ring could be in that church! The ring from the
Volsung Saga
. The ring that Tolkien wrote about. Don’t you realise how cool that is!’
‘Frankly, I don’t give a toss. That professor I spoke to only a week ago is dead. A vicar is dead. There’s a nutter running around somewhere out there who’s looking to kill a girl. A real live person, Lawrence, don’t you get that?’
‘Hey, look, it’s got nothing to do with us,’ said Feldman. He looked at Jubb suspiciously. ‘Or does it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, did you kill the professor?’ said Feldman.
‘Don’t be daft. Course I bloody didn’t.’
‘You say that, but I have no way of knowing whether you are telling the truth.’
‘Look. That copper out there is looking for Ingileif. We know
where she is. We should tell him.’ Jubb took out his mobile phone. ‘Give me his number.’
‘No, Gimli. No.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Jubb. He jumped out of the car, flung open the door to the back and hauled Feldman out. The little man tried to cling on to the seatbelt but Jubb broke his grip. Jubb clenched his fist. ‘Give me that number or I’ll smash yer face in.’
Feldman cowered on the ground and handed the big Yorkshireman the scrap of paper bearing Magnus’s number.
Jubb went round to the driver’s side. ‘Are you with me?’ he asked Axel.
‘The problem is, Steve, that bugging the girl’s car wasn’t strictly legal.’
Jubb didn’t wait to argue. He leaned in, grabbed the private investigator, and flung him into the road. He jumped into the driver’s seat and started up the engine. With Feldman and Axel hammering on the side of the car, he executed a quick three-point turn and sped off after the copper, striking Feldman a glancing blow on the legs with his bumper as he did so.
Magnus slowed as he reached the junction of the main road just south of Flúdir. His cell phone chirped.
‘Hello?’
‘This is Steve Jubb. Just wait where you are! I’m right behind you.’
‘All right,’ said Magnus. He
knew
Feldman and Jubb had known more than they were saying, although he was surprised that they had decided to tell him what. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
Magnus pulled over to the side. Within two minutes he saw the private investigator’s car fly down the road towards him. It pulled in behind him, and Steve Jubb jumped out, carrying a laptop under his arm. Alone.
He climbed into the passenger seat next to Magnus.
‘Hang on,’ he said, switching on the laptop, and a receiver attached to it. ‘This will tell us where Ingileif is.’
‘Excellent,’ said Magnus. He put the car into gear and turned left, towards Reykjavík. That was by far the most likely direction and he wanted to catch her up. ‘Where are your friends?’
‘Tossers,’ muttered Jubb as he fiddled with the computer.
Magnus wasn’t exactly sure what a tosser was, but he was prepared to take Jubb’s word for it. ‘Thanks for coming to get me.’
‘I should have said something back there,’ Jubb said. ‘Should have told you everything back when you arrested me.’ He clicked a couple of keys. ‘Come on …’ he muttered.
‘So you bugged her car?’
Jubb just grunted and carried on tapping at the keyboard. ‘Here we are. She’s north of here. Way north of here. Turn around.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Course I’m bloody sure. Take a look.’
Magnus slowed and peered at the computer screen on Jubb’s lap. It displayed a map of south-west Iceland, and it showed a round circle moving north along a road on the other side of Flúdir.
‘Where the hell is she going?’ Magnus asked. ‘There’s nothing up there, is there? Take a look at the map. There’s one in the glove compartment.’
Jubb pulled out a map. ‘You’re right, there’s not much north of here. A couple of glaciers, I think they are. The road goes right the way across the middle of the country.’
‘It’ll still be closed this time of year,’ Magnus said.
‘Wait a minute. There’s something here. Gullfoss? Do you know what that is?’
‘It’s a waterfall,’ said Magnus. ‘A massive waterfall.’
Pétur pulled into the large car park. This early in the season, and in this weather, it was empty, apart from one tour bus.
He climbed out of his BMW. The enormous waterfall roared at him, unseen, from beyond the far side of the information centre. Tourists emerged along the pathway leading to the waterfall, cooing to each other about the majesty of what they had just
witnessed. In five minutes they would be whisked away to the next stop on their tour, the geysers at Geysir, perhaps, or the Althing assembly grounds at Thingvellir.
Good, thought Pétur.
Rather than heading straight down towards the waterfall, Pétur turned left, upstream. There was now a maintained path leading up the low hill; in his childhood it had just been a narrow sheep track.
Just over the crest of the hill was a shallow hollow. It was here that Dr Ásgrímur had liked to take his family for a picnic on sunny days. Tourists usually walked to the foot of the falls, or halfway up, or followed the gorge downstream. The hollow, above the falls, offered some privacy, even in the height of summer. The grass and moss, soft and springy, made a comfortable spot to sit, when things were dry.
At the beginning of May, in the mist, things were very wet and there was no sign of anyone. It was only a couple of hundred metres to the car park, but there was no chance of being seen or heard above the din from there.
Pétur walked towards the river. The dull roar turned into a crescendo as the magnificent waterfall opened out beneath him. Its power was extraordinary. The Hvítá flung itself down into the gorge in two stages, at each throwing up a thick curtain of spray. The resultant tumult was known as Gullfoss, which means ‘golden waterfall’, because of the tricks of light that low sunshine could play on the fine moisture suspended above the cauldron. In the right conditions rainbows danced gold and purple over the falls.
On a clear day it was possible to see Langjökull, the ‘Long Glacier’ which produced all this water, crouching between the mountain peaks thirty kilometres to the north. But not today. Today, everything was covered in a grey shroud of moisture, spray and cloud merging into one.
Again, good.
Pétur stood and waited for Ingileif.
He was pleased with his choice of meeting place. Like the road to Stöng. Pétur had tempted Hákon out to that remote spot with
a far-fetched tale of how he knew where the helm of Fafnir was hidden. He remembered the look of excitement and expectation on the pastor’s face as he had approached him parked above the Fossá. Pétur had led the pastor down to the river, and then paused to let him pass. A blow on the back of the head with a rock, and the pastor had tumbled: it was all that Pétur had been able to do to stop him from falling straight into the water. He held him back just long enough to ease the ring off his finger, and then tipped him into the torrent. It could be weeks before his body was found, if ever.