The version of events Nick had supplied to Kate had him meeting Martin Caldwell that evening. Inventing a message from Martin saying his arrival in Reykjavík had been delayed by twenty-four hours got him off that hook and he planned to report Martin had been further delayed later.
The real question remained, though: was Caldwell in Iceland? Was this where he’d fled after leaving Exeter? Nick got hold of a list of hotels and guesthouses in Reykjavík from the tourist office and started phoning round, asking if Martin Caldwell was staying with them. No was the consistent answer, until … the Hotel Arnarson. Caldwell wasn’t a guest of theirs. But he had been. Until the previous Monday.
‘Are you a relative of Mr Caldwell, or a friend?’
‘A friend. My name’s Miller. Nick Miller. I can’t seem to contact Martin and I’m becoming concerned for his safety.’
‘We have had several enquiries about Mr Caldwell. Actually, the police have been looking for him.’
‘The police? Why?’
‘They did not tell us, sir. But it seems Mr Caldwell has not left Iceland, so …’
‘Who are these other people who’ve been asking after him?’
‘Well …’
‘I’m really very worried. It would be a great help if you could at least put me in touch with some of them.’
There was a pause. ‘To be frank, sir, only two of those who’ve enquired about Mr Caldwell have left names and phone numbers.’
‘Could you give me them?’
‘Mmm. I will have to check with a colleague.’
‘Look, you’re not far from where I am now, so I’ll come and see you and hope your colleague’s given you permission in the meantime. How does that sound?’
‘As you wish, sir.’
The weather closed in around them as they approached Stóri-Asgarbær. The road became a track, with plenty of bumps and dips. The landscape lost all its features and merged with the sky. It was no surprise when George suggested they turn back.
‘I’ll gladly bring you out here another day, Umiko,’ he said, slowing to a crawl. ‘Otherwise we’re gonna have the makings of a Jack London novel here.’
‘I do not know the novels of Jack London.’
‘Well trust me, the endings of some of ’em wouldn’t be any comfort in this situation.’
‘But we are only a few kilometres from our destination.’
‘Yeah. And this track leads to it. So we can probably get there. But can we get back?’
He’d come to a halt by now. The wipers were batting away great clods of snow. But for the posts dotted along the side of the track, they could easily have gone into a snow-filled gully. The journey had become hazardous at some point they’d already passed. And she knew going on would only make it more hazardous still.
‘Can you actually turn round here?’
‘Not sure. But there was a swing-round sheltered by some damn great rock a few hundred yards back. I can reverse as far as that.’
‘I really need to get to Stóri-Asgarbær today, George.’
‘You realize we could be trapped there overnight? My phone doesn’t work out here and I’m taking it yours doesn’t either.’
Wada checked. ‘No signal,’ she reported dismally.
‘Right. So, we’d be kinda counting on finding some hospitality at this place. You know? Roaring fire, roasted reindeer, that kinda thing. You said you had business there.’
‘I did say that, yes.’
‘With whoever lives there?’
Wada sensed it was time to drop the pretence. ‘I do not know if anyone lives there, George.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No.’
‘So, this business of yours …’
‘Is complicated to explain.’
George sighed. ‘I can’t complain, I suppose, when a woman of mystery turns out to have a lot of secrets.’
She sighed too. ‘We will go back if you think we should.’
‘I think we should. Sorry, Umiko. As soon as the weather clears, we’ll take another crack at this, I promise.’
He engaged reverse, slung one large arm across the back of her seat, swivelled his neck to see where they were going and began to steer a careful course back they way they’d come.
And all Wada could do was stifle her disappointment.
Nick was greeted at the Arnarson by the man he’d spoken to on the phone. His name, according to his lapel badge, was Bjarni.
‘Hello, Mr Miller,’ he said, smiling amiably. ‘I am sorry if I was … unhelpful … when you called.’
‘That’s OK. I guess you have confidentiality issues to consider.’
‘Indeed. One of the people who asked about Mr Caldwell and left a name said she was happy to hear from anyone else asking about him. The other … I am not so sure about.’
‘I understand.’
‘So.’ Bjarni handed Nick a hotel card. ‘This I can give you.’
Nick looked at the note. It gave a name – Erla Torfadóttir – and a phone number. ‘Thanks.’
‘And for the other … I could call her and ask if she was willing to speak to you.’ Her, Nick noted. ‘Would you like me to do that?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘OK.’ Bjarni stepped back into the small office behind the reception desk and put a call through on the hotel phone. A few seconds passed. He frowned, then put the phone down and returned to the desk. ‘There is a fault on her number.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’
‘I will try again later and let you know the outcome. I have your number.’
‘Is this woman Japanese, by any chance?’
The look of surprise on Bjarni’s face was an answer in itself. But he was still determined to stonewall on her behalf. ‘I can’t say, Mr Miller.’
‘That’s OK, Bjarni. You don’t really need to.’
They’d covered perhaps a hundred metres in slow reverse when George exclaimed, ‘Son of a bitch,’ and came to a juddering halt.
‘What is wrong?’ Wada asked.
‘See for yourself.’
Wada turned and peered through the rear window. Behind them, to her astonishment, she saw the slowly approaching headlamps of another vehicle.
‘It seems we’re not alone out here after all,’ said George.
Wada’s heart missed a beat. Another vehicle? It was a chunky four-wheel-drive, dark bodywork showing through layers of snow, its headlamps glaring at them through the slashing flakes like the eyes of some living creature.
‘Maybe this guy lives at Story Asperger.’ George hadn’t yet mastered the pronunciation of Stóri-Asgarbær.
‘Maybe,’ said Wada. But somehow she doubted it.
‘Well, we sure can’t get past him, specially not in reverse.’
‘Perhaps we should go forward.’
‘Hell, no. We just agreed not to do that.’
‘What, then?’
‘I’ll go have a word with him. He’s probably local. He’ll likely know what’s best.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Why not? Someone’s got to make the first move.’ George yanked on the handbrake, dragged his anorak off the back seat and went to open the door.
‘George—’
‘It’s OK, Umiko.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’ve got this.’ He pushed the door open and struggled out. A flurry of snow and freezing air buffeted in. Then the door was slammed shut.
Wada adjusted the rear-view mirror and watched George stump along the track to the other car. He tapped on the driver’s window. Some kind of conversation ensued. George flung up his arms in a gesture of bemusement. The conversation didn’t seem to be going as he’d hoped. Wada craned over her shoulder for a clearer view of what was happening.
Something appeared through the open driver’s window of the other car. At first, Wada couldn’t work out what it was. But suddenly, to her horror, she realized it was a gun.
She didn’t hear the shot. But she saw George’s head jerk back. He went straight do
wn, like a tree falling, and lay motionless in the snow at the edge of the track.
The driver’s door opened. The driver got out. And started walking towards her.
Something in the man’s stature and the way he held himself told Wada who he was, even though his face was buried in the hood of a parka.
He was the tall Japanese man who’d attacked her in Caldwell’s flat in Exeter. She was certain it was him.
And she was certain in that moment that he meant to kill her.
SIXTEEN
WADA COULDN’T DRIVE. that is, she wasn’t qualified to drive. But she was nothing if not observant. She’d driven around with Haruto often enough in his tiny old Nissan to have some grasp of the basics. And George’s hire car was an automatic, which made things easier. Besides, it wasn’t a matter of choice. It was a matter of survival.
She released the seatbelt and half slid, half jumped over into the driver’s seat, praying to all the gods she didn’t believe in – there being none she did believe in – that she wouldn’t stall the engine. She released the handbrake, then shoved the stick into drive.
She was about to press her foot down hard on the accelerator when a movement reflected in the wing mirror caught her eye. George’s killer was closing on her fast. There he was, only a few metres from the rear of the car.
The decision was made in an instant. She moved the stick to reverse and stamped on the accelerator pedal, pulling the steering wheel down with her left hand as the car skidded back, slewing towards the side of the track.
There was a thump and the sound of a shot and then another thump as she hit one of the trackside posts. She pressed down on the footbrake and peered round. She saw the man lying in the snow beside the post. He wasn’t moving.
She knew what she should do. Drive forwards, then reverse over him – make sure she finished him. But she wasn’t confident she could control the car well enough to do that. And she wasn’t certain the tyres would grip if she left the track.
Maybe he was dead, though she doubted it. Maybe he was at least too badly injured to come after her. She had her doubts about that too. But she had to make a choice. And she had to make it now.
She put the stick into drive and pushed her foot down on the accelerator. The car surged forward. It began jolting and skidding as she moved her foot too violently on the pedal. It took her a few seconds to gain proper control. Then she accelerated smoothly along the track, steering a middle course between the posts.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror as she picked up speed. She could see George’s body lying where he’d fallen. And she thought she could see blood on the snow around him. Her eyes filled with tears.
The snow she’d ploughed up reversing against the post obscured her view of his killer, and the pitch of the track meant she couldn’t be sure whether he’d moved or not. Or maybe her uncertainty was caused by the tears blurring her vision.
For the moment, it didn’t matter. She was alive. And she was moving, even if no one else was.
Nick phoned Erla Torfadóttir as soon as he left the Arnarson. She didn’t answer, so he left a message explaining he was anxious, as apparently she was too, to track down Martin Caldwell. Could they perhaps help each other? He didn’t mention Mimori Takenaga, though he suspected she must have been in touch with Erla. Who Erla was, of course, and what her connection with Caldwell might be, he had no idea. That went for a whole lot else as well. He was beginning to wonder if he’d ever come close to understanding what was going on in the secret world of Peter Ellery, into which Caldwell had lately vanished.
Within an hour, however, he had heard from Erla Torfadóttir, in the form of a text message. Can we meet at Reykjavík Roasters Brautarholt 0930 tomorrow?
There could be only one answer to that, which he texted back straight away.
Yes.
Wada drove on towards Stóri-Asgarbær with no definite plan as to what to do when she arrived. It was Quartizon property, so going there was crazy on one level. But she couldn’t go back. That much was certain. So she had to go on.
Keeping the car on the track and judging the route ahead by reference to the wayside posts required all her concentration. And the less she thought about what she’d left behind her the better able she’d be to cope with whatever lay ahead. She should never have persuaded George to drive her here, of course. She should have bided her time and chosen some safer method to prise open Quartizon’s secrets. Her impetuosity had cost George Guptill his life. And it might yet cost her hers.
Which was ironic in its own tragic way. Because no one would ever have called Umiko Wada impetuous.
What looked like an unusually tall wayside post at first sight revealed itself to be a signpost as she drew closer. But the snow had blotted out whatever was on the sign and she couldn’t stop to investigate. She wasn’t confident of starting again if she did. She pressed on.
Then she saw something that gave her no choice but to stop: a gate across the track, with a low snow-capped wall stretching away on either side.
She came to a halt, took the stick carefully out of drive and gently lifted her foot from the accelerator, fearful for some reason that the engine might cut out. It didn’t.
She glanced about before climbing out of the car, but there was no one anywhere around, just wind and snow. It seemed colder than ever when she emerged into the open air. She didn’t have George’s anorak to shield her from the weather now.
She hurried round to the fastened side of the gate and felt a wave of relief when she saw it wasn’t padlocked. Shifting the bolt took all her strength, though. The steel felt as if it was freezing itself to her skin. She had to raise the gate slightly with one hand and pull at the bolt with the other before it slid across. And it did so with a jolt that carried her off her feet.
She scrambled up and walked the gate open. There was a chain that had to be looped over a post to hold it in place. That done, she slithered back to the car.
She’d driven only a short distance beyond the gate when, looking ahead, she saw a building.
Three gables sprouted from a long, low-roofed structure, hummocked with snow. The gables were wood, but the other walls appeared to be rough stone. There was another, squarer-roofed building that looked as if it might be a barn away to the right.
One end of the main building was in a poor state of repair, but the part around the front door looked well maintained. Wada had thought initially a light was shining in one of the adjacent windows, but there was no sign of it as she drew closer and she concluded it was probably a reflection from the car’s headlamps. She braked to a halt near the main door and studied the windows one by one. Nothing moved. Nothing glimmered.
The place might be empty, of course. But Wada’s options were few and none of them was ideal. She needed to take shelter and phone for assistance. Her own phone didn’t work. She recalled the man in the convenience store who’d sold her an Iceland-compatible SIM card telling her it would be useless in remote areas. At the time, she hadn’t anticipated going to a remote area. But she was in one now.
That at least meant there was a chance the house was fitted with some reliable means of communication. She couldn’t find out whether it was or not without going in. She had to leave the car and try her luck. She didn’t really want to. Leaving the car meant giving up the small amount of control over her situation that she still had. But it had to be done.
She turned off the engine and at once heard the wind howling like some kind of demon in the gable eaves. That, she told herself, was simply what wind did. It couldn’t hurt her. As to what could hurt her … she would gain nothing by thinking about that.
She pulled her woolly hat down low over her eyes, took the key out of the ignition and slipped it into her pocket, then clambered out of the car and headed for the main door of the house.
She rapped hard on the door six or seven times with the heavy knocker, enough, she reckoned, to alert anyone inside to her presence. She was actually relieved when there was no
response, even though she knew that wasn’t necessarily good news. She tried the handle, but it wouldn’t turn.
She peered through the nearest window and could dimly see a wood-framed interior, fitted out with wooden bedsteads. The room didn’t appear to be in use. She tried another few raps at the knocker, but still nothing stirred. And wrench at the handle as much as she liked, the door wasn’t going to open.
There was nothing for it but to see if she could gain access at the rear. She headed for the dilapidated end of the building, sheltering under the eaves as she went as best she could.
She came to what might once have been stables and a back door, sheltered by the overhang of the stable roof. Through the narrow window next to it she could see a stone-flagged passage leading into the house, with doorways off into other rooms. She tried the door handle. It turned, but the door was locked shut.
The window appeared to be her only chance of entry. There were loose stones lying in the snow at the foot of the stable wall. She picked one up and punched a hole in the pane of glass closest to the window latch, then knocked out the remaining shards, reached in and lifted the latch.
The window opened with a squeal of swollen wood and she clambered in over the sill. But the sill was so wide, because of the thickness of the wall, that she ended up falling into the passage.
As she scrambled to her feet, a figure stepped into the passage from one of the rooms ahead: a tall, thin man dressed in corduroy trousers and a bulky sweater. He had lank grey hair and a narrow, bony face. His sunken eyes peered at her from behind black-framed glasses.
Wada took all that in at once, but somehow failed to notice the double-barrelled shotgun he was holding in his hands until he raised it to chest height and pointed it straight at her.
‘Who are you?’ The voice was gruff, as if from lack of use. The accent was that of a well-educated Englishman.
She stared at him, unable for the moment even to speak.
‘Who are you?’ he repeated.
She had to say something. But the truth might be as fatal as a lie. Who was he became the vital question.
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection Page 17
