Meltwater

by Michael Ridpath

  He was only a few yards away now. Behind her was the rough rocky edge of the lagoon. She could never climb out that way in time. She was trapped.

  She screamed.

  Magnus drove fast. As they reached the turn-off from the airport road, he saw the lights of two police cars coming the other way from Keflavík.

  ‘Keep an eye out on the lava field,’ he said to his colleagues.

  Although the terrain was basically flat, there were slashes across the landscape: gullies and fissures into which a vehicle could be driven or a body hidden. And, of course, there was the shoreline on the other side of the airport road. But they couldn’t see anything driving along the tracks that criss-crossed the lava field, nor the tell-tale cloud of dust that a vehicle would kick up.

  They reached the parking lot for the Blue Lagoon. There was already a police car there with its blue light flashing, probably from Grindavík, the fishing village just over the low ridge of mountains. Magnus, Vigdís and Árni jumped out of the car and ran along the path to the entrance. A policeman was talking to the woman at reception.

  ‘Sergeant Magnús,’ Magnus said, identifying himself. ‘Has she seen them?’

  ‘Yes,’ the officer replied. ‘The woman and one of the men went to change. The other said he was going to the café.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ the woman at the reception desk said.

  ‘Vigdís, take the changing rooms. Árni, come with me. You too,’ he said to the constable.

  They ran through the changing room to the edge of the pool. Magnus scanned the thirty or so swimmers he could see. No sign of anyone who looked like Erika, Franz or Dúddi. But with the steam, it was difficult to be sure.

  ‘Árni, take the perimeter. You stay here,’ he said to the constable. And with that he jumped in and waded fast into the steam.

  The water was warm, but dragged at his sodden clothes. People stared at him. The wrong people. Not Erika.

  He saw the back of a dark-haired woman swimming away from him and called Erika’s name. The woman turned around. It wasn’t her.

  Then he heard a scream. It was close by. He tried to quicken his step, the water up to his chest. The steam cleared and he saw a tall broad-shouldered man moving towards a smaller figure in a black swimsuit.

  ‘Hey! Police!’ he shouted in English. ‘Stop!’

  The man turned to face him. It was the guy who had grabbed Erika by the Saebraut. Sébastien Freitag.

  Freitag was only a couple of yards from Erika, who was backed against the rock edge. He raised a knife. There was no way Magnus could get to him before he plunged it into her.

  ‘Cowabunga!’

  A figure flew through the air from the rocky edge, screaming as it did so, and landed on Freitag’s upraised arm.

  Both bodies plunged under the water. Magnus was on them, looking for the knife.

  Árni screamed, in pain this time. He had his arms around Sébastien’s chest and neck, but Sébastien’s knife arm was free and was stabbing down on Árni’s back.

  Magnus grabbed the arm and pulled it back. Sébastien was big, but Magnus was bigger. He banged Sébastien’s hand against the rocky wall of the pool, but Sébastien wouldn’t let go of the knife. The fingers of Sébastien’s other hand clutched at Magnus’s face, reaching for his eyes. Magnus jabbed at Sébastien’s throat with his elbow, and the knife finally slipped out of Sébastien’s grasp. Magnus wrapped his arm around Sébastien’s neck in a headlock and plunged his face under water.

  Árni let go. There was a streak of red in the milky blue.

  The uniformed constable jumped in next to them, handcuffs at the ready. It took them a minute but finally Sébastien was cuffed and subdued.

  ‘Are you OK, Árni?’ Magnus asked.

  Árni flexed his shoulders. ‘It hurts, but I think it’s a scratch rather than a hole.’

  ‘Cowabunga?’ Magnus raised his eyebrows.

  Árni shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I wanted to distract him. It was the first thing that came into my head.’

  ‘Nice one, Árni.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sunday 18 April 2010

  MAGNUS’S ALARM WENT off: 7.50 a.m.

  He rolled out of bed, padded over to his desk and powered up his laptop.

  Freeflow’s press conference was at nine o’clock British time, eight o’clock in Reykjavík. Erika had told him how to watch it live on his computer.

  After discussions with the Commissioner, Magnus had taken a written statement from her about the attack in the Blue Lagoon, and then let her get on her flight to Glasgow, with the promise that she would return to Iceland within three days, ash cloud permitting. It had taken two hours to find Franz, who had never actually gone into the lagoon himself, but was waiting outside with clothes for his brother. He had escaped into the nearby mountains, where a police dog had eventually tracked him down.

  Both he and his brother had given lengthy statements about what they had done and why they had done it. They showed no remorse for trying to murder Erika, just regret that they had not succeeded. Magnus doubted that Franz had the guts to kill anyone himself. But even now he seemed to be under the influence of Sébastien: he was adamant that what his elder brother had done was right and that Erika had deserved to die. Reality had not sunk in. Yet.

  But Sébastien had known what he was doing all along. He was a cold-blooded, calculating killer. His own grief had not given him the right to ruin the lives of all those who knew and loved Ásta and Nico. Very few people who were prosecuted in the Icelandic justice system were acquitted, and Magnus was pretty sure that Sébastien and François Freitag were going down. Which was a thought that gave him pleasure.

  Árni’s knife wound was more than a scratch, but less than a hole – more of a slice, really. He had been stitched up at the hospital in Keflavík, but would be off work for a couple of days. Magnus had agreed to keep the ‘Cowabunga’ out of his report.

  The computer settled down and Magnus typed in the relevant website address. A picture of an empty lectern appeared, somewhere in London. A crowd of journalists murmured out of shot. After a minute or so, the hubbub died down and two people appeared: Erika and a blonde woman of about twenty-three with a fresh rosy face.

  Erika approached the microphone. ‘Good morning, everybody,’ she said. ‘And thank you for coming at such short notice. We are going to show you a video of an event that happened on 14 January 2009 in Gaza. With me is Samantha Wilton: her sister, Tamara, is one of the people you will see on the video. The video lasts three minutes, and is an edited-down version of the full sixteen-minute footage that was given to Freeflow. The unedited version is on our website, should you wish to view it.’

  She paused, looking around the audience. ‘I will not tell you what we at Freeflow think of what you will soon see. That is not our role. It is up to you to interpret. But I will ask Samantha to say a few words afterwards.’

  The camera switched to a projector behind the lectern where a grainy black-and-white video ran. There were subtitles as the Hebrew was translated into English. Also the names of the victims were captioned as they spilled out of their vehicle.

  Magnus had seen the unedited version before, but it was just as horrifying the second time around. Worse, given the translations of the Israeli soldiers’ comments as they were firing.

  The screen went black. There was a long silence, broken only by a cough from one of the journalists. Then Samantha Wilton approached the lectern and began to speak haltingly. It was disconcerting to see the identical twin of the figure that a moment earlier had been writhing in the dirt in Gaza. She was brave, she was beautiful and she was angry.

  She only spoke for two minutes. Her words were understated, but they were powerful. What had just been shown was immoral, unjust, criminal. And the criminals should be made to pay.

  Magnus watched Erika take a couple of questions from the journalists, and then he shut down his computer. He planned to go into the station la
ter that morning to plough through paperwork. Murder always generated paperwork: fortunately there was less of it in Reykjavík than he was used to in Boston. But before he did that, Magnus wanted to speak to Ollie. Presumably Ollie’s flight was still scheduled to leave that afternoon – flights from Reykjavík to the States had mostly been uninterrupted. In fact, Magnus should take his brother to the airport.

  There was yet another difficult conversation to be had with him. Jóhannes was right; Magnus had a duty to tell Snorri about the similarities between Benedikt’s murder and his own father’s. Perhaps on Monday. Ollie wouldn’t like that, but he had a right to know what Magnus was planning.

  It was Sunday, and Ollie’s last morning, so Magnus waited an hour or so before going downstairs to wake his brother up. There were signs someone had already had breakfast.

  He went through to Katrín’s bedroom and knocked on the door. Twice. Three times.

  Eventually she appeared, blinking. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Have you got my brother in there?’

  ‘No. He left early this morning. He says he’s going for a drive with a friend?’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘Some schoolteacher he met.’

  Schoolteacher? That must be Jóhannes. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  ‘Yeah. Back to the farm where he grew up.’

  Magnus drove fast, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly they were white. He should have been pleased that his brother was finally taking an interest in their grandfather and their father’s death, but he wasn’t. He was furious.

  The only reason that Magnus could think of for Ollie and Jóhannes to drive up to Bjarnarhöfn was to confront the old man. And if that was going to happen, Magnus wanted to be there. It was out of consideration for Ollie that he had held off asking his own questions about the two murders. And now Ollie was blithely blundering in by himself.

  Sure, there was emotion involved in Magnus’s frustration, but the policeman in him knew that Ollie’s action was a really bad idea. If anyone was going to ask Hallgrímur questions, it should be Magnus. He knew what to ask, and he would know what to do with the answers. Magnus couldn’t trust Ollie to do that.

  Jóhannes seemed an intelligent man. Maybe he could be trusted at least to remember the answers.

  It was weird that Ollie had teamed up with Jóhannes. Who had contacted whom? Magnus wondered. It must have been Ollie who had made the first move. Jóhannes’s disapproval of Ollie had been obvious at lunch, and Magnus would naturally be the brother he would call.

  But why would Ollie talk to Jóhannes and not Magnus? Perhaps he had tried to, but Magnus was too busy chasing homicidal Belgians.

  Strange, very strange.

  Magnus was skirting the flank of Mount Esja. The sun glinted off the grey Faxaflói Bay, and Reykjavík was gleaming in the distance. It was a little less than two hours to Bjarnarhöfn from Reykjavík. Magnus had forgotten to ask Katrín what time Ollie had left, but he guessed it was early: Magnus hadn’t heard his brother leave the house. So it was unlikely he would catch them up.

  He picked up his phone and called in to the station to tell Baldur he wouldn’t be in until late afternoon. He made an excuse about how it was Ollie’s last day and a problem had come up with his flight home. Which was true; Ollie would be hard pushed to get to Bjarnarhöfn and back in time to catch it.

  Baldur didn’t complain. He still had his work cut out. Although the Church wasn’t implicated in Ásta’s murder, Soffía’s allegations were out in the open, or at least halfway out. It was going to be a rough summer for the Church of Iceland.

  The car radio cut to the news. The Freeflow video was given prominence and they played a clip of Samantha Wilton’s plea for the criminals responsible to be brought to justice. There was already a comment from the Israeli government, who said that the video was a fake. That was quick, thought Magnus. An Icelandic correspondent speculated that the peace process would be delayed yet again.

  Was the video a fake? Magnus had no idea. But it seemed to him that Freeflow was wide open to misinformation, no matter how carefully it said it vetted everything it received. And he wasn’t convinced by Freeflow’s protestation of neutrality. Although it wasn’t overtly commenting on the evidence, the video had been edited and presented for maximum emotional impact. What Magnus didn’t know was whether Freeflow was the manipulator or the manipulated.

  The road plunged into the deep twisting tunnel under Hvalfjördur and the radio cut out. As he emerged on to the other side, he switched to a CD. It was a Brahms cello sonata that Ingileif used to play all the time. She had introduced Magnus to classical music and the sonata had become one of his favourite pieces, inextricably mixed up in his mind, in his soul, with her.

  Just when he thought he had got used to being without her, she had burst back into his life. For a couple of days, a couple of nights, he had remembered why he loved being with her so much. Fooling around with her was fun, but she meant so much more to him than that, and he couldn’t pretend to himself or to her that she didn’t.

  Which was why Kerem pissed him off so badly. She was jerking Magnus around and he didn’t like it.

  Presumably she was still in Iceland somewhere, trapped by the ash cloud, staying with her friend María probably. The sooner she was back in Hamburg with her Turk the better.

  He ejected the cello, and replaced it with Soundgarden. Much better.

  He approached the Snaefells Peninsula along an empty road. While the sky above him was clear and the sea over to the left sparkled, the mountains that formed the knobbly backbone of the peninsula were shrouded in a layer of dark cloud. He climbed the Kerlingin Pass and plunged into the moisture. The cloud pressed down on the north side of the mountains; visibility was poor, and he could see no more than about a mile ahead. He turned left along the main road towards Grundarfjördur, and then right again, through the Berserkjahraun, the Berserkers’ Lava Field. Stone twisted and twirled on either side of the car. Mysterious figures lunged out of the mist to left and right. He had to slow down as he made his way on the rough track cut in the lava field towards the farm.

  Cold fingers of long-repressed fear clutched at Magnus’s chest, making it difficult to breathe. The memories reared up like the congealed lava. The beatings that his grandfather had given Magnus and his brother; the humiliation, the loneliness, the desperation. The four years spent at that place from the age of eight to twelve were without doubt the worst of Magnus’s life. And of Ollie’s.

  Things had been so much worse for Ollie. He was younger, and not as tough as Magnus. Their grandfather had picked on him. Ollie had slid into a never-ending cycle of bedwetting at night and punishment during the day.

  That was why Ollie had vowed to blank those four years out of his life, and why Magnus was amazed that he should venture back here with a stranger.

  Come to think of it, why had Ollie come to Iceland at all? Magnus had asked him the question and he hadn’t really answered it. Maybe it did have something to do with his past after all.

  Magnus himself had returned to Bjarnarhöfn six months before, just after he had discovered the similarity between the murder of his father and of Benedikt. He had confronted his grandfather for the first time in thirteen years. It was nothing more than an exchange of threats, but even though the old man was at least eighty-five, Magnus had felt the chill of his power and authority.

  Visibility was only a couple of hundred yards as he pulled out of the lava field and up a low hill to the small complex of buildings between a fell and the sea that was Bjarnarhöfn.

  The farm was still. Beside the track leading to the farmhouse itself was a small single-storey dwelling with white concrete walls and a metal roof. This is where Hallgrímur now lived with his wife, Magnus’s grandmother: the main house was occupied by Hallgrímur’s son Kolbeinn.

  There was an old blue VW Passat station wagon parked just outside the house. Magnus had no idea if it was Hallgrímur’s or Jóhann
es’s. He pulled up next to it, and jumped out.

  He rapped on the door. No answer. There was no sound of farm activity, but he could hear the noise of the waterfall tumbling off the fell behind the farmhouse. A raven croaked.

  Magnus knocked again.

  No reply.

  He tried the door. It was open. He walked in.

  ‘Hello!’ he shouted. ‘Grandpa!’

  No response. Tentatively at first, and then more quickly, he moved from room to room.

  No one. There was a half-full cup of coffee on a table by the sofa in the living room. Magnus stuck his finger in it. Tepid. A Sudoku puzzle book lay open and face down on the table.

  He left the building and stood outside the house, wondering where to go next. The farmhouse itself was about fifty yards away. As he walked towards it, he looked down towards Breidafjördur but couldn’t see it in the mist.

  What he could see was the tiny black chapel, in its little graveyard. The door was open.

  That door was never left open.

  He turned and jogged down towards it, opening the gate to the churchyard. He slowed as he approached the entrance to the chapel itself.

  ‘Grandpa?’ he called. ‘Ollie?’

  No reply, save for the croak of a raven.

  He pushed the white door more firmly open, and entered the little building, which was not much more than a hut. Inside the walls were freshly painted, a bright shade of light blue. Six short rows of yellow pews led down to an altar fenced in by an ornate white communion rail beneath an ancient painting of Jesus and two of his disciples. All this, Magnus took in in an instant. But his eyes were drawn to the floor in front of the altar.

  There lay his grandfather, Hallgrímur, face pressed against the wooden floor, eyes shut. A trickle of fresh blood ran down the old man’s face from his temple, forming a small pool on the wood.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Magnus. ‘Ollie, what have you done?’