Sea of Stone

by Michael Ridpath

  A broad grin spread across Magnus’s face. ‘Well done, Ingileif,’ he said. Then he glanced at Sibba and the grin disappeared.

  Magnus stood up and walked over to the window. There was a view north of the little car park outside the prison, over the flood plain to the snow-streaked ridge of hills above the towns of Selfoss and Hveragerdi.

  ‘You know, this is the only room in Litla-Hraun where I can see the outside world.’

  Sibba was silent.

  He turned. ‘Sibba, I have two important questions for you. I remember that you and your family came to visit us at Bjarnarhöfn one Christmas.’

  ‘That’s right. We came over to Iceland for Christmas several times, but only once when you were living at Bjarnarhöfn.’

  ‘I don’t remember what year it was. Do you?’

  ‘I do, actually,’ Sibba said. ‘I was sixteen, so it was 1985. Christmas 1985.’

  ‘Benedikt Jóhannesson was killed on December twenty-eighth 1985.’

  Sibba frowned

  ‘And is your father right-handed?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Sibba’s frown deepened. ‘Wait a minute. What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Your father—’

  ‘No! The visit is a coincidence. It’s got to be a coincidence. And eighty per cent of the people on the planet are right-handed.’

  ‘I take your point about being right-handed. But I remember Fearon saying the hair colour was blond, and your father had blond hair before it went grey.’

  ‘Fair. Light brown, really,’ Sibba said. ‘Once again, like many people.’

  ‘I think they also described it as “sandy”,’ Magnus said. ‘And you really mean “like many Icelanders”. But the key point is that it’s a pretty big coincidence that a close relative of my mother’s was in the house with my father in Duxbury in July 1996, and your father was at Bjarnarhöfn in December 1985.’

  ‘He never left the farm, I’m sure. He didn’t go down to Reykjavík. I would have remembered.’

  ‘Two hours down, an hour there, two hours back. You wouldn’t have remembered unless he told you, and he wouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘Dad isn’t a killer!’ Sibba protested. ‘You know him. He’d never kill anyone.’

  Magnus looked at his cousin. He had seen it so many times before in his career – children denying that their parent was a murderer, refusing to contemplate the possibility. On the other hand, he was pretty sure that was why Sibba had been so tense. She knew what Fearon’s DNA analysis implied.

  He touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She shook him off. ‘No! I won’t accept that. It’s just circumstantial. You can’t make a case against him.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Magnus. He returned to the chair opposite his cousin.

  Sibba glared at Magnus. ‘Now I’m definitely going to have to resign as your lawyer.’

  Magnus nodded. ‘Thanks for what you’ve done so far, Sibba.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything!’ Sibba’s voice rose in frustration. ‘You wouldn’t let me!’

  ‘You did what I asked you to do, even when it didn’t seem to make any sense.’

  Sibba shook her head and shrugged. ‘So who do you want to replace me?’ She paused for a moment, running through the possibilities. ‘What about Kristján Gylfason?’

  Magnus had sparred against Kristján before. He didn’t like him much, but he was one of the best criminal lawyers in Reykjavík.

  ‘Maybe.’ He nodded. ‘But first can you do one last thing for me?’

  Sibba collected herself, once more the lawyer. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Call Emil. Tell him that I have some information for him that he is going to want to hear. But tell him I will only talk if he brings me up to Stykkishólmur. No video link from here. No interviews at police headquarters. Stykkishólmur or nothing.’

  Sibba nodded. ‘I’ll tell him.’ She hesitated. ‘Magnus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now I’m not acting for you, can I make an observation?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You didn’t kill Hallgrímur, did you? You think your brother did. You’re covering for him.’

  ‘I don’t know who killed our grandfather, Sibba,’ Magnus said. ‘But I fear it was someone very close to one or other of us.’

  Half an hour later, Magnus was sitting in the back of a police car in handcuffs, speeding northwards along the banks of the broad river Ölfusá towards Selfoss. Over to his right he could see the high bent plume of Eyjafjallajökull. He marvelled at how Ingileif had managed to defy the volcano that seemed to have grounded the rest of the world.

  It was clear, despite Sibba’s protestations, that her father, Magnus’s uncle Villi, was a suspect for the murder of Ragnar, and of the writer Benedikt Jóhannesson. Magnus could see that. Sibba could see that. Would Emil?

  Magnus realized that the moment he had been waiting for for thirteen years was close. Very close. Soon he would know for sure who had murdered his father. The excitement bubbled up within him. He was grateful that Emil had agreed to his request to be driven up to Stykkishólmur. Given what he now knew, he would have found it very hard to stay cooped up in Litla-Hraun. He might be in handcuffs, but at least now he was moving – moving north towards the Snaefells Peninsula and an answer.

  Of course, even if Villi had murdered two people in the past, it didn’t necessarily mean that he had killed Hallgrímur. Hallgrímur’s killer might indeed have been Ollie, who was at that moment being grilled by the police. And, in fact, Magnus would still be their prime suspect. But there must be some connection between those earlier murders and Hallgrímur’s, and Emil would be in the best position to find it, with some help from Magnus.

  The police car bypassed Reykjavík, dived through the tunnel under Hvalfjördur, and sped along empty roads through heaths and lava fields beside the remote and beautiful western coastline. Magnus remembered that other trip along the same route, taken thirteen years before at a much slower speed on a bus from Reykjavík to Stykkishólmur. It was a couple of months after the murder of his father, and Magnus had decided to travel to Iceland to build bridges with his mother’s family.

  It had been tough settling down back at Brown. It had been the beginning of his junior year, and he found himself skipping classes. He had begun drinking. His girlfriend tried to support him, but he pushed her away. He felt alone, lost and angry. So he skipped some more classes and bought a ticket to Reykjavík.

  Ollie thought Magnus was mad to go back to Iceland. But the country of their birth had always meant more to Magnus than to his brother. And now that their father was gone, it was as if Magnus had been cast adrift in America. It was his father who had spoken Icelandic with him, who shared his enthusiasm for the sagas, with whom he walked once a year in the mountains of their homeland. But Magnus believed it was also his father who had been the impediment to a rapprochement with his mother’s family. Now he was gone, Magnus thought that perhaps he could form some kind of link with his uncles, and even his grandparents. He had to try.

  Magnus remembered how on the bus he had gone through the two notebooks he had filled with thoughts about his father’s murder. At that stage Magnus was still focused on Kathleen; no one had yet told him about her alibi in the air-con engineer’s bed. He had stopped the driver as the bus descended over the Kerlingin Pass to the main Grundarfjördur–Stykkishólmur road, and jumped off. He shouldered his backpack and walked across the Berserkjahraun towards Bjarnarhöfn.

  He hadn’t warned them that he was coming; he knew they would just try to put him off. A feeling of dread gathered around him as he walked through the lava field and remembered his miserable childhood years at the farm. The yard was empty, so he knocked on the farmhouse door. He was surprised to see it opened by a tall, attractive woman in her mid-thirties with long blonde hair. Aníta.

  Once Aníta had figured out who he was, she ushered him in to the kitchen and plied him with coffee and cakes. Her distress and sympathy at the
death of his father was heartfelt. She explained how she and Kolbeinn had taken over the farmhouse from Kolbeinn’s parents, who now lived in the cottage, and the warmth of Aníta’s presence made the kitchen feel entirely different than it had when it was his grandmother’s domain.

  Kolbeinn dropped in a few minutes later. He was much as Magnus remembered him: tall, square-shouldered, reserved. His sympathy was more sparingly given, but was genuine nonetheless. He seemed pleased that Magnus had come.

  They had chatted for almost an hour when Magnus spied through the window an old lady with white hair staring at him. His grandmother. Magnus saw hesitation turn to recognition in his grandmother’s eyes. Magnus tried a smile. She turned and scurried off towards the cottage.

  ‘She’s going to tell Hallgrímur,’ Aníta said.

  ‘He’s not going to like you being here,’ said Kolbeinn.

  ‘I’m ready for him,’ said Magnus, turning over in his mind the little speech he had prepared about reconciliation and family.

  They were silent for a couple of minutes, waiting.

  Then Magnus heard rapid footsteps in the yard, and the door was flung open. In strode a short familiar figure, white hair sticking up, blue eyes blazing. And in his hands was a shotgun.

  Aníta let out a small cry.

  ‘Magnús? Are you Magnús Ragnarsson?’ Hallgrímur spat out the words more as an accusation than a question. The gun was pointing upwards.

  Magnus realized that although his grandfather was instantly recognizable to him, he himself had changed a bit since the age of twelve.

  Magnus stood up slowly. ‘I am your grandson, yes.’

  ‘Hallgrímur, put that gun down,’ said Aníta.

  ‘Well, kindly leave my property,’ Hallgrímur growled, ignoring her. ‘Now.’

  ‘I have come to talk to you, Afi. Now my father is dead, I hoped I could—’

  ‘I said leave!’ Hallgrímur lowered the gun so that it was pointing at Magnus.

  ‘Put the gun down!’ Aníta repeated.

  Kolbeinn stood and moved towards Magnus. ‘I can drive him into Stykkishólmur.’

  ‘Do that,’ snapped Hallgrímur.

  ‘He just wants to speak to you,’ Aníta said. ‘He is your grandson, after all.’

  ‘Go!’ Hallgrímur said. ‘And don’t ever come back here again, or I will shoot you myself. And if I don’t, my son will.’

  So Kolbeinn had driven Magnus into the middle of Stykkishólmur and dropped him off. Magnus had bought a bottle of Scotch on his way into the country at duty free at Keflavík Airport as a peace offering to his grandpa. He walked along the harbour wall, found a good spot, dug the bottle out of his backpack and began to drink.

  As Magnus stared out of the police car at the silver flatness of Faxaflói Bay, a thought struck him. He had always assumed that by ‘my son’, his grandfather had been referring to Kolbeinn. But maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had been referring to another, much more dangerous Hallgrímsson.

  Villi.

  *

  Villi manoeuvred the car down the steep slope to the shore of the lake. A clang rang out above the sound of the engine as the floor of the Peugeot dropped on to a sharp rock. He should have hired a four-wheel-drive.

  Swine Lake looped around the Berserkjahraun in a hook. The day before, Villi had parked at the northernmost tip of the lake, nearest the main road. And he had been seen. This time he had driven on along a rough track to a part of the lake out of sight of any road.

  He parked down on the sand by the water. In the summer people fished for brown trout here. Indeed, he and his brothers had done that themselves, many decades before. But in April the only visitors to this spot would be particularly hardy hikers. And the odd eagle.

  He climbed out of his car and strolled along the shore of the lake on a beach of black volcanic sand. It was a beautiful spot. The lava here was twenty metres high, a crenulated wall of frozen magma that had created the lake several thousand years before. The lake itself that morning was a bluish shade of grey, reflecting the sky above. A crisp breeze blew in from the fjord to the north.

  Villi was angry. He was angry about Aníta. Kolbeinn had called that morning to say that they had operated on her, and it looked like she was going to pull through, although she was still unconscious. Villi knew that his anger stemmed from guilt. If only Aníta hadn’t decided to snoop in his mother’s stuff in the first place.

  Villi was losing control. Somehow, since Ragnar’s death thirteen years before, he had managed to keep a lid on things, or at least to scare Ollie into keeping a lid on things. But Magnus was always the weak link. Villi believed that Ollie had done his best to prevent his brother from asking difficult questions, and indeed Ollie’s ability to manipulate Magnus was impressive. But when it had become clear that Magnus was not to be put off any longer, Villi had sent Ollie over to Iceland for one more try. The news from Ollie had been bad, and so Villi had warned his father that he could expect a visit from Magnus at any time, and told Hallgrímur to refuse to say anything.

  But Hallgrímur didn’t like being told what to do. He said that if Magnus came to see him, he would explain how Ragnar had deserved to die. How Ragnar had mistreated Magnus’s mother Margrét, how he had slept with Margrét’s best friend. He even muttered about telling Magnus about the feud with Benedikt of Hraun’s family.

  Villi didn’t know whether the old man was losing it or whether he was just playing games, taunting his son as he so loved to do. But he knew he had to be stopped. Which is why Villi had flown to Iceland unannounced. The story about checking on his mother’s dementia was just an excuse.

  But Villi had lost control, as Aníta’s shooting showed. Somewhere, a long way in the past, he had taken decisions, bad decisions, from which he had never been able to recover.

  The obvious one was not turning back to help Atli when he had fallen into the cove the night of the sveitaball. But perhaps there had been another chance.

  For when Villi had scrambled back up the cliff that night he had met his younger brother Ingvar, who was then sixteen. Ingvar denied seeing anything, but Villi swore him to secrecy anyway.

  Atli was discovered by another couple an hour later, floating face down in the cove. The girl who had been with Villi said nothing. Villi said nothing. And Ingvar, if he had seen something, said nothing.

  Or nothing to the police. It became clear, two years later, that Ingvar had told their father.

  Why had he done that? You would have thought that Hallgrímur would have been the last person in the world Ingvar would have told. But Villi never underestimated the power of Hallgrímur not just to make his children confess, but also to realize they were hiding something. Villi couldn’t really blame Ingvar. It was inevitable.

  He still didn’t know how much Ingvar had seen. But it was clear that Hallgrímur knew Villi had killed Atli. His father didn’t say much – just the odd bitter or cruel comment when he was angry. Just enough to show Villi that he knew and that Villi was in his power.

  Somehow Villi should have stood up to him then, before it was too late.

  Villi was the eldest son, but he couldn’t face the idea of becoming the farmer of Bjarnarhöfn and living his whole life in Hallgrímur’s shadow, so he decided to study engineering. Hallgrímur was disappointed, but engineering was a good career, and Kolbeinn was a good substitute. The move to Canada had been more difficult. Villi and his new wife were absolutely determined to put the Atlantic Ocean between their new family and Villi’s old one. Hallgrímur disapproved, and at one point seemed close to raising the threat of what he knew about Atli and the night of the sveitaball, but Villi had promised to visit home often, and Hallgrímur had let him go.

  And he had built a new life, a decent life, a life where he could look at himself in the mirror in the morning when he shaved and like the man he saw.

  But all along his father had always known what kind of man Villi really was.

  A murderer.

  One thing had led to anothe
r, Hallgrímur had made sure of that. Benedikt. Ragnar. Ollie. And even though Hallgrímur was gone, even though Villi himself was sixty-four, on the brink of old age, he was still not free of the web that his father had woven.

  He had gone too far. He had gone way too far. He hated himself, or at least that part of himself that had become involved in murder, that part that however hard he tried he seemed unable to erase.

  He looked down at the water, tiny waves lapping against the volcanic sand.

  His cell phone buzzed. He was amazed he had coverage, even here.

  ‘Yes, Ingvar,’ he said.

  ‘Are you at the lake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  Villi waited for his brother, the anger boiling inside him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MAGNUS SAT IN the interview room in Stykkishólmur police station marvelling at how fat Sergeant Emil was. Obesity was becoming a real problem for some detectives in Boston, but Emil was certainly the heaviest detective Magnus had seen in Iceland. Adam, sitting next to him, pen and notebook at the ready, looked positively emaciated by comparison.

  Somewhere in the building, Magnus knew, was his brother. What he didn’t know was what his brother had already said.

  ‘I don’t like being dictated to, Magnús,’ said Emil sternly.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t, and I apologize. But at least you haven’t had to drive all the way down to Reykjavík, and this will be much better than a video interview.’

  Emil grunted. ‘Where’s your lawyer?’

  ‘I’ve fired her. Not her fault. You’ll see why in a minute.’

  ‘Do you want another one?’

  ‘I’ll be OK for now,’ Magnus said.

  ‘All right,’ said Emil. ‘Talk to me. And I hope what you have to tell me makes dragging you up here worth it.’

  So did Magnus. ‘By now I am sure you have discovered that I have spent much of the last thirteen years investigating the death of my father.’

  ‘I’ve been to your flat. I’ve seen the wall,’ said Emil.