Close to the Heel

by Norah McClintock

  “So why does she think Brynja knows where he is?”

  Tryggvi examined me silently from behind the wheel of his car. “You’re an inquisitive fellow,” he said finally. “Is there some special reason you’re asking all these questions?”

  “The woman harassed Brynja. She came up to me today. She seems to think I can help her.”

  Tryggvi shook his head. “This is a peaceful country. Unlike America, the homicide rate is low—one or two people a year at most. And the murderers generally turn out to be mentally deranged.”

  “You mean like that woman?”

  “I’m not saying that. But she’s clearly upset by the disappearance of her husband. Maybe he got tired of her. Maybe he got tired of Iceland. I don’t know.”

  “So why does she think Brynja knows anything about it?”

  “Maybe you should ask her. In the meantime, if that woman gets to be a nuisance, let me know.”

  I said I would. He wished me a good day, rolled up his window and eased his car on down the street.

  The woman was still watching me from inside the grocery store.

  EIGHT

  I thought about the tourist information center and its Internet connection. Then I remembered the computer in the little office at the back of Brynja’s house. If Brynja still wasn’t home…

  Fifteen minutes later, I let myself in the front door and stood for a moment, listening.

  Nothing.

  I went through to the kitchen. The door to the old man’s room was open and the nurse was inside, knitting beside his bed. I nodded to her. She nodded back. I went through to the back room and sat down at the desk. The computer was still on. I opened Google and it came up looking exactly as it always did back home. I typed in Gudrun + Njalsdottir + waterfall + death.

  It didn’t get me many pages. I clicked through them one by one. Finally, I saw a reference to a Gudrun Njalsdottir who had been found drowned at the base of a waterfall about a year ago. Just as Tryggvi had said, she’d been a reporter specializing in investigative reporting. There was a photograph. She was a gorgeous, dark-haired woman with piercing eyes. The article said an investigation was ongoing. I searched again and found a follow-up article, which said that the investigation had ruled out foul play. There was no mention of murder. There wasn’t even a hint of murder, even though Tryggvi had said the family believed someone had killed her. What had made them think that?

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Brynja’s voice behind me made me jump. I clicked back to Google and cleared the search history.

  “I was going to email my dad,” I said. She must have been in the doorway to the room when she spoke because she was halfway across the room now. “It’s okay if I use this computer, right?”

  “You should ask first.”

  “I would have, but there was no one to ask. I couldn’t find you.”

  She was peering at the screen.

  “I just logged on,” I said. One thing my past had taught me to do reasonably well was lie. The Major never believed me—well, almost never—but most other people did.

  Brynja looked deep into my eyes. Good luck, I thought. Finally she said, “I guess it’s okay.”

  I logged into my email account and sent a brief message to the Major to back up my story.

  “So, what are you up to today?” I asked when I’d finished.

  “I’m supposed to show you around.” She didn’t try to hide her lack of enthusiasm.

  “I can look after myself if you have something else you’d rather do,” I said.

  “You’re proud of that, aren’t you?”

  Huh?

  “You keep telling me you can look after yourself.” It seemed to irritate her.

  “Well, I can.”

  “My father wants me to show you some of the sights, so that’s what I’m going to do. Just give me a chance to check my email and get changed.”

  I nodded and retreated to the kitchen to get myself some Icelandic yogurt. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think Brynja believed that I’d just been sending an email. I think she wanted to find out what sites I had been looking at. Well, good luck with that too.

  She was frowning when she went through the kitchen to go upstairs.

  “I’ll meet you outside,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  I said okay and listened as she went up the stairs. I walked to the front door, opened it and closed it again, loudly. Then I crept upstairs and down the hallway to my left.

  “Looking for something?” I asked from the doorway to my room.

  It was Brynja’s turn to jump.

  She whirled around, red-faced.

  “Any particular reason you’re going through my duffel bag?” I asked.

  “I—I…”

  “I don’t know what you call it here, but back home it’s called snooping, and people don’t like it.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “So, are you going to change?” I said. “Or are you ready to go?”

  “I’m ready.”

  I followed her to her SUV. She didn’t say a word about me using the computer, and I didn’t say anything about her going through my stuff.

  I had no idea what she was like with her friends or her family, but with me she acted like an automated tour guide, complete with phony-perky voice and fake frozen smile. She took me to a couple of waterfalls and hiked me through a lava field that was filled with all kinds of weird rock formations. Then we went up the side of a dormant volcano, and finally she walked me down to a black sand beach that, according to her, had caused a lot of ships to run aground over the years. The sailors had mistaken the blackness of the sand for the blackness of deep water.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked me after we had hiked and viewed pretty much everything the area had to offer.

  The thing about me: I’m always hungry. My mom used to tease me about having a hollow leg. I felt something stab my heart. It happened all the time. I’d be cruising along, then something would remind me of my mom, and I’d feel the pain all over again.

  We got back into her vehicle and drove until we reached a cluster of buildings, including a restaurant. We went in and found a table.

  “They have the same kind of food you’re used to back home,” she said. “Hamburgers, pizza, stuff like that. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous…” She paused and looked at me. “Never mind. They do an okay hamburger, not that I’ve ever had McDonald’s or anything.”

  “I never go to McDonald’s,” I said. “I prefer to eat healthy.” I picked up the menu and looked it over. Besides the burgers, fries and pizza she had mentioned, there were a lot of different kinds of fish and lamb.

  “Do you want me to order for you?” she asked.

  “I can manage.”

  A waitress approached. Brynja ordered in Icelandic. The waitress turned to me.

  I’d narrowed my choices down to lamb and shark, but I couldn’t decide which to order. So I asked the waitress. She glanced at Brynja. Maybe she didn’t understand English. Sure enough, she said something to Brynja in Icelandic.

  “You can have shark as an appetizer,” Brynja said. “They have a dish called hakarl. You can have smoked lamb for your entrée.”

  Sounded good.

  Brynja ordered for me.

  My shark arrived first—little cubes of it on a plate.

  “Go ahead,” Brynja said.

  I skewered a piece and popped it into my mouth. I gagged as soon as it was in my mouth. It tasted like motor oil, not that I’ve ever actually tasted motor oil. You know what I mean.

  “An Icelandic delicacy?” I asked as soon as I could speak.

  “Roughly translated, it’s putrefied shark,” she said with a smile.

  “Putrefied?”

  “It gives you stamina.” She also said she never ate it.

  My lamb arrived about the same time that I smelled cigarettes. “Are you allowed to smoke in restaurants over here?”

  Brynja looked s
urprised. “You smoke?”

  “No. But it smells like someone does.” I glanced around, but there wasn’t a cigarette, lit or otherwise, in sight. I sliced some of the lamb and popped it into my mouth.

  Holy crap!

  “This tastes like cigarettes,” I said. I spit the meat into my napkin.

  “It’s smoked lamb,” Brynja said. “It’s also an Icelandic specialty. My grandfather loves it. He has it every year for Christmas.”

  “Yeah, well, no offence, but if you blindfolded me and asked me to lick the bottom of an ashtray, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between that and this lamb.”

  “Maybe I should have ordered hrutspunga,” she said.

  “Which is?”

  “Ram’s testicles.”

  I gulped. Thank god she hadn’t.

  The waitress returned. “She wants to know if everything is okay,” Brynja said. “And before I answer, I should tell you that it’s extremely rude not to eat the food that’s put in front of you. In fact, it would be an insult to the chef.”

  One thing Brynja didn’t know about me—I had eaten boot camp food all summer. I smiled up at the waitress.

  “Can I get a soda, please?”

  Brynja stared at me as I tucked into the lamb. Brynja’s meal arrived a minute later: a burger and fries. She smiled sweetly as she dipped a fry in mayo and popped it into her mouth.

  I cleaned my plate just to show her…well, something. I’m not actually sure what. Brynja and the waitress had a good chat when Brynja went to pay the bill.

  “You two sound like you’re great friends,” I said.

  “We go to school together.”

  Oh.

  “What if I hadn’t ordered smoked lamb and putrefied shark?” I asked. “Then what?”

  “She would have brought them no matter what you ordered, and I would have told you that they were the correct dishes.”

  “You don’t like me much, do you?”

  “Tell me what my afi said.”

  “Ask him yourself. And stay out of my room.”

  We drove back to her place in silence.

  There was a helicopter in one of the fields beside Brynja’s house. Brynja smiled when she saw it. She jumped out of the car and ran into the house. I followed.

  A muscular man in jeans and a sweatshirt was standing in front of some shelves in the living room, straightening the spines of books and the knickknacks in front of them. He turned when he heard us come in.

  “Fadir!” Brynja said, launching herself into his arms.

  The man smiled and hugged her back. He looked over the top of her head at me.

  “You must be Rennie,” he said. I couldn’t help noticing that he spoke with an accent, whereas Brynja’s English was almost perfect. He released Brynja and came across the room to shake my hand.

  “I am Einar,” he said.

  Brynja said something I didn’t understand.

  “Brynja, manners,” her father chided. “We have a guest. You must speak English.”

  Brynja scowled at me. She was in no mood to do me any favors. But her father was another story.

  “You’re back early,” she said.

  “The clients’ son was unruly,” Einar said. “Whenever we went hiking, he went so far ahead that I lost track of him. His father kept saying I should not worry because his son was an Eagle Scout back in America. I kept telling the father, America isn’t Iceland. When we got to Vatnajökull, the kid disappeared.”

  “Vatnajökull is a glacier,” Brynja told me. “It’s the largest one in Europe.”

  “Eight thousand square kilometers,” Einar said. “And this kid decides to take a hike all by himself. We ended up having to send out a search party. He’d fallen into a crevice.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “He broke his ankle. He was down there for a couple of hours before we found him—after dark, I might add. He was lucky. The door swung a little too close to the heel for my liking.” Einar must have noticed the giant question mark on my face. “When the door swings too close to the heel, it’s what you might call a close call.”

  Oh.

  He shook his head in disgust. “I’ll never understand these young boys. I tell them over and over, glaciers are dangerous. Ice is dangerous. You could slip into a crevice and never be seen again. But they all think they’re invincible. Americans are the worst.”

  Brynja shot me a look, as if her father had just proved a point that she’d been arguing with me.

  “I’m Canadian,” I said—again.

  Einar smiled at me. “Has Brynja been taking good care of you?”

  “She’s shown me a few things,” I said.

  “Good. Good. I have some business to wrap up in the next day or so, and then we can get organized for your expedition.”

  “When do you think we’ll be able to leave?”

  “If all goes well, Thursday,” he said.

  Thursday? This was only Monday. What was I going to do for the next couple of days?

  He must have read the disappointment on my face, because he said, “Have you visited Reykjavik yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “You must spend a day there. We’ll arrange it.” He looked at Brynja and held up a picture frame. “I found this facedown. What happened to it?” His tone was mild, but his eyes were sharp and piercing.

  Brynja looked at the frame. “I did that yesterday,” she said. “I’m sorry, Dad. I just…I’m sorry.”

  Einar pulled his daughter close and hugged her. “It’s all right,” he said. “I was thinking about her too.” He set the frame back on the shelf. “Well, I’d better unpack.”

  “I’ll help you,” Brynja said. She glanced at me. I would have bet anything that what she really wanted to do was tell her dad about the mysterious journal I had shown her grandfather. But that was her business, not mine. Anyway, I had other things on my mind. I was staring at the photograph that Einar had just replaced on the shelf. The woman smiling out at me was eerily familiar. I’d seen her face on the Internet only yesterday. She was Gudrun Njalsdottir, the woman whose family was convinced she had been murdered.

  NINE

  I woke with the sun. The clock beside my bed read 6:15. I couldn’t get back to sleep—and, believe me, I tried. So I swung up out of bed, showered and got dressed.

  The house was quiet. I hesitated to go into the kitchen in case I disturbed the old man. Instead, I let myself out of the house into the crisp morning air and took a stroll around the property. I walked back as far as the base of the waterfall and gazed up at the highlands where it originated. There was a rough path up one side of the falls. I started to climb it. The higher I went, the more spectacular the view became and the colder it got. The farmhouse, the little church and the outbuildings below got smaller and smaller, and once I was at the top, I spotted another farm to the east and Reykholt to the west. The terrain up top was desolate. In the distance, cresting the highest points, was a sheet of white—snow. Or ice. I wasn’t sure which. There wasn’t a tree anywhere. I don’t know why, but it popped into my mind that a fugitive would have a hard time in Iceland. Not only was the place small, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide. It was all farmland, coastline and lava fields.

  I wandered inland, sticking to the creek so I wouldn’t lose my bearings. I was no Eagle Scout, but I knew how to be careful in unfamiliar surroundings—not like, say, Worm, who stepped off the trail to take a leak the day after I duct-taped him to the canoe and promptly got lost. He wasn’t my buddy that day; Jimi had had the pleasure, and Jimi hadn’t cared that he was gone because we were staying camped for a few days and were only hiking to an old fire tower. Long story short: we spent six hours doing a systematic search for Worm and found him blubbering under a tree just before sundown. He’d gone just far enough into the woods so that he couldn’t see the trail and had got disoriented. It happens. One tree looks pretty much like another, especially to a city boy like Worm.

  I followed the cree
k back to where the waterfall began its tumble to the rocks below. My stomach was growling by then, and I was hoping that Einar at least would be up and ready for breakfast when I got back to the house.

  He was.

  I spotted him down below.

  He was walking around the long narrow rise in the land on the far side of the house from the outbuildings. As I began my descent, I saw him standing in front of the rise. Then I lost track of him. Going down sounds easier than going up, but it isn’t, not when you’re basically rock climbing in reverse. You have to watch what you’re doing and test your footing with each step. It took a good half hour before I got to the bottom. By then Einar was nowhere to be seen.

  I found him talking on the phone in the kitchen and started to back away. I didn’t want to interrupt his coversation or give him the impression I was trying to eavesdrop either—not that I understood a word of what he was saying—but he turned and saw me. “He’s here,” he said into the phone, in English this time. “I’ll talk to you later.” He closed his phone and set it down onto the counter. “I thought we’d lost you,” he said. “Where were you?”

  “I woke up early. I guess my internal clock is all screwed up. Everyone was asleep, so I went for a walk. I climbed up by the waterfall. I got a great view from up there.”

  “You shouldn’t wander off without telling anyone where you are.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Well.” He let out a long sigh. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  Finally, a smile. “As I suspected. Teenaged boys are always hungry. How about some muesli and yogurt, followed by eggs, toast, cheese, some ham…?”

  I grinned as the menu got longer.

  “What can I do to help?” I asked.

  I had just polished off a bowl of cereal and yogurt, two soft-boiled eggs and three pieces of toast with slices of cheese and ham, when Brynja stumbled into the room.

  “Hungry?” Einar asked.

  She shook her head. “Is there coffee?”

  “Just made. Pour some for Rennie too. I’m going to check on Sigurdur.”