And, of course, if this was any normal country and Árni had been carrying a gun, he could simply have drawn it and shouted a challenge.
But even if he wasn’t smart, Árni was brave. And if the hit man had just been a split-second slower, Árni’s headlong rush might have worked. But the Dominican had been fast, and Árni had taken a bullet for Magnus.
The Police Commissioner had recruited Magnus to control the spread of big-city violence to Reykjavík. But all he had done was lead it right into the heart of the city, the heart of the police department.
Mind you, he had already come across plenty of unusual deaths in Iceland. Dr Ásgrímur, Agnar, Ingileif’s stepfather.
Katrín burst in. ‘How is he?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. They haven’t said anything yet.’
‘I’ve called Mum and Dad. They are on their way.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Magnus said.
Katrín was a tall woman. She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Did you shoot him?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then you have nothing to be sorry about.’
Magnus gave her a small smile and shrugged. He wasn’t about to take this moment to argue with an Icelandic woman.
A doctor appeared, mid-forties, confident, competent but concerned. ‘Are you next-of-kin?’ she asked Katrín.
‘I’m Árni’s sister, yes.’
‘He’s lost quite a lot of blood. The bullet’s still in there, right next to the heart. We’re going to go in and get it out. It will take a while.’
‘Will he be OK?’
The doctor looked Katrín in the eye much the same way she had just looked at Magnus. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’s got a chance. A good chance. Beyond that I can’t say.’
‘OK, don’t waste time here,’ Katrín said. ‘Get on with it.’
Magnus was sure that Iceland had competent doctors. But he was worried that they would have little experience with gunshot wounds. Back home, at Boston Medical Center, they spent much of their Friday and Saturday nights plugging up bullet holes.
He decided not to mention this to Katrín.
There was a commotion outside the waiting room and Baldur strode in. Magnus had seen Baldur angry before, but never this angry.
‘How is he?’ he asked.
‘They’re operating on him now,’ Magnus said. ‘The bullet’s still in there somewhere and they’re trying to fish it out.’
‘Will he make it?’
‘They hope so,’ said Magnus.
‘He’d better,’ said Baldur. ‘Now I’ve got some questions for you.’ He turned to Katrín, disapproval all over his face. Although Katrín wasn’t in full regalia, there was a sprinkling of metal sticking out of her face. ‘Can you excuse us?’
Katrín frowned. Magnus could see she had taken an instant dislike to the policeman, and was not in the mood to be pushed around.
‘Let’s leave her here,’ said Magnus. ‘ She has as much right to be here as we do. More. We can do this outside.’
Baldur glared at Katrín. Katrín glared back. They moved out into the corridor.
‘Do you know why one of my police officers was shot?’ Baldur said, his face only a few inches away from Magnus.
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m a witness in a big police corruption trial in Boston. Some people there want me dead. Dominican drug traffickers. That’s why I came here. Looks like they found me.’
‘And why didn’t you tell me about this?’
‘The Police Commissioner thought that the fewer people who knew, the less chance there would be of a leak.’
‘So he knew about it?’
‘Of course.’ ‘If Árni dies, so help me I’ll …’ Baldur hesitated as he tried to think of a convincing threat.
‘I’ve apologized to Árni’s sister, and I will apologize to you,’ Magnus said. ‘I’m sorry that I led the hit man over here. I’m bad news. I should go.’
‘Yes, you should. Starting now. I want you to leave this hospital, you can’t do anything more here. Go back to the station and make a statement. They’re waiting for you.’
Magnus didn’t have the strength to argue. He badly wanted to stay and see how Árni was doing, but in a way Baldur was right. He was a distraction. He should go.
He put his head into the waiting room. ‘I’ve got to leave now,’ he said to Katrín. ‘Let me know if there’s news, one way or the other.’
‘The bald Gestapo officer sent you home, did he?’
Magnus nodded. ‘He’s a little wound up. Understandably.’
‘Huh.’ Katrín seemed unimpressed. ‘I’ll call you when there’s news.’
Magnus slept badly. No dreams, thank God, but he kept on expecting the phone to ring. It didn’t.
He got up at six and called the hospital. He didn’t want to ring Katrín’s cell phone in case she had managed to snatch some sleep and he woke her. They had completed the operation and extracted the bullet. Árni had lost a lot of blood, but he was alive. They were cautiously optimistic, with the emphasis on cautiously. But Árni was still unconscious.
Magnus walked down the hill to the police station. It was a grey, windy, dull Reykjavík day. Cold, but not very cold.
There were two or three detectives in the Violent Crimes room. He nodded to them and they smiled and nodded back. Although he was prepared to shrug off hostility, he was glad that it didn’t seem to be present.
Vigdís came over with a cup of coffee. ‘I expect you need this.’
‘Thank you,’ Magnus said with a smile. And then: ‘Sorry about Árni.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Vigdís said.
‘Do we know who the shooter is?’
‘No. He has a US passport, but we’re pretty sure it’s a fake. He’s not talking.’
‘He’s a pro. He won’t.’ Magnus had given the detective who had taken his statement the night before all the information he could, including whom to contact in the Boston PD. It had been made very clear that Baldur didn’t want him to interview the Dominican.
‘They might send another one, you know?’ Vigdís said. ‘Another hit man.’
‘It will take them a day or two before they realize things have gone wrong and they get someone else over here. And I’ll be gone soon.’
‘Keep your eyes open,’ said Vigdís. ‘Now you haven’t got Árni around to watch out for you any more.’
Magnus smiled. ‘I will.’ Vigdís was right. He was probably OK for twenty-four hours, but he ought to think of a place to lie low until he flew back to the States.
‘If you need any help with anything, just ask, OK?’
‘OK. Thanks.’
As Vigdís left, Magnus turned to his computer. He needed to tell the FBI and Williams what had happened himself. But before he began to type there was an incoming e-mail, direct, not via the FBI.
Hey Magnus,
There’s something I really ought to tell you. A guy broke into my apartment a couple of nights ago and shoved a gun in my mouth. He wanted to know where you were. I kinda told him about the Reykjavík police domain name on your e-mail address.
I feel real bad about this. I haven’t told the department, but I figured you needed to know so you could keep a look out for trouble.
Johnny Yeoh
Anger flared in Magnus. He hit the reply key and began typing, but after a couple of words he stopped. He couldn’t really blame Johnny. The gun was real, the threat was real, if Johnny hadn’t told the man what he wanted to know he risked getting his head blown off.
Although he could have warned Magnus sooner.
Magnus was really most angry with himself. He shouldn’t have breached the simple protocols that the FBI had set up. There was a reason they didn’t want him sending e-mails directly to anyone in the States. Turned out it was a very good reason.
He deleted the half-written e-mail and replaced it with a simple ‘thanks for letting me know’. Johnny Yeoh would be in big trou
ble anyway, not for talking to the gangster, but for not reporting the fact that he had immediately. And all that would come out in good time.
Magnus composed an e-mail to Williams describing what had happened the night before, omitting for the moment the information that Johnny Yeoh had pointed the Dominicans to Iceland.
He was aware of a figure sitting in Árni’s chair opposite him. Snorri Gudmundsson, the National Police Commissioner of Iceland. The Big Salmon himself.
He had expected a summons to the Commissioner’s office at some point. He hadn’t expected a visit.
‘How are you doing, Magnús?’ the Commissioner asked.
‘Hard to put into words,’ said Magnus. ‘I feel bad about Árni.’
‘Don’t,’ said the Commissioner. ‘I knew that your life was under threat. I knew that there was a chance that they would come looking for you. I didn’t think that one of my officers would get shot, but I was wrong, and that’s my responsibility, not yours.’ The Commissioner sighed. ‘Thank God he’s going to live.’
‘Are they sure?’ Magnus asked.
‘Not a hundred per cent, but it’s looking better by the hour.’
‘He’s a brave man,’ Magnus said. ‘A very brave man.’
‘He is.’
‘Look, Snorri, I meant to tell you. I heard from my chief the other day. The trial in Boston has been moved up to next week. I’ll have to fly over and testify.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I guess I won’t be coming back.’ ‘I guess you will.’ The Commissioner’s bright blue eyes twinkled.
Magnus raised his eyebrows in surprise.
‘We discussed this when you arrived. I want you here for two years.’
‘Yes, but after all that’s happened …’
‘We got a result in the Agnar case. We know who the murderer is, all we have to do now is find him. From what I’ve heard, you were important in solving the case.’
‘What you’ve heard? Not from Baldur, surely?’
‘No. From Thorkell.’
‘He can’t be very pleased about his nephew getting shot up.’
‘He’s not. But he doesn’t blame you. And if he blames me, he’s not saying.’
‘What about Baldur? I’m sure he would love it if I went back to the States and never came back.’
‘You leave Baldur to me.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. He had assumed that he would be done with Iceland within a matter of days. And he had assumed he would be very happy with that state of affairs.
‘You’re coming back,’ said the Commissioner, getting to his feet. ‘You have a moral obligation. That’s important to me, and I think that’s important to you.’
As Magnus watched the Commissioner leave the room, two thoughts were uppermost in his mind.
The first, the most insistent, was whether he should indeed stay in Iceland.
The second, lower key, nagging, was that he wasn’t as sure as the Commissioner that the case was solved.
Ten minutes later, Baldur prowled into the room.
‘What are you doing here?’ he growled when he saw Magnus.
‘It’s where I work. At least for now.’
‘We don’t need spectators here. Have you made your statement?’
‘Last night.’
‘Then go home and stay home where we can get hold of you if we need you to add to it.’
‘Have you found the Reverend Hákon?’ Magnus asked.
‘Not yet. But we will. He can’t get out of the country.’
‘Have you looked at Stöng? Or Álfabrekka?’
‘Why should we do that?’
‘We know that the ring has an enormous influence over Hákon. He’s a strange man, a romantic in his way. Where would he run to? I’m sure you’re watching all the obvious places, the airports, his relatives if he has any. But he might go somewhere that’s important to the ring. Somewhere like Stöng. Or the cave where the ring was originally found. I think the map Dr Ásgrímur drew is still in my car.’
Baldur just shook his head. ‘If you think I am going to divert scarce resources into the middle of nowhere to satisfy your idiotic notions of what a ring “thinks” then …’ He trailed off in frustration. ‘Forget it. Go home.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
BUT MAGNUS DIDN’T go home. He signed out a car and drove out towards Gaukur’s abandoned farm at Stöng. The further east he drove the worse the weather became. A grey damp cloud had settled on Iceland, and he was driving through it. Even once he dropped down from the lava fields on to the broad plain around Selfoss, visibility was poor. Horses looked miserably out of sodden fields towards the road. Every now and then a church or a farm would loom out of the mist on a little knoll.
There was certainly no sign of Hekla, not even as he turned up the road that ran along the banks of the River Thjórsá.
He had no idea whether he really would find anything at Stöng or Álfabrekka. But he sure as hell didn’t want to hang around Reykjavík doing nothing. He had tried to put himself inside the pastor’s strange mind. It was difficult to do, he couldn’t pretend that he understood the man, but he thought his hunch wasn’t bad as hunches went.
He thought about the Police Commissioner’s request that he stay on in Iceland. It was more of a command, really.
He was sure that once back home he could persuade Williams to let him remain in Boston. But the Commissioner’s appeal to Magnus’s sense of honour was shrewd. The Icelandic police had provided him with sanctuary. One of them had almost given his life to save Magnus’s. The Commissioner had a point; he did owe them.
When he had first arrived in Iceland he had immediately felt the urge to return to the violent streets of Boston. But perhaps Colby was right, what kind of life was that, anyway? Solve one murder, look for the next. A frantic, never-ending search to discover who he was, to make sense of his past, of his father’s murder, of himself.
There was a good chance the answers to those questions didn’t lie in Boston, but here, in Iceland. If he wanted, he could try to continue running away from his Icelandic past, from his family. But he would be running away from himself. He would spend his life running, moving from dead body to dead body in the South End. Perhaps if he stayed in Iceland for a couple of years he could begin to answer those questions, to find out who he really was.
And even who his father was. For the last few days he had successfully crammed Sigurbjörg’s disclosure that his father had been unfaithful to his mother back into its box. But it wouldn’t stay there quietly for the rest of his life. That knowledge was part of him now. Just like his father’s murder, it would haunt him.
Although he was driving through a short straight stretch of road, Magnus braked.
His father’s murder.
That puzzle had tormented him wherever he went, whatever he did. The police hadn’t found the murderer and neither had he, no matter how hard he had tried. But perhaps they had all been looking in the wrong place. Perhaps he should look in Iceland.
As soon as he thought of the idea, Magnus tried to dismiss it. He knew how much anxiety pursuing that line of thought would cause him, how he could become swallowed up in yet more fruitless investigation. But the idea, once thought, couldn’t be unthought.
His mother’s family hated his father and now he knew why, Sigurbjörg had told him. They blamed him for destroying her. They wanted revenge.
The answer was in Iceland. The answer to everything was in Iceland.
*
Pétur watched the small team of Poles go at his car, scrubbing, washing, polishing. He had overcome the urge to pay them double to do a good job; he didn’t want them to remember him. The fact his BMW four-by-four was white helped. It meant it was easier to spot any dirt they left. He decided that he would go at it himself once they had finished.
Pétur usually kept a cool head, but he had almost missed the dirt. If the police had stopped by his apartment the night before and impounded his car, their forensic
s people would have been able to tell where he had been the previous afternoon.
And the problem with a white BMW four-by-four was that it stuck out, even in the land of expensive four-by-fours. Inga had certainly noticed it: his eyes had met hers for a fraction of a second as he had sped past her the day before.
Which was why he had called her mobile immediately and asked her not to mention it.
He hoped she hadn’t said anything. He hoped to God she hadn’t said anything.
Searching for comfort, his hand closed around the object stuck deep in the warm pocket of his coat.
A ring.
The ring.
But Ingileif hadn’t told anyone. She had been surprised when she had seen Pési driving up the Thjórsárdalur, she couldn’t think of any reason why he should be there. But her instinct was not to mention it to Magnus. She didn’t know why.
She told herself it wasn’t important, and indeed, why should it be important? But she didn’t go the further step of asking herself why, if it wasn’t important, she hadn’t said anything.
She was frustrated by Magnus’s behaviour. She liked to think that she had a pretty down-to-earth view of sex and relationships. Despite what Magnus implied, she didn’t jump into bed with every man she fancied. There might be the odd night with Lárus, but everyone knew there was nothing in the odd night with Lárus. Or everyone in Reykjavík did anyway.
She had liked Magnus. And she had trusted him. Then suddenly he had pulled a girlfriend out of nowhere and more or less called her a slut.
Jerk.
The problem with the sudden deterioration in their relations was it made it more difficult for her to find out from Magnus whether Hákon really had killed her father, or indeed whether it was Tómas. She thought it unlikely that it was Tómas, but she didn’t know.
She did know someone who would. Tómas’s mother.
Her name was Erna, and Ingileif trusted her. She was a small woman with blonde curly hair, who had originally come from a village in the West Fjords where she had met Hákon when he had been serving as a priest there. Ingileif remembered the way Erna used to look up to her husband, not just literally, for Hákon was almost half a metre taller than his wife, but also how she seemed to submit to his will. But Erna was basically an honest, kind, sensible woman who had ensured that Tómas hadn’t grown up an emotional wreck. It must have taken a lot of courage for her to leave her husband when she did, but it was definitely a wise decision.
Where the Shadows Lie Page 28
