‘Why not?’ Magnus said. He could feel the anger in his voice. ‘Why the fuck not?’
Ingileif’s eyes widened at Magnus’s tone. But she didn’t back down. Ingileif didn’t do backing down. ‘Because otherwise it will eat away at you for the rest of your life. Just like it has for the last twenty years. You told me it was your father’s murder that bothered you, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’
Magnus didn’t answer.
‘Isn’t there? Answer me, Magnús.’
‘No.’
‘Answer me.’
‘Ingileif?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
A hundred and seventy kilometres is a long way to drive in silence, even if you are going thirty kilometres an hour over the speed limit.
He turned his motorbike off the little road, on to an even smaller road, not much more than a track with a strip of tarmac at its centre, and stopped to examine his Michelin map. He couldn’t believe how many trees there were in this country, specifically how many apple trees. They were unknown in Iceland. He would have plucked a fruit from the small orchard adjacent to the road, but that would mean taking off his helmet to eat it, and he didn’t want to do that.
He knew exactly where he was. He had spent a couple of hours examining the map at home and checking it against Google Earth, until this small strip of Normandy was etched on his brain. Sure enough, beyond the orchard the road curved to the left. On one side were small fields of pasture, on the other, woodland.
He kicked the motorbike into life and drove it slowly and quietly along the lane. He couldn’t see anyone. That was good. The bike had Dutch number plates, which made him feel conspicuous here in France. They should have thought of that, but as long as no one saw him, it wouldn’t matter.
He counted the telegraph poles running along the side of the road. At the seventh, he stopped and pushed the bike into the woods opposite. He spent a couple of minutes making sure that it was concealed from the road, yet ready for a quick getaway.
He made his way through the trees about twenty metres until he reached the other side. A group of cows were chewing their cud in a small field, their tails swishing away the flies. Beyond the field was the barn.
He moved through the edge of the wood just a few metres in from the field, until he found the tree he was looking for. It had been carved with a ‘B’ a metre above the ground. ‘B’ for Bjartur, although only he would know that; the French police would have no clue what it stood for when they discovered it. The patch of freshly dug ground was five metres to the west of the tree, partially hidden under a broken branch.
He slid the pack off his back, took out a trowel, and started to dig. The earth came away easily, and within a few minutes he had revealed a polythene bag containing rifle and ammunition.
A Remington 700. He grinned. He eased the rifle out of its bag and checked the mechanism. Everything worked perfectly.
Then he pulled out his binoculars and examined the barn. It was large and had been converted into a holiday home. Behind it was the farmhouse to which the barn must once have been attached. It was a sunny afternoon, and so there were no lights on in the building, but a door out to the garden was open. And in the garden were two chairs, a book resting open on the seat of one of them. There was a car parked on the patch of gravel in the front – only one car, which implied there were no bodyguards. Excellent. The car was an Audi estate: he could just make out the number plate – British, not French.
It was hard to estimate range with any precision, but he guessed a hundred and twenty-five metres was about right. The chair seemed to be about the same distance away from him as the petrol container had been back in the mountain valley the previous morning.
He found a good spot to lie, with the barrel resting on a log, and waited. It was a sunny day, the French September sun was much stronger than its Icelandic counterpart, and he felt uncomfortably warm in his motorcycle leathers. He would wait until nightfall if he had to, although having spotted the open book on the chair he was optimistic that that would be unnecessary.
He ran through the getaway in his mind. He would be sure to drive the bike at a steady speed so as not to attract attention. It was fifteen kilometres to the isolated water-filled quarry where he would chuck the polythene bag containing rifle, trowel, binoculars and bullet casings, and then twenty more kilometres before he hit the autoroute and the long ride back to Amsterdam.
Through the binoculars he could see movement in the house. He tensed. The target emerged.
He put down the binoculars and rested the rifle on his shoulder. The target was wearing a narrow-checked shirt and carrying a mug. Tea, no doubt – so English. The target walked across to the chair and bent to place the mug by its side. Stood up. Surveyed the landscape.
He pressed the trigger. Several things happened at once. The window behind the target exploded. The noise of the rifle shattered the rural quiet. Rooks further along the copse took to the air, yelling angrily.
The target turned towards the window and then back towards the wood, jaw open, reactions dulled by the surprise.
He had missed. Keep calm. He fired again. This time the target took a step back and raised a hand to his upper arm. A short, sharp cry of pain. One more shot. The target crumpled to the ground, just as a woman ran out of the door screaming.
Time to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY
FRIKKI SAT IN the back of the church as the priest droned on. Magda had forced him to come with her to the large concrete Catholic cathedral on the hill on the other side of the centre of town from the Hallgrímskirkja. She was sitting next to him now, struggling to make sense of the sermon the priest was giving. Frikki had given up after the first sentence.
She had wanted him to pray for forgiveness. He wasn’t sure how to do that. He closed his eyes. ‘Forgive me, God,’ he muttered to himself. Was that enough? He wasn’t sure. ‘Forgive me, God,’ he repeated. Why should God forgive him, a loser without a job, who stole, who never went to church? Who had killed someone.
The only good thing about Frikki’s life was Magda. If God had any sense he wouldn’t bother saving Frikki, he would save Magda from Frikki.
Frikki closed his eyes again. ‘Please, God, don’t take Magda away from me.’
Frikki thought he would be bored, but he wasn’t. It was a peaceful building with its smooth blue columns. Although he didn’t feel a part of the congregation of earnest worshippers, most of whom were foreign, they did give the place a sense of calm. No one stared at him, although Frikki was sure everyone must know he was the only Protestant in a Catholic church.
He could sort of see why Magda liked coming to places like this every week. He could understand why religion made sense for her. But not for him.
He didn’t really believe in God. And he was quite sure that if there was a God, He didn’t believe in Frikki.
Had he killed the banker? He had no way of knowing whether the man was already dead before Frikki had kicked him. Sometimes, in his better moods, Frikki was convinced he was. At other times, like now, Frikki was pretty sure he wasn’t.
The worst thing was, for those few moments back in January, Frikki had actually wanted to kill him.
Those few seconds would stay with him for the rest of his life. He would always be a murderer, even when he was an old man. And now Magda knew.
But not only did she know, she understood. She said that she would forgive him, and that God would forgive him.
They were all standing up and walking up to the priest to kneel down and take the bread and the wine. The choir sang. Magda bobbed down on one knee, made the sign of the cross, and followed them. There was no way Frikki was going to do that.
Suddenly it came to him. For Magda truly to forgive Frikki, she had to believe God had forgiven him.
He knelt down to pray.
When he got back to Reykjavík, Magnus dropped Ingileif off at her apartment, and drove back to his own place in
Njálsgata. He poured himself a beer and flopped into his armchair.
Seeing his grandfather again after all those years had shaken him. He knew he had been wrong to take it out on Ingileif, but she should have realized that it was time to back off.
He sipped his beer and tried to make sense of it all. His father’s affair with Unnur. The series of deaths spanning fifty years. His father’s own death.
He was very tempted just to ignore everything, focus on today, on Óskar and Gabríel Örn.
But Ingileif was right: he, of all people, couldn’t step back now he was beginning to discover so much.
He needed to do two things. Find out whether his grandfather had been in America when his father had been murdered, and look at the file on Benedikt Jóhannesson’s death in 1985.
His phone beeped. He checked it. A voicemail. He called the number and heard his brother’s voice.
‘Hey, Magnus, it’s Ollie. Just checking in. Call me back when you have a moment.’ The message had been left an hour before, probably when Magnus was out of reception somewhere on the way back from Stykkishólmur.
Ollie. Poor Ollie. Unlike Magnus, who had always been drawn by his Icelandic roots, Ollie had denied them. He was an American through and through: America still provided that service it had offered to immigrants throughout its history, the opportunity to stop being who they were and start being who they wanted to be. Ollie had taken up the offer with enthusiasm.
And given the miserable time he had had in Iceland, who could blame him?
Magnus considered calling Ollie back there and then and telling him where he had been. Perhaps it would give Ollie a chance to exorcize some old ghosts.
Or perhaps not. Magnus couldn’t face talking to him that evening. He’d call back tomorrow. Or the day after.
He finished the beer, and turned on his small TV as he went to the fridge for another one.
It was the news on RÚV, the public broadcasting station. There was a story about Julian Lister, the former British Chancellor of the Exchequer. It seemed to Magnus the Icelanders should let that one go. Sure, they had been treated badly, but Lister wasn’t the cause of their problems, nor was he the solution, especially after he had been dumped by his own Prime Minister.
But there was something about the newsreader’s tone that was not quite right. Magnus glanced at the pictures. An ambulance. A hospital in France.
He sat down and watched.
Julian Lister had been shot twice by an unknown gunman at his holiday home in Normandy. He was in a critical condition at a hospital in Rouen. No arrests had yet been made. Speculation focused on a terrorist assassination attempt with Al-Qaeda the first-choice suspects and Irish Republicans second, but the French police were making no comment.
There are going to be some Icelanders that will be happy to hear that, thought Magnus.
Then he thought a little harder.
No. There couldn’t be a link between Gabríel Örn, Óskar and Julian Lister, that was too far-fetched. Besides, Magnus had seen Björn and Harpa in Iceland that weekend, so there was no chance that they had shot anyone in France. He was letting his desire to get involved in an interesting murder case get the better of him.
And yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
February 1985
Benedikt Jóhannesson sat on a rock and stared across the black causeway towards the Grótta lighthouse on its own little island. Behind it, swirls of grey cloud shifted and jostled as a strong cold breeze blew in from the Atlantic and the breakers crashed against the volcanic sand. He was alone.
Good.
Hunched into his parka, he opened the pack of cigarettes he had just bought and tried to light one. It took him a while in the wind, he was out of practice. Eventually it caught and he took a deep drag, suppressing the urge to cough.
That tasted good.
Sixteen hours after stumbling out of the hospital, he had taken his first positive decision: to start smoking again. It was nearly eight years since he had given up, and he had missed it. Now there was no point in protecting his lungs.
The nicotine made his head buzz, denting the pain lurking there from all the brandy he had drunk the night before. His brain was mush: he wouldn’t be able to write that day. Would he be able to write again?
He wouldn’t tell anyone. Not the kids, not his friends. He would have had to tell Lilja of course, but she had left him two years before. A sudden heart attack. No warning, a result of undiagnosed heart disease. He was glad he didn’t have to tell Lilja.
There. Two decisions.
What about the writing? The moment he had asked himself the question whether he could write again, his subconscious had screamed yes, yes he could. But what? What could he write in six months that would make a difference? Two years, maybe he could force himself to come up with the great Icelandic novel, something to rival Halldór Laxness, something to ensure his name was remembered.
But who was he kidding? If he could write that book, he would have done so already.
The cigarette was fast disappearing. His cheeks stung in the cold air. But the wind brought clarity to his confusion.
Moor and the Man wasn’t a bad book. It might even be his best. He would have time to finish that. And maybe a short story or two. But what, in the last few months of his life, could he tell the world?
Suddenly it came to him. He would tell the truth. After forty years he would finally tell the truth.
He stubbed out the cigarette, stood up and scrambled back towards his car. He needed to get back to his desk. There was no time to lose.
Monday 21 September 2009
‘Did you see the news about Julian Lister?’ Vigdís asked Magnus as she arrived for work, dumping her bag by her desk.
‘Yes, poor bastard.’
‘They say they don’t think he’ll make it.’
‘Yeah.’ Magnus had listened to the morning news as well. Lister had been operated on overnight at a hospital in Rouen. The doctors rated his chances as slim.
‘Do you think there’s a connection?’
‘With Óskar?’ Magnus looked at her sharply. ‘I wondered about that.’
‘Some Icelanders would be very happy to see him dead,’ Vigdís said. ‘Not the majority, not even a minority, but it would only take one.’
‘Or two, or three.’
‘You mean Björn and Harpa?’
‘And Ísak, possibly.’
Vigdís raised her eyebrows. ‘We don’t have any concrete link between him and the other two.’
‘OK, if not Ísak, maybe somebody else.’
‘So we’re saying there is a bunch of nutters out there who want to shoot bankers and politicians?’
‘Who they think are responsible for the kreppa.’
Magnus and Vigdís looked at each other. ‘If we raise this, the shit really will hit the fan,’ Vigdís said.
‘I know,’ said Magnus.
‘And I mean not just with Baldur. With Thorkell. And the Big Salmon himself.’
‘I know.’
‘We haven’t got any evidence, have we? I mean, none at all.’
‘I know.’
‘So what do we do?’
Magnus had been thinking. ‘Let’s just keep an open mind for now. Baldur told me to go back to the police college today, and I have a lecture to give there at eleven o’clock. But I have an idea.’
‘Yes?’
‘Did the police take surveillance videos during the demonstrations in January?’
‘Sure.’
‘Dig them out for the day Gabríel Örn was killed. See if you can see Harpa. And Björn. See what they did. See who they talked to. Maybe you’ll be able to figure out whether they really did meet then for the first time.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Vigdís.
‘Let me know what you find. In the meantime, how do I get hold of the file on a murder from 1985?’
‘Which case?’
‘Benedikt Jóhannesson.’
‘The
writer?’
‘Yes. Do you know anything about it?’
‘I was only a kid at the time. But we studied it at police college. Stabbed in his home, I think. The crime was never solved.’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Has this got a connection to Óskar?’
‘Not really.’
Vigdís frowned. Magnus remained impassive. Vigdís decided not to push it. ‘It won’t be scanned on to the system, but Records will have the original file buried away somewhere. It will probably take them a while to locate it.’
‘Thanks, Vigdís.’
While Vigdís made some calls to rustle up the surveillance video, Magnus composed an e-mail to one of his buddies in the Homicide Unit in Boston, asking to check with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services for immigration information for July 1996. Then he called Records.
Árni breezed in. ‘Morning, Magnús. Good weekend? All quiet here?’
‘Talk to Vigdís,’ Magnus said. ‘You’ve got some work to do.’
Ísak popped the toast out of the toaster, and spread on butter and marmalade. It was an English habit that was growing on him. The house off the Mile End Road which he shared with four other students ran on toast. And instant coffee. The kettle boiled and Ísak made himself a cup.
‘Hey.’
He turned to see his girlfriend Sophie slope into the small kitchen in pyjama bottoms and an old Save Darfur T-shirt.
‘I thought you didn’t have any lectures until twelve?’
‘I decided I really have to go to the library,’ she said. ‘I can’t put it off any longer.’ She perched herself on his lap and kissed him quickly on the lips. ‘Good morning,’ she said, and kissed him again, deeper.
Ísak smiled and let his hand brush over her breast. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
She left it there for a moment, but then she extricated herself and stood up. ‘No. Discipline. I need discipline.’ She opened the cupboard and started rummaging around, looking for bread. Ísak had finished off the loaf. ‘Do you want another slice of toast, Zak?’
‘Yeah, OK. Thanks.’
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