Sea of Stone

by Michael Ridpath

  He hoped that by solving the crime, he would deal with the problem once and for all. That was what was driving him on; that was what drove him to do his day job of solving one homicide after another. But would it? The thought that it might not, that even if he knew who had killed his father and brought whoever it was to justice he still wouldn’t be able to sleep easily, scared him.

  Unlike Ollie, Magnus had always admired his father. Even when the boys had been abandoned at Bjarnarhöfn, Magnus had known that Ragnar would return for him, and he had. Ragnar had read the sagas aloud to Magnus every night; they had enjoyed those tales of medieval murder and revenge together. The saga heroes who sought justice for their relatives were Ragnar’s heroes, as well as Magnus’s.

  And yet.

  And yet Magnus knew that although his father was very proud of him, he wasn’t worried about him, he was worried about Ollie. He had always been worried about Ollie, from when he had hauled the damaged little boy over to Boston, probably even to when he had discovered eight years later that his son was sleeping with his wife.

  He had never said it, but Magnus knew that his father blamed himself for how Ollie had turned out. If Ollie really could sort himself out, once and for all, then his father would be happy. And if Magnus helped him do it, then he would be proud of his eldest son.

  But was Ollie really sorting himself out? Could he ever sort himself out? Wasn’t he just a lost cause?

  Magnus stopped and turned around. He was close to the summit of the small hill, with Tufts University buildings around him. Through the snowflakes he could see the lights of Cambridge and, beyond that, the city of Boston glowing softly through the flakes.

  Ollie was a lost cause as soon as Magnus gave up on him. There was no one else.

  Magnus blinked as a flake fell in his eye. He stood still, letting the decision he was making wash over him. He knew what his father would want him to do.

  He pulled out his phone and selected Ollie’s number.

  ‘Yeah?’ his brother answered.

  ‘You win, Ollie,’ Magnus said. ‘I’ll quit asking questions. But on one condition. You keep seeing that therapist.’

  Magnus could hear his brother exhaling. There was silence for moment.

  ‘Thanks, bro,’ Ollie said. ‘Thanks.’

  He hung up.

  Magnus put the phone back in his pants pocket and hurried down the hill back to his car. He didn’t want to stay with Ollie that night. It should be easy to find a hotel room.

  Or.

  When he got to the car, he started it up and headed for Harvard Bridge over the Charles to the Back Bay.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Monday, 19 April 2010

  ANÍTA STIRRED THE stew. She still felt agitated, and as night came closer her agitation increased. In the end she had walked down the track with Kolbeinn to speak to the press; it was clear they wouldn’t go away until someone had done so. She had done all the talking, but she couldn’t deny that it had helped having Kolbeinn’s large presence beside her. She had managed to hold it together, but it had been difficult.

  But she had had a good conversation with Ingvar that afternoon, who had agreed to fetch Sylvía the following day and have her stay with him and Gabrielle. He would try to take her down to Reykjavík to see a specialist gerontologist in the next few days. He wasn’t sure to what extent her confusion was psychological, and to what extent the result of Alzheimer’s or possibly mini strokes. He was clearly feeling guilty that he had neglected his mother over the previous few months, although, being Ingvar, he wasn’t about to admit it.

  So, one more night to get through. Aníta was still worried that Sylvía might start a fire. Villi was in the guest bedroom and Sylvía was sharing Tóta’s room. Aníta had given her daughter strict instructions to wake her up if she heard her grandmother get up in the night. Aníta planned to hide all the matches in the house before she went to bed.

  Once again, Tóta was watching Shrek with her grandmother. The dinner could look after itself for a few minutes, so Aníta decided to go up to Tóta’s bedroom, just to check Sylvía’s stuff.

  The room was reasonably tidy. Tóta was sleeping on a camp bed and Sylvía in Tóta’s bed. Sylvía’s clothes were neatly folded in the small suitcase they had taken out of her cottage the night before. Feeling slightly guilty, Aníta ran her fingers through the garments, feeling for a box of matches or a lighter. Nothing there.

  Sylvía had packed a little wash bag that was on the bed stand. Nothing odd there either.

  She ran her hands under the pillow. Nothing. She felt a bit stupid searching her mother-in-law’s stuff for non-existent matches, but not half as stupid as she would feel if the old lady burned the house down that night.

  She stood back. Her eyes caught the wooden corner of a small box under the bed. She bent down to take a look.

  She didn’t recognize it, but it was clearly very old – the dark-stained wood had split. It was perhaps twenty centimetres long. She hesitated before opening it. People put private stuff in boxes like that.

  But what if there were matches in there? Aníta knew that it was partly that fear and partly just plain curiosity that made her open the box.

  There were only a few small items inside. Two old brooches. A locket containing an old black-and-white photograph of a woman, who Aníta was pretty sure was Sylvía’s mother. A tiny framed photograph of a pretty blonde girl of about eight: Margrét, Sylvía’s daughter. Aníta examined the photograph for a moment and decided there was only a superficial similarity with her own daughter Tóta.

  She heard heavy footsteps on the landing outside Tóta’s room. Aníta had left the door open. She shut the box quickly as Villi poked his head around the door. He saw Aníta with the box on her knee.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I thought it was my mother.’

  ‘No, she’s downstairs with Tóta,’ said Aníta. She reddened. ‘I was just checking to make sure Sylvía didn’t have any matches or anything.’

  ‘You don’t think she’ll start another fire, do you?’

  ‘No. But I want to be sure.’ Aníta considered sharing her discovery of the box with Villi, but thought better of it. It would show that she had been snooping. ‘Frankly, the sooner she is at Ingvar’s house, the happier I will be.’

  ‘He said he would come tomorrow afternoon,’ said Villi. ‘I’ll make sure he does.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Aníta.

  Villi hesitated. They looked at each other. Aníta felt a desire to throw herself into his arms, to explain everything: Hallgrímur’s ghost, the woman in the lava field, her fear that Sylvía would burn the house down, everything. And to look through the box together.

  But she resisted it. She sat motionless.

  ‘See you later,’ said Villi, eventually.

  ‘Dinner is in about half an hour.’

  Aníta waited a full minute and then got up to shut the door. She sat on Sylvía’s bed and opened the box again.

  There was an airmail envelope in the box. She lifted it up and underneath lay a single earring, the mate of the one the police had shown them that morning.

  The envelope bore a United States stamp, and was addressed to Hallgrímur. Inside it was a postcard. She slipped it out.

  Aníta knew she shouldn’t read the card. There were no matches in there, she should just put everything away and replace the box under the bed. But she couldn’t help herself.

  What she read changed everything.

  Villi stood staring out of the window of the small guest bedroom. He hadn’t liked the guilty look on Aníta’s face. He had hoped that his hesitation would prompt her to be forthcoming, and he sensed that it almost had. She was clearly snooping in his mother’s stuff. But what had she found?

  There was only one way to find out. He waited. The smell of stew wafted up from the kitchen. Aníta would have to return there at some point to see to dinner.

  It was only about five minutes before he heard Aníta’s footsteps hurry alon
g the landing and down the stairs. He slipped out of his own room and into Tóta’s. It took him only a few seconds to locate the box under Sylvía’s bed.

  He found the little pieces of jewellery. And the envelope, addressed to his father in his own handwriting.

  He pulled out the postcard and scanned the writing on its back, even though he could remember what it said.

  Shit! What the hell was he going to do now?

  Dinner was difficult. Villi did his best to play that traditional Icelandic role, the successful relative from the west returning home to his family. He managed to keep his air of calm, even when Aníta started asking who was where in the winter of 1985. Villi insisted that it was the following year, 1986, when he had brought his family over for Christmas. That was before Aníta’s time; she hadn’t married Kolbeinn until the early nineties. Kolbeinn didn’t contradict him. Neither, thank God, did Sylvía.

  After dinner, Villi excused himself and went out for a walk, striding west towards Cumberland Bay. The clouds had mostly gone and the sun was dipping down towards the horizon. The shadow of the snow-topped Bjarnarhöfn Fell darkened the Berserkjahraun behind him. A small group of Aníta’s horses ambled across their paddock towards him.

  What was he going to do with her?

  Life was so much easier in Canada. There he was the man he wanted to be. A well-respected retired civil engineer, reliable, honest, not exactly a pillar of his local community, but someone most people liked. He had been a good husband, almost faithful. He had brought up two decent children with good jobs and nice kids of their own.

  But here in Iceland… Here in Iceland he was something else.

  A murderer.

  He was nineteen. It was the night of the sveitaball, the summer dance in Stykkishólmur. He got drunk; all the kids got drunk. It was a lovely summer’s night, one of dusk rather than darkness, when the sun rolled under the horizon for a couple of hours before rolling up again, unnoticed. He had kissed a girl; he couldn’t even remember her name. He had taken her off to a cove a few hundred metres away from the dance. She had come willingly.

  So had her boyfriend. Villi could remember his name: Atli. He was a year or so younger than Villi and quite a bit smaller. Just as drunk. And angry as hell.

  He had jumped Villi on the path down to the cove. They were maybe ten metres above the sea. It had all been over in seconds. Atli had swung at Villi, who had parried his blow, and stumbled backwards. Atli had shoved Villi hard and Villi had nearly fallen. The anger had risen in Villi – the bastard had nearly killed him! Atli lunged again, and this time Villi moved out of the way. He hooked his own foot around Atli’s and Atli fell.

  There were rocks down below and the sea rose in a swell against them. Villi looked down at the body of Atli, which was being thrust against the rocks in a macabre rhythm. Atli seemed to be head down in the water. There was no easy way down there, and besides, it looked dangerous. Villi knew how drunk he was: if he went down to try to help Atli, he would probably fall in too.

  The girl had run away back up the path. She was just as drunk as the two boys. Villi turned and hurried after her.

  That was his mistake. If he had only stayed, tried to fish Atli out of the water. Even if he had failed he could kid himself that it was all an accident, it was all Atli’s fault, that Villi had done everything he could. But because he walked away, he couldn’t rid himself of the memory of hooking his foot around Atli’s.

  Villi had killed another boy. From that fact, everything else had followed.

  Villi reached the shore of the inlet that was known as Cumberland Bay after the English traders from that county who used to put in there in the Middle Ages. Now there was just grass and cormorants.

  It was strange to see Aníta again. She was still beautiful, although she must have been nearer fifty than forty. He remembered those three magical days. For him it had been a form of escapism; not escape from his respectable life in Canada, but from those other memories that Bjarnarhöfn brought back. Atli.

  And his father.

  He didn’t give a damn about Ollie. The snivelling little bastard deserved all his troubles. But Aníta. Oh, Aníta! What the hell was he going to do about Aníta?

  Vigdís jogged down the hill from her apartment building towards the harbour. She lived in the fishing port of Hafnarfjördur, a few kilometres south-west of Reykjavík, just off the highway to Keflavík.

  It was nine o’clock and still light. Vigdís was amazed how quickly the evenings lengthened in April: it was less than four weeks since the equinox. What Icelanders laughably called ‘The first day of summer’ was only three days away. The last weather report she had seen had forecast a 30 per cent chance of snow.

  It had been a bad evening. After a panicky phone call from Árni, she had met him in Café Roma to return the Benedikt file, and then she had headed out to Keflavík to see her mother. She had cooked them both an early supper of pasta. Things weren’t too bad: there was no sign of the Pole, her mother had only been ten minutes late to work that morning, and she seemed cold sober. But she had drunk ‘just one glass’ of red wine at supper. There was three-quarters of a bottle left when Vigdís had gone home.

  Her mother had insisted that the night before had been a oneoff. But Vigdís had learned enough about her mother to know that a one-off became a two-off, which became an every-night, which became an every-day.

  The thought sent shivers down her spine. Was she kidding herself to believe that her mother could ever kick the habit?

  She ran along the edge of the harbour, a natural cove formed by the lava flow from a prehistoric volcanic eruption. A massive blue trawler was unloading its catch on the far side. The town was just a bunch of buildings plonked on top of a lava field. The cold anger of the earth was never more than a couple of metres below you in Hafnarfjördur.

  Tomorrow morning she would be up early to drive out to the airport at Keflavík again. This time she really hoped Davíd would be there. She needed cheering up.

  She ran around the harbour and up the lava hill on the other side. The details she had quickly read that afternoon in the file on the murder of Benedikt Jóhannesson jogged around her mind. The investigation, led by Inspector Snorri Gudmundsson, who had gone on to become National Police Commissioner, was thorough. Vigdís had been unable to spot any leads that should have been followed up but weren’t. Family members had been investigated, including Benedikt’s son, Jóhannes the school-teacher, as had all known local burglars. Nothing. There wasn’t even any forensic evidence that might yield results to modern analytical methods in a cold-case review.

  Unlike the Duxbury murder eleven years later. Vigdís was sure that the lab results the American detective had referred to related to that. If there was to be a breakthrough, that was where it would come from. If only Árni had been more tactful! Now the detective knew Magnus was a murder suspect, Vigdís doubted he would give up whatever information he had to anything but an official request.

  At least after her day of asking questions, and particularly looking at Magnus’s wall, Vigdís had a pretty good idea what Magnus knew. How he was piecing together the evidence relating to his father’s death. How he might suspect that his grandfather was involved. Why, indeed, he might go up to Bjarnarhöfn to see him.

  To do what exactly? To confront him? Or to kill him?

  Vigdís kept the pace up as she ran up the hill back towards her apartment building, past the twisted lava garden that, according to its owner, was teeming with hidden people, that parallel invisible population that many Icelanders believed inhabited the rocks and stones around them. Although she passed it almost every day, Vigdís had yet to see one.

  OK, so that was Magnus. But what about his brother Ollie? Vigdís wasn’t completely clear why he had suddenly decided to come to Iceland. And then why he had taken off up to Bjarnarhöfn with the schoolteacher. Magnus had probably been asking himself the same question. There was a photograph of Ollie pinned bang in the middle of his wall with a yellow Po
st-it bearing a large question mark stuck over his face.

  Why was Magnus so stubborn? Surely after all they had been through over the last year he would trust her. He might be a private person, a bit grumpy sometimes, but she thought of him as a friend. So why hadn’t he opened up to her? Allowed her to help him?

  Then the awful thought hit her. Maybe the real reason was the obvious one. Maybe Magnus had killed his grandfather after all.

  Aníta was scared to go to sleep. But she was also exhausted. The thoughts that had been jumping around her head all day had pummelled her brain to the point where it just wanted to quit. Her husband was snoring gently beside her. Kolbeinn always slept well.

  ‘Aníta. Aníta.’ The whisper woke her. She must have drifted off.

  She opened her eyes, and across the room saw the familiar figure of her grandmother sitting in her rocking chair, her form faint in the dim moonlight that seeped into the room through the curtains.

  Aníta sat up. ‘Amma? Amma, I am so pleased to see you. I am so frightened.’

  ‘So you should be, Aníta, dear,’ her grandmother said in the tone of an adult admonishing a child. ‘So you should be.’

  ‘I saw Hallgrímur last night. Downstairs. With a boy. I thought it was Krissi, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Krissi,’ said the old lady. ‘It was another boy. But don’t worry. I have told Hallgrímur to leave you alone. He won’t bother you.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, Amma.’

  ‘But I have come to warn you. You must leave Bjarnarhöfn first thing in the morning. The very first thing, do you hear me? You must listen to your grandmother this time, Aníta, dear.’

  ‘Why? Why must I leave?’

  ‘Please don’t ask questions, Aníta, just promise me you will leave. Do you promise me?’

  ‘Yes, I promise you. I promise you, Amma.’

  ‘Good.’

  Aníta turned to her husband and shook him awake. ‘Kolbeinn. Kolbeinn! Amma is here.’

  But when she turned back towards the rocking chair, the old lady was gone.