Where the Shadows Lie

by Michael Ridpath

  Thirty minutes later Magnus was sitting in the back of a white car hurtling along the highway between Keflavík and Reykjavík. Across the car was emblazoned the word Lögreglan – with typical stubbornness Iceland was one of the very few countries in the world that refused to use a derivation of the word ‘police’ for its law-enforcement agency.

  Outside, the squall had passed and the wind seemed to be dying down. The lavascape, undulating mounds of stones, boulders and moss, stretched across towards a line of squat mountains in the distance, still not a tree in sight. Thousands of years after the event this patch of Iceland hadn’t recovered from the devastation of a massive volcanic eruption. The thin layers of mosses nibbling at the rocks were only just beginning a process of restoration that would take millennia.

  But Magnus wasn’t looking at the scenery. He was concentrating hard on the man sitting next to him, Snorri Gudmundsson, the National Police Commissioner. He was a small man with shrewd blue eyes and thick grey hair brushed back in a bouffant. He was speaking rapidly in Icelandic, and it took all Magnus’s powers of concentration to follow him.

  ‘As I am sure you must know, Iceland has a low per-capita homicide rate and low levels of serious crime,’ he was saying. ‘Most policing involves clearing up the mess on Saturday and Sunday mornings once the partygoers have had their fun. Until the kreppa and the demonstrations over this last winter, of course. Every one of my officers in the Reykjavík area was tied up with those. They did well, I am proud of them.’

  Kreppa was the Icelandic word for the credit crunch, which had hit the country particularly badly. The banks, the government and many of the people were bankrupt, drowning under debt incurred in the boom times. Magnus had read of the weekly demonstrations which had taken place in front of the Parliament building every Saturday afternoon for months, until the government had finally bowed to popular pressure and resigned.

  ‘The trend is worrying,’ the Commissioner went on. ‘There are more drugs, more drug gangs. We have had problems with Lithuanian gangs and the Hells Angels have been trying to break into Iceland for years. There are more foreigners in our country now, and a small minority of them have a different attitude to crime to most Icelanders. The yellow press here exaggerates the problem, but it would be a foolish police commissioner who ignored the threat.’

  He paused to check if Magnus was following. Magnus nodded to indicate he was, just.

  ‘I am proud of our police force, they work hard and they have a good clear-up rate, but they are just not used to the kind of crimes that occur in big cities with large populations of foreigners. The greater Reykjavík area has a population of only a hundred and eighty thousand, the entire country has only three hundred thousand people, but I want us to be prepared in case the kinds of things that happen in Amsterdam, or Manchester, or Boston for that matter, happen here. Which is why I asked for you.

  ‘Last year there were three unsolved murders in Iceland, all related. We never knew who committed them until he volunteered himself at police headquarters. He was a Pole. We should have caught him after the first woman was killed, but we didn’t, so two more died. I think with someone like you working with us, we would have stopped him then.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Magnus.

  ‘I’ve read a copy of your file and spoken to Deputy Superintendent Williams. He was very flattering.’

  Magnus raised his eyebrows. He didn’t know Williams did flattery. And he knew there were some serious black marks in his record from those times in his career when he hadn’t always done exactly what he had been told.

  ‘The idea is that you will go through a crash course at the National Police College. In the mean time you will be available for training seminars and for advice should something crop up that you can help us with.’

  ‘A crash course?’ said Magnus, wanting to check that he had understood correctly. ‘How long would that take?’

  ‘The normal course is a year, but since you have so much police experience, we would hope to get you through in less than six months. It’s unavoidable. You can’t arrest someone unless you know Icelandic law.’

  ‘No, I see that, but how long did you …’ Magnus paused as he tried to remember the Icelandic word for ‘envision’ ‘… see me being here?’

  ‘I specified a minimum of two years. Deputy Superintendent Williams assured me that would be acceptable.’

  ‘He never mentioned that kind of timeframe to me,’ said Magnus.

  Snorri’s blue eyes bored into Magnus’s. ‘Williams did, of course, mention the reason why you were so eager to leave Boston on a temporary basis. I admire your courage.’ His eyes flicked towards the uniformed police driver in the front seat. ‘No one here knows about it apart from me.’

  Magnus was about to protest, but he let it drop. As yet, he had no idea how many months it would be until the trial of Lenahan and the others. He would go along with the Police Commissioner until he was called to testify, then he would return to Boston and stay there, no matter what plans the Commissioner had for him.

  Snorri smiled. ‘But, as luck would have it, we have something to get your teeth into right away. A body was discovered this morning, in a summer house by Lake Thingvellir. And I am told that one of the initial suspects is an American. I am taking you straight there now.’

  Keflavík Airport was at the tip of the peninsula that stuck out to the west of Reykjavík into the Atlantic Ocean. They drove east, through a tangle of highways and grey suburbs to the south of the city, lined with small factories and warehouses and familiar fast-food joints: KFC, Taco Bell and Subway. Depressing.

  To his left, Magnus could see the multicoloured metal roofs of little houses that marked the centre of Reykjavík, dominated by the rocket spire of the Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland’s largest church, rising up from the top of a small hill. No sign of the clusters of skyscrapers that dominated the downtown areas of even small cities in America. Beyond the city was Faxaflói Bay, and beyond that the broad foot of Mount Esja, an imposing ridge of stone that reached up into the low cloud.

  They passed though bleak suburbs of square squat blocks of flats to the east of the city. Mount Esja rose up ever larger ahead of them, before they turned away from the bay and climbed up Mosfell Heath. The houses disappeared and there was just heath land of yellow grass and green moss, bulky rounded hills and cloud – low, dark, swirling cloud.

  After twenty minutes or so they descended and Magnus saw Lake Thingvellir ahead of him. Magnus had been there several times as a boy, visiting Thingvellir itself, a grass plain that ran along the floor of a rift valley at the northern edge of the lake. It was the spot where the American and European continental plates split Iceland in two. More importantly for Magnus and his father, it was the dramatic site of the Althing, Iceland’s annual outdoor parliament during the age of the sagas.

  Magnus remembered the lake as a beautiful deep blue. Now it was dark and foreboding, the clouds reaching down from the sky almost low enough to touch the black water. Even the hump of a small island in the middle was smothered by the dense blanket of moisture.

  They turned off the main road, past a large farm with horses grazing in its home meadow, down to the lake itself. They followed a stone track to a row of half a dozen summer houses, protected by a stand of scrappy birch trees, not yet in leaf. The only trees in sight. Magnus saw the familiar signs of a newly established crime scene: badly parked police cars, some with lights still flashing unnecessarily, an ambulance with its back doors open, yellow tape fluttering in the breeze and figures milling about in a mixture of dark police uniforms and white forensic overalls.

  The focus of attention was the fifth house, at the end of the row. Magnus checked the other summer houses. It was still early in the season, so only one, the second, showed signs of habitation, a Range Rover parked outside.

  The police car pulled up next to the ambulance and the Commissioner and Magnus got out. The air was cold and damp. He could hear the rustle of the wind and a hauntin
g bird call that he recognized from his childhood. A curlew?

  A tall, balding man with a long face, wearing forensic overalls, approached them.

  ‘Let me introduce Inspector Baldur Jakobsson of the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police CID,’ the Commissioner said. ‘He is in charge of the investigation. Lake Thingvellir is covered by the police at Selfoss to the south of here, but once they realized this could be a murder investigation they asked me to arrange for assistance from Reykjavík. Baldur, this is Sergeant Detective Magnús Jonson from the Boston Police Department…’ He paused and looked at Magnus quizzically. ‘Jonson?’

  ‘Ragnarsson,’ Magnus corrected him.

  The Commissioner smiled, pleased that Magnus was reverting to his Icelandic name. ‘Ragnarsson.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Baldur stiffly, in halting English with a thick accent.

  ‘Gódan daginn,’ replied Magnus.

  ‘Baldur, can you explain to Magnús what’s happened here?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Baldur said, his thin lips showing no smile or other sign of enthusiasm. ‘The victim was Agnar Haraldsson. He is a professor at the University of Iceland. This is his summer house. He was murdered last night, hit over the head in the house, we think, and then dragged down into the lake. He was found by two children from the house just back there at ten o’clock this morning.’

  ‘The house with the Range Rover out front?’ asked Magnus.

  Baldur nodded. ‘They fetched their father and he dialled 112.’

  ‘When was he last seen alive?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Yesterday was a holiday – the first day of summer.’

  ‘It’s Iceland’s little joke,’ said the Commissioner. ‘The real summer is a few months off yet, but we need anything we can get to cheer ourselves up after the long winter.’

  Baldur ignored the interruption. ‘The neighbours saw Agnar arrive at about eleven o’clock in the morning. They saw him park his car outside his house and go in. They waved to him, he waved back, but they didn’t speak. He did receive a visitor, or visitors, that evening.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘None. They just saw the car, small, bright blue, something like a Toyota Yaris, although they are not precisely sure. The car arrived about seven-thirty, eight o’clock. Left at nine-thirty. They didn’t see it, but the woman remembered what she was watching on TV when she heard it drive past.’

  ‘Any other visitors?’

  ‘None that the neighbours know of. But they were out all afternoon at Thingvellir, so there could have been.’

  Baldur answered Magnus’s questions simply and directly, his long face giving an air of serious intensity to his responses. The Commissioner was listening closely, but let Magnus do the talking.

  ‘Have you found the murder weapon?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll have to wait for a post-mortem. The pathologist might give us some clues.’

  ‘Can I see the body?’

  Baldur nodded and led Magnus and the Commissioner past the side of the house down a narrow earth pathway to a blue tent, erected on the edge of the lake, about ten metres from the house. Baldur called for overalls, boots and gloves. Magnus and the Commissioner put them on, signed a log held by the policeman guarding the scene and ducked into the tent.

  Inside, a body was stretched out on the boggy grass. Two men in forensic overalls were preparing to lift it into a body bag. When they saw who had joined them they stopped what they were doing and squeezed out of the tent to give their senior officers room to examine the corpse.

  ‘The paramedics from Selfoss who responded to the call dragged him out of the lake when they found him,’ Baldur said. ‘They thought he had drowned, but the doctor who examined the body was suspicious.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was a blow on the back of his head. There are some rocks on the bottom of the lake and there was a chance that he might have struck one of them if he had fallen in, but the doctor thought the blow was too hard.’

  ‘Can I take a look?’

  Agnar was, or had been, a man of about forty, longish dark hair with flecks of grey at the temples, sharp features, stubble of the designer variety. Under the bristle, his face was pale and taut, his lips thin and a bluish-grey colour. The body was cold, which was no surprise after spending the night in the lake. It was also still stiff, suggesting he had been dead more than eight and less than twenty-four hours, which meant between four o’clock the previous afternoon and eight o’clock that morning. That was no help. Magnus doubted whether the pathologist would be able to come up with anything very precise about time of death. It was often difficult to be certain of a drowning, whether the victim had died before or after immersion in water. Sand or weed in the lungs was a clue, but that would have to wait for the autopsy.

  Gently Magnus parted the professor’s hair and examined the wound at the back of his skull.

  He turned to Baldur. ‘I think I know where your murder weapon is.’

  ‘Where?’ Baldur asked.

  Magnus pointed out to the deep grey waters of the lake. Somewhere out there the rift between the continental plates at Thingvellir continued downwards to a depth of several hundred feet.

  Baldur sighed. ‘We need divers.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ said Magnus. ‘You’ll never find it.’

  Baldur frowned.

  ‘He was hit by a rock,’ Magnus explained. ‘Something with jagged edges. There are still flecks of stone in the wound. I have no idea where the rock came from, possibly the dirt road back there, some of those stones are pretty big. Your lab could tell you. But my guess is the killer threw it into the lake afterwards. Unless he was very stupid – it’s the perfect place to lose a rock.’

  ‘Do you have forensic training?’ Baldur asked, suspiciously.

  ‘Not much,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve just seen a few dead people with dents in their heads. Can I see inside the house?’

  Baldur nodded. They walked back up the path to the summer house. The place was getting the full forensics treatment, powerful lamps, a vacuum cleaner, and at least five technicians crawling around with tweezers and fingerprint powder.

  Magnus looked around. The door opened directly into a large living area, with big windows overlooking the lake. Walls and floor were soft wood, the furniture was modern but not expensive. Lots of bookshelves: novels in English and Icelandic, history books, some specialist literary criticism. An impressive collection of CDs: classical, jazz, Icelanders Magnus had never heard of. No television. A desk covered with papers occupied one corner of the room, and in the middle were chairs and a sofa around a low table, on which was a glass half filled with red wine, and a tumbler containing the dregs of what looked like Coke. Both were covered in a thin film of smudged fingerprint powder. Through one open door Magnus could see a kitchen. There were three other doors that led off the living room, presumably to bedrooms or a bathroom.

  ‘We think he was struck over here,’ said Baldur, pointing towards the desk. There were signs of fresh scrubbing on the wooden floor, and a few inches away, two chalk marks surrounded tiny specks.

  ‘Can you do DNA analysis on this?’

  ‘In case the blood came from the murderer?’ Baldur asked.

  Magnus nodded.

  ‘We can. We send it to a lab in Norway. It takes a while for the results to come back.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Magnus. In Boston the DNA lab was permanently backed up; everything was a rush job and so nothing was. Somehow Magnus suspected that the Norwegian lab might treat its neighbour’s lone request with a bit more respect.

  ‘So we think that Agnar was hit on the back of the head here as he was turning towards the desk. Then dragged out of the house and dumped in the lake.’

  ‘Sounds plausible,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Except …’ Baldur hesitated. Magnus wondered if he was wary about expressing doubts in front of his boss.

  ‘Except what?’

  Baldur glanced at Magnus, hesitating. ‘
Come and look at this.’ He led Magnus through to the kitchen. It was tidy, except for an open bottle of wine and the makings of a ham and cheese sandwich on the counter.

  ‘We found some additional specks of blood here,’ Baldur said, pointing to the counter. ‘They look like high-velocity blood spatter, but that makes no sense. Perhaps Agnar hurt himself earlier. Perhaps he somehow staggered in here, but there are no other signs of a struggle in here at all. Perhaps the murderer came in here to clean himself up. Yet if that were the case, you would expect the spatters to be much bigger.’

  Magnus glanced around the room. Three flies were battering the window in a never-ending attempt to get out.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘It’s the flies.’

  ‘Flies?’

  ‘Sure. They land on the body, gorge themselves, then fly into the kitchen where it’s warm. There they regurgitate the blood – it helps them to digest it. Maybe they wanted some of the sandwich for dessert.’ Magnus bent down to examine the plate. ‘Yes. There’s some more there. You’ll be able to see better with a magnifying glass, or Luminol if you have any. Of course it means that the body must have been lying around in here long enough for the flies to have their feast. But that’s only fifteen, twenty minutes.’

  Baldur still wasn’t smiling, but the Commissioner was. ‘Thank you,’ was all the inspector could manage.

  ‘Footprints?’ asked Magnus, looking at the floor. Footprints should show up well on the polished wood.

  ‘Yes,’ said Baldur. ‘One set, size forty-five. Which is odd.’

  It was Magnus’s turn to look puzzled. ‘How so?’

  ‘Icelanders usually take their shoes off when they enter a house. Except perhaps if they are a foreign visitor and don’t know the customs. We spend as much time looking for fibres from socks as footprints.’