Where the Shadows Lie

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘So Dad and I rolled around in the snow, then I pushed him and he fell, hitting his head on a rock.’ Pétur gulped. The tears came into his eyes. ‘I thought I had knocked him out, but he was dead. Just like that.’

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that! You pushed him over a cliff! He was found at the bottom of the cliff.’

  ‘I didn’t, I swear it. It was only a fall of a couple of metres. It was just the way he hit his head. On his temple – right here.’ Pétur tapped his own shaved skull.

  ‘So how do you explain the cliff?’

  ‘Reverend Hákon saw what had happened. He took charge. I was a wreck after I saw what I had done. My mind was a blank. I couldn’t say anything, I couldn’t think anything. Hákon knew it was an accident. He told me to go, run away, pretend I was never there. So I ran.

  ‘He pushed Dad over the cliff. Oh, he was dead then, that’s for sure, the autopsy people got that wrong when they said he was alive for a few minutes. But Hákon covered for me.’

  Ingileif put a hand to her mouth, her brow knitted in anguish. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘So you were the elf the old sheep farmer saw?’

  ‘Elf?’ Pétur frowned.

  ‘Never mind.’

  Pétur smiled at his sister. ‘It’s true. I killed Dad. But it was a mistake. A dreadful, horrible mistake. If Hákon were alive he could tell you that.’ He took a step forward. Took his sister’s hands in his. Looked in her eyes – horrified, shocked, confused. ‘Can you forgive me, Inga?’

  Ingileif stood stunned for a moment. Then she backed off.

  ‘It wasn’t murder, Inga. Surely you understand that?’

  ‘But what about Aggi? And the pastor? Did you kill them as well?’

  ‘Don’t you see, I had to?’

  ‘What do you mean, you had to?’

  ‘As you know by now, Hákon took the ring. When Agnar went to see him, he guessed he had it. He accused Hákon of killing Dad and taking the ring. Hákon threw him out, of course, but then Agnar approached Tómas, tried to get him to act as an intermediary. He tried to blackmail Hákon through him.’

  ‘But what did all this have to do with you?’

  ‘Hákon had been good to me. He had kept me out of the police investigation completely. Until then, I had no idea what had happened to the ring, I had tried so hard not to think about it, or to ask questions about it, but it didn’t exactly surprise me that Hákon had taken it from Dad. So, in the end, Hákon called me. He explained what was going on, that it looked like he would have to tell the truth about what had happened to Dad, unless I did something.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘He didn’t say. But we both knew.’

  ‘Oh, my God! You did kill Aggi!’

  ‘I had to. Don’t you see, I had to?’

  Ingileif shook her head. ‘Of course you didn’t have to. And then you killed Hákon?’

  Pétur nodded. ‘Once his son was in jail and the police were after him, I knew the truth would come out.’

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘What do you mean, how could I?’ Pétur protested, with a flash of anger. ‘You were the one who insisted on putting Gaukur’s Saga up for sale. If it hadn’t been for that, all would be well.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. Yes, I made a mistake. But I had no idea what would happen. It was you! You who killed them!’ Ingileif took a step back. ‘OK, maybe you killed Dad by accident, but not the other two. Hang on – did you kill Sigursteinn as well?’

  Pétur nodded. ‘You have to admit he deserved it after what he had done to Birna. I flew back from London, met him in Reykjavík, bought him a few drinks.’

  ‘And he ended up in the harbour?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Ingileif said, her eyes wide. ‘You’re not my brother. Who are you?’

  Pétur closed his eyes. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s this.’ He took his hand out of his pocket. Showed her the ring on his finger. ‘Here. Take a look.’

  He slipped it off and handed it to her. It was his last chance. Maybe the ring would corrupt his sister just like it had corrupted him, his father, Hákon and all the others.

  Ingileif stared at it. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She closed her fist around it. Pétur felt an urge to grab it, but resisted. Let her have it. Let it do its evil magic with her.

  ‘So, what are you going to do?’ Pétur asked.

  ‘I’m going to the police,’ Ingileif said. ‘What did you think I would do?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Pétur. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ Ingileif said. She glared at her brother. In addition to fear and shock, there was hatred there now.

  Pétur’s shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes. Oh, well. The ring was going to have its way. He had been foolish to think that this could end any other way.

  He took a step forward.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  MAGNUS PASSED A tour bus on its way out as he screeched into the parking lot. It was almost deserted. Two cars were parked next to each other – a big SUV and a much smaller hatchback, with a third a few feet away.

  ‘That’s Ingileif’s,’ said Jubb, pointing to the hatchback.

  ‘Stay here!’ shouted Magnus, as he leaped out of the car.

  He ran across the parking lot and down some wooden steps. The waterfall opened up before him, a cauldron of roaring water. The path went to a ledge with an observation point halfway down the waterfall.

  Nothing. No one. Just water. An unimaginable volume of water.

  He looked up at the falls. The path stopped just short of them, all pretty much in his view. But downstream were more steps, a path, another parking lot, a gorge. Plenty of places to hide out of view.

  Magnus ran down the steps towards the gorge.

  ‘Pési? What are you doing?’ Ingileif’s eyes widened, but anger over-came fear. Pétur knew he would have a struggle on his hands. His sister wouldn’t go quietly. He wished he had to hand a rock or some other blunt instrument to hit her with first. If he hit her hard enough with his fist, he might knock her out.

  He swallowed. It was going to be very hard to strike Ingileif.

  But … But he had to.

  He took another step forward. But then he saw some movement out of the corner of his eye. A couple with a tripod appeared over the lip of the hollow. One of them, a woman by her size and shape, waved. Pétur didn’t acknowledge her but turned back to Ingileif, who hadn’t noticed.

  He would have to play for time, until they had gone.

  ‘Do you want me to turn myself in?’ he asked his sister.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Why should I?’ said Pétur.

  For two minutes they continued a halting conversation, with Pétur watching the couple through his peripheral vision. He saw them set up the tripod, move it, and then take it down. Whether they had taken a picture of the falls or decided against the shot, Pétur didn’t know. But he was relieved to see them disappear back over the rim of the hollow.

  He took another step towards his sister.

  Jubb didn’t stay in the car. He looked around the car park, and then made his way to the information office. A middle-aged woman inside wished him a good afternoon in English, having sized him up as a foreigner.

  ‘Have you seen two people here?’ Jubb asked. ‘A man and a woman? The man is bald, and the woman is blonde. Icelanders.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I did just speak to a German couple. The man had a woolly hat so I couldn’t see if he was bald. But the woman had dark hair, I am sure of it. They were going to take photographs of the falls.’

  ‘But no Icelanders?’

  ‘No, I am sorry. Of course, I don’t have a good view of the car park from here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jubb.

  As he stepped out of the information centre, he saw the German couple the woman had mentioned, walking down into the car park from the hill above, h
uddling together against the weather. The man had a tripod slung over his shoulder.

  Jubb trotted over to them. ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said the woman.

  ‘Have you seen a man and a woman up there? The man is bald and the woman is blonde?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘Just over the top of this hill here.’

  Jubb thought for a second. Should he run up there himself, or should he get Magnus?

  Get Magnus.

  He ran down from the car park towards the falls.

  Pétur decided against hitting Ingileif, at least right away. He turned and sauntered over towards the edge of the gorge.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Ingileif called after him.

  ‘To look at the falls.’

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, I’m listening.’

  As he had hoped Ingileif followed. She was still arguing with him, pleading with him to give himself up. But she was keeping her distance.

  Pétur paused, talked and then moved on again. This seemed to work. Finally he was within a few feet of the rim of the gorge. He had to shout to be heard.

  Ingileif had stopped dead. She wasn’t moving any further.

  Then he saw in her eyes that she understood what he was doing – tempting her forward to her death. She took a few steps back-wards and then turned and ran. Pétur lunged after her. His legs were longer, he was stronger, fitter, he caught her up, throwing her to the ground.

  She screamed, but the scream was killed by the mist and the roar of the water. He pinned her to the grass, but she raised her right hand and scratched at his face.

  Damn! That would be very hard to explain to the cops. He would think of something.

  He hit her in the face. She screamed, but continued to writhe beneath him. He hit her again, harder. She lay still.

  He swallowed. His eyes were hot with tears. But he had had no choice. He had never had a choice.

  He dragged her over towards the rim of the gorge. That spot wouldn’t quite work. Below the cliff a grassy slope dropped down to the water. It was steep, but not quite steep enough. He would have to go a few metres upstream.

  He pulled her along a rough path, her legs and body knocking against bare rock. She seemed to be coming round. But he was nearly to a good spot; the top of a rock jutting out with a near vertical drop down to the river hurtling towards the falls.

  The ring! She had the ring. Damn it. Perhaps she had dropped it when they had fought. Or perhaps it was in her pockets.

  He lay her down. She groaned. He began to search her pockets.

  And then, out of nowhere, a large shape flew through the air and bowled him over.

  Magnus never heard Steve Jubb’s shouts above the din of the waterfall. But he did pause and look back up the way he had come.

  He saw the portly figure of Jubb wobbling down the path towards him, his arms waving.

  Magnus ran. It was uphill and it was steep but he sprinted.

  He usually kept himself very fit, running several miles a day if he could. In Iceland he hadn’t had the chance, and already the edge was off his fitness. His heart was pounding and the breaths were hard to take. It was a steep path, but he took it as fast as he could.

  ‘Up there!’ Jubb said. ‘Above the waterfall.’

  Magnus didn’t wait for more explanation but continued running uphill.

  His chest felt like it was going to explode as he scrambled over the rim of the hill.

  He saw them. Two figures, a few feet from the edge of the cliff, one lying on the ground, the other crouching over her.

  Magnus ran faster downhill towards them. There was no chance of Pétur hearing him in all the noise, and he was concentrating too hard on Ingileif to see what was coming at him.

  Magnus threw himself at Pétur and together they rolled to the cliff edge.

  Pétur writhed, broke away, and hauled himself to his feet. He stood swaying on the edge of the cliff above the river.

  Magnus stared at him, keeping his distance of a few feet. He had no desire to plunge over the cliff in a death-grapple with Pétur. Arrest was going to be difficult. For a start, Magnus didn’t have any handcuffs with him. He didn’t know what he would do if he managed to overpower Pétur – perhaps get Steve Jubb to sit on him for an hour until Vigdís showed up. Of course, if he hadn’t been in some Mickey-Mouse country, he would have a gun, in which case things would be much simpler. As it was …

  As it was, Magnus could see Pétur sizing him up. Pétur was tall and rangy. But Magnus was big, and he knew he looked like he could look after himself. People usually didn’t mess with Magnus.

  Magnus heard a groan behind him. Ingileif. That was good news: at least she was alive.

  ‘OK, Pétur,’ Magnus said evenly. ‘You had better give yourself up. There’s no way out for you now. Come with me.’

  Pétur hesitated. Then he glanced behind him, at the boiling river and the jagged rocks rising out of it. In a moment, he had turned and was gone.

  Magnus took a few steps and looked over the rim. There was a kind of path, or rather a series of hand-and footholds that led down to some rocks on the edge of the river. He could see that it would just be possible to clamber along these, down almost at the level of the river, and to climb up again further upstream.

  Magnus descended after Pétur. The spray had left the rocks extremely slippery, and Magnus had real trouble keeping his footing. Pétur was taking more risks, widening the gap. Magnus realized he would have been much better off keeping to the cliff top; he could probably have run upstream to the point Pétur was aiming for before Pétur reached it. It was too late now.

  Magnus felt his footing slip. He grabbed hold of the rock with one hand. Below, the river rushed headlong to the top edge of the waterfall. The water was a beautiful deadly mixture of green and white.

  Pure cold death.

  Magnus hauled himself up with both arms and lay panting on the rock. He saw Pétur skip across three rocks barely five feet above the river. The man’s balance was extraordinary.

  But then Pétur slipped. Like Magnus he grabbed hold of the rock with one arm and held on. But unlike Magnus, he couldn’t find a hold for his other hand. He dangled there, swinging, his legs bunched up beneath him, desperately trying to keep his feet out of the water, lest the river grabbed them and snatched him down.

  Magnus leaped on to one rock. Another. His sense of balance was not as good as Pétur’s. The rocks were about ten feet from the cliff edge now, out in the river.

  This was stupid.

  Pétur stared at him, his face wincing in agony at the effort of hanging on with one arm, his bald head dripping with moisture.

  He couldn’t hold on much longer.

  Magnus turned. He could see Ingileif standing on the edge of the cliff shouting and waving. She was beckoning to him to come. Magnus couldn’t hear what she was yelling above the roar, but he could see her lips. ‘Leave him!’ they seemed to be shouting.

  Magnus turned back to Pétur. Ingileif was right. He watched the man who had murdered four people, including his own father, and who had just tried to murder his own sister, fight for his life.

  Pétur’s eyes met Magnus’s. Pétur knew that Magnus had given up trying to reach him.

  He closed his eyes, his grip slipped and he fell without a cry. His body was whisked along the top of the spate and over the rim of the waterfall.

  Within two seconds he was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  MAGNUS SAW INGILEIF standing next to her brother’s white BMW four-wheel-drive, with the snow-covered mountain rising above her.

  He pulled up beside her and got out of his car.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said. Her face was pink in the cold, her eyes shining.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Never mind. I’m glad you came.’

  Magnus smiled. ‘I’m glad you asked me.’

  ‘I thought you might have go
ne back to America.’

  ‘Tomorrow. Although everyone in the police department thinks I’ve already left.’

  ‘So where are you staying?’

  ‘I can’t really tell you.’

  Ingileif frowned. ‘I would have thought that by now you would have trusted me.’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s not that. Let’s just say I’ve learned the hard way that the fewer people who know where I am the better.’

  There was a remote possibility that Soto would send out a replacement for the hit man who had shot Árni, so the Police Commissioner had decided to let everyone think that Magnus had flown back to Boston. Actually, he had sent Magnus to stay with his brother at his farm an hour and a half to the north of Reykjavík. It was a beautiful spot, on the edge of a fjord, with outstanding views. And the Commissioner’s brother and his family were hospitable.

  Nobody had heard anything from Colby. That was a good sign. All she had to do was lie low for a couple more days.

  ‘So, what do we do now?’ Magnus said, staring up at Mount Hekla rising above them.

  ‘Climb it, of course.’

  ‘Dare I ask why?’

  ‘What kind of Icelander are you?’ Ingileif said. ‘It’s a lovely day, so we’re going up a mountain. Don’t you want to?’

  ‘Oh, I’d like to,’ said Magnus. ‘Is it difficult?’ He had borrowed boots from the farmer, and he was more or less properly dressed for the occasion.

  ‘It’s easy in summer. It will be more difficult now. This early in May there’s still a lot of snow about, but we’ll manage. Let’s go.’

  So they set off up the side of the volcano. It was a glorious day, the sky was clear and cold and there was already a magnificent view stretching out behind them. The snow lay on lava and pumice, and was actually easier underfoot than the black rock and stone. Magnus felt good. The air was crisp, the exercise was invigorating, and it was nice to have Ingileif beside him. Or ahead of him. She set a rapid pace, which Magnus was happy to follow.

  ‘How’s your friend?’ she asked as they paused to catch their breath and admire the view. ‘The one who was shot?’