66° North (16 page)

It was frustrating. Magnus could feel himself being drawn into the investigation. He wanted to find Óskar’s killer, the person who had taken their son from them. He’d love to fly back to London with Sharon to see the investigation through at first hand, but he knew that Thorkell and the Commissioner would never authorize it. Why should they?

He wanted there to be an Icelandic link so that he could get properly involved. Perhaps Harpa was that link. His intuition told him that there was more than a common employer and a fouryear-old night of passion connecting Harpa, Gabríel Örn and Óskar. But maybe that was just what he wanted to believe.

It was a shame he couldn’t talk to Sharon about it.

There were five of them at the table in the crowded bar: Magnus, Sharon Piper, Ingileif, Árni and Vigdís. Ingileif had abandoned her party with her fashionable clients to join them, which Magnus appreciated, although he suspected it was curiosity that had drawn her.

As usual, the Icelanders were much better dressed than the foreigners, and when it came to dress sense Magnus was definitely a foreigner. Árni looked cool in a gangly kind of way in a black sweater under a linen jacket. Both Vigdís and Ingileif were wearing jeans, but both looked stunning, with subtle make-up and jewellery, whereas Sharon was wearing the grey pants and pink blouse she had had on all day, and Magnus a checked shirt over a T-shirt and old jeans.

The conversation was animated but slurred. Árni and Magnus had moved on to whisky, but the women had been drinking wine all night. How many bottles, Magnus had long lost count. Vigdís was quizzing Sharon about what it was like to be a woman in the Metropolitan police, with Árni translating frantically and inaccurately.

‘It’s nice to get away for a night or two,’ Sharon said.

‘Have you got kids?’ Ingileif asked.

‘A couple. My daughter’s at uni, and my son has just left school. No job – says he can’t get one with the recession, which might be true. But he’s been getting into all kinds of trouble recently. He expects me to get him out of it, but I’ve had enough. I don’t know what I did wrong. He was a good kid until three years ago.’

‘And your husband?’

‘Oh, he can’t control him. He just sits at home now, watching golf on tellie all day.’

‘Is he retired?’ Vigdís asked.

‘He used to work in a bank, in the back office. He never got paid very much, and they made him redundant in March. He’s tried to get another job, but he’s too old, they say. Fifty-one. So it’s all down…’ She blinked and swayed alarmingly. ‘It’s all down to me.’

‘Are the police losing their jobs?’ asked Vigdís, in English. ‘They are in Reykjavík.’

Árni translated into slurred Icelandic.

‘No,’ Sharon said. ‘But they are going to screw us on our pensions, I’m sure of that.’ She blinked. ‘Hang on. You
do
speak English.’

Vigdís glanced at Magnus and Árni. She giggled. ‘Only when I’m drunk.’

Árni translated into Icelandic faithfully. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said in English, looking perplexed.

‘Why don’t you speak English when you are sober?’ Sharon asked.

‘Because everyone expects me to speak English,’ Vigdís said in a strong Icelandic accent. ‘Because I am black nobody believes I am an Icelander.’

‘I had noticed you look a little different from all these others,’ said Sharon. ‘But I didn’t want to say anything.’

Vigdís smiled. ‘Foreigners are OK. It is the Icelanders that are a problem. Some of them think that it doesn’t matter where you were born, what language you speak, unless your ancestors,
all
your ancestors, arrived here in a longship a thousand years ago, then you are a foreigner.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Sharon. ‘One of yours didn’t.’

‘My father was an American soldier of some kind at Keflavík air base. I never met him. My mother never talks about him. But because of him people don’t believe that I am who I am.’

‘I believe you are an Icelander, Vigdís,’ Sharon said. ‘A very nice Icelander. And a good copper. That’s important, you know.’

‘Have you ever been to America?’ Ingileif asked. They were all speaking English now.

‘Not yet.’ Vigdís tried and failed to suppress a smile.

Ingileif noticed. ‘But?’

‘I’m going next week. Tuesday. To
Nýja Jórvík
. New York.’

‘What are you going to see?’ Árni asked.

‘
Who
are you going to see?’ Ingileif corrected him.

‘A guy,’ Vigdís admitted.

‘Not an American, surely?’ said Magnus.

‘No, an Icelander,’ said Vigdís. Her smile broadened. ‘He’s the brother of an old friend from Keflavík. He works for a TV company. I met him when he was visiting his family here over the summer.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Piper.

‘How are you going to deal with the language issues?’ Magnus asked.

‘She’ll be OK,’ said Árni. ‘As long as she stays drunk all the time, she can speak English.’

‘I’ll have to think about that,’ said Vigdís. ‘You’re right, it’s an important point of principle.’

A phone chirped from somewhere. Everyone glanced at each other, then Sharon reached into her bag. ‘Hello.’

She listened and straightened up. ‘This is DS Piper,’ she said, carefully. Magnus felt sorry for her. It was always tough getting a call from the station when you had had a few.

‘Yes, Charlie is my son… You are holding him for what?… Tooting police station?… He did what to an officer?… Did you call my husband?… The problem is I’m not in the country at the moment, I’m in Iceland… If I were you I would lock him up and throw away the key.’ She hung up.

‘Trouble at home?’ asked Ingileif.

‘Charlie is in trouble again. He thinks he can rely on me to bail him out, literally. But not this time. This time he’s going to get what’s coming to him.’ She leaned back into the bench and closed her eyes.

Her phone rang again. She ignored it. ‘Is she asleep?’ said Ingileif.

Magnus picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Can I speak to my mum?’ It was a young male voice.

‘She’s kinda busy right now,’ said Magnus, glancing at the woman lolling opposite him.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ the voice shouted. ‘Are you shagging my mum? I want to speak to her!’

‘One moment.’ He put his hand over his phone. ‘Sharon? It’s your son.’

Sharon opened her eyes. ‘You know what? Tell him I’ll talk to him in the morning.’ She closed her eyes again.

‘Night, night, Charlie,’ Magnus said. ‘Sleep well.’

T
HE SUN WAS
shining over Ólafsvík as Benedikt rode Skjona out of the town back towards Hraun. He had been representing his family at his cousin Thorgils’s confirmation – his mother couldn’t afford to spend the time away from the farm.

The talk in Ólafsvík had been all about the invasion of Iceland the previous week by the British. Opinion was divided. Some people thought it was better to be invaded by the British than the Germans. Others saw no reason why Iceland couldn’t be left alone, they had no part in a war fought on a continent a thousand kilometres away. But everyone was hoping for a boom to match that of the Kaiser’s war. Fish, wool and lamb prices were already rising, and people thought that with the British around, Icelandic exports would be protected.

Of course no one had actually seen a British soldier. They were all two hundred kilometres away in Reykjavík. Benedikt smiled to himself. He could imagine Hallgrímur preparing himself to fight off any British invaders that tried to cross the lava field to Bjarnarhöfn.

Hallgrímur and Benedikt, now aged sixteen and fourteen, barely spoke any more. They were polite to each other, especially in front of others from their respective families, but they had stopped playing together that winter. Gunnar, Hallgrímur’s father, was a frequent visitor to Hraun. He was a good neighbour to Benedikt’s
mother, in particular helping fix things around the farm. He was careful to teach Benedikt while he worked. Benedikt hated these times. He knew that there were a lot of important skills he could learn from Gunnar, but he could not bear to treat his neighbour like a helpful uncle.

He preferred talking to Hallgrímur’s mother, but she was much less often seen at Hraun.

Benedikt rode Skjona down to the beach, and set off at a gallop. Horse and rider thrilled as they splashed through the surf and the black sand. A few kilometres in front of them rose Búland’s Head, a massive shoulder of rock and grass that jutted out into the sea. A broad cloud draped the top of the mountain, and seemed to be slipping down towards the water.

Benedikt rode back to the road and the bridge over the River Fródá. This was where Thurídur had lived, the beautiful woman whom Björn of Breidavík had wooed a thousand years before. The same Björn who had defied the great chieftain Snorri, and who had ended up in America amongst the Skraelings.

But Benedikt’s father hadn’t escaped. He was still lying at the bottom of Swine Lake, or at least his bones were.

And neither Benedikt nor Hallgrímur had told anyone what they had heard that day.

Benedikt knew that his father had been wrong to betray his mother, but he didn’t hold that against him. His mother had been robbed of her husband, which was much worse. She was a tough woman, and she had coped well. Widowhood was common in Iceland, many husbands lost their lives at sea, a few on the fells. There were four children and Benedikt and Hildur, his elder sister, had done all they could to help her. But Benedikt was not a natural farmer like Hallgrímur, or like his father.

It was all Gunnar’s fault.

It was funny, for the couple of days that he had been staying with his aunt and uncle in Ólafsvík, he had forgotten about Gunnar. The rage, which constantly seemed to be churning within his breast, had disappeared.

But now, seeing the River Fródá, the scene of that other seduction so many centuries ago, it had returned.

He felt apprehensive as he began to climb the path up the edge of Búland’s Head. The sunshine was behind him now, and the base of the cloud only a few metres above.

He remembered the first time he had ridden that path around Búland’s Head. It had been with his father, the summer before he died, and they had been visiting his aunt’s family in Ólafsvík. Benedikt had been scared to death. There were all kinds of stories that drifted around Búland’s Head. Trolls who threw travellers into the sea. Criminals who were hanged there, witches who were stoned. But what was really scary wasn’t the stories, but the path itself, an impossibly narrow ledge cut into the side of the mountain, hundreds of metres above the sea.

There was a story about a father and son, who lived on either side of the head, who had argued and become bitter enemies. One day they both met while riding around the headland. Neither gave way and each passed the other at a trot; miraculously neither one slipped. Afterwards, they discovered that the silver buttons that each wore at the side of their trousers had been torn off.

There was a stone on the other side that Benedikt had tapped for luck on his way out. He wished there was one on this side that he could tap on the way back.

The path wound higher and higher. Mist swirled all around them, pressing in on horse and boy in a clammy, silent grip. He was now so high up that he could no longer hear the surf on the rocks below. Just the clopping of hoofs on stone, and the trickle of water on rock all around him. He hoped to God he didn’t come across someone approaching from the other direction.

There was nothing much he could do, apart from concentrating on keeping his balance. It was all up to Skjona, and she had picked her way over this route several times before.

The path rose inexorably. They came to a section where it had completely worn away. Skjona’s hoof loosened a stone that clattered
down to the sea below. The mare paused, snorting, planning her route.

And then Benedikt heard a sound. Hoofs. A boulder jutted out about ten metres ahead and in a moment a horse and rider appeared.

‘Hello, there!’ the rider called.

Benedikt recognized the voice. Gunnar.

‘Is that Benni?’

‘Yes, it is.’

Gunnar kicked on his horse who picked his way through what remained of the path and paused a couple of metres in front of Skjona.

‘What are you doing here?’ Gunnar asked, his voice friendly.

‘I’ve just been to my cousin’s confirmation in Ólafsvík.’

‘Ah, yes, your mother told me about that. Thorgils, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘All right, son,’ Gunnar said. ‘This is going to be a bit tricky.’

Benedikt winced. He
hated
it when Gunnar called him ‘son’. Fear fed his anger.

‘Get Skjona to go backwards. It’s not far. Just a few metres and we will be able to pass.’

‘But she won’t be able to see,’ Benedikt protested. ‘She’ll fall.’

‘No she won’t. She’ll be fine. Just take it slowly. Don’t scare her.’

But Benedikt was paralysed with fear. ‘I can’t. You’ll have to go back yourself.’

‘That won’t work,’ said Gunnar. ‘I have much further to go than you. Come on. It’s only five metres. If we try to pass right here, one of us will fall.’

Suddenly, Benedikt knew what he had to do. He summoned up his courage and tugged gently at the reins. Skjona pinned back her ears, but shuffled backwards. Another stone rattled loose down the cliff until it was lost in the cloud.

‘That’s it,’ said Gunnar, his voice calm, encouraging. ‘That’s it, Benni. She’s doing fine. You’re nearly there.’

And indeed Skjona and Benedikt were back on the path proper. It was just wide enough for two horses to pass.

‘All right, hold still,’ said Gunnar. Gently he urged his own horse on. Slowly he passed Benedikt on the outside.

For a moment Benedikt hesitated. He knew what he did or didn’t do in the next two or three seconds would change his life.

He freed his left foot from his stirrup. Placed it gently on the flank of Gunnar’s horse.

And pushed.

He parked the vehicle at the foot of the hill, lifted the shapeless canvas bag off the front seat next to him, and set off up the side of the fell along a sheep track.