It was two and a half hours from Reykjavík to Ólafsvík, and Magnus was glad that Vigdís was willing to do the driving. They retraced Magnus’s route of that morning north to Borgarnes, and then they took the dramatic road along the west coast through lava fields and beneath glowering mountains towards Snaefellsnes. On a clear day, Magnus could see the snow-topped peak of Snaefellsjökull floating above Faxaflói Bay from his window in police headquarters in Reykjavík. But that afternoon, the mountains that formed the spine of the peninsula were covered in thick grey cloud.
Magnus filled Vigdís in on the details of the case as they drove, and spoke to Árni on his phone for updates from Saudárkrókur. The only information of any note was that a couple of French tourists had seen a lone young woman with short, streaked blonde hair standing next to a small blue car parked in a lay-by a few kilometres east of town, looking out at the island of Drangey. They had pulled up next to her to share the view. They reckoned the time was between eight and eight-thirty on Monday evening.
If that was Carlotta, it suggested she had driven north from Glaumbaer after her visit there. It sounded as if she was killing time, rather than rushing to meet someone or to do something.
‘What did Thelma say when you told her you were bringing me with you?’ asked Vigdís.
‘Nothing,’ said Magnus.
‘Nothing? Are you sure? She didn’t suggest taking Róbert instead?’
‘Well, she raised her eyebrows.’
‘I thought so!’ Vigdís’s lips pursed in frustration.
‘That’s all she did, Vigdís. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Of course it does. She’s undermining your confidence in me.’
Magnus snorted. ‘That’s dumb, Vigdís, and you know it. What is your problem with her, anyway? She’s got to be an improvement on Baldur.’ Baldur hadn’t liked either of them, basically for who they were. Magnus was a smart-arsed American and Baldur had no idea how anyone could think a black woman could possibly be a detective in Iceland. As far as he was concerned, both of them had been foisted on him by a commissioner who had been swayed by the glamour of foreign ideas. But Baldur was gone now, to sap the spirits of the Traffic Department. Thelma was much more modern in her outlook. She had even spent two years doing a masters in criminology somewhere in the States.
‘At least with Baldur you knew who you were dealing with. I can handle reactionary Icelandic males. But Thelma is different.’
‘What do you mean? Do you think she has a problem with your colour?’
‘No.’
They drove on in silence for a couple of kilometres. The lonely crater of Eldborg emerged from the moisture-filled gloom ahead of them, a ring of rock rising a hundred metres above the rough field of mossy lava.
‘Is she the reason why you haven’t been promoted?’
‘Yes,’ Vigdís said. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘Why?’ asked Magnus. ‘Did you screw up somehow?’
‘Oh, thanks for the vote of confidence, Magnús.’
‘Hey, Vigdís, I’ve seen you break the rules many times. I would never doubt your competence, but I would doubt your ability to do what you are told. Just like I’d doubt myself.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Vigdís. ‘But actually without you around these last few years, I have been remarkably obedient. No, she just doesn’t like me.’
‘Why not?’
‘It took me a while to figure it out. She is one of the two or three successful women in the police. And she had to fight hard to get there, especially when she lost her leg. She was twenty-six then, she could have been invalided out, but she insisted on staying on, and — to their credit — they let her. She’s ambitious, she’s tough as nails and she’s successful. She used to be my role model.’
‘Used to be? What’s wrong with her?’
‘Most women get intimidated or angry when they are the only female in the room, but Thelma likes it. She can handle the men, but she’s scared of the women. Since she became head of the department, we haven’t taken on a single woman. They’ve all been men. And it makes me sick.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, I’m quite sure. She knows I know. And she knows I don’t like it.’
‘You’re just imagining it, Vigdís. She really doesn’t seem like the jealous type to me.’
‘You watch her,’ said Vigdís. ‘Next time you’re in a meeting with her and some other men and a woman — me for instance — you watch her. You’ll see what I mean.’
Magnus shook his head.
Vigdís smiled wryly. ‘But you’ll be OK. At least if I never get promoted you’ll still have me to drive you around.’
They headed west and the clouds lifted, shredding on the spine of the mountain range, letting columns of yellow sunshine streak through. They climbed the pass between the south side of the Snaefellsnes peninsula and the north. As they crested the ridge a familiar view spread out before them: the southern shore of Breidafjördur, or Broad Fjord, with its multitude of islands and the West Fjords in the distance.
Two farms clung to the shoreline, separated by a mile of tumbling frozen lava: the Berserkjahraun or Berserkers’ Lava Field, named after the two Swedish warriors who had lain buried there for a thousand years.
It was at the farm on the left, Bjarnarhöfn, that Magnus and his little brother Ollie had spent four miserable years of their childhood being looked after by their grandparents. It was at this farm that the key to the murder of Magnus’s father in Massachusetts had lain. And it was at Bjarnarhöfn, seven years before, that Magnus had found the body of his own grandfather, who had caused him and his whole family so much pain over the years.
Vigdís glanced at him as she guided the car down towards the plain by the shore. ‘Have you been back here?’
‘No. Or at least, not since I left Iceland last time. The place is now farmed by my uncle and his wife. I suppose I should go and see them. It’s difficult.’
Bjarnarhöfn was the location where Magnus’s whole family had been blown apart, collateral damage everywhere. He had done his bit to pick up the pieces immediately afterwards, but he hadn’t even told them he was back in Iceland.
‘I remember them,’ said Vigdís. ‘Do you want to stop there now for half an hour?’
‘No. We had better get on to Ólafsvík.’
They both knew they could spare half an hour, but Vigdís didn’t argue.
They reached the main road running along the coast and turned left, west towards Ólafsvík. Bjarnarhöfn was only a couple of kilometres away, over the heaving and swirling lava field that Magnus remembered so well.
‘Is Ollie out of jail?’ Vigdís asked.
‘Soon. October. He made parole: good behaviour, amazingly enough.’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sounds like it didn’t go well?’
‘No. He blames me for putting him inside.’
‘What does he expect? You had to testify. You couldn’t lie.’
‘I think he thinks I should have done.’
Ollie had been in Iceland when their grandfather had been murdered. But he had been imprisoned in the States for the peripheral role he had played in that other murder nearly twenty years earlier, of their father. The district attorney had called Magnus as a witness. As a police officer, he couldn’t very well refuse to testify, nor could he not tell the truth. And, actually, Ollie deserved to face trial for what he had done. But Ollie didn’t see it that way. He thought his big brother, who had stood by him all his life, had finally turned against him.
Part of Magnus agreed with him. But once Ollie was out on the streets he would want to take his revenge on Magnus, in ways petty and not so petty. Ollie had always been an expert in manipulating his elder brother’s desire to protect him. Magnus had had enough; now he was in Iceland Ollie would just have to face Boston on his own.