They reached the cairn nestling in a hollow, a flat mound of stone big enough to contain two large men.
‘This is it?’ Ingileif said. ‘Wow. And do they really think the berserkers are inside?’
‘They dug it up a hundred years ago,’ Magnus said. ‘There are two skeletons buried there. Apparently they are not particularly tall, but they were powerfully built.’
Ingileif stopped and looked around at the wondrous stone shapes. ‘This must have been a great place to play as a kid.’
‘Yes. Although Óli was scared of it. Grandpa told him the berserkers were still roaming around.’
‘But not you?’
Magnus took a deep breath. ‘I tried not to let my grandfather scare me. I didn’t always succeed.’
Ingileif glanced at him. Magnus could tell she wanted to ask him more.
Suddenly he needed to leave. ‘Let’s go.’
‘No. I’d like to walk a bit further.’
‘Come on.’ Magnus turned on his heel and strode rapidly along the path back to the car. He didn’t look behind him until he reached it. Ingileif was struggling to catch up.
Wordlessly, Magnus started the engine and drove off.
They passed a spot where a road peeled off to the right. ‘Is that the way to Bjarnarhöfn?’ Ingileif asked.
Magnus didn’t answer.
The track became narrow, with a ten foot drop on either side into the rocky waves. A car approached kicking up dust, an old station wagon. Magnus pulled over as close as he could to the side of the track, leaving enough room for the other car to pass.
The car stopped a few feet ahead. It flashed its lights and sounded the horn.
An old man was behind the wheel.
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Magnus in English.
There was really nowhere for Magnus to go, unless he tried to reverse the Range Rover a hundred yards back down the track.
‘Come on, you old git,’ Ingileif said good-naturedly. ‘There’s plenty of room.’
The ‘old git’ edged forward until he pulled parallel with Magnus. Magnus recognized the broad weather-beaten face, the angry blue eyes. The wrinkles were deeper, the grey wiry hair thinner, but it was the same man.
Magnus stared straight ahead.
The man lowered his window. ‘Can’t you pull over further, you selfish bastard!’ he shouted. Then, ‘Magnús?’
Magnus put the car into gear and accelerated along the track, almost driving the large vehicle over the edge.
‘Jesus!’ said Ingileif. ‘Was that him?’
‘Of course it was him,’ said Magnus.
‘And he recognized you?’
‘You heard him say my name.’
The car lurched and skidded through the lava until it hit the main road. Magnus turned to the right up the pass over the mountains.
‘Slow down, Magnús!’ Ingileif said.
Magnus ignored her.
Ingileif stayed quiet as Magnus threw the car around the bends up the hill. But after they had crested the head of the pass, the road on the other side was straighter.
‘What did he do to you, Magnús?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘But you have to.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do, Magnús!’ Ingileif said. ‘You have to face up to it some time. You can’t just bury it.’
‘Why not?’ Magnus said. He could feel the anger in his voice. ‘Why the fuck not?’
Ingileif’s eyes widened at Magnus’s tone. But she didn’t back down. Ingileif didn’t do backing down. ‘Because otherwise it will eat away at you for the rest of your life. Just like it has for the last twenty years. You told me it was your father’s murder that bothered you, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’
Magnus didn’t answer.
‘Isn’t there? Answer me, Magnús.’
‘No.’
‘Answer me.’
‘Ingileif?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
A hundred and seventy kilometres is a long way to drive in silence, even if you are going thirty kilometres an hour over the speed limit.
He turned his motorbike off the little road, on to an even smaller road, not much more than a track with a strip of tarmac at its centre, and stopped to examine his Michelin map. He couldn’t believe how many trees there were in this country, specifically how many apple trees. They were unknown in Iceland. He would have plucked a fruit from the small orchard adjacent to the road, but that would mean taking off his helmet to eat it, and he didn’t want to do that.
He knew exactly where he was. He had spent a couple of hours examining the map at home and checking it against Google Earth, until this small strip of Normandy was etched on his brain. Sure enough, beyond the orchard the road curved to the left. On one side were small fields of pasture, on the other, woodland.
He kicked the motorbike into life and drove it slowly and quietly along the lane. He couldn’t see anyone. That was good. The bike had Dutch number plates, which made him feel conspicuous here in France. They should have thought of that, but as long as no one saw him, it wouldn’t matter.
He counted the telegraph poles running along the side of the road. At the seventh, he stopped and pushed the bike into the woods opposite. He spent a couple of minutes making sure that it was concealed from the road, yet ready for a quick getaway.
He made his way through the trees about twenty metres until he reached the other side. A group of cows were chewing their cud in a small field, their tails swishing away the flies. Beyond the field was the barn.
He moved through the edge of the wood just a few metres in from the field, until he found the tree he was looking for. It had been carved with a ‘B’ a metre above the ground. ‘B’ for Bjartur, although only he would know that; the French police would have no clue what it stood for when they discovered it. The patch of freshly dug ground was five metres to the west of the tree, partially hidden under a broken branch.
He slid the pack off his back, took out a trowel, and started to dig. The earth came away easily, and within a few minutes he had revealed a polythene bag containing rifle and ammunition.
A Remington 700. He grinned. He eased the rifle out of its bag and checked the mechanism. Everything worked perfectly.
Then he pulled out his binoculars and examined the barn. It was large and had been converted into a holiday home. Behind it was the farmhouse to which the barn must once have been attached. It was a sunny afternoon, and so there were no lights on in the building, but a door out to the garden was open. And in the garden were two chairs, a book resting open on the seat of one of them. There was a car parked on the patch of gravel in the front – only one car, which implied there were no bodyguards. Excellent. The car was an Audi estate: he could just make out the number plate – British, not French.
It was hard to estimate range with any precision, but he guessed a hundred and twenty-five metres was about right. The chair seemed to be about the same distance away from him as the petrol container had been back in the mountain valley the previous morning.
He found a good spot to lie, with the barrel resting on a log, and waited. It was a sunny day, the French September sun was much stronger than its Icelandic counterpart, and he felt uncomfortably warm in his motorcycle leathers. He would wait until nightfall if he had to, although having spotted the open book on the chair he was optimistic that that would be unnecessary.
He ran through the getaway in his mind. He would be sure to drive the bike at a steady speed so as not to attract attention. It was fifteen kilometres to the isolated water-filled quarry where he would chuck the polythene bag containing rifle, trowel, binoculars and bullet casings, and then twenty more kilometres before he hit the autoroute and the long ride back to Amsterdam.
Through the binoculars he could see movement in the house. He tensed. The target emerged.
He put down the binoculars and rested the rifle on his shoulder. The target was wearing a narrow-checked shirt and carrying a mug. Tea, no doubt – so English. The target walked across to the chair and bent to place the mug by its side. Stood up. Surveyed the landscape.