‘Will you please stop flirting with my wife?’
Magnus turned, shocked by the interruption, to see Davíd staring at him. His brow was twisted, his eyes shining.
‘Davíd!’ Eyrún exclaimed.
Magnus felt a flash of anger, but he controlled it. This guy was clearly not stable. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. ‘I didn’t mean to flirt. We were having a nice conversation, that’s all.’
‘I can see the way you are looking at her. I’m no fool. And Eyrún, why are you encouraging him?’
‘I’m not encouraging him!’ Eyrún snapped. Then, with a visible effort, she softened her voice. ‘Look, darling, Magnus is our guest. We should make him feel at home.’
‘I know how you want to make him feel at home.’
Eyrún reddened, but held her tongue.
Magnus pulled himself to his feet. He wanted to slug the guy. He wanted to slug him real bad.
A humourless smile had crept across Davíd’s face. Magnus turned to Eyrún.
‘Don’t Magnús,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you?’ said Davíd. ‘Go into a man’s home. Drink his wine. Flirt with his wife. And then attack him.’
A little voice of reason whispered to Magnus that beating up the Mayor’s spouse was not a good career move, no matter if he explicitly asked for it.
‘Thank you for a lovely dinner, Eyrún,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll be going now.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Eyrún.
‘Sure. Go right ahead,’ said Davíd.
‘Just to the door,’ said Eyrún.
‘Are you going to be OK?’ asked Magnus as she gave him his coat in the hallway.
‘Oh, he won’t touch me,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry about that. I should never have asked you. Davíd has been particularly bad these last couple of days.’
‘Is he sick?’ Magnus asked.
‘I think so,’ said Eyrún. ‘And I’m glad you realise it. He would never have done that a year ago. Even six months ago. I hoped leaving Reykjavík would help him. He used to work in a bank, but then he had a breakdown during the kreppa. He said he wanted to go somewhere quiet and this seemed the perfect place. And it was until a couple of months ago. Jealousy is his most recent thing, he doesn’t seem to be able to get it out of his mind. Which is absurd in a place like this.’
‘Can you take him to see someone?’
‘Out here? You must be kidding. But it’s a good idea; I’m beginning to think we should return to Reykjavík, but I’d feel really bad abandoning this job. And of course, it’s terrible for the children.’ She touched his sleeve. ‘Thanks for being so understanding. I shouldn’t have exposed you to all this. Look, I’m sorry I can’t give you a lift to the guesthouse, but I’d better stay here.’
‘I understand. And thanks for dinner.’
‘Not at all. I enjoyed it,’ she said. She smiled. ‘It was nice to talk to someone.’
The cold air bit into Magnus’s cheeks as he stepped out into the street. Bolungarvík at nine o’clock in the evening was dead. The wind had diminished to a stiff breeze, but not before it had ripped away the clouds overhead, revealing a clear night sky splattered with a million stars.
Magnus decided to walk through the town rather than go straight to his guesthouse. Icicles dangled from the corrugated eaves of the houses. He headed for the church on a low hill just on the edge of the village, threading his way through the soft pools of yellow thrown down by the street lights on to the snow. A traffic light blinked green, yellow and red, unnoticed by any passing car.
He felt sorry for Eyrún. No doubt a year or two ago she and her husband had appeared the perfect couple living the Icelandic dream: two high-paying jobs, lots of stylish stuff in a stylish house in Reykjavík, two beautiful kids. And now they were trapped in their own private hell. He could imagine how moving out of the fast city had seemed like a good idea, but it had clearly been a mistake.
Had it been a similar mistake for him to move to Iceland? He had enjoyed being a homicide detective in Boston. Over there, there were real murders, and they came thick and fast. And Magnus had relished clearing them up. He was good at it too. He smiled as he imagined what his old boss at the Homicide Unit, Deputy Superintendent Williams, would have thought of him chasing elves through the darkness and the snow. They would have loved that back in Schroeder Plaza, he wouldn’t have heard the end of it.
He still had the problem of what the hell to tell Baldur: whether to declare this a full murder investigation. He really didn’t want to get that call wrong. If he summoned reinforcements from Ísafjördur and Reykjavík and Gústi’s death turned out to be no more than an accident, he would look a total idiot. In an absurd way, the talk of elves and hidden people had raised the stakes. The bear and the lamp were suspicious, but he wasn’t convinced of Arnór as a suspect. He would sleep on it, ask some more questions and decide the following morning.
He crossed the bridge over the river and climbed up to the church. Below him the buildings of Bolungarvík huddled tightly together for warmth and security. Above the village towered the massive snow-covered rock of the mountain, and beyond that the wild North Atlantic tossed and churned. To the south he could make out the dark scars of previous landslides on the flanks of the fells. A streak of green caught Magnus’s attention as it fluttered and swished across the ridge of mountains on the other side of the fjord. The northern lights.
It was cold, it was bleak. The sun didn’t shine. There were no trees. Yet the mountains, the sea, the sky, seemed to be alive: swirling, shifting, shimmering as the stars, the moon and the aurora brushed them in a shifting palette of yellow, white and green illumination. And if the landscape was alive, then it had purpose and it had power.
It reminded him of his grandfather’s farm on the Snaefells Peninsula a little to the south where Magnus and his brother had spent four miserable years after their father had left Iceland. He shuddered. Those were years Magnus wanted to forget.
That had seemed lonely. But this, this seemed even lonelier.
People shouldn’t live here. No wonder those that did were driven crazy like Davíd, or crushed by the land itself like Gústi. They should leave it to the trolls and the elves.
What had Baldur called this place? The edge of nowhere.
Magnus shivered again and set off back into town to the guesthouse. The sooner he sorted out Gústi’s death and got back to Reykjavík the better.
4
Magnus was just finishing his breakfast, alone in the small dining room of the guesthouse, when Tómas strode in.
‘Good morning, Tómas. Have some coffee. They have a whole urn full and only me to drink it.’
‘I just got a call from a witness who said that he had information about Gústi’s death.’
‘An elf nut?’ asked Magnus.
‘No. Not really. Let’s just say he’s a reliable man. Very reliable.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Haraldur, the postman.’
Magnus imagined that a postman would be a good source of information in a small town. Perhaps he too had seen Arnór loading his truck.
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he needed to tell us in person. And I thought it was probably best if you were there in any case.’
Tómas had learned from his mistake with the stuffed toy the day before. ‘Thank you,’ said Magnus, gulping his coffee. ‘Let’s go.’
It was still dark outside: it wouldn’t get light until after eleven o’clock. Haraldur was half way through his round, so they met him at the petrol station. In Icelandic towns and villages the petrol station is one of the centres of social activity. There are always half a dozen Formica tables, a vending machine and a microwave. And coffee.