Magnus smiled. ‘I will.’ Vigdis was right. He was probably OK for twenty-four hours, but he ought to think of a place to lie low until he flew back to the States.
‘If you need any help with anything, just ask, OK?’
‘OK. Thanks.’
As Vigdis left, Magnus turned to his computer. He needed to tell the FBI and Williams what had happened himself. But before he began to type there was an incoming e-mail, direct, not via the FBI.
Hey Magnus,
There’s something I really ought to tell you. A guy broke into my apartment a couple of nights ago and shoved a gun in my mouth. He wanted to know where you were. I kinda told him about the Reykjavik police domain name on your e-mail address.
I feel real bad about this. I haven’t told the department, but I figured you needed to know so you could keep a look out for trouble.
Johnny Yeoh
Anger flared in Magnus. He hit the reply key and began typing, but after a couple of words he stopped. He couldn’t really blame Johnny. The gun was real, the threat was real, if Johnny hadn’t told the man what he wanted to know he risked getting his head blown off.
Although he could have warned Magnus sooner.
Magnus was really most angry with himself. He shouldn’t have breached the simple protocols that the FBI had set up. There was a reason they didn’t want him sending e-mails directly to anyone in the States. Turned out it was a very good reason.
He deleted the half-written e-mail and replaced it with a simple ‘thanks for letting me know’. Johnny Yeoh would be in big trouble anyway, not for talking to the gangster, but for not reporting the fact that he had immediately. And all that would come out in good time.
Magnus composed an e-mail to Williams describing what had happened the night before, omitting for the moment the information that Johnny Yeoh had pointed the Dominicans to Iceland.
He was aware of a figure sitting in Arni’s chair opposite him. Snorri Gudmundsson, the National Police Commissioner of Iceland. The Big Salmon himself.
He had expected a summons to the Commissioner’s office at some point. He hadn’t expected a visit.
‘How are you doing, Magnus?’ the Commissioner asked.
‘Hard to put into words,’ said Magnus. ‘I feel bad about Arni.’
‘Don’t,’ said the Commissioner. ‘I knew that your life was under threat. I knew that there was a chance that they would come looking for you. I didn’t think that one of my officers would get shot, but I was wrong, and that’s my responsibility, not yours.’ The Commissioner sighed. ‘Thank God he’s going to live.’
‘Are they sure?’ Magnus asked.
‘Not a hundred per cent, but it’s looking better by the hour.’
‘He’s a brave man,’ Magnus said. ‘A very brave man.’
‘He is.’
‘Look, Snorri, I meant to tell you. I heard from my chief the other day. The trial in Boston has been moved up to next week. I’ll have to fly over and testify.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I guess I won’t be coming back.’ ‘I guess you will.’ The Commissioner’s bright blue eyes twinkled.
Magnus raised his eyebrows in surprise.
‘We discussed this when you arrived. I want you here for two years.’
‘Yes, but after all that’s happened…’
‘We got a result in the Agnar case. We know who the murderer is, all we have to do now is find him. From what I’ve heard, you were important in solving the case.’
‘What you’ve heard? Not from Baldur, surely?’
‘No. From Thorkell.’
‘He can’t be very pleased about his nephew getting shot up.’
‘He’s not. But he doesn’t blame you. And if he blames me, he’s not saying.’
‘What about Baldur? I’m sure he would love it if I went back to the States and never came back.’
‘You leave Baldur to me.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. He had assumed that he would be done with Iceland within a matter of days. And he had assumed he would be very happy with that state of affairs.
‘You’re coming back,’ said the Commissioner, getting to his feet. ‘You have a moral obligation. That’s important to me, and I think that’s important to you.’
As Magnus watched the Commissioner leave the room, two thoughts were uppermost in his mind.
The first, the most insistent, was whether he should indeed stay in Iceland.
The second, lower key, nagging, was that he wasn’t as sure as the Commissioner that the case was solved.
Ten minutes later, Baldur prowled into the room.
‘What are you doing here?’ he growled when he saw Magnus.
‘It’s where I work. At least for now.’
‘We don’t need spectators here. Have you made your statement?’
‘Last night.’
‘Then go home and stay home where we can get hold of you if we need you to add to it.’
‘Have you found the Reverend Hakon?’ Magnus asked.
‘Not yet. But we will. He can’t get out of the country.’
‘Have you looked at Stong? Or Alfabrekka?’
‘Why should we do that?’
‘We know that the ring has an enormous influence over Hakon. He’s a strange man, a romantic in his way. Where would he run to? I’m sure you’re watching all the obvious places, the airports, his relatives if he has any. But he might go somewhere that’s important to the ring. Somewhere like Stong. Or the cave where the ring was originally found. I think the map Dr Asgrimur drew is still in my car.’
Baldur just shook his head. ‘If you think I am going to divert scarce resources into the middle of nowhere to satisfy your idiotic notions of what a ring “thinks” then…’ He trailed off in frustration. ‘Forget it. Go home.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
But Magnus didn’t go home. He signed out a car and drove out towards Gaukur’s abandoned farm at Stong. The further east he drove the worse the weather became. A grey damp cloud had settled on Iceland, and he was driving through it. Even once he dropped down from the lava fields on to the broad plain around Selfoss, visibility was poor. Horses looked miserably out of sodden fields towards the road. Every now and then a church or a farm would loom out of the mist on a little knoll.
There was certainly no sign of Hekla, not even as he turned up the road that ran along the banks of the River Thjorsa.
He had no idea whether he really would find anything at Stong or Alfabrekka. But he sure as hell didn’t want to hang around Reykjavik doing nothing. He had tried to put himself inside the pastor’s strange mind. It was difficult to do, he couldn’t pretend that he understood the man, but he thought his hunch wasn’t bad as hunches went.
He thought about the Police Commissioner’s request that he stay on in Iceland. It was more of a command, really.
He was sure that once back home he could persuade Williams to let him remain in Boston. But the Commissioner’s appeal to Magnus’s sense of honour was shrewd. The Icelandic police had provided him with sanctuary. One of them had almost given his life to save Magnus’s. The Commissioner had a point; he did owe them.
When he had first arrived in Iceland he had immediately felt the urge to return to the violent streets of Boston. But perhaps Colby was right, what kind of life was that, anyway? Solve one murder, look for the next. A frantic, never-ending search to discover who he was, to make sense of his past, of his father’s murder, of himself.
There was a good chance the answers to those questions didn’t lie in Boston, but here, in Iceland. If he wanted, he could try to continue running away from his Icelandic past, from his family. But he would be running away from himself. He would spend his life running, moving from dead body to dead body in the South End. Perhaps if he stayed in Iceland for a couple of years he could begin to answer those questions, to find out who he really was.
And even who his father was. For the last few days he had successfully crammed Sigurbjorg’s disclosure that his father had been unfaithful to his mother back into its box. But it wouldn’t stay there quietly for the rest of his life. That knowledge was part of him now. Just like his father’s murder, it would haunt him.