Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

ridge of stone that reached up into the low cloud.
    They passed though bleak suburbs of square squat blocks of flats to the east of the city. Mount Esja rose up ever larger ahead of them, before they turned away from the bay and climbed up Mosfell Heath. The houses disappeared and there was just heath land of yellow grass and green moss, bulky rounded hills and cloud – low, dark, swirling cloud.
    After twenty minutes or so they descended and Magnus saw Lake Thingvellir ahead of him. Magnus had been there several times as a boy, visiting Thingvellir itself, a grass plain that ran along the floor of a rift valley at the northern edge of the lake. It was the spot where the American and European continental plates split Iceland in two. More importantly for Magnus and his father, it was the dramatic site of the Althing, Iceland’s annual outdoor parliament during the age of the sagas.
    Magnus remembered the lake as a beautiful deep blue. Now it was dark and foreboding, the clouds reaching down from the sky almost low enough to touch the black water. Even the hump of a small island in the middle was smothered by the dense blanket of moisture.
    They turned off the main road, past a large farm with horses grazing in its home meadow, down to the lake itself. They followed a stone track to a row of half a dozen summer houses, protected by a stand of scrappy birch trees, not yet in leaf. The only trees in sight. Magnus saw the familiar signs of a newly established crime scene: badly parked police cars, some with lights still flashing unnecessarily, an ambulance with its back doors open, yellow tape fluttering in the breeze and figures milling about in a mixture of dark police uniforms and white forensic overalls.
    The focus of attention was the fifth house, at the end of the row. Magnus checked the other summer houses. It was still early in the season, so only one, the second, showed signs of habitation, a Range Rover parked outside.
    The police car pulled up next to the ambulance and the Commissioner and Magnus got out. The air was cold and damp. He could hear the rustle of the wind and a haunting bird call that he recognized from his childhood. A curlew?
    A tall, balding man with a long face, wearing forensic overalls, approached them.
    ‘Let me introduce Inspector Baldur Jakobsson of the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police CID,’ the Commissioner said. ‘He is in charge of the investigation. Lake Thingvellir is covered by the police at Selfoss to the south of here, but once they realized this could be a murder investigation they asked me to arrange for assistance from Reykjavík. Baldur, this is Sergeant Detective Magnús Jonson from the Boston Police Department…’ He paused and looked at Magnus quizzically. ‘Jonson?’
    ‘Ragnarsson,’ Magnus corrected him.
    The Commissioner smiled, pleased that Magnus was reverting to his Icelandic name. ‘Ragnarsson.’
    ‘ Good afternoon ,’ said Baldur stiffly, in halting English with a thick accent.
    ‘ Gódan daginn ,’ replied Magnus.
    ‘Baldur, can you explain to Magnús what’s happened here?’
    ‘Certainly,’ Baldur said, his thin lips showing no smile or other sign of enthusiasm. ‘The victim was Agnar Haraldsson. He is a professor at the University of Iceland. This is his summer house. He was murdered last night, hit over the head in the house, we think, and then dragged down into the lake. He was found by two children from the house just back there at ten o’clock this morning.’
    ‘The house with the Range Rover out front?’ asked Magnus.
    Baldur nodded. ‘They fetched their father and he dialled 112.’
    ‘When was he last seen alive?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Yesterday was a holiday – the first day of summer.’
    ‘It’s Iceland’s little joke,’ said the Commissioner. ‘The real summer is a few months off yet, but we need anything we can get to cheer ourselves up after the long winter.’
    Baldur ignored the interruption. ‘The neighbours saw Agnar arrive at about eleven o’clock in the morning. They saw him park his car outside his house and go in. They waved to him, he waved back, but they didn’t speak. He did receive a visitor, or visitors, that evening.’
    ‘Description?’
    ‘None. They just saw the car, small, bright blue, something like a Toyota Yaris, although they are not precisely sure. The car arrived about seven-thirty, eight o’clock. Left at nine-thirty. They didn’t see it, but the woman remembered what she was watching on