Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

knobbly backbone of the
peninsula were shrouded in a layer of dark cloud. He climbed the Kerlingin Pass and plunged into the moisture. The cloud pressed down on the north side of the mountains; visibility was poor, and he
could see no more than about a mile ahead. He turned left along the main road towards Grundarfjördur, and then right again, through the Berserkjahraun, the Berserkers’ Lava Field. Stone
twisted and twirled on either side of the car. Mysterious figures lunged out of the mist to left and right. He had to slow down as he made his way on the rough track cut in the lava field towards
the farm.
    Cold fingers of long-repressed fear clutched at Magnus’s chest, making it difficult to breathe. The memories reared up like the congealed lava. The beatings that his grandfather had given
Magnus and his brother; the humiliation, the loneliness, the desperation. The four years spent at that place from the age of eight to twelve were without doubt the worst of Magnus’s life. And
of Ollie’s.
    Things had been so much worse for Ollie. He was younger, and not as tough as Magnus. Their grandfather had picked on him. Ollie had slid into a never-ending cycle of bedwetting at night and
punishment during the day.
    That was why Ollie had vowed to blank those four years out of his life, and why Magnus was amazed that he should venture back here with a stranger.
    Come to think of it, why had Ollie come to Iceland at all? Magnus had asked him the question and he hadn’t really answered it. Maybe it did have something to do with his past after
all.
    Magnus himself had returned to Bjarnarhöfn six months before, just after he had discovered the similarity between the murder of his father and of Benedikt. He had confronted his grandfather
for the first time in thirteen years. It was nothing more than an exchange of threats, but even though the old man was at least eighty-five, Magnus had felt the chill of his power and
authority.
    Visibility was only a couple of hundred yards as he pulled out of the lava field and up a low hill to the small complex of buildings between a fell and the sea that was Bjarnarhöfn.
    The farm was still. Beside the track leading to the farmhouse itself was a small single-storey dwelling with white concrete walls and a metal roof. This is where Hallgrímur now lived with
his wife, Magnus’s grandmother: the main house was occupied by Hallgrímur’s son Kolbeinn.
    There was an old blue VW Passat station wagon parked just outside the house. Magnus had no idea if it was Hallgrímur’s or Jóhannes’s. He pulled up next to it, and
jumped out.
    He rapped on the door. No answer. There was no sound of farm activity, but he could hear the noise of the waterfall tumbling off the fell behind the farmhouse. A raven croaked.
    Magnus knocked again.
    No reply.
    He tried the door. It was open. He walked in.
    ‘Hello!’ he shouted. ‘Grandpa!’
    No response. Tentatively at first, and then more quickly, he moved from room to room.
    No one. There was a half-full cup of coffee on a table by the sofa in the living room. Magnus stuck his finger in it. Tepid. A Sudoku puzzle book lay open and face down on the table.
    He left the building and stood outside the house, wondering where to go next. The farmhouse itself was about fifty yards away. As he walked towards it, he looked down towards Breidafjördur
but couldn’t see it in the mist.
    What he could see was the tiny black chapel, in its little graveyard. The door was open.
    That door was never left open.
    He turned and jogged down towards it, opening the gate to the churchyard. He slowed as he approached the entrance to the chapel itself.
    ‘Grandpa?’ he called. ‘Ollie?’
    No reply, save for the croak of a raven.
    He pushed the white door more firmly open, and entered the little building, which was not much more than a hut. Inside the walls were freshly painted, a bright shade of light blue. Six short
rows of yellow pews led down to an altar fenced in by an ornate white communion rail beneath an ancient painting of Jesus and two of his disciples. All this, Magnus took in in an instant. But his
eyes were drawn to the floor in front of the altar.
    There lay his grandfather, Hallgrímur, face pressed against the wooden floor, eyes shut. A trickle of fresh blood ran down the old man’s face from his temple, forming a small pool
on the wood.
    ‘Oh, my God,’ said Magnus. ‘Ollie, what have you done?’

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    T HERE MUST BE