Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

was sixteen, something like that. Halldór was very old at that stage.
Like your father he had been a regular visitor to the hotel in the past; he used to write some of his books here. I read one of them: Under the Glacier . Couldn’t make head nor tail of
it.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Jóhannes dryly.
    ‘Anyway, he got it in his head he wanted to get on a horse again. He must have been in his eighties at least, and he hadn’t ridden for years.’
    ‘Eighty-three,’ said Jóhannes: Halldór Laxness’s date of birth was part of his professional armoury.
    ‘Sounds about right. It was a real struggle, but I got him up into the saddle in the end, and we rode up to the church and on into the lava field. Just at a walk, you know. We hadn’t
gone far when he pointed to a couple of figures in a hollow by the shore. One of them had a shotgun. Their voices were raised, I could hear, although the old man couldn’t. He did a good job
to notice them before me.
    ‘So, I left Halldór there and rode down to see what was going on. One of the men was your father, Benedikt – he had been staying at the hotel for a couple of weeks, writing.
The other was a poacher. When the poacher saw me he backed off.’
    ‘Can you show me where this was?’ asked Benedikt.
    ‘Sure,’ said Hermann. ‘Follow me.’
    They left the stables and walked around the hotel up to the little church. All around them stretched the lava field. This was a broad extent of stone criss-crossed with folds and crevices, in
the middle of which, about two kilometres away, rose a large crater. Jóhannes remembered the scene well. There were no berserkers in this lava field, unlike the one near the farm at Hraun,
but there were hidden people, that parallel race of invisible beings that Icelanders believed shared their country with them, living in rocks or, in this case, tunnels. A concealed lava tunnel
lined with gold and precious jewels was supposed to lead from this spot a hundred kilometres to the mountains to the east. Jóhannes smiled as he remembered clambering around the rocks with
his father looking for it.
    ‘Do you know what the argument was about?’
    ‘No. Your father didn’t tell me. I was only a boy, remember. I assume that your father had confronted the poacher and asked him what he was doing.’
    ‘So what happened then?’
    ‘Your father looked shaken. He went straight back to the hotel and checked out. I went back up to where I had left Halldór.’ Hermann paused. ‘Look, it was down
there.’ He pointed down to a grassy hollow in the stone, not far from the shore. It was exposed, but out of sight of the hotel or the road. ‘And in fact Halldór and I were right
here when we saw them.’
    ‘I see,’ said Jóhannes. ‘And the poacher?’
    ‘Must have gone straight back up to the road, I suppose. I don’t really remember.’
    ‘You know that my father was murdered a few weeks later?’ Jóhannes said.
    ‘Yes, I do,’ said Hermann.
    ‘I wonder if there was any connection. Did the police talk to you about this?’
    ‘As a matter of fact they did. A tall miserable bastard from Reykjavík. They said that Halldór had contacted them. I told them then what I am telling you now.’
    ‘And did you recognize the man?’
    ‘No. Never seen him before. That’s what I told the police.’ Hermann’s voice was firm and strong, but his eyes flicked quickly to one side. Jóhannes raised his
eyebrows. Hermann held his gaze but touched his left ear briefly.
    There was no ill discipline in any of Jóhannes’s classes. Ever. He had numerous tricks up his sleeve, but one of them was an unerring ability to tell when a child was lying to him.
Keeping silent and raising the eyebrows was the clincher. The liars always cracked then.
    Hermann might be a grown man in his forties, but Jóhannes knew he was lying.
    ‘Look, Hermann,’ Jóhannes said. ‘It was a long time ago, and you were only a kid. You didn’t like the policeman who was asking you questions. So you lied then
– I understand that. But this is my father we are talking about now and I need to find out what happened to him. It’s all a long time ago. Halldór Laxness is dead. My father is
dead. Maybe the man with the shotgun is dead. But please tell me who he was.’
    ‘Are you suggesting I was lying?’
    Jóhannes raised his eyebrows again.
    Hermann sighed and pursed his lips. Jóhannes waited.
    ‘You’re right,’ the groom said. ‘It was a long time