Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

would have been completely impassable a couple of weeks earlier, before the snow had melted. Once or twice, Magnus debated turning back. But of course Hákon’s four-wheel-drive would have had an easier time of it.
    Then he rounded a bend and saw it. The red Suzuki. It was parked on a brief stretch of road fifty feet above the river. Magnus pulled up next to it and checked the plate. Definitely the Reverend Hákon’s vehicle.
    He turned off his engine and climbed out of his car.
    The damp air hit his nostrils. After the whine of his own car engine and the clanking of stones and rock against the chassis, everything seemed quiet, damply quiet. Except there was a low roar, the sound of water rushing by below.
    Somewhere in the fog a duck quacked. Odd to hear the sound of a living thing in that landscape.
    Magnus walked over to the Suzuki. Empty. He tried the door handle. Unlocked. No keys in the ignition.
    He looked around. Visibility was only a couple of hundred feet. He couldn’t see Hákon. Mist swirled around the pinnacles of twisted lava all about Magnus, odd grotesque shapes, volcanic gargoyles. Under his feet was black grit and chips of obsidian, rock melted into black glass deep within the earth and then spewed out on to the very spot where he stood.
    Perhaps Hákon had abandoned the car here to walk on to Stöng on foot? A possibility, Magnus could not see far enough along the road to evaluate its quality. But Hákon was an Icelander and he was driving a four-wheel-drive. He was unlikely to give up that easily.
    The man was crazy, Magnus knew that. He could have set out on a long hike to God-knows-where over the bleak landscape. To the cave near Álfabrekka, perhaps? To Mount Hekla? He could be away for days.
    Magnus looked around the Suzuki for footprints. There were some, but they were muddled. He moved away from the vehicle in expanding circles, but the ground was too hard to betray which direction Hákon might have gone. He did find something of interest, though.
    Tyre marks. About thirty feet away from the Suzuki on a small patch of soft ground. Another car had parked there. But when?
    Magnus had no idea of the last time it had rained at that particular spot. It had been beautiful in the Thjórsárdalur when he and Ingileif had driven to Álfabrekka the previous day. It was possible that it might not have rained since then. Or it could have rained twenty minutes before.
    He debated whether to drive on to Stöng. He recalled the abandoned farm from his childhood. It lay in a small patch of green by a stream. But first he had to report what he had seen to Baldur.
    He pulled out his phone. No signal, which was hardly surprising. And there wasn’t a police radio in the car.
    So he decided to drive back towards the main road until he found a signal to make the call.
    After a bone-shattering two kilometres, his phone, which he had placed on the seat beside him, began to ring.
    He pulled over and picked it up. He couldn’t drive with only one hand on that road.
    ‘Hi, Magnús, it’s Ingileif.’
    ‘Hello,’ said Magnus, wary, yet pleased that it was her.
    ‘Are you OK?’
    ‘Yes, I’m fine.’
    ‘It’s just I heard on the radio this morning that there had been a shooting. A police officer was in hospital. An American had been arrested. I assumed one of the two was you.’
    ‘Yeah, it happened right after I went to your place last night. My partner Árni was shot. I got the guy who did it.’
    ‘And he was after you?’
    ‘He was after me.’
    There was a brief silence. Then Ingileif spoke again. ‘I’ve just been to see Erna, Tómas’s mother. She lives in Hella.’
    ‘Oh, yes?’
    ‘She is sure that Tómas didn’t kill my father. He couldn’t have been there. He was singing with the village choir in the Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík that weekend.’
    ‘Or so she says. She is his mother, remember?’
    ‘That can be checked, though, can’t it? Even seventeen years later?’
    ‘Yes, it can,’ admitted Magnus. Ingileif was right. It was an unlikely lie. ‘What did she say about Hákon?’
    ‘She’s certain that he didn’t kill Dad either. But she doesn’t have any evidence.’
    ‘I think we can safely ignore that,’ Magnus said.
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Ingileif. ‘But she did sound convincing. She also told me where Hákon hides the ring.’
    ‘In the altar in the church?’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Tómas told me yesterday.’
    ‘Have you found him? Hákon?’
    Magnus