Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

to try to keep it quiet, the police would find out in the end. The betrayal had been committed, the mistake had been made, the consequences were playing themselves out. There was nothing she could do to put the saga back in its safe.
    She stopped in front of the Höfdi House, the elegant white-timbered mansion where Gorbachev had met Reagan when she was six years old.
    She dug the detective’s number out of her purse, and punched it into her mobile phone.
    Colby was waiting on the sidewalk outside the bank when it opened. Walked straight in to the cashier, first in line, and withdrew twelve thousand dollars in cash. Then she drove to an outdoor equipment store and bought camping gear.
    When the thug with the gun had left her apartment she had been too scared to scream. Richard hadn’t been any help: he had scurried out of the bathroom muttering how his legal career was too important to be caught up with criminals, and she should rethink her friendships. She had watched dully as he had scrambled to get into his clothes and left her. He forgot his jacket.
    Tough.
    She was glad she hadn’t told the thug about Iceland. It had been a close call, she had been so scared that she had almost given it away, but the change to Sweden at the last minute was inspired. Magnus had told her that he used to have the nickname ‘Swede’, and that had stuck in her brain.
    The thug had believed her. She was sure of it.
    She hoped it would take him and his friends some time to realize their mistake, but she wasn’t going to hang around. She certainly wasn’t going anywhere near Magnus. Now she took Magnus’s warnings seriously. She wasn’t taking any risks with credit cards, or hotels or friends. No one would know where she was.
    She was going to disappear.
    From the camp shop she went to the supermarket. Then, with the trunk full of supplies, she drove west. Her plan was eventually to head north, to Maine or New Hampshire or somewhere, and to lose herself in the wilderness. But first she had something to do. She pulled off the highway in the suburb of Wellesley. She found an Internet café, grabbed a cup of coffee.
    The first e-mail was to her boss, telling him that she was not going to be at work and she couldn’t explain why, but he shouldn’t worry. The second was to her mother, saying more or less the same thing. There was no way to phrase it so that her mother wouldn’t drive herself demented with panic, so Colby didn’t even try.
    The third was to Magnus.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    I T WAS NO more than a ten-minute walk from police headquarters to the Höfdi House, where Ingileif had asked to meet Magnus. He was feeling a little better after the sausage he had picked up from the coffee shop in the bus station on his way back from the Commissioner’s office, but he still needed to do all he could to clear his head.
    He felt so stupid. His apology to the National Police Commissioner had been sincere; he appreciated all the man had done for him, and Magnus had let him down. His fellow detectives had initially appeared to be in awe of him; now they would just think he was a joke. Not a good start.
    He was also scared. Alcoholism ran in families. If there was a gene for it, he suspected that he had it. It had been a very close call in college. And learning about his father’s infidelity had disturbed something deep inside him. Even now, with his ears ringing with the consequences of his stupidity, part of him just wanted to take a detour to the Grand Rokk and buy a beer. And then another. Of course it would screw everything up. But that was why he wanted to do it.
    This was dangerous. Somehow he had to cram what Sigurbjörg had told him back in its box.
    Throwing himself into the Agnar case would help. He wondered what it was that Ingileif wanted to speak to him about. She had sounded tense on the phone.
    He didn’t trust her. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the saga was a forgery drawn up by Agnar. Ingileif was his accomplice, to add authenticity. Their relationship had been very close, perhaps it still was very close, the ballet-dancing literature student notwithstanding.
    The Höfdi House stood all alone in a grassy square between two busy roads that ran along the shore. A solitary figure was perched on a low wall beside the squat white building.
    ‘Thank you for coming,’ Ingileif said.
    ‘No problem,’ said Magnus. ‘That’s why I gave you my number.’
    He sat next to Ingileif on the