Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

comment. He was pleased to be going home. But he didn’t like giving up. He hated the idea that he would leave Iceland with Agnar’s murder unsolved. To be brutally honest, he hated the idea of Baldur solving it just as much. Árni was right, he shouldn’t give up. He was looking forward to going to Hruni the next day with Ingileif. There was her father’s death to explain as well.
    There was so much to explain. With a kind of weary inevitability, his mind drifted back to his own father’s death.
    He paused outside the Grand Rokk and strode towards the pool of light emanating from the bar. The warmth of the chatter and the alcohol seeped out into the little front yard.
    He went in.
    Magnus was in a tight spot. He had already wasted three of the bad guys, but there were another two out there, at least. He was packing a Remington shotgun and a three fifty-seven magnum. The docks were dark. He heard a rustle.
    He turned, saw a gun poke out from behind a container and loosed off two rounds from the Remington. A figure rolled out on to the tarmac, dead. Two more figures jumped him from close quarters; he shot one and then a message flashed up in the bottom corner of the screen. SHOULDER WOUND. He had to drop the gun. The grinning face of a hoodlum appeared in the screen, followed by the business end of an MP5. ‘Make my day,’ the guy said and the screen went orange and then black.
    GAME OVER .
    Johnny Yeoh swore and pushed his chair back from the screen. He had been playing Magnus’s career for five hours straight. Kopz Life was his favourite game, and he always called himself Magnus. That guy was just so cool.
    Johnny wondered whether he should take the plunge and apply to join the police department for real. He was certainly smart enough. And he thought of himself as good under pressure. Sure, he wasn’t exactly big, but if you packed the right piece, what did that matter?
    The buzzer sounded. He checked his watch: half-past midnight. He suddenly realized how hungry he was. He had ordered the pizza forty-five minutes before, although thanks to his total absorption in the game, it felt like only ten.
    He buzzed the pizza guy into his building, and a minute later unlocked his apartment door to let him in.
    The door slammed open and Johnny found himself pinned up against the wall of his living room, a revolver shoved down his throat. A light brown face with cool eyes stared at him, inches away. Johnny’s own eyes hurt as he crossed them, trying to focus on the gun in his mouth.
    ‘OK, Johnny, I got one question for you,’ the man said.
    Johnny tried to speak, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know whether it was the fear or the metal pressed on his tongue.
    The man withdrew the gun so that it was an inch away from his mouth.
    Johnny tried to speak again. No sound. It was the fear.
    ‘Say what?’
    This time Johnny squeezed out some words. ‘What do you want to know?’
    ‘You done some work for a cop by the name of Magnus Jonson?’
    Johnny nodded vigorously.
    ‘You found the address of some guy in California he was looking for?’
    Johnny nodded again.
    ‘How about you write that down for me, man?’ The guy glanced around the room. He was tall, slim, with a smooth face and hard brown eyes. Eyes which alighted on some paper and a pen. ‘Over there!’
    ‘I need to check my computer,’ Johnny said.
    ‘Go right ahead. I’ll be watching you. So don’t go typing no messages to nobody.’
    Intensely aware of the gun in the back of his head, Johnny Yeoh went over to the desk and sat in front of his computer. He clenched his buttocks, trying desperately hard to stop his bowels moving. He wanted to pee too.
    Within less than a minute he had found Lawrence Feldman’s address. He wrote it down: his hand was shaking so badly it took him two attempts, and even then the words were illegible.
    ‘Did Jonson say where he’s at?’ the guy asked.
    ‘No,’ said Johnny, turning to look up at the man, his eyes wide. ‘I didn’t speak to him. He sent me an e-mail.’
    ‘Where’d it come from?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Sweden?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Then look!’ The gun was crammed into his skull.
    Johnny called up his e-mail folder and found the one from Magnus. The truth was he hadn’t checked the address. The domain name was lrh.is . Where the hell was that? A country beginning with ‘IS’. Isreal? No, that was ‘.il’. ‘Iceland, perhaps?’
    ‘Hey, I’m asking you.’
    ‘All right, all