and jinked to the left, a fullback slicing through the defence.
A shot rang out, the flame from the barrel illuminating the man’s face for a fraction of a second.
The man moved his gun to the right, pointed it straight at Magnus, aiming high.
So Magnus dived low, a football tackle directly at the man’s knees. Another shot, just a little too high, and the man went down.
Magnus wriggled and lunged for the hand holding the gun. He grabbed the barrel, and twisted it up and towards the man. Another shot and the sound of broken glass from the house. A satisfying snap and a cry as a thumb broke, jammed in the trigger guard. The man’s free hand reached over Magnus’s face grappling for his eyes. Magnus bucked and wrenched the gun away, rolling back and on to his feet.
He jabbed the gun into the man’s face.
He wanted to pull the trigger; he wanted so badly to pull the trigger. But he knew it would lead to all kinds of problems.
‘Get up!’ he shouted in English. ‘Stand up, or I’ll blow your head off!’
The man slowly raised himself to his feet, his eyes on Magnus, breathing heavily.
‘Get your hands up! Move over here!’
Magnus could hear shouting in the house. ‘Call the police,’ he yelled in Icelandic.
He pushed the man along the side of the house and out on to the street, and shoved him against the wall, his face pressed against the corrugated metal. Now he had a problem. He wanted to tend to Arni, but he couldn’t risk leaving the man uncovered.
He considered once again blowing the guy’s brains out. He was tempted.
Bad idea.
‘Turn around,’ he said, and as the guy turned towards him, he transferred the gun to his left hand and whacked the man with a blow to the jaw with his right.
The pain shot through Magnus’s hand, but the man crumpled. Out cold.
Magnus knelt down beside Arni. He was still alive, his eyelids were fluttering and his breath was coming in short gasps. There was a hole in his chest, there was blood. But there wasn’t that horrible wheezing sound of a sucking chest wound.
‘It’s OK, Arni. You’ll be fine. Hang in there, buddy. You’re not hit too bad.’
Arni’s lips began to move.
‘Shh,’ said Magnus. ‘Quiet now. We’ll get an ambulance here in no time.’
Someone had called the police, he could hear the sirens coming closer.
But Arni’s lips continued to move. ‘Magnus. Listen,’ he whispered, in English.
Magnus moved his head close to Arni’s face, but he couldn’t quite make out what Arni was trying to say, just the last word, which was something like ‘Bye’.
‘Hey, no need to say goodbye now, Arni, you’re gonna make it, you’re the Terminator, remember?’
Arni moved his head from side to side and tried to speak again. It was too much for him. The eyes closed. The lips stopped moving.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Magnus jumped into the police car that led the ambulance to the National Hospital, lights flashing, sirens blaring. It took less than five minutes. He was elbowed away by paramedics pushing Arni through corridors and double hospital doors. The last Magnus saw of his partner was his feet speeding towards the operating room at the stern of the gurney.
He was shown into a small waiting room and began pacing, a television mumbling in the background. Uniformed police officers bustled about.
A woman with a clipboard asked him about next of kin. He wrote down Katrin’s name and address. Then he called her.
‘Oh, hi, Magnus, did Arni find you?’ she asked in English.
‘Yeah, he found me.’
Katrin could tell from the tone of his voice that something was wrong. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m at the hospital. Arni’s been shot.’
‘Shot? He can’t have been shot. This is Iceland.’
‘Well, he was. In the chest.’
‘Is he OK?’
‘He’s not OK, no. But he is alive. I don’t know yet how bad it is. He’s in surgery now.’
‘Did it have something to do with you?’
‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘Yes, it did have something to do with me.’
As he ended the call, he thought about exactly what it had had to do with him. It was his fault that Arni had been nearly killed. It was he who had led a Dominican hit man to Iceland, armed with a gun and primed to fire it.
It should have been him in there on the operating table.
‘Damn, Arni!’ He smashed his fist against the wall. A flash of pain ran through his hand, still sensitive from where it had connected with the punk’s jaw. OK, Arni wasn’t used to being around criminals with guns, but a Boston cop would never have done what he had done. There were lots of options. Drive the car straight at the guy. Drive up to Magnus and put the car between him and the punk. Just honk the horn, roll down the window and yell. All of those would have worked better than sprinting full speed at an armed man.
And, of course, if this was any normal country and Arni had been carrying a gun, he could simply have drawn it and shouted a challenge.
But even if he wasn’t smart, Arni was brave. And if the hit man had just been a split-second slower, Arni’s headlong rush might have worked. But the Dominican had been fast, and Arni had taken a bullet for Magnus.
The Police Commissioner had recruited Magnus to control the spread of big-city violence to Reykjavik. But all he had done was lead it right into the heart of the city, the heart of the police department.
Mind you, he had already come across plenty of unusual deaths in Iceland. Dr Asgrimur, Agnar, Ingileif’s stepfather.
Katrin burst in. ‘How is he?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. They haven’t said anything yet.’
‘I’ve called Mum and Dad. They are on their way.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Magnus said.
Katrin was a tall woman. She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Did you shoot him?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then you have nothing to be sorry about.’
Magnus gave her a small smile and shrugged. He wasn’t about to take this moment to argue with an Icelandic woman.
A doctor appeared, mid-forties, confident, competent but concerned. ‘Are you next-of-kin?’ she asked Katrin.
‘I’m Arni’s sister, yes.’
‘He’s lost quite a lot of blood. The bullet’s still in there, right next to the heart. We’re going to go in and get it out. It will take a while.’
‘Will he be OK?’
The doctor looked Katrin in the eye much the same way she had just looked at Magnus. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’s got a chance. A good chance. Beyond that I can’t say.’
‘OK, don’t waste time here,’ Katrin said. ‘Get on with it.’
Magnus was sure that Iceland had competent doctors. But he was worried that they would have little experience with gunshot wounds. Back home, at Boston Medical Center, they spent much of their Friday and Saturday nights plugging up bullet holes.
He decided not to mention this to Katrin.
