sense, she would just lie low and wait.
Magnus’s situation was different. He was a big lumbering target making a lot of noise, whose adversary had a knife and had just used it. And he was unarmed. If only he had a firearm. According to the manual he should hold off and wait for back-up.
Screw that. Apart from anything else the back-up wouldn’t be armed either.
He pressed on.
His heart pounding, he found himself in a shallow dip between two wind-eroded rocks. He had the impression that he was on the ridge between the two valleys.
He heard the sound of someone falling and a cry. It sounded as if it was coming from ahead and to the right but lower down, not too far away.
Magnus altered direction towards it. He was going downhill. A few seconds later he emerged from the clouds. Below him was a new valley, grassier than the bleak one they had just left, with a road of pristine black asphalt running up the centre of it.
And a couple of hundred metres down the slope of the valley, he saw Harpa sliding down the hill, Isak close behind her. She was finding it hard to keep her balance with her hands tied in front of her.
Magnus hurried after them. In dismay he could see Harpa heading for the top of a rocky outcrop perhaps fifty feet high. She obviously couldn’t see the drop. ‘To the left!’ he shouted. ‘Run to the left!’
But she ignored him. It looked for a second as if she was going to propel herself off the cliff, but she stopped just in time. Turned. Saw Isak close behind her and slid down a crevice.
She came to rest on a narrow ledge and began to work her way awkwardly along the rock face, her back to the cliff, hands in front of her.
Isak hesitated at the top of the outcrop. He turned to see Magnus approaching down the hill.
‘Wait, Isak!’ Magnus shouted.
Isak looked down, and slid down the crevice as well.
It took Magnus a minute to get to the rock. Below him, Harpa had run out of ledge. Isak was inching towards her, knife outstretched. There was still some of Bjorn’s blood on the blade.
‘Put the knife down, Isak!’ Magnus shouted. ‘There’s no point in killing Harpa now!’
Isak hesitated. He was listening.
‘Sindri has talked. We know you stabbed Bjorn. It doesn’t matter what Harpa tells us now. So let her go!’
For a moment Magnus thought Isak would do the rational thing. But then he seemed to come to a decision. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘You back off! Back off or I will kill her!’ He continued making his way carefully along the ledge.
A hostage situation. It was some progress. At least Isak wouldn’t kill Harpa right away.
But hostage situations were inherently uncertain. Magnus had been involved in a couple back in Boston where people had died when they shouldn’t.
Although Isak was desperate, he wasn’t high and he wasn’t a psycho. And yet, you never knew what might happen with hostage situations.
There were still a few seconds before Isak reached Harpa. Magnus weighed the options. Isak and Harpa were probably twenty feet below him. Below them was a further twenty to thirty feet to a steep grassy slope.
If Magnus slid down the rock face he could take Isak with him in a tumble all the way to the bottom. A dumb thing to do. Magnus would probably break something, possibly his neck. And Isak might easily stick him with the knife.
Whereas if Isak reached Harpa the situation might resolve itself with nobody getting hurt.
Or not.
Isak closed on Harpa. She had nowhere to go. She screamed.
What the hell. Magnus jumped.
He slid down the near-vertical smooth rock on his ass. Isak turned and raised his knife, jabbing upwards. Magnus twisted. The knife caught his arm, but Magnus’s legs knocked into Isak’s and the two of them rolled and bumped their way to the bottom of the slope.
Magnus hit his back, his chest and then his head on a rock.
Everything went black.
He had no idea how long he was out. It must only have been a few seconds, because when he opened his eyes, he saw Isak scrambling towards him, clutching the knife, blood running down one of his cheeks.
Magnus tried to heave himself on to his elbow, but his head swam. His body was receiving mixed signals, his confused brain was unable to make use of the adrenalin flooding his system.
Isak reached him. Swayed. Two Isaks.
Magnus tried to force his brain to tell his legs and arms to cooperate, but they wouldn’t.
Isak raised the knife. Magnus couldn’t even cry out.
Then he saw a grey stone come crashing down on the back of Isak’s skull and the kid crumpled.
Two Harpas came into Magnus’s vision and slowly merged into one.
Finally he managed to pull himself onto his elbows.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘What shall I do?’ said Harpa, looking down at the prone body of Isak. A stone a bit bigger than a baseball still in her bound hands.
‘If he moves, hit him again with that,’ said Magnus.
‘Do you think I’ve killed him?’
‘I hope so.’ Just then a police car came roaring up the road, its lights flashing. ‘Give them a wave, will you?’
Magnus’s head hurt, and his forearm stung where Isak’s knife had grazed it. He was leaning against the police car which had pulled over on the verge of the road up through the pass. There had been two officers in it. One was watching over Isak who was still unconscious, the other one was summoning an ambulance from the hospital in Stykkisholmur.
‘I’ve killed him, haven’t I?’ Harpa said.
‘Not yet, unfortunately,’ said Magnus. ‘He’s still breathing.’
‘After Gabriel Orn, I couldn’t handle knowing I had killed someone else.’
‘Harpa?’
‘Yes.’
‘A bit of advice. From now on, don’t talk to anyone, especially a policeman, about what happened to Gabriel Orn. Not unless you have a lawyer present.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Harpa. ‘I don’t care.’ She winced, and bent down to rub her knee. ‘That hurts.’
‘Trust me,’ said Magnus. ‘For Markus’s sake.’
She smiled quickly. ‘OK. But I thought you were trying to get me to confess?’
‘Yeah. But that was before you saved my life. Don’t worry, we’ll figure out what happened. I just don’t want you to screw up your defence.’
She smiled. ‘Thanks. And thanks for coming after me.’
Magnus’s brain was beginning to clear. ‘There are a load of questions we need to ask you, but I guess the most important is, do you know if they have another target?’
‘Yes,’ said Harpa. ‘Yes, they do.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘I asked Bjorn, but he wouldn’t say.’
‘Ingolfur Arnarson? Did he mention the name Ingolfur Arnarson?’
‘The first settler? No. He did say there’s someone else out there. Someone who actually does the killing. But I don’t know who that is.’
‘Do you have any clue? Think, Harpa.’
‘No. I tried to make him tell me, but he wouldn’t.’
‘Did he say when it’s going to happen?’
‘Yes. Kind of. What did he say?’ Harpa frowned, trying to remember. ‘How did he put it? “This afternoon maybe. Maybe this evening. Certainly by tomorrow morning.” Something like that. That’s where he was going. To receive a text from the killer on his phone. He couldn’t get reception in the hut so he went back up the pass. Have you found
