Free Edge of Nowhere by Michael Ridpath

 
    1
     
    Baldur was smiling. Baldur never smiled. Magnus was suspicious.
    Baldur Jakobsson was the inspector in charge of the Violent Crimes Unit of the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police, and Magnus’s boss. He was in his forties, about ten years older than Magnus, with a long, lugubrious face beneath a high, bald dome of a forehead. He was not known for his sense of humour. ‘I have just the case for you,’ he said. ‘Now you’ve graduated and we can send you out on your own.’
    ‘Sounds good,’ said Magnus carefully.
    Although Baldur knew all there was to know about Icelandic police work, Magnus had far more experience of the serious stuff. It was true that Magnus had just graduated from the Police College, but that was after a long stint working as a homicide detective with the Boston Police Department. The Icelandic National Police Commissioner had requested the loan of a detective from the States with big-city crime experience and, as a fluent Icelandic speaker, Magnus had seemed perfect for the job. But it was necessary for that officer to be familiar with the laws and policing methods of the country in which he was operating, hence the six-month spell at the Police College. Magnus couldn’t argue with that.
    ‘We have a suspicious death,’ said Baldur. ‘Ágúst Sigurdsson, forty-five, construction worker. He was killed under a landslide while repairing a road. It’s probably an accident, but the local constable feels there is a possibility the slide might have been started deliberately.’
    ‘Why does he think that?’
    ‘The location of the landslide. And the victim was unpopular in the village.’
    ‘I see,’ said Magnus. ‘And where is this village?’
    ‘Bolungarvík,’ said Baldur, his lips twitching upwards. ‘The edge of nowhere.’
    Magnus knew where Bolungarvík was. To the north-west of Iceland a peninsula in the shape of a hand with outstretched fingers reaches out into the Atlantic. The area is known as the West Fjords and is the most remote part of a remote country. Right at the tip of the longest of these fingers lies Bolungarvík.
    Magnus glanced out of the window of Baldur’s office. It was mid December and sleet was driving horizontally across the police car park. That was in Reykjavík. In Bolungarvík the weather would be a lot worse.
    He glanced at Baldur’s long face. His boss was doing his best to suppress a smile. For Baldur to be that amused there must be more to the case than an isolated village in bad weather.
    ‘Are there any suspects?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Baldur. ‘You are going to need all your forensic-science and criminal-profiling expertise for this one.’
    Magnus waited for more explanation, but Baldur was making him ask. ‘Tell me.’
    ‘The hidden people,’ Baldur said, his disconcerting grin re-emerging.
    ‘Hidden people?’
    ‘That’s right.’ Baldur laughed out loud. ‘They think the poor guy was killed by elves.’
    The small commuter plane bumped and jolted and then banked alarmingly as the pilot guided it down through thick cloud on the approach to the airport at Ísafjördur, the largest town and administrative capital of the West Fjords. Magnus had been there once before, on a trip back to Iceland with his father when he was fifteen. He smiled to himself as he remembered the trip: a week hiking together along the uninhabited north coast.
    Although Magnus had been born in Iceland, he had followed his father to America when he was twelve. His father had ensured Magnus retained contact with their homeland, speaking to him in the language, reading the sagas with him, and taking him on one-week hiking trips to the Icelandic wilderness every year. It was something father and son looked forward to.
    Until Magnus’s father died, stabbed by an intruder when Magnus was twenty. The police had never found his killer. Magnus was still looking.
    Suddenly the plane emerged beneath the clouds into a spectacular amphitheatre of grey and white.