of the crater. The Icelanders have their own peculiar form of motor sport; they drive into a crater and try to get out the hard way. I’ve never known anyone break his neck at this hazardous game but it’s not for want of trying.
I drove the car as near to the gas vent as I could and then went forward on foot until I could look into the impenetrable darkness of the hole. I dropped a stone into it and there was a receding clatter which went on for a long time. Verne’s hero who went to the centre of the earth might have had an easier time if he had picked this hole instead of Snaefellsjökull.
Before I popped Lindholm into his final resting-place I searched him. It was a messy business because the blood was still sticky and it was lucky I had not yet changed my suit. He had a Swedish passport made out in the name of Axel Lindholm, but that didn’t mean a thing – passports are easy to come by. There were a few more bits and pieces but nothing of importance, and all I retained were the cosh and the pistol, a Smith & Wesson .38.
Then I carried him up to the vent and dropped him into it. There were a few soggy thumps and then silence – a silence I hoped would be eternal. I went back to the car and changed into a clean suit and pulled the stained clothing inside out so that the blood would not touch the inside of my suitcase. The cosh, the pistol and Slade’s damned package I also tossed into the suitcase before I closed it, and then I set off on the wearisome way to Reykjavik.
I was very tired.
II
It was late evening when I pulled up in front of the Hotel Saga, although it was still light with the brightness of the northern summer. My eyes were sore because I had been driving right into the western sun and I stayed in the car for a moment to rest them. If I had stayed in the car two minutes more the next fateful thing would not have happened, but I didn’t; I got out and was just extracting the suitcase when a tall man came out of the hotel, paused, and hailed me. ‘Alan Stewart!’
I looked up and cursed under my breath because the man in the uniform of an Icelandair pilot was the last man I wanted to see – Bjarni Ragnarsson. ‘Hello, Bjarni,’ I said.
We shook hands. ‘Elin didn’t tell me you were coming.’
‘She didn’t know,’ I said. ‘It was a last-minute decision; I didn’t even have time to telephone.’
He looked at my suitcase resting on the pavement. ‘You’re not staying at the Saga!’ he said in surprise.
It was a snap judgment and I had to make it fast. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll be going to the apartment.’ I didn’t want to bring Elin into this but now her brother knew I was in Reykjavik he would be sure to tell her and I didn’t want her to be hurt in that way. Elin was very special.
I saw Bjarni looking at the car. ‘I’ll leave it here,’ I said lightly. ‘It’s just a delivery job for a friend. I’ll take a taxi to the apartment.’
He accepted that, and said, ‘Staying long?’
‘For the rest of the summer, as usual,’ I said easily.
‘We must go fishing,’ he said.
I agreed. ‘Have you become a father yet?’
‘Another month,’ he said glumly. ‘I’m dreading it.’
I laughed. ‘I should think that’s Kristin’s worry; you aren’t even in the country half the time. No nappy-changing for you.’
We spent another few minutes in the usual idle-small-talk of old friends just met and then he glanced at his watch. ‘I have a flight to Greenland,’ he said. ‘I must go. I’ll ring you in a couple of days.’
‘Do that.’ I watched him go and then captured a taxi which had just dropped a fare at the hotel and told the driver where to go. Outside the building I paid him off and then stood uncertainly on the pavement wondering whether I was doing the right thing.
Elin Ragnarsdottir was someone very special.
She was a schoolteacher but, like many other Icelanders of her type, she held down two jobs. There are certain factors about Iceland – the smallness of population, the size of the country and its situation in high northern latitudes – which result in a social system which outsiders are apt to find weird. But since the system is designed to suit Icelanders they don’t give a damn what outsiders think, which is just as it should be.
One result of this social system is that all the schools close down for four months in the summer and a lot of them are used as hotels. The teachers thus have a lot of spare time and many of them have quite a different summer occupation. When I first met her three years earlier, Elin had been a courier for Ferdaskrifstofaa Nordri, a travel agency in Reykjavik, and had shown visitors around the country.
A couple of seasons before, I had persuaded her to become my personal courier on a full-time summer basis. I had been afraid that her brother, Bjarni, might have thought that a touch irregular and put in an objection, but he didn’t – presumably he thought his sister to be grown-up enough to handle her own affairs. She was an undemanding person and it was an easy relationship, but obviously it couldn’t go on like that for ever and I intended to do something about it, but I doubted if this was the appropriate time – it takes someone with a stronger stomach than mine to propose marriage on the same day one has dropped a body down a hole.
I went up to the apartment and, although I had a key, I didn’t use it; instead I knocked on the door. Elin opened it and looked at me with an expression of surprise changing to delight, and something in me jumped at the sight of her trim figure and corn-coloured hair. ‘Alan!’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’
‘A quick decision,’ I said, and held up the cased fishing-rod. ‘I’ve got a new one.’
Her lips curved down in mock glumness. ‘That makes six,’ she said severely, and held the door wide. ‘Oh, come in, darling!’
I went in, dropped the suitcase and the rod, and took her in my arms. She held me closely and said, with her head against my chest, ‘You didn’t write, and I thought …’
‘You thought I wasn’t coming.’ The reason I hadn’t written was because of something Slade had said, but I couldn’t tell her that. I said, ‘I’ve been very busy, Elin.’
She drew back her head and looked at me intently. ‘Yes, your face is drawn; you look tired.’
I smiled. ‘But I feel hungry.’
She kissed me. ‘I’ll prepare something.’ She broke away. ‘Don’t worry about unpacking your bag; I’ll do it after supper.’
I thought of the bloody suit. ‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘I can do it.’ I picked up the suitcase and the rod and took them into my room. I call it my room because it was the place where my gear was stored. Actually, the whole apartment was mine because, although it was in Elin’s name, I paid the rent. Spending one-third of every year in Iceland, it was convenient to have a pied-à-terre.
I put the rod with the others and laid down the suitcase, wondering what to do with the suit. Until that moment I had never had any secrets I wanted to keep from Elin – with the one important exception – and there wasn’t a lockable cupboard or drawer in the place. I opened
