Sea of Stone Read Free

to realize that he never stopped lecturing. Which Ollie liked. The two men had slipped into a student–teacher relationship, which Ollie found comforting, encouraging even.
    But Ollie wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this Bárdur guy. ‘Does that mean he’s with us or against us, then?’
    Jóhannes chuckled. ‘Oh, he’s with us. If there’s one thing those Vikings understood, it was revenge.’
    Constable Páll Gylfason grinned to himself as he climbed into his police car. This was the third time he had been called by Gunnhildur to complain about the young couple from Reykjavík who liked to have sex in the living room with the curtains open on a Sunday morning. The couple had pointed out that they were perfectly entitled to do whatever they liked in the privacy of their own home; it was Gunnhildur’s problem if she insisted on spying on them. To Páll’s suggestion that they pull the curtains closed, they replied that in the heat of the moment there wasn’t time. Páll wasn’t convinced by this. It seemed to him that their Sunday morning passion was becoming predictable. The real point he wanted to get across was that in a small town like Grundarfjördur, you didn’t mess with women like Gunnhildur.
    They were a nice couple, though. The woman, who was a new teacher at the school in town, had a foxy look about her, and had complimented Páll fulsomely on his bushy moustache, of which he was very proud.
    He started the car and headed back home. The little police station near the harbour was left unoccupied on a Sunday. He turned on the car radio, looking for news on the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which had erupted the previous week, chucking ash all over farms in the south and causing chaos to anyone trying to travel anywhere by air. Fortunately, because of the direction of the wind, most of Iceland had been spared. There was no sign of any ash on the Snaefells Peninsula.
    But the wind direction could always change.
    His police radio crackled into life. He recognized the voice of the dispatcher from Stykkishólmur.
    ‘A body has been reported at Bjarnarhöfn. Suspected homicide. Sergeant Magnús Ragnarsson called it in.’
    ‘I’m on my way.’
    Páll whipped his Hyundai Santa Fe around and hit the accelerator, lights flashing, sirens blaring. A woman preparing to cross the main street, pushing a child in a buggy with another one holding her hand, stopped and stared. Bjarnarhöfn was about halfway between Grundarfjördur and regional headquarters at Stykkishólmur. Since Páll was already in his vehicle, he should get there first. If he hurried.
    Páll remembered Magnus well. He was an American homicide detective who had been transferred to the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police, but he had been born in Iceland and spoke good Icelandic. They had worked together on a case involving a fisherman from Grundarfjördur the previous year, and Páll rated Magnus highly. He also knew that Magnus had family at Bjarnarhöfn.
    Visibility was poor as mist pressed down on the road from the mountains above. The road was empty on a Sunday morning, and Páll took some risks he probably shouldn’t have. He turned left off the main Stykkishólmur road onto the dirt track that led through the Berserkjahraun lava field to Bjarnarhöfn. Three minutes later, he was rattling over the cattle grid into the farm.
    There were a couple of cars parked in front of the nearest building, a cottage with white concrete walls and a red corrugated metal roof. Páll knew that was where old man Hallgrímur lived; his son, Kolbeinn, inhabited the main farmhouse with his family. The front door of Hallgrímur’s cottage was open. Páll slowed and scanned the farm. The cloud stooped low, embracing the lower flanks of the fell, from which fingers of snow stretched down to the fields. A waterfall spurted from a gash in the steep hill, feeding a stream that tumbled down towards the sea, hidden in the gloom. Páll could see one other dwelling – the main