Close to the Heel (20 page)

Karl ignores me. “If he gets away, I won't be able to protect you this time,” he says to Einar.

“You were protecting yourself,” I say. “She knew, didn't she, Karl? What did you tell her when you arranged to meet with her? Did you feed her a line? Did you tell her you could explain everything?” I could just see it. “Did you tell her you were investigating yourself, but that it was all hush-hush until you made your case?” Still nothing.

“She was afraid of how Einar would react because you two were friends when you were kids. Gudrun was afraid Einar would be disappointed in you—or maybe angry at her for what she turned up about you. So either she forced you to meet her or you lured her to the falls. Either way, the result was the same. You killed her.”

Einar is staring at Karl now.

“Karl?” Einar's voice is quivering with emotion. “What is he talking about?”

“You tricked Einar into doing some of your dirty work for you. You made sure he dealt with Baldur, and then you told him to hide the body. That way he wouldn't push to find out more. He already had it settled in his mind. And it gave you something to hold over him—you could threaten to expose him if you had to. Just like you're doing now.”

“Karl? Is this true?”

“Of course not,” Karl says.

“Sigurdur saw you,” I say to Einar. “Just before he collapsed, he wanted to show me something. He pointed to this hut. He saw you bring Baldur back here. He saw you drag his body into the hut. But he didn't say anything because he believed that Baldur had killed Gudrun—because you told him that's what happened, because that's what Karl told you.” I turn to Karl. “And you destroyed the sixth notebook too.”

“What notebook?” Einar says.

“Gudrun had six notebooks,” I say. “They were all turned over to the police, but only five were returned. No one noticed until now. Karl destroyed the sixth one. I bet there was something in it that implicated him.”

Einar is staring at his old friend now. “You did this? You killed Gudrun?”

“No,” Karl says.

“Yes,” I say. “It wasn't Baldur. It was Karl.”

Karl surprises the daylights out of me when he reaches behind himself and pulls out a gun from under his jacket.

“I thought handguns were illegal in Iceland,” I say.

Karl smiles. “Where there's a will, there's a way. Give me the pick, Einar.”

“What are you going to do?” I say. “Kill me and then kill him and say you got here too late to save him?”

“If you can't take care of it, I will, Einar,” Karl says.

“So it is true,” Einar says.

“Don't be ridiculous. Give me the pick, Einar.”

“Ask him where he was the night Gudrun died,” I say to Einar.

Einar looks at Karl for an answer.

“I was at home,” Karl says. “For god's sake, Einar!”

“I bet he wasn't at home. I bet he was meeting Gudrun.”

“Give me the pick, Einar.”

“He did it, Einar. He killed Gudrun.”

Karl points his gun at me. “I've had about enough of you.” He's going to shoot. I see it in his eyes.

Einar raises the pick again. His eyes are hard on Karl.

Karl swings the gun and fires at Einar. I see a dot of red on Einar's chest. It grows. Einar looks down at it, puzzled. He sinks to his knees and then crumples face-first into the dirt.

I reach up and grab one of the ropes hanging from a rafter. I swing it, and the pieces of wood strung to it catch Karl across the face. He staggers backward, still clutching the gun. I swing again, harder this time. The rope catches him and wraps around his throat. He drops the gun and claws at the rope to loosen it.

I dive for the gun. I'm on my feet pointing it at Karl at about the time he manages to loosen the rope. He's gasping for breath. He eyes the gun in my hand.

“You gonna shoot me, Rennie?” he says.

“Get down on your knees or you're going to find out.”

He won't go down. Instead, he takes a step toward me, his hand outstretched.

“Give me the gun, Rennie, before someone gets hurt.”

“Someone already got hurt.” I nod at Einar. “Stay where you are or I swear I'll shoot.”

He smiles and takes another step toward me.

A car door slams, and I hear Brynja call in Icelandic for her father.

“Brynja, call the police in Reykjavik,” I shout. “Call the police in Reykjavik.”

Karl lunges at me and takes me down in a tackle. I almost pass out from the impact. I hold the gun over my head, as far from him as I can, but he's on top of me, head-butting me before reaching again for the gun. I see stars. But I don't let go. I hit him as hard as I can with the gun butt. He collapses on top of me.

A shadow appears in the doorway. Brynja. She falls to her knees beside her father.

“Call the police, Brynja,” I say. “And get an ambulance.”

NINETEEN

After that, everything happens both fast and slow.

Brynja calls Tryggvi. Tryggvi calls the police in Reykjavik. It takes a while for them to sort everything out. In the meantime, Einar and Karl are loaded into ambulances. Brynja rides to the hospital with her father. A cop rides with Karl. After quizzing me, the remaining cops start to take the back wall of the turf hut apart. After they find the body, they take me in for questioning. It's hours before I hear that Einar is going to be okay. Even better, he comes clean about everything that's happened and says that it was Karl's idea to get rid of me. Karl is charged with two counts of attempted murder. That will hold him until the cops figure out his part in the deaths of Gudrun and Baldur. I also hear that they're going to take a hard look at his finances, including any off-shore accounts he might have. They let me go. I call the Major and fill him in on what has happened. To my astonishment, he stays calm. He doesn't yell at me. He talks to the cops and has me put up at a guesthouse in Reykjavik. He says he's taking the next flight to Iceland.

Two days later, the police say I can go home with the Major. There's just one problem. I have unfinished business.

I get the Major to drive me to the hospital. Just as I suspect, I find Brynja there, shuttling between her father and Sigurdur. On the way over, I was afraid she'd be angry to see me, but she isn't. Mostly she looks tired.

“Afi has been asking for you,” she says.

“And I want to see him. But first I wanted to talk to you. Are you okay?”

She draws in a deep breath. Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks to me like she's fighting back tears.

“My father made a mistake,” she says quietly. “A terrible mistake.”

“Karl set him up. He used your dad to solve his own problems.”

“I know.” She holds herself up tall. “I'm going to live with my aunt until—until everything is sorted out.”

Einar's sure to end up in prison. Even if he didn't mean to kill Baldur, he hid the body. It could be a hard sell to a judge and jury that it was an accident. He tried to kill me too, so I wouldn't be able to tell anyone what I found out in that turf hut. I wonder how long they'll keep him locked up—and what prisons are like in Iceland.

“I want to show you something.” I pull my grandfather's journal out of my pocket and hand it to her. She stares at it and then at me. She opens it and pages through it. When she looks at me again, she's frowning.

“Who is this?”

“Do you recognize her?” I ask.

“She looks a lot like my grandmother.” She's still frowning. “Where did you get this?”

I tell her everything I know about the journal and the woman whose face fills its pages. I show her the letter, but she has as hard a time reading it as I did.

“I don't understand,” she says. “Why didn't Afi want me to see this?”

“I don't know.”

She peers at me and finally nods.

“Come on,” she says.

Sigurdur is propped up in bed. He looks better—even better than when I first arrived.

“I'm glad you're all right,” he says.

“And I'm sorry about Einar—and about everything.”

“It is a good thing,” Sigurdur says. “The burden was getting heavier and heavier for Einar. And for me. It is good that there are no more secrets.”

Brynja and I exchange glances. She hands the journal and the letter to Sigurdur.

“There still are some, Afi,” she says.

And so the old man begins to talk. He's the oldest person I've ever met, and the story he tells is seventy years old, but his voice trembles as he tells it and tears fill his eyes. What it comes down to is he loved her. He loved Kerstin and, if you ask me, he never got over loving her. She worked for him when he was starting out as a young doctor. She kept his house and helped with his patients. He was going to ask her to marry him. But she fell in love with someone else—an air force pilot. She moved to Reykjavik to be closer to the base at Keflavik. She got pregnant. Her pilot boyfriend was sent on a mission, and the next thing she heard, he was missing and presumed dead. She went to the only place she knew to have her baby—back to Sigurdur. He looked after her. He delivered her baby. Then she heard from her boyfriend's parents. They wanted the child. They were adamant their granddaughter was not going to be raised in a place as backward at Iceland.

“They were very well off and extremely well connected. And they were American. She was terrified the government was going to let them have the child.” So they cooked up a scheme—Kerstin and Sigurdur. They were going to say the child had died. Sigurdur was prepared to fake a death certificate.

“I thought if I did…” But his voice breaks off and tears spring to his eyes. Brynja squeezes his hand and says something softly in Icelandic.

Then Kerstin got a message, forwarded to her from Reykjavik. Her boyfriend wasn't dead after all. He was on his way back to Iceland. They would be reunited soon. Everything would be fine.

Or it would have been if the plane, the one my grandfather was flying, hadn't got caught in that blizzard and crash-landed—and if Kerstin's boyfriend hadn't died in my grandfather's arms.

The air force knew where it had lost track of the plane. Searchers were ready to go out as soon as the blizzard cleared. Kerstin was determined to go with them. But every minute that she waited put her more on edge. What had happened to the plane? Had it landed—or crashed? If it had crashed, was he alive? Hurt? Unable to move? Maybe freezing to death while the searchers were waiting?

She knew the terrain—or thought she did. She set out to find the father of her child.

She found my grandfather instead. After she made sure he was safe, she pressed on. She never made it back.

“But why did you lie to my grandfather?” I asked. “Why did you tell him there was no woman?”

“David was a friend of the baby's father. The baby was at my house. I was afraid he would say something to the parents. Kerstin didn't want her baby raised by strangers in America. She wanted her raised here among her own people. And”—he clutched Brynja's hand tightly—“it was
her
baby. So I signed the death certificate and sent it to the baby's American grandparents.”

“The baby?” Brynja asked.

“Your grandmother. A beautiful child. She looked so much like her mother.”

Brynja looks down at the floor. “So you're not really my afi?” she says finally.

A few seconds pass before her eyes meet Sigurdur's.

“What I did was wrong,” he says. “But I raised your grandmother, and when she died, I raised your mother. If you're angry with me, I understand.”

“I'm only angry that you didn't tell me. Or Mother. Or anyone.”

“She—Kerstin—she wanted the baby to stay here. She didn't want it to go to America.”

“I love you, Afi,” Brynja says. “No matter what. But you should have told me. Then you wouldn't have had to carry such a burden yourself. I'm glad you kept the baby. I'm glad you're my afi.”

A tear trickles down the old man's face as Brynja leans in and kisses his cheek.

Brynja turns to me.

“Are you still planning to take the journal out there?”

I glance at the old man, who says, “He should do what David wanted.”

I look at his gnarled fingers clutching the journal. “I think if he had known the whole story, he would have wanted you to have it,” I say. “To remember her by.”

When I finally leave the room, Brynja follows me.

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for being so kind to him.”

I tell her it's nothing, and it's true. It feels good to do something nice for the old man. He deserves it.