Thurston is tempted to finish this one now. He reaches for the knife strapped to his waist but hesitates.
Miller is the primary target here. If he fails to disable the big man immediately this could all be over before it’s started.
The giant drives away and Thurston turns his attention back to the farmhouse. He walks closer to the window, his boots squeaking softly on the packed snow. Thurston finds a crack in the curtains and puts his eye to the glass.
The farmhouse, largely traditional on the outside, has been decorated inside like Vegas. On a low white sofa that curls around a copper-hooded central fireplace, a naked Nate Miller sprawls back while two girls busy themselves on his crotch. Here and there around the open-plan room are more men with more girls. Thurston estimates the girls to be about seventeen or eighteen, and that’s if he’s being optimistic. A glass table to one side of the sofa is scattered with cigarettes, drug paraphernalia, and two automatic handguns. A girl wearing only a white bra is unconscious underneath the table. To one side is a video camera on a tripod.
An image of a younger Sofi Girsdóttir in this room springs into Thurston’s mind. He feels the cold black thing in his heart compress further until it becomes a diamond of undiluted hatred. For what he did to Barb and Sofi, Miller must be removed from the planet, it’s that simple. Cops, courts, judges won’t do it, so Thurston will.
But the guns on the table remind Thurston tonight is not the night. If this thing is going to go the way Thurston wants he will have to re-evaluate his strategy. It doesn’t matter how clever he is, how adept, how cunning; all it takes is one of Miller’s numbskulls to get lucky—to find a split second to aim and fire—and Thurston will find himself on the wrong end of a bullet.
It’s of no consequence. Now Thurston has Miller’s location and—in the form of the girls—renewed fervor for the job in hand. Thurston needs weapons. He retreats from the farmhouse and starts to retrace his steps back to the Land Cruiser.
Chapter 19
The Hvítá river glows blue-white under a scudding black sky.
Thurston takes particular care on this section: a treacherously narrow strip of rock no more than a meter wide bending around a curve in the river about four meters above the torrent. This close to the water the noise is incredible. But there’s another sound, too; the deeper primordial bass growl of the Gullfoss Falls a hundred meters ahead roaring like some caged beast.
Gullfoss Falls lie at one of the widest points of the Hvítá. Above it, the canyons force millions of tons of water faster and faster along the rocks until it is vomited over and down a series of huge stone steps some fifty or sixty meters wide to rejoin the river below.
As seasoned as Thurston is, the thought of falling into the Hvítá makes him light-headed. He takes each slippery step carefully, making sure he moves slowly and deliberately.
He rounds a bend and finds himself on a slightly wider part of the path that cuts into an overhanging ledge of rock.
Blocking his path is Axel “The Axe” Anders, Nate Miller’s giant, the man who Thurston had knocked unconscious back in Hackney. Anders is smiling. In his left hand he holds a short-handled Uzi. From his right dangles a wicked-looking axe.
“Evening,” shouts Thurston. “How’s it going?”
The big guy doesn’t reply but a second voice comes from behind Thurston.
“Keep talking, pussy. See how far it gets you with the Axe.”
Thurston turns to see Nate Miller backed by three guys. They all have guns and all look extremely comfortable about using them. Thurston curses his arrogance in underestimating Miller. Until they’d appeared he had no idea he was being followed.
“The Axe?” says Thurston. “Jeez, how long was the brainstorming session you bunch of geniuses took to come up with that one?”
“Pretty quick,” says Miller. “We don’t like to waste time.” He shakes his head. “Why’d you come out here unarmed? I thought you were better than that. I offered you a job, man. Christ Almighty. I’m disappointed.”
“My mother often says the same,” says Thurston, weighing up his chances of disarming the Axe. “You sound exactly like her. Although she’s got a better beard than you.”
“Okay,” says Miller. He waves the barrel of his auto toward Thurston. “Take this guy’s fucking head off,” he says to the Axe.
Thurston slips off his backpack and lets it fall to the ground as Anders approaches. He backs away until he feels his heels hanging over the edge of the trail. Thurston looks over his shoulder at the racing water. He unzips his jacket and lets it fall and Miller laughs.
Thurston’s hand reaches around his back into the waistband of his waterproof pants. His fingers close around the handle of his knife. In a smooth movement, he flips the knife over and hurls it at the advancing Anders. The blade glances off the guy’s temple, slicing through his knit cap and taking a chunk out of his ear. Anders bellows in pain and comes at Thurston with the blade swinging. Thurston dodges left and right and then his feet find nothing but cold, thin air.
There’s a moment of electric realization and then he falls.
In the split second before he hits the water he gulps down a last lungful of oxygen before he is greedily sucked down into the Hvítá’s icy depths.
Chapter 20
The cold almost stops Thurston’s heart but the thick wet suit he’s wearing underneath his clothes keeps him operational.
Just.
The power of the water is astonishing. In zero visibility Thurston feels himself being dragged downward as though in the maw of some giant beast. He slams hard into a rock wall and then another. It’s only pure luck he hasn’t been smashed into pulp inside the first ten seconds.
He gets drawn into a comparably quieter zone and takes the chance to shrug off the pants that have been acting as an anchor. He strikes for the surface.
In almost the same moment, some accident of the current brings Thurston to the surface. He gets a brief glimpse of the night sky and registers a noise like a jet engine before he is hurled over the first great stone step and down the Gullfoss Falls.
There’s nothing he can do except hold his breath and hope.
He wraps his arms around his head as he tumbles down. He hits the bottom and comes to a brief stop. A monstrous weight of cascading water is pressing him flat against the rock. Thurston inches forward, blindly, fighting the force pulling him down. He will likely die anyway but if he stays at the bottom of this eddy he will die sooner. It takes Thurston several agonizing minutes before he feels the river take him again. Once it does, he is moving faster than ever.
Quite suddenly, he tastes fresh air as the falls spit him over another ledge. He spins and sucks in more air. This time when he hits the water he manages to keep his head above the surface. He feels a fractional easing of the speed of the current and kicks as hard as he can for a spar of snow-covered rock jutting out at an angle. As he gets closer he tries to grab hold of something but his fingers won’t work properly. The rocks are slick with ice and water.
“C’mon!” grunts Thurston and he kicks again, finding strength from somewhere.
The river flicks Thurston into a tiny eddy nestling in an elbow of rock. He digs his hands into the shale and hauls himself clear of the water, lungs burning and ice already forming on his hair and face.
Thurston permits himself a few brief seconds before he gets to his feet.
Do nothing and die.
The cold is so intense, so all-consuming, Thurston almost laughs. He feels a drowsiness begin to descend and knows this is hypothermia showing its face. He climbs up a short bank and out across an endless white plain disappearing into the darkness. Thurston has no way of knowing how far he’s come from the point where he entered the water but he’s guessing it’s more than two kilometers.
He flashes on the Land Cruiser parked back by the tourist office. Warmth, shelter, life. He turns back along the river and begins running.
It’s all he can do.
Cha
pter 21
Thurston’s been moving as best he can for ten minutes when it dawns on him he’s not going to make it back to the Land Cruiser. He’s been dragged too far downstream and the cold is slowing him down too much. If he doesn’t get to shelter in the next few minutes he will die out here.
He reaches a relatively high point of land and climbs, trying to ignore the stabbing pains shooting down his arms and legs as he slithers on the snow. At the top of the rise, his breath coming hard, Thurston scrapes ice from his eyes and rubs his hands while he turns 360 degrees.
He’s looking at a wilderness. A blasted snowscape bounded on one side by distant black mountains. There isn’t a single visible light. The pointlessness of his situation, and the inevitability of his death hits him hard. His breath hurts his lungs. His limbs are heavy and sleep tugs at his eyelids. It would be so good to sit down, so easy to rest on the soft snow, to close his eyes and forget all about Miller and Sofi and Barb.
And then he sees it. About two hundred meters away. An electric thrill runs through his nervous system. A chance.
A roof.
It’s a farm building of some sort. A cattle shed.
There’s no sign of the farm it belongs to and Thurston can’t risk trying to find it. It’s this stinking hole or nothing.
Dead on his feet, he stumbles the last few meters to the door, lifts the wooden crossbar lock, and pushes himself inside.
A wave of beautiful, stinking animal warmth hits him and Thurston almost faints with relief. He can’t see a thing but inside the stock shed the temperature feels positively tropical by comparison with outside. His arrival is greeted with relative calm and a few disgruntled moans, as though Thurston is a late arrival on an already over-crowded commuter train.
Thurston feels his way around, bumping into the animals as he does. One stands on his foot and he pulls it away, trying not to spook the beast. He has no idea what the animals are apart from the fact they don’t seem to be cows.
In a corner of the shed Thurston comes across a stack of thick plastic bags scattered on top of a heap of straw bales. Moving as quickly as he is able, and shivering violently, he fills one of them with loose straw. There are only minutes left before he succumbs to the cold, even in here. He stuffs his wet snow boots with straw. If he’s going to survive this he’ll need to walk out of here. Without the boots he won’t stand a chance.
Thurston places his boots on a hay bale and bends to fumble in the straw on the floor of the shed until he finds what he’s looking for: a warm heap of fresh dung. He smears it over his skin as thickly as possible, paying particular attention to his feet and hands. When he judges himself well-covered he slides into the straw-stuffed plastic bag. He finds a gap between the hay bales, drops his wet suit under him, and wedges himself in the space above, stuffing handfuls of straw to plug any gaps. He pulls another bale over the top until he is encased. He curls into a fetal position and jams his hands between his thighs.
Agonizingly slowly, stinking to high heaven, he begins to thaw, hoping he hasn’t been so exposed his fingers or toes become necrotic.
After a time, unconsciousness comes.
Chapter 22
Thurston is woken by a rough, wet tongue energetically licking the top of his head—the only part of him not inside the straw-stuffed plastic bag.
Feeling like death, Thurston groans and lifts his face free of his makeshift sleeping bag. As thin early morning Icelandic light dribbles in through the cracks in the shed wall, Thurston finds himself staring directly into the disdainful hooded eyes of a white-coated llama.
“Fuck me,” Thurston croaks. “Llamas.”
The llama regards him curiously and then turns away.
Thurston creaks upright and promptly vomits onto the hay bales as his stomach gets rid of the river water forced down his throat the night before. After the vomiting stops he carefully checks his hands and feet. All seem to be intact, if wracked by cramps. He hopes the cramps don’t indicate irreversible damage but he doesn’t dwell on it: time will tell and there’s no benefit in thinking about what might happen.
Thurston unravels his wet suit and spreads it across the straw. As the llamas gather around to inspect, Thurston puts on the wetsuit. It’s like climbing into a discarded bag of ice but Thurston hopes his body heat will warm the moisture. Eventually.
Shivering, he fastens the zips and finds his snow boots. The straw has dried them a little but they are still too wet. For the second time since he’d gotten out of the river, Thurston feels the seductive tug of capitulation. Without boots he’s finished. He sits down heavily on a bale and tries to force his mind to concentrate, to think.
And then, from somewhere outside, he hears a noise: an engine.
Thurston puts an eye to a crack in the wall.
Coming slowly over the rise ahead is a snowmobile pulling a sled piled with straw bales. It turns in a wide semicircle before pulling up outside the shed.
The farmer’s arrival causes excitement among the llamas. Their noise reaches the farmer because he calls out something in Icelandic.
Thurston positions himself behind the door and waits.
After a few seconds the shed door swings open and a heavyset man swaddled in thickly padded winter work gear walks in staggering under the weight of a bale of straw. He takes a few steps before he stops dead and slowly turns to look at Thurston over his left shoulder.
“G’day,” says Thurston and raises his hand.
The farmer looks impassively at Thurston as though finding a shivering, shit-covered Australian in his remote llama shed is an everyday occurrence.
“Am I glad to see you, llama farmer,” says Thurston.
As he speaks, the farmer puts down the bale, reaches into his jacket, and comes out with a short-barreled shotgun.
“I haven’t got time for this,” says Thurston. He takes two quick strides forward and in one smooth motion twists the gun free of the farmer. “If you’re going to point a gun at least look like you mean it, brother, okay?”
The farmer nods.
“You speak English?” says Thurston.
“Yes. A little.”
“Okay, good. I need clothes, boots, food, and a car. If I don’t get those things I’m going to kill you. You understand?”
The farmer understands.
Chapter 23
The farmer lives alone, which is a bonus since Thurston doesn’t have to deal with the complication of a wife or family. He ties the farmer securely to a radiator and then takes a long, hot bath in the surprisingly clean bathroom. He borrows clothes and raids the farmer’s kitchen, cooking a gigantic plate of eggs and washing it down with a gallon of coffee.
Less than an hour after arriving at the farm, with the farmer’s confiscated shotgun nestling in a holdall on the passenger seat, Thurston bundles the farmer into the back of his ancient truck, blindfolded and gagged. Thurston could simply leave the farmer and take the truck but that would invite complications. Easier to take him to Reykjavik and let him make his own way back. The farmer’s done nothing wrong—other than point a shotgun—but Thurston can’t rule out a link with Miller who is, after all, a neighbor.
Before heading back to the city, Thurston checks the Land Cruiser at Gullfoss Falls. As expected, it’s gone. He thinks about heading straight back to Miller’s place but dismisses it. With Miller assuming he is dead, Thurston knows he temporarily has the upper hand. Better to make preparations in Reykjavik and come back loaded for bear.
Thurston points the truck east and heads to Reykjavik. The journey passes uneventfully although Thurston has to blink himself awake more than once.
Eight blocks from his rented apartment, Thurston parks the truck. He grabs the holdall and steps out of the car. Leaning into the backseat he unties the farmer’s hands and walks away. By the time the old guy has his bearings, Thurston is gone.
He makes his way to the apartment and, although he doesn’t expect any, checks for surveillance. Once he’s satisfied Miller hasn??
?t left anyone, Thurston goes inside.
The place has been tossed but, since Thurston hadn’t spent more than five minutes in the place, there’s nothing for him to worry about. Thurston retrieves the backpack he’d stowed under the outside steps last night.
By midday he’s in another scalding bath at the Centerhotel Arnarhvoll overlooking the harbor. He stays there for almost an hour before wolfing down a room-service steak and sleeping the sleep of the dead.
Chapter 24
For three days Thurston licks his wounds at the Arnarhvoll. His main concern had been his hands and feet but they seem to have come through without any lasting damage. He’s copped a black eye, bruised ribs, and an impressive lineup of contusions from the battering he took in the Falls. As he recovers he spends time mapping out an approach route to Miller’s farm and rents a car to replace the Land Cruiser, which he’ll report stolen when he’s left Iceland. If he leaves Iceland.
Thurston’s dreams are plagued by images of Sofi Girsdóttir and Barb Connors—Sofi appearing to him wearing the look of pure animal horror when she saw Miller in the bar. With Barb it is her screams; screams that jolt Thurston awake in the small hours. He spends a lot of time in those hours thinking about the two women and of the party girls he’d seen at Miller’s place. Those girls—and it’s all too easy to see a younger Sofi as one of them—were as disposable to Miller as paper coffee cups. Children—or as close as makes no difference—used as toys. Thurston flashes back to the smug expression on Miller’s face at Gullfoss and fixes the image in his mind.
Thurston’s escape from Paddington Green has faded from the online press. He has no doubt the case is still very much alive but at least it means his photo isn’t still being splashed around the media. Thurston notes that DS Hall is no longer mentioned as leading the investigation although, so far, there’s no tabloid exposé of the video he’d shot of Hall at 22 Logandale Lane.