Far North - Michael Ridpath [141]
Ísak hesitated. Perhaps if he didn’t scare her she would mistake him for a rescuer. They had only met once, in January, and she might not recognize him from a distance.
He slowed to a walk. ‘Are you all right?’ he shouted.
Harpa hesitated. ‘Who are you?’
‘I was hiking through the pass and I saw you run,’ Ísak called. ‘Are you OK?’
Harpa approached him gingerly. Ísak was close to the stream now. He gripped the knife in the pocket of his coat.
‘Ísak! You’re Ísak aren’t you?’ Harpa shouted. She took a couple of steps back and then ran up the slope.
Ísak leaped into the stream. The water was freezing and more powerful than he expected. He slipped on a rock and rolled over once, his head striking another stone. The shock of the cold water seemed to squeeze the air out of his lungs. For a moment he panicked. Fast flowing mountain streams in Iceland were much more dangerous than they appeared. He fought for air and grabbed a stone, pulling himself to his feet.
He could see Harpa scampering up the rocky side of the valley a few metres ahead, hurrying towards the base of the cloud.
Then he heard the sound of a vehicle behind him.
*
Björn was thinking about Harpa as he drove up into the mist towards the head of the pass. Her calm unnerved him. He was used to her confused, panicky. This sense of purpose was new. It didn’t bode well for her changing her mind and keeping quiet once he let her go.
In which case, what was he to do with her?
He glanced down at his phone. A couple of bars flickered. Maybe he could get reception here without going all the way over the head of the pass. He stopped the car. He was right at the point where the road disappeared behind a boulder, but he couldn’t see back to the hut because of the fog. The two bars flickered and died. He stepped out and moved around the black volcanic dirt at the side of the track, trying to get reception, but there was nothing.
He was surrounded on three sides by thick moisture, but above him, through a thin patina of white, he could see the blue of the sky.
He trotted back to the truck.
Then he saw it. A footprint in the dust, a couple of metres from where he had walked himself. He put his own feet by the print. Smaller, definitely not his.
He followed the prints back into the mist. The dirt had been scuffed. There was part of a tyre mark.
A small conical rock lay about twenty metres back from the track. He checked behind it: a car. The same car he had seen struggling up the pass earlier.
Who the hell’s was it? A strange walker, who for an unknowable reason had wanted to hide his car before setting out? He doubted it.
Could it be the police? The small Honda didn’t look like a police car, and he could see various bits of camping equipment in the back.
It could be Ísak. After Harpa.
Björn ran back to his truck, spun it around and hurtled down the hill to the valley.
He burst through the cloud, and the valley floor opened before him. He noticed the door to the hut hanging open. He scanned the valley as he drove and saw a figure clambering out of the stream and up the hill on the other side. Ísak.
Further up the hill he could see Harpa, only a few metres below the cloud base.
He swerved off the track and drove down towards the stream. Within a few seconds the truck came to a halt as a front wheel slid into a hole with a clang. Björn flung open the door and leaped out. He saw Ísak turn towards him and then keep climbing.
Björn bounded from stone to stone in the stream, and was soon on the other side. He could no longer see Harpa. And the cloud was descending further. In a moment it had swallowed up Ísak.
Björn kept his eyes on where he had last seen Ísak and kept his legs pumping. He was a fit man, fitter than Ísak he would bet.
He scrambled upwards past a rock. A snipe darted up to his right with a whirr of wings. He saw a flash of steel, and twisted, raising his arm to parry the blow. There was the sound