‘I know,’ said Ingileif. ‘I’ll do all that if you like. I know how much you hate the saga. And this is all my fault, after all.’
‘That’s kind of you to offer,’ Pétur said. ‘We’ll see.’
‘There’s something else I should show you,’ Ingileif said. She fetched her bag from behind the door and handed Pétur Tolkien’s letter. The second one, the one written in 1948.
He opened it and read, frowning.
Ingileif had been expecting more of a reaction. ‘This shows that Grandpa actually found the ring.’
Pétur looked up at his sister. ‘I knew that.’
‘You knew it! How? When?’
‘Grandpa told me. And he told me that he wanted the ring to remain hidden. He was worried that Dad would look for it once he died and he wanted me to stop him.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ingileif asked.
‘It was another one of our family secrets,’ Pétur said. ‘And after Dad died, I didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it.’
‘I wish you had stopped him,’ Ingileif said.
Anger flared in Pétur’s eyes. ‘Don’t you think I do? I beat myself up about that for years. But what could I do? I was in high school in Reykjavík. Besides, I was his son, I couldn’t tell him what to do.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Ingileif quickly. ‘I’m sorry.’ They sat in silence for a moment, Pétur’s anger subsiding.
‘I’ve been wondering recently, since I found this letter, wondering about Dad’s death,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he went off with the pastor to look for the ring. Maybe they found it?’
‘No. We have no reason to think that.’
‘I should ask him.’
‘Who? The pastor? Don’t you think he would have told us if they had found anything?’
‘Maybe not.’
Pétur closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were moist. ‘Inga, I don’t know why thinking about Dad’s death affects me like this, but it always does. I want to forget it. I have tried so hard over the years to forget it, but I never seem able to. I just can’t stop thinking that it’s all my fault.’
‘Of course it wasn’t your fault, Pési,’ Ingileif said.
‘I know that. I know that.’ Pétur dabbed his eye with a finger. It was strange for Ingileif to see her brother, usually so composed and aloof, so upset. He sniffed and shook his head. ‘Or else I think it’s that damned ring. When I was a kid I was obsessed with it, scared of it. Then when Dad died I thought it was a load of bullshit and I wanted nothing to do with it.’
He stared angrily at his sister. ‘And now? Now I wonder whether it hasn’t destroyed our family. Reached out from that moment a thousand years ago when Gaukur took it from Ísildur on the summit of Hekla, reached out to destroy us: Dad, Mum, Birna, me, you.’
He leaned forward, his moist eyes alight. ‘It doesn’t need to exist anywhere but in here.’ He tapped his temple with his finger. ‘It is lodged in the minds of all of us, all our family. That’s where it does its damage.’
Vigdís parked her car on one of the small streets leading down towards the bay from Hverfisgata, and she and Baldur jumped out. The renewed questioning at the university had turned up something. A uniformed officer had interviewed one of Agnar’s students, a dopey twenty-year-old, who had remembered someone asking around at the university for Agnar on the day he had died. The student had mentioned to the man that Agnar had a summer house by Lake Thingvellir and that he sometimes spent time there. Why the student hadn’t reported this before wasn’t clear, to the student or to the police, although he didn’t have a good explanation as to what he was doing on the university campus on a public holiday. The police let that drop.
No, the man hadn’t given his name. But the student recognized him. From TV.
Tómas Hákonarson.
He lived on the eighth floor of one of the new blocks of luxury apartments that had sprouted up in the Skuggahverfi, or Shadow District, along the shore of the bay. He answered the door, bleary eyed, as if he had just been woken up.
Baldur introduced himself and Vigdís, and barged in.
‘What’s this about?’ asked Tómas, blinking.
‘The murder of Agnar Haraldsson.’
‘Ah. You’d better take a seat then.’
The furniture was expensive cream leather. The view of the bay was spectacular, although at that precise moment a dark cloud was pressing down on the darker sea. Only the lowest hundred feet or so of Mount Esja was visible, and there was no chance of seeing Snaefellsnes glacier in the gloom. To the left, tall cranes dithered above the unfinished national concert hall, one of the casualties of the kreppa.
‘What do you know?’ Tómas asked.
‘I’d rather ask you what you know,’ Baldur said. ‘Starting with your movements on Thursday the twenty-third. Last Thursday.’
Tómas gathered his thoughts. ‘I got up late. Went out for a sand-wich for lunch and a cup of coffee. Then I drove over to the university.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was looking for Agnar Haraldsson. I asked a student who said that he might be at his summer house by Lake Thingvellir. So I drove up there.’
‘At what time was this?’ Vigdís asked, her notebook out, pen poised.
‘I got there about four o’clock, I think. I don’t know. I can’t remember precisely. Can’t have been much before three-thirty. Might have been a bit after four.’
‘And was Agnar there?’
‘Yes, he was. I had a cup of coffee. We chatted a bit. And then I left.’
‘I see. And what time did you leave?’
‘I don’t know. Once again, I didn’t look at my watch. I was there about three-quarters of an hour.’
‘So that would make it four forty-five?’
‘Or thereabouts.’
Baldur was silent. Tómas held his silence too. Vigdís knew the game: she was motionless, pen poised. But Tómas wasn’t saying any more.
‘What did you chat about?’ Baldur asked, eventually.
‘I wanted to discuss a possible television project on the sagas.’
‘What kind of project?’
‘Well, that was the trouble. I didn’t have a specific idea. I was kind of hoping that Agnar would provide that. But he didn’t.’
‘So you left?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And then what did you do?’
‘I came back home. Watched a movie, a DVD. Had a drink. Well, I had several drinks actually.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes,’ said Tómas.
‘Do you often drink alone?’
Tómas took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said again.
Vigdís looked around the flat. Sure enough there was an empty whisky bottle in the bin. Dewar’s.
‘And was this the first time you had met Agnar?’ Baldur asked.
‘No,’ said Tómas. ‘I had bumped into him once or twice in the past. I suppose he was my saga contact.’
Baldur’s long face was impassive, but Vigdís could feel the excitement in him. Tómas was talking nonsense, and Baldur knew it.
‘And why didn’t you come forward before?’ Baldur asked, gently.
‘Um. Well, you see, I didn’t see anything about the murder in the papers.’
‘Oh, don’t give me that, Tómas! Your job is to keep up with the news. The papers have been full of it.’
‘And … I didn’t want to get involved. I couldn’t see that it was important.’
At this Baldur couldn’t maintain his composure. He laughed. ‘Right, Tómas. You are coming with us to the station, where you had better think up a better story than that bullshit. I would suggest the truth; that usually works. But first I want you to show me what clothes you were wearing on that day. And the shoes.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘YOU CAN’T RELEASE Steve Jubb!’ Magnus almost shouted.
Baldur stood in the corridor outside t
he interview room, facing him. ‘I can and I will. We don’t have the evidence to hold him. We know that there was someone else there that night after Steve Jubb had driven back to Reykjavík. Someone who dumped Agnar into the lake once it got dark.’
‘According to a four-year-old girl.’
‘She’s five. But the point is all the forensic evidence backs that up.’
‘But what about her parents? Surely they would have heard another car going past their house after nine-thirty?’
‘We checked. They went to bed early. Their bedroom is at the back of the house. And they were busy.’
‘Busy? Busy doing what?’
‘Busy doing what married people sometimes do when they go to bed early.’
‘Oh.’
‘And now we have another suspect.’ Baldur nodded towards the door where Tómas Hákonarson was just beginning a marathon interview session.
Magnus looked in. A man with round glasses, thinning hair and chubby cheeks was sitting smoking a cigarette, watched closely by Vigdís. The famous television personality.
‘And has he confessed?’
‘Give me time,’ Baldur said. ‘His fingerprints match the unidentified set we found in the house. We’re analysing his clothes and his boots now. For the moment his story is that he came and went before Steve Jubb arrived. Jubb arrived at about seven-thirty that evening and the neighbours were out all afternoon, so it’s just about possible that Tómas came and went without them seeing him. But if you thought Jubb was lying, you should see this guy. His story is shot full of holes. We’ll break it.’
‘Don’t you think what I told you about Lawrence Feldman and Steve Jubb trying to buy a ring from Agnar changes things?’
‘No,’ said Baldur, firmly. ‘Now, I have some work to do.’
Magnus went back to his desk in intense frustration. What really bugged him was the possibility that Baldur might be right and he wrong. Baldur was a good cop who trusted his intuition, but then so was Magnus. Which was why it would be so galling if Baldur’s hunches proved to be correct and his were not.
He knew he should take a deep breath, keep an open mind, let the direction of the inquiry follow the evidence as it emerged. But the trouble was, the more he looked into the saga and ring deal, the murkier it got. And the higher were the stakes for those involved.
When it came right down to it, Tómas Hákonarson had the opportunity but as yet not the motive. Isildur and Gimli, as they liked to call themselves, had motive aplenty.
The seat opposite Magnus was empty – Árni was still up in the air. Magnus called his cell phone and left a message on his voice-mail to tell him that Isildur was in Reykjavík and he may as well come home.
Poor guy.
He switched on his computer and checked for an e-mail. There was one from Deputy Superintendent Williams, a long one by his standards.
Williams apologized for the failure to protect Colby. He claimed there was a patrol car outside all night, but they didn’t see anything. There was no trace of Colby herself, although she had told her boss and her parents that she was going away for a while.
There had been questions asked around Schroeder Plaza, the headquarters of the Homicide Unit, questions about Magnus disguised as gossip. Friends of Lenahan; friends of friends of Soto. There was no doubt that Soto’s gang was after Magnus.
The kid Magnus had shot had died. The inquest into his death and that of his older partner was going to be delayed until after the Lenahan trial.
But the big news was the Lenahan trial itself. The judge had finally grown impatient with the delay tactics of the defence and had denied their motions to subpoena thousands of e-mails from the police department. That, combined with the surprise collapse of another murder trial which left a hole in the judge’s docket, meant that it was likely that the trial would begin sometime the following week. Magnus would be called as a witness as early as possible: the FBI hoped that as soon as he testified, Lenahan would talk. The Feds would send Magnus details of his flight as soon as they had decided them. The destination airport was still under discussion, but it wouldn’t be Logan. The FBI would be there in force to meet him and take him to a safe house.
Magnus tapped out a reply saying it would be good to be home. Which was true. He felt that the value he was adding to the Icelandic police force was precisely zero. Baldur’s estimate would be negative.
He thought about Colby, and smiled. Good for her. If the Boston police couldn’t find her, that was a good thing. If she really wanted to hide, she could do it.
He wrote a quick e-mail to her, telling her to let him know she was OK, if she got the opportunity. That was the best he could hope for.
His thoughts turned to the case. He hated the idea of dropping it, leaving it to Baldur to clear up.
OK, if he was right and Baldur was wrong, that meant the case turned on the saga and the ring. Especially the ring. Leave aside the question of whether this was really the ring that was taken from a dwarf who fished in the shape of a pike a couple of millennia ago. That wasn’t important. What was important was that Agnar thought he knew where a ring was, and Feldman wanted that ring. Badly.
So where was it?
As he had pointed out to Árni, it seemed unlikely that Agnar could conjure up a fake thousand-year-old ring in a couple of days. Which meant either that someone else had it, Ingileif for example, or that Agnar had figured out where he could find it.
Magnus didn’t think Ingileif had the ring. All right, he didn’t want to believe that Ingileif had the ring, but he knew he should keep the idea open as a possibility.
Unless someone else had it. Magnus had no idea who.
What if Agnar had figured out where it was hidden? Magnus had read Gaukur’s Saga: there were not enough clues in there to lead anyone to the ring. But Agnar was an expert on medieval Icelandic literature. He no doubt knew of dozens of folk tales and legends which might hold clues, cross-references.
Then Magnus remembered the entry in Agnar’s diary for Hruni. Not Flúdir, Hruni. Vigdís had interviewed the pastor there, the pastor Pétur had told Magnus about, Dr Ásgrímur’s friend. Magnus recalled her report: the pastor had had nothing much of interest to say.
Magnus needed to go to Hruni. But first he wanted to speak to Ingileif. He wanted to find out more about the ring, and the pastor.
And, damn it, he wanted to see her.
He walked to the gallery and arrived just before closing time, but Ingileif wasn’t there. Her partner, a striking dark-haired woman, told him she was probably working at home. He had her home address from the initial interview and it only took him ten minutes to walk there.
Her first reaction when she saw him on her doorstep seemed to be pleasure, her smile was wide and warm, but a moment later it was clouded by doubt. But she invited him in.
‘How are you getting on in Iceland?’ she asked ‘Met any nice girls yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’m offended.’
‘Present company excepted of course.’
‘Of course. Have a seat.’
Magnus sat in a low chrome chair and accepted a glass of wine. A cello was propped up against the wall, dominating the small room. In an apartment this tiny a violin might have been a better choice of instrument, Magnus thought. Or a piccolo.
‘I didn’t know you were allowed to drink on duty,’ Ingileif said as she handed the glass to him.
‘I’m not sure I am on duty,’ said Magnus.
‘Really?’ said Ingileif, raising her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t realize this was a social call.’
‘Well, it’s not a formal interview,’ Magnus said. ‘I want your help.’
‘I thought that’s what I had been doing,’ Ingileif said. ‘Helping the police with their inquiries. Except I admit I wasn’t very helpful at first.’
‘I want to talk to you about the ring. I need to figure out where it is. Who has it.’
‘I have no idea, I told you that,’ Ingileif said. ‘It’s stu
ffed in some tiny niche in the rocks somewhere in the Icelandic wilderness.’
‘Agnar thought he had found it,’ Magnus said. ‘Or at least he thought he knew where it was. It wasn’t just the saga he was trying to sell to Lawrence Feldman, it was the ring too.’
Magnus explained the contents of the text message Steve Jubb had sent to Feldman the night Agnar had been murdered, and Feldman’s conviction that Agnar knew where the ring was.
‘So somebody has it?’ Ingileif asked.
‘Possibly,’ Magnus said.
‘Who?’
‘The most obvious candidate is you.’
Ingileif exploded. ‘Hey! You said you wanted my help. I would have said if I had it. I know I didn’t tell you everything earlier, but I’ve given up on the saga, and the damned ring. So if you don’t believe me, take me away and interrogate me. Or torture me. You are American, aren’t you? Do you want to try out some water-boarding on me?’
Magnus was taken aback by the vehemence of her denial. ‘It’s true I have lived in America for a while. But I’m not going to torture you. In fact, I’ll just ask you. Do you know where the ring is?’
‘No,’ Ingileif said. ‘Do you believe me?’
‘Yes,’ Magnus said. He knew that as a professional detective he should still doubt her, but a professional detective wouldn’t have been drinking a glass of wine in her apartment. He had given up on being a professional detective, at least while he was in Iceland. He just wanted to find out who killed Agnar.
She seemed to calm down. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘About the water-boarding dig.’
‘Will you still help me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your brother told me that your father confided in the local pastor. That the two of them worked on theories of where the ring might be hidden. Can you tell me something about this pastor?’
‘I didn’t know anything about my grandfather finding the ring at that stage, but I did know that Dad planned several hiking trips around Thjórsárdalur with the pastor to look for it. So, what can I tell you about Reverend Hákon?’
Where the Shadows Lie Page 20