Mordor. Where the shadows lie.
A large black bird swooped down and alighted on a fence post only feet from the car. It opened its beak and croaked accusingly. It cocked its head on one side and seemed to be staring right at Feldman with one eye. A raven. The damn bird was weirding him out.
Feldman had elected to remain in the car, while Kristján Gylfason, the lawyer he had hired to represent Gimli, had gone into the prison to fetch him. The stories the big red-haired policeman with the flaw-less American accent had told Feldman about the prison still unsettled him.
A man emerged from a nearby building. He was a big guy, six-foot six, with long fair hair, a beard and a barrel chest, wearing blue overalls, and he was coming right towards the Mercedes. One of those depraved shepherds Feldman had heard about, no doubt. Feldman reached for the door lock, and was relieved to hear the comforting electronic clicks as he depressed it. The guy in the over-alls caught sight of him in the car, gave him a curt nod and a wave, and climbed into a Toyota pick-up.
At last he saw the smooth besuited figure of Kristján emerge from the prison entrance, accompanied by a big man in a blue tracksuit, his stomach protruding in front of him. Feldman reached over, unlocked the door and pushed it open.
‘Gimli!’
Gimli flopped into the back seat with a grunt. ‘How you doin’?’ he said.
Feldman hesitated. This was the first time he had ever met Gimli in the flesh, but he felt he knew him so well. He was overcome with emotion. He leaned forward clumsily to give him a hug.
Gimli sat still. ‘Steady on, mate,’ he said. He had a pronounced Yorkshire accent.
Feldman broke away.
‘How was it?’ Feldman asked. ‘In there? Was it really bad?’
‘It were all right. Food’s OK. Mind you, the telly in this country is crap.’
‘What about the other prisoners? Did they treat you OK?’
‘Didn’t talk to them,’ Gimli said. ‘I kept meself to meself.’
‘That was wise,’ said Feldman. He looked closely at Gimli, trying to figure out if he was lying. Feldman would understand if he didn’t want to be too specific about his prison experiences.
Gimli shifted uncomfortably under Feldman’s stare. ‘Thanks for your help, Lawrence. With Kristján and everything.’
‘Not at all. And please call me Isildur. I’ll call you Gimli.’
Gimli turned towards Feldman, raised an eyebrow and shrugged. ‘Fair enough. I didn’t tell them anything, you know. Although they seemed to have figured a lot of it out theirselves. They found out about the saga, and the ring, for instance, but it weren’t me what told them.’
‘Of course not,’ said Feldman, instantly guilty about how much he had told the police under much less pressure.
Kristján started the car and drove out of the prison grounds and back towards Reykjavík. Feldman was glad to get out of there. He glanced at his companion. Jubb was bigger than he imagined: because of his nickname Feldman had assumed someone shorter. But this Gimli shared a tough solidity with his namesake from Middle Earth. A good partner.
‘You know, Gimli, we might have missed Gaukur’s Saga, but we could still find the ring. Do you want to help me?’
‘After all that’s happened here?’ Gimli asked.
‘Of course, I’d understand if you didn’t,’ said Feldman. ‘But if we found it, we could share it. Split custody of it. Seventy-five, twenty-five.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you get to keep it twenty-five per cent of the time. Three months in every year.’
Gimli stared out of the window at the brown plain. He nodded. ‘Well, I’ve gone through so much, I may as well get something from it.’
‘Deal?’ Feldman held out his hand.
Gimli shook it. ‘How do we start?’
‘Did Agnar give you any indication at all where the ring might be?’
‘No. But he was pretty confident he could get his hands on it. Like he knew where it was.’
‘Excellent. Now, when the police questioned you, did they ask you about anyone in particular?’
‘Yes, they did. A brother and sister. Peter and Ingi-something Ásgrímsson. I’m pretty sure they must be the ones who were selling the saga.’
‘All right. All we have to do is find them. Kristján? Can you help us?’
‘I haven’t been listening to your conversation,’ said the lawyer.
‘We need to track down a couple of people. Can you help?’
‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ said Kristján. ‘If I need to defend you in the future, the less I know the better.’
‘I get it. Then can you recommend a good investigator? Someone who is willing to bend the rules a bit to find out what we need?’
‘The kind of investigators we use would never do that kind of thing,’ Kristján said.
Feldman frowned.
‘So who would you not recommend, then?’ asked Steve Jubb. ‘You know, who should we steer clear of?’
‘There’s a man called Axel Bjarnason,’ said Kristján. ‘He’s well known to stray on the wrong side of the law. I would stay well clear of him. You’ll find his name in the phone book. Under “A”, we list people under first names in this country.’
It took Magnus a while to requisition a car for the journey to Hruni, and it wasn’t until after lunch before he rolled up outside the gallery on Skólavördustígur to pick up Ingileif. It would take a little less than two hours to get to Hruni, but there should be time to get there, speak to the pastor and return to Reykjavík that evening.
She was wearing jeans and an anorak, her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She looked good. She also looked pleased to see him.
They drove out of Reykjavík under a broad dark cloud, the suburbs of Grafarvogur and Breidholt, a lesser grey, stretching out beside them. As they climbed up the pass to the south-east, lava and cloud converged, until suddenly they crested the final rise and a broad flood plain sparkled in the sunshine beneath them. The plain was scattered with knolls and tiny settlements, and bisected by a broad river, which ran down to the sea, through the town of Selfoss. Closer by, steam rose in tall plumes from the boreholes of a geothermal power station. Immediately below were the vegetable greenhouses of Hveragerdi, heated by spouts of hot water shooting up from the centre of the earth. There was a touch of sulphur in the air, even inside the car.
A thin band of white edged the black cloud hovering above them. Ahead, the sky was a pale, faultless blue.
‘Tell me about Tómas,’ Magnus said.
‘I’ve known him for about as long as I can remember,’ Ingileif said. ‘We went to elementary school together in Flúdir. His parents separated when he was about fourteen, and he moved with his mother to Hella. He’s totally different to his father, a bit of a joker, charming in his way, although I never found him attractive. Quite smart. But his father was always disappointed in him.’
She paused as Magnus manoeuvred around a particularly steep bend down the hill, swerving slightly to avoid a truck coming up the other way.
‘We drive on the right in this country,’ Ingileif said.
‘I know. We do in the States too.’
‘It’s just you seem to prefer the middle of the road.’
Magnus took no notice. He was in perfect control of the car.
‘Tómas bummed around after university for a bit,’ Ingileif continued. ‘Then did some journalism and suddenly fell into this show he does: The Point. He’s perfect for it. The producer who spotted him must be a genius.’
‘When was that?’
‘A couple of years ago. I think it’s gone to his head a bit. Tómas always liked to drink, do drugs, but his parties have the reputation for being pretty wild.’
‘Have you been to any?’
‘Actually, no. I haven’t seen much of him recently, until yesterday. But he asked me to go to one on Saturday.’
‘I wouldn’t buy yourself a frock for that one.’
&
nbsp; ‘No,’ said Ingileif. ‘I hear he might be double booked.’
‘You say you saw him yesterday?’
Ingileif described her meeting with Tómas in Mokka, and his cryptic questions about the Agnar case.
‘How does he get along with his father?’ Magnus asked.
‘Well, I don’t know about now. But it always used to be the classic relationship between an over-demanding father and a son who is constantly trying to please and never quite succeeds. Tómas tried to rebel, dropping out, the parties and so on, but he never quite managed it. He always felt his father’s disapproval deeply. I’m sure he still does.’
‘So he might do his father a favour? A big favour?’
‘Like murdering someone?’
Magnus shrugged.
Ingileif thought about it for a few seconds. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in frustration eventually. ‘I can’t imagine he would. I can’t imagine that anyone would murder anyone else. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Iceland.’
‘It happens everywhere,’ said Magnus. ‘And it’s happened here. To Agnar.’
They were now on the floor of the plain, driving on a long straight road that cut through fields of knotted brown grass. Every mile or so, a farmhouse or a little white-and-red church perched on top of a hillock, a green patch of home meadow laid out neatly in front of it. Sheep grazed, most still shaggy with the winter’s wool, but the prevalent animal was the horse, sturdy animals, barely bigger than ponies, many a golden chestnut colour.
‘So, back in America, are you a tough-guy cop with a gun like you see on TV?’ Ingileif asked. ‘You know, chasing the bad guys around the city in sports cars?’
‘Cops get irritated as hell by the TV shows, they never get it right,’ said Magnus. ‘But yes, I do have a gun. And the city is full of bad guys, or at least the areas I end up working in.’
‘Doesn’t it depress you? Or do you get a thrill out of it?’
‘I dunno,’ said Magnus. It was always hard to explain being a cop to civilians. They never quite got it. Colby had never gotten it.
‘Sorry,’ said Ingileif, and she turned to look out of the window.
They drove on. Perhaps Magnus was being unfair to Ingileif. She had made an effort to understand him the night before.
‘There was a girl I knew in college, Erin. She used to go down into Providence to work with the kids there. It was a real tough place back then. I went with her, partly because I thought what she was doing was good, mostly because I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the college and I wanted to get her into bed.’
‘How romantic.’
‘Yeah. But she did do a lot of good. She was great with the kids, the boys drooled over her, and the girls thought she was cool too. And I helped out.’
‘I bet all the girls thought you were cool as well,’ Ingileif said with a grin.
‘I managed to fight them off,’ said Magnus.
‘And did you worm your evil way into this poor girl’s bed?’
‘For a while.’ Magnus smiled at the memory. ‘She was genuinely a very good person. One of the best people I’ve ever met. Much better than me.
‘Every time she met a screwed up kid who was dealing drugs or knifing his neighbours, she saw a scared little boy who had been abused and abandoned by his parents and by society.’
‘And you?’
‘Well, I tried to see it her way, I really did. But in my world there were good guys and bad guys, and all I saw was a bad guy. The way I saw it, it was the bad guys who were ruining the neighbourhood and corrupting the other kids in it. All I wanted to do was stop the little punk from ruining other people’s lives. Just like my life had been ruined by whoever killed my father.’
‘So you became a cop?’
‘That’s right. And she became a teacher.’ Magnus smiled wryly. ‘And somehow I think she has made the world a better place than I have.’
‘Do you still see her?’
‘No,’ said Magnus. ‘I visited her once in Chicago a couple of years after we left college. We were very different people by then. She was still gorgeous, though.’
‘I think I’d agree with you,’ Ingileif said, turning towards him. ‘About the bad guys.’
‘Really?’
‘You sound surprised?’
‘I guess I am.’ Erin certainly hadn’t agreed with him. Neither had Colby for that matter. Policemen always felt lonely on that point, as if they were doing the jobs no one else wanted to do, or even wanted to admit needed doing.
‘Sure. You’ve read your sagas. We Icelandic women are constantly nagging our menfolk to get out of bed and go and avenge their family honour before lunch time.’
‘That’s true,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve always loved that in a woman, especially on a Sunday morning.’
They drove on in silence. Over the cantilevered bridge at the River Ölfusá and through the town of Selfoss.
‘How long are you staying in Iceland?’ Ingileif asked.
‘I thought it was going to be several months. But now it looks like I will have to go back to the States next week to testify at a trial.’
‘Are you coming back afterwards?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Magnus.
‘Oh. Don’t you like Iceland?’ Ingileif sounded offended. Which was hardly surprising; there is no easier way to offend an Icelander than to disparage their country.
‘I do like it. It just brings back difficult memories. And my job at the Reykjavík CID isn’t working out that well. I don’t really get along with the boss.’
‘Is there a girlfriend back in Boston?’ Ingileif asked.
‘No,’ said Magnus, thinking of Colby. She was an ex -girlfriend if ever there was one. He wanted to ask Ingileif why she had asked him that, but that would sound crass. Perhaps she was just curious. Icelanders asked direct questions when they wanted to know answers.
‘Look, there’s Hekla!’
Ingileif pointed ahead towards the broad white muscular ridge that was Iceland’s most famous volcano. It didn’t have the cone shape of the classic volcano, but it was much more violent than the prettier Mount Fuji, for example. Hekla had erupted four times in the previous forty years, through a fissure that ran horizontally along the ridge. And then, every couple of centuries or so, it would come up with a big one. Like the eruption of 1104 that had smothered Gaukur’s farm at Stöng.
‘Do you know that around Boston they sell Hekla cinnamon rolls?’ Magnus said. ‘They’re big upside-down rolls covered in sugar. Look just like the mountain.’
‘But do they blow up in your face at random intervals?’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
‘Then they’re not real Hekla rolls. They need a bit more violence in them.’ Ingileif smiled. ‘I remember watching Hekla erupt in 1991. I was ten or eleven, I suppose. You can’t quite see it from Flúdir, but I had a friend who lived on a farm a few kilometres to the south and you got a great view of it from there.
‘It was extraordinary. It was January and it was night time. The volcano was glowing angry red and orange and at the same time you could see a green streak of the aurora hovering above it. I’ll never forget it.’
She swallowed. ‘It was the year before Dad died.’
‘When life was normal?’ Magnus asked.
‘That’s right,’ said Ingileif. ‘When life was normal.’
The volcano loomed bigger as they drove towards it, and then they turned to the north and lost it behind the foothills that edged the valley. With two kilometres to Flúdir, they came to a turn-off to Hruni to the right. Magnus took it, and the road wound through the hills for a couple of kilometres, before breaking out into a valley. The small white church of Hruni was visible beneath a rocky crag, surrounded by a house and some farm buildings.
They pulled up in the empty gravel car park in front of the church. Magnus climbed out of the car. There was a spectacular view to the north, of glaciers many miles away. Plovers dived and swirled over
the fields, calling as they did so. Otherwise there was silence. And peace.
They approached the rectory, a large house by Icelandic standards, white with a red roof, and rang the doorbell. No answer. But there was a red Suzuki in the garage.
‘Let’s check inside the church,’ suggested Ingileif. ‘He is a pastor after all.’
As they walked through the ancient graveyard, Ingileif nodded towards a line of newer stones. ‘That’s where my mother is.’
‘Do you want to look?’ said Magnus. ‘I can wait.’
‘No,’ said Ingileif. ‘No, it feels wrong.’ She smiled sheepishly at Magnus. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t want to involve her in all this.’
‘It makes sense,’ said Magnus.
So they continued on to the church and went in. It was warm and really quite beautiful. It was also empty.
As they made their way back to the car, Magnus caught sight of a boy of about sixteen moving around the barn next to the rectory. He called out to him. ‘Have you seen the pastor?’
‘He was here this morning.’
‘Do you know where he might have gone? Does he have another car?’
The boy noticed the Suzuki parked in the garage. ‘No. He could have gone for a walk. He does that sometimes. He can be out all day.’
‘Thank you,’ said Magnus. He checked his watch. Three-thirty. Then turning to Ingileif: ‘What now?’
‘You could come back to our house in the village,’ she said. ‘I can show you the letters from Tolkien to my grandfather. And my father’s notes about where the ring might be. Although I doubt they will be much help.’
‘Good idea,’ said Magnus. ‘We’ll come back here later.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AUSTURSTRAETI WAS ONLY a block away from the Hótel Borg. Isildur was reassured by the two men beside him, the big trucker from England and the wrinkled Icelandic ex-policeman. When Gimli had suggested a sum to Axel Bjarnason, he had been eager to drop everything to help them, although Gimli suspected that the private investigator didn’t have much to drop. He had short grey hair, sharp blue eyes and a weather-beaten face, and he looked more like a fisherman than a private investigator, not that Isildur had ever employed a private investigator before.
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