Where the Shadows Lie fai-1
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‘My mother didn’t like them going off, either. She thought all this Isildur and Gaukur and magic ring stuff was very weird. I honestly don’t think my father told her anything about it until after they were married and it was too late.’
He smiled. ‘Of course they never found it.’
‘Do you believe it exists?’ Arni asked, wide eyed.
‘I did then,’ Petur said. ‘I’m not at all sure now.’ A note of anger crept into his voice. ‘I don’t think about the ring or the damned saga at all now. My stupid father went off into the hills when a snowstorm was forecast and blundered over a cliff. Gaukur and his ring did that. It didn’t need to exist to kill him.’
‘What about your sister, Ingileif?’ Magnus asked. ‘Was she involved in all this?’
‘No,’ said Petur. ‘She knew about the saga, of course, but not about the ring.’
‘Do you see much of her?’
‘Now and again. After my father died I drifted away from the family. Ran away, more like. I couldn’t handle it. All the ring stuff; it seemed to me that it had killed him. And I felt that I should have stopped him from looking for the ring, like my grandfather told me to. Of course, there was nothing I could do, I was only fifteen, but at that age you sometimes think you have more power than you really do.
‘I dropped out of high school, went to London. Then, after I came back, I started to see Ingileif a bit. She was angry with me: she thought I had abandoned our mother.’ Petur grimaced. ‘I guess she was right.’
‘Do you know if she was still involved with Agnar?’
‘I doubt it very much,’ Petur said. ‘But he was the natural person for her to go to when she wanted to sell the saga.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t suspect her of killing him, do you?’
Magnus shrugged. ‘We are keeping an open mind. She wasn’t altogether straight with us when we first spoke to her.’
‘She was just trying to cover up her mistake. She should never have tried to sell the saga, and she knew it. But Ingileif is honest through and through. It’s inconceivable she killed anyone; she’s incapable of it. I’m actually very fond of her, always have been. She’d do anything for her friends or her family. She was the one of the three of us who looked after Mum at the end, when she was dying of cancer. You know the gallery is in trouble?’
Magnus nodded.
‘Well, that’s why she needed the money from the saga. To pay out her partners. She blames herself. I told her not to worry too much about it; it’s business. A venture goes wrong, you drop it, pick yourself up, and go on to something else. But she doesn’t think that way. Everyone is going bust in Iceland these days.’
The door to the club opened and three more musicians came in, lugging big bags of musical instruments and electronics. This lot were a little older, a little hairier.
‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ Petur said to them. Then, turning back to Magnus and Arni, ‘Ingileif’s had a tough life. First her father, then her stepfather, then her mother, all on top of losing her business.’
‘Stepfather?’ Magnus asked.
‘Yeah. Mum married again. A drunken arsehole called Sigursteinn. I never met him, it all happened when I was in London.’
‘They separated?’
‘No, he got drunk in Reykjavik. Fell off the harbour wall and killed himself. A good thing all round from what I have heard. Mum never got over it, though.’
Magnus nodded. ‘As you say, tough for her. And for you.’
Petur shrugged. ‘I ran away from it all. Ingileif stayed to do what she could. She always did.’
‘And your other sister? Birna?’
Petur shook his head. ‘She’s pretty much screwed up.’
‘Thank you, Petur,’ Magnus said, getting to his feet. ‘One last question. What were you doing the night Agnar died?’
At first Petur seemed taken aback by the question, but then he smiled. ‘I suppose that’s something you have to ask?’
Magnus waited.
‘What day was that?’
‘Thursday the twenty-third. The first day of summer.’
‘The clubs were busy that night. I spent the evening moving from one to the other. Now if you will excuse me, I have some music to listen to. I just hope these guys are better than the last lot.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Arni drove Magnus out towards Birna Asgrimsdottir’s house in Gardabaer, a suburb of Reykjavik.
Magnus’s headache was getting worse. ‘Check out Petur’s alibi, Arni,’ Magnus said.
‘Is he a suspect?’ Arni said, surprised.
‘Everyone’s a suspect,’ Magnus said.
‘I thought you were certain Steve Jubb killed Agnar.’
‘Just do it!’ Magnus growled.
They drove through the grey suburbs. ‘By the way, I heard back from the Australian Elvish expert,’ Arni said. ‘He figured out what kallisarvoinen means.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘It’s Finnish. Apparently Tolkien liked the Finnish language, found it interesting. A lot of Quenya words come from Finnish as does much of the grammar. Our friend wondered whether Jubb and Isildur might have used Finnish vocabulary when there wasn’t an existing Quenya word. So he looked up kallisarvoinen in a Finnish dictionary.’
‘And?’
‘It means “precious”.’
‘Precious? That’s the word Gollum used for the ring in Lord of the Rings.’
‘That’s right.’
Magnus recalled the SMS from Steve Jubb. Saw Agnar. He has kallisarvoinen. ‘So Steve Jubb thought that Agnar had the ring,’ he said. ‘That’s what he wanted to sell for five million bucks.’
‘We haven’t found an old ring amongst Agnar’s stuff,’ Arni said.
‘Perhaps Steve Jubb took it,’ Magnus said. ‘After he killed him.’
‘And did what with it? We didn’t find it in his hotel room.’
‘Hid it perhaps.’
‘Where?’
Magnus sighed. ‘God knows. Or perhaps he mailed it back to Isildur in California. No one remembered Steve Jubb mailing a package at the Post Office, but he could easily have slipped a ring into an envelope and dropped it in a mail box.’
‘But Jubb sent the text message to Isildur after he had come back from seeing Agnar. That suggests that Agnar still had it, or at least Jubb thought he had.’
Magnus saw Arni’s point.
‘Do you really think that Agnar found the ring?’ Arni said. ‘He only heard about it on Sunday. The e-mail was sent on Tuesday. People have devoted years to looking for it and haven’t found it. Unless it was a fake?’
‘That would be just as hard to arrange in a hurry. Harder. Faking a thousand-year-old ring is a major job. And you can bet that Isildur wouldn’t shell out five million bucks without checking out what he was buying pretty thoroughly.’
‘You’re not suggesting it’s real?’ said Arni. ‘That the ring that Gaukur took from Isildur survived?’
‘Of course not,’ said Magnus irritably. But then, as he had just pointed out, it was hard to see how the ring could be a fake. Perhaps it was an older fake, the work of Ingileif’s grandfather? Patience. All would become clear in time.
Chastened, Arni was silent for a minute. ‘So what do we do?’ he asked eventually.
‘Tell Baldur. Look for likely hiding places. See if we’ve missed anything.’ Magnus glared at Arni. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’
‘I only got the response this morning.’
‘You could have told me back at the station.’
‘Sorry.’
Magnus turned away to look out of the window at the grey boxes. He was lumbered with an idiot. And he wished his headache would go away.
Birna Asgrimsdottir lived in a new concrete house with a bright red roof in a new development. Each house had its patch of lawn, together with optimistically planted saplings. Expensive SUVs littered the driveways. Wealthy. Comfortable. Soulless.
Birna herself was softe
r, rounder and older than Ingileif. She had big blue eyes and pouting lips. She could have been attractive, but there was something sagging and sloppy about her. Two lines pointed downwards from the corners of her mouth. She was wearing tight, bulging jeans and a bright orange top.
When she saw Magnus, she smiled, her eyes lingering over his body before moving up to his face.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Magnus, disconcerted despite himself. ‘We are from the Metropolitan Police. We have come to ask you about the murder of Professor Agnar Haraldsson.’
‘How nice,’ said Birna. ‘Come in. Can I get you something to drink?’
‘Just coffee,’ said Magnus.
Arni nodded. ‘Me too,’ he said, his voice a little hoarse. This woman had presence.
They sat in the living room, waiting for the coffee. The furniture was new and characterless, and the room was dominated by a truly massive television, on which was some daytime American TV show in English that Magnus vaguely recognized. Satellite.
Dotted around the living room were photographs. Most of them were of a stunning blonde girl of about eighteen wearing swimsuits and various sashes. Birna. A younger Birna. There were also a couple of pictures of a suave, dark-haired man wearing the uniform of Icelandair.
Birna returned with the coffee. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you much, but I’ll try.’
‘Did you ever meet Agnar?’
‘No, never. You know about the family saga, I take it?’
‘Yes, yes we do.’
‘Well, Ingileif was handling all the negotiations. She did ask me whether I objected to her selling the thing, and I told her I didn’t give a toss.’
‘Did she tell you how the negotiations were progressing?’
‘No. In fact I haven’t spoken to her since then.’
‘Did she mention a ring?’
Birna laughed out loud. ‘You don’t mean Gaukur’s ring?’
‘It seems that your grandfather found it sixty years ago, but then he hid it again. Agnar may have found it more recently, or he may have claimed he did.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Birna said. ‘If there ever was a ring it was lost centuries ago. Let me tell you something,’ she said, leaning forward towards Magnus. He could smell some kind of alcohol on her breath. In his current state it was all he could do not to recoil. ‘That ring and that saga are just trouble. It’s all a load of bullshit. Don’t believe a word of it. I tell you Ingileif should have sold the damn thing, especially if she could have done it in secret.’
‘Are you and Ingileif close?’
Birna leaned back in her chair. ‘That’s a good question. We were once, very. After my father died my mother married again, and I had some trouble with my stepfather. Even though she was two years younger than me, Ingileif helped me a lot. Got me through it. But after that, we kind of drifted apart. We lead different lives now. I married a jerk, and Ingileif does her designer stuff.’
‘Trouble with your stepfather?’
Birna looked at Magnus again, this time at his eyes, as if deciding whether to trust him. ‘Is this relevant to your investigation?’
Magnus shrugged. ‘It might be. I won’t know until you tell me.’
Birna pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and after offering one to Magnus and Arni, lit up.
‘I was fourteen when my father died. I was a pretty girl.’ She nodded towards the photographs. ‘My mother got it into her head that I should become Miss Iceland. She became obsessed with it. As bad as Dad and his saga. I think it might have been a way of trying to deal with his death, putting it out of her mind. Of course it didn’t work.’
She smiled. ‘I never managed better than third, but Mum and I tried really hard. In the middle of all that, she married Sigursteinn, who was some kind of car dealer from Selfoss. I could tell the minute I met him that Sigursteinn fancied me. It took him less than a month after he got married before he, well…’ she took a deep drag of her cigarette. ‘Well, he raped me really. I didn’t think that at the time, but it was rape. He wanted sex with me, I was scared of him. It happened. Lots of times.’
‘Ingileif found out, caught us at it, and she went crazy. She went at him with a broken bottle, but in the end it was she who was cut. Have you noticed she has a little scar on her eyebrow? And on her cheek?’
Magnus nodded.
‘Well, that was Sigursteinn. Ingileif told Mum, who didn’t believe her. There was the most almighty family row. Ingileif was thrown out of the house, I was too scared to say anything. Then, three months later, Sigursteinn was on a business trip to Reykjavik when he fell into the harbour. I was so relieved.’
‘How did your mother react?’
‘She was totally distraught. She went as far as accusing Ingileif of killing him, which was just stupid. Then I told her exactly what he had done to me, and eventually she believed it.’ Birna stared, her big blue eyes unblinking. ‘That pretty much mucked up our family.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Magnus.
‘Ingileif went away to Reykjavik. In recent years she started speaking to Mum again. She spent a lot of time with her just before she died.’
‘And you?’
Birna blinked. ‘Oh, I married Matthias and have lived a perfect life of happiness ever since.’
Magnus ignored the sarcasm. ‘And Petur?’
‘He missed all this. He came back to Reykjavik a couple of years later. We see each other occasionally. But whenever we do I get the impression he feels sorry for me. Can’t think why.’
God, what a family, Magnus thought. His own was bad enough. He remembered Ingileif’s quavering voice when she had told him about the ghost of the girl accused of incest at the Hofdi House. No wonder she felt sorry for her. She was thinking of Birna.
‘One last question. Where were you last Thursday night? The first day of summer?’
Birna laughed again. ‘You can’t be serious? You don’t think I killed the poor man, do you.’
‘Just answer the question.’
Birna hesitated. ‘Do I have to?’
Magnus knew what was coming next. He was beginning to get used to the sex life of Icelanders. ‘Yes, you do. And we will have to check out whatever you tell us. But we will do it discreetly, I can promise you. And it won’t come up in any eventual trial, unless it is relevant to the prosecution.’
Birna sighed. ‘Matthias was in New York. Probably in bed with a flight attendant.’
‘And you?’
‘I was with a friend named Dagur Tomasson. He’s married as well. We spent the night in a hotel in Kopavogur. It’s anonymous and as discreet as you can get in Iceland.’
‘Which one?’
‘The Merlin.’
‘And can we have his address?’
‘I’ll give you his mobile phone number,’ said Birna. ‘It’s nothing serious,’ she continued, staring straight at Magnus. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards. ‘I don’t like to restrict myself to any one man.’
‘I think she likes you,’ said Arni five minutes later as he was driving Magnus back to station.
‘Shut up,’ growled Magnus. ‘And check out the hotel. But somehow I suspect that alibi will hold up.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Baldur listened closely as Magnus explained his theory that Agnar was trying to sell the ring from Gaukur’s Saga to Steve Jubb and the modern-day Isildur.
‘So what are you suggesting?’ he said, when Magnus had finished. ‘We go over Agnar’s house again, looking for a mythical ring that has been lost for a thousand years? Do you know how absurd that sounds?’ The expression on Baldur’s long face verged on contempt. ‘You were brought here to bring us some big-city homicide experience. Instead you start mumbling about elves and rings like the most superstitious Icelandic grandmother. You’ll be saying the hidden people did it next.’
Magnus’s foul mood deepened. He knew that Baldur was trying to needle him, and he fought to control his anger.
Baldur shook his head. ‘All we’ve seen is a hundred and twenty pages that was spat out of a computer printer two weeks ago.’
Magnus leaned back. ‘Fair enough. Maybe the saga is a forgery. Maybe there is a ring, but it’s a fake too. If anything, that would create a bigger motive for Steve Jubb to kill Agnar. We still need to find it.’
‘The thing is, I’m not sure that Steve Jubb did murder Agnar.’
Magnus snorted.
‘I’ve just interviewed him again. He wouldn’t tell me anything about sagas or rings. But he did deny he murdered Agnar.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘Yes, actually. My hunch is he’s telling the truth.’
‘Your hunch?’
Baldur found a sheet of paper in the pile on his desk. ‘Here’s a report from the forensics lab.’
Magnus scanned it. It was an analysis of the soil samples on Steve Jubb’s size forty-five shoes.
‘It shows that there were no traces of the kind of mud on the path from the summer house down to the lake shore, or the mud on the shore itself.’
Magnus read the report, his mind buzzing. ‘Maybe Jubb cleaned his shoes. Thoroughly.’
‘There was soil from the area right in front of the summer house. So he was at the front that evening, but not at the back. And he didn’t clean his shoes.’
‘Perhaps he changed into boots? Ditched them afterwards?’
‘We’d have found footprints in or around the house,’ Baldur said. ‘And that’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it?’
Magnus stared at the piece of paper, not reading the words, just trying to figure out how Jubb could have dragged the body down to the lake without getting mud on his shoes. He found it impossible to believe that Jubb’s presence at the summer house that evening was just coincidence.