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 Skolavordustigur 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 Reykjavik 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 Reykjavik 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 Tomas,’ Magnus said.
‘I’ve known him for about as long as I can remember,’ Ingileif said. ‘We went to elementary school together in Fludir. 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.
‘Tomas 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. Tomas 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.’
‘No,’ said Ingileif. ‘I hear he might be double booked.’
‘You say you saw him yesterday?’
Ingileif described her meeting with Tomas 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. Tomas 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 Olfusa 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 yo
u 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 Reykjavik 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 Stong.
‘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 Fludir, 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 Fludir, 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 Hotel 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.
He clearly knew his town, though. He had recognized Petur Asgrimsson’s name immediately and had only required a few seconds to check that Ingileif’s gallery was where he thought it was. He was at the Hotel Borg less than a quarter of an hour later.
Isildur was nervous, scared even. He was in a strange country, and Iceland was a very strange country. Someone had been murdered and there was a chance that the murderer was the man walking along beside him. Isildur didn’t like to think too hard about that; he had decided not to ask Gimli right out whether he had killed the professor.
But the danger added to the thrill. It was a long shot: perhaps the police would get to the ring first. Perhaps the ring was a fake all along. Perhaps no one would ever find it. But there was a chance, a real chance, that Isildur might end up the owner of the actual ring that had inspired The Lord of the Rings, that had been carried to Iceland by his namesake a thousand years before.
That was cool. That was seriously cool.
The main entrance to Neon was just a small door on the street, but Bjarnason led them around the back. There another door was propped open by a couple of crates of beer. A young man was carrying in some cases of vodka.
Bjarnason stopped him and rattled something in Icelandic. That was one weird language. Isildur wondered to himself which Middle Earth language would sound like it. Possibly none of them: Quenya was Finnish-influenced and Sindarin was derived from Welsh. Perhaps Icelandic was just too obvious for Tolkien – no fun.
The boy led them downstairs past a vast dance floor to a small office. There a tall man with a shaved head was in earnest discussion with a red-haired woman in jeans and a Severed Crotch T-Shirt.
‘Go ahead,’ said Bjarnason to Isildur. ‘I’m sure he speaks English.’
‘Mr Asgrimsson?’ said Isildur.
The man with the shaved head looked up. ‘Yes?’ No hint of a smile. His smooth skull bulged alarmingly.
‘My name is Lawrence Feldman and this is my colleague Steve Jubb.’
‘What do you want? I thought you were in jail?’ Asgrimsson said.
‘Steve was always innocent,’ Isildur said. ‘I guess the cops finally figured that out.’
‘Well, if you want the saga, the police have it. And when they have finished with it, there is no way we are selling it to you.’
Asgrimsson was aggressive, but Isildur stood up to him. He was used to people trying to push him around, people who underestimated the programmer whose talents they needed to make their business work.
‘That’s a topic for a later day. We want to speak with you about a ring. Isildur’s ring, or perhaps you prefer Gaukur’s ring.’
‘Get out of my club now!’ Asgrimsson’s voice was firm.
‘We’ll pay well. Very well,’ said Isildur.
‘Listen to me,’ said Asgrimsson, his eyes burning. ‘A man has died because of that stupid saga. Two men, if you include my father. My family kept it a secret for centuries for a reason, a good reason as it turns out. It should still be a
secret, and it would have been if I had had my way. But the reason it isn’t is you – your nosing around, your flashing dollars everywhere.’
He took a step closer to Isildur. ‘You’ve seen what the result is. Professor Agnar Haraldsson is dead! Don’t you feel guilty about that? Don’t you think you should just get the hell out of Iceland and fuck off back to America?’
‘Mr Asgrimsson-’
‘Out!’ Petur was shouting now, his finger pointing to the exit. ‘I said, get out!’
The pastor was sweating in the unseasonably warm sun. It was a glorious day and he had already walked about seven kilometres. He was in a high valley, uninhabited even by sheep this early in the year. A brook ran down from the snow-covered heath at the head of the valley. All around him snow was melting, trickling, dribbling, seeping over the stones and into the earth. Most of the grass that had been revealed in the last few days was yellow, but by the side of the brook there was a patch of rich green shoots. Spring. New nourishment for this barren land.
All around birds chirped and warbled in the sunshine.
He took a deep breath. He remembered when he had first come to this valley, as the newly arrived pastor of Hruni, how he had felt that this is where God lived.
And at that moment, he believed it again.
Over to the left, along the side of the valley, were some rocky crags. He turned off the path, what little there was of it, and squelched through the yellow grass towards them. He took out his notebook.
He needed to find a good hiding place.
Tomas’s arrest as a suspect for the murder of Agnar Haraldsson had been on the lunch time news on the radio. Top story, hardly surprising, given Tomas’s celebrity. The moment he heard it the pastor knew he had to find a new place to hide the ring.
He paused and examined it on the fourth finger of his right hand. It didn’t look a thousand years old. That was the thing with gold – it didn’t matter how old it was, if you polished it carefully it looked new. Or newer.
There were scratches and scuffs. But the inscription in runes engraved on the inside was still legible, just.
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