Where the Shadows Lie (35 page)

‘But the farmers saw it on his finger!’

‘Yes, just before they saw an elf.’

‘Well, I don’t care what you believe. I believe Hákon killed my father and took the ring! He must have done.’

‘Unless it was Tómas who killed him?’

‘He was only thirteen,’ said Ingileif. ‘He wasn’t that kind of kid. Whereas Hákon …’

‘Well, if Tómas didn’t kill your father, he would have witnessed it. It sounds like I have plenty to talk to him about.’

‘Can’t we just go back to Hruni and search Hákon’s house?’

‘We need a warrant. Especially if we’re going to find evidence we plan to use at trial, which it sounds like we might. That’s why I’ve got to get back to Reykjavík.’

They were going pretty fast. The surface of the road along the edge of the river was excellent, but there were some bends and wiggles. Magnus sped over the crest of a small hill, and almost hit a white BMW four-wheel-drive coming at him the other way.

‘That was close.’ He glanced over to see Ingileif’s reaction to his driving.

She was sitting bolt upright in her seat, frowning slightly.

Her phone rang. She answered quickly, glanced at Magnus, mumbled ‘
Já
,’ two or three times, and hung up.

‘Who was that?’ Magnus asked.

‘The gallery,’ Ingileif answered.

Magnus took Ingileif directly to her apartment in 101.

‘Will I see you tonight?’ she said as she got out of the car. ‘I could cook you dinner.’ She smiled.

‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m bound to be working late on the case.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Ingileif. ‘We can eat late. I’ll be eager to hear what’s happening. And well …’ she hesitated, blushing. ‘It would be nice to see you.’

‘I don’t know, Ingileif.’

‘Magnús? Magnús, what is it?’

‘There’s this girl. Colby. Back in Boston.’

‘But I asked you if there were any girls! You told me there weren’t.’

‘There aren’t.’ Magnus tried to get his thoughts in order. ‘She’s an ex-girlfriend. Definitely an ex-girlfriend.’

‘Well then?’

‘Well …’ Magnus was floundering. Ingileif was standing on the pavement watching him flounder. Her smile was long gone.

‘Yes?’

‘Am I just like Lárus?’

‘What!’

‘I mean, am I just a, you know, someone to see, when you feel like …’

‘When I feel like a fuck? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

Magnus sighed. ‘I don’t know what I’m trying to say.’

‘Look, Magnús. You’re going back to the States in the next few days. I would like to spend as much time as possible with you before you go. It’s simple. If you have a problem with that, just tell me, and I won’t waste my time. Do you have a problem with that?’

‘I …’

‘Don’t bother answering, because come to think of it, maybe I have a problem myself.’ She turned on her heel.

‘Ingileif!’

‘Men are such jerks,’ she muttered as she stalked back to her flat.

‘N
OT ANOTHER FUCKING
elf!’

Baldur stared at Magnus in disbelief. Magnus had dragged him out of the interview room where he was still working on Tómas. He was unhappy to be interrupted, but reluctantly led Magnus along to his office. He listened closely as Magnus described his interview with the Reverend Hákon and with the sheep farmers, but began to lose patience once Magnus related the old man’s story about trolls and rings and the hidden man he had seen.

‘I’m supposed to be the old-fashioned one around here. And then I have to listen to this elf and troll bullshit!’

‘Obviously, it wasn’t an elf,’ said Magnus. ‘It was Tómas. He was a tall thirteen-year-old.’

‘And the ring? Are you trying to tell me that the pastor was wearing an ancient ring belonging to Odin or Thor or someone?’

‘I don’t know whether the ring is authentic,’ said Magnus. ‘And frankly, I don’t care. The point is that seventeen years ago a small group of people did think it was important. Important enough to kill for.’

‘Oh, so now we’re solving another crime, are we? A death in 1992. Except this wasn’t a crime, it was an accident. There was an investigation: we know it was an accident.’

Magnus leaned back in his chair. ‘Let me talk to Tómas.’

‘No.’

‘I spoke to his father.’

Baldur shook his head. ‘Vigdís should have spotted they were father and son.’

‘Hákon isn’t such an uncommon name,’ Magnus said. ‘We must have interviewed dozens of witnesses; I’ll bet at least five of them have the same first names as someone else’s last name. She didn’t know Tómas had spent his childhood in Flúdir, so there was no obvious connection.’

‘She should have checked,’ Baldur insisted.

Baldur might have had a point, but Magnus didn’t want to dwell on it. ‘I can tell Tómas the farmers saw him in the snowstorm. I can convince him that we know he was there.’

‘I said, no.’

They sat in silence, staring at each other. Then Magnus smiled. ‘I know you and I haven’t started out very well together.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘But just give me twenty minutes. You can be there too. You’ll know if we’re making progress, if there’s an opening. If I get nowhere, then we’ve lost twenty minutes, that’s all.’

The corners of Baldur’s lips were turned down, scepticism was written all over his long face. But he was listening.

He took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Twenty minutes. Let’s go.’

Tómas Hákonarson looked exhausted, as did his lawyer, a mousy woman of about thirty.

Baldur introduced Magnus. Tómas’s tired eyes assessed him.

‘Don’t worry, I don’t want to talk to you about Agnar,’ Magnus began.

‘Good,’ said Tómas.

‘It’s another murder I want to discuss with you. One that took place seventeen years ago.’

Tómas was suddenly awake, his eyes focusing on Magnus.

‘Know whose murder I’m talking about?’

Tómas remained motionless. Magnus felt that he wasn’t trusting himself to speak. A good sign.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Dr Ásgrímur. Seventeen years ago your father pushed Dr Ásgrímur off a cliff. And you witnessed it.’

Tómas swallowed. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘I’ve just come back from Hruni where I interviewed your father. And I went to Álfabrekka and spoke to the farmers who helped him go back and find Dr Ásgrímur. They saw you.’

‘They can’t have done.’

‘They saw a thirteen-year-old boy sneak by their farm in the snow.’

Tómas frowned. ‘That wasn’t me.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Anyway. Why would my father kill the doctor? They were friends.’

Magnus smiled. ‘The ring.’

‘What ring?’

‘The ring you went to talk to Professor Agnar about.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

Magnus leaned forward. He spoke in a low urgent voice, only a fraction above a whisper. ‘You see, the farmers saw your father wearing an ancient ring. We
know
that your father pushed Dr Ásgrímur off a cliff and took the ring. You witnessed it and ran away.’

‘Has he admitted it?’ Tómas asked.

Magnus could see that the instant he had uttered it, Tómas regretted his question, with its implication that there was something to admit.

‘He will. We are going to arrest him shortly.’

He paused, watching Tómas as he fiddled with the empty coffee cup in front of him. ‘Tell us the truth, Tómas. You can stop protecting your father. It’s too late for that.’

Tómas glanced at his lawyer, who was listening intently. ‘OK.’

‘Talk to me,’ said Magnus.

Tómas took a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who your farmer witness saw, but it wasn’t me.’

Magnus was tempted to argue, but held his tongue. Best to coax out the entirety of Tómas’s story and then pick holes in it.

‘I don’t even know for sure whether my father did kill him, I really don’t. But I do know that he has the ring, Gaukur’s ring.’

‘How do you know?’ Magnus asked.

‘He told me. About five years later, when I was eighteen or so. He said that he was looking after it for me. He told me the whole story of the ring, how it was the very same ring of Andvari from the
Volsung Saga
, about how Ísildur had taken it back to Iceland and how Gaukur had killed his brother for it, and had then hidden it. He showed it to me once.’

‘So you’ve actually
seen
it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you how he got it?’

Tómas hesitated. ‘Yes. Yes, he did. He said that he and Dr Ásgrímur found it that weekend, and that Dr Ásgrímur was wearing it when he fell off the cliff. He said that he had taken it off Dr Ásgrímur’s finger.’

‘While he was lying dying at the bottom of the cliff?’

Tómas shrugged. ‘I guess so. I don’t know. It was either then, or when he came back for him with the farmers and found him dead. But it would have been quite difficult to take the ring then, I would expect.’

‘Didn’t that shock you?’

‘Yes, it did.’ Tómas swallowed. ‘My father was always a bit strange. But he became much stranger after the doctor died. I was scared of him, in awe of him. I still am, if the truth be told. And, well …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had done something awful like take a ring off a dying man’s finger.’

‘What about killing that man?’

Tómas hesitated. Magnus glanced at Tómas’s lawyer. She was listening intently, but letting him speak. As far as she was concerned her client was going some way towards exonerating himself.

Baldur was also listening closely, letting Magnus get on with it.

Tómas took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Like killing the doctor.’

‘Did he admit he had done that?’

‘No, not at all. Never.’

‘But you suspect he did?’

‘Not at first,’ said Tómas. ‘It didn’t occur to me. I had always believed my father about everything. But then the suspicion did begin to nag at me. I hoped it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t help asking myself, what if Father had pushed the doctor?’

‘Did you confront him?’

‘No, absolutely not.’ It was clear that the last thing on earth Tómas would do was confront his father. ‘But one day I overheard something. It was Father talking to my mother, this was several years after they had separated. It was Birna Ásgrímsdóttir’s wedding. Father was officiating. They were talking about how messed up Birna was. Father said something like: “It’s hardly surprising when her father was murdered.”

‘I don’t know whether Mother noticed. She didn’t say anything. I could tell Father had realized he had made a mistake by the way he glanced at her immediately. I don’t think he knew I was listening.’

‘That’s not exactly hard evidence,’ Magnus said.

‘No,’ Tómas admitted.

Which was no doubt why Tómas had told them. Magnus still wasn’t convinced that Tómas wasn’t there and hadn’t witnessed the whole thing. But he’d come to that later.

‘All right. So why were you visiting Agnar?’

‘Can I have some water?’ Tómas asked.

Magnus nodded. To Magnus’s surprise Baldur went to the door to ask for some. A minute later a police officer returned with a plastic cup and a jug.

Tómas drank gratefully. Gathering his thoughts.

‘Agnar approached me. We knew each other vaguely, we’d met at parties, had one or two mutual friends, you know how this town is?’

Magnus nodded.

‘We met at a café.’

‘Café Paris,’ Magnus said, remembering his conversation with Katrín, about her seeing them together.

Tómas frowned in surprise.

‘Go on,’ Magnus said.

‘Agnar said that he had been approached by a wealthy American to buy Gaukur’s ring. I acted dumb, but Agnar went on. He said that he had just come back from Hruni, where he had spoken to Father. He said that although Father denied he had the ring, Agnar was sure he was lying.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘He did. It was ridiculous.’ Tómas smiled to himself. ‘He said it was because Father looked much younger than his age. In
Gaukur’s Saga
the warrior who bears the ring, Ulf something, is actually ninety, but looks much younger, and Agnar’s theory was that the same thing was happening to Father, he wasn’t getting any older.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Magnus. ‘That is a little weird.’

‘I know. The problem was I laughed at him. It was a problem because right then Agnar could tell I knew what he was talking about.’

‘But you didn’t actually admit it?’

‘No. Then he claimed that Father must have murdered Dr Ásgrímur. Obviously, I said that was wrong. But Agnar persisted. He seemed very sure of himself. Basically, he tried to blackmail me. Or us.’