Árni disappeared to the coffee machine and returned with two cups. The boy had promise.
Magnus sipped his coffee and considered Agnar. He didn’t yet know much about the professor, but he did know that he was someone’s husband, the father of two children. Magnus thought of those kids growing up with the knowledge that their father had been murdered, of the devastated wife struggling to come to terms with the destruction of her family. They needed to know who had killed Agnar and why, and they needed to know that the murderer had been punished. Otherwise – well, otherwise they would end up like Magnus.
The familiar urge returned. Even though Magnus had not yet met them, might never even meet them, he could promise them one thing: he would find Agnar’s killer.
‘Have you decided where you are going to stay in Reykjavík?’ Árni asked, sipping from his own cup.
‘No, not really,’ Magnus replied. ‘The hotel’s OK, I guess.’
‘But you won’t be able to stay there the whole time you’re with us?’
Magnus shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess not. I’ve no idea how long that will be.’
‘My sister has a spare room in her apartment. It’s a nice place, very central, in Thingholt. You could rent that. She wouldn’t charge much.’
Magnus hadn’t begun to think about money, accommodation, clothes, living expenses; he was just pleased to be alive. But operating out of a suitcase in a hotel room would soon get tiresome, and Árni’s sister might provide a quick easy solution to a problem he hadn’t even begun to address yet. And cheap. That might be important. ‘Sure, I’ll take a look at it.’
‘Great. I’ll show you around this evening, if you like.’
The coffee wasn’t bad. Icelanders lived on many cups of coffee a day – the whole society was fuelled by caffeine. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why they never sat still for long.
‘I’m sure I’ve heard this name Ísildur somewhere,’ Magnus said. ‘Maybe it was a kid at school. But that would have shown up on Vigdís’s search.’
‘Probably just the movie,’ Árni said, sipping from his own cup.
‘The movie? What movie?’
‘
The Fellowship of the Ring
. Haven’t you seen it? It’s the first of
The Lord of the Rings
trilogy.’
‘No, I haven’t seen the movie, but I did read the book. So Ísildur’s one of the characters, right? What is he, some kind of elf?’
‘No, he’s a man,’ said Árni. ‘He wins the ring at the beginning of the movie and then loses it in a river somewhere. Then Gollum finds it.’
‘Árni! Why didn’t you mention this at the meeting?’
‘I was going to, but then I thought everyone would just laugh at me. They do that sometimes, you know. And it obviously doesn’t have anything to do with the case.’
‘Of course it does!’ Magnus just stopped himself from adding the words ‘you idiot!’. ‘Have you read the
Saga of the Volsungs
?’
‘I think I did at school,’ said Árni. ‘It’s about Sigurd and Brynhild and Gunnar, isn’t it? Dragons and treasure.’
‘And the ring. There’s a magic ring. It’s an Icelandic take on the
Nibelungenlied
which Wagner based his
Ring Cycle
on. I bet Tolkien
read it too. And it’s Steve Jubb’s favourite saga – it’s probably the only saga he
has
read. He’s a
Lord of the Rings
nut and he has a friend who is another
Lord of the Rings
nut whose nickname is Isildur.’
‘So Isildur isn’t Icelandic at all?’
Magnus shook his head. ‘No, he’s probably another truck driver from Yorkshire. We need to talk to Baldur.’
A look of panic flashed across Árni’s face. ‘Do you really think this is important?’
‘I do,’ Magnus nodded. ‘It’s a lead. In a murder investigation you take every lead you get.’
‘Um … Perhaps you should see Baldur by yourself.’
‘Oh, come on Árni. I won’t tell him you knew all along who Isildur was. Let’s go.’
They had to wait an hour for Baldur to return from the courthouse on the Laekjargata, but he looked happy. ‘We can detain Steve Jubb for three weeks,’ he said when he saw Magnus. ‘And I have a search warrant for his hotel room.’
‘Didn’t he make bail?’ Magnus asked.
‘There’s no chance of bail in Iceland for a murder suspect. We usually get three weeks to pursue our investigation before we have to hand over evidence to the defence. Once we have finished with him here, Jubb will be taken to the prison at Litla Hraun. That will make him think.’
‘I like it,’ Magnus said.
‘Strange thing is, he has a new lawyer. We gave him a kid a couple of years out of law school, but he’s already fired him and hired Kristján Gylfason, who is about the most experienced criminal lawyer in Iceland. Someone must be helping him; finding the lawyer and paying for him. Kristján doesn’t come cheap. And for that matter, neither does the Hótel Borg.’
‘Isildur?’ Magnus asked.
Baldur shrugged. ‘Maybe. Whoever he is.’
‘We think we have an idea about that.’
Baldur listened to Magnus’s theory, a frown crossing the dome of his forehead. ‘I think we need to have another word with Mr Jubb.’
S
TEVE JUBB’S NEW
lawyer, Kristján Gylfason, was smooth: intelligent face, prematurely silver hair, an air of calm competence and wealth. His very presence seemed to give Jubb comfort. Not good.
There were now five men in the interview room: Jubb, his lawyer, Baldur, Magnus and the interpreter.
Baldur flung an English copy of
The Lord of the Rings
onto the desk. There was silence in the room. Jubb’s eyes flicked down to it. Árni had rushed out and bought it from the Eymundsson book-shop in the middle of town.
Baldur tapped the book. ‘Ever read this before?’
Jubb nodded.
Baldur slowly and deliberately opened the book at
chapter two
and passed it over to Steve Jubb. ‘Now, read that and tell me you don’t know who Isildur is.’
‘It’s a character in a book,’ Jubb said. ‘That’s all.’
‘How many times have you read this book?’ Baldur asked.
‘Once or twice.’
‘Once or twice?’ Baldur snorted. ‘Isildur is a nickname, isn’t it? He’s a friend of yours. A fellow
Lord of the Rings
fan.’
Steve Jubb shrugged.
Magnus glanced at the lower extremity of a tattoo peeking out beneath Jubb’s sleeve. ‘Take off your shirt.’
Steve Jubb shrugged and removed the denim shirt he had been wearing since his arrest. He revealed a plain white T-shirt, and on his forearm a tattoo of a helmeted man with a beard wielding an axe.
A man? Or perhaps a dwarf.
‘Let me guess,’ said Magnus. ‘Your nickname is Gimli.’ He remembered that Gimli was the name of the dwarf in
Lord of the Rings
.
Jubb shrugged again.
‘Is Isildur a buddy from Yorkshire?’ Magnus asked. ‘You meet in a pub every Friday, have a few beers and talk about old Icelandic sagas?’
No answer.
‘You get cop shows in England?’ Magnus asked. ‘
CSI
,
Law and Order
?’
Jubb frowned.
‘Well, in those shows the bad guy gets to remain silent while the good guys ask all the questions. But it doesn’t work that way in Iceland.’ Magnus leaned forward. ‘In Iceland if you keep quiet we think you’ve got something to hide. Isn’t that right, Kristján?’
‘My client’s decision not to answer your questions is his own,’ the lawyer said. ‘I have explained the consequences.’
‘We
will
find out what you are hiding,’ Baldur said. ‘And your failure to cooperate will be remembered when it comes to trial.’
The lawyer was about to say something, but Jubb put a hand on his arm. ‘Look, if you two are so bloody clever, you’ll eventually figure out that I had bugger all to do with Agnar’s death, and then you’ll have to let me go. Until then, I’m saying nowt.’
The arms folded, the jaw jutted out. Steve Jubb didn’t utter another word.
Vigdís was waiting for them outside the interview room.
‘There’s someone from the British Embassy to see you.’
Baldur swore. ‘Damn it. He’s only going to waste my time. But I must speak to him, I suppose. Is there anything else?’ Baldur could tell from the look of suppressed excitement on Vigdís’s face that there was.
‘Agnar had a lover,’ Vigdís said, with a small smile of triumph.
Baldur raised his eyebrows. ‘Did he indeed?’
‘Andrea Fridriksdóttir. She is one of Agnar’s Icelandic literature students at the university. She came forward as soon as she heard he had been killed.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Downstairs.’
‘Excellent. Let’s go and talk to her. Tell the man from the British Embassy I will be with him as soon as I can. But I want to speak to this Andrea first.’
Realizing that he was not invited, Magnus returned to his desk, where a woman from the National Police Commissioner’s office was waiting for him. Cell phone, bank account, daily allowance, payment of salary, cash advance, even the promise of a car in a few days, she had it all prepared. Magnus was impressed. He was quite sure that the Boston Police Department could never match her for efficiency.
She was followed by a man from the IT Department. He gave Magnus his password, and spent a few minutes showing him how to use the computer system, including how to access e-mail.
Once the man had gone, Magnus stared at the screen in front of him. The time had come. Magnus could put it off no longer.
It had turned out that the FBI agents who had escorted Magnus in his last days in Massachusetts were out of the Cleveland Field Office. One, Agent Hendricks, had been designated his contact man. Magnus had agreed never to use the phone to the United States, even to Deputy Superintendent Williams. Especially to Deputy Superintendent Williams. The fear, that was never articulated but which was in the minds of Magnus, the FBI and Williams himself, was that the three police officers who had been arrested were not alone. That they had accomplices, or perhaps just friends in the Boston PD, friends for whom tracing Magnus’s whereabouts would all be in a day’s work.
So the idea was that the only form of communication would be
e-mails. Even those Magnus could not send directly, but via Agent Hendricks in Cleveland. That was the method that Magnus would have to use if he wanted to contact Colby.
And he needed to contact Colby. It had become clear to him that he couldn’t take the risk that she would be attacked or killed on his account. She had outmanoeuvred him, and he had to accept that.
He stared at the screen for several minutes more, trying out arguments, justifications, explanations, but he knew Colby, and he was aware of the danger of giving her the opportunity to complicate things. So in the end he kept it simple.
The answer to your question is yes. Now please come with me. I am very worried about you.
With all my love
Magnus.
Not very romantic – hardly the right way to start a life together. Although he was attracted to Colby, loved her even, the more he got to know her the more sure he was that they shouldn’t get married. It wasn’t just his fear of commitment, although Colby was absolutely right that he did suffer from that. He just knew that if there was a woman out there somewhere that he could spend the rest of his life with, it wasn’t Colby. Her latest high-stakes ploy was an example of why.
But he had no choice. She had given him no choice.
He composed a brief report to Williams, telling him he was safe and in e-mail contact should Williams learn anything about the trial date.
He thought of writing to Ollie, as his brother now called himself, but decided against it. The FBI had informed Ollie that Magnus was disappearing, and an agent had taken his stuff from the guestroom in Ollie’s house. That would have to be enough – the less Magnus had to do with Ollie the better. He realized that it
wasn’t just Colby who was at risk from the Soto gang, his brother might be too.
Magnus closed his eyes. Nothing he could do about that now except hope that the gangsters would ignore them all.
Oh, God. Maybe Colby was right. Maybe he should just have pretended that he hadn’t heard Lenahan’s conversation.
Of course, in his beloved sagas, the heroes always did their duty. But then most of their relatives came to a bloody end before the story was finished. It was easy to be brave with your own skin, much harder with other people’s. He felt more like a coward than a hero, safe in Iceland when his brother and his girlfriend were in danger.
But then the ancient Icelandic reaction kicked in. If they touched a hair of Colby’s or Ollie’s head, he would make the bastards pay. All of them.
Baldur held another conference at two o’clock that afternoon. The team were still fresh and enthusiastic.
He began with the initial findings from the autopsy. It looked likely that Agnar had drowned; there was some mud found in his lungs, which suggested that he was still breathing when he hit the water. As Magnus had suspected, the fragments of stone in the victim’s head wound were from the dirt road rather than the lake floor.