Michael Ridpath: Where the Shadows Lie

Ingileif Asgrimsdottir owned an art gallery on Skolavordustigur, which was a bit of a mouthful, even for an Icelander. New York had Fifth Avenue, London had Bond Street and Reykjavik had Skolavordustigur. The street led up from Laugavegur, the busiest shopping street in town, to the Hallgrimskirkja at the top of a hill. Small stores lined the road, part concrete, part brightly painted corrugated metal, selling art supplies, jewellery, designer clothes and fancy foods. But the credit crunch had made its mark: some premises were discreetly empty, displaying small signs showing the words Til Leigu, meaning For Rent.

Vigdis parked her car a few metres below the gallery. Above her and Magnus the massive concrete spire of the church thrust upwards. Designed in the nineteen thirties, it was supported by two great wings that swept up from the ground; it looked like Iceland’s very own intercontinental ballistic missile, or possibly a moon rocket.

As Magnus climbed out of the car, he was almost knocked over by a blonde girl of about twenty dressed in a lime green sweater with a short leopard-skin skirt and a two foot tail hurtling down the hill on a bicycle. Where were the traffic cops when you needed them?

Vigdis pushed open the door to the gallery and Magnus followed her in. A woman, presumably Ingileif Asgrimsdottir, was speaking to a tourist couple in English. Vigdis was about to interrupt them, when Magnus touched her arm. ‘Let’s wait until she’s finished.’

So Magnus and Vigdis examined the objects on sale in the gallery, as well as Ingileif herself. She was slim with blonde hair that came down in a fringe over her eyes and was tied back in a ponytail. A quick broad smile beneath high cheekbones, a smile which she was using to maximum effect on her customers. An English couple, they had begun by picking up a small candle holder made of rough red lava, but had ended up buying a large glass vase and an abstract painting that hinted of Reykjavik, Mount Esja and horizontal layers of pale grey cloud. They spent tens of thousands of kronur.

After they had left the store, the owner turned to Magnus and Vigdis. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said in English. ‘Can I help you?’

Her Icelandic accent was delicious, as was her smile. Magnus hadn’t appreciated that he looked so obviously American; then he realized it was Vigdis who had prompted the choice of language. In Reykjavik, black meant foreigner.

Vigdis herself was all business. ‘Are you Ingileif Asgrimsdottir?’ she asked in Icelandic.

The woman nodded.

Vigdis pulled out her badge. ‘My name is Detective Vigdis Audarsdottir of the Metropolitan Police, and this is my colleague, Magnus Ragnarsson. We have some questions for you relating to the murder of Agnar Haraldsson.’

The smile disappeared. ‘You’d better sit down.’ The woman led them to a cramped desk at the back of the gallery and they sat on two small chairs. ‘I saw something about Agnar on the news. He taught me Icelandic literature when I was at the university.’

‘You saw him recently,’ Vigdis said, checking her notebook. ‘On the sixth of April, at two-thirty?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Ingileif, her voice suddenly hoarse. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I bumped into him in the street, and he asked me to drop in on him some time at the university. So I did.’

‘What did you discuss?’

‘Oh, nothing, really. My design career, mostly. This gallery. He was very attentive, very charming.’

‘Did he say anything about himself?’

‘Not much had changed really. He had married again. He said he had two children.’ She smiled briefly. ‘Difficult to imagine Agnar with kids, but there you are.’

‘You come from Fludir, don’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Ingileif. ‘I was born and brought up there. Best farmland in the country, biggest courgettes, reddest tomatoes. Can’t think why I ever left.’

‘Sounds like quite a place. It’s near Hruni, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Hruni is the parish church. It’s three kilometres away.’

‘Did you meet Agnar at Hruni on the afternoon of the twentieth of April?’

Ingileif frowned. ‘No, I didn’t. I was in this shop all day.’

‘It only takes a couple of hours to drive there.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t go there to meet Agnar.’

‘He met someone in Hruni that day. Doesn’t it strike you that it’s a bit of a coincidence that he should go to Fludir, the village where you grew up?’

Ingileif shrugged. ‘Not really. I have no idea what he was doing there.’ She forced a smile. ‘This is a small country. Coincidences happen all the time.’

Vigdis looked at her doubtfully. ‘Is there anyone who could confirm that you were in the shop that afternoon?’

Ingileif thought a moment. ‘That was Monday, wasn’t it? Disa in the boutique next door. She dropped in to borrow some tea bags. I am pretty sure that was Monday.’

Vigdis glanced at Magnus. He realized that she was holding off on pushing Ingileif directly on her relationship with Agnar, and so he decided on a different tack. They could always come back to Agnar later. ‘You had a brother, named Isildur, who died young?’

‘Yes,’ said Ingileif. ‘It was several years before I was born. Meningitis, I think. I never knew him. My parents didn’t speak about him much. He was their first child, it hit them badly, as you can imagine.’

‘Isn’t Isildur an unusual name?’

‘I suppose it is. I hadn’t really thought about it.’

‘Do you know why your parents gave him that name?’

Ingileif shook her head. ‘No idea.’ She seemed nervous and was frowning slightly. Magnus noticed a V-shaped nick above one of her eyebrows, partly hidden by her fringe. Her fingers were fiddling with an intricate silver earring, no doubt designed by one of her colleagues. ‘Except that Isildur was my great-grandfather’s name, I think. On my father’s side. Maybe my dad wanted to honour his own grandfather. You know how names recur in families.’

‘We’d like to ask your parents,’ Magnus asked. ‘Can you give us their address?’

Ingileif sighed. ‘I’m afraid they are both dead. My father died in 1992, and my mother last year.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Magnus said, and he meant it. Ingileif appeared to be in her late twenties, which would mean she had lost her father at about the same age Magnus was when he lost his mother.

‘Were either of them fans of the Lord of the Rings?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Ingileif. ‘I mean, we had a copy in the house so one of them must have read it, but they never mentioned it.’

‘And you? Have you read it?’

‘When I was a kid.’

‘Seen the movies?’

‘I saw the first one. Not the other two. I didn’t really like it. When you’ve seen one orc you’ve seen them all.’

Magnus paused, waiting for more. Ingileif’s pale cheeks blushed red.

‘Have you ever heard of an Englishman named Steve Jubb?’

Ingileif shook her head firmly. ‘No.’

Magnus glanced at Vigdis. Time to get back to Ingileif and Agnar. ‘Ingileif, were you having an affair with Agnar?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Ingileif replied angrily. ‘No, absolutely not.’

‘But you found him charming?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. He always was charming, and that hasn’t changed.’

‘Have you ever had an affair with him?’ Magnus asked.

‘No,’ said Ingileif, her voice hoarse again. Her fingers drifted up towards her earring.

‘Ingileif, this is a murder investigation,’ Vigdis said slowly and firmly. ‘If you lie to us now then we can arrest you. It will be a serious matter, I can assure you. Now, once more, did you ever have an affair with Agnar?’