Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

There was a small chance that sending him an e-mail asking him to help the Reykjavik police with a murder inquiry would elicit a response. There was a much greater chance that it would tip Isildur off that the police were on to him, and he would go quiet.

The previous year Magnus had been involved in the investigation of the rape and murder of a woman in the middle-class suburb of Brookline. She had received anonymous e-mails from a stalker. With the help of a young technician named Johnny Yeoh in Computer Forensics, Magnus had tracked down the IP address of the computer from which the e-mails had been sent, despite all kinds of ploys the sender had used to disguise it. It turned out he was the woman’s next-door neighbour. He was now serving life in Cedar Junction.

Magnus had Isildur’s e-mail address. All he needed to do was provoke an e-mail response from him, which would include a ‘header’ divulging the IP address of Isildur’s computer.

He thought for a minute and then tapped something out.

Hi Isildur,

I found your comment about the Saga of the Volsungs very interesting. Where can I get a copy?

Matt Johnson

A simple, if slightly dumb question which would take Isildur only a few seconds to respond to, with luck not enough time to worry about the e-mail address from which it was sent. Worth a try.

The problem with e-mail correspondence was that you never knew how long a reply would take to arrive. It could be a minute, an hour, a day or a month. While he was waiting, Magnus checked how Arni was doing. He had made some progress: he had found a lecturer in Linguistics at the University of New South Wales who claimed to be an expert on Tolkien’s invented languages, of which there were supposed to be fourteen. Like Magnus, he had sent an e-mail inquiry and was waiting for a response.

Arni had also found traces of an Isildur. There was someone using that nickname who seemed to be trying to build an online translation service into and out of Quenya, which was one of Tolkien’s most detailed Elvish languages. Whether it was the same Isildur or some other Lord of the Rings obsessive using that name, they could not be certain.

Magnus went back to his own computer. He was in luck. There was a brief e-mail from Isildur.

Hi Matt

You should be able to get a copy from Amazon. There is a good Penguin Classics edition. It’s well worth reading. Enjoy.

Isildur

Magnus hit a few keys on his computer, and a string of codes and numerals was revealed, the e-mail header.

Pay dirt.

‘Arni. Do you know anyone in your Computer Forensics department who could check out an e-mail header for me?’

Arni looked doubtful. ‘It’s Saturday. They’ll be at home. I could try to get hold of someone, but it will take a while. We might have to wait until Monday.’

Monday was no good. Magnus checked his watch. It was about lunch time in Boston. Johnny Yeoh was a civilian, not a police officer, but he was the kind of geek who would drop everything to be helpful if he was interested. Magnus and he had gotten on well, especially since Magnus had made sure that Johnny had received plenty of credit for his work in tracking down the Brookline killer. This would be just the kind of task to get Johnny’s juices flowing.

Magnus tapped out a quick e-mail, cutting and pasting the header from Isildur’s message. He made sure that there was nothing in the text of the e-mail that might suggest that he was anywhere but some city in the heart of America. He considered sending it to Johnny’s Boston PD address via Agent Hendricks. The problem was Johnny wouldn’t get it till Monday. Magnus needed a result more quickly than that.

Magnus could remember Johnny’s home e-mail address – he had used it enough times the previous year. He weighed the risks. There was no way that anyone would be monitoring Johnny Yeoh for a contact with Magnus. And although Lenahan had lots of buddies throughout the police department, Johnny was about the least likely person to be one of them.

He tapped out Johnny’s address and pressed send.

With any luck, by morning they would know who Isildur was.

Thingholt was a jumble of brightly coloured little houses in the central 101 postal district of Reykjavik, clinging to the side of the hill below the big church. It was where the artists lived, the designers, the writers, the poets, the actors, the cool and the fashionable.

It wasn’t really a cop’s neighbourhood, but Magnus liked it.

Arni drove him along a quiet street just around the corner from the gallery Magnus had visited earlier that afternoon, and stopped outside a tiny house, probably the smallest in the road. The walls were cream concrete, and the roof lime-green corrugated metal, out from which jutted a lone window. Paint on walls and roof was peeling and the grass in the tiny yard at the side of the building was straggly and trampled down. Yet it reminded Magnus of the house he had grown up in as a child.

Arni rang the doorbell. Waited. Rang the bell again. ‘She’s probably asleep.’

Magnus checked his watch. It was only seven o’clock. ‘She’s in bed early.’

‘No, I mean she hasn’t got up yet.’

Just then the door opened, and there stood a very tall, black-haired girl, with a pale face, wearing a skimpy T-shirt and shorts. ‘Arni!’ she said. ‘What are you doing waking me up at this hour?’

‘What’s wrong with this hour?’ Arni said. ‘Can we come in?’

The woman nodded, a slow droop of her head, and stood back to let them in. They went through the hallway into a small living room, in which was a long blue sofa, a big TV, a couple of bean bags on the polished wooden floor and a bookcase heaving with books. The walls were panelled in wood; the longest had been painted in swirls of blue, green and yellow, giving an impression of a tropical island.

‘This is my sister, Katrin,’ Arni said. ‘This is Magnus. He’s an American friend of mine. He was looking for a place to stay in Reykjavik and so I suggested here.’

Katrin rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on Magnus. Her top was more of a singlet than a T-shirt, one of her small breasts peeked out. She looked quite a lot like Arni, tall, thin and dark, but where Arni’s features were weak, hers were strong, white face, angled cheekbones and jaw, thick short black hair, big dark eyes.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you?’ She spoke in English, with a British accent.

‘I’m doing good,’ Magnus replied. ‘And you?’

‘Yeah. Cool,’ she mumbled.

‘Shall we sit down and have a chat?’ Arni asked.

Katrin focused on Magnus, staring him up and down. ‘No. He’s cool. I’m going back to bed.’ And with that she disappeared into a room off the hallway.

‘Looks like you passed,’ said Arni. ‘Let me show you the room.’ He led Magnus up some narrow stairs. ‘Our grandparents used to live here. It belongs to both of us now, and we rent out the room on the first floor. Here we are.’

They emerged into a small room with the basic furniture: bed, table, a couple of chairs and so on. There were two windows, pale evening light streamed in through one, and through the other Magnus could see the spire of the Hallgrimskirkja swooping high above the multicoloured patchwork of metal roofs. ‘Nice view,’ he said.

‘Do you like the room?’

‘What happened to the previous tenant?’

Arni looked pained. ‘We arrested him. Last week.’

‘Ah. Narcotics?’

‘Amphetamines. Small-time dealer.’

‘I see.’

Arni coughed. ‘I would appreciate it if you could keep an eye on Katrin while you’re here. In a low-key way, of course.’

‘Will she mind that? I mean, is she happy sharing a place with a cop?’