Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

This time she held his gaze. ‘No. I told myself that all this was irrelevant to his death, which is why I had no need to tell you about it, and I know of no connection.’ She sighed. ‘It’s not my job to guess, but doesn’t it seem likely that these people you were talking about thought that they could get hold of the saga without paying Agnar?’

‘Unless you killed him,’ Magnus said.

‘And why would I do that?’ She returned his gaze defiantly.

‘To shut him up. You told me yourself that you wanted to withdraw the sale of the saga and he threatened to tell the world about it.’

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t kill him for that reason. I wouldn’t kill anyone for any reason,’ Ingileif said.

Magnus stared hard. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Magnus let the hundred and twenty pages of Gaukur’s Saga fall on to Baldur’s desk with a thump.

‘What’s this?’ Baldur asked, glaring at Magnus.

‘The reason Steve Jubb killed Agnar.’

‘What do you mean?’

Magnus reported what he and Arni had found at the summer house and his subsequent interview with Ingileif. Baldur listened closely, his long face drawn, lips pursed.

‘Did you get this woman Ingileif ’s prints?’ Baldur asked.

‘No,’ said Magnus.

‘Well, bring her in and take them. We need to see if those are the missing set at the scene. And we should get this authenticated.’ He tapped the typescript in front of him.

He raised his fingers into a steeple and touched his chin. ‘So, this must be the deal they were discussing. But that still doesn’t explain why Agnar was killed. We know that Steve Jubb didn’t get a copy of the saga. We didn’t find it in his hotel room.’

‘He could have hidden it,’ Magnus said. ‘Or mailed it the next morning. To Lawrence Feldman.’

‘Possibly. The Central Post Office is just around the corner from the hotel. We can check if anyone remembers him. And if he sent it registered mail, there will be a record of it, as well as the address it was sent to.’

‘Or perhaps the deal went bad? They had a fight about the price.’

‘Until they had the original saga in their possession, Feldman and Jubb would want Agnar alive.’ Baldur sighed. ‘But we are getting somewhere. I’ll have another go with Steve Jubb. We’ll get him back from Litla Hraun tomorrow morning.’

‘May I join you?’ Magnus asked.

‘No,’ said Baldur, simply.

‘What about Lawrence Feldman in California?’ Magnus said. ‘It’s even more important to speak to him now.’ Magnus could feel Arni stiffening in anticipation behind him.

‘I said, I would think about it, and I will think about it,’ said Baldur.

‘Right,’ said Magnus, and he made for the door of Baldur’s office.

‘And Magnus,’ Baldur said.

‘What?’

‘You should have reported this before you saw Ingileif. I’m in charge of the investigation here.’

Magnus bristled, but he knew that Baldur was right. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

Arni went to fetch Ingileif and bring her in to the station to be fingerprinted. Magnus called Nathan Moritz, a colleague of Agnar’s at the university who had been interviewed earlier by the police. Moritz was at home, and Magnus asked him to come into the station to look at something. The professor sounded doubtful at first, but when Magnus mentioned it was an English translation of a lost saga about Gaukur and his brother Isildur, Moritz said he would be right over.

Moritz was an American, a small man of about sixty with a neat pointed beard and messy grey hair. He spoke perfect Icelandic, which wasn’t surprising for a lecturer on the subject, and explained that he was on a two-year secondment to the University of Iceland from the University of Michigan. They slipped into English, when Magnus admitted that he was operating under a similar arrangement.

Magnus fetched him a coffee and they sat down in an interview room, the typescript from the summer house in front of Magnus. Moritz had brought his own exhibit, a big hardback book. He was so excited he could barely sit still, and he ignored his coffee.

‘Is that it?’ he said. ‘ Gaukur’s Saga?’

‘We think so.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘It seems to be an English translation that Agnar made.’

‘So that’s what he was working on!’ Moritz said. ‘He was beavering away at something for the last few weeks. He claimed that he was commenting on a French translation of the Laxdaela Saga, but that sounded strange. I’ve known Agnar for years, worked with him on a couple of projects, and he was never one to bother himself unduly over deadlines.’ Moritz shook his head. ‘ Gaukur’s Saga.’

‘I didn’t know it existed,’ said Magnus.

‘It doesn’t. Or at least we didn’t think it did. But it used to. Look.’

Moritz opened up the book in front of him. ‘This is a facsimile of the Book of Modruvellir, from the fourteenth century, one of the most important collections of the sagas. There are eleven of them in all.’

Magnus walked around the table and stood behind Moritz’s shoulder. Moritz leafed through the book, each brown page a faithful copy of the vellum of the original manuscript. He paused at an empty page on which were written only a couple of faded lines. Indecipherable.

‘There is a big gap between Njals Saga and Egils Saga. No one could read this line until the invention of ultra-violet light. Now they know what it says.’ Moritz quoted from memory. ‘“Insert here Gauks Saga Trandilssonar; I am told that Grimur Thorsteinsson Esq has a copy.”’ He turned to Magnus and smiled. ‘We knew that there once was a Gaukur’s Saga, but we thought it had been lost, like so many others. Gaukur is mentioned once, very briefly in Njals Saga; that he was killed by Asgrimur.’

‘When you read the saga, you will find out how,’ said Magnus with a smile, returning to his seat. The Book of Modruvellir must have been the instance of the saga’s existence that Ingileif had mentioned.

‘The other place he crops up in is extraordinary,’ Moritz said. ‘There are some Viking runes in a tomb in Orkney, graffiti really, which were discovered in the nineteenth century. The runes claim that they were carved by the axe once owned by Gaukur Trandilsson of Iceland. So the man really did exist.’

Moritz looked at the sheaf of papers in front of Magnus.

‘And that’s the English translation? May I read it?’

‘Yes. Although you will have to use gloves and you will have to read it here. We need to give it to our forensics people before it can be copied.’

‘Do you know where the original is?’

‘Yes, I do. There are only scraps of the original vellum, but there’s an excellent seventeenth-century paper copy. We can show it to you tomorrow. Of course, we can’t be sure what we’ve found is genuine. We need you to authenticate it.’

‘With pleasure,’ said Moritz.

‘And keep this confidential. Don’t say a word to anyone.’

‘I understand. But don’t let your forensic people handle either document without my supervision.’

‘Of course,’ said Magnus. ‘If the saga is genuine, how much would it bring?’

‘It’s impossible to say,’ Moritz replied. ‘The last medieval manuscript on the market was sold by Sotheby’s in the nineteen sixties to a consortium of Icelandic banks. It had belonged to a British collector. Of course this time around the banks haven’t got any money, nor has the Icelandic government.’ He paused. ‘But for this? If it is authentic? There will be plenty of willing buyers outside Iceland. You’re talking millions of dollars.’

He shook his head. ‘Many millions.’