Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

Magnus had dutifully returned to the station to fill Baldur in on his interview with Ingileif. Baldur shared Magnus’s scepticism that the ring in the saga did really exist, but he understood his point that the promise that it might would fire up Steve Jubb and the modern-day Isildur, as well as Agnar.

Baldur had sent one of his detectives to Yorkshire to search Steve Jubb’s house and computer, although they were having trouble getting a search warrant from the British authorities. A hot-shot criminal lawyer from London had popped up from nowhere to raise all kinds of objections.

Another sign that there was big money somewhere in the background of this case.

‘This your kind of music, Arni?’ Magnus asked.

Arni looked at him with contempt. Magnus was relieved. At least the boy had some taste. He knew very little about Icelandic bands himself, but had recently formed a fondness for the ethereal Sigur Ros. A far cry from this bunch.

The band stopped. Silence, wonderful silence.

Petur Asgrimsson stood up from his chair in the middle of the floor and took a few paces towards the band. ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ he said.

There were cries of protest from the five blond teenage rap’n’reggae stars. ‘Come back next year, when you have refined things a little,’ he said. ‘And lose the drummer.’

He turned towards his visitors and pulled up one of the chairs lining the back of the room. He was a tall, imposing figure with a spare frame but square shoulders, and Ingileif’s high cheekbones. His cranium, shaved smooth, bulged above his long thin face. His grey eyes were hard and intelligent, swiftly assessing the two policemen.

‘You’ve come to speak to me about Agnar Haraldsson, I take it?’

‘Are you surprised?’ Magnus asked.

‘I thought you would have been here earlier.’

There was a hint of rebuke in the comment, an accusation that they were a little slow.

‘We would have been if your sister had only told us the full story up front. Or if you had contacted us yourself.’

Petur raised his fair eyebrows. ‘What would I have to say?’

‘You knew that Ingileif was trying to sell Gaukur’s Saga through Agnar?’

Petur nodded. ‘Much against my will.’

‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘No. Or at least not recently. I think I might have bumped into him a couple of times when Ingileif was a student. But not since then. I was quite clear that I would play no part in the negotiations over the saga.’

‘But you would take your share of the sale proceeds?’ Arni asked.

‘Yes,’ said Petur simply. He looked around his nightclub. ‘Times are tough. The banks are getting difficult. Like everyone else, I borrowed too much.’

‘Is this your only club?’ They were in the depths of Neon, on Austurstraeti, a short shopping street in the centre of town.

‘No,’ Petur replied. ‘This is my third. I started with Theme on Laugavegur.’

‘Sorry, I don’t know it,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve been away from Iceland a long time.’

‘I thought from your accent you were American,’ Petur said. ‘It was the most popular place in Reykjavik a few years ago. I spent a few years in London on the edges of the music scene there, learning the trade you could say, but when Reykjavik was setting itself up as the Ibiza of the north I thought I had better come home. Theme was just a small cafe, but I squeezed in a dance floor and got lucky. It became the place to go, and because it was so small, everyone had to queue outside. There’s no one happier than a seventeen-year-old Icelandic girl wearing a crop top, shivering outside a club at three o’clock in the morning in the snow.’

‘What happened to it?’ Magnus asked.

‘It’s still going, but it’s much less popular than it used to be. I saw that coming, so I opened Soho, and now Neon.’ Petur smiled. ‘This town is fickle. You have to stay one step ahead or you get trampled.’

Petur exuded confidence. He wasn’t going to get trampled.

‘Have you read Gaukur’s Saga?’ Magnus asked.

‘Read it? I think I know it off by heart. I certainly used to.’

‘Your sister said you have no interest in it.’

Petur smiled. ‘That’s certainly true now. But not when I was a boy. My father and grandfather were obsessed, and they passed that obsession on to me. Have you read it?’

Magnus and Arni nodded.

‘I adored my grandfather, and I loved the stories he told me about Isildur and Gaukur and Asgrimur from when I was little. I was groomed to be the keeper of the saga, you see, the keeper of the secret. And it wasn’t just Gaukur’s Saga that interested me, it was all the others.’

‘Did you know that your grandfather found the ring?’ Magnus asked.

Petur frowned. ‘My sister told you about that? I didn’t know she even knew about it.’

Magnus nodded. ‘She turned up a letter from Tolkien to your grandfather Hogni, which mentioned that Hogni had found the ring.’

‘And replaced it,’ said Petur. ‘He put it back, you know.’

‘Yes, the letter said that too.’ Magnus studied Petur. There was no doubt that the mention of the ring had disconcerted him. ‘So why aren’t you still obsessed with the saga?’

Petur took a deep breath. ‘My father and I argued about it, or about the ring, just before he died. You see my grandfather didn’t trust my father after he had revealed Gaukur’s Saga to the whole family. He wasn’t supposed to do that, it was supposed to be just me, the eldest son.’

A hint of bitterness touched Petur’s voice. ‘So Grandfather decided to tell me of the existence of the ring a few months before he died. He impressed upon me the importance of leaving the ring undisturbed. He scared the living daylights out of me. He persuaded me that if I, or my father, were to find the ring and take it from its hiding place then a terrible evil would be unleashed throughout the whole world.’

‘What kind of evil?’ Magnus asked.

‘I don’t know. He wasn’t specific. In my imagination it was some kind of nuclear war. I had just read On the Beach by Nevil Shute – you know, the story about survivors of a nuclear war in Australia – and it scared me witless. But the day after my grandfather died, my father set out on an expedition to Thjorsardalur to find the ring. I was furious. I told him he shouldn’t go, but he wouldn’t listen.’

‘You didn’t go with him?’

‘No. I was away at high school in Reykjavik. But I wouldn’t have gone in any case. My father was close friends with the local pastor. As soon as my grandfather died, my father told him all about Gaukur’s Saga, and the ring. It was something else I was upset about: letting the secret out to someone outside the family. The pastor was an expert on folk legends and the two of them discussed where the ring might be. So they went off on expeditions together.

‘My mother didn’t like them going off, either. She thought all this Isildur and Gaukur and magic ring stuff was very weird. I honestly don’t think my father told her anything about it until after they were married and it was too late.’

He smiled. ‘Of course they never found it.’

‘Do you believe it exists?’ Arni asked, wide eyed.

‘I did then,’ Petur said. ‘I’m not at all sure now.’ A note of anger crept into his voice. ‘I don’t think about the ring or the damned saga at all now. My stupid father went off into the hills when a snowstorm was forecast and blundered over a cliff. Gaukur and his ring did that. It didn’t need to exist to kill him.’

‘What about your sister, Ingileif?’ Magnus asked. ‘Was she involved in all this?’

‘No,’ said Petur. ‘She knew about the saga, of course, but not about the ring.’