Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

They pulled up in the empty gravel car park in front of the church. Magnus climbed out of the car. There was a spectacular view to the north, of glaciers many miles away. Plovers dived and swirled over the fields, calling as they did so. Otherwise there was silence. And peace.

They approached the rectory, a large house by Icelandic standards, white with a red roof, and rang the doorbell. No answer. But there was a red Suzuki in the garage.

‘Let’s check inside the church,’ suggested Ingileif. ‘He is a pastor after all.’

As they walked through the ancient graveyard, Ingileif nodded towards a line of newer stones. ‘That’s where my mother is.’

‘Do you want to look?’ said Magnus. ‘I can wait.’

‘No,’ said Ingileif. ‘No, it feels wrong.’ She smiled sheepishly at Magnus. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t want to involve her in all this.’

‘It makes sense,’ said Magnus.

So they continued on to the church and went in. It was warm and really quite beautiful. It was also empty.

As they made their way back to the car, Magnus caught sight of a boy of about sixteen moving around the barn next to the rectory. He called out to him. ‘Have you seen the pastor?’

‘He was here this morning.’

‘Do you know where he might have gone? Does he have another car?’

The boy noticed the Suzuki parked in the garage. ‘No. He could have gone for a walk. He does that sometimes. He can be out all day.’

‘Thank you,’ said Magnus. He checked his watch. Three-thirty. Then turning to Ingileif: ‘What now?’

‘You could come back to our house in the village,’ she said. ‘I can show you the letters from Tolkien to my grandfather. And my father’s notes about where the ring might be. Although I doubt they will be much help.’

‘Good idea,’ said Magnus. ‘We’ll come back here later.’

Austurstraeti was only a block away from the Hotel Borg. Isildur was reassured by the two men beside him, the big trucker from England and the wrinkled Icelandic ex-policeman. When Gimli had suggested a sum to Axel Bjarnason, he had been eager to drop everything to help them, although Gimli suspected that the private investigator didn’t have much to drop. He had short grey hair, sharp blue eyes and a weather-beaten face, and he looked more like a fisherman than a private investigator, not that Isildur had ever employed a private investigator before.

He clearly knew his town, though. He had recognized Petur Asgrimsson’s name immediately and had only required a few seconds to check that Ingileif’s gallery was where he thought it was. He was at the Hotel Borg less than a quarter of an hour later.

Isildur was nervous, scared even. He was in a strange country, and Iceland was a very strange country. Someone had been murdered and there was a chance that the murderer was the man walking along beside him. Isildur didn’t like to think too hard about that; he had decided not to ask Gimli right out whether he had killed the professor.

But the danger added to the thrill. It was a long shot: perhaps the police would get to the ring first. Perhaps the ring was a fake all along. Perhaps no one would ever find it. But there was a chance, a real chance, that Isildur might end up the owner of the actual ring that had inspired The Lord of the Rings, that had been carried to Iceland by his namesake a thousand years before.

That was cool. That was seriously cool.

The main entrance to Neon was just a small door on the street, but Bjarnason led them around the back. There another door was propped open by a couple of crates of beer. A young man was carrying in some cases of vodka.

Bjarnason stopped him and rattled something in Icelandic. That was one weird language. Isildur wondered to himself which Middle Earth language would sound like it. Possibly none of them: Quenya was Finnish-influenced and Sindarin was derived from Welsh. Perhaps Icelandic was just too obvious for Tolkien – no fun.

The boy led them downstairs past a vast dance floor to a small office. There a tall man with a shaved head was in earnest discussion with a red-haired woman in jeans and a Severed Crotch T-Shirt.

‘Go ahead,’ said Bjarnason to Isildur. ‘I’m sure he speaks English.’

‘Mr Asgrimsson?’ said Isildur.

The man with the shaved head looked up. ‘Yes?’ No hint of a smile. His smooth skull bulged alarmingly.

‘My name is Lawrence Feldman and this is my colleague Steve Jubb.’

‘What do you want? I thought you were in jail?’ Asgrimsson said.

‘Steve was always innocent,’ Isildur said. ‘I guess the cops finally figured that out.’

‘Well, if you want the saga, the police have it. And when they have finished with it, there is no way we are selling it to you.’

Asgrimsson was aggressive, but Isildur stood up to him. He was used to people trying to push him around, people who underestimated the programmer whose talents they needed to make their business work.

‘That’s a topic for a later day. We want to speak with you about a ring. Isildur’s ring, or perhaps you prefer Gaukur’s ring.’

‘Get out of my club now!’ Asgrimsson’s voice was firm.

‘We’ll pay well. Very well,’ said Isildur.

‘Listen to me,’ said Asgrimsson, his eyes burning. ‘A man has died because of that stupid saga. Two men, if you include my father. My family kept it a secret for centuries for a reason, a good reason as it turns out. It should still be a secret, and it would have been if I had had my way. But the reason it isn’t is you – your nosing around, your flashing dollars everywhere.’

He took a step closer to Isildur. ‘You’ve seen what the result is. Professor Agnar Haraldsson is dead! Don’t you feel guilty about that? Don’t you think you should just get the hell out of Iceland and fuck off back to America?’

‘Mr Asgrimsson-’

‘Out!’ Petur was shouting now, his finger pointing to the exit. ‘I said, get out!’

The pastor was sweating in the unseasonably warm sun. It was a glorious day and he had already walked about seven kilometres. He was in a high valley, uninhabited even by sheep this early in the year. A brook ran down from the snow-covered heath at the head of the valley. All around him snow was melting, trickling, dribbling, seeping over the stones and into the earth. Most of the grass that had been revealed in the last few days was yellow, but by the side of the brook there was a patch of rich green shoots. Spring. New nourishment for this barren land.

All around birds chirped and warbled in the sunshine.

He took a deep breath. He remembered when he had first come to this valley, as the newly arrived pastor of Hruni, how he had felt that this is where God lived.

And at that moment, he believed it again.

Over to the left, along the side of the valley, were some rocky crags. He turned off the path, what little there was of it, and squelched through the yellow grass towards them. He took out his notebook.

He needed to find a good hiding place.

Tomas’s arrest as a suspect for the murder of Agnar Haraldsson had been on the lunch time news on the radio. Top story, hardly surprising, given Tomas’s celebrity. The moment he heard it the pastor knew he had to find a new place to hide the ring.

He paused and examined it on the fourth finger of his right hand. It didn’t look a thousand years old. That was the thing with gold – it didn’t matter how old it was, if you polished it carefully it looked new. Or newer.

There were scratches and scuffs. But the inscription in runes engraved on the inside was still legible, just.

He remembered when he and Asgrimur had found it in that cave. Well, it was hardly a cave, more like a hole in the rock. It was the greatest, the most profound moment of his life. And of Asgrimur’s of course. Even if it was just about his last.