Michael Ridpath - Where the Shadows Lie

‘Take a look at these,’ Baldur said, returning to Icelandic. He pushed three sheets of paper towards Jubb and handed another three to Magnus. ‘These are printouts of e-mails taken from Agnar’s computer. E-mail correspondence with you.’

Jubb picked up the sheets of paper and read them, as did Magnus. Two were simple messages confirming the visit Steve had suggested on the phone and arranging a date, time and place to meet. The tone was more businesslike than an informal arrangement to meet up for a chat with an acquaintance.

The third e-mail was the most interesting.

From: Agnar Haraldsson

To: Steve Jubb

Subject: Meeting 23 April

Dear Steve

I’m looking forward to seeing you on Thursday. I have made a discovery that I think you will find very exciting.

It is a shame that Isildur can’t be there as well. I have a proposal for him that it would be good to discuss in person. Is it too late to persuade him to come?

Kind Regards,

Agnar

‘So – who is Isildur?’ Baldur asked once again, this time in Icelandic. The interpreter translated.

Jubb sighed heavily, tossed the papers on to the desk and crossed his arms. He said nothing.

‘What was the proposal Agnar wanted to discuss with you? Did he discuss it with you?’

Nothing.

‘Did he tell you what the discovery was?’

‘I’m not answering any more questions,’ said Jubb. ‘I want to go back to my hotel.’

‘You can’t,’ said Baldur. ‘You’re staying here. You are under arrest.’

Jubb frowned. ‘In that case, I want to speak to someone from the British Embassy.’

‘You are a suspect in a murder inquiry. We can inform the British Embassy that we are holding you, but you don’t have the right to see them. We can get you a lawyer if you wish.’

‘I do wish. And until I’ve seen him, I’m not saying anything.’ And Steve Jubb sat in his chair, a big man, arms folded tightly across his chest, lower jaw jutting out, immovable.

Baldur ran a brisk morning meeting, brisk and efficient. Half a dozen detectives were present, plus Magnus, the assistant prosecutor – a young red-haired woman called Rannveig – and Chief Superintendent Thorkell Holm, the head of the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police CID. Thorkell was in his early sixties, with a round jovial face and shiny pink cheeks. He seemed at ease with his detectives, happy to blend into the background and listen to Baldur, who was in charge of the investigation.

There was an air of expectancy around the table, enthusiasm for the task ahead. It was a Saturday morning. A long weekend of work to come for everyone, but they seemed eager to start.

Magnus felt himself caught up in the excitement. Arni had driven him back to his hotel the night before. He had grabbed something to eat and gone to bed – it had been a long day, and he was still exhausted from the shooting in Boston and its aftermath. But he slept well for once. It was good to be out of reach of Soto’s gang. He was eager to get a message to Colby, but he would have to arrange access to a computer for that. In the meantime the investigation into the professor’s murder intrigued him.

And he intrigued the detectives around him. They stared at him when he entered the room: none of the smiles you would expect from a group of Americans welcoming a stranger. Magnus didn’t know whether this was the typical initial reserve of Icelanders, a reserve that was usually replaced by warmth within ten minutes, or if it was something more hostile. He decided to ignore it. But he was glad of the uninhibited friendly smile of Arni sitting next to him.

‘Our suspect is still saying nothing,’ Baldur said. ‘We’ve heard from the British police: his criminal record is clean apart from two convictions for possession of cannabis in the 1970s. Rannveig will take him before the judge this morning to get an order to keep him in custody for the next few weeks.’

‘Do we have enough evidence for that?’ Magnus asked.

Baldur frowned at the interruption. ‘Steve Jubb was the last person to see Agnar alive. He was at the scene of the crime at about the time the murder was committed. We know he was discussing some kind of deal with Agnar but he won’t tell us what he was doing there. He’s hiding something, and until he tells us otherwise, we’re going to assume it’s a murder. I’d say we have enough to hold him, and so will the judge.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Magnus. And it did. In the US what they had would not be nearly enough to hold a suspect, but Magnus could learn to like the Icelandic system.

Baldur nodded curtly. ‘Now, what have we got?’

Two detectives had interviewed Agnar’s wife, Linda, at their house in Seltjarnarnes, a suburb of Reykjavik. She was devastated. They had been married seven years and had two small children. It was Agnar’s second marriage: he was divorced when they met – like his first wife, Linda had been one of his students. He had gone to the summer house to catch up on some work – apparently he had a deadline looming for a translation. He had spent the previous two weekends there. His wife, stuck alone with the children in Seltjarnarnes, had not been too happy with that.

Agnar’s laptop had not revealed any more interesting e-mails to Steve Jubb. There was a jumble of Word files and Internet sites visited, all of which would be analysed. There were piles of working papers in his office at the University and at the summer house which would be read through.

Forensics had found four sets of fingerprints in the summer house: Agnar’s, Steve Jubb’s and two others as yet unidentified. None from Agnar’s wife, who had stated that she had not visited the summer house yet that year. There were no prints on the passenger door of Jubb’s rented Toyota, confirming his claim that he had visited Agnar alone.

They had also found traces of cocaine use in the bedroom, and a one-gram bag of the drug hidden in a wardrobe.

‘Vigdis. Any luck with the name Isildur?’ Baldur asked.

He turned to a tall elegant black woman of about thirty, who was wearing a tight black sweater and jeans. Magnus had noticed her as soon as he had walked into the room. She was the first black person Magnus had seen since he had arrived in Iceland. Iceland didn’t do ethnic minorities, especially blacks.

‘It seems that Isildur, with an “i”, is a legitimate Icelandic name.’ She pronounced the Icelandic letter with a long “ee” sound. ‘Although it is very rare indeed. I have searched the National Registry database, and only come up with one entry for that name in the last eighty years, a child named Isildur Asgrimsson. Born 1974, died 1977 in Fludir.’ Fludir was a village in the south-west of Iceland, Magnus dimly remembered. It was pronounced Floothir, the ‘d’ being the Icelandic letter ‘

’

Vigdis had a perfect Icelandic accent, Magnus noticed. It sounded very odd to him, he had worked with plenty of black female detectives in Boston, and he was half expecting a laconic Boston drawl, not a lilting Icelandic trill. ‘His father, Asgrimur Hognason, was a doctor. He died in 1992.’

‘But no sign of anyone alive today with that name?’

Vigdis shook her head. ‘I suppose he might be a vestur-islenskur. ’ She meant a Western Icelander, one of those Icelanders, predecessors of Magnus himself, who had crossed over the Atlantic to North America a century before. ‘Or he could live in England. If he was born overseas he won’t be on our database.’

‘Anyone heard of an Isildur?’ Baldur asked the room. ‘It does sound Icelandic.’ No one said anything, although Arni, who was sitting next to Magnus, seemed about to open his mouth and then thought better of it.