Where the Shadows Lie

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ingileif was absorbed in her drawing, her eyes flicking from her emerging design to the piece of tanned fish skin in front of her. It was Nile perch – the scales larger than the salmon she often used, the textures rougher. It had a wonderful light blue, translucent colour. She was designing a credit-card holder, always a popular item.

Ingileif didn’t work in the gallery on Tuesday afternoons, her partner Sunna, the painter, was minding the store. She had plenty to worry about, but it felt good to lose herself in the design process for an hour or two. She had spent a year in Florence after she had graduated from university learning how to work with leather. When she returned to Iceland she had attended the Academy of Arts where she experimented with fish skin. Each skin was different. The more she worked with the material, the more possibilities she saw.

The bell rang. Ingileif lived in a tiny one-bedroom flat on the upper floor of a small house in 101, not too far from the gallery. The bedroom was her studio and occasional guest room – she slept in the living area. The flat was stark: Icelandic minimalist with white walls, lots of wood and not much clutter. Despite that, it was cramped, but it was all she could afford in Reykjavik 101, the central postal area. And she didn’t want to live in one of those soulless apartments in the suburbs of Kopavogur or Gardabaer.

She went downstairs to the front door. It was Petur.

‘Pesi!’ She felt a sudden urge to throw herself into her brother’s arms. He held her tight for a few moments, stroking her hair.

They broke apart. Petur smiled at her awkwardly, surprised at her sudden show of affection. ‘Come on up,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,’ said Petur.

‘You mean since Agnar’s murder?’ She flopped back on to the white counterpane on her bed, leaning back against the wall. Petur took one of the two low chrome chairs.

He nodded.

‘In a way I’m glad you haven’t,’ Ingileif said. ‘You must be so angry with me.’

‘I told you you shouldn’t have tried to sell the saga.’

Ingileif glanced at her brother. There was as much sympathy as anger in his eyes. ‘You did. And I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t: I need the money.’

‘Well, you’ll get it now,’ said Petur. ‘I assume you’ll still be able to sell it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ingileif. ‘I haven’t asked. I don’t care about the money any more. The whole thing was just a big mistake.’

‘Have the police been round?’

‘Yes. Lots of times. And you?’

‘Once,’ Petur said. ‘There wasn’t much I could tell them.’

‘They seem to think an Englishman killed Agnar. The guy who was acting for the American Lord of the Rings fan who wanted to buy the saga.’

‘I haven’t seen anything in the news about the saga,’ Petur said.

‘No. The police are keeping its existence quiet while the investigation is proceeding. They’ve taken it away for analysis. The detective I spoke to seemed to think it’s a forgery, which is ridiculous.’

‘It’s no forgery,’ said Petur. He sighed. ‘But they’ll make it public eventually, won’t they? And then the world’s press will be all over it. We’ll have to give interviews, talk about it, see it on the cover of every Icelandic magazine.’

‘I know,’ said Ingileif. ‘I’ll do all that if you like. I know how much you hate the saga. And this is all my fault, after all.’

‘That’s kind of you to offer,’ Petur said. ‘We’ll see.’

‘There’s something else I should show you,’ Ingileif said. She fetched her bag from behind the door and handed Petur Tolkien’s letter. The second one, the one written in 1948.

He opened it and read, frowning.

Ingileif had been expecting more of a reaction. ‘This shows that Grandpa actually found the ring.’

Petur looked up at his sister. ‘I knew that.’

‘You knew it! How? When?’

‘Grandpa told me. And he told me that he wanted the ring to remain hidden. He was worried that Dad would look for it once he died and he wanted me to stop him.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ingileif asked.

‘It was another one of our family secrets,’ Petur said. ‘And after Dad died, I didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it.’

‘I wish you had stopped him,’ Ingileif said.

Anger flared in Petur’s eyes. ‘Don’t you think I do? I beat myself up about that for years. But what could I do? I was in high school in Reykjavik. Besides, I was his son, I couldn’t tell him what to do.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Ingileif quickly. ‘I’m sorry.’ They sat in silence for a moment, Petur’s anger subsiding.

‘I’ve been wondering recently, since I found this letter, wondering about Dad’s death,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he went off with the pastor to look for the ring. Maybe they found it?’

‘No. We have no reason to think that.’

‘I should ask him.’

‘Who? The pastor? Don’t you think he would have told us if they had found anything?’

‘Maybe not.’

Petur closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were moist. ‘Inga, I don’t know why thinking about Dad’s death affects me like this, but it always does. I want to forget it. I have tried so hard over the years to forget it, but I never seem able to. I just can’t stop thinking that it’s all my fault.’

‘Of course it wasn’t your fault, Pesi,’ Ingileif said.

‘I know that. I know that.’ Petur dabbed his eye with a finger. It was strange for Ingileif to see her brother, usually so composed and aloof, so upset. He sniffed and shook his head. ‘Or else I think it’s that damned ring. When I was a kid I was obsessed with it, scared of it. Then when Dad died I thought it was a load of bullshit and I wanted nothing to do with it.’

He stared angrily at his sister. ‘And now? Now I wonder whether it hasn’t destroyed our family. Reached out from that moment a thousand years ago when Gaukur took it from Isildur on the summit of Hekla, reached out to destroy us: Dad, Mum, Birna, me, you.’

He leaned forward, his moist eyes alight. ‘It doesn’t need to exist anywhere but in here.’ He tapped his temple with his finger. ‘It is lodged in the minds of all of us, all our family. That’s where it does its damage.’

Vigdis parked her car on one of the small streets leading down towards the bay from Hverfisgata, and she and Baldur jumped out. The renewed questioning at the university had turned up something. A uniformed officer had interviewed one of Agnar’s students, a dopey twenty-year-old, who had remembered someone asking around at the university for Agnar on the day he had died. The student had mentioned to the man that Agnar had a summer house by Lake Thingvellir and that he sometimes spent time there. Why the student hadn’t reported this before wasn’t clear, to the student or to the police, although he didn’t have a good explanation as to what he was doing on the university campus on a public holiday. The police let that drop.

No, the man hadn’t given his name. But the student recognized him. From TV.

Tomas Hakonarson.

He lived on the eighth floor of one of the new blocks of luxury apartments that had sprouted up in the Skuggahverfi, or Shadow District, along the shore of the bay. He answered the door, bleary eyed, as if he had just been woken up.

Baldur introduced himself and Vigdis, and barged in.

‘What’s this about?’ asked Tomas, blinking.

‘The murder of Agnar Haraldsson.’

‘Ah. You’d better take a seat then.’

The furniture was expensive cream leather. The view of the bay was spectacular, although at that precise moment a dark cloud was pressing down on the darker sea. Only the lowest hundred feet or so of Mount Esja was visible, and there was no chance of seeing Snaefellsnes glacier in the gloom. To the left, tall cranes dithered above the unfinished national concert hall, one of the casualties of the kreppa.

‘What do you know?’ Tomas asked.

‘I’d rather ask you what you know,’ Baldur said. ‘Starting with your movements on Thursday the twenty-third. Last Thursday.’

Tomas gathered his thoughts. ‘I got up late. Went out for a sand-wich for lunch and a cup of coffee. Then I drove over to the university.’

‘Go on.’

‘I was looking for Agnar Haraldsson. I asked a student who said that he might be at his summer house by Lake Thingvellir. So I drove up there.’

‘At what time was this?’ Vigdis asked, her notebook out, pen poised.

‘I got there about four o’clock, I think. I don’t know. I can’t remember precisely. Can’t have been much before three-thirty. Might have been a bit after four.’

‘And was Agnar there?’

‘Yes, he was. I had a cup of coffee. We chatted a bit. And then I left.’

‘I see. And what time did you leave?’

‘I don’t know. Once again, I didn’t look at my watch. I was there about three-quarters of an hour.’

‘So that would make it four forty-five?’

‘Or thereabouts.’

Baldur was silent. Tomas held his silence too. Vigdis knew the game: she was motionless, pen poised. But Tomas wasn’t saying any more.

‘What did you chat about?’ Baldur asked, eventually.

‘I wanted to discuss a possible television project on the sagas.’

‘What kind of project?’

‘Well, that was the trouble. I didn’t have a specific idea. I was kind of hoping that Agnar would provide that. But he didn’t.’

‘So you left?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And then what did you do?’

‘I came back home. Watched a movie, a DVD. Had a drink. Well, I had several drinks actually.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes,’ said Tomas.

‘Do you often drink alone?’

Tomas took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said again.

Vigdis looked around the flat. Sure enough there was an empty whisky bottle in the bin. Dewar’s.

‘And was this the first time you had met Agnar?’ Baldur asked.

‘No,’ said Tomas. ‘I had bumped into him once or twice in the past. I suppose he was my saga contact.’

Baldur’s long face was impassive, but Vigdis could feel the excitement in him. Tomas was talking nonsense, and Baldur knew it.

‘And why didn’t you come forward before?’ Baldur asked, gently.

‘Um. Well, you see, I didn’t see anything about the murder in the papers.’

‘Oh, don’t give me that, Tomas! Your job is to keep up with the news. The papers have been full of it.’

‘And… I didn’t want to get involved. I couldn’t see that it was important.’

At this Baldur couldn’t maintain his composure. He laughed. ‘Right, Tomas. You are coming with us to the station, where you had better think up a better story than that bullshit. I would suggest the truth; that usually works. But first I want you to show me what clothes you were wearing on that day. And the shoes.’