She saw where he was looking. ‘Do what you want,’ she said. ‘Just do it.’
‘Hey, all I want is a little talk,’ said Diego. ‘I ain’t gonna touch you, as long as you talk to me.’
Colby swallowed, her eyes wide.
In a swift movement, Diego grabbed her hair with one hand and jammed the revolver in her mouth with the other. ‘Where’s Magnus?’
‘Who?’ The woman was barely audible.
‘Magnus Jonson. Your boyfriend.’ He smiled and glanced at the bathroom. ‘Or one of your boyfriends. Looks like you’re the kind of girl that needs several men to keep you happy.’
‘I… I don’t know.’
Diego pulled the trigger. Click.
A strangled sob from Colby.
Diego explained the rules of his version of the Russian roulette game. He just loved that bit, loved watching the eyes of his victims. The fear. The uncertainty. Perfect.
‘OK. I’ll ask you again. Where is Magnus?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Colby. ‘I swear it. He said he was going away somewhere and he couldn’t tell me where.’
‘Did you guess?’
Colby shook her head.
Diego spotted weakness. ‘You guessed, didn’t you?’
‘N-no. No, I swear I didn’t.’
‘Thing is, I ain’t believing you.’
He pulled the trigger again.
Click.
‘Oh, God.’ Colby slumped backwards, trying to sob with the barrel of a gun crammed into her mouth.
Diego loved this game. ‘You guessed. OK. So now I’m gonna guess,’ said Diego. ‘Is he in state?’
Colby hesitated and then shook her head.
‘All right. In the country then?’
‘No.’
‘We talking Mexico?’
A shake of the head.
‘Canada?’
Another shake.
Diego was rather enjoying this. ‘Is it hot or cold?’
No answer.
He squeezed the trigger.
Click.
‘Cold. It’s somewhere cold.’
‘Good girl. But I give up now. My geography ain’t that good. Where’s he at?’
Another click. The game wasn’t strictly fair. Although Colby didn’t know which chamber the bullet was in, Diego knew it was in the last. That’s how he liked to play the game. It really would be too bad to blow her brains out before he had gotten the answer he wanted.
‘OK. OK. He’s in Sweden. I don’t know where in Sweden. Stockholm, I guess. It’s Sweden.’
‘You’re just a thick-headed Icelandic drunk, aren’t you?’
With difficulty Magnus focused on the red face of the National Police Commissioner in front of him. His mouth was dry, his head was pounding, his stomach growling.
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ He would call his superior officer ‘sir’. Screw Icelandic etiquette.
‘Do you do this often? Is this a once-a-week thing for you? Or perhaps you hit the bottle every day? I didn’t read anything about this on your file. You broke a few rules from time to time, but you never showed up for duty intoxicated.’
‘No, sir. It’s been years since I got that drunk.’
‘Then why did you do it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Magnus said. ‘I got some bad news. Personal news. It won’t happen again.’
‘It had better not,’ said the Commissioner. ‘I have an important role in mind for you, but that role demands that my officers should respect you. Within three days you have made yourself a laughing stock.’
The night was a blur, but Magnus could remember the laughter. The desk sergeant had heard about the new hot-shot detective over from America and had thought it highly amusing that this man was now in his drunk tank. As had the patrolmen who had arrested him. And the other uniformed officers coming off duty. And the next shift coming on.
They had had the kindness to drive him back to his house. He had passed out in the car, but vaguely remembered Katrin getting his clothes off and putting him to bed.
He had woken up a few hours later with his head exploding, his bladder full and his mouth dry. He crawled back into the police station at about ten o’clock. The rest of the detectives grinned and whispered as he sat at his desk. Within a minute Baldur had told him with a thin smile that the Big Salmon wanted to see him.
‘I am very sorry I have let you down, Commissioner,’ Magnus repeated. ‘I do appreciate what you have done for me here, and I am sure I can help.’
The Commissioner grunted. ‘Thorkell seems to think you have made a good start. How is the Agnar Haraldsson case going? I heard about the discovery of the saga. Is it genuine?’
‘Possibly, but we don’t know yet for sure. It looks like the Brit Steve Jubb was trying to buy it from Agnar. There was a problem, they had a dispute, and Jubb killed him.’
‘Jubb still isn’t talking?’
‘Not yet. But there’s this guy Lawrence Feldman who goes by the Internet alias of Isildur, who seems to have financed the deal. We know where he lives. If I put some pressure on him, I’m sure he’ll talk.’
‘So why don’t you?’
‘He’s in California. Baldur won’t authorize it.’
The Commissioner nodded. ‘Can you work today, or do you need to take the day off sick?’
Magnus suspected that this wasn’t a kind offer from a concerned superior. It was a direct question of his commitment.
‘I can work today.’
‘Good. And don’t let me down again. Or else I will send you straight back to Boston and I don’t care who is after you.’
Ingileif watched as Professor Moritz carefully carried the envelope containing the old scraps of vellum to his car outside while a female colleague took the bigger seventeenth-century volume. A couple of uniformed police officers and the young detective called Arni danced around in attendance.
She had expected to feel relief. She felt nothing of the kind. She was drowning, drowning beneath a wave of guilt.
The secret that her family had kept for so many generations, hundreds and hundreds of years, was disappearing out of the door. It had been an astounding achievement to keep it so quiet for so long. She could imagine her ancestors, fathers and eldest sons, huddled over a peat fire in their simple turf-roofed farmhouse, reading the saga over and over to each other during the long winter nights. It must have been difficult keeping its existence from extended family, neighbours, in-laws. But they had succeeded. And they hadn’t sold out. A farmer’s life in Iceland during the last three centuries was extremely precarious. Even when they had endured unimaginable poverty and starvation, they hadn’t taken the easy way. They had needed the money more than her.
What right did she have to cash it in now?
Her brother, Petur, had spoken the truth when he had urged her not to sell. And he hated the saga even more than she did.
She looked around the gallery. The objects on display – the vases, the fish-skin bags, the candle-holders, the lavascapes – were truly beautiful. But did they matter so much?
The police said that the saga would be needed for evidence. They would keep its existence quiet while the investigation was still under way. But eventually everyone would know. Not just Icelanders, but the whole world.
