‘I think so,’ said Ingileif. ‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’
Magnus examined the upright precise handwriting. It looked real. But of course if it had been written by a careful forger it would look real. He glanced up at Ingileif. She seemed to be telling the truth, unlike her previous two conversations with him when she had been lying badly. Of course she could have feigned her earlier awkwardness to lull him into thinking she was telling the truth this time, but she would have to be a consummate actress to pull that off. And very cunning.
Could he believe that the ring in Gaukur’s Saga had really survived?
It was tempting. There was great scholarly debate about how historically accurate Iceland’s sagas really were. Most of the people and many of the events mentioned in them had really existed, but then there were also passages that were obviously pure invention. Whenever Magnus read them, the matter-of-fact style and the realistic characters lulled him into suspending disbelief until he felt medieval Iceland was almost close enough to touch.
The homicide detective in him resisted the temptation. First of all, Magnus couldn’t even be sure that the saga itself was authentic. And even if it was, then the ring could be fictional. And even if a gold ring had existed, it would probably be either buried under tons of ash, or long since have been found and sold by a poor shepherd. The whole thing was unlikely. Highly unlikely. But speculation was pointless. It didn’t really matter what Magnus thought: what mattered was what Agnar believed, and Steve Jubb and Isildur.
For if a true Lord of the Rings fanatic thought he had a chance of getting his hands on the ring, the One Ring, then he might be tempted to kill for it.
‘I don’t know what I think,’ said Magnus. ‘But thank you for telling me. Eventually.’
Ingileif shrugged.
‘Of course, it would have been better if you had come out with all this up front.’
Ingileif sighed. ‘It would have been better if I had never let the damn saga out of my safe in the first place.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The canteen was almost full. Officer Pattie Lenahan looked around for someone she knew, and saw Shannon Kraychyk from Traffic, sitting alone at the table in the back of the room next to a bunch of civilian geeks from the computer department. She carried her tray over.
‘How you doin’, Shannon?’
‘I’m doin’ good. Other than my dumb-ass sergeant giving me a hard time because we’re behind on our quota for this month. Like there’s anything I can do about it! What am I supposed to do if Boston’s citizens suddenly decide they’re all gonna respect the speed limit?’
Pattie and Shannon traded grumbles happily for a while until Shannon excused herself and left Pattie alone with the rest of her chef’s salad.
The geeks were talking about a case the previous year. Pattie remembered it. The kidnapping of a woman in Brookline by her next door neighbour; it had dominated the newspapers and the station gossip for a couple of weeks.
‘I haven’t seen Jonson around here recently,’ one of them said.
‘Haven’t you heard? He’s been disappeared. He’s a witness on the Lenahan case.’
‘You mean Witness Protection Programme?’
‘I guess.’
‘I heard from him the other day.’ Pattie glanced quickly at the speaker. A Chinese guy, small, talked real fast. ‘Sent me an e-mail out of the blue. He wanted me to check out an e-mail header for him, same as in the Brookline case.’
‘Did you nail it?’
‘Yeah. It was nowhere near as difficult. Some guy in California. He made no real attempt to hide the IP.’
The conversation moved on and Pattie finished her salad. She got herself a cup of coffee and took it back to the squad room.
Uncle Sean’s arrest had caused a big stir in her family. It was hardly surprising, everyone in her family were cops, had been for three generations, and none of them was a bad one, especially not Uncle Sean. That was the problem with the department, it was all bound up in rules and regulations, in cops snooping on cops. Cops like Magnus Jonson.
Pattie wasn’t entirely sure she agreed with the family consensus. It seemed to her that Uncle Sean was accused of something pretty serious. And she had never really trusted him: he was just a little too glib, too flaky. She didn’t know Magnus Jonson; but what she did know was that you didn’t rat out a fellow cop. Ever.
Should she tell her father what she had heard? He, at least, was a straight guy. He’d know what to do, whether to tell anyone else.
And besides, if she didn’t tell him and he ever found out, he would have her hide.
Better tell him.
The noise was appalling. Magnus and Arni were sitting at the back of a long low room, deep underground, listening to a group of teenage no-hopers called Shrink Wrapped. They were playing a bizarre mixture of reggae and rap, with their own Icelandic twist. Original, perhaps, but painful. Especially in combination with Magnus’s malingering hangover. He had thought that food and fresh air had taken care of his headache, but now it was back with a vengeance.
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
