student. But not since then. I was quite clear that I would play no part in the negotiations over the saga.’
‘But you would take your share of the sale proceeds?’ Arni asked.
‘Yes,’ said Petur simply. He looked around his nightclub. ‘Times are tough. The banks are getting difficult. Like everyone else, I borrowed too much.’
‘Is this your only club?’ They were in the depths of Neon, on Austurstraeti, a short shopping street in the centre of town.
‘No,’ Petur replied. ‘This is my third. I started with Theme on Laugavegur.’
‘Sorry, I don’t know it,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve been away from Iceland a long time.’
‘I thought from your accent you were American,’ Petur said. ‘It was the most popular place in Reykjavik a few years ago. I spent a few years in London on the edges of the music scene there, learning the trade you could say, but when Reykjavik was setting itself up as the Ibiza of the north I thought I had better come home. Theme was just a small cafe, but I squeezed in a dance floor and got lucky. It became the place to go, and because it was so small, everyone had to queue outside. There’s no one happier than a seventeen-year-old Icelandic girl wearing a crop top, shivering outside a club at three o’clock in the morning in the snow.’
‘What happened to it?’ Magnus asked.
‘It’s still going, but it’s much less popular than it used to be. I saw that coming, so I opened Soho, and now Neon.’ Petur smiled. ‘This town is fickle. You have to stay one step ahead or you get trampled.’
Petur exuded confidence. He wasn’t going to get trampled.
‘Have you read Gaukur’s Saga?’ Magnus asked.
‘Read it? I think I know it off by heart. I certainly used to.’
‘Your sister said you have no interest in it.’
Petur smiled. ‘That’s certainly true now. But not when I was a boy. My father and grandfather were obsessed, and they passed that obsession on to me. Have you read it?’
Magnus and Arni nodded.
‘I adored my grandfather, and I loved the stories he told me about Isildur and Gaukur and Asgrimur from when I was little. I was groomed to be the keeper of the saga, you see, the keeper of the secret. And it wasn’t just Gaukur’s Saga that interested me, it was all the others.’
‘Did you know that your grandfather found the ring?’ Magnus asked.
Petur frowned. ‘My sister told you about that? I didn’t know she even knew about it.’
Magnus nodded. ‘She turned up a letter from Tolkien to your grandfather Hogni, which mentioned that Hogni had found the ring.’
‘And replaced it,’ said Petur. ‘He put it back, you know.’
‘Yes, the letter said that too.’ Magnus studied Petur. There was no doubt that the mention of the ring had disconcerted him. ‘So why aren’t you still obsessed with the saga?’
Petur took a deep breath. ‘My father and I argued about it, or about the ring, just before he died. You see my grandfather didn’t trust my father after he had revealed Gaukur’s Saga to the whole family. He wasn’t supposed to do that, it was supposed to be just me, the eldest son.’
A hint of bitterness touched Petur’s voice. ‘So Grandfather decided to tell me of the existence of the ring a few months before he died. He impressed upon me the importance of leaving the ring undisturbed. He scared the living daylights out of me. He persuaded me that if I, or my father, were to find the ring and take it from its hiding place then a terrible evil would be unleashed throughout the whole world.’
‘What kind of evil?’ Magnus asked.
‘I don’t know. He wasn’t specific. In my imagination it was some kind of nuclear war. I had just read On the Beach by Nevil Shute – you know, the story about survivors of a nuclear war in Australia – and it scared me witless. But the day after my grandfather died, my father set out on an expedition to Thjorsardalur to find the ring. I was furious. I told him he shouldn’t go, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘You didn’t go with him?’
‘No. I was away at high school in Reykjavik. But I wouldn’t have gone in any case. My father was close friends with the local pastor. As soon as my grandfather died, my father told him all about Gaukur’s Saga, and the ring. It was something else I was upset about: letting the secret out to someone outside the family. The pastor was an expert on folk legends and the two of them discussed where the ring might be. So they went off on expeditions together.
‘My mother didn’t like them going off, either. She thought all this Isildur and Gaukur and magic ring stuff was very weird. I honestly don’t think my father told her anything about it until after they were married and it was too late.’
He smiled. ‘Of course they never found it.’
‘Do you believe it exists?’ Arni asked, wide eyed.
‘I did then,’ Petur said. ‘I’m not at all sure now.’ A note of anger crept into his voice. ‘I don’t think about the ring or the damned saga at all now. My stupid father went off into the hills when a snowstorm was forecast and blundered over a cliff. Gaukur and his ring did that. It didn’t need to exist to kill him.’
‘What about your sister, Ingileif?’ Magnus asked. ‘Was she involved in all this?’
‘No,’ said Petur. ‘She knew about the saga, of course, but not about the ring.’
‘Do you see much of her?’
‘Now and again. After my father died I drifted away from the family. Ran away, more like. I couldn’t handle it. All the ring stuff; it seemed to me that it had killed him. And I felt that I should have stopped him from looking for the ring, like my grandfather told me to. Of course, there was nothing I could do, I was only fifteen, but at that age you sometimes think you have more power than you really do.
‘I dropped out of high school, went to London. Then, after I came back, I started to see Ingileif a bit. She was angry with me: she thought I had abandoned our mother.’ Petur grimaced. ‘I guess she was right.’
‘Do you know if she was still involved with Agnar?’
‘I doubt it very much,’ Petur said. ‘But he was the natural person for her to go to when she wanted to sell the saga.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t suspect her of killing him, do you?’
Magnus shrugged. ‘We are keeping an open mind. She wasn’t altogether straight with us when we first spoke to her.’
‘She was just trying to cover up her mistake. She should never have tried to sell the saga, and she knew it. But Ingileif is honest through and through. It’s inconceivable she killed anyone; she’s incapable of it. I’m actually very fond of her, always have been. She’d do anything for her friends or her family. She was the one of the three of us who looked after Mum at the end, when she was dying of cancer. You know the gallery is in trouble?’
Magnus nodded.
‘Well, that’s why she needed the money from the saga. To pay out her partners. She blames herself. I told her not to worry too much about it; it’s business. A venture goes wrong, you drop it, pick yourself up, and go on to something else. But she doesn’t think that way. Everyone is going bust in Iceland these days.’
The door to the club opened and three more musicians came in, lugging big bags of musical instruments and electronics. This lot were a little older, a little hairier.
‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ Petur said to them. Then, turning back to Magnus and Arni, ‘Ingileif’s had a tough life. First her father, then her stepfather, then her mother, all on top of losing her business.’
‘Stepfather?’ Magnus asked.
‘Yeah. Mum married again. A drunken arsehole called Sigursteinn. I never met him, it all happened when I was in London.’
‘They separated?’
‘No, he got drunk in Reykjavik. Fell off the harbour wall and killed himself. A good thing all round from what I have heard. Mum never got over it, though.’
Magnus nodded. ‘As you say, tough for her. And for you.’
Petur shrugged. ‘I ran away from it all. Ingileif stayed to do what she could. She always did.’
‘And your other sister? Birna?’
Petur shook his head. ‘She’s pretty much screwed up.’
‘Thank you, Petur,’ Magnus said, getting to his feet. ‘One last question. What were you doing the night Agnar died?’
At first Petur seemed taken aback by the question, but then he smiled. ‘I suppose that’s something you have
