Beneath its finery, the altar was actually a tatty old pine cupboard, inside which were piles of old copies of the Logbirtingablad , official notices going back several decades. The pastor reached under the pile to the right of the cupboard. His fingers felt for the familiar round shape.
The ring.
He drew it out and pulled it on to the fourth finger of his right hand, where it fitted snugly. The pastor had big hands, he had been a good handball player in his youth, yet the ring was not too tight. It had been made for the fingers of warriors.
And now it belonged to the pastor of Hruni.
Baldur ignored Magnus in the morning meeting.
He was amassing a case against Tomas Hakonarson. No one had seen Tomas come home that evening, either when he said he did at around five or six o’clock, or much later. There was little obvious sign of mud on the trainers Tomas said he had worn that night, but then they had been soaked the previous Saturday when he had walked through puddles wearing them. The lab was working on a more thorough examination, and attempts to match the fibres on his socks with three still-unexplained fibres from the summer house.
Tomas himself had asked for a lawyer and was sticking to his story, refusing to admit how unconvincing it sounded.
During the whole meeting, Baldur never directed a single comment to Magnus, nor asked his opinion, nor gave him any tasks in the investigation. And all this was watched by Thorkell Holm.
Screw Baldur.
Magnus’s head hurt. He had had quite a bit more than one beer in the Grand Rokk the night before, but had managed to go easy on the chasers. He was suffering from more of a thick head than a full blown hangover. But it was enough to put him in an uncooperative mood.
Magnus would tell Baldur all about Tomas’s father in his own good time. When he had spoken to the pastor himself.
Lawrence Feldman sat in the back seat of the black Mercedes four-wheel-drive and surveyed the prison buildings ahead of him. He was in the car park of Litla Hraun. The buildings themselves weren’t too bad, white, functional, surrounded by two layers of wire fencing. But the landscape surrounding them was bleak: flat, bare and brown, stretching across to the mountain slopes to the north. To the south lay the wide grey expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. At least there was some sunshine on this side of the pass.
The journey from Reykjavik, only an hour away, had been exhilarating, as they drove up through the lava field into the clouds. Feldman thought he could well have been in Middle Earth, perhaps on the edge of Mordor, the home of the Dark Lord Sauron. There was no grass, no greenery, or not the greenery of home. Weird lichens and mosses, some of them a bright lime colour, some grey, some orange, clung to the rock. Patches of snow stretched up the mountainsides into the clouds. To the side of the road, plumes of steam rose up from the ground.
Mordor. Where the shadows lie.
A large black bird swooped down and alighted on a fence post only feet from the car. It opened its beak and croaked accusingly. It cocked its head on one side and seemed to be staring right at Feldman with one eye. A raven. The damn bird was weirding him out.
Feldman had elected to remain in the car, while Kristjan Gylfason, the lawyer he had hired to represent Gimli, had gone into the prison to fetch him. The stories the big red-haired policeman with the flaw-less American accent had told Feldman about the prison still unsettled him.
A man emerged from a nearby building. He was a big guy, six-foot six, with long fair hair, a beard and a barrel chest, wearing blue overalls, and he was coming right towards the Mercedes. One of those depraved shepherds Feldman had heard about, no doubt. Feldman reached for the door lock, and was relieved to hear the comforting electronic clicks as he depressed it. The guy in the over-alls caught sight of him in the car, gave him a curt nod and a wave, and climbed into a Toyota pick-up.
At last he saw the smooth besuited figure of Kristjan emerge from the prison entrance, accompanied by a big man in a blue tracksuit, his stomach protruding in front of him. Feldman reached over, unlocked the door and pushed it open.
‘Gimli!’
Gimli flopped into the back seat with a grunt. ‘How you doin’?’ he said.
Feldman hesitated. This was the first time he had ever met Gimli in the flesh, but he felt he knew him so well. He was overcome with emotion. He leaned forward clumsily to give him a hug.
Gimli sat still. ‘Steady on, mate,’ he said. He had a pronounced Yorkshire accent.
Feldman broke away.
‘How was it?’ Feldman asked. ‘In there? Was it really bad?’
‘It were all right. Food’s OK. Mind you, the telly in this country is crap.’
‘What about the other prisoners? Did they treat you OK?’
‘Didn’t talk to them,’ Gimli said. ‘I kept meself to meself.’
‘That was wise,’ said Feldman. He looked closely at Gimli, trying to figure out if he was lying. Feldman would understand if he didn’t want to be too specific about his prison experiences.
Gimli shifted uncomfortably under Feldman’s stare. ‘Thanks for your help, Lawrence. With Kristjan and everything.’
‘Not at all. And please call me Isildur. I’ll call you Gimli.’
Gimli turned towards Feldman, raised an eyebrow and shrugged. ‘Fair enough. I didn’t tell them anything, you know. Although they seemed to have figured a lot of it out theirselves. They found out about the saga, and the ring, for instance, but it weren’t me what told them.’
‘Of course not,’ said Feldman, instantly guilty about how much he had told the police under much less pressure.
Kristjan started the car and drove out of the prison grounds and back towards Reykjavik. Feldman was glad to get out of there. He glanced at his companion. Jubb was bigger than he imagined: because of his nickname Feldman had assumed someone shorter. But this Gimli shared a tough solidity with his namesake from Middle Earth. A good partner.
‘You know, Gimli, we might have missed Gaukur’s Saga, but we could still find the ring. Do you want to help me?’
‘After all that’s happened here?’ Gimli asked.
‘Of course, I’d understand if you didn’t,’ said Feldman. ‘But if we found it, we could share it. Split custody of it. Seventy-five, twenty-five.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you get to keep it twenty-five per cent of the time. Three months in every year.’
Gimli stared out of the window at the brown plain. He nodded. ‘Well, I’ve gone through so much, I may as well get something from it.’
‘Deal?’ Feldman held out his hand.
Gimli shook it. ‘How do we start?’
‘Did Agnar give you any indication at all where the ring might be?’
‘No. But he was pretty confident he could get his hands on it. Like he knew where it was.’
‘Excellent. Now, when the police questioned you, did they ask you about anyone in particular?’
‘Yes, they did. A brother and sister. Peter and Ingi-something Asgrimsson. I’m pretty sure they must be the ones who were selling the saga.’
‘All right. All we have to do is find them. Kristjan? Can you help us?’
‘I haven’t been listening to your conversation,’ said the lawyer.
‘We need to track down a couple of people. Can you help?’
‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ said Kristjan. ‘If I need to defend you in the future, the less I know the better.’
‘I get it. Then can you recommend a good investigator? Someone who is willing to bend the rules a bit to find out what we need?’
‘The kind of investigators we use would never do that kind of thing,’ Kristjan said.
Feldman frowned.
‘So who would you not recommend, then?’ asked Steve Jubb. ‘You know, who should we steer clear of?’
