Baldur ran a brisk morning meeting, brisk and efficient. Half a dozen detectives were present, plus Magnus, the assistant prosecutor – a young red-haired woman called Rannveig – and Chief Superintendent Thorkell Holm, the head of the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police CID. Thorkell was in his early sixties, with a round jovial face and shiny pink cheeks. He seemed at ease with his detectives, happy to blend into the background and listen to Baldur, who was in charge of the investigation.
There was an air of expectancy around the table, enthusiasm for the task ahead. It was a Saturday morning. A long weekend of work to come for everyone, but they seemed eager to start.
Magnus felt himself caught up in the excitement. Arni had driven him back to his hotel the night before. He had grabbed something to eat and gone to bed – it had been a long day, and he was still exhausted from the shooting in Boston and its aftermath. But he slept well for once. It was good to be out of reach of Soto’s gang. He was eager to get a message to Colby, but he would have to arrange access to a computer for that. In the meantime the investigation into the professor’s murder intrigued him.
And he intrigued the detectives around him. They stared at him when he entered the room: none of the smiles you would expect from a group of Americans welcoming a stranger. Magnus didn’t know whether this was the typical initial reserve of Icelanders, a reserve that was usually replaced by warmth within ten minutes, or if it was something more hostile. He decided to ignore it. But he was glad of the uninhibited friendly smile of Arni sitting next to him.
‘Our suspect is still saying nothing,’ Baldur said. ‘We’ve heard from the British police: his criminal record is clean apart from two convictions for possession of cannabis in the 1970s. Rannveig will take him before the judge this morning to get an order to keep him in custody for the next few weeks.’
‘Do we have enough evidence for that?’ Magnus asked.
Baldur frowned at the interruption. ‘Steve Jubb was the last person to see Agnar alive. He was at the scene of the crime at about the time the murder was committed. We know he was discussing some kind of deal with Agnar but he won’t tell us what he was doing there. He’s hiding something, and until he tells us otherwise, we’re going to assume it’s a murder. I’d say we have enough to hold him, and so will the judge.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Magnus. And it did. In the US what they had would not be nearly enough to hold a suspect, but Magnus could learn to like the Icelandic system.
Baldur nodded curtly. ‘Now, what have we got?’
Two detectives had interviewed Agnar’s wife, Linda, at their house in Seltjarnarnes, a suburb of Reykjavik. She was devastated. They had been married seven years and had two small children. It was Agnar’s second marriage: he was divorced when they met – like his first wife, Linda had been one of his students. He had gone to the summer house to catch up on some work – apparently he had a deadline looming for a translation. He had spent the previous two weekends there. His wife, stuck alone with the children in Seltjarnarnes, had not been too happy with that.
Agnar’s laptop had not revealed any more interesting e-mails to Steve Jubb. There was a jumble of Word files and Internet sites visited, all of which would be analysed. There were piles of working papers in his office at the University and at the summer house which would be read through.
Forensics had found four sets of fingerprints in the summer house: Agnar’s, Steve Jubb’s and two others as yet unidentified. None from Agnar’s wife, who had stated that she had not visited the summer house yet that year. There were no prints on the passenger door of Jubb’s rented Toyota, confirming his claim that he had visited Agnar alone.
They had also found traces of cocaine use in the bedroom, and a one-gram bag of the drug hidden in a wardrobe.
‘Vigdis. Any luck with the name Isildur?’ Baldur asked.
He turned to a tall elegant black woman of about thirty, who was wearing a tight black sweater and jeans. Magnus had noticed her as soon as he had walked into the room. She was the first black person Magnus had seen since he had arrived in Iceland. Iceland didn’t do ethnic minorities, especially blacks.
‘It seems that Isildur, with an “i”, is a legitimate Icelandic name.’ She pronounced the Icelandic letter with a long “ee” sound. ‘Although it is very rare indeed. I have searched the National Registry database, and only come up with one entry for that name in the last eighty years, a child named Isildur Asgrimsson. Born 1974, died 1977 in Fludir.’ Fludir was a village in the south-west of Iceland, Magnus dimly remembered. It was pronounced Floothir, the ‘d’ being the Icelandic letter ‘
’
Vigdis had a perfect Icelandic accent, Magnus noticed. It sounded very odd to him, he had worked with plenty of black female detectives in Boston, and he was half expecting a laconic Boston drawl, not a lilting Icelandic trill. ‘His father, Asgrimur Hognason, was a doctor. He died in 1992.’
‘But no sign of anyone alive today with that name?’
Vigdis shook her head. ‘I suppose he might be a vestur-islenskur. ’ She meant a Western Icelander, one of those Icelanders, predecessors of Magnus himself, who had crossed over the Atlantic to North America a century before. ‘Or he could live in England. If he was born overseas he won’t be on our database.’
‘Anyone heard of an Isildur?’ Baldur asked the room. ‘It does sound Icelandic.’ No one said anything, although Arni, who was sitting next to Magnus, seemed about to open his mouth and then thought better of it.
‘All right,’ said Baldur. ‘This is what we know. It’s clear that Steve Jubb went to the summer house for more than a chat with an acquaintance. He was doing some kind of deal with Agnar, something involving a man named Isildur.’
He stared around the room. ‘We need to find out what it is that Agnar had discovered, and what deal they were negotiating. We need to find out a lot more about Agnar. And most of all we need to find out who the hell this Isildur is. Let’s hope Steve Jubb will begin to talk once he realizes that he is going to spend the next few weeks in jail.’
When the meeting was over, Chief Superintendent Thorkell asked Magnus for a word. His office was big and comfortable, with a magnificent view of the bay and Mount Esja. The clouds were higher than the day before; far out into the bay a patch of sunlight reflected off the water. Three photographs of small fair-haired children were positioned on the chief superintendent’s desk so that both Thorkell and his visitors could see them. A couple of primitive paintings, probably by the same kids, hung on the wall.
Thorkell sat down in his big leather desk chair and smiled. ‘Welcome to Reykjavik,’ he said.
At least he, like Arni, seemed friendly. Magnus couldn’t see any physical similarity between them, but they shared the same last name, Holm, and so they were probably related. A small minority of Icelanders used the same family naming system as the rest of the world. They were often from wealthier families, descendants of young Icelanders who had travelled abroad to Denmark to study and given themselves family names while they were there.
But then all Icelanders were related. The society was more of a gene puddle than a gene pool.
‘Thank you,’ Magnus replied.
‘You will be part of the National Police Commissioner’s staff, but when you are not at the Police College you will have a desk here, with us. I very much support the Commissioner’s initiative in requesting you, and I think you will be a great help to us in the current investigation.’
‘I hope so.’
Thorkell hesitated. ‘Inspector Baldur is an excellent detective, and very successful. He likes to use tried and tested techniques that work in Iceland. It boils down to the fact that in such a small country someone always knows someone who knows the criminal. But as the nature of crime changes in this country, so must the methods of fighting it, which is why you are here. Flexibility is perhaps not Baldur’s strong point. But don’t be afraid to voice your opinion. We want to hear it, you will have my assurance of that.’
Magnus smiled. ‘I understand.’
‘Good. Now, someone from the Commissioner’s office will be in touch with you this morning about salary and accommodation and so on. In the meantime, Arni will set you up with a desk, a phone and a computer. Do you have any questions?’
‘Yes, one. Can I carry a gun?’
‘No,’ said Thorkell. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘I’m not used to being on duty without one,’ Magnus said.
‘Then you will become used to it.’
They stared at each other for a moment. A cop needed a badge and a gun, as far as Magnus was concerned. He appreciated the difficulties with the badge. But he needed the gun.
‘How do I get a licence to carry?’
‘You don’t. No one has guns in Iceland, or not hand guns. They have been banned since 1968, after a man was shot dead.’
‘You’re telling me there are no police officers with firearms training?’
Thorkell sighed. ‘We do have some firearms officers in the Viking Squad – it’s what we call our SWAT team. You may be able to practise on the indoor range at Kopavogur, but we cannot permit you to carry a weapon outside it. That’s just not the way we do things here.’
Magnus was tempted to say something about flexibility and voicing his opinion, but he appreciated the chief superintendent’s support and didn’t want to antagonize him needlessly, so he just thanked him again and left.
Arni was waiting outside. He led Magnus to an office stuffed with small screened-in cubicles, with the sign Violent Crimes on the door. Two or three of the detectives that Magnus had seen at the meeting were on the phones or their computers, the others were already out interviewing people. Magnus’s desk was right opposite Arni’s. The phone worked, and Arni assured him that someone from the IT department would set him up with a password that morning.
Arni disappeared to the coffee machine and returned with two cups. The boy had promise.
Magnus sipped his coffee and considered Agnar. He didn’t yet know much about the professor, but he did know that he was someone’s husband, the father of two children. Magnus thought of those kids growing up with the knowledge that their father had been murdered, of the devastated wife struggling to come to terms with the destruction of her family. They needed to know who had killed Agnar and why, and they needed to know that the murderer had been punished. Otherwise – well, otherwise they would end up like Magnus.
The familiar urge returned. Even though Magnus had not yet met them, might never even meet them, he could promise them one thing: he would find Agnar’s killer.
‘Have you decided where you are going to stay in Reykjavik?’ Arni asked, sipping from his own cup.
‘No, not really,’ Magnus replied. ‘The hotel’s OK, I guess.’
‘But you won’t be able to stay there the whole time you’re with us?’
Magnus shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess not. I’ve no idea how long that will be.’
‘My sister has a spare room in her apartment. It’s a nice place, very central, in Thingholt. You could rent that. She wouldn’t charge much.’
Magnus hadn’t begun to think about money, accommodation, clothes, living expenses; he was just pleased to be alive. But operating out of a suitcase in a hotel room would soon get tiresome, and Arni’s sister might provide a quick easy solution to a problem he hadn’t even begun to address yet. And cheap. That might be important. ‘Sure, I’ll take a look at it.’
‘Great. I’ll show you around this evening, if you like.’
The coffee wasn’t bad. Icelanders lived on many cups of coffee a day – the whole society was fuelled by caffeine. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why they never sat still for long.
‘I’m sure I’ve heard this name Isildur somewhere,’ Magnus said. ‘Maybe it was a kid at school. But that would have shown up on Vigdis’s search.’
‘Probably just the movie,’ Arni said, sipping from his own cup.
‘The movie? What movie?’
‘ The Fellowship of the Ring. Haven’t you seen it? It’s the first of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.’
‘No, I haven’t seen the movie, but I did read the book. So Isildur’s one of the characters, right? What is he, some kind of elf?’
‘No, he’s a man,’ said Arni. ‘He wins the ring at the beginning of the movie and then loses it in a river somewhere. Then Gollum finds it.’
‘Arni! Why didn’t you mention this at the meeting?’
‘I was going to, but then I thought everyone would just laugh at me. They do that sometimes, you know. And it obviously doesn’t have anything to do with the case.’
‘Of course it does!’ Magnus just stopped himself from adding the words ‘you idiot!’. ‘Have you read the Saga of the Volsungs?’
‘I think I did at school,’ said Arni. ‘It’s about Sigurd and Brynhild and Gunnar, isn’t it? Dragons and treasure.’
‘And the ring. There’s a magic ring. It’s an Icelandic take on the Nibelungenlied which Wagner based his Ring Cycle on. I bet Tolkien read it too. And it’s Steve Jubb’s favourite saga – it’s probably the only saga he has read. He’s a Lord of the Rings nut and he has a friend who is another Lord of the Rings nut whose nickname is Isildur.’
‘So Isildur isn’t Icelandic at all?’
Magnus shook his head. ‘No, he’s probably another truck driver from Yorkshire. We need to talk to Baldur.’
A look of panic flashed across Arni’s face. ‘Do you really think this is important?’
‘I do,’ Magnus nodded. ‘It’s a lead. In a murder investigation you take every lead you get.’
‘Um… Perhaps you should see Baldur by yourself.’
‘Oh, come on Arni. I won’t tell him you knew all along who Isildur was. Let’s go.’
They had to wait an hour for Baldur to return from the courthouse on the Laekjargata, but he looked happy. ‘We can detain Steve Jubb for three weeks,’ he said when he saw Magnus. ‘And I have a search warrant for his hotel room.’
‘Didn’t he make bail?’ Magnus asked.
‘There’s no chance of bail in Iceland for a murder suspect. We usually get three weeks to pursue our investigation before we have to hand over evidence to the defence. Once we have finished with him here, Jubb will be taken to the prison at Litla Hraun. That will make him think.’
‘I like it,’ Magnus said.
‘Strange thing is, he has a new lawyer. We gave him a kid a couple of years out of law school, but he’s already fired him and hired Kristjan Gylfason, who is about the most experienced criminal lawyer in Iceland. Someone must be helping him; finding the lawyer and paying for him. Kristjan doesn’t come cheap. And for that matter, neither does the Hotel Borg.’
‘Isildur?’ Magnus asked.
Baldur shrugged. ‘Maybe. Whoever he is.’
‘We think we have an idea about that.’
Baldur listened to Magnus’s theory, a frown crossing the dome of his forehead. ‘I think we need to have another word with Mr Jubb.’