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.’
CHAPTER SIX
Steve Jubb’s new lawyer, Kristjan Gylfason, was smooth: intelligent face, prematurely silver hair, an air of calm competence and wealth. His very presence seemed to give Jubb comfort. Not good.
There were now five men in the interview room: Jubb, his lawyer, Baldur, Magnus and the interpreter.
Baldur flung an English copy of The Lord of the Rings onto the desk. There was silence in the room. Jubb’s eyes flicked down to it. Arni had rushed out and bought it from the Eymundsson book-shop in the middle of town.
Baldur tapped the book. ‘Ever read this before?’
Jubb nodded.
Baldur slowly and deliberately opened the book at chapter two and passed it over to Steve Jubb. ‘Now, read that and tell me you don’t know who Isildur is.’