‘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?’
‘There’s a man called Axel Bjarnason,’ said Kristjan. ‘He’s well known to stray on the wrong side of the law. I would stay well clear of him. You’ll find his name in the phone book. Under “A”, we list people under first names in this country.’
It took Magnus a while to requisition a car for the journey to Hruni, and it wasn’t until after lunch before he rolled up outside the gallery on Skolavordustigur to pick up Ingileif. It would take a little less than two hours to get to Hruni, but there should be time to get there, speak to the pastor and return to Reykjavik that evening.
She was wearing jeans and an anorak, her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She looked good. She also looked pleased to see him.
They drove out of Reykjavik under a broad dark cloud, the suburbs of Grafarvogur and Breidholt, a lesser grey, stretching out beside them. As they climbed up the pass to the south-east, lava and cloud converged, until suddenly they crested the final rise and a broad flood plain sparkled in the sunshine beneath them. The plain was scattered with knolls and tiny settlements, and bisected by a broad river, which ran down to the sea, through the town of Selfoss. Closer by, steam rose in tall plumes from the boreholes of a geothermal power station. Immediately below were the vegetable greenhouses of Hveragerdi, heated by spouts of hot water shooting up from the centre of the earth. There was a touch of sulphur in the air, even inside the car.
A thin band of white edged the black cloud hovering above them. Ahead, the sky was a pale, faultless blue.
‘Tell me about Tomas,’ Magnus said.
‘I’ve known him for about as long as I can remember,’ Ingileif said. ‘We went to elementary school together in Fludir. His parents separated when he was about fourteen, and he moved with his mother to Hella. He’s totally different to his father, a bit of a joker, charming in his way, although I never found him attractive. Quite smart. But his father was always disappointed in him.’
She paused as Magnus manoeuvred around a particularly steep bend down the hill, swerving slightly to avoid a truck coming up the other way.
‘We drive on the right in this country,’ Ingileif said.
‘I know. We do in the States too.’
‘It’s just you seem to prefer the middle of the road.’
Magnus took no notice. He was in perfect control of the car.
‘Tomas bummed around after university for a bit,’ Ingileif continued. ‘Then did some journalism and suddenly fell into this show he does: The Point. He’s perfect for it. The producer who spotted him must be a genius.’
‘When was that?’
‘A couple of years ago. I think it’s gone to his head a bit. Tomas always liked to drink, do drugs, but his parties have the reputation for being pretty wild.’
‘Have you been to any?’
‘Actually, no. I haven’t seen much of him recently, until yesterday. But he asked me to go to one on Saturday.’
‘I wouldn’t buy yourself a frock for that one.’
‘No,’ said Ingileif. ‘I hear he might be double booked.’
‘You say you saw him yesterday?’
Ingileif described her meeting with Tomas in Mokka, and his cryptic questions about the Agnar case.
‘How does he get along with his father?’ Magnus asked.
‘Well, I don’t know about now. But it always used to be the classic relationship between an over-demanding father and a son who is constantly trying to please and never quite succeeds. Tomas tried to rebel, dropping out, the parties and so on, but he never quite managed it. He always felt his father’s disapproval deeply. I’m sure he still does.’
‘So he might do his father a favour? A big favour?’
‘Like murdering someone?’
Magnus shrugged.
Ingileif thought about it for a few seconds. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in frustration eventually. ‘I can’t imagine he would. I can’t imagine that anyone would murder anyone else. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Iceland.’
‘It happens everywhere,’ said Magnus. ‘And it’s happened here. To Agnar.’
They were now on the floor of the plain, driving on a long straight road that cut through fields of knotted brown grass. Every mile or so, a farmhouse or a little white-and-red church perched on top of a hillock, a green patch of home meadow laid out neatly in front of it. Sheep grazed, most still shaggy with the winter’s wool, but the prevalent animal was the horse, sturdy animals, barely bigger than ponies, many a golden chestnut colour.