Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

cliff and took the ring. You witnessed it and ran away.’
    ‘Has he admitted it?’ Tómas asked.
    Magnus could see that the instant he had uttered it, Tómas regretted his question, with its implication that there was something to admit.
    ‘He will. We are going to arrest him shortly.’
    He paused, watching Tómas as he fiddled with the empty coffee cup in front of him. ‘Tell us the truth, Tómas. You can stop protecting your father. It’s too late for that.’
    Tómas glanced at his lawyer, who was listening intently. ‘OK.’
    ‘Talk to me,’ said Magnus.
    Tómas took a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who your farmer witness saw, but it wasn’t me.’
    Magnus was tempted to argue, but held his tongue. Best to coax out the entirety of Tómas’s story and then pick holes in it.
    ‘I don’t even know for sure whether my father did kill him, I really don’t. But I do know that he has the ring, Gaukur’s ring.’
    ‘How do you know?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘He told me. About five years later, when I was eighteen or so. He said that he was looking after it for me. He told me the whole story of the ring, how it was the very same ring of Andvari from the Volsung Saga , about how Ísildur had taken it back to Iceland and how Gaukur had killed his brother for it, and had then hidden it. He showed it to me once.’
    ‘So you’ve actually seen it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did he tell you how he got it?’
    Tómas hesitated. ‘Yes. Yes, he did. He said that he and Dr Ásgrímur found it that weekend, and that Dr Ásgrímur was wearing it when he fell off the cliff. He said that he had taken it off Dr Ásgrímur’s finger.’
    ‘While he was lying dying at the bottom of the cliff?’
    Tómas shrugged. ‘I guess so. I don’t know. It was either then, or when he came back for him with the farmers and found him dead. But it would have been quite difficult to take the ring then, I would expect.’
    ‘Didn’t that shock you?’
    ‘Yes, it did.’ Tómas swallowed. ‘My father was always a bit strange. But he became much stranger after the doctor died. I was scared of him, in awe of him. I still am, if the truth be told. And, well …’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had done something awful like take a ring off a dying man’s finger.’
    ‘What about killing that man?’
    Tómas hesitated. Magnus glanced at Tómas’s lawyer. She was listening intently, but letting him speak. As far as she was concerned her client was going some way towards exonerating himself.
    Baldur was also listening closely, letting Magnus get on with it.
    Tómas took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Like killing the doctor.’
    ‘Did he admit he had done that?’
    ‘No, not at all. Never.’
    ‘But you suspect he did?’
    ‘Not at first,’ said Tómas. ‘It didn’t occur to me. I had always believed my father about everything. But then the suspicion did begin to nag at me. I hoped it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t help asking myself, what if Father had pushed the doctor?’
    ‘Did you confront him?’
    ‘No, absolutely not.’ It was clear that the last thing on earth Tómas would do was confront his father. ‘But one day I overheard something. It was Father talking to my mother, this was several years after they had separated. It was Birna Ásgrímsdóttir’s wedding. Father was officiating. They were talking about how messed up Birna was. Father said something like: “It’s hardly surprising when her father was murdered.”
    ‘I don’t know whether Mother noticed. She didn’t say anything. I could tell Father had realized he had made a mistake by the way he glanced at her immediately. I don’t think he knew I was listening.’
    ‘That’s not exactly hard evidence,’ Magnus said.
    ‘No,’ Tómas admitted.
    Which was no doubt why Tómas had told them. Magnus still wasn’t convinced that Tómas wasn’t there and hadn’t witnessed the whole thing. But he’d come to that later.
    ‘All right. So why were you visiting Agnar?’
    ‘Can I have some water?’ Tómas asked.
    Magnus nodded. To Magnus’s surprise Baldur went to the door to ask for some. A minute later a police officer returned with a plastic cup and a jug.
    Tómas drank gratefully. Gathering his thoughts.
    ‘Agnar approached me. We knew each other vaguely, we’d met at parties, had one or two mutual friends, you know how this town is?’
    Magnus nodded.
    ‘We met at a café.’
    ‘Café Paris,’ Magnus