Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

drunk Coca-Cola and his host red wine. He had kept his shoes on in the summer house: his shoe size was ten and a half under the UK measurement system. Jubb wasn’t sure what that was in Continental sizes.
    After half an hour of this Baldur left the room and found Magnus. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
    ‘His story holds up,’ Magnus replied.
    ‘But he’s hiding something.’ It was a statement, not a question.
    ‘I think so too, but it’s tough to tell from in here, I can’t really see him. Can I speak to him face-to-face? Without the interpreter? I know anything he tells me won’t be admissible, but I might loosen him up. And if he lets something slip, you can zero in on it later.’
    Baldur thought for a moment and then nodded.
    Magnus wandered into the interview room and took the chair next to Jubb, the one that had been occupied by the interpreter. He leaned back.
    ‘Hey, Steve, how’s it going?’ Magnus said. ‘You holding up OK?’
    Jubb frowned. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Magnus Jonson,’ Magnus said. It seemed natural to slip back into his American name when he was speaking English.
    ‘You’re a bloody Yank.’ Jubb’s Yorkshire accent was strong and direct.
    ‘Sure am. I’m helping these guys out for a spell.’
    Jubb grunted.
    ‘So, tell me about Agnar.’
    Jubb sighed at having to repeat his story yet again. ‘We met a year ago in a bar in Reykjavík. I liked the bloke, so I looked him up when I came back to Iceland.’
    ‘What did you talk about?’
    ‘This and that. Places to visit in Iceland. He knows the country pretty well.’
    ‘No, I mean what did you talk about that made you want to see him again? He was a university professor, you’re a truck driver.’ Magnus remembered Jubb’s unmarried status. ‘Are you gay?’ Unlikely, but it might provoke a reaction.
    ‘Course I’m not bloody gay.’
    ‘Then what did you talk about?’
    Jubb hesitated, then answered. ‘Sagas. He was an expert, I’d always been interested in them. It was one of the reasons I came to Iceland.’
    ‘Sagas!’ Magnus snorted. ‘Give me a break.’
    Jubb shrugged his broad shoulders and folded his arms over his belly. ‘You asked.’
    Magnus paused, assessing him. ‘OK, I’m sorry. Which one is your favourite?’
    ‘The Saga of the Volsungs.’
    Magnus raised his eyebrows. ‘Unusual choice.’ The most popular sagas were about the Viking settlers in Iceland during the tenth century, but the Saga of the Volsungs was set in a much earlier period. Although written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, it was a myth about an early Germanic family of kings, the Volsungs, who eventually became the Burgundians: Attila the Hun had a role in the story. It wasn’t one of Magnus’s favourites, but he had read it a few times.
    ‘OK. So what was the name of the dwarf who was forced to give his gold to Odin and Loki?’ he asked.
    Jubb smiled. ‘Andvari.’
    ‘And Sigurd’s sword?’
    ‘Gram. And his horse was called Grani.’
    Jubb knew his stuff. He might be a truck driver, but he was a well-read man. Not to be underestimated. ‘I like the sagas,’ Magnus said with a smile. ‘My dad used to read them to me. But he was Icelandic. How did you get into them?’
    ‘My grandfather,’ Jubb said. ‘He studied them at university. He used to tell me the stories when I was a lad. I was hooked. Then I found some of them on tape and I used to play them in the wagon. Still do.’
    ‘In English?’
    ‘Obviously.’
    ‘They are better in Icelandic.’
    ‘That’s what Agnar said. And I believe him. But it’s too late for me to learn another language now.’ Jubb paused. ‘I’m sorry he’s dead. He was an interesting bloke.’
    ‘Did you kill him?’ It was a question Magnus had asked all sorts of people during his career. He didn’t expect an honest answer, but often the reaction the question provoked was useful.
    ‘No,’ said Jubb. ‘Of course I bloody didn’t!’
    Magnus studied Steve Jubb. The denial was convincing, and yet … The lorry driver was hiding something.
    At that moment the door opened and Baldur burst in, followed by the interpreter. Magnus couldn’t conceal his irritation; he thought he was beginning to get somewhere.
    Baldur was clutching some sheets of paper. He sat at the desk and laid them in front of him. He leaned over and turned a switch on a small console by the computer. ‘Interview recommences at eighteen twenty-two,’ he said. And then, in English, staring at