Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

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. Árni 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.’
    ‘It’s a character in a book,’ Jubb said. ‘That’s all.’
    ‘How many times have you read this book?’ Baldur asked.
    ‘Once or twice.’
    ‘Once or twice?’ Baldur snorted. ‘Isildur is a nickname, isn’t it? He’s a friend of yours. A fellow Lord of the Rings fan.’
    Steve Jubb shrugged.
    Magnus glanced at the lower extremity of a tattoo peeking out beneath Jubb’s sleeve. ‘Take off your shirt.’
    Steve Jubb shrugged and removed the denim shirt he had been wearing since his arrest. He revealed a plain white T-shirt, and on his forearm a tattoo of a helmeted man with a beard wielding an axe.
    A man? Or perhaps a dwarf.
    ‘Let me guess,’ said Magnus. ‘Your nickname is Gimli.’ He remembered that Gimli was the name of the dwarf in Lord of the Rings .
    Jubb shrugged again.
    ‘Is Isildur a buddy from Yorkshire?’ Magnus asked. ‘You meet in a pub every Friday, have a few beers and talk about old Icelandic sagas?’
    No answer.
    ‘You get cop shows in England?’ Magnus asked. ‘ CSI , Law and Order ?’
    Jubb frowned.
    ‘Well, in those shows the bad guy gets to remain silent while the good guys ask all the questions. But it doesn’t work that way in Iceland.’ Magnus leaned forward. ‘In Iceland if you keep quiet we think you’ve got something to hide. Isn’t that right, Kristján?’
    ‘My client’s decision not to answer your questions is his own,’ the lawyer said. ‘I have explained the consequences.’
    ‘We will find out what you are hiding,’ Baldur said. ‘And your failure to cooperate will be remembered when it comes to trial.’
    The lawyer was about to say something, but Jubb put a hand on his arm. ‘Look, if you two are so bloody clever, you’ll eventually figure out that I had bugger all to do with Agnar’s death, and then you’ll have to let me go. Until then, I’m saying nowt.’
    The arms folded, the jaw jutted out. Steve Jubb didn’t utter another word.
    Vigdís was waiting for them outside the interview room.
    ‘There’s someone from the British Embassy to see you.’
    Baldur swore. ‘Damn it. He’s only going to waste my time. But I must speak to him, I suppose. Is there anything else?’ Baldur could tell from the look of suppressed excitement on Vigdís’s face that there was.
    ‘Agnar had a lover,’ Vigdís said, with a small smile of triumph.
    Baldur raised his eyebrows. ‘Did he indeed?’
    ‘Andrea Fridriksdóttir. She is one of Agnar’s Icelandic literature students at the university. She came forward as soon as she heard he had been killed.’
    ‘Where is she?’
    ‘Downstairs.’
    ‘Excellent. Let’s go and talk to her. Tell the man from the British Embassy I will be with him as soon as I can. But I want to speak to this Andrea first.’
    Realizing that he was not invited, Magnus returned to his desk, where a woman from the National Police Commissioner’s office was waiting for him. Cell phone, bank account, daily allowance, payment of salary, cash advance, even the promise of a car in a few days, she had it all prepared. Magnus was impressed. He was quite sure that the Boston Police Department could never match her for efficiency.
    She was followed by a man from the IT Department. He gave Magnus his password, and spent a few minutes showing him how to use the computer system, including how to access e-mail.
    Once the man had gone, Magnus stared at the screen in front of him. The time had come. Magnus could put it off no longer.
    It had turned out that the FBI agents who had escorted Magnus in his last days in Massachusetts were out of the Cleveland Field Office. One, Agent Hendricks, had been designated his contact man. Magnus had agreed never to use the phone to the United States, even to Deputy Superintendent Williams. Especially to Deputy Superintendent Williams. The fear, that was never articulated but which was in the minds of Magnus, the FBI and Williams himself, was that the three police officers who had been arrested were not alone. That they had