Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

accomplices, or perhaps just friends in the Boston PD, friends for whom tracing Magnus’s whereabouts would all be in a day’s work.
    So the idea was that the only form of communication would be e-mails. Even those Magnus could not send directly, but via Agent Hendricks in Cleveland. That was the method that Magnus would have to use if he wanted to contact Colby.
    And he needed to contact Colby. It had become clear to him that he couldn’t take the risk that she would be attacked or killed on his account. She had outmanoeuvred him, and he had to accept that.
    He stared at the screen for several minutes more, trying out arguments, justifications, explanations, but he knew Colby, and he was aware of the danger of giving her the opportunity to complicate things. So in the end he kept it simple.
The answer to your question is yes. Now please come with me. I am very worried about you.
With all my love
Magnus.
    Not very romantic – hardly the right way to start a life together. Although he was attracted to Colby, loved her even, the more he got to know her the more sure he was that they shouldn’t get married. It wasn’t just his fear of commitment, although Colby was absolutely right that he did suffer from that. He just knew that if there was a woman out there somewhere that he could spend the rest of his life with, it wasn’t Colby. Her latest high-stakes ploy was an example of why.
    But he had no choice. She had given him no choice.
    He composed a brief report to Williams, telling him he was safe and in e-mail contact should Williams learn anything about the trial date.
    He thought of writing to Ollie, as his brother now called himself, but decided against it. The FBI had informed Ollie that Magnus was disappearing, and an agent had taken his stuff from the guestroom in Ollie’s house. That would have to be enough – the less Magnus had to do with Ollie the better. He realized that it wasn’t just Colby who was at risk from the Soto gang, his brother might be too.
    Magnus closed his eyes. Nothing he could do about that now except hope that the gangsters would ignore them all.
    Oh, God. Maybe Colby was right. Maybe he should just have pretended that he hadn’t heard Lenahan’s conversation.
    Of course, in his beloved sagas, the heroes always did their duty. But then most of their relatives came to a bloody end before the story was finished. It was easy to be brave with your own skin, much harder with other people’s. He felt more like a coward than a hero, safe in Iceland when his brother and his girlfriend were in danger.
    But then the ancient Icelandic reaction kicked in. If they touched a hair of Colby’s or Ollie’s head, he would make the bastards pay. All of them.
    Baldur held another conference at two o’clock that afternoon. The team were still fresh and enthusiastic.
    He began with the initial findings from the autopsy. It looked likely that Agnar had drowned; there was some mud found in his lungs, which suggested that he was still breathing when he hit the water. As Magnus had suspected, the fragments of stone in the victim’s head wound were from the dirt road rather than the lake floor.
    There were small traces of cocaine in the victim’s blood, and some alcohol, but not nearly enough to cause intoxication. The pathologist’s conclusion was that the victim was struck on the back of the head with a stone, fell unconscious and was dragged into the lake where he drowned. No surprises there.
    Baldur and Vigdís had interviewed Andrea. She had admitted that her affair with Agnar had been going on for about a month. She was besotted with him, she had spent most of the previous year trying to seduce him, and had finally succeeded after a drunken student party to which he had been invited. She had spent one weekend with him at the summer house. Her finger-prints were indeed one of the two sets that remained unidentified.
    Andrea said that Agnar had seemed terrified that his wife would discover what had happened. He had promised her after she had caught him with a student four years before that he would remain faithful, and until Andrea he had kept his word. Andrea’s impression was that Agnar was scared of Linda.
    Magnus outlined the theory that Isildur was a nickname for a Lord of the Rings fan, and that Steve Jubb was one himself. One or two of the faces around the table looked a little uncomfortable. Maybe Árni wasn’t the only one to have seen the Lord of the Rings movie.
    Baldur handed