Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

calling Tolkien a liar and a plagiarist. This seemed to unite Minshall and Isildur in defence of their hero, and the subject was laid to rest there.
    Magnus strongly suspected that this was the same Isildur who was Steve Jubb’s partner: both of them shared an interest in the Volsung Saga . Fortunately the web page included a link to the e-mail address of the people posting the commentaries. Isildur’s address indicated an Internet Service Provider from the US. The question was, how could Magnus find out who he was?
    There was a small chance that sending him an e-mail asking him to help the Reykjavík police with a murder inquiry would elicit a response. There was a much greater chance that it would tip Isildur off that the police were on to him, and he would go quiet.
    The previous year Magnus had been involved in the investigation of the rape and murder of a woman in the middle-class suburb of Brookline. She had received anonymous e-mails from a stalker. With the help of a young technician named Johnny Yeoh in Computer Forensics, Magnus had tracked down the IP address of the computer from which the e-mails had been sent, despite all kinds of ploys the sender had used to disguise it. It turned out he was the woman’s next-door neighbour. He was now serving life in Cedar Junction.
    Magnus had Isildur’s e-mail address. All he needed to do was provoke an e-mail response from him, which would include a ‘header’ divulging the IP address of Isildur’s computer.
    He thought for a minute and then tapped something out.
Hi Isildur ,
I found your comment about the Saga of the Volsungs very interesting. Where can I get a copy?
Matt Johnson
    A simple, if slightly dumb question which would take Isildur only a few seconds to respond to, with luck not enough time to worry about the e-mail address from which it was sent. Worth a try.
    The problem with e-mail correspondence was that you never knew how long a reply would take to arrive. It could be a minute, an hour, a day or a month. While he was waiting, Magnus checked how Árni was doing. He had made some progress: he had found a lecturer in Linguistics at the University of New South Wales who claimed to be an expert on Tolkien’s invented languages, of which there were supposed to be fourteen. Like Magnus, he had sent an e-mail inquiry and was waiting for a response.
    Árni had also found traces of an Isildur. There was someone using that nickname who seemed to be trying to build an online translation service into and out of Quenya, which was one of Tolkien’s most detailed Elvish languages. Whether it was the same Isildur or some other Lord of the Rings obsessive using that name, they could not be certain.
    Magnus went back to his own computer. He was in luck. There was a brief e-mail from Isildur.
Hi Matt
You should be able to get a copy from Amazon. There is a good Penguin Classics edition. It’s well worth reading. Enjoy.
Isildur
    Magnus hit a few keys on his computer, and a string of codes and numerals was revealed, the e-mail header.
    Pay dirt.
    ‘Árni. Do you know anyone in your Computer Forensics department who could check out an e-mail header for me?’
    Árni looked doubtful. ‘It’s Saturday. They’ll be at home. I could try to get hold of someone, but it will take a while. We might have to wait until Monday.’
    Monday was no good. Magnus checked his watch. It was about lunch time in Boston. Johnny Yeoh was a civilian, not a police officer, but he was the kind of geek who would drop everything to be helpful if he was interested. Magnus and he had gotten on well, especially since Magnus had made sure that Johnny had received plenty of credit for his work in tracking down the Brookline killer. This would be just the kind of task to get Johnny’s juices flowing.
    Magnus tapped out a quick e-mail, cutting and pasting the header from Isildur’s message. He made sure that there was nothing in the text of the e-mail that might suggest that he was anywhere but some city in the heart of America. He considered sending it to Johnny’s Boston PD address via Agent Hendricks. The problem was Johnny wouldn’t get it till Monday. Magnus needed a result more quickly than that.
    Magnus could remember Johnny’s home e-mail address – he had used it enough times the previous year. He weighed the risks. There was no way that anyone would be monitoring Johnny Yeoh for a contact with Magnus. And although Lenahan had lots of buddies throughout the police department,