Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

would be available for his meeting.
    So Árni drove Magnus out to Lake Thingvellir. ‘Do you think Baldur will let you go to California?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t know. He didn’t seem excited by the idea.’
    ‘If you do go, can you take me with you?’ Árni glanced at Magnus sitting in the passenger seat and noticed his hesitation. ‘I did my degree in the States so I am familiar with US police procedures. Plus, California is my spiritual home.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You know. The Gubernator.’
    Magnus shook his head. Árni would be demanding a personal interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger next. Besides, Magnus would rather approach Lawrence Feldman in his own way without his Icelandic puppy at his heels. ‘We’ll see.’
    Deflated, Árni drove over the pass beyond Mosfell Heath and down towards the lake. It wasn’t actually raining, but there was a stiff breeze that ruffled the surface. Their approach was watched by a posse of sturdy Icelandic horses from the farm behind the cottages, their long golden forelocks flopping down over their eyes.
    Magnus noticed a boy and a girl playing by the shore of the lake – the boy was about eight, the girl much smaller. Again, only the one summer house with the Range Rover was occupied. Agnar’s property was still a crime scene, with yellow tape fluttering in the wind and a police car parked outside, in which sat a solitary constable reading a book. Crime and Punishment by one F.M. Dostojevskí, it transpired. Magnus smiled. Cops everywhere liked to read about crime; it wasn’t surprising that the Icelanders had a more literary approach to it than their American counterparts.
    The policeman was glad of the company and let Magnus and Árni into the house. It was cold and still. Fingerprint dust covered most of the smooth surfaces, adding to the sense of desolation, and there were chalk marks around the traces of blood on the floor.
    Magnus examined the desk: drawers full of papers, most of them printouts from a computer. There was also a low cupboard just to the left of the desk, in which more reams of paper lay.
    ‘OK, you check out the cabinet, I’ll check out the desk,’ Magnus said, slipping on a pair of white latex gloves.
    The first bundle he examined was a French translation of the Laxdaela Saga , on which were scribbled comments in French. These only covered the first half of the manuscript. Magnus had learned some French at school, and he guessed that Árni had been correcting or commenting on the work of another translator, probably an Icelandic-speaking Frenchman.
    ‘What have you got, Árni?’
    ‘ Gaukur’s Saga ,’ he said. ‘Have you ever heard of it?’
    ‘No,’ said Magnus. That wasn’t necessarily a surprise. There were dozens of sagas, some well-known, some much less so. ‘Wait a minute. Wasn’t Gaukur the guy who lived at Stöng?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Árni. ‘I went there when I was a kid. I was scared out of my wits.’
    ‘I know what you mean,’ said Magnus. ‘My father took me there when I was sixteen. There was something really creepy about that place.’
    Stöng was an abandoned farm about twenty kilometres north of the volcano, Mount Hekla. It had been smothered in ash after a massive eruption some time in the middle ages, and had only been rediscovered in the twentieth century. It lay at the end of a rough track which wound its way through a landscape of blackened destruction: mounds of sand and small outcrops of lava twisted into grotesque shapes. When Magnus read of the apocalypse, he thought of the road to Stöng.
    ‘Let me take a look.’
    Árni handed the manuscript to Magnus. It was about a hundred and twenty crisp, newly printed pages, in English. On the cover were the simple words: ‘Gaukur’s Saga, translated by Agnar Haraldsson’.
    Magnus turned the page, scanning the text. On the second page he came upon a word that brought his eyes to an abrupt halt.
    Ísildur.
    ‘Árni, look at this!’ He flicked rapidly through more pages. Ísildur. Ísildur. Ísildur. Ísildur.
    The name cropped up several times on each page. Ísildur wasn’t a bit player in this saga, he was a main character.
    ‘Wow,’ said Árni. ‘Shall we take it back to headquarters to get forensics to look at it?’
    ‘I’m going to read it,’ Magnus said. ‘Then forensics can take a look.’
    So he sat down in a comfortable armchair, and began to read, passing each page carefully to Árni as he finished with