Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

suggested.
    ‘Or maybe someone else has it,’ said Magnus, thinking.
    He looked out of the window over the lake towards the low snow-topped mountains in the distance. Then it came to him.
    ‘Come on, Árni. Let’s get back to Reykjavík.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    T HE GALLERY ON Skólavördustígur was only open for a couple of hours on Sundays and by the time Magnus and Árni got there it was closed. But, peering in through the window, Magnus could see a figure working at the desk at the back of the shop.
    He rapped on the glass door. Ingileif appeared, looking irritated. The irritation increased when she saw who it was. ‘We’re closed.’
    ‘We didn’t come here to buy anything,’ Magnus said. ‘We want to ask you some questions.’
    Ingileif saw the grim expression on his face and let them in. She led them back to her desk which was covered in number-strewn papers, weighted down with a calculator. They sat facing her.
    ‘You said your great-grandfather’s name was Ísildur?’ Magnus began.
    ‘I did.’
    ‘And your father’s name was Ásgrímur?’
    Ingileif frowned, the nick appearing above her eyebrow. ‘Obviously. You know my name.’
    ‘Interesting names.’
    ‘Not especially,’ said Ingileif. ‘Apart from perhaps Ísildur, but we discussed that.’
    Magnus said nothing, let silence do its work. Ingileif began to blush.
    ‘Anyone in your family named Gaukur?’ he asked.
    Ingileif closed her eyes, exhaled and leaned backwards. Magnus waited.
    ‘You found the saga, then?’ she said.
    ‘Just Agnar’s translation. You should have known we would. Eventually.’
    ‘Actually, Gaukur is a name we tend to avoid in our family.’
    ‘I’m not surprised. Why didn’t you tell us about it?’
    Ingileif put her head in her hands.
    Magnus waited.
    ‘Have you read it?’ she asked. ‘All the way through?’
    Magnus nodded.
    ‘Well, obviously I should have told you, I was stupid not to. But if you have read the saga, you might understand why I didn’t. It’s been in my family for generations and we have successfully kept it a secret.’
    ‘Until you tried to sell it.’
    Ingileif nodded. ‘Until I tried to sell it. Which is something I deeply regret now.’
    ‘You mean now that someone is dead?’
    Ingileif took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’
    ‘And this saga was really kept a secret for all those years?’
    Ingileif nodded. ‘Almost. With one lapse a few hundred years ago. Until my father, knowledge of the saga had only been passed on from father to eldest son, or in a couple of instances, eldest daughter. My father decided to read it to all us children, something my grandfather was not very happy about. But we were all sworn to absolute secrecy.’
    ‘Do you still have the original?’
    ‘Unfortunately, it wore out. We only have scraps left, but an excellent copy was made in the seventeenth century. I made a copy of that myself for Agnar to translate; it will be in his papers somewhere.’
    ‘So, after all those centuries, why did you decide to sell it?’
    Ingileif sighed. ‘As you can imagine, people in my family have always been obsessed by the sagas, and by our saga in particular. Although my father became a doctor, he was the most obsessed of the lot. He was convinced that the ring mentioned in the saga still existed and he used to go on expeditions all around the valley of the River Thjórsá, which is where Gaukur’s farm was, to look for it. He never found it, of course, but that’s how he died. He fell off a cliff in bad weather.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Magnus. And although Ingileif had lied to him, he was sorry.
    ‘That put the rest of us off Gaukur’s Saga . My brother, who until then had been brainwashed by Dad to a level of obsession that matched his, wanted nothing more to do with it. My sister was never very interested. I think my mother had always found the saga a little weird and held it responsible for Dad’s death. Of all of them, I was perhaps the least put off: I went on to study Icelandic at university. So when I found I needed money desperately, it seemed to me that I was the only one who would really care if we sold it.
    ‘The gallery is going bust. It is bust really. I need money badly – a lot of money. So when my mother died last year I spoke to my brother and my sister about selling the saga. Birna, my sister, couldn’t give a damn, but my brother Pétur argued against it. He said we were custodians of the saga, it wasn’t ours to sell. I was a bit