Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

didn’t ask questions. You had to, if you wanted the company to succeed. Her job was to protect the company from the legal risks of doing business, not to purge the world of dishonesty.
    Magnus would never go to law school. He probably wouldn’t even make it any further up the ladder in the police department.
    A loser.
    Which was why when a slim, well-dressed lawyer with whom she had dealt the year before had bumped into her on the ‘T’ and asked her for a cup of coffee, she had said yes.
    And why when he had called her to ask her out to dinner, she had also said yes.
    His name was Richard Rubinstein. Cute, if a little too neat for her taste. Jewish, of course. She had googled him and discovered that he had just been made a partner of his downtown law firm. Which wasn’t necessarily important, but did mean he wasn’t a loser. And unlike almost everyone else she knew, he didn’t know Magnus, had never even heard of Magnus, didn’t know that she had had a boyfriend for the last three years.
    She was going to enjoy herself. But not with Magnus’s earrings.
    She unfastened them, replaced them with a pair of simple pearls, and headed out into the warm evening.
    From a car parked across the street, Diego watched her. Checked a photograph on his lap. It was the same girl all right.
    By the way she was dressed she was going out for a while. That would give him plenty of time to sneak into the building and then into her apartment without being seen.
    There was still the problem of the lone cop sitting in his patrol car right outside the building. But if Diego knew anything about cops the guy would be getting hungry.
    Sure enough, once the woman disappeared down the street, the patrol car started up and pulled out.
    Time enough to grab a pizza or a burger before the girl returned.
    Diego got out of his car and crossed the street.
    Magnus walked back to his new place in Thingholt from police headquarters. He needed the exercise and the fresh air. And you could at least say this for the air in Reykjavík, it was fresh.
    His mind was buzzing with the day’s events. It was way too early to tell, but according to Professor Moritz, there was nothing in the translation of Gaukur’s Saga to suggest it was a forgery. The professor was clearly desperate to believe that the saga was authentic, but he admitted that if anyone could forge a saga, Agnar could.
    Which raised another interesting possibility. Perhaps Steve Jubb had somehow discovered that the document Agnar was trying to sell him for so many millions of dollars was a fake, and he had killed him because of it.
    Magnus still wasn’t convinced that Ingileif was telling the whole truth. But she had seemed much more sincere when he had spoken to her that afternoon. And he had to admit that he found her mixture of vulnerability and determination attractive.
    He smiled when he remembered Officer O’Malley’s wise words of advice when Magnus started on the job: ‘Just because a girl has a nice ass, it don’t mean she’s telling the truth.’
    There was no doubt Ingileif had a nice ass.
    Steve Jubb wasn’t going to give them anything, especially if he was as guilty as Magnus thought he was. They needed to get on a plane to California and talk to Isildur. Threaten him with a conspiracy to commit murder rap and let him sing. Magnus could do that, he was sure he could.
    ‘Magnus!’
    He was in a little street not far from Katrín’s house, quite high up the hill. He turned to see a woman he vaguely recognized walking hesitantly towards him. She was about forty, short reddish hair, a broad face with a wide smile. Although the hair was a different colour, her face reminded him strongly of his mother. Especially here, so close to the house in which he had grown up.
    She stared at him closely, frowning. ‘It is Magnus, isn’t it? Magnus Ragnarsson?’ She spoke in English.
    ‘Sigurbjörg?’ It was a bit of a guess on Magnus’s part. Sigurbjörg was his cousin on his mother’s side of the family. The side that he had hoped to avoid in Reykjavík.
    The smile broadened. ‘That’s right. I thought it was you.’
    ‘How did you recognize me?’
    ‘I noticed you walking along the street. For a second I thought you were my father, except you’re a whole lot younger and he’s in Canada. Then I realized it must be you.’
    ‘We haven’t met for what, fifteen years?’
    ‘About that. When you came to Iceland after your father’s death.’ Sigurbjörg must have seen