Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

to keep it so quiet for so long. She could imagine her ancestors, fathers and eldest sons, huddled over a peat fire in their simple turf-roofed farmhouse, reading the saga over and over to each other during the long winter nights. It must have been difficult keeping its existence from extended family, neighbours, in-laws. But they had succeeded. And they hadn’t sold out. A farmer’s life in Iceland during the last three centuries was extremely precarious. Even when they had endured unimaginable poverty and starvation, they hadn’t taken the easy way. They had needed the money more than her.
    What right did she have to cash it in now?
    Her brother, Pétur, had spoken the truth when he had urged her not to sell. And he hated the saga even more than she did.
    She looked around the gallery. The objects on display – the vases, the fish-skin bags, the candle-holders, the lavascapes – were truly beautiful. But did they matter so much?
    The police said that the saga would be needed for evidence. They would keep its existence quiet while the investigation was still under way. But eventually everyone would know. Not just Icelanders, but the whole world. Tolkien fans from America, England, the rest of Europe would want to find out everything about the document. Every corner of the secret would be raised to the glare of global publicity.
    Eventually, she would probably be allowed to sell the saga. In the open, under the glare of publicity, she would no doubt get a handsome price, if the Icelandic government didn’t somehow manage to confiscate it from her. If she could just keep the gallery going for a few months longer, it might survive.
    Until Agnar’s death, keeping the gallery open was the most important thing in her life. Now she appreciated how wrong she was.
    The gallery was going bust because she had made a poor business judgment. The kreppa made matters worse, but she should never have trusted Nordidea. She was to blame and she should have taken the consequences.
    Outside, the professor and the police climbed into their cars and drove off. Ingileif felt trapped in the tiny gallery. She grabbed her bag, switched off the light and locked up. So what if she lost a sale or two that morning?
    She walked down the hill, her mind in incoherent turmoil. She soon reached the bay, and walked along the bike path which ran along the shore. She headed east, towards the solid block of Mount Esja, its top smothered in cloud. The breeze skipping in from across the water chilled her face. The sounds of Reykjavík traffic merged with the cries of seagulls. A pair of ducks paddled in circles a few yards out from the red volcanic pumice that served as a sea wall.
    She felt so alone. Her mother had died a few months before, her father when she was twelve. Birna, her sister, wouldn’t care or understand. She would be sympathetic for a few minutes, but she was too self-absorbed, stuck in her nice house and her bad marriage and her bottles of vodka. She had never been interested in Gaukur’s Saga , and after their father died she had picked up their mother’s hostility to the family legend. She had told Ingileif she couldn’t care less what Ingileif did with it.
    Ingileif knew she should speak to Pétur, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He had hated the saga with a passion for what he thought it had done to their father. Yet, even he had believed that it would be wrong to sell. She had assured him that Agnar would be able to do a deal while keeping the secret safe, and only then had Pétur reluctantly agreed. He would be angry with her now, and justifiably so. Not much sympathy there.
    He must have read about Agnar’s murder in the papers, but he hadn’t been in touch with her yet. Thank God.
    It was ironic. She had been determined not to let her father’s death screw her up like it had screwed up the other members of her family. She was the sane, down-to-earth one, or so she thought.
    And now poor Aggi had been murdered. Foolishly she had tried to hide the existence of the saga from the police. As a plan, that was never going to work. And even now she was hiding something.
    She glanced down at her bag. Where she had slipped the envelope just before the police came to take away the saga. The other envelope.
    She recalled the big red-haired detective with the slight American accent. He was trying to catch the man who had murdered Agnar, and she had some information that would be certain to help him. It was far too late