Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

exists.’
    Baldur shook his head. ‘All we’ve seen is a hundred and twenty pages that was spat out of a computer printer two weeks ago.’
    Magnus leaned back. ‘Fair enough. Maybe the saga is a forgery. Maybe there is a ring, but it’s a fake too. If anything, that would create a bigger motive for Steve Jubb to kill Agnar. We still need to find it.’
    ‘The thing is, I’m not sure that Steve Jubb did murder Agnar.’
    Magnus snorted.
    ‘I’ve just interviewed him again. He wouldn’t tell me anything about sagas or rings. But he did deny he murdered Agnar.’
    ‘And you believe him?’
    ‘Yes, actually. My hunch is he’s telling the truth.’
    ‘Your hunch?’
    Baldur found a sheet of paper in the pile on his desk. ‘Here’s a report from the forensics lab.’
    Magnus scanned it. It was an analysis of the soil samples on Steve Jubb’s size forty-five shoes.
    ‘It shows that there were no traces of the kind of mud on the path from the summer house down to the lake shore, or the mud on the shore itself.’
    Magnus read the report, his mind buzzing. ‘Maybe Jubb cleaned his shoes. Thoroughly.’
    ‘There was soil from the area right in front of the summer house. So he was at the front that evening, but not at the back. And he didn’t clean his shoes.’
    ‘Perhaps he changed into boots? Ditched them afterwards?’
    ‘We’d have found footprints in or around the house,’ Baldur said. ‘And that’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it?’
    Magnus stared at the piece of paper, not reading the words, just trying to figure out how Jubb could have dragged the body down to the lake without getting mud on his shoes. He found it impossible to believe that Jubb’s presence at the summer house that evening was just coincidence.
    ‘Someone else moved Agnar,’ Baldur said. ‘ After Steve Jubb had left. And it’s quite probable that someone else killed him.’
    ‘Did you find footprints near the lake?’
    Baldur shook his head. ‘Nothing useful. It had rained overnight. And the scene was well and truly compromised. The kids, their father, the paramedics, the police officers from Selfoss. They left footprints all over the place.’
    ‘An accomplice then,’ said Magnus.
    ‘Like who?’ Baldur said.
    ‘Isildur. This Lawrence Feldman guy.’ As soon as he said it Magnus regretted it.
    Baldur spotted the flaw immediately. ‘You contacted Isildur two days later, and he replied from a computer located in California.’
    ‘An Icelandic accomplice. There are Lord of the Rings fans in this country.’
    ‘There is no record of any Icelandic number on Steve Jubb’s mobile phone, apart from Agnar’s. We know that Steve Jubb never left his hotel from the time he arrived in Reykjavík in the morning to the time he went out to Lake Thingvellir late afternoon. None of the hotel staff recalls anyone visiting him at the hotel.’
    ‘Someone could have gone directly to his room without stopping at the front desk.’
    Baldur just raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to spring him?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Not yet. And I’m not ruling him out as a suspect. But we need to widen the investigation. Look at the more real-world circumstances.’ Baldur counted them off on his fingers. ‘Agnar saw a lover and a former lover in the weeks before he died. His wife was seriously angry about his infidelity. He had big money problems. He bought drugs. Maybe he had debts we don’t know about? Maybe he owed his dealer money? Someone else was there that night and we need to find out who.’
    ‘So it’s just a coincidence he was negotiating this deal with Jubb and Isildur?’
    ‘Why not?’ said Baldur. ‘Look. We shouldn’t rule out this saga deal completely. If you like, you can focus on that. But there are plenty of other things for the rest of the team to look at.’
    ‘I’m sure if I went to California I could get Isildur to—’
    ‘No,’ said Baldur.
    Several time zones to the west, it was early morning in the woods of Trinity County, Northern California. Isildur looked out of his study over the little valley towards the waterfall tumbling down from the bare rock face opposite. The morning sunlight glistened off the rain-washed greenery. In the garden he could see the life-sized shapes of Gandalf, Legolas and Elrond, bronze sculptures he had commissioned at great expense from a San Francisco artist.
    It was a beautiful spot. He had bought it with a fraction of the money he had made from selling his