Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

her computer screen. ‘Lawrence Feldman.’
    ‘Which room?’
    ‘Three-ten.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    Magnus gave Feldman a minute to get himself into his room and then took the elevator up to the third floor. He knocked on the door of Room 310.
    The man answered.
    ‘Isildur?’ said Magnus.
    Feldman blinked. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘My name is Sergeant Detective Jonson. I’m working with the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police. Can I come in?’
    ‘Er, I guess so,’ said Feldman. His suitcase and his jacket were on the bed, together with the baseball cap. Magnus could hear the sound of the lavatory cistern refilling from the bathroom.
    ‘Take a load off,’ said Magnus, indicating the bed. Feldman sat on it, and Magnus pulled out the chair behind the desk.
    Feldman looked tired. His brown eyes were quick and intelligent, but rimmed with red blood vessels. His skin was a waxy pale underneath the scrappy beard.
    ‘Just flown in?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘You followed me in from the airport?’ said Feldman. ‘I guess you knew I would check in at the Borg.’
    Magnus just grunted. Feldman was right, they should have known there was a good chance that he would show up in Iceland sooner or later. They should have been checking the airports. And the Hótel Borg was the natural place to stay. But Magnus decided not to explain to Feldman that it was just dumb luck that he had spotted him.
    He thought about Árni, currently high over the Midwest on his way to California. It was all he could do not to smile to himself.
    ‘Should I get a lawyer here?’ Feldman asked.
    ‘Good question,’ said Magnus. ‘There’s no doubt you’re in deep shit. And if this was the States, then I would definitely advise it. But here? I don’t know.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, here they can lock you up for three weeks if they think you’re a suspect. That’s what happened to Steve Jubb. He’s in the top-security jail at Litla Hraun now. I could easily send you in there with him, if you don’t cooperate. I mean we’re looking at conspiracy to murder.’
    Feldman just blinked.
    ‘These Icelandic places are tough. Full of these big blond beefy Vikings. Oh, don’t worry, they’ll like you. They like little guys.’ Feldman shifted uncomfortably on the bed. ‘A lot of them are shep-herds, you know, stuck up on a hillside all alone with a flock of sheep. They break the law – rape, incest, indecent acts with herbivores, that kind of thing. They get caught. They go to prison. No women, no sheep. What’s a big blond Viking guy going to do?’ Magnus smiled. ‘That’s where you come in.’
    For a moment Magnus thought he had gone too far, but Feldman seemed to be buying it. He was tired, disoriented, in a foreign country.
    Of course Magnus had absolutely no idea what conditions at Litla Hraun were really like. Knowing Iceland he rather suspected that the warders brought the prisoners hot cocoa and slippers every night as the inmates watched the latest soap on TV and knitted themselves scarves.
    ‘So, if I talk to you now, you’ll guarantee you won’t send me there?’
    Magnus looked directly at Feldman. ‘That kinda depends on what you tell me.’
    Feldman swallowed. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with Agnar’s murder. And I really don’t think that Gimli did either.’
    ‘OK,’ said Magnus. ‘Let’s start from the beginning. Tell me about Gaukur’s ring.’
    ‘I like to call it Isildur’s ring,’ said Feldman. ‘I changed my online nickname to Isildur when I first heard the story.’
    ‘What was it before?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Elrond. The lord of Rivendell.’
    ‘All right. So tell me about Isildur’s ring.’
    ‘I first heard about it three years ago. A Danish guy, Jens Pedersen, popped up on one of the websites saying he had found a letter from a poet who was an old friend of Árni Magnússon in Copenhagen. The poet had read Gaukur’s Saga . There were a couple of sentences about Ísildur’s quest to throw the ring into Mount Hekla.
    ‘Now, this Danish guy was an academic doing his PhD thesis on the poet. He wanted some help from the forum to see if there was any link between Gaukur’s Saga and the Lord of the Rings . Of course, we all went wild: he didn’t know what had hit him. I tried to contact him directly to pay him to do more research on this saga. I think I tempted him at first; he said he had been in touch with a Professor of Icelandic at the University of Iceland named Agnar Haraldsson, who had