'Give that to me,' said Magnus, holding out his hand and swaying. 'I'm a cop.'

'Piss off,' said the pusher.

Magnus lunged at him. The guy ducked and struck him in the chest. But there was no power in it and Magnus laid him out with a single blow to the jaw. The Nordic hulk grabbed Magnus and tried to drag him down to the floor, but Magnus shook him off. For a few moments the adrenaline overcame the alcohol, and Magnus landed two good blows, before getting an arm lock on the big guy. 'You're under arrest!' he shouted, still in English.

The pusher was on the ground, moaning. The thin guy with the woolly hat started running.

'Get the hell off me,' growled the hulk in Icelandic.

He swung round and crashed backwards into the wall, crushing Magnus. Magnus let go. The big guy turned and struck Magnus twice, once in the head and once in the stomach, but Magnus dodged the third blow and hit him with an uppercut.

The big guy reeled. Another crunching punch from Magnus and he went down.

Magnus stared at the pusher who was pulling himself to his feet. 'You're under arrest too.'

But then the alley started to sway and spin. The blow to his stomach did its stuff, and Magnus doubled up to retch. He tried to stand up straight, but he couldn't. He swayed. Staggered.

The little guy was about to run, when he saw the state that Magnus was in. He laughed and head-butted him in the face.

Magnus dropped.

He lay on the cold tarmac for a while. Seconds? Minutes? He didn't know.

He heard sirens. Good. Help.

Rough hands picked him up. He tried to focus on the face in front of him. It was a cop wearing the uniform of the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police.

'They went that way,' said Magnus, in English. Waving indeterminately.

'Come with us,' said the cop and pulled Magnus over to the waiting car, with its lights flashing.

'I'm a police officer,' said Magnus. 'Look, let me show you my badge.' All this still in English.

The patrolman waited while Magnus pulled out his Commonwealth of Massachusetts driver's licence from his wallet.

'Come on,' said the cop.

Then Magnus threw up all over the patrolman's shoes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

DIEGO TURNED ON the light. The two naked bodies entwined on top of the bed froze, but only for an instant.

Then the man leaped off the woman, twisted and sat up, all in one athletic movement. The woman opened her mouth to scream, but stopped when she saw the gun.

Fortunately, there was no way that either of them could know that there was only one bullet in the cylinder of the revolver.

Diego chuckled.

It was pretty funny. He had positioned himself in an armchair in the living room, gun drawn, out of line of sight of the door. He'd waited there happily all evening. Then two people had come in.

Diego decided to wait. Surprise them when they turned around. But he'd never got the chance!

The guy jumped the girl right away. And she seemed happy with that. For a moment it looked as if Diego was going to get a show right there on the living room floor, but then the woman led the guy into the bedroom. And neither of them even saw him!

He decided to wait until they had taken off whatever clothes they were going to take off. Naked was good, as far as he was concerned. Then he slipped through the open door into the bedroom, and watched the action in the dim glow of the streetlights outside for a few seconds.

Now they were both blinking in the glare of the electric light.

'You!' Diego jabbed the revolver at the man. 'In the bathroom! Now! And if I hear a sound I'll come right in there and pump your skinny ass full of bullets.'

The guy needed no more prompting. He was out of the bed and in the bathroom with the door shut in an instant.

He moved over towards the woman. Colby.

Nice body. A bit thin, but nice firm tits.

She saw where he was looking. 'Do what you want,' she said. 'Just do it.'

'Hey, all I want is a little talk,' said Diego. 'I ain't gonna touch you, as long as you talk to me.'

Colby swallowed, her eyes wide.

In a swift movement, Diego grabbed her hair with one hand and jammed the revolver in her mouth with the other. 'Where's Magnus?'

'Who?' The woman was barely audible.

'Magnus Jonson. Your boyfriend.' He smiled and glanced at the bathroom. 'Or one of your boyfriends. Looks like you're the kind of girl that needs several men to keep you happy.'

'I ... I don't know.'

Diego pulled the trigger. Click.

A strangled sob from Colby.

Diego explained the rules of his version of the Russian roulette game. He just loved that bit, loved watching the eyes of his victims. The fear. The uncertainty. Perfect.

'OK. I'll ask you again. Where is Magnus?'

'I don't know,' said Colby. 'I swear it. He said he was going away somewhere and he couldn't tell me where.'

'Did you guess?'

Colby shook her head.

Diego spotted weakness. 'You guessed, didn't you?'

'N-no. No, I swear I didn't.'

'Thing is, I ain't believing you.'

He pulled the trigger again.

Click.

'Oh, God.' Colby slumped backwards, trying to sob with the barrel of a gun crammed into her mouth.

Diego loved this game. 'You guessed. OK. So now I'm gonna guess,' said Diego. 'Is he in state?'

Colby hesitated and then shook her head.

'All right. In the country then?'

'No.'

'We talking Mexico?'

A shake of the head.

'Canada?'

Another shake.

Diego was rather enjoying this. 'Is it hot or cold?'

No answer.

He squeezed the trigger.

Click.

'Cold. It's somewhere cold.'

'Good girl. But I give up now. My geography ain't that good. Where's he at?'

Another click. The game wasn't strictly fair. Although Colby didn't know which chamber the bullet was in, Diego knew it was in the last. That's how he liked to play the game. It really would be too bad to blow her brains out before he had gotten the answer he wanted.

'OK. OK. He's in Sweden. I don't know where in Sweden. Stockholm, I guess. It's Sweden.'

'You're just a thick-headed Icelandic drunk, aren't you?'

With difficulty Magnus focused on the red face of the National Police Commissioner in front of him. His mouth was dry, his head was pounding, his stomach growling.

'I'm sorry, sir.' He would call his superior officer 'sir'. Screw Icelandic etiquette.

'Do you do this often? Is this a once-a-week thing for you? Or perhaps you hit the bottle every day? I didn't read anything about this on your file. You broke a few rules from time to time, but you never showed up for duty intoxicated.'

'No, sir. It's been years since I got that drunk.'

'Then why did you do it?'

'I don't know,' Magnus said. 'I got some bad news. Personal news. It won't happen again.'

'It had better not,' said the Commissioner. 'I have an important role in mind for you, but that role demands that my officers should respect you. Within three days you have made yourself a laughing stock.'

The night was a blur, but Magnus could remember the laughter. The desk sergeant had heard about the new hot-shot detective over from America and had thought it highly amusing that this man was now in his drunk tank. As had the patrolmen who had arrested him. And the other uniformed officers coming off duty. And the next shift coming on.

They had had the kindness to drive him back to his house. He had passed out in the car, but vaguely remembered Katrin getting his clothes off and putting him to bed.

He had woken up a few hours later with his head exploding, his bladder full and his mouth dry. He crawled back into the police station at about ten o'clock. The rest of the detectives grinned and whispered as he sat at his desk. Within a minute Baldur had told him with a thin smile that the Big Salmon wanted to see him.

'I am very sorry I have let you down, Commissioner,' Magnus repeated. 'I do appreciate what you have done for me here, and I am sure I can help.'

The Commissioner grunted. 'Thorkell seems to think you have made a good start. How is the Agnar Haraldsson case going? I heard about the discovery of the saga. Is it genuine?'

'Possibly, but we don't know yet for sure. It looks like the Brit Steve Jubb was trying to buy it from Agnar. There was a problem, they had a dispute, and Jubb killed him.'

'Jubb still isn't talking?'

'Not yet. But there's this guy Lawrence Feldman who goes by the Internet alias of Isildur, who seems to have financed the deal. We know where he lives. If I put some pressure on him, I'm sure he'll talk.'

'So why don't you?'

'He's in California. Baldur won't authorize it.'

The Commissioner nodded. 'Can you work today, or do you need to take the day off sick?'

Magnus suspected that this wasn't a kind offer from a concerned superior. It was a direct question of his commitment.

'I can work today.'

'Good. And don't let me down again. Or else I will send you straight back to Boston and I don't care who is after you.'

Ingileif watched as Professor Moritz carefully carried the envelope containing the old scraps of vellum to his car outside while a female colleague took the bigger seventeenth-century volume. A couple of uniformed police officers and the young detective called arni danced around in attendance.

She had expected to feel relief. She felt nothing of the kind. She was drowning, drowning beneath a wave of guilt.

The secret that her family had kept for so many generations, hundreds and hundreds of years, was disappearing out of the door. It had been an astounding achievement 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?