'Do you want to look?' said Magnus. 'I can wait.'

'No,' said Ingileif. 'No, it feels wrong.' She smiled sheepishly at Magnus. 'I know it doesn't make sense, but I don't want to involve her in all this.'

'It makes sense,' said Magnus.

So they continued on to the church and went in. It was warm and really quite beautiful. It was also empty.

As they made their way back to the car, Magnus caught sight of a boy of about sixteen moving around the barn next to the rectory. He called out to him. 'Have you seen the pastor?'

'He was here this morning.'

'Do you know where he might have gone? Does he have another car?'

The boy noticed the Suzuki parked in the garage. 'No. He could have gone for a walk. He does that sometimes. He can be out all day.'

'Thank you,' said Magnus. He checked his watch. Three-thirty. Then turning to Ingileif: 'What now?'

'You could come back to our house in the village,' she said. 'I can show you the letters from Tolkien to my grandfather. And my father's notes about where the ring might be. Although I doubt they will be much help.'

'Good idea,' said Magnus. 'We'll come back here later.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

AUSTURSTRAETI WAS ONLY a block away from the Hotel Borg. Isildur was reassured by the two men beside him, the big trucker from England and the wrinkled Icelandic ex-policeman. When Gimli had suggested a sum to Axel Bjarnason, he had been eager to drop everything to help them, although Gimli suspected that the private investigator didn't have much to drop. He had short grey hair, sharp blue eyes and a weather-beaten face, and he looked more like a fisherman than a private investigator, not that Isildur had ever employed a private investigator before.

He clearly knew his town, though. He had recognized Petur asgrimsson's name immediately and had only required a few seconds to check that Ingileif's gallery was where he thought it was. He was at the Hotel Borg less than a quarter of an hour later.

Isildur was nervous, scared even. He was in a strange country, and Iceland was a very strange country. Someone had been murdered and there was a chance that the murderer was the man walking along beside him. Isildur didn't like to think too hard about that; he had decided not to ask Gimli right out whether he had killed the professor.

But the danger added to the thrill. It was a long shot: perhaps the police would get to the ring first. Perhaps the ring was a fake all along. Perhaps no one would ever find it. But there was a chance, a real chance, that Isildur might end up the owner of the actual ring that had inspired The Lord of the Rings, that had been carried to Iceland by his namesake a thousand years before.

That was cool. That was seriously cool.

The main entrance to Neon was just a small door on the street, but Bjarnason led them around the back. There another door was propped open by a couple of crates of beer. A young man was carrying in some cases of vodka.

Bjarnason stopped him and rattled something in Icelandic. That was one weird language. Isildur wondered to himself which Middle Earth language would sound like it. Possibly none of them: Quenya was Finnish-influenced and Sindarin was derived from Welsh. Perhaps Icelandic was just too obvious for Tolkien no fun.

The boy led them downstairs past a vast dance floor to a small office. There a tall man with a shaved head was in earnest discussion with a red-haired woman in jeans and a Severed Crotch T-Shirt.

'Go ahead,' said Bjarnason to Isildur. 'I'm sure he speaks English.'

'Mr asgrimsson?' said Isildur.

The man with the shaved head looked up. 'Yes?' No hint of a smile. His smooth skull bulged alarmingly.

'My name is Lawrence Feldman and this is my colleague Steve Jubb.'

'What do you want? I thought you were in jail?' asgrimsson said.

'Steve was always innocent,' Isildur said. 'I guess the cops finally figured that out.'

'Well, if you want the saga, the police have it. And when they have finished with it, there is no way we are selling it to you.'

asgrimsson was aggressive, but Isildur stood up to him. He was used to people trying to push him around, people who underestimated the programmer whose talents they needed to make their business work.

'That's a topic for a later day. We want to speak with you about a ring. Isildur's ring, or perhaps you prefer Gaukur's ring.'

'Get out of my club now!' asgrimsson's voice was firm.

'We'll pay well. Very well,' said Isildur.

'Listen to me,' said asgrimsson, his eyes burning. 'A man has died because of that stupid saga. Two men, if you include my father. My family kept it a secret for centuries for a reason, a good reason as it turns out. It should still be a secret, and it would have been if I had had my way. But the reason it isn't is you your nosing around, your flashing dollars everywhere.'

He took a step closer to Isildur. 'You've seen what the result is. Professor Agnar Haraldsson is dead! Don't you feel guilty about that? Don't you think you should just get the hell out of Iceland and fuck off back to America?'

'Mr asgrimsson-'

'Out!' Petur was shouting now, his finger pointing to the exit. 'I said, get out!'

The pastor was sweating in the unseasonably warm sun. It was a glorious day and he had already walked about seven kilometres. He was in a high valley, uninhabited even by sheep this early in the year. A brook ran down from the snow-covered heath at the head of the valley. All around him snow was melting, trickling, dribbling, seeping over the stones and into the earth. Most of the grass that had been revealed in the last few days was yellow, but by the side of the brook there was a patch of rich green shoots. Spring. New nourishment for this barren land.

All around birds chirped and warbled in the sunshine.

He took a deep breath. He remembered when he had first come to this valley, as the newly arrived pastor of Hruni, how he had felt that this is where God lived.

And at that moment, he believed it again.

Over to the left, along the side of the valley, were some rocky crags. He turned off the path, what little there was of it, and squelched through the yellow grass towards them. He took out his notebook.

He needed to find a good hiding place.

Tomas's arrest as a suspect for the murder of Agnar Haraldsson had been on the lunch time news on the radio. Top story, hardly surprising, given Tomas's celebrity. The moment he heard it the pastor knew he had to find a new place to hide the ring.

He paused and examined it on the fourth finger of his right hand. It didn't look a thousand years old. That was the thing with gold it didn't matter how old it was, if you polished it carefully it looked new. Or newer.

There were scratches and scuffs. But the inscription in runes engraved on the inside was still legible, just.

He remembered when he and asgrimur had found it in that cave. Well, it was hardly a cave, more like a hole in the rock. It was the greatest, the most profound moment of his life. And of asgrimur's of course. Even if it was just about his last.

It was miraculous that the hole had not been submerged in any of the volcanic eruptions of the previous millennium, especially the big one that had smothered Gaukur's farm. But then the ring dealt in miracles.

He had worn it on and off now for nearly twenty years. He loved it, he worshipped it. Sometimes he would just sit and stare at it, the music of Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple swirling around him, wondering at its history, its mystery, its power. Andvari, Odin, Hreidmar, Fafnir, Sigurd, Brynhild, Gunnar, Ulf Leg Lopper, Trandill, isildur and Gaukur, they had all owned it. And now it was his. The pastor of Hruni.

Extraordinary.

But although it gave him a tremendous feeling of exhilaration, of power, every time he put it on, over time his disappointment had grown. The pastor thought of himself as a pretty extraordinary man, and he had assumed that the ring had chosen him because of his knowledge of the devil and of Saemundur. But although he had thrown himself into his studies, nothing had happened. Nothing had been revealed to him. The way to power and domination had not appeared.

But how could it, when he locked himself up in the hills at Hruni? He had assumed that it was his duty to keep the ring in the shadows of Mount Hekla, which was after all only forty kilometres away as the raven flew. But keep it for whom? He had always assumed that his son was worthless, far too lightweight and superficial to make any use of the ring. But perhaps he might make something of his life after all. He was already a celebrity in Iceland. It was unlikely that an Icelander could go out into the wider world and make a name for himself, but perhaps Tomas could.

With the help of the ring.

The pastor scrabbled around in the rocks looking for a niche similar to the one in which he had originally found the ring seventeen years before. He would have to be very careful to make clear notes of where he had hidden it, or else it might be lost for another ten centuries.

But maybe he shouldn't conceal it? The ring had not revealed itself to him and Dr asgrimur merely to be removed from the world again. It was making an entrance into the affairs of men.

It wanted to be discovered.

The hiding place in the altar at Hruni church wasn't the best. A determined police team, or anyone else for that matter, could find it there. But it was the right place.

The pastor took off the ring and grasped it in his hand. He closed his eyes and tried to feel what the ring was telling him.

It was the right place.

He turned on his heel and began walking back towards Hruni at a brisk pace. He checked his watch. He would be lucky to be home by nightfall.

Ingileif's house, or rather her family's house, was on a bank over-looking the river that ran through Fludir. Fludir itself was a prosperous village with a convenience store, an hotel, two schools, some municipal buildings and a number of geothermally powered greenhouses Ingileif said it had the best farming in Iceland. But no church: the parish church was at Hruni, three kilometres away.

Although the village itself wasn't up to much, the view was spectacular. To the west was the valley of the glacial River Hvita, with its ancient settlement at Skalholt, the site of Iceland's first cathedral, and to the north were the glaciers themselves, thick slabs of white running a dead-straight horizon between mountain peaks.

Hekla was out of sight, behind the hills to the south-east.

The house was a single-storey affair, cosy, but large enough for a family of five. Magnus and Ingileif spread out the contents of several cardboard boxes on the floor of Ingileif's mother's bedroom. There were indeed a dozen letters from Tolkien to Hogni, Ingileif's grandfather, which had only come into her father's possession after Hogni's death. Ingileif showed Magnus a first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. Magnus recognized the handwriting of the inscription inside: To Hogni isildarson, one good story deserves another, with thanks and all good wishes, J.R.R. Tolkien, September 1954.

They studied a folder of notes and maps, most of which were in Dr asgrimur's handwriting, which showed guesses of where the ring might be hidden. There were also notes and letters from Hakon, the pastor. They dealt with various folk tales he had researched. There were several pages on the story of Gissur and the troll sisters of Burfell, which was a mountain close to Gaukur's farm at Stong. There was also a mention of a story about a shep-herd girl named Thorgerd who ran off with an elf.

'Do you have elves in America?' Ingileif asked.

'Not as such,' said Magnus. 'We got drug dealers, we got pimps, we got mobsters, we got crooked lawyers, we got investment bankers. No elves. But if we ever do have any problems with elves in the South End, I know right where to come for help. We could do an exchange with the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police.'

'So you didn't hear any stories about them when you were a kid?'

'Oh, yes, especially when I was living with my grandparents in Iceland. My dad was more into sagas than elves and trolls. But I do remember asking him about them.' Magnus smiled at the memory. 'I guess I was fourteen. We were hiking in the Adirondacks. That was my favourite thing, hiking with my dad. My brother wouldn't come, so it was just me and him. We spoke nothing but Icelandic to each other for a whole week. We talked about everything.

'I can remember exactly where we were, on the shore of Raquette Lake. We were eating a sandwich sitting on a rock that looked like a troll. Dad told me how the Icelanders would have invented a long involved story about it. Then I asked him whether he believed in elves.'

'And what did he say?'

'He kind of dodged the question. So I pressed him on it. He was a mathematician, he spent all his life dealing in proofs, there was no proof that elves existed.

'So he gives me a long lecture about how although there is no proof that elves exist there is equally no absolute proof that they don't. So science can't answer the question. He said although he didn't believe in elves, he was too much of an Icelander to deny their existence, and if I ever lived in Iceland I would understand.'

'And now you live in Iceland, do you believe in them?'

Magnus laughed. 'No. What about you?'

'My grandmother saw hidden people all the time,' Ingileif said. 'Back in a rock near the farm where my mother was born. In fact a hidden woman came to her the night before my mother's birth. They were planning to call Mum Boghildur, but the hidden woman said that unless my grandmother named her Liney the baby would die young. So that's how my mother became Liney.'

'Better than Boghildur,' said Magnus. 'The hidden woman had taste.'

'Here, look,' said Ingileif, pointing to a map with notes and arrows scrawled across it. 'This is where they were heading for the weekend my father died.' A cave was marked near a stream about ten kilometres away from the abandoned Viking farm at Stong.

Ingileif's cell phone rang. As she answered Magnus could hear an agitated male voice, although he couldn't hear it well enough to recognize it.

'That was my brother,' Ingileif said when the call was over. 'Apparently the two foreigners who were trying to buy the saga showed up at Neon. An American and an Englishman. They were asking about the ring. Petur sent them packing.'

'You'd think they would have the sense to leave all that alone.'

'That's certainly Petur's opinion,' said Ingileif. 'He warned me they'll be looking for me too. He doesn't want me to tell them anything.'

'Will you?'

'No. And they're not buying the saga at any price, if we ever do get the chance to sell it. Petur is adamant about that, and I agree with him.' She checked her watch. 'It's nearly seven o'clock. The pastor should be back by now. Shall we go and check?'

They drove back up to Hruni, but there was no answer when they rang the doorbell. The pastor's car was still in the garage. They looked up around the hills and the valley to see if they could spot a solitary walker. The sun, lower now, produced a soft, clear light, that seemed to pick out every detail of the landscape, and lit the snow on the distant mountains with a pinkish glow. A pair of ravens whirled in the distance, their croaking borne over the grassland by the breeze. But there was no sign of a human being anywhere.

'What time does it get dark?' Magnus asked. 'Nine-thirty?'

'I don't know,' said Ingileif. 'About that, I guess. It's getting later and later these days.'

'Are you hungry?'

Ingileif nodded. 'I know a place in the village we can get something to eat.'

'Let's do that. We can come back here afterwards.'

'And then drive back to Reykjavik?'

Magnus nodded.

'We could do that,' said Ingileif. 'Or ...' She smiled. Her grey eyes danced under her blonde fringe. She looked delectable.

'Or what?'

'Or we could see him in the morning.'

Magnus woke with a start. He was sweating. For a moment he didn't know where he was. He looked across the room at an unfamiliar window, blue-grey moonlight behind the thin curtains.

A hand touched his forearm.

He turned to see a woman lying in bed next to him. Ingileif.