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Автор Майкл Ридпат
Where the Shadows Lie
Michael Ridpath
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Where the Shadows Lie
Michael Ridpath
CHAPTER ONE
Professor Agnar Haraldsson folded the letter and slipped it back into its small yellowing envelope.
He glanced again at the address inscribed in an upright, ornamental hand: Hogni Isildarson, Laugavegur 64, Reykjavik, Iceland. The stamp bore the profile of a beardless British king, an Edward or a George, Agnar wasn’t certain which.
His heart thumped, the envelope performing a tiny dance in his shaking hand. The letter had arrived that morning enclosed within a larger envelope bearing a modern Icelandic stamp and a Reykjavik postmark.
It was all that Agnar could have hoped for. It was more than that; it was perfect.
As a professor of Icelandic at the University of Iceland, Agnar had been privileged to handle some of the oldest manuscripts of his country’s sagas, copied out by monks with infinite care on to sheaves of calf skins using black bearberry juice for ink, and feathers from the left wings of swans for pens. Those magnificent documents were Iceland’s heritage, Iceland’s soul. But none of them would cause as great a stir in the outside world as this single sheet of paper.
And none of them was his discovery.
He looked up from his desk over the serene lake in front of him. It glittered a rare deep blue in the April sunshine.
Ten minutes before it had glinted steel grey, and in a few more minutes it would do so again as dark clouds from the west chased after those disappearing over the snow-topped mountains across the lake to the east.A perfect location for a summer house. The cabin had been built by Agnar’s father, a former politician who was now in an oldpeople’s home. Although summer was still some time away, Agnar had escaped there for the weekend to work with no distractions. His wife had just given birth to their second child, and Agnar had a tight deadline to get through a pile of translation.
‘Aggi, come back to bed. ’
He turned to see the breathtakingly beautiful figure of Andrea, ballet dancer and third-year literature student, naked as she glided across the bare wooden floor towards him, her blonde hair a tangled mess.
‘I’m sorry, darling, I can’t,’ he said nodding towards the mess of papers in front of him.
‘Are you sure?’ She bent down to kiss him, and ran her fingers under his shirt and through the hair on his chest, her mane tickling his nose. She broke away. ‘Are you really sure?’
