Detective Dagbjartur sat at the National Library with Egill, the reception manager from Hotel Borg, who was skimming through the newspapers of the last months. Egill was supposed to try to recognize the man who had inquired about Professor Lund the previous autumn. The reception manager was sure he had seen pictures of the man in the papers, and now they had to flip through them until they found him. This was their second day on this task, and it was proceeding slowly. Egill carefully studied all the photographs of men and occasionally stumbled on snippets of articles that drew his attention. Dagbjartur just sat there patiently, yawning and cleaning his nails. He had set himself a very clear and delimited task, which at best could be stretched out for another day or two. This temporarily freed him of petty criminals and paperwork. A press release had been dispatched to the papers that morning requesting the man to come forward, and it read as follows: “The man who entered Hotel Borg at the end of August of last year and enquired about Gaston Lund from Denmark is asked to contact the police in Reykjavik.” The notice would not be appearing before next Wednesday at the earliest. Whitsunday was upon them and no papers would be coming out.
Large, thick folders of newspapers lay on the table in front of the two men, and Dagbjartur ensured each pile was renewed as soon as it had been viewed. It was a moderate task to be performing on a beautiful June day, and it seemed to be proceeding nicely. It was also a quiet day at the library on that Saturday, and there was only a small group of regulars at work. Every now and then a smothered cough, sneeze, whisper, or shifting chair could be heard. Otherwise everything was as quiet as a morgue.
Dagbjartur was dozing off in his seat when the reception manager suddenly exclaimed, “There he is!”
Dagbjartur popped off his chair. “Are you sure?” he asked, disappointed.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “absolutely sure.”
Dagbjartur looked at the paper. The picture was of an amiable-looking silver-haired man, who was named underneath as Fridrik Einarsson. The title of the article was “Killing methods in the Orkneyinga saga.”
Dagbjartur glanced at his watch. There was still plenty of time left in the day to find this man and talk to him. There was no way of avoiding it. Dagbjartur sighed wearily.
Question two: Most impudent. First letter. When they reached Reine, they spotted three longships rowing down the fjord. The third was a dragon ship. As the ships passed the merchant vessel, an imposing figure walked onto the deck of the dragon ship and said, “Who is the commander of this ship, and where did you first make land and camp last night?”
Sarcastic Halli replied, “We spent the winter in Iceland and sailed from Gasir, and our commander is called Bard. We made land at Hitra and camped at Agdanes.”
The man, who in actual fact was King Harald Sigurdsson, then asked, “Didn’t Agdi sodomize you?”
“Not yet,” Halli answered.
The king smiled and said, “Have you made some arrangement for him to perform this service on you later then?”
Halli answered, “If you’re curious to know, Agdi is saving that up for nobler people than us and is expecting you to arrive this evening so that he can pay you this debt in full.”
“You’re exceedingly impudent,” said the king.
The answer is “sarcastic Halli,” and the first letter is s.