Meltwater

by Michael Ridpath

  Damn!

  He pulled back. His grip loosened on the knife handle. So much for that idea. This was a house that never slept. He would need another plan.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wednesday 14 April 2010

  DESPITE THE LACK of sleep, Magnus felt invigorated as he bounded up the steps of police headquarters at just after seven. He had left Ingileif asleep in his bed. He doubted he would have time to see her at lunch, and didn’t know how or when he would see her that evening, but it would happen and he was looking forward to it.

  Shame about Ollie arriving that day. He reminded himself to send Ollie an SMS telling him he couldn’t meet him at the airport. There was work to be done.

  Magnus was surprised and gratified to see Árni at his desk already. The young detective’s eyes were shining with excitement. ‘Did you hear about the eruption?’

  ‘Not Katla?’ Magnus said.

  ‘No. Eyjafjallajökull. But they think it’s bigger than the Fimmvörduháls volcano.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘The middle of the night some time. They’ve evacuated several hundred people.’

  ‘Has there been a jökulhlaup?’

  ‘Not yet, but they’re expecting it.’

  Southern Iceland bore the scars of frequent flooding over the millennia as the various volcanoes had erupted, melting vast quantities of glacier ice and sending the resultant walls of meltwater rushing to the sea by the fastest route.

  ‘Damn!’ Magnus swore.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This is going to really screw up the investigation.’

  ‘True,’ said Árni. ‘I don’t think we can expect much help from the Hvolsvöllur police in the next few days.’

  Magnus called the chief superintendent.

  ‘Kristján,’ he answered.

  ‘It’s Magnús. I guess you’ve been busy?’

  ‘Very busy. We’ve got almost everyone evacuated, all the farmers anyway. But there are still some tourists we need to track down, including a bunch of English schoolgirls. And the Norwegian ambassador is out there somewhere apparently, in a tent.’

  ‘Any sign of flooding yet?’

  ‘Not yet. But they say it’s coming.’

  ‘Can you see the eruption?’

  ‘Too cloudy. Look, Magnús, I’ve got to go. You’re on your own with the investigation for the next few days.’

  ‘I understand. One question, though. Any leads on the snowmobilers?’

  ‘Nothing. No one saw anything. And if anyone saw snowmobiles that day, we have no way of knowing whether they were those snowmobiles.’

  Damn, again. ‘OK. Is there any way you can join in the conference at eight?’

  There was a conference planned first thing that morning to discuss the case, and Kristján and some of his officers had intended to patch themselves in on a speakerphone.

  ‘No way, Magnús. As I said, you’re on your own.’

  ‘Of course. Good luck.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The conference room was full. Magnus, Árni, Vigdís and the other detectives from the Violent Crimes Unit were there, as were Edda from forensics, the computer guy Ossi, Baldur, and a uniformed inspector who was supposed to provide resources to do some of the legwork of the investigation.

  Although the Icelanders were less in awe of rank than the American cops Magnus was used to, he felt uncomfortable leading the proceedings in front of Baldur. It would have been better to have the Hvolsvöllur chief superintendent nominally in charge on the other end of the speakerphone.

  But Baldur was silent, his fingers steepled, tapping against his chin as he listened. He looked unhappy. The Commissioner’s decision to gve the investigation to Magnus rather than him had obviously not gone down well.

  There was some excited chatter about the latest eruption, and then Magnus outlined the case as he saw it so far. The most likely motive for the attack was either revenge for something Freeflow had done in the past, or an attempt to prevent whatever they were working on in the present from seeing the light of day. If that was the case, the assailants might be Israelis or Italians. Or the murderer could well be the French snowmobiler in the red snow jacket that Franz had spoken to by the volcano. But it was far too early in the investigation to rule out other possibilities. The only thing that did seem certain was that none of the Freeflow group on the mountain had attacked Nico and Erika.

  Edda reported on the forensics results so far. All the men in the room stared as she spoke, and despite his night with Ingileif, Magnus had to struggle to focus on what she was saying.

  Which was nothing new. The blood on Erika’s clothes was Nico’s blood type – big surprise. They had analysed the fibre on the rock that the assailant had handled and were searching for a match with commercially available gloves. There was no match yet with any of the clothes from the Freeflow group. The autopsy had been carried out and although the report wasn’t quite ready yet, the conclusion was that Nico had died following a single stab wound to the abdomen with a knife whose blade was at least eight centimetres long. Once again, no surprise.

  Ossi and his computer forensics team had been unable to recover anything at all from the mirrored laptop hard drives. The encryption was impregnable. If they were to get anywhere they would need help from a major intelligence agency, and even then it might prove impossible.

  Magnus divided up tasks. Tracking down and interviewing all Italian and Israeli tourists in the country. More research through Interpol into the Freeflow leaks in Belgium, Luxembourg and anything from the United States and Britain. And greater efforts to track down the snowmobilers.

  ‘I’m sorry, Magnús, I can only spare you three men,’ said Gudjón, the uniformed inspector.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They need help over in Hvolsvöllur.’

  ‘But this is a murder investigation!’

  ‘I know. But we are talking about one man who is already dead, compared to dozens who might be.’

  Magnus took a deep breath. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good. I’m sorry. As soon as I can free up resources I will. Now, I have to go.’

  As the inspector left, Magnus reflected on how well the Icelanders dealt with the kind of natural disaster that would have paralysed an American police department, whereas a complex murder investigation failed to excite them. Not surprising, really. And that was, after all, why he was there.

  ‘Can I make an observation?’ It was Baldur, who had been silent throughout.

  Magnus nodded.

  ‘In my humble experience, assault or murder is usually committed by someone close to the victim. If a woman is attacked, it’s the husband or the boyfriend who did it. I know that there are all these exciting international secrets involved in this case, but are we not forgetting the basics?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, was the killer someone Erika knew? A rival? A boyfriend? Or perhaps Nico was the real target after all, in which case was it a jealous husband? Or someone he knew?’

  Magnus took a deep breath. It was important to encourage participants in an investigation to question assumptions at every stage, but he hated to be questioned by Baldur, especially when he had a good point.

  ‘We’ve found no sign of any jealous lovers or husbands,’ Magnus said. ‘Or of any internal antagonism among the people at Freeflow.’

  ‘Perhaps you haven’t looked hard enough,’ said Baldur.

  ‘It’s a point worth bearing in mind,’ said Magnus. ‘OK, let’s go to it.’

  He went straight from the meeting into a press conference. With the new eruption, there were fewer journalists present than there might have been, but nonetheless Magnus was nervous. Although he had spoken to the press many times in Boston, it was not something he was used to in Iceland.

  There were plenty of questions about Freeflow, none about Israel, and he focused once again on the snowmobilers who had been on the volcano at the same time as the Freeflow team.


  He wound things up as soon as he could. Ossi was waiting for him.

  ‘What’s up?’ Magnus asked.

  Ossi led Magnus out of the room, where some journalists were still packing up their stuff. ‘I was working on our system at three o’clock this morning when I spotted an intrusion.’

  ‘Someone broke into the station?’

  ‘No. Someone broke into the computer system. More particularly, they broke into your account. I don’t know what they were doing there. As soon as they realized I was logged on and had spotted them, they left.’

  ‘Have you any idea who it is?’

  ‘Whoever they were, they were accomplished hackers. There is an obvious suspect, of course.’

  ‘Freeflow?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Can they get in again?’

  ‘I’ve closed the backdoor they used. In theory our system is secure, but in practice there might be another backdoor we don’t know about. I suspect they can break in again if they want to. I’ll keep an eye out for them. But you should all be careful what you put on the computer.’

  ‘How can you run a police investigation these days without using a computer?’ Magnus said.

  ‘Yeah. Perhaps if there’s anything important insist that it’s written down with pen and paper? You can enter it on to the system once the investigation is concluded.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Magnus. He was glad that he hadn’t made any formal notes of his conversation with Franz, or at least the bit relating to Israel. A near miss.

  As he got back to his desk, he looked at his terminal. He wondered which of the Freeflow team had broken in. Dieter the German probably, although it could have been Franz or even the Icelander, Dúddi. Or some other member of the organization thousands of miles away.

  Or it could have been someone outside Freeflow entirely. The people who had killed Nico and tried to kill Erika. The Israelis. Or the Italians. The Chinese. Anyone.

  Whoever it was, Magnus wanted to talk to them.

  He sat down at his keyboard and set up a file named Freeflow Secret Leaks. That should attract the attention of any future intruders.

  Then he composed a message. In English.

  Hi,

  I really don’t care what Freeflow is working on, what the details of its secret leaks are. If you have looked through my files you will see that I am not working for the CIA or anyone else.

  But I do care who killed Niccolò Andreose. And I am going to find that person.

  I don’t know who you are. Perhaps you are behind Nico’s death yourself. But if you aren’t, and you knew him, and perhaps worked with him, you owe it to him to help me. So if you have any information that might be of use, please share it with me.

  Magnus

  As Magnus read through the message, he doubted that it would provoke a response. But it might. And it couldn’t do any harm.

  ‘Hey, Magnús!’

  Magnus looked up. It was Vigdís, and she was holding the telephone.

  ‘I’ve got a call here from someone I know you are going to want to talk to.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A guy who claims he was on a snowmobile at Fimmvörduháls on Monday evening.’

  Magnus grabbed the phone. ‘This is Sergeant Magnús speaking. I understand you were up on Fimmvörduháls when Niccolò Andreose was murdered?’

  ‘I think so,’ said a man’s voice. ‘I didn’t see the murder, but I was up there at about dusk that evening. And the man I was with was wearing a red jacket.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Magnus.

  ‘Mikael Már Sigthórsson. I live in Selfoss.’

  ‘And the guy you were with?’

  ‘Pierre Joubert. He’s French, a potential client of mine. He was visiting me for a couple of days and wanted me to take him up to the volcano. So I did.’

  ‘And where is this Monsieur Joubert now?’

  ‘Back in Lyons. He flew back yesterday.’

  ‘Look, Mikael Már, I have a lot of questions for you. Can I see you in an hour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Give me your address.’

  It was less than an hour’s drive to Selfoss, a medium-sized town by Icelandic standards, on the plain between Reykjavík and the two volcanoes. The address Mikael Már had given Magnus was a small one-storey house just off the main road that ran through the centre of town.

  Mikael Már was a lean dark-haired man of about Magnus’s age, wearing small round glasses. He led Magnus through into a room which functioned as an office and offered him some coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch earlier,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t see any of the news yesterday. It was only late last night that my wife mentioned you were looking for two snowmobilers. So I listened to the news this morning and gave you a call.’

  ‘Thanks for doing that,’ said Magnus. ‘Can you take me through what you did up on the glacier?’

  ‘Sure. Pierre had spent the day with me. He works for a big dealership in France, and I was hoping to join up with him to sell vans and light trucks here in Selfoss. I lost my job in a bank in Reykjavík a few months ago, as did my wife, but she found something at the hospital here. So I’ve been trying to figure out what I could do and this seemed like a good idea.’

  Magnus nodded. Iceland was full of people who had lost their jobs in the previous year and were trying something new.

  ‘I thought he was interested, so when he said he wanted to see the volcano, I agreed to take him, even though the weather forecast was bad. I have a snowmobile and a trailer, and I borrowed another machine from my brother-in-law, and we headed up there. I’ve been several times over the last few weeks.

  ‘Anyway, the visibility was poor until we actually got to the volcano, when fortunately it cleared for a bit. We spent about half an hour up there, and then came down.’

  ‘OK,’ said Magnus. ‘And who did you see on the volcano?’

  ‘We met several jeeps coming down as we were going up, and snowmobiles. There was a middle-aged couple sitting in a jeep up there. And a group of five or six others. And also a single guy in another jeep, a smaller one.’

  Magnus’s pulse quickened. ‘OK, we’ll come back to the last guy. Tell me about the group.’

  ‘They arrived just after us, I think. They all went up to the rim. We spoke to one of them who was kind of off by himself.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Just how amazing the volcano was, that kind of thing. Pierre did most of the talking. He spoke French.’

  ‘Did you see where he went?’

  ‘No, except that he returned to the jeep early, I saw that.’

  ‘What about the others? Did you see a man and a woman go off to the side?’

  ‘No.’

  Magnus examined Mikael Már. There was no obvious link between him and Freeflow. He didn’t look like a hired hit man or an Italian Mafioso. His Icelandic was perfect.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Freeflow?’ Magnus asked.

  Mikael Már shrugged. ‘Not until I listened to the news this morning.’

  ‘Or Erika Zinn.’

  He shook his head. ‘Never.’

  ‘OK, what about Pierre Joubert? Did he seem interested in the Freeflow group?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mikael Már. ‘He just wanted to see the volcano. Although he kind of liked talking to the guy in French.’

  ‘Do you know him well?’

  ‘No. This is the first time I have actually met him. We’ve been e-mailing back and forth for a month or so.’

  ‘And did you contact him or did he contact you initially?’ Magnus realized that was the key question. If Mikael Már had approached the Frenchman first, then it meant that Joubert’s visit to Iceland was not a result of Freeflow’s decision to meet there. Whereas if Joubert had got in touch with Mikael Már out of the blue, that would have been more interesting.

  ‘I contacted him. Or rather his boss in Lyons. Here, I’ve got some of their
sales literature.’

  Mikael Már leafed through some papers on his messy desk and pulled out a glossy brochure of French vans. On a middle page was a tiny picture of a tall, slightly overweight man in his late thirties. The caption read ‘Pierre Joubert, Directeur Régional’.

  Realistically, it would be impossible to fake all this at short notice. The mysterious Frenchman in the red ski jacket was off the list of suspects. But there was the other visitor to the crater.

  ‘Tell me about the other jeep. The one with the single guy.’

  Mikael Már winced, concentrating. ‘I didn’t really see much of him. The jeep came up after us and after the Freeflow group. It was parked a couple of hundred metres away from our snowmobiles and the other two jeeps. Out of sight of them. We only saw it when we walked around a bit. And he left before we did. But we overtook him on the way back down.’

  ‘And the guy? Did you see him?’

  ‘Not then. I’d seen him before on the way up, just by Skógafoss. He was wearing a red jacket and staring at his mobile phone.’ Mikael Már raised his eyebrows. ‘Just like Pierre. The red jacket, I mean.’

  ‘How do you know it was the same guy?’

  ‘Same jeep. A black Suzuki Vitara. I remember thinking it was a bit small to take up a glacier, especially when the weather was bad. I suppose it is possible that there were two vehicles of the same type.’

  ‘Possible, but unlikely,’ said Magnus. ‘Can you describe him?’

  Mikael Már screwed up his eyes, thinking. ‘No. I think he was young. But no, not really. I certainly wouldn’t be able to identify him. I could show you the spot where he was waiting.’

  ‘Could you do that now?’ asked Magnus.

  ‘Yes, if you like,’ said Mikael Már. ‘But what about the new eruption?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said Magnus. ‘Let’s go.’

  They went in Magnus’s Range Rover. The cloud was low as they drove over the plain to the east of Selfoss. It was impossible to see Hekla or the Westman Islands. They followed Route 1, the national highway known as ‘the Ring Road’ that circled Iceland. The road was good and straight and Magnus drove fast.