Meltwater

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Yeah, it’s not a bad place,’ said Magnus. ‘Katrín doesn’t charge me too much.’

  ‘And Ingileif is back? I remember you talking about her. Will I get to meet her?’

  ‘Probably later. She’s out with clients this evening. And she’s not staying in Iceland very long. She’s still working in Hamburg.’

  ‘What is all that?’ Ollie exclaimed looking at Magnus’s wall. ‘Is that all about Dad’s death?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘And the death of Benedikt Jóhannesson the author. I told you about that.’

  ‘You’re seriously strange, you know that?’ said Ollie staring at the wall. ‘Hey, that’s a photo of me! What am I doing there? Where do I fit in?’

  ‘You don’t, really,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Too right, I don’t. Hey, can we go out to a bar or something?’

  The words I don’t want to stay in a room with that on the wall were unsaid, but Magnus understood them.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  Magnus’s regular hangout, the Grand Rokk, had closed a couple of months before, much to his sorrow – yet another victim of the credit crunch. So they went to a bar down the hill, Kaffibarinn. It was just a small black-painted building with a London Underground sign above the door. It was empty on a Wednesday evening, cosy and civilized. It was difficult to imagine the seething crowd of drink- and drug-fuelled bodies heaving to the music that crammed into the place on a Friday or Saturday night.

  Magnus bought his brother another beer.

  ‘How are things going?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Not good,’ said Ollie. ‘I keep on thinking that the market’s coming back, but then it goes dead on me. And the rent isn’t quite enough to cover the mortgage payments.’

  ‘The students are still coming though?’

  ‘Yeah. But as you know the plan was always to make capital gains.’

  Ollie had purchased half a dozen houses in Medford, a suburb of Boston near Tufts University. They were the kind that students liked to rent. He had borrowed heavily to do it, hoping to flip them as prices rose. It was something he had been doing for several years, and he had made some good money, all of which he had ploughed back into more properties. He had urged Magnus to join him, but Magnus had resisted. Then the crash came, house prices fell, but the debt Ollie owed to the banks only got bigger.

  Perhaps Ollie was more of an Icelander than he realized.

  ‘Maybe things will get better in the summer,’ Magnus said.

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Hey, any chance I can get to see this volcano? That sounds cool.’

  ‘The pretty one has stopped erupting,’ Magnus said. ‘There’s a big ugly one going at it now.’

  He described his morning drive out to Skógafoss and the jökulhlaup. And then his evening entertainment with the guy with the knife.

  ‘And you told me life here is dull,’ Ollie said.

  ‘It is most of the time. And then something happens, and an interesting case crops up. I guess I should just be more patient. I’m used to a couple of murders a week.’

  ‘Yeah, but those are on the streets of Southie, not on the edge of a friggin’ volcano.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Another beer?’ said Ollie. He went up to the bar and bought them from a girl with green hair and a ring through her nose. Magnus couldn’t hear what Ollie said to her, but he did hear her laugh. Turned out she was from New Hampshire, Ollie announced when he returned with the drinks.

  ‘Speaking of murders in Boston . . .’ Magnus said.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Ollie, eyeing his brother as he took a gulp of his beer.

  ‘I did what you wanted,’ Magnus said. ‘I haven’t asked anyone any more questions here about Dad.’

  ‘Thanks, bro, I appreciate it.’

  ‘But I want to.’ Magnus leaned forward. ‘You’ve seen the wall in my room. It’s true I want to know what happened to him. I need to know. It was why I joined Boston PD in the first place. It’s like I feel every murder I investigate is his murder, except I never get to solve it. Or resolve it. So I go on to the next and the next.’

  ‘I can’t help you with that shit, Magnus,’ Ollie said.

  ‘But you can, that’s just it. I think finally I might be getting there. When we go back to the house I’ll show you the wall. There is this writer called Benedikt Jóhannesson who was killed in 1985 in Reykjavík with exactly the same MO as Dad.’

  ‘MO?’

  ‘Modus operandi. Method. A stab wound in the back and two in the chest. Just like Dad.’

  ‘Except Dad was killed five thousand miles away and ten years later.’

  ‘Two thousand miles.’

  ‘Whatever. You get my point.’

  ‘Yes, but Benedikt was brought up at Hraun, over the lava field from Bjarnarhöfn. You remember the place?’

  ‘I remember as little as possible of all that.’

  ‘Well, he was. And they’ve got some kind of family feud going. Grandpa’s father Gunnar killed Benedikt’s father, and then Benedikt killed Gunnar.’

  ‘So you think Grandpa killed them both?’

  ‘Not necessarily. He’s left-handed for a start and the killer was right-handed. Also there is no record of Grandpa ever going to America, let alone him being there when Dad was murdered in 1996.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you’ve got the wrong guy then,’ Ollie said.

  ‘Perhaps. But I know I can find the right guy.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘That I’m going to start asking more questions about our family. About Benedikt. About Dad.’

  ‘But you promised not to!’ Anger flared in Ollie’s eyes.

  ‘I know, and now I’ve changed my mind.’

  Ollie put his head in his hands. ‘Look, I’m just about getting my shit together again, Magnus. This is the last thing I need now. What happened at Bjarnarhöfn was really bad for me. I get nightmares about that potato cellar that Grandpa shoved me into. The dark. The cold. The smell. The slime of those rotten potatoes. It might not sound like much but I was a little kid, my mother was drunk all the time, my father had abandoned me and this horrible man made my life hell.’

  ‘I was there.’

  Ollie smiled. ‘Yeah, you were there for me. You’re always there for me. Which is why I’m begging you to leave all this alone, man.’

  ‘But what if I don’t tell you what I discover? What difference would that make to you?’

  ‘Oh, come on. You will tell me. You’ll drag me back to that hellhole one way or another. Come on, man!’ Anger was rising in Ollie’s voice. ‘You know I’ve been to different shrinks over the years. They all say the same thing, and frankly it’s a pretty easy diagnosis. My problems come from those four years at Bjarnarhöfn.’

  ‘And mine come from the year Dad died.’

  ‘You can handle it better than me,’ Ollie said, jabbing his finger at his brother. ‘You’ve always been able to handle things better than me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Magnus. ‘But I am going to do some more investigation. I won’t tell you what I discover, if you like, but I’m going to ask those questions.’

  Ollie’s lips were pursed and his head was shaking in anger and frustration. ‘You’re gonna push me over the edge here, Magnus. I’m not kidding you, man.’

  Magnus didn’t reply.

  Ollie finished his beer. ‘Let’s go back. I’m tired.’

  They walked back to Njálsgata in silence. Back at the house, Ollie was just about to go through to Katrín’s room when Magnus touched his arm.

  ‘Ollie?’

  Ollie glared at his brother.

  ‘Why did you come to Iceland?’ Magnus asked. ‘If you wanted to leave all this behind you?’

  ‘See the sights. Catch some rays. Spend some quality time with my brother. What do you think?’

  His voice was dripping with sarcasm, and before Magnus could reply he had gone through to Katrín’s room.

  Magnus had no i
dea what to think. He stomped up the stairs to his own room.

  He stared at the wall. At the photograph of his father. At the picture of Benedikt Jóhannesson.

  He knew Ollie’s fear of what had happened to him at Bjarnarhöfn when he was a kid was real, but he didn’t understand why that meant Magnus couldn’t pursue his own investigations. He had a perfect right to, whatever Ollie said.

  Magnus felt the anger rise within him. Once again he was being manipulated by his brother, who was taking on his habitual role of injured victim. Magnus was always being manipulated by his brother. Well, this time Magnus wasn’t going to let him get away with it. He picked up the photograph of Ollie with his cocky smirk, and stuck it dead centre in the middle of the wall.

  Ollie was involved, and no amount of whining on his part would change that.

  His doorbell rang. He went downstairs to see Ingileif, smiling broadly on the doorstep. She kissed him.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I finally get to see you.’

  They went up to his room. ‘Is Ollie here?’

  ‘He’s downstairs. He said he was going to sleep.’

  ‘So I won’t get to meet him?’

  ‘Perhaps not tonight. Although he seems to have made good friends with Katrín.’

  ‘Really? Last time I saw her, she liked girls.’

  ‘A passing phase, I think. Ollie and I had a fight.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Yeah. Over that.’ Magnus nodded to the wall.

  ‘You want to find out more and he doesn’t?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Magnus slumped on to the bed. Ingileif flopped next to him, and snuggled into his chest. He put his arm around her and squeezed.

  ‘At some point you need to do what you need to do,’ Ingileif said. ‘I know you worry about him, but this is important for you too. And maybe once you have figured out what’s going on, you can take all that down.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Magnus. ‘Maybe a lot of things would be better.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Ingileif. But Magnus could hear the note of doubt in her voice. Perhaps he would never be able to live in peace with the death of his father. But he had to try.

  ‘How’s the other investigation going?’ Ingileif asked. ‘The guy who died on the volcano?’

  ‘Not brilliantly.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  So Magnus told her about Freeflow and Erika and Teresa. As he talked he unwound, relaxed.

  And then they made love.

  As Magnus lay in bed staring at the ceiling, his thigh lightly touching Ingileif’s naked, slumbering body, he thought how good it was to have her back.

  He smiled.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Thursday 15 April 2010

  ‘THE ASH IS falling,’ said Árni. ‘Did you see it on TV?’

  His eyes were shining. It was eight o’clock and all the members of the Violent Crimes Unit were huddled together in a meeting room to discuss the case. The uniformed inspector was there, as were Rannveig and Chief Superintendent Thorkell Holm, the head of CID and everybody’s boss. And Baldur, of course.

  ‘Some of us have better things to do in the morning than watch TV,’ said Baldur.

  ‘Like sleep,’ said Róbert.

  ‘There was a shot of a farm in Mýrdalur,’ Árni continued. ‘The whole place is covered in this horrible grey stuff, including the sheep. The farmer said he was screwed. The ash will poison his crops and his animals. Fluorine.’

  ‘Is the eruption getting worse?’ someone asked.

  ‘It’s still going strong. And there is a lot of ash. They have closed some airspace as far away as Scotland. Apparently the ash can ruin aircraft engines.’

  ‘It looks OK here,’ said Róbert. And indeed it did. In Reykjavík it was a bit cloudy, a bit cold, but no sign of ash.

  ‘The wind is blowing it all to the east,’ said Árni. ‘Although they say it’s going to blow south today.’

  Thorkell cleared his throat. He was a bluff grey-haired man with a shiny good-natured face. Not quite as sharp as Snorri, the Commissioner, but no dummy. And he was Árni’s uncle. ‘Let’s start. We have a lot to get through this morning. Magnús?’

  Magnus ran through the attack on Erika the evening before and the attempts to find the attacker. Several witnesses had seen him run across Laugavegur up the hill towards the Hallgrímskirkja, but no one had seen him get into a car. Erika had confirmed that she was pretty sure that he was the same man who had attacked her and Nico on the volcano. She herself had spent a couple of hours in hospital – her cheek had been badly cut – but now she was back at the house on Thórsgata.

  Magnus repeated his description and said he was due to spend some time with a police artist that morning.

  ‘You heard him speak, did you, Magnús?’ Baldur asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of accent did he have?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. It was a good question. ‘He only said a few words.’ Magnus closed his eyes trying to remember. ‘It was foreign – I mean he wasn’t a native English speaker. And definitely not Icelandic or Germanic. Could have been Italian . . . French . . . Spanish, something like that.’

  ‘Israeli?’

  ‘I guess. I’m not really sure what an Israeli accent sounds like.’

  ‘Did he look like a professional killer?’ Vigdís asked.

  Magnus remembered the manic eyes. The failure to cut Erika’s throat when he had her in his grasp.

  ‘No. No, I don’t think so, but we shouldn’t rule it out. He could be an idealist. And we know he’s capable of killing. Whatever he is, he’s still out there. We ought to increase the police presence at the house on Thórsgata.’

  The uniformed inspector nodded. ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Now. Let’s go through all the possible suspects again.’

  They spent an hour going through Israelis, Italians, Canadians driving Suzuki Vitara rental cars, US college fraternities, Mikael Már and his French business client, Teresa, the inhabitants of the house. There were leads to follow up: an Israeli tourist unaccounted for, last seen in the east of Iceland. And leads to drop: the group of Italians who had stayed at the Hotel Rangá were having dinner there the moment Nico was attacked. There was plenty to do and not enough people to do it. Vigdís wasn’t there – her flight to Paris was that afternoon. Magnus could have used her.

  ‘Did you check out the café receipt at Heathrow, Árni?’

  ‘The receipt was timed at 12:17 and there was an Icelandair flight departing from that terminal at 13:00.’

  ‘Anyone interesting on the flight?’

  ‘Nico Andreose was the only member of the Freeflow team. It was Sunday; presumably he flew over earlier than the others.’

  ‘I wonder if he recognized the killer?’ Magnus said.

  Árni pondered Magnus’s question. ‘I suppose he might have done. He might even have chatted to him – since there was no one else from Freeflow on the plane we wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Yes. It’s worth checking whether he mentioned anything to the rest of the team later. You know: “Guess who I saw on the plane yesterday?” What about Israelis? Italians?’

  ‘No Israelis. Apart from Nico there was one Italian couple, but they were in their sixties.’ Árni checked his notes. ‘Mostly Icelanders, quite a few British, three US citizens, then a couple of Canadians, French, Belgian, Japanese, Thai, Irish. No real lead that I could see.’

  Magnus was disappointed, especially given the risks he had taken to find the damn receipt.

  ‘I checked the Skull and Bones society on the Freeflow website,’ Árni said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing from Yale at all.’

  ‘Check Ohio State,’ said Magnus, thinking of Franz, who had said he’d spent a year there. Although he doubted very much that a year in Columbus, Ohio would inspire enough loyalty in the young Swiss to kill. />
  ‘What about the CIA?’ Árni asked.

  The whole room looked at Magnus. He hadn’t told any of them about his meeting with Bryant, and he didn’t intend to. The CIA had an agenda and Magnus had no idea what it really was. He had had few dealings with the agency in the States. The FBI, all the time. Homeland Security occasionally; there was no predicting what they might get up to once they had an idea in their heads. But not the CIA.

  ‘I’ll think about that one,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Do you want me to make inquiries with the American Embassy?’ said Thorkell.

  ‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m not sure they’ll tell you anything, but they might.’ Bryant had suggested that the CIA had been in touch with the Icelandic government for its help in impeding Freeflow’s activities. Clearly Thorkell knew nothing of that. But it would be useful if he could unearth the Icelanders’ side of the story.

  ‘What about Teresa?’ Baldur asked.

  Magnus suppressed a flash or irritation. ‘I interviewed her briefly yesterday.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’s angry about her husband. Angry with her husband, that’s for sure. And with Erika. Understandably.’

  ‘Very understandably,’ said Baldur. ‘Did she pay someone to kill them?’

  Magnus swallowed. ‘I didn’t ask her.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you have?’

  ‘Yes,’ Magnus said. ‘Yes, of course.’ Baldur was absolutely right. Teresa needed a grilling, however unpleasant that would be for all concerned, and Magnus really should have done it the day before. His instinct then was that her anger at her husband’s death was genuine, but Baldur’s suggestion was theoretically possible, and should be followed up, if only to rule it out. ‘I’ll bring her in this morning.’

  ‘Can I join you?’

  ‘By all means,’ said Magnus.

  Magnus spent ten minutes dividing up tasks, and then the meeting broke up just in time for a press conference, which he attended with Thorkell. Lots of questions, lots of answers. Plenty of excitement that there was a foreign killer on the loose in Reykjavík. Magnus gave a description, but didn’t mention the Vitara. If the suspect was still using that vehicle, Magnus didn’t want him to ditch it – which he would certainly do if he heard about it on TV.