Meltwater

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘What are you planning to do? Bust the current Bishop?’

  ‘I might ask him some questions.’

  Magnus blew air through his cheeks. ‘I think I’ll leave that to you,’ he said.

  Back at Thórsgata, Project Meltwater was making good progress. The video was finished, both in its three-minute edited and its sixteen-minute unedited versions. The websites and their back-ups were ready. The ISP in Sweden had confirmed that they had received the fifteen thousand euros and were willing to host Freeflow’s sites. Alan had been in touch with Samantha Wilton and she had agreed to appear at a press conference at a club in London on Sunday at nine o’clock. Invitations were ready to go out, once it was confirmed that Erika was actually in the air on her way to the UK. The Guardian wasn’t happy about a press conference on Sunday, because it screwed up their exclusive on Monday morning, but the Post could publish on Sunday, given the time difference.

  Erika: any luck with flights tomorrow, apex?

  Apex: no problems. with all the cancellations, icelandair’s reservation system is a mess, no one noticed that i was messing it up more. i got you booked on 2 flights from reykjavik to glasgow. one at 1410, one at 1750. if you get on the first one, i’ll cancel the second.

  Erika: apparently one flight from iceland landed at glasgow airport this afternoon. there has to be a good chance for tomorrow.

  Apex: a chance but not a certainty. don’t forget cash to buy a train ticket from glasgow to london.

  Erika: thanks apex.

  She would ask Viktor for the cash for the train fare. Of course she would have no money at all when she finally arrived in London. But she would be OK. She always was.

  Once she got out of Iceland.

  With the end in sight, she stretched her stiff shoulders. ‘Hey, Dúddi!’ she called. ‘Is there any chance of stopping at the Blue Lagoon on the way to the airport tomorrow?’

  Ollie checked his map. He was down by the Old Harbour in the centre of town. Bárugata seemed to be up the hill somewhere.

  The houses in this part of town were nice, more solid-looking than the tin-roofed shacks around where Magnus lived. He checked the painted numbers for the address Jóhannes had given him. He found the house and stood outside it, hesitating.

  He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

  Jóhannes answered. He was wearing a tweed jacket and tie. It took him a moment to recognize Ollie. ‘Ah, it’s you,’ he said eventually. ‘The policeman’s brother. How interesting that you’ve come. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  Jóhannes led Ollie into a darkened living room. It was full of books, photographs and papers. It smelled of pipe smoke. It was years since Ollie had seen anyone smoking a pipe.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Jóhannes brandished the instrument in question.

  ‘No. Go right ahead,’ said Ollie.

  ‘Your brother isn’t with you?’

  ‘No,’ said Ollie. ‘In fact he doesn’t know I’m here.’

  The white eyebrows rose. ‘Really?’ It made Ollie feel like a schoolkid who had almost broken a school rule but not quite.

  ‘Yeah. He’s out somewhere solving crimes, I guess.’

  ‘There was another murder this morning,’ Jóhannes said. ‘A young woman priest.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure Magnus is in on that,’ Ollie said. ‘You see, he and I view things differently.’

  ‘Things?’ said Jóhannes puffing at his pipe.

  It was odd. Jóhannes had slipped into his role of schoolteacher, with Ollie as his student. What was odd was that Ollie quite liked the feeling. This guy seemed to be listening to him, to be on his side.

  ‘Yes,’ Ollie said. ‘Our father’s death had a big effect on the both of us. As did the time we spent with my grandfather at Bjarnarhöfn.’ Despite his years away from the Icelandic language, Ollie pronounced the name of his grandfather’s farm perfectly, getting the hurp sound at the end just right. ‘We both had a miserable time there, and I guess we both hate him.’

  ‘So far, so similar,’ Jóhannes said.

  ‘Right,’ said Ollie. ‘But Magnus being a cop, what he wants to do is get to the bottom of everything. Find out what happened. Pick over it. It’s as though he thinks if he can solve the crime of my father’s murder then everything will be OK. Of course, it won’t. Things won’t be any different.’

  ‘I know how he feels,’ said Jóhannes. ‘I’m the same. Except I want to write it down, put my father’s life in a book. Explain his death. Understand it. And I think it will help. But what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’ Ollie smiled and sipped his coffee. ‘I have spent my whole life wanting to blank it out, forget it, deny it, bury it. That’s where me and my brother clash.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘But, well, now I’m not so sure. Maybe I need to resolve things. But in my own way, not my brother’s way. Maybe your way too.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  Ollie hesitated. ‘You know this talk of a family feud. Your family against my family, Bjarnarhöfn against Hraun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I figure you and me are on the same side.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was listening to you closely yesterday. You said something like: “My father was a good man. I think he thought it was his duty to avenge the murder of his own father.”’

  Jóhannes smiled. ‘I did. It’s a common theme of the sagas, as I am sure you know. Many people think those concepts are from a bygone age. My father didn’t.’

  ‘Yeah. Magnus didn’t get it, of course. It can be a pain in the ass having a brother who is a cop. But I got it.’ Ollie looked straight at Jóhannes.

  ‘Did you?’ Jóhannes said, quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ollie. ‘Yes, I did.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  POLICE HEADQUARTERS WAS hopping all afternoon. The Commissioner, Thorkell Holm, the Prosecutor and the Minister of Justice were all trying to decide how best to approach the Church. Baldur was sent off to interview the current Bishop with Thorkell. Amazingly, the Bishop didn’t confess to masterminding an operation of mass murder to hush up his predecessor’s sexual misdemeanours. Fortunately that was a line of inquiry the Commissioner was keen to keep Magnus well away from. While Magnus had many strengths that the Commissioner professed to admire, political tact wasn’t one of them.

  They had found the black Suzuki Vitara that had been rented by the mysterious Dutchman parked in the suburb of Árbaer. Forensics were all over it. If a fingerprint from the vehicle could be matched to one of the many sets found in the church, that would point strongly to a link between Nico’s and Ásta’s murder.

  But Magnus was tired and frustrated. He wondered what to do about the information from Apex about Dieter and Erika. He would like to get some corroboration from someone else before confronting them, but from whom? Nico might have known, but he was dead. Dúddi had not been involved in Freeflow for long enough. Perhaps Ásta had discovered something about it, which was why she had died? Was that why she knew the Israelis weren’t responsible?

  Possible? Just. But there was clearly someone else involved outside Freeflow, the man who had killed Nico, who had attacked Erika, and who had presumably murdered Ásta. Why would he care about Dieter’s jealousy of Nico?

  It didn’t add up.

  ‘Magnús?’

  It was Vigdís. She was holding a loose page torn from a spiral reporter’s notebook. She was wearing gloves.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Look at this. We found it in Ásta’s bag. It’s her writing, by the way.’

  It was a kind of to-do list. Seven single words in a column. Top of the list was the word ‘Scanning’. It was obvious what that meant. Fourth on the list was ‘Dumont?’.

  ‘Dumont?’ said Magnus. ‘That’s something to do with the Belgian scandal, right? Wasn’t that the name of the Finance Minister?’

  ‘That’s right. In 2008 Sabine Dumont became Finance Minister in the Belg
ian government. Two weeks later, Freeflow published details of an internal investigation into her time as an economist at the European Monetary Institute in Frankfurt in 1998.’

  ‘What’s the European Monetary Institute?’

  ‘It doesn’t exist any more. It was the predecessor organization to the European Central Bank.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Anyway, Dumont had an affair with a German banker called Helmut Bernecker. The investigation was launched in 2000 and it uncovered evidence that suggested Bernecker had traded on inside information about European monetary policy from Dumont. But the evidence wasn’t conclusive and the report was shelved.’

  ‘Not good for Madame Dumont.’

  ‘No, but what was worse was that in 2005 Bernecker, who was now working for a fund manager, was found guilty in a totally separate case of insider trading. But no one went back to look at the old Dumont investigation until Freeflow put it up on the web for all to see.’

  ‘I’m guessing that didn’t do Dumont’s career a whole lot of good.’

  ‘She resigned the next day. Three days after that she killed herself in a hotel room in Antwerp.’

  ‘So Freeflow got its scalp,’ said Magnus. ‘But why would Ásta be interested in that case in particular?’

  Vigdís shrugged. ‘I don’t know. There was a big sheaf of paper she had printed out next to her computer: downloads from the Freeflow website and press comment on their various leaks. The Dumont scandal was in there, but so were all the others: Gruppo Cavour, the German bank in Luxembourg, the Icelandic bank, all of it.’

  Magnus stared at the piece of paper. ‘Belgians speak Dutch, don’t they? Flemish is more or less the same as Dutch, right?’

  Vigdís shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve never been to Belgium. You mean you think our friend who rented the Suzuki Vitara was actually Belgian?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Magnus sighed. He was tired. It was getting late. The investigation was charging off without him. ‘You’ve had a bad day, Vigdís.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Want a beer?’

  Although it was nine o’clock on a Friday evening, 46 in Hverfisgata was only half full. It was still early for Reykjavík, which didn’t really get going until midnight.

  Magnus carried a beer and a large glass of wine back to Vigdís. She was sitting on a high stool at a small table in front of a large abstract painting. 46 liked to call itself ‘Gallery 46’, but the crowd included a number of the regular drinkers from the Grand Rokk, which had closed a couple of months before. It had been Magnus’s regular haunt in Reykjavík. 46 wasn’t as cosy, but it would do.

  ‘What a day,’ he said. ‘You know, I liked Ásta.’

  ‘Me too. From what I saw of her.’

  ‘I prefer it when I haven’t had time to get to know the victims.’

  Vigdís sipped her wine. ‘Do you really think someone in the Church shut her up?’

  Magnus gulped his own drink. That felt good. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Because clergymen don’t kill people?’

  ‘Actually, I think they probably don’t,’ said Magnus. ‘But that’s not it. It’s too much of a coincidence for Ásta and Nico’s death not to be connected. And I can’t see why anyone trying to protect the Bishop’s reputation would want to kill Nico and Erika.’

  ‘But isn’t it also too much of a coincidence that Ásta had such explosive information?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Magnus. ‘In fact that’s the whole trouble with this case. Freeflow deals in information that people want to cover up. That’s what it does. And it’s why every time we pick up a stone we find something new and nasty underneath.’

  ‘That video was nasty,’ said Vigdís. ‘I hope they get to publish it.’

  ‘If it’s genuine,’ said Magnus.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Magnus didn’t reply. He drank his beer.

  ‘Magnús?’

  ‘The CIA thinks it’s a fake.’

  ‘The CIA? How do you know what the CIA think?’

  ‘Because I’ve spoken with someone.’

  ‘Magnús!’ Vigdís looked genuinely shocked. ‘Don’t tell me you work for them after all?’

  ‘No,’ said Magnus. He saw the doubt in Vigdís’s brown eyes and it disturbed him. He didn’t want to lose her trust, or Árni’s. They were unfailingly loyal to him. ‘No. A couple of days ago a CIA agent approached me. He wanted me to tell him what Freeflow was working on. I told him to piss off.’

  ‘Good.’

  Magnus smiled quickly. ‘Then I saw him again today.’

  ‘Árni said you had been talking to strange men.’

  ‘He knew about the Gaza video. He didn’t know for sure that Freeflow was working on it, but he said there were rumours about a video going around and that it was faked.’

  ‘How could it be faked?’

  ‘Strictly speaking the audio is faked.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The CIA agent said to disrupt the peace process. He said it might be the Palestinians. Or it could even be the Israelis themselves. A lot of the hard right in Israel don’t want to give the Palestinians anything in peace negotiations. The CIA wants me to tell Freeflow this.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus.

  Vigdís frowned. Magnus wasn’t sure if it was disapproval at him talking to the CIA, or if she was thinking. He waited.

  ‘You know they could be bullshitting you,’ she said.

  ‘The CIA? Why?’

  ‘Isn’t that what the CIA do?’

  ‘I suppose so. But why would they make something like that up?’

  ‘So that you tell Freeflow and Freeflow don’t publish it. The video is genuine after all, but the CIA buy some more time. The spook asked you to shut down publication the first time he saw you. He’s just asking you again, but in a different way.’

  Magnus could feel himself blushing. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  ‘Of course, it might be fake,’ Vigdís said. ‘We just don’t know.’

  ‘Screw it,’ he said, draining his glass. ‘I need another drink. You?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Vigdís, emptying hers.

  It didn’t take long to return with refills. Gunni, a big tug-boat captain Magnus knew from the Grand Rokk, was trying to chat Vigdís up, but she brushed him off expertly.

  He winked at Magnus as he stumbled back towards the bar.

  ‘One of your buddies?’ Vigdís said.

  ‘He’s OK,’ said Magnus.

  ‘He needs to work on his chat-up lines.’

  ‘I’ll give him some lessons,’ Magnus said.

  ‘No offence, but I think he’s going to need more than that.’

  At least she smiled. Vigdís was quite attractive when she smiled. She had big brown eyes and a long, sculpted face with angular cheekbones. Her habitual expression was cool and detached, but when she smiled or laughed, her teeth flashed and her eyes danced.

  Plus she had a great body.

  ‘Magnús, you’re leering.’

  ‘Am I?’ said Magnus, trying very hard not to blush again. He groped for a smart rejoinder, but failed, and drank his beer instead.

  Vigdís flashed him another good-humoured smile, knowing she had caught him, but it didn’t last long. The silence started off a little awkward, but then became gloomy.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry about Paris,’ Magnus said.

  Vigdís shrugged.

  ‘Have you spoken to Daníel?’

  ‘Davíd. Yeah. I spoke to him. He’s pissed off. Very pissed off.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ Magnus said. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘Now he’s stuck in Europe. He has some big meeting in Chicago he can’t afford to miss on Monday. I think he’s planning to go to Madrid or somewhere and try to get a flight to the States from there. So even if I can get to Paris he won’t be there.’

  ‘It’s stil
l not your fault.’

  ‘Maybe not this time. But the other three times were. And Davíd did point out that if I’d left here on Wednesday as planned, I would be in Paris right now.’

  ‘Ah.’ There wasn’t much Magnus could say to that.

  Vigdís looked Magnus in the eye. ‘The thing is I really like him. I mean really like him.’

  ‘Well, then, take some vacation and fly over to New York in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘He won’t let me. He said this was the last time.’

  ‘Then don’t tell him. Just show up.’

  ‘I could,’ Vigdís said, averting her eyes from Magnus. ‘I’ve thought of that. But I don’t know what I would find. What he would say when I got there.’

  Magnus thought of Ingileif and Hamburg and what might happen if he were to fly over there to visit her unannounced. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘How’s Ingileif?’ Vigdís asked, as if reading his mind. ‘Aren’t you seeing her tonight?’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Magnus.

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  Magnus told Vigdís about his conversation with Ingileif the night before. It was good to talk to his colleague. Ingileif was right; he didn’t really have any close friends in Iceland, now she had gone.

  ‘I think she’s jerking you around,’ said Vigdís, when he had finished.

  ‘She says that I am just an uptight American.’

  ‘You may be an uptight American, but that’s who you are. She should accept that. She shouldn’t just get to do things her way.’

  What Vigdís said sounded right. ‘So what do you think I should do?’

  ‘Tell her how you feel about her. Tell her you want to see her in Hamburg. Tell her to dump this Turkish guy.’

  ‘But what if she doesn’t?’

  ‘Then you’re better off without her.’

  ‘I guess I am,’ said Magnus, but he knew his voice lacked conviction.

  ‘There are plenty of other women in Iceland, you know,’ said Vigdís.

  Magnus looked at her. ‘I guess there are.’

  Vigdís drained her drink. ‘OK, I’ve got to go. Thanks for the drink, Magnús.’ She gave him a peck on the cheek and she was gone.