Meltwater

by Michael Ridpath

‘That is correct.’

  ‘Did he have an accent?’

  ‘Er . . . yes. Yes, he did.’

  ‘And could you tell where he came from?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The accent wasn’t very strong, but it was quite obvious he was not French.’

  ‘Was he Swiss?’

  ‘No. No, not at all. The Swiss accent is very distinctive.’

  ‘I see, Monsieur Joubert. So which country did the man come from?’

  ‘Belgium. I am quite certain he was Belgian.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘OK, DÚDDI, LET’S go,’ said Erika.

  ‘What about the police?’ said Dúddi. ‘There’s still a car parked right outside. Will they stop us?’

  ‘Oh, God, I forgot about them,’ said Erika. She was tired; she was usually alive to who was watching her. ‘It would be best if the police didn’t realize I was leaving until Viktor called them.’ Viktor had left the house earlier for his office, where he was preparing his arguments in case there was trouble at the airport.

  ‘You could hop out a window at the back,’ said Dúddi. ‘You can cut through the garden of the house behind us. I could drive around to Lokastígur and pick you up?’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Erika.

  ‘Hey, Dúddi, shall I take her?’ said Franz. ‘I think the other guys need you here, and when I’m at the airport I can try to figure out flights for the rest of us.’

  Erika glanced at Dúddi. ‘It might make sense,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind Franz driving your car.’

  ‘Never had an accident so far,’ said Franz, holding his hands up.

  Dúddi hesitated. ‘Better not,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be insured. And however good a driver you are, there’s nothing you can do if some other idiot drives into you. But you can come with us, if you want to sort out your flights. It probably would be better to do that at the airport.’

  ‘I think I will, actually. The Blue Lagoon sounds cool.’

  ‘Can we rent suits there?’ Erika asks.

  ‘Suits?’ Dúddi frowned. ‘Why do you want a suit?’

  ‘Swimsuits,’ said Franz.

  ‘Oh, yeah. No problem. But don’t wear them in the shower before you go in, otherwise you’ll get yelled at.’

  Dúddi left by the front door and Franz and Erika opened a window at the back of the house. Erika had her backpack: all the luggage she ever took anywhere.

  ‘Bye, Dieter,’ she said, hugging him. ‘And you, Zivah. You’ve done a great job. I know it’s been hard.’ She hugged her too.

  ‘I’m sorry I got scared,’ said Zivah. ‘It’s been a wonderful experience.’ Erika noticed there was a tear in her eye. ‘I believe in what you’re doing.’

  ‘What we’re doing,’ said Erika. ‘I hope we’ll see you again?’

  Zivah smiled. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Definitely.’

  With that, Erika hopped over the sill and into the garden, Franz dropping down behind her.

  ‘Árni!’ Magnus turned to the detective. ‘Do you have the manifest for that Icelandair flight that took off from Heathrow on Sunday just after the time on that café receipt?’

  ‘I do.’ Árni reached for a pile of papers by the side of his desk and extracted a couple of pages. ‘Here it is.’

  Magnus scanned it quickly. ‘I knew it!’ he exclaimed, glaring at Árni. ‘Why the hell didn’t you read this more carefully?’

  ‘I did,’ Árni squeaked.

  ‘Then why didn’t you spot that?’ Magnus slammed the manifest on to the desk and thrust his thumb halfway down the list of names. ‘Tell me what it says.’

  ‘Sébastien Freitag. Belgian,’ Árni read.

  ‘Freitag? Freitag!’ Magnus shouted. ‘Didn’t that ring any bells? Like maybe he was related to François Freitag, otherwise known as Franz, who has been sitting in the house on Thórsgata for the last week!’

  ‘But Franz Freitag is Swiss.’

  ‘No he’s not, Árni. He might have a Swiss passport, but he speaks French with a Belgian accent. I bet this guy is his brother or something.’

  Árni’s Adam’s apple bobbled. He looked as if he was about to burst into tears. Magnus didn’t care.

  ‘OK, Franz Freitag is Belgian,’ Magnus said. ‘His brother Sébastien was up on the volcano when Nico was killed. He had rented the Suzuki Vitara under a Dutch name because imitating a Dutchman was easy for him. He attacked Erika when she went out for a run, and he was also in the church where Ásta was found murdered. Perhaps it was Franz who confessed to Ásta? Maybe she discovered something to do with the Dumont scandal and she asked him about it? We need to figure out the connection between Dumont and the Freitags.’

  Magnus was staring at Árni, but Árni’s brain had turned to jelly.

  ‘There’s an easy way to find that out,’ said Vigdís, turning to her computer. Magnus looked over her shoulder, with Árni hovering too close behind him. Vigdís called up Google and typed in two words: Dumont and Freitag.

  The first answer was in French. Vigdís clicked on it and brought up an article from the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique. Magnus couldn’t read French very well, but he did understand the word mari, which was next to the name Ernst Freitag, and the deux fils, Sébastien (26) and François (22). Ernst seemed to be a citoyen suisse.

  ‘Come on, you two. We’re going to Thórsgata. Now.’

  The door of the house in Thórsgata was opened by an exhausted-looking Zivah.

  Magnus rushed past her into the living room, ready to make an arrest. Only Dieter was there, headphones on, tapping on his keyboard. No sign of Franz.

  ‘Upstairs, Árni,’ said Magnus. ‘Where’s Franz?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ said Dieter, straightening himself up and facing Magnus.

  Magnus took three strides over to him, grabbed him by the T-shirt and lifted him out of his chair. ‘I’ve had enough of you people not telling me the truth! I want to know where Franz Freitag is and I want to know now! And please don’t tell me he is with Erika.’

  Dieter swallowed. ‘Why do you want to know?’ he repeated.

  ‘Because Franz is trying to kill her, that’s why. Is that good enough for you?’ He threw Dieter backwards so that he tripped over a bin and fell on to the floor.

  ‘What!’

  ‘I know you care about Erika, Dieter,’ Magnus said, standing over him. ‘So if you want her to stay alive, tell me where he is.’

  ‘OK, OK. They’ve gone to the airport. Dúddi, Erika and Franz. But they are stopping at the Blue Lagoon first.’

  ‘Have you got Erika’s cell number?’

  ‘No,’ said Dieter. ‘She uses pay-as-you-go phones. She doesn’t keep them switched on.’

  ‘What about Dúddi?’

  Dieter shrugged.

  ‘When did they leave?’

  ‘About a quarter of an hour ago.’

  Sébastien Freitag sat in the café in Hafnarfjördur, nursing his second cup of coffee, and stared out over the harbour. Lying on the table next to the cup was his phone.

  It was nearly over, one way or the other. In five hours either Erika Zinn would be in a plane over the North Atlantic, or she would be dead. Where Sébastien would be, he had no idea.

  After the Italian, killing the priest hadn’t been so difficult. And it had had to be done. François had been such a fool to tell her everything when she had confronted him with her discovery that he was Sabine Dumont’s son. Of course, in typical François fashion, he had thought he was being clever, ensuring her silence through the seal of confession. But confession only applied in the Catholic Church; François should have known that. They couldn’t risk Ásta talking, just couldn’t risk it, at least not until after they had got to Erika.

  So she had had to die.

  Sébastien didn’t feel any regrets about Nico. The Italian was an integral part of Freeflow. Although he hadn’t been around when Freeflow had published the investigation, he was just as guilty as the rest of them. Just as guilty as Erika.
/>
  Freeflow had destroyed their mother.

  Sébastien would never forget that week in the summer of 2008 when his family had been blown apart. They were all so proud of his mother’s achievement in becoming Finance Minister. It was so unexpected and yet it seemed to her family that it was nothing less than what she deserved. Then, two weeks later, Sébastien had noticed on his way to work the headline on the morning paper: Dumont affair with German Fraudster.

  He couldn’t conceive of his mother having an affair with anyone, let alone a German banker. A corrupt German banker who was in jail.

  He had called François in Zurich and told him. The newspaper story referred to an organization named Freeflow, of which neither brother had heard. As soon as Sébastien got in to work he had checked out their website and seen all the squalid details.

  He was furious with his mother. He called her the next day and had a bitter conversation with her on the phone, which ended with her hanging up in tears. A day later she was found swinging in a hotel room in Antwerp.

  Their father, a mild-mannered Swiss economist who had followed his wife from Frankfurt to Belgium, was bewildered and then devastated. He left his job at a think-tank in Brussels and returned to Zurich. But no one there wanted to hire him – he was old, washed out, miserable. So he drank.

  He blamed himself, he blamed her, he blamed everyone but the people who had really caused his wife’s death: Freeflow.

  Specifically Erika Zinn. He might not have blamed her. But his sons did.

  It was when they read Erika’s justification in an interview in Der Spiegel about her decision to put the investigation up on to the Freeflow website that the two brothers had decided they must take action. The arrogance, the sanctimoniousness, the assumption of role of judge – no, worse that that – of God, in the life of their mother. And in her death.

  Erika claimed that transparency of information was of paramount importance. That Sabine Dumont had deserved the scandal that she had found herself in when everyone in Belgium discovered what she had done. That if she chose to take her own life, that was up to her. It was a consequence of her actions ten years before, not Freeflow’s.

  That was unfair and untrue.

  Erika Zinn had as good as killed Sébastien’s mother.

  And Sébastien owed his mother a lot. She had always believed in him – when he had been expelled from high school for breaking the leg of that jerk Marcel with a hammer, when he had been arrested for getting his own back on the kid who accused him of cheating at university. It was down to her that he had eventually graduated as an engineer, and that he now had a good job with the electricity company.

  No one else had cared.

  He had given her a hard time when she was alive, a very hard time, secure in the knowledge that she loved him unreservedly. He regretted that now. He would make up for it.

  The anger and the hatred that he had nurtured for nearly two years flared up again. Erika was going to die. She deserved to die. Of that, Sébastien was sure.

  The idea that he should do something tangible to avenge his mother’s death had come to him after his mother’s funeral, during a long night of drinking with his brother. At first François hadn’t thought he was serious, but the more Sébastien thought about it, the more it seemed the right thing to do, the only thing to do. And he could persuade François. His younger brother was if anything more devastated than he was by what had happened, and, as always, he followed Sébastien’s lead. Sébastien knew he would have to do the actual killing himself, but he could rely on his brother to help. And it had been François who had thought of infiltrating himself into Freeflow.

  If only Sébastien had been slightly quicker on the volcano, Erika would be dead and he would be back in Belgium. But it hadn’t worked out that way.

  François had suggested bagging the whole plan, lying low until the ash cloud lifted and trying again somewhere else. But that didn’t make sense, and Sébastien had told him so. They didn’t have much time. They simply had to do what they had set out to do: kill Erika Zinn. Sure, there was an ever-increasing chance that they would get caught, but Sébastien really didn’t want to risk getting arrested before they had achieved their objective. Killing Erika was all that mattered.

  François had understood. They had gone into this together; they would finish it together.

  Hafnarfjördur was on the way to the airport from Keflavík. François had said that Erika wanted to spend an hour at the Blue Lagoon before the airport. Plan A was for François to drive her by himself towards the lagoon, and meet up with Sébastien on a quiet track Sébastien had checked out earlier. Plan A was good. Plan B, if someone else drove her, wasn’t quite so good, but still might work.

  Plan C, if she changed her mind and was driven directly to airport, didn’t really exist. There was no Plan C. They would just follow her and take any opportunity they could.

  They might be lucky, but frankly, under any of the three plans, there was a chance they would get caught. However, they were committed now. They had to finish what they had come to do, and take the consequences.

  Sébastien’s phone buzzed and a text message came through.

  Plan B

  Sébastien took a deep breath. He left some krónur on the table, and hurried outside to his car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  IT WAS WONDERFUL to be out of Reykjavík and on the open road. Once Dúddi had driven past the town of Hafnarfjördur, they were into a bleak, brown landscape of rock and dirt. No trees, just a light dusting of green moss. On the right was the sea, and on the left, in the distance, a low ridge of jagged mountains. They passed a perfectly conical miniature mountain, like the volcano in a child’s drawing, and then turned off the main airport road following signs to the Blue Lagoon.

  It was a cold clear morning; the temperature could not have been much above freezing. Erika could see steam rising up in great billows from the foot of the range of mountains. ‘Is that it?’ she asked Dúddi.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But what are all those buildings next to it? It looks like a power station?’

  Indeed there were lines of pylons running across the lava field towards the steam.

  ‘It is. The lagoon is totally artificial. It’s made up of heated water from the geothermal plant.’

  ‘That’s a bit disappointing.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll like it.’

  They passed a line of racks on which what looked like brown rags hung. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Drying racks for cod. Stockfish, I think you call it.’

  ‘Do we?’ said Erika. She had never heard of them. They looked disgusting.

  They were now very close to the power station, which was beginning to look like some exotic Cold War base from an old James Bond movie. Metal domes, wires, black rocks piled in puzzling directions and steam spewing out of the ground. They rounded a corner and were soon in a kind of stone amphitheatre, which doubled as a parking lot. One bus and a dozen or so cars were parked there.

  ‘We’re lucky,’ said Dúddi. ‘This place can get crowded, but it doesn’t look too bad this morning.’

  They walked through a pathway cut into the rock and into a modern glass and wooden building. The entry ticket price was high. Franz took very little persuasion to pay for Erika. Dúddi said he would wait for them both in the café.

  Erika went into the changing rooms and showered. She stripped off the dressing on her cheek; she was sure the water would do her wound good. She put on her rented swimsuit and went out to the lagoon.

  The cold air bit her exposed skin, but it was only a few steps into the water, which was an unnatural bright milky blue. She closed her eyes as she lowered her body down to her neck and felt the warm soft liquid embrace her.

  In the cold air, steam rose from the water and she couldn’t see how far the lagoon stretched. Underfoot was a soft white mud. She noticed a couple of women had smeared it on to their faces. Maybe she would try that later.
/>   It was crowded near the entrance to the pool, and so she waded out deeper. She wasn’t looking for Franz and hoped he wouldn’t find her. She wanted to be alone.

  The steam hovered just above the water, dampening sound as well as obscuring vision. Yet she could see upwards to the cold clear sky. It was a very strange sensation, to be surrounded by warmth and yet to see rock cliffs rising just a few hundred feet beyond the lagoon. The pool turned out to be quite large and she began to swim a gentle breaststroke. Eventually she reached the far side: a perimeter of rocks piled high. She could see no one through the steam.

  She lay on her back and floated: it was easy to float in that mineral-rich water. She closed her eyes. She could hear the murmur of voices in many languages: English spoken with an Irish accent; Spanish; some kind of Scandinavian language with a different rhythm to Icelandic.

  It felt good. It felt so good. There was something soft and invigorating about the water beyond just its temperature.

  She had a lot to do once they reached the airport. She hadn’t yet thought how she would run the press conference, what she would say. She would decide that later.

  She was proud of what they had achieved in Iceland, but the cost had been too high. Although she was angry at the way Nico had betrayed her, she was deeply sad about his death. She had enjoyed being with him.

  And Ásta. Someone with so much promise ahead of her should not have died.

  She thought about the man who had twice tried to attack her. Why couldn’t the police figure out who he was? Erika’s instinct was that he was Israeli. But there was something familiar about him. She was pretty sure that she had never seen him before, but he did remind her of someone.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure wading through the steam. She turned to look. A wisp of steam blew away so that she saw the profile.

  It was Franz.

  No, the man was bigger than Franz.

  Oh God! She recognized him.

  She stood up straight. The man saw her and increased his stride towards her. There was no one else in sight.

  Beneath the ripples she saw a dancing rod of grey steel. He was going to stab her, drop the knife and disappear into the steam.