Sun on Fire

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  “So what was the cause of the fire?”

  Magnús paused. Finally he said, “The forensic investigation of the ruins indicated that a gas stove had been in use when the fire started. A large saucepan containing traces of wax lay on the floor. Witnesses said that there had always been things for candle production—molds, coloring, wicks—in the living room. The surviving household members confirmed that candle production had taken place in the house. The investigators’ conclusion was that Fabían had been melting wax in rather rudimentary conditions. The wax overheated, and fire broke out. He was able to get out through the back door, but Sunna was probably in the attic tending to the cannabis plants, unaware of the fire until it was too late. Her body was found under the collapsed roof near the small skylight she probably tried to escape through.”

  “So it was an accident.”

  “Yes, a tragic one. Sheriff Arngrímur was so traumatized by the experience that he quit his job and went to work for the foreign service. Shortly afterward I was offered a position in Reykjavík, and I tried to put the matter behind me. This experience was simply too devastating to even think about.”

  “Why did Arngrímur stop calling himself Esjar?”

  “I don’t know,” Magnús said. “Maybe to keep his head down. The Esjar family name was kind of prominent, and his father made a lot of noise wherever he went.”

  “And instead of taking on his father’s first name for his patronymic, Arngrímur used his father’s second name,” Birkir said. “Any idea why?”

  “No,” Magnús answered, impatiently. “I haven’t seen Arngrímur since all of that happened. He suffered from burns and smoke inhalation, and I think it took him a long time to recover. He never went back to Hvolsvöllur.”

  17:30

  Even though Gunnar was officially on leave, Birkir knew he wanted to be kept up to speed on the investigation, so he decided to make a sick call to his home.

  María met him at the door. “Birkir Li. My favorite.” She smiled, and invited him into the apartment, which smelled of cooking.

  “You make sure Gunnar not go back to Egilsstadir,” she whispered as she ushered him into the living room, where Gunnar sat in a comfortable chair with a stool under his feet.

  “Mom is cooking meat stew,” he grinned, looking at Birkir with his good eye; the left one was completely obscured by an ugly blue swelling. “Stay for dinner. There’s plenty. Enough to last all week.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m great,” Gunnar said. “But the doc thinks I’ll be worse tomorrow when the bruising on my chest kicks in. I asked Mom to cook the stew a long time, at least two hours, because I don’t want to have to chew too much.”

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Really well. The rest of the ward needed extra sleeping pills because of my snoring. The night shift had never heard anything like it,” Gunnar said triumphantly.

  “You’re lying,” Birkir said.

  “OK, I might be exaggerating, but I slept really well, thanks. The hospital gave me strong painkillers. I’m supposed to take more if I can’t sleep tonight.”

  Birkir told Gunnar about his trip out to Fljótshlíd and his conversation with Magnús. Then they ate meat stew and watched CSI on television. When Gunnar had fallen asleep in his chair, Birkir went home.

  Birkir had hardly sat down at his desk when his phone rang; a female voice said, “Good morning, this is the Icelandic embassy in Berlin. Just connecting you with the acting ambassador—one moment, please.”

  After a brief pause, Birkir heard a man’s voice, “Birkir Li Hinriksson?”

  “Yes, speaking.”

  “Hello. Sigmundur here. Berlin embassy.”

  “Oh, yes. Good morning.”

  “I need your assistance,” Sigmundur said. “Do you have a moment?”

  “Sure. What can we do for you?”

  “Our counselor, Arngrímur Ingason, went to Iceland last Friday and we haven’t been able to get ahold of him since.”

  “Is this a police matter?”

  “No—or yes, actually. Something strange is going on.”

  “Strange?”

  “Yes. Arngrímur got a call Friday morning from the Foreign Ministry with instructions to go to Iceland for an urgent meeting with the minister. A plane ticket arrived by e-mail shortly after.”

  “Is there something strange about that?”

  “Well, no. Unusual, perhaps, to be summoned like that, but not in itself strange. It became strange when we needed to get in touch with him during the weekend in connection with a case he’s dealing with here. When he didn’t pick up his cell phone, I had our secretaries contact all the hotels in the Reykjavík area, but he wasn’t registered as a guest in any of them, so this morning we contacted the ministry to find out where he was. Nobody there knew anything about any summons to go to Iceland.”

  “You’re saying the phone call was a fake?”

  “It looks like it. We checked Arngrímur’s e-mails and found the one that came with the ticket. It appears to come from the ministry, but the sender is not an actual employee there. The attached ticket was business class, the next flight to Iceland that same day.”

  “So you’re saying Arngrímur was tricked into going to Iceland, and then disappeared when he got here?”

  “Yes. There’s something going on here that’s not right.”

  “Do you want us to start a search?”

  “No, absolutely not—I mean, not right away. Hopefully there’s a reasonable explanation. But perhaps you could look into it without being conspicuous?”

  “Does Arngrímur have any relatives here in Iceland?”

  “None that he was in touch with. He never went to Iceland as far as I know.”

  “Where should we start looking?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a policeman.”

  “Well, we can ask our computer specialists to check this e-mail. I’ll have them contact you. They know how to analyze that kind of data. And we’ll try to find out who paid for the ticket.”

  “Great. Is there anything else that can be done?”

  “We may be able to check the security cameras at the airport.”

  “Good, very good. The chief secretary at the Foreign Ministry was going to speak with his counterpart at the Ministry of Justice, but suggested I meanwhile contact you directly to speed things up, because you’re familiar with our embassy and you’ve met Arngrímur—which is why I’m calling. This is a priority matter, but we want to keep it under wraps in case there’s a good explanation—we’ve had more than enough trouble recently. Hopefully, Arngrímur is just staying with friends somewhere.”

  The conversation over, Birkir called the police at Keflavík Airport and asked them to send him, as a matter of urgency, all the security-camera footage from the arrivals area for a period of two hours from the time the Berlin flight landed the previous Friday. Then he headed for Magnús’s office to brief him about this development; they would doubtless be getting orders from above, and it would be good to be able to report that the matter was already in hand. This missing-person situation was different from the usual ones involving underage rebellious teenagers who’d gone into hiding.

  Magnús seemed shocked by what Birkir had to tell him. “The embassy staff really didn’t have any idea where Arngrímur might be staying here?” he asked.

  “No. They seem to be completely in the dark.”

  Thinking aloud, Magnús said, “Let’s hope he’s just happily ensconced somewhere with his phone off in order to have a break from work. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done that.”

  Birkir was silent as he mulled things over. Finally he said, “But there’s that strange knife at the embassy. As I’ve pointed out, whoever smuggled it in can’t have planned to use it on Anton. Arngrímur was supposed to be at the embassy that day but was called away. Could the knife possibly have been intended for him?”

  “Why, in heaven’s name?”

  “Arngrímu
r was involved in the Sandgil drug investigation. Maybe the three former members of the commune had some beef with him because of the fire.”

  Magnús shook his head vigorously. “After all these years? What makes you think that?”

  “It’s the only lead we have.”

  “Arngrímur was only at Sandgil in an assisting role as district sheriff. The investigation was a police matter under my responsibility, in collaboration with the Reykjavík force. Many individuals were more involved than Arngrímur in that investigation and the arrests. Why on earth should vengeance be focused on him after all these years? Especially as it required so much prior organization. No, there’s something completely different behind this—if there’s anything at all.”

  09:50

  Birkir’s telephone was ringing again when he returned from speaking with Magnús. It was the station’s switchboard.

  “There’s a lawyer asking for somebody dealing with the Anton Eiríksson murder. Can you take the call?”

  “Sure. Put them through.”

  Birkir introduced himself to the caller. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “We are attorneys representing Anton Eiríksson here in Iceland,” the man said.

  “OK. Do you have information that can help us with the investigation into his death?”

  “No, I can’t say we do, but I felt it would be right to be in touch. We are going through his file just now.”

  “Is there anything in it we should see?”

  “Not really, it’s just some accounts, a tax return, and a will. There were instructions to open it a week after his death, which is why we only did it this morning.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Is what unusual?”

  “Putting off opening the will.”

  “It varies. Some people feel it’s appropriate to wait for a few days.”

  “I see. So what does it say?”

  “All his estate goes to orphans in Indonesia. There are names of institutions that perform relief work in that part of the world.”

  “Huh,” Birkir said. “Carrying on the good work, then.”

  “Yes, well, then everything seems clear.”

  “I guess so. What does the estate consist of?”

  “The papers list a number of bank accounts, both here and abroad. There’s also a reference to liquid assets kept in a safe-deposit box.”

  “How much?”

  “Around four hundred thousand euros.”

  “That’s quite a sum.”

  “Yes. We would not have advised keeping it as cash. A sum as large as that would of course have accrued considerable interest.”

  “Maybe Anton didn’t trust banks.”

  “Possibly not.”

  Birkir thought this over. “Where is the safe-deposit box?” he asked.

  “In his apartment.”

  “In London?”

  “No, here in Reykjavík.”

  “We didn’t know he had an apartment here. No property was registered using his national ID.”

  “The apartment is in the name of a private limited company owned, in turn, by another company. It’s somewhat complicated. Tax reasons.”

  “Where is this apartment?”

  “It’s in a high-rise on Austurbrún.”

  “We’ll need to have a look at it.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m free on . . . let’s see . . . Thursday at eleven o’clock.”

  “No, not Thursday. Today,” Birkir said.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “We need to find a way.”

  There was silence on the other end. Finally the lawyer said, “I see I have a meeting just after noon that I can put off. Shall we say twelve thirty?”

  “That works,” Birkir said. “One of our team will be there at twelve thirty. Do you have a key?”

  “No.”

  Birkir reached for the key ring he’d found at the Berlin hotel. It contained several keys that might fit an apartment lock. “We have some keys here we can try,” he said. “If they don’t work, we’ll call a locksmith.”

  11:15

  The Keflavík police responded promptly to Birkir’s request. They called to say they’d uploaded a password-protected folder containing the video footage to the Reykjavík police computer network, and gave him the information he needed to access it. Then they e-mailed him details of the security-camera positions, together with the order in which to view the video files to follow the progress of passengers coming from the Berlin flight’s arrival gate.

  Birkir had already called Gunnar to tell him the news about Arngrímur.

  “I’m coming in now,” Gunnar said, ignoring Birkir’s protests. Thirty minutes later, he came hobbling along the police station hallway, leaning on his crutches.

  “How are you?” Birkir greeted him.

  “I can’t breathe right because of the bruising around my ribs, I can’t sneeze or cough even though my cold is killing me, but I think I can sit at a desk and make myself useful.”

  “Great,” Birkir said. “Then you can help me examine some pictures from the airport.”

  “That’ll be exciting,” Gunnar said, and carefully lowered himself into the chair in front of the computer. Birkir watched over his shoulder as, with a few clicks of the mouse, he set the first video in motion. Observing the time stamp in the corner of the picture, he fast-forwarded the film until they got to the confirmed arrival time of the Berlin flight.

  “There he is,” Gunnar said, as passengers emerged into the walkway. Birkir saw that he was right. First to disembark were the business-class travelers, and there among them was Arngrímur, carrying an overcoat on his arm and looking uncertainly from side to side. After a brief hesitation, he headed off in the wake of his fellow passengers, who clearly had a better sense of where to go next.

  Birkir’s cell rang. He had Gunnar stop the video, and answered. He listened a moment, thanked the caller, and returned the phone to his pocket.

  “They’ve traced the payment for the ticket Arngrímur was sent,” Birkir said. “A credit card belonging to Anton Eiríksson.”

  “Anton. But he’s dead.”

  “So somebody’s using his card.”

  Gunnar said, “There were some cards in the wallet the German police found on him.”

  Birkir nodded. “So he must have had more.”

  They turned back to the computer. “The time stamp says 14:43,” Gunnar said. “Let’s check the same time on the next camera so we can see where he goes.”

  They worked steadily through the sequence of files from the security cameras in the terminal and were able to piece together Arngrímur’s progress through passport control and along the walkways to the baggage claim area, where he eventually took up a position by the carousel and waited for his suitcase.

  “D’you think they’ve got pictures like that of us from Thursday?” Gunnar said. “When you pushed me in the wheelchair all the way through the terminal, I was goddamned furious.” He fast-forwarded.

  Birkir smiled. “Maybe we should get a copy to show at the annual gala dinner.”

  “Look, he’s picking up his bag,” Gunnar said, slowing down the picture again.

  They watched Arngrímur walk toward the green customs gate and disappear through the doorway. The next footage was from the greeting area, packed with people waiting to meet the passengers as they emerged, one after another. Eventually Arngrímur appeared. Still holding his overcoat, he now pulled a small wheeled suitcase. He paused and looked around, and then walked straight across to a man holding up a white card; they exchanged a few words and then left the building.

  “Who’s that?” Gunnar asked.

  “I don’t know, but haven’t we seen him somewhere before?”

  The phone rang, and Birkir picked up. It was Dóra, who’d gone to meet the lawyer at Anton’s apartment. “A couple keys on the key ring opened the main entrance and the door to the apartment,” she said.

  “Good,” Birkir said.

>   “No, not good. There’s a dead man in there. With a head injury.”

  12:50

  Birkir and Anna arrived at the Austurbrún high-rise and pulled on the usual white crime-scene coveralls. In the lobby outside Anton’s apartment they greeted Dóra, who was waiting for them.

  “Where’s the lawyer?” Birkir asked.

  “Gone to a meeting,” Dóra replied. “There wasn’t really anything for him to do here. We left the scene when we realized what had happened.”

  Anna moved toward the half-open door of the apartment and sniffed. “Three days,” she said.

  Birkir followed Anna as she slipped carefully in; he detected a faint smell, one he had come across before—not often, but often enough. More experienced than he in this sort of thing, Anna could tell by smell alone how long ago death had occurred—if it was no more than a week, that is. After that it was just a foul stench.

  Inside was parquet, an airy entrance hall with living room beyond; kitchen to the left, a bathroom, and two rooms on the right—in one of those was the body and a wall safe, wide open and completely empty. A large power drill accounted for the two holes in the safe’s door where the locks had been.

  The deceased lay on the floor, face turned toward the wall. He’d been wearing ear protectors, but they now lay askew across the top of his head.

  “Two blows,” Anna said. She pointed at the back of the head, which was covered in blood. “This was the first one. The attacker approaches from behind and strikes him hard with a blunt instrument.” She indicated the metal bar lying beside the body.