Sun on Fire

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  “The back of the skull is the strongest part, and the blow isn’t enough to knock him out. The skin is broken and he bleeds, but he backs away and turns toward his attacker, who strikes once more—this time harder, and in the center of his forehead.”

  She pointed at the man’s crushed brow. “The skull is weaker here, and it shatters under the impact of this heavier blow. The guy loses consciousness and collapses.”

  Birkir nodded. This analysis seemed right. Sadly, he regarded the corpse; he had seen this man before, talked with him. Búi Rútsson, Anton Eiríksson’s bodyguard, had not told Birkir the truth when he said he was leaving Berlin for Spain; he’d traveled instead to Iceland on this, his final journey. He evidently had urgent business to attend to in his employer’s apartment, where this brutal attack had ended his life.

  Anna turned to the drill, clamped into an impressive horizontal drill frame standing next to the safe. “He used a core drill to cut out the two locks from the door of the safe. Not a very professional method, but effective. It must have taken hours to get through this.”

  Birkir said, “And he was wearing ear protectors with a radio to while away the hours. That would have made it easier for the attacker to sneak up behind him.”

  “Yeah, although it’s not as if he was actually wielding the tool by hand,” Anna said. “This gear here holds the drill in place and maintains pressure on the cut. Very convenient. But a skillful professional burglar would have tackled the actual locks. It’s quicker, quieter, and cleaner.”

  Birkir pointed out the key ring, holding dozens of keys, that lay on the floor. “That’s something a professional would have, right?”

  Anna looked at the keys and nodded. “Those he would have used to get into the apartment. The safe is more complicated.”

  Birkir was familiar with the method. The key ring contained all the most common types of house key, with the peaks of their blades filed down to small points so they could be used to open any lock matching the given type of key. You insert the key into the lock and tap it with a hammer while at the same time gently turning it. The force of the blow bounces the upper tumbler pins above the shear point, allowing the key to continue turning. Having seen this demonstrated one time, Birkir had immediately attached a bolt to his front door.

  Anna said, “The attacker must have struck as soon as the safe was open.”

  “Maybe they were working together,” Birkir said. “And one of them decided he didn’t want to share the loot.”

  “Could be,” Anna said.

  14:00

  More detective officers arrived at the apartment, and Birkir decided to leave them to it; he trusted that if there was anything useful to be found, Dóra and Anna would find it. He wanted to focus on something else.

  Starkadur wasn’t pleased to see him when Birkir greeted him in the holding cell.

  “You just shut me in here and then ignore me,” he said. “My attorney has already appealed to the Supreme Court.”

  Birkir felt guilty. He said, “We’re shorthanded at the moment and other things came up.”

  “Right, and you just left me here to rot.”

  “I hope we are about to get things sorted. But right now I’d like to ask you about your sister.”

  “My sister? Sunna?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s she got to do with all this? She died when I was in my teens.”

  “I know,” Birkir said. “But I’ve heard that she was very special. People who knew her don’t seem to be able to forget her.”

  “You’d understand that if you’d met my sister. She had a naturally kind soul, and her death was so incredibly unjust.”

  “Tell me about your relationship.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You don’t have to. But I will do my best to have you released directly. I can argue that your being free won’t jeopardize the investigation.”

  “I’ll get out today?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “But you want to know more about Sun?”

  “It’s not a condition for your release, but I would be grateful.”

  “Oh, OK then. I’ll tell you about Sun. She deserves to have her memory kept alive.”

  “I understand,” Birkir said.

  “Well, there were just the two of us—me and Sun. Dad was a teacher in our village up in the Northwest, and Mom kept house. They were both kind of old-fashioned and conservative, and we weren’t really close. They were nearly forty when I was born. Sun was five years older than me and always looked after me. When I was fifteen, I discovered that I had a massive crush on one of my classmates—a boy. I didn’t really have a clear idea of what was happening, because the image I had of homosexual people was horrific. There was a guy in the village who was thought to be ‘one of those,’ and he was totally isolated. He was a drunk and he was filthy. We kids were warned not to have anything to do with him, but that just prompted us to bully him atrociously. Someone would say ‘Let’s get the homo!’ and we’d gather outside his house and throw garbage at his windows until everything was covered in shit. I thought that was what my future would be like, and I planned to drown myself. Sun was the only person I could confide in, and she saved my life. She said I should trust my feelings and not let anybody tell me what was right or wrong in these matters. If my heart was pointing in this direction, then that was the road intended for me. No one should twist their feelings. Sun told me that there were places where people like me could live in freedom, live good lives in harmony with their surroundings. She promised to help me get there.”

  He teared up and sobbed as he continued, “And Sun was as good as her word, in spite of being taken from this life. Because of what she said to me, I set myself a goal to strive toward, although I did remain deep inside the closet for many more years. I didn’t venture out until both my parents had died, and the one thing I regret is that I said good-bye to them while still living a lie. And the place Sun promised me did exist, but instead of me going there, it came to me. Today, Reykjavík is becoming that place, and I’ve done my best to help make it so.”

  Starkadur finished speaking and wept quietly as Birkir left.

  15:20

  The body had been removed from the apartment, and Anna was moving ahead with the crime-scene investigation. She had called in two specialists and sent everybody else away. Dóra was busy visiting all the other apartments in the building to find out if their occupants had seen or heard anything that could assist with the investigation.

  The forensic pathologist who came and examined the body indicated that Anna’s initial theory was correct. He estimated the killing had taken place the previous Friday, though he couldn’t confirm that until after the autopsy. Food wrappers from the garbage suggested that Búi had spent two days in the apartment, but there was no indication he’d spent the night there. Thursday’s and Friday’s newspapers were in the kitchen.

  The drilling of the safe had created a substantial amount of debris, but it hadn’t been spread around the apartment sufficiently that footprints could be detected. The floor was, in fact, remarkably clean—someone had evidently swabbed it recently—but their examination of the area where the body had been lying revealed tiny, widespread droplets of blood. From the droplets’ size and shape it might be possible to calculate the force of the blows struck, their angle of impact, and the attacker’s position. Each drop was photographed alongside a centimeter scale and a position marker.

  The metal bar—the murder weapon—attracted most of their attention. They could find no fingerprints on it—someone seemed to have wiped them off with a tea towel that they found discarded on the kitchen floor. The towel was stained with blood, presumably from the bar, and on the front doorknob they found a trace of blood but no prints, and they surmised that this one cloth had been used to wipe everywhere that might have had fingerprints.

  The weapon itself was made of glass-smooth stainless steel, a tube five centimeters wide and eighty centimete
rs long. Anna regarded it for a while before she made the connection. “Of course! It’s a rod from a closet.”

  The room where the murder had taken place had a closet, and it had just such a rod, one end of which sat in an O-shaped bracket while the other was in a U-shaped one so it was easy to remove it by lifting that end up. Anna went into the bedroom next door, where she found another closet, its sliding door half open. Inside, the brackets were identical to those in the first room, but there was no rod. Anna observed this, and then looked down. Something attracted her attention, so she fetched a powerful flashlight to see it better. A thin layer of dust covered the floor of the closet: In it she saw fresh footprints.

  16:00

  Gunnar didn’t object when Birkir said he’d made arrangements for Starkadur to be released. Keeping him locked up was completely pointless. There wasn’t a trace of blood on the guy’s clothing, and they had no further evidence against him. They didn’t even have any sensible questions to ask.

  “OK, OK,” was all Gunnar had to say. His mind was elsewhere. The man who’d met Arngrímur Ingason at Keflavík Airport had seemed familiar, but they hadn’t been able to place him. Gunnar had scrutinized the video over and over, and finally he had the idea of reviewing the footage from the Berlin security cameras; that was the focus of his attention as Birkir sat down next to him.

  Although the images from Berlin were far from sharp, they were clear enough to identify all the ambassador’s guests as they left the embassy: Starkadur and David had left ahead of everyone else, so it was obvious which ones they were. Jón the Sun Poet was easily recognizable, of course, and Birkir was able to point out Fabían. The ambassador was short and limped, and there was his wife, leaning on Helgi’s arm. The only other one was Lúdvík Bjarnason, whom they’d seen neither in the flesh, nor in the party photos Helgi had shown them—that’s because he’d been behind the camera taking the pictures. But there was a fair image of him from the Berlin security camera.

  Gunnar copied a frame and compared it with the Keflavík Airport footage. His hunch was correct—it looked like the same man.

  “Wasn’t he supposed to be abroad?” said Birkir.

  “No, he was back home when I spoke with him. Or so he said.”

  “Call him on his cell.”

  Gunnar tried the number he had called before. “It’s off.”

  “I think I’d better go have another word with Helgi Kárason,” Birkir said.

  17:20

  Birkir took a taxi to Helgi’s studio in the west end of town. He could see a light in the window, so Helgi must be working. The main door into the building was unlocked, but when Birkir knocked on the door of the second-floor studio, he got no reply. This was hardly surprising, given the earsplitting rock music he heard coming from within. He tried the door. It was locked, and he banged on it with the flat of his hand, but Cream’s “White Room” at full volume overpowered everything. Birkir saw that he wouldn’t be able to break down the door, but he looked around and spotted a cabinet on the wall, farther along the hallway. He went to investigate and, as he suspected, found it was the fuse box for the whole floor—an old-fashioned board with screw sockets, and packs of spare fuses lying at the bottom of the cabinet. He couldn’t decipher the fuse labeling and so unscrewed the main fuse. The music stopped instantly, and the hallway was plunged into total darkness. Birkir waited until he heard someone open the door, and then reinserted the fuse.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Helgi said, when the light came back on and he saw Birkir standing by the fuse box.

  “We need to talk. You didn’t hear when I knocked on the door.”

  “I’m working.”

  “You can keep working, no problem. But if you refuse to answer my questions, I’ll have you arrested, and then you won’t be able to work.”

  “Arrested?”

  “Yes. There are plenty of reasons for doing that. Do I need to explain?”

  “Yes. You do.”

  “A staff member from the Icelandic embassy in Berlin, Arngrímur Ingason, disappeared on arrival here in Iceland last Friday. We think his disappearance is linked to the fire in Sandgil, and I want to hear the rest of that story.”

  “Arngrímur Esjar has disappeared?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  “He was sheriff in Hvolsvöllur.”

  “Have you met with him recently?”

  “No. I never had any dealings with him when we were living there, I only saw him from a distance in the village, and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Are you, the former occupants of Sandgil, responsible for Arngrímur’s disappearance?”

  “Not me.”

  “What about the others?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it a possibility?”

  “You better come in,” Helgi said, beckoning Birkir into the studio. He went across to a small kitchen unit at one end of the studio, picked up a thermos flask, and unscrewed the lid. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. Just a glass of water, please.”

  Helgi took a glass out of a cupboard and passed it to Birkir. “The water’s there,” he said, pointing at a faucet over the sink. Then he poured himself some coffee.

  Birkir repeated his question, “Is it possible that Jón Sváfnisson, Rakel, and Starkadur are linked to Arngrímur’s disappearance?”

  “Not Rakel.”

  “How about Jón and Starkadur?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have any reason to think it might be possible?”

  “I don’t know anything anymore. This is all becoming too toxic for me. My nerves can’t take it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you the story, but I don’t want you to record it. I don’t care what happens anymore, but I don’t want this recorded. No way.”

  “I understand,” Birkir said.

  Helgi sat down in a comfortable chair next to the kitchenette and offered Birkir a seat.

  “I’m not in the mood for more work today,” he said, sipping his coffee. Then he was silent.

  Birkir was silent, too, his gaze resting on the glass of water in his hand, and a few long moments passed before Helgi seemed ready to speak. Finally he began: “When Jón and Rakel came to Amsterdam to drag me out of the gutter and my heroin-induced stupor, they had a story to tell. Fabían had languished in a mental hospital since Sun died in the fire. He’d been unable to express himself, had been in some kind of mental shock—for years he’d been awake but not there. But things changed after a young woman, a psychologist, at the hospital had, with patience and persistence, managed to get through to him using some kind of hypnotism. The first advance was when he spontaneously helped himself to a glass of water. Then he began to say the occasional word. It took a couple years to get him back to the stage he is at today, which is pretty good, mentally. But part of that procedure involved having him work through what happened to him in the fire. It turned out that every single fraction of a second of that evening was etched into his mind like a movie on a DVD. He could describe the course of events and the surroundings in minute detail. He was also able to draw pictures of his experience.

  “His story revealed that he and Sun had been making candles—he in the kitchen watching over the pot of wax on the stove, and she in the living room working on the molds. Our method for melting wax was quite primitive and demanded a lot of care. The correct way is to stand the pan of wax in boiling water so the wax temperature never exceeds a hundred degrees Celsius, but we were impatient and just used to melt the wax over a gas ring, watching it all the time. Then as soon as it was melted, we took it off the stove and poured it into the molds. So Fabían was standing by the stove when he heard a car come up to the house. He heard someone come in, and then the sound of the newcomer and Sun talking next door in the living room, but he didn’t check what was going on because he was stuck there looking after the hot wax. The muffled conversation continued awhile, but then he
heard a commotion and stomping of feet as Sun ran up the ladder into the attic, followed by the bang of the trapdoor slamming shut. Fabían could resist no longer and stuck his head around the door into the living room, where the visitor had clambered up the ladder and was banging on the trapdoor. Fabían saw the man, and the man saw him. The man jumped down to chase after him, but Fabían escaped through the back door in the pantry and hid behind the outhouse as the man searched around in the dark for him.

  “Abandoning the pursuit, the man went back inside, and shortly afterward Fabían saw smoke billowing out the back door. He called out Sun’s name, but the smoke was increasing, and he soon saw flames in the pantry. The wax must have ignited, and the fire spread quickly through the bone-dry timbers of the house and the highly flammable paper that covered its walls. The whole house was soon ablaze, and all Fabían could do was retreat into the darkness. Finally, he saw the little skylight fly open and Sun trying to climb out through it, but at that moment the house collapsed and she disappeared into the flames.

  “This vision haunted Fabían’s every waking hour for all those years. He could neither hear nor see anything else—could not free himself from what had happened. The memory overpowered everything else, until at last the hypnotism treatment tore a tiny hole in the black shroud that had enveloped his mind. The image of that visitor in the living room was still etched in his brain, and eventually he regained enough mental balance to be able to transfer that image onto paper. His artistic skills were the same as they had been before the catastrophe. The picture he drew was of a man he had never seen before that night, because he never had any business in Hvolsvöllur with the rest of us; but Jón and Rakel immediately recognized the young sheriff.

  “Officially, the sheriff’s version of events had been that the house was already on fire when he and the policeman got there, and that, despite their efforts to get in, they couldn’t save anything or anyone. The young sheriff suffered burns in his attempt, and the story went around that the experience so discombobulated him that he didn’t feel able to continue in his post, and went to work in the Foreign Ministry instead. But according to Fabían’s story, there was no fire when this man first entered the house. His actions had caused Fabían to run away, abandoning the melting wax, which must have reached flash point and ignited, bringing about the conflagration. In which case, Arngrímur was obviously responsible for the fire and Sun’s death. Worst thing was, as a result of the sheriff’s testimony, Fabían got the blame for the fire—the inquiry determined that he failed to exercise due care while melting the wax, and that the fire was his fault. And we, his best friends, believed it.”