Meltwater (35 page)

The country wasn’t the cold, bleak, cruel place he had remembered. Or rather that he had chosen to forget.

Ollie loved America. From the moment he had arrived at the age of ten he had had one aim: to become a normal American kid. And he had achieved it within a year. Strangely, his father, for all his talk of Iceland and endless readings of the sagas and reciting of poetry, had understood. There was no doubt that Magnus was his father’s favourite, with his insatiable desire for all things Icelandic, but Ragnar had helped Ollie become an American kid. They had gone to Fenway Park together countless times, with Ollie explaining each time what was going on on the baseball field. If Magnus was the expert on long-dead Vikings, Ollie was the expert on the Sox. Ragnar always seemed to listen attentively, but Ollie could never figure out why such an intelligent man, a math professor no less, could never quite understand the intricacies of the game no matter how many times he was told.

Ragnar was easier on Ollie too, perhaps because he realized that Ollie’s pain in Iceland had been greater. Magnus was expected to get into an Ivy League College, Ollie could go where he liked. Magnus was also expected to carry the torch of his father’s Icelandic heritage, to read and learn the sagas and the poems, even to travel to Iceland with his father, whereas Ollie could watch TV and fool around at school. Ragnar had taken him to see a nice lady in Brookline every week, who Ollie had subsequently realized was a shrink. With the help of subsequent shrinks, Ollie had figured out what his father was doing. Ragnar thought Ollie was screwed up and he felt guilty that he was responsible for it.

So Ollie knew he was screwed up. Which explained the drugs, the failed relationships, the drinking. Maybe even his lack of ability to pull off the big real estate coup that always seemed just around the corner. And he knew it was his father’s fault, along with his evil grandfather. But he had found his own way of dealing with things. Live for the present, enjoy yourself, and leave the bad stuff well behind you.

He reached the bottom of the hill, crossed a busy road and came to the pond in the middle of town. Fancy houses lined its shores, and a dozen different kinds of bird squealed and squabbled on its water. The base of a rainbow rested on the metal roofs on the hill behind him, chopped off at the beginning of its curve.

He sat down on a bench, ignoring the damp, to watch the birds.

All had been hunky-dory until his father had been murdered that summer afternoon in Duxbury. Ollie had been at the beach with a girl, and they had been the ones who discovered his father’s body when they returned to the house. The following days and weeks had been hell for Ollie, for Magnus and for their stepmother, Kathleen, who had even been suspected of the crime for a while. The girl had lost no time in dropping Ollie.

Ollie knew how to deal with it. Forget it. Deny it. Obliterate it. Why couldn’t Magnus do the same thing?

But Magnus couldn’t. He had to stir and stir. Which was why Ollie was in Iceland.

At first Ollie had regretted his decision to come to the lunch in the Culture Institute the day before. But he had listened closely to what the old schoolteacher Jóhannes had said, especially those words from the saga of Thor the Tub-Thumper or whoever he was: ‘I would rather lose you than have a coward son.’

He pulled out the scrap of paper on which the schoolteacher had written his address and phone number and stared at it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

M
AGNUS HAD INTENDED
to see Viktor at his office after leaving Thórsgata, but it turned out that the lawyer was at police headquarters, offering himself for interview.

All the bluster was gone. It was clear that Viktor had been very fond of his niece and blamed himself for her murder.

‘Have you seen much of Ásta over the last few days?’ Magnus asked him.

‘Not really. Not since we were both in the house in Thórsgata on Sunday afternoon, getting it ready. I probably haven’t spoken to her alone at all since then.’

‘And how do you think she got on with the members of the Freeflow team?’ Magnus asked.

‘Very well. They seemed to like her. She’s good with people. She would have made a very good pastor.’

‘She would have,’ said Magnus, remembering his own conversation with her on the drive back from the volcano. ‘Why was she so interested in Freeflow?’

‘She bought into the ideal. You know, freedom of information, transparency. She was a political idealist as well as a religious one. I remember talking to her about it at my brother’s house just after Erika and Nico had visited Iceland last year. She said then that she would like to help in any way she could. So I called her last week when I heard Freeflow were on their way. She had time on her hands, she was willing, and I knew she would be useful. Which she was. A bunch of geeks like that need someone normal to look after them.’

‘It seems strange to me that she was the one who was killed,’ Magnus said. ‘I mean she was on the periphery of Freeflow, wasn’t she? Did she give any indication why anyone would want to kill her? Did she have any specific information?’

Viktor frowned and shook his head. ‘You are right. She had seen the Gaza video – I take it you know about that now?’

Magnus nodded. ‘I’ve seen it.’

‘OK,’ Viktor continued. ‘But then so had everyone else.’

‘Do you think she might have had a leak of her own for Freeflow?’ Magnus asked, remembering what Erika had told him.

Viktor glanced at Magnus quickly. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. A couple of weeks ago, before I even knew Freeflow were coming to Iceland, Ásta asked me how a potential leaker might get in touch with them.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I said the details were on the Freeflow website, but the best thing was probably to post a CD to one of their PO Boxes.’

‘Did you ask her about it? Whether she had anything specific in mind?’

‘No. That didn’t occur to me. Until now.’

Once Viktor had gone, Magnus called Baldur to tell him what the MP had said, and how that corroborated Erika’s impression. He also mentioned Zivah’s feeling that Ásta knew who might be behind the attacks on Erika, or at least knew that the Israelis weren’t. Baldur was just about to search Ásta’s room, and he said he would keep a look out for possible leaked material.

There was a message from Matthías for Magnus to call him.

‘What have you got for me?’ Magnus asked the inspector.

‘A stone wall.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They said they’ve referred it to legal to see whether the Blue Notice complies with Article Three of the constitution.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘It means the guy in Rome is trying to tell us something. It’s politics. Article Three prohibits Interpol from taking action on political matters. Once it goes to legal it will be weeks before it comes out again. But at least they’ve told us why.’

‘They are scared of upsetting Tretto?’

‘Or his friends.’

‘Can’t you push them?’

‘Sorry, Magnús. There really is no point. That’s what the guy in Rome was telling me.’

‘All right. Thanks for trying.’ Magnus slammed the phone down in frustration. If it wasn’t for the ash cloud, he’d fly to Milan himself and break into Nico’s house to get a hold of that computer.

He turned to his own machine. It was nearly lunchtime and it was the first chance he had got to look at it all day.

There was a message from Apex.

Magnus typed a response:
How do you know?

He had to wait less than a minute for a reply. Apex had obviously set some kind of alert to tell him whenever Magnus typed anything into his machine.

i took a look at his stored e-mails.

Magnus couldn’t resist a laugh. Of course he had. He didn’t have to go through Interpol.
Thanks, Apex. You heard about Ásta?

Apex replied:
yes. it has us all rattled. any ideas who did it?

Magnus typed:
Not yet. You?

There was no immediate response. Magnus sat back in his chair staring at his screen. He hadn’t told anyone else about his contact with Apex, and of course Apex’s hacking into Nico’s computer could not be used as formal evidence.

Nico and his Italian friends could not be ruled out as suspects completely, but they were looking less likely.

Then a message appeared:
i hate to say this, but maybe dieter. he had a kind of crush on erika, always has had. he may have been jealous of nico.

Magnus typed a response:
Did he ever sleep with her?

The reply came quickly.
i don’t know.

Magnus typed again:
Do you think Dieter is capable of murder?

no, i don’t. he went over to the dark side about fifteen years ago. stole a load of credit card numbers. after jail he sorted himself out. i really don’t believe he would kill anyone. and none of that explains asta’s death. but, you asked.

Thanks, Apex,
Magnus typed.

He rubbed his eyes. Another suspect! Magnus considered Dieter, the quiet, lumbering idealist. From what he understood of the way Freeflow worked, Dieter was Erika’s right-hand man; he had been with her from the beginning. It was perfectly easy to imagine that he admired her commitment to the cause, her energy and her charisma. And although she was by no stretch of the imagination beautiful, she had a sexiness about her that Dieter would have had plenty of time to appreciate. Magnus thought it highly unlikely that they were sleeping together in the house on Thórsgata. Someone would have noticed; someone would have told him; he would have seen the signs. But in some other house in some other country in the past?

Possibly.

In which case if Dieter found out about Erika and Nico he could have been jealous. Jealous enough to kill? Magnus had no idea. Dieter was obsessive about Freeflow, he could be obsessive about its founder as well.

But if Dieter had killed Nico, it would mean that Erika’s story of what happened on the volcano was pure fabrication. And it certainly wasn’t Dieter who had chased Erika two days before.

Magnus’s phone rang.

‘Magnús? It’s Vigdís.’

‘I thought I told you to be at the airport?’

‘Well, I’m not. I’m at a small garage in Kópavogur. They rent out cars occasionally, usually to Icelanders, but sometimes to foreigners who find them on the Internet. They are unlicensed, which is why it’s taken us a while to find them.’

Magnus’s pulse quickened. ‘And?’

‘And they rented a black Suzuki Vitara out on Monday morning.’

‘To whom?’

‘To a Dutchman.’

‘A Dutchman!’ Magnus’s heart sank. Holland was about the only country in the world that hadn’t emerged in the investigation so far. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Jaap Peeters. Or at least that’s what he said his name was.’

‘Didn’t the guy check his driver’s licence? Or his passport? What about credit card?’

‘No.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘A big cash deposit. In euros.’

‘E-mail address?’

‘Hotmail. It will have been set up anonymously. But I showed him the picture of our assailant. The garage owner confirmed it was the same guy.’

Magnus shook his head. ‘And has the car been returned yet?’

‘No. It’s due back on Monday. A one-week rental.’

‘So the guy might not even
be
Dutch?’

‘No. Except the garage owner says he was reading a Dutch magazine, he remembers.’

Magnus hung up and put his head in his hands. ‘Árni!’

Árni looked up. ‘Yes?’

‘Get on to hotels in Reykjavík, and check the flight manifests again. We are looking for a Dutchman this time. Jaap Peeters.’

It didn’t take Baldur long to find the journal. It was open, face down, next to Ásta’s printer. For a moment, when he started reading, he thought she was the author. But the more he read, the more obvious it was that this was someone else’s diary, someone else’s life.

He skimmed it and his pulse quickened. This was going to be the beginning of something big, something nasty.

This was what Ásta had wanted to leak through Freeflow.

The journal belonged to a girl called Soffía. It was clearly one of several volumes, and had been written in 1993 and 1994. From what Baldur could make out, Soffía had been working in the office of the Bishop of Iceland at the time. A devout Christian, she had had a number of intense private conversations with him, which at first had left her inspired.