Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

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.
    Baldur knew where this was heading. Sure enough, the Bishop had seduced her, or forced himself on her, Baldur wasn’t sure which, and neither was the girl. He flicked forward through the
pages. Much of the rest of the journal was taken up with the details of sex sessions with the Bishop and what they all meant. The girl’s confusion was all too clear: Soffía was
becoming more and more desperate. Baldur turned to the end of the journal.
    The last page was as he suspected. On 13 November 1994 she decided she could carry on no longer.
    There were a lot of people Baldur should call. He decided to call Magnus.
    It took Magnus less than fifteen minutes to get to Grafarholt.
    Baldur was standing outside the entrance of Ásta’s apartment block.
    ‘Thanks for waiting for me,’ said Magnus.
    Baldur shrugged. ‘I thought you should be here.’ He held up the journal in his gloved hand. ‘This is going to make a lot of people unhappy.’
    Magnus was desperate to read the journal for himself, but he knew that would have to wait. ‘The Bishop of Iceland? That’s the Big Salmon of the whole Church, right? There’s
only one bishop?’ Iceland had an established national Church, which was Lutheran. Almost all Icelanders were nominally members, although few attended services every Sunday.
    ‘That’s right. This one died a couple of years ago. There was a big scandal in 1996 when two women went public with their complaints that he had sexually harassed them. He went after
them, claimed they were delusional, pressed charges for defamation against them.’
    ‘ He accused them ?’
    ‘Fortunately, the prosecutor dropped the charges. But the Church crushed the girls. One of them had to leave the country.’
    ‘And had he harassed them?’
    ‘What are