Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

worked the odd interesting case in his first year; perhaps this would be another one. ‘Are there any suspects?’
    ‘Not yet,’ said Vigdís. ‘They’ve rounded up the witnesses at the Hvolsvöllur Police Station. That’s where we’re going now.’
    ‘What about the scene of the crime?’
    ‘That’s a little inaccessible at the moment. It’s on the rim of the Fimmvörduháls volcano. And there’s a blizzard blowing.’
    It was past midnight by the time they reached Hvolsvöllur, a small agricultural town on the broad floodplain to the south-east of Reykjavík. With Magnus were two
other detectives from the Violent Crimes Unit: Vigdís, one of the few female detectives in Reykjavík and certainly the only black one; and Árni, who was young, keen and
error-prone. It was Árni’s sister who was Magnus’s landlady. Vigdís had left her car outside Magnus’s place and the three of them had piled into Magnus’s Range
Rover, which was better suited to the terrain outside Reykjavík. Magnus was glad he had only had a few sips of his beer; it would have been a shame to miss the case because he had had a
skinful.
    The police station was a square modern building opposite the Saga Centre on the edge of town. Inside, lights were on.
    They were met by Chief Superintendent Kristján Sveinsson, a neat, dark-haired man of about forty, displaying the three yellow stars of his rank on his black uniform. Although a chief
superintendent, Kristján – whatever their rank or title Icelanders always called each other by their first names – had only nine officers reporting to him. For serious cases such
as a murder, he needed reinforcements from Reykjavík.
    Kristján showed the three detectives into his office, small but modern and tidy.
    ‘What happened?’ asked Magnus.
    ‘A group of foreign journalists went up to see the volcano with a couple of Icelanders. The weather was bad; there weren’t many other sightseers up there. Two of them – Nico
the murder victim and an American woman named Erika – wandered away from the others. They were attacked by a single assailant and Nico was stabbed.
    ‘Erika ran away, with the assailant chasing her. Other members of the group came back to look for her and Nico. When the assailant saw them, he gave up the chase and
disappeared.’
    ‘Anything at the scene?’ Magnus asked. ‘Murder weapon?’
    ‘The assailant took his knife with him. The crime scene is a blizzard. I have two men up there now, but I doubt we’ll find anything. Forensics will come out from Reykjavík
first thing in the morning.’
    ‘And the body?’
    ‘Still up there waiting for the forensics guys.’
    Magnus grunted. Normally, you wanted crime-scene investigators at the scene as soon as possible, but Magnus understood why it didn’t make sense to crawl around a volcano with a pair of
tweezers in a blizzard in the dark.
    ‘I pity your guys,’ Magnus said.
    ‘They’re used to it,’ said the chief superintendent. ‘We’ve spent all our time up there over the last three weeks, trying to control the sightseers. I feared
someone would get killed at some point. But not like this.’
    ‘Witnesses?’
    ‘The group are all here in the station. Four journalists and two Icelanders. One of them is a priest.’
    ‘A priest? Really? What was he doing there?’
    ‘It’s a she. And we haven’t interviewed them in any depth yet.’
    ‘Good,’ said Magnus. ‘What about other witnesses?’
    ‘We’re looking. They say there was a couple in a jeep and two snowmobilers up by the volcano. They passed other vehicles coming down on their way up the glacier, but the weather was
so bad by the time they got there there was scarcely anyone around.’
    ‘We should appeal for witnesses to come forward. A press conference first thing in the morning.’
    ‘I can arrange that.’
    ‘OK, Vigdís, you interview the Icelanders,’ said Magnus. Vigdís didn’t speak English. ‘I’ll interview the foreigners with Árni. Can you lend us
a man to join Vigdís?’ he asked Kristján.
    ‘I can do it if you like?’
    Magnus almost laughed. In Boston a chief superintendent would never have offered to sit in as an assistant to a mere sergeant detective, but this was Iceland. This guy was clearly smart, and he
wanted to be helpful.
    ‘Sure. Please do. So where are these people?’
    Kristján showed Magnus through to a kind of common room where half a dozen figures were huddled miserably around a table,