Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

artificial. It’s made up of heated water from the geothermal plant.’
    ‘That’s a bit disappointing.’
    ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll like it.’
    They passed a line of racks on which what looked like brown rags hung. ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Drying racks for cod. Stockfish, I think you call it.’
    ‘Do we?’ said Erika. She had never heard of them. They looked disgusting.
    They were now very close to the power station, which was beginning to look like some exotic Cold War base from an old James Bond movie. Metal domes, wires, black rocks piled in puzzling
directions and steam spewing out of the ground. They rounded a corner and were soon in a kind of stone amphitheatre, which doubled as a parking lot. One bus and a dozen or so cars were parked
there.
    ‘We’re lucky,’ said Dúddi. ‘This place can get crowded, but it doesn’t look too bad this morning.’
    They walked through a pathway cut into the rock and into a modern glass and wooden building. The entry ticket price was high. Franz took very little persuasion to pay for Erika. Dúddi
said he would wait for them both in the café.
    Erika went into the changing rooms and showered. She stripped off the dressing on her cheek; she was sure the water would do her wound good. She put on her rented swimsuit and went out to the
lagoon.
    The cold air bit her exposed skin, but it was only a few steps into the water, which was an unnatural bright milky blue. She closed her eyes as she lowered her body down to her neck and felt the
warm soft liquid embrace her.
    In the cold air, steam rose from the water and she couldn’t see how far the lagoon stretched. Underfoot was a soft white mud. She noticed a couple of women had smeared it on to their
faces. Maybe she would try that later.
    It was crowded near the entrance to the pool, and so she waded out deeper. She wasn’t looking for Franz and hoped he wouldn’t find her. She wanted to be alone.
    The steam hovered just above the water, dampening sound as well as obscuring vision. Yet she could see upwards to the cold clear sky. It was a very strange sensation, to be surrounded by warmth
and yet to see rock cliffs rising just a few hundred feet beyond the lagoon. The pool turned out to be quite large and she began to swim a gentle breaststroke. Eventually she reached the far side:
a perimeter of rocks piled high. She could see no one through the steam.
    She lay on her back and floated: it was easy to float in that mineral-rich water. She closed her eyes. She could hear the murmur of voices in many languages: English spoken with an Irish accent;
Spanish; some kind of Scandinavian language with a different rhythm to Icelandic.
    It felt good. It felt so good. There was something soft and invigorating about the water beyond just its temperature.
    She had a lot to do once they reached the airport. She hadn’t yet thought how she would run the press conference, what she would say. She would decide that later.
    She was proud of what they had achieved in Iceland, but the cost had been too high. Although she was angry at the way Nico had betrayed her, she was deeply sad about his death. She had enjoyed
being with him.
    And Ásta. Someone with so much promise ahead of her should not have died.
    She thought about the man who had twice tried to attack her. Why couldn’t the police figure out who he was? Erika’s instinct was that he was Israeli. But there was something familiar
about him. She was pretty sure that she had never seen him before, but he did remind her of someone.
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure wading through the steam. She turned to look. A wisp of steam blew away so that she saw the profile.
    It was Franz.
    No, the man was bigger than Franz.
    Oh God! She recognized him.
    She stood up straight. The man saw her and increased his stride towards her. There was no one else in sight.
    Beneath the ripples she saw a dancing rod of grey steel. He was going to stab her, drop the knife and disappear into the steam.
    He was only a few yards away now. Behind her was the rough rocky edge of the lagoon. She could never climb out that way in time. She was trapped.
    She screamed.
    Magnus drove fast. As they reached the turn-off from the airport road, he saw the lights of two police cars coming the other way from Keflavík.
    ‘Keep an eye out on the lava field,’ he said to his colleagues.
    Although the terrain was basically flat, there were slashes across the landscape: gullies and