Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

showed no remorse for trying to murder Erika, just regret that they had not
succeeded. Magnus doubted that Franz had the guts to kill anyone himself. But even now he seemed to be under the influence of Sébastien: he was adamant that what his elder brother had done
was right and that Erika had deserved to die. Reality had not sunk in. Yet.
    But Sébastien had known what he was doing all along. He was a cold-blooded, calculating killer. His own grief had not given him the right to ruin the lives of all those who knew and loved
Ásta and Nico. Very few people who were prosecuted in the Icelandic justice system were acquitted, and Magnus was pretty sure that Sébastien and François Freitag were going
down. Which was a thought that gave him pleasure.
    Árni’s knife wound was more than a scratch, but less than a hole – more of a slice, really. He had been stitched up at the hospital in Keflavík, but would be off work
for a couple of days. Magnus had agreed to keep the ‘Cowabunga’ out of his report.
    The computer settled down and Magnus typed in the relevant website address. A picture of an empty lectern appeared, somewhere in London. A crowd of journalists murmured out of shot. After a
minute or so, the hubbub died down and two people appeared: Erika and a blonde woman of about twenty-three with a fresh rosy face.
    Erika approached the microphone. ‘Good morning, everybody,’ she said. ‘And thank you for coming at such short notice. We are going to show you a video of an event that happened
on 14 January 2009 in Gaza. With me is Samantha Wilton: her sister, Tamara, is one of the people you will see on the video. The video lasts three minutes, and is an edited-down version of the full
sixteen-minute footage that was given to Freeflow. The unedited version is on our website, should you wish to view it.’
    She paused, looking around the audience. ‘I will not tell you what we at Freeflow think of what you will soon see. That is not our role. It is up to you to interpret. But I will ask
Samantha to say a few words afterwards.’
    The camera switched to a projector behind the lectern where a grainy black-and-white video ran. There were subtitles as the Hebrew was translated into English. Also the names of the victims were
captioned as they spilled out of their vehicle.
    Magnus had seen the unedited version before, but it was just as horrifying the second time around. Worse, given the translations of the Israeli soldiers’ comments as they were firing.
    The screen went black. There was a long silence, broken only by a cough from one of the journalists. Then Samantha Wilton approached the lectern and began to speak haltingly. It was
disconcerting to see the identical twin of the figure that a moment earlier had been writhing in the dirt in Gaza. She was brave, she was beautiful and she was angry.
    She only spoke for two minutes. Her words were understated, but they were powerful. What had just been shown was immoral, unjust, criminal. And the criminals should be made to pay.
    Magnus watched Erika take a couple of questions from the journalists, and then he shut down his computer. He planned to go into the station later that morning to plough through paperwork. Murder
always generated paperwork: fortunately there was less of it in Reykjavík than he was used to in Boston. But before he did that, Magnus wanted to speak to Ollie. Presumably Ollie’s
flight was still scheduled to leave that afternoon – flights from Reykjavík to the States had mostly been uninterrupted. In fact, Magnus should take his brother to the airport.
    There was yet another difficult conversation to be had with him. Jóhannes was right; Magnus had a duty to tell Snorri about the similarities between Benedikt’s murder and his own
father’s. Perhaps on Monday. Ollie wouldn’t like that, but he had a right to know what Magnus was planning.
    It was Sunday, and Ollie’s last morning, so Magnus waited an hour or so before going downstairs to wake his brother up. There were signs someone had already had breakfast.
    He went through to Katrín’s bedroom and knocked on the door. Twice. Three times.
    Eventually she appeared, blinking. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
    ‘Have you got my brother in there?’
    ‘No. He left early this morning. He says he’s going for a drive with a friend?’
    ‘A friend?’
    ‘Some schoolteacher he met.’
    Schoolteacher? That must be Jóhannes. ‘Did he say where he was going?’
    ‘Yeah. Back