Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

for.’
    ‘Worth a try,’ Magnus said, impressed.
    Edda stood up straight. ‘It all looks pristine now, but the trouble is there have been hundreds of people up here over the last few weeks, thousands. And they will all have been dropping
stuff. There’s no way of telling what came from the killer and what came from a tourist a few days ago.’
    ‘I see what you mean,’ said Magnus. He was still finding it hard not to stare. Even wrapped up in forensic overalls over a heavy snow jacket she looked gorgeous. Ridiculous. If you
worked in Iceland you just had to get used to working with women like Edda.
    Or like Ingileif. Funny how he kept on thinking about her in the strangest places.
    ‘OK, I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you turn up anything.’
    He retraced his steps to the police jeeps where Ásta was waiting for him together with the local Hvolsvöllur cops.
    ‘You got a call on the radio,’ one of them said. ‘Inspector Baldur from Reykjavík. He wants to talk to you. Channel seventeen.’
    Baldur was head of the Violent Crimes Unit and kind of Magnus’s boss. ‘Kind of’ because actually Magnus reported directly to the National Police Commissioner and was
‘attached’ to Baldur’s department. Baldur was a cop of the old school, suspicious of new foreign methods. Although he was ten years older than Magnus and held a higher rank, he
had significantly less experience of homicide investigations. He knew that, as did Magnus and the Police Commissioner.
    A recipe for trouble. Which, Magnus suspected, was on its way. Especially since Baldur wanted to avoid the Hvolsvöllur police channel and switch to a more private frequency.
    ‘Good morning, Baldur.’
    ‘What the hell happened last night, Magnús? I’ve had the Commissioner on the phone. Apparently Árni assaulted an MP.’
    ‘Viktor isn’t pressing charges, is he?’ Magnus said.
    ‘No. Not this time. But he’s very angry. And he has lots of powerful friends.’
    ‘Did he say why he isn’t pressing charges?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Because he slugged Árni himself. And accused me of being a CIA spy. And called Vigdís a “nigger”. And I tell you if he does that again, I’ll slug him
myself.’
    ‘But she is a “nigger”, isn’t she?’
    Magnus took a deep breath. They were speaking Icelandic and Magnus had used the English word, as of course had Viktor. Baldur’s English was poor and his cultural sensitivity even worse.
Even so, it seemed to Magnus that Baldur should stand up for his officers.
    ‘I want Árni off the case,’ Baldur said.
    ‘I’m telling you, it wasn’t his fault,’ said Magnus. Not entirely true, but someone had to stand up for Árni, and it clearly wasn’t going to be Baldur.
Árni had a reputation for incompetence, but he was keen and he was loyal and he had once saved Magnus’s life, and that was good enough for Magnus. ‘If he’s off the case,
I’m off the case.’
    There was a pause on the radio. ‘We’ll discuss it later. Anything at the crime scene?’
    ‘Forensics will give it a thorough going over, but I doubt they will find anything. The victim died of a stab wound to the stomach. Has the press release gone out, do you know? It would be
good to find the snowmobilers and the couple in the other jeep.’
    ‘It has. And Chief Superintendent Kristján is doing a press conference at nine o’clock.’
    ‘We need a warrant to search the Freeflow house in Thórsgata. And their computers. Especially their computers.’
    ‘Vigdís is going to talk to Rannveig as soon as she gets in.’ Rannveig was the assistant prosecutor in Reykjavík. She would need to take a warrant to the judge at the
District Court on Laekjargata. It shouldn’t be a problem: from Magnus’s limited experience, judges in Iceland were quite cooperative about that sort of thing.
    ‘OK,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m on my way back to Reykjavík.’
    He hung up. The two policemen who had stayed on the glacier overnight were ready to go back to Hvolsvöllur, and so Magnus asked them to give Ásta and him a lift. He would pick up his
own vehicle from outside the police station.
    The priest’s face was pale, her expression thoughtful.
    ‘I hope none of the information you refused to give us would help us find Nico’s killer,’ said Magnus. ‘Because otherwise you are going to feel very guilty for a very
long time.’
    Ásta glanced at Magnus quickly and climbed into the jeep.

CHAPTER SIX
    ‘“E ARL