Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

of everything on them. The sooner you cooperate with us, the sooner we can leave you alone. And, more importantly, the sooner we can find
whoever it was who killed your friend.’
    Magnus turned to Viktor. ‘OK, everyone should wait in the kitchen area. Is there a bedroom where we can conduct the interviews? I’d like to start with Erika again.’
    ‘Sure,’ said Viktor.
    Magnus’s phone rang. He answered. ‘Magnús.’
    ‘It’s Edda.’
    Magnus picked up the hint of excitement in the forensics team leader’s voice. ‘What have you found?’
    ‘Much as we thought. There is a lot of junk under the snow, and we have no way of telling who dropped it. But we did isolate the rock the assailant tried to strike Erika with. And there is
a fibre of some kind on it.’
    ‘Any chance you can get any DNA?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Impossible to say with the naked eye. But you should take DNA samples from all the witnesses and bring in the clothes they were wearing yesterday, especially gloves.’
    ‘I’m with them now,’ said Magnus. ‘We’ll do that. Let me know if you find anything else.’
    There was another knock on the door: it was a team of uniformed police officers plus another member of the forensics unit. Magnus gave them instructions, and a couple of minutes later he was
crammed into a small bedroom with Rannveig, Viktor and Erika. It looked out over a scrappy garden at the back. Some personal touches from the owners of the property remained: bright yellow curtains
and some artistic photographs of Icelandic horses galloping along beaches. A sleeping bag was rolled up in a corner.
    Erika and Viktor sat on the bed, at different ends, and Rannveig and Magnus took the two chairs.
    Erika looked very cool and composed, as if she was just about to begin a difficult business meeting or negotiation.
    Magnus didn’t like that.
    ‘You were very nearly killed yesterday, Erika,’ he began.
    Erika nodded.
    ‘And your friend was killed.’
    ‘That’s right.’ And I couldn’t give a damn , her expression seemed to say.
    Well, Magnus gave a damn.
    ‘So I’d like you to do everything you can to help us find who killed him.’
    ‘Sure, I’ll do that.’
    ‘Provided you don’t ask her about what Freeflow are working on now,’ said Viktor.
    Magnus ignored him. ‘OK. I would guess that Freeflow has some enemies. Can we go through them?’
    ‘All right,’ said Erika. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. You’re correct; we have a lot of enemies. The Chinese, the Zimbabweans, the Sudanese, some people in
Belgium, lots of powerful Italians, a big German bank, a whole bunch of American frat boys, and probably some other people we’ve pissed off along the way. But the guy I saw on the mountain
wasn’t Asian and he wasn’t African, so that narrows it down a bit.’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Magnus. ‘But there’s nothing to stop these people paying a white guy to do their dirty work.’
    ‘I really can’t imagine the Sudanese doing that.’
    ‘Well, let’s go through them one by one. We’ll figure out the likely candidates once we’ve done that.’
    Magnus spent the next twenty minutes writing down details of the various entities Freeflow had exposed. It was an impressive list, and most of them deserved to have their dirty washing aired.
There was no doubt that the Italians were top of the list of suspects. Stirring up corrupt politicians and organized crime in the land which gave the world the word ‘Mafia’ was clearly
a dangerous activity.
    ‘Was Nico involved in the Italian leak at all?’ Magnus asked. ‘He was Italian, after all.’
    ‘No. It was before his time: he wasn’t part of the team then.’
    ‘OK. What about the Chinese?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘That’s an interesting one,’ said Erika. ‘The main reason they hate us is that we eavesdropped on their eavesdropping. They have been harvesting information from
the Internet for years using weaknesses in the Tor nodes. We saw what they were getting and helped ourselves to it. Since then they have been trying to break into our own computer systems. You
could say we are at war with them. But it’s a war in cyberspace, not the real world.’
    ‘I see. And the CIA? Nothing you have said so far seems to affect the CIA directly.’
    ‘No. But we know that it has also been trying to hack into our network. And I have been followed many times.’
    ‘Were you followed when you arrived here yesterday?’
    ‘No, I don’t think so. I did look.