Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

catch him. so if you have any questions about freeflow,
     ask me. maybe i can answer them maybe i can’t.
    Magnus smiled. That was interesting. Clearly someone at Freeflow wanted to help him. He wondered which of the group had written the message. Not Erika, obviously. Probably not Ásta.
Perhaps Franz? Or someone with a longer period of involvement: Dúddi or Dieter?
    What to ask?
    He remembered Baldur’s words. If there were any tensions within the Freeflow group, they hadn’t come out in any of the interviews so far. But Teresa’s dramatic outburst had
demonstrated that there were things going on between members of the group that Erika and the rest of them had kept from the police.
    Magnus began to type:
    No one told us about Nico and Erika’s relationship. Is there anything else going on between the people at Freeflow that we should know
     about?
    Also who are you? I appreciate that you might not want the others to know that you have been in touch with me, but it would help me to know what to ask
     you.
    Thanks for your help.
    Magnus
    Erika needed to get out of the house. The big cop, Magnus, might have warned her against it, but she just had to get away from the tense silence of the crowded room. She would
explode otherwise. She pulled on her running kit and without saying anything to anyone, stepped out into the road.
    The air was wonderfully fresh after the foetid house. Patches of blue came and went behind fast-moving clouds, and there was a brisk, salt-laden breeze blowing.
    She hadn’t looked at a map since she had arrived, but uphill to the big church and then down to the left would take her to the bay. She set off at speed.
    It wasn’t far to the top of the hill, but the wind was stronger there. She eased off as she loped down a small street, crossed a larger road lined with stores, dodging a couple of
meandering tourists on the sidewalk, and headed down towards the water.
    She crossed the busy road and hit the bike path right along the shoreline. At last she could get into a rhythm.
    As a rule, Erika didn’t do guilt. She saw guilt as one of those negative impulses injected into her psyche when she was young by her parents, with the intention of holding her back. Others
were a desire for status, a duty to have children and a need for a monthly pay cheque.
    She had fought them all and won. Provided you knew what you stood for, were open and honest at all times, and believed in your fellow humans, then Erika knew that you had nothing to feel guilty
about. And she was all of those things: OK, sometimes she wasn’t exactly honest, but you couldn’t get anywhere unless you were willing to bend the truth for a good cause.
    Yet it was hard to avoid the sense of guilt. Teresa’s pain was real. Her hatred of Erika was real. Her love of Nico was real.
    Was Teresa right? Had Erika not only taken her husband away from her, but also caused his death?
    For a moment, Erika’s steps faltered. She slowed down, became aware of how tired she was. The wind blew down cold from the big block of Mount Esja to the north. Perhaps she should just
pack her suitcase and move out of the house as soon as she got home.
    And then what would she do?
    No, Erika was committed to her life, to her cause. Teresa was wrong. Teresa must be wrong.
    Erika thought it all through, sensibly this time. Although she was quite capable of seducing married men, it was Nico who had seduced her. Right here in Reykjavík the previous November.
Erika had been planning to stay at a cheap guesthouse when Nico had changed the reservations to the 101 hotel, the smartest hotel in town, paying the bill himself. He had booked two rooms, but they
ended up only using one of them.
    He wouldn’t have done that if he had loved Teresa.
    He might have loved her once, but he loved Erika more. And Erika knew why. She and Freeflow had given Nico a sense of purpose. He had had a bad couple of years at his hedge fund in London, but
he had thrown himself into helping her build up Freeflow. He had loved it.
    He had loved her.
    It was all his choice. All of it. She needn’t point that out to Teresa, but she herself shouldn’t forget it.
    She had gone quite a distance – past the white mansion with the flags, and almost to the end of the road of plush new office buildings.
    She turned around. She was tired, but the blood was flowing. Things were rearranging themselves in her head, as she knew they would.
    She wasn’t sure precisely where she had emerged