Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

smiled. Magnus could see she
was genuinely pleased for him. Although they had never spoken about it, Katrín knew he missed her. She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I’ll leave you two alone.’
    ‘See you later,’ said Ollie.
    ‘Oh, Katrín,’ said Magnus. ‘Can Ollie use your spare bedroom tonight? I thought he could sleep on my floor, but with Ingileif in town . . .’
    ‘I’m sure I can find room for your cute little brother,’ she said with a quick glance at Ollie, and left the kitchen.
    ‘Come upstairs, Ollie,’ said Magnus.
    ‘Katrín and I became quite well acquainted,’ Ollie said, following Magnus up the stairs. ‘She’s very friendly, you know?’
    ‘Yeah. I knew you’d get along, I just didn’t think you’d get along that well.’
    Ollie did well with women, always had. He had a mixture of cockiness and vulnerability that seemed to appeal to some of them; why, Magnus wasn’t quite sure.
    ‘Nice view,’ said Ollie, looking out of the window and up the hill at the swooping spire.
    ‘Yeah, it’s not a bad place,’ said Magnus. ‘Katrín doesn’t charge me too much.’
    ‘And Ingileif is back? I remember you talking about her. Will I get to meet her?’
    ‘Probably later. She’s out with clients this evening. And she’s not staying in Iceland very long. She’s still working in Hamburg.’
    ‘What is all that?’ Ollie exclaimed looking at Magnus’s wall. ‘Is that all about Dad’s death?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘And the death of Benedikt Jóhannesson the author. I told you about that.’
    ‘You’re seriously strange, you know that?’ said Ollie staring at the wall. ‘Hey, that’s a photo of me! What am I doing there? Where do I fit in?’
    ‘You don’t, really,’ said Magnus.
    ‘Too right, I don’t. Hey, can we go out to a bar or something?’
    The words I don’t want to stay in a room with that on the wall were unsaid, but Magnus understood them.
    ‘Sure,’ he said.
    Magnus’s regular hangout, the Grand Rokk, had closed a couple of months before, much to his sorrow – yet another victim of the credit crunch. So they went to a bar down the hill,
Kaffibarinn. It was just a small black-painted building with a London Underground sign above the door. It was empty on a Wednesday evening, cosy and civilized. It was difficult to imagine the
seething crowd of drink- and drug-fuelled bodies heaving to the music that crammed into the place on a Friday or Saturday night.
    Magnus bought his brother another beer.
    ‘How are things going?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Not good,’ said Ollie. ‘I keep on thinking that the market’s coming back, but then it goes dead on me. And the rent isn’t quite enough to cover the mortgage
payments.’
    ‘The students are still coming though?’
    ‘Yeah. But as you know the plan was always to make capital gains.’
    Ollie had purchased half a dozen houses in Medford, a suburb of Boston near Tufts University. They were the kind that students liked to rent. He had borrowed heavily to do it, hoping to flip
them as prices rose. It was something he had been doing for several years, and he had made some good money, all of which he had ploughed back into more properties. He had urged Magnus to join him,
but Magnus had resisted. Then the crash came, house prices fell, but the debt Ollie owed to the banks only got bigger.
    Perhaps Ollie was more of an Icelander than he realized.
    ‘Maybe things will get better in the summer,’ Magnus said.
    ‘Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Hey, any chance I can get to see this volcano? That sounds cool.’
    ‘The pretty one has stopped erupting,’ Magnus said. ‘There’s a big ugly one going at it now.’
    He described his morning drive out to Skógafoss and the jökulhlaup . And then his evening entertainment with the guy with the knife.
    ‘And you told me life here is dull,’ Ollie said.
    ‘It is most of the time. And then something happens, and an interesting case crops up. I guess I should just be more patient. I’m used to a couple of murders a week.’
    ‘Yeah, but those are on the streets of Southie, not on the edge of a friggin’ volcano.’
    ‘That’s true,’ said Magnus.
    ‘Another beer?’ said Ollie. He went up to the bar and bought them from a girl with green hair and a ring through her nose. Magnus couldn’t hear what Ollie said to her, but he
did hear her laugh. Turned out she was from New Hampshire, Ollie announced when he returned with the drinks.
    ‘Speaking of murders in