Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

Magnus was also expected to carry the torch of his father’s Icelandic heritage, to read and learn the sagas and the poems, even to travel to Iceland with his father, whereas Ollie
could watch TV and fool around at school. Ragnar had taken him to see a nice lady in Brookline every week, who Ollie had subsequently realized was a shrink. With the help of subsequent shrinks,
Ollie had figured out what his father was doing. Ragnar thought Ollie was screwed up and he felt guilty that he was responsible for it.
    So Ollie knew he was screwed up. Which explained the drugs, the failed relationships, the drinking. Maybe even his lack of ability to pull off the big real estate coup that always seemed just
around the corner. And he knew it was his father’s fault, along with his evil grandfather. But he had found his own way of dealing with things. Live for the present, enjoy yourself, and leave
the bad stuff well behind you.
    He reached the bottom of the hill, crossed a busy road and came to the pond in the middle of town. Fancy houses lined its shores, and a dozen different kinds of bird squealed and squabbled on
its water. The base of a rainbow rested on the metal roofs on the hill behind him, chopped off at the beginning of its curve.
    He sat down on a bench, ignoring the damp, to watch the birds.
    All had been hunky-dory until his father had been murdered that summer afternoon in Duxbury. Ollie had been at the beach with a girl, and they had been the ones who discovered his father’s
body when they returned to the house. The following days and weeks had been hell for Ollie, for Magnus and for their stepmother, Kathleen, who had even been suspected of the crime for a while. The
girl had lost no time in dropping Ollie.
    Ollie knew how to deal with it. Forget it. Deny it. Obliterate it. Why couldn’t Magnus do the same thing?
    But Magnus couldn’t. He had to stir and stir. Which was why Ollie was in Iceland.
    At first Ollie had regretted his decision to come to the lunch in the Culture Institute the day before. But he had listened closely to what the old schoolteacher Jóhannes had said,
especially those words from the saga of Thor the Tub-Thumper or whoever he was: ‘I would rather lose you than have a coward son.’
    He pulled out the scrap of paper on which the schoolteacher had written his address and phone number and stared at it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
    M AGNUS HAD INTENDED to see Viktor at his office after leaving Thórsgata, but it turned out that the lawyer was at
police headquarters, offering himself for interview.
    All the bluster was gone. It was clear that Viktor had been very fond of his niece and blamed himself for her murder.
    ‘Have you seen much of Ásta over the last few days?’ Magnus asked him.
    ‘Not really. Not since we were both in the house in Thórsgata on Sunday afternoon, getting it ready. I probably haven’t spoken to her alone at all since then.’
    ‘And how do you think she got on with the members of the Freeflow team?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Very well. They seemed to like her. She’s good with people. She would have made a very good pastor.’
    ‘She would have,’ said Magnus, remembering his own conversation with her on the drive back from the volcano. ‘Why was she so interested in Freeflow?’
    ‘She bought into the ideal. You know, freedom of information, transparency. She was a political idealist as well as a religious one. I remember talking to her about it at my
brother’s house just after Erika and Nico had visited Iceland last year. She said then that she would like to help in any way she could. So I called her last week when I heard Freeflow were
on their way. She had time on her hands, she was willing, and I knew she would be useful. Which she was. A bunch of geeks like that need someone normal to look after them.’
    ‘It seems strange to me that she was the one who was killed,’ Magnus said. ‘I mean she was on the periphery of Freeflow, wasn’t she? Did she give any indication why
anyone would want to kill her? Did she have any specific information?’
    Viktor frowned and shook his head. ‘You are right. She had seen the Gaza video – I take it you know about that now?’
    Magnus nodded. ‘I’ve seen it.’
    ‘OK,’ Viktor continued. ‘But then so had everyone else.’
    ‘Do you think she might have had a leak of her own for Freeflow?’ Magnus asked, remembering what Erika had told him.
    Viktor glanced at Magnus quickly. ‘I don’t know.