Meltwater (27 page)

Magnus repeated his description and said he was due to spend some time with a police artist that morning.

‘You heard him speak, did you, Magnús?’ Baldur asked.

‘Yes.’

‘In English?’

‘Yes.’

‘What kind of accent did he have?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. It was a good question. ‘He only said a few words.’ Magnus closed his eyes trying to remember. ‘It was foreign – I mean he wasn’t a native English speaker. And definitely not Icelandic or Germanic. Could have been Italian . . . French . . . Spanish, something like that.’

‘Israeli?’

‘I guess. I’m not really sure what an Israeli accent sounds like.’

‘Did he look like a professional killer?’ Vigdís asked.

Magnus remembered the manic eyes. The failure to cut Erika’s throat when he had her in his grasp.

‘No. No, I don’t think so, but we shouldn’t rule it out. He could be an idealist. And we know he’s capable of killing. Whatever he is, he’s still out there. We ought to increase the police presence at the house on Thórsgata.’

The uniformed inspector nodded. ‘I’ll do that.’

‘Now. Let’s go through all the possible suspects again.’

They spent an hour going through Israelis, Italians, Canadians driving Suzuki Vitara rental cars, US college fraternities, Mikael Már and his French business client, Teresa, the inhabitants of the house. There were leads to follow up: an Israeli tourist unaccounted for, last seen in the east of Iceland. And leads to drop: the group of Italians who had stayed at the Hotel Rangá were having dinner there the moment Nico was attacked. There was plenty to do and not enough people to do it. Vigdís wasn’t there – her flight to Paris was that afternoon. Magnus could have used her.

‘Did you check out the café receipt at Heathrow, Árni?’

‘The receipt was timed at 12:17 and there was an Icelandair flight departing from that terminal at 13:00.’

‘Anyone interesting on the flight?’

‘Nico Andreose was the only member of the Freeflow team. It was Sunday; presumably he flew over earlier than the others.’

‘I wonder if he recognized the killer?’ Magnus said.

Árni pondered Magnus’s question. ‘I suppose he might have done. He might even have chatted to him – since there was no one else from Freeflow on the plane we wouldn’t know.’

‘Yes. It’s worth checking whether he mentioned anything to the rest of the team later. You know: “Guess who I saw on the plane yesterday?” What about Israelis? Italians?’

‘No Israelis. Apart from Nico there was one Italian couple, but they were in their sixties.’ Árni checked his notes. ‘Mostly Icelanders, quite a few British, three US citizens, then a couple of Canadians, French, Belgian, Japanese, Thai, Irish. No real lead that I could see.’

Magnus was disappointed, especially given the risks he had taken to find the damn receipt.

‘I checked the Skull and Bones society on the Freeflow website,’ Árni said.

‘And?’

‘Nothing. Nothing from Yale at all.’

‘Check Ohio State,’ said Magnus, thinking of Franz, who had said he’d spent a year there. Although he doubted very much that a year in Columbus, Ohio would inspire enough loyalty in the young Swiss to kill.

‘What about the CIA?’ Árni asked.

The whole room looked at Magnus. He hadn’t told any of them about his meeting with Bryant, and he didn’t intend to. The CIA had an agenda and Magnus had no idea what it really was. He had had few dealings with the agency in the States. The FBI, all the time. Homeland Security occasionally; there was no predicting what
they
might get up to once they had an idea in their heads. But not the CIA.

‘I’ll think about that one,’ said Magnus.

‘Do you want me to make inquiries with the American Embassy?’ said Thorkell.

‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m not sure they’ll tell you anything, but they might.’ Bryant had suggested that the CIA had been in touch with the Icelandic government for its help in impeding Freeflow’s activities. Clearly Thorkell knew nothing of that. But it would be useful if he could unearth the Icelanders’ side of the story.

‘What about Teresa?’ Baldur asked.

Magnus suppressed a flash or irritation. ‘I interviewed her briefly yesterday.’

‘And?’

‘She’s angry about her husband. Angry
with
her husband, that’s for sure. And with Erika. Understandably.’

‘Very understandably,’ said Baldur. ‘Did she pay someone to kill them?’

Magnus swallowed. ‘I didn’t ask her.’

‘Shouldn’t you have?’

‘Yes,’ Magnus said. ‘Yes, of course.’ Baldur was absolutely right. Teresa needed a grilling, however unpleasant that would be for all concerned, and Magnus really should have done it the day before. His instinct then was that her anger at her husband’s death was genuine, but Baldur’s suggestion was theoretically possible, and should be followed up, if only to rule it out. ‘I’ll bring her in this morning.’

‘Can I join you?’

‘By all means,’ said Magnus.

Magnus spent ten minutes dividing up tasks, and then the meeting broke up just in time for a press conference, which he attended with Thorkell. Lots of questions, lots of answers. Plenty of excitement that there was a foreign killer on the loose in Reykjavík. Magnus gave a description, but didn’t mention the Vitara. If the suspect was still using that vehicle, Magnus didn’t want him to ditch it – which he would certainly do if he heard about it on TV.

‘We need to find this man soon, Magnús,’ said Thorkell. ‘They’re excited today – they’ll be angry tomorrow.’

‘I know,’ said Magnus.

Erika was afraid. She had worked almost all night on the video, hoping to push the fear out of her mind, but the more tired she got, the more it crept back.

She had been in danger before, in the hellhole that was Rwanda, when she was much younger. Twice she had had the barrel of a Kalashnikov shoved into her face. Once a bunch of heavily armed Hutus had threatened to rape her. Somehow, Guillaume, the Rwandan doctor who later briefly became her husband, had talked them out of it. She had been scared, but at the age of twenty she had somehow always known she would come through alive.

She was kidding herself then, of course – it was the illusion of invulnerability of youth – but she had believed it, and she had stayed in Rwanda for nine more months, returning to the States with a husband.

She was older now and she knew she wasn’t invulnerable. If Nico could die, so could she.

Of the many things she felt guilty about, at least she no longer felt guilty about betraying Israel. If the Israelis had killed Nico and were trying to kill her, they deserved all they got. If anything, it was the Israeli state who were betraying people like her grandmother, loyal Jews who believed in the Promised Land. It was up to Erika and Freeflow to expose that betrayal.

It was always the same: the closer you looked at the secrets of a government, any government, the more filth you found.

She wondered about protection. They could use a couple of guns. She glanced around the room. She would never trust Dieter with a firearm, but she knew how to operate a handgun. Franz seemed capable and she had read somewhere that the Swiss did military service. As did Israeli women. That was three of them.

She would ask Magnus when she next saw him, which would no doubt be some time that morning.

She swigged from a can of Red Bull and touched her cheek. The doctor had said there would be a small scar, but it would fade. Erika wasn’t too bothered. She had never been a classic beauty, and somehow she felt her allure to men would only be enhanced with a war wound.

She was exhausted. She could work long hours without sleep. Her brain was a battleground, the forces of fatigue fighting the caffeine, adrenaline and pure determination. She knew she should rest, or her judgement would begin to go. And a misjudgement could blow the whole project.

The corner of her screen flickered. A message. From Gareth.

Gareth:
bad news.

Erika:
please don’t tell me you’re not at heathrow.

Gareth:
i’m at heathrow. and so is my plane. but it’s not going anywhere, at least today. all flights are cancelled. uk airspace is closed.

Erika:
why?

Gareth:
because of your volcano. there is an ash cloud over the atlantic and all over britain.

‘Damn liar!’ Erika growled to herself. She stood up and went to the living-room window, flicking back the curtain. Grey clouds. Clear air. She stalked back to the computer.

Erika:
there’s no ash. get your ass over here!

Gareth:
hey, it’s not up to me. if they won’t let the planes fly there’s nothing i can do.

Dieter:
i just checked. he’s right. there’s a big cloud of ash blowing south from Iceland stopping flights into the uk.

Erika glanced across at Dieter only a few feet away from her, cocooned in his headphones. He, of course, had drawn his observation from his computer screen and not the real world outside. He shrugged and shook his head.

Erika:
have they said when you can fly?

Gareth:
they say they will make another announcement at 3pm. it all depends on the wind apparently.

Erika:
okay, don’t leave the airport. get your ass on the first plane to reykjavik.

Gareth:
ok. i’ll let you know as soon as they tell me my flight’s leaving.

Erika stared at the screen. The video editing was going well. Dieter and Apex had set up a complicated series of websites to host it. The big weakness was verification.

Erika:
apex, did you get that?

Apex:
yeah.

Of course he did. It might be the middle of the night around the other side of the world, but Apex would be faithfully staring at his screen.

Erika:
are you still worried about the engine noise of the helicopter?’

Apex:
frankly, yes. gareth says it’s probably just the wind conditions at the time of the incident, or the pitch of the rotor blades, but i need him to check it out properly, which he hasn’t been able to do yet.

Erika:
maybe he’ll get out tonight. or tomorrow.

Apex:
he had better. but i do have some good news.

Erika:
what?

Apex:
15,000 euros just hit our account.

‘Yes!’ Erika punched the air. ‘See that, Dieter?’ she shouted across the room to her colleague, but he was still staring at his screen, earphones on, waiting for her to type something.

Erika:
yay!!! where did it come from?

Apex:
no idea. all donations are anonymized. you know that.

Erika:
yes, but can’t you get into the system and find out?

Apex:
i set it up so I couldn’t. we agreed it was better all round if we didn’t know where the money came from.

Typical Apex, Erika thought. What a warped sense of integrity he had; she didn’t understand it. She wondered who the donor was. Viktor, perhaps? But why would he make it anonymously?

Still, fifteen thousand euros was fifteen thousand euros. She wasn’t going to quibble.

Erika:
can you send it on to Sweden?

Apex:
it’s on its way. i contacted them and they confirmed as long as their bank gets the funds by friday, they’ll host our sites over the weekend.

Erika:
so we are all set. as long as gareth gets here tomorrow.

Apex:
what about alan? wasn’t he flying to london this morning?

‘Shit!’ exclaimed Erika.

Erika:
i’ll check.

She picked out one of the phones Viktor and Dúddi had bought, and dialled a US cell-phone number.

‘Alan Traub.’

‘Hey, Alan, it’s Erika. Where are you?’

‘At the Hertz desk at Heathrow.’

‘Thank God. I thought your flight might have been cancelled. There’s an ash cloud from the volcano here heading for Britain.’

‘They didn’t tell us anything about that. But I’m definitely in England now.’

‘Are you going to see Samantha Wilton?’

‘Called her yesterday. She lives in Beaconsfield: it’s not far from the airport. I’ll probably be there in an hour or so. When can I say she can see the video?’

‘We’re aiming to have it finished noon Sunday. I’ll fly to London that afternoon and I’ll bring it with me. She can see it that evening. We’ll do the press conference on Monday and put it up on our website then. I warn you, she’s not going to like it.’

‘I’ll tell her that. But I know she’ll want to see it.’

‘And she’s happy with attending the press conference?’

‘I’ll talk to her about it this morning.’

‘OK, I won’t keep you. Give me a call when you’ve spoken to her.’