Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

describing how he had died: a stab wound in the back and two more in the chest.
    In the middle of the wall, connecting these two murders in some way as yet unknown to Magnus, was Magnus’s family, or more specifically, his mother’s family.
    There were two photographs of his mother. One of her in her twenties, leaning against his father, sitting in a café on holiday somewhere in Italy, looking relaxed, happy and beautiful:
light tan, blond hair falling down over her eyes, warm smile. The other, taken ten years later, of the same woman only different: puffy eyes, lined face, pursed lips. That was a couple of months
before she drank half a bottle of vodka and drove herself into a rock.
    Also in this section of the wall were photographs of Bjarnarhöfn, the farm on the Snaefells Peninsula just a couple of kilometres from Hraun where Magnus’s grandparents lived, and
where Magnus and Ollie had spent the four most miserable years of their lives. There was a photograph of Hallgrímur, Magnus’s grandfather and the farmer of Bjarnarhöfn, who had
made the two boys’ lives so miserable. They had been sent there after their father had moved to Massachusetts, leaving their mother, swiftly becoming an alcoholic, in Iceland. She
couldn’t cope and so the boys had been sent to their grandparents’ farm. It was a time Magnus wanted to forget and his little brother Ollie had blanked out entirely.
    So what linked the family in the middle with the unsolved murders on the left and the right? Magnus didn’t know.
    No matter how long he stared at the wall, he didn’t know.
    There were clues.
    A promising line of inquiry had emerged the previous autumn, when Magnus had called up the old file on Benedikt’s murder and discovered that the writer had died in exactly the same way as
his father. He had also discovered there was a feud between Benedikt’s family and Hallgrímur’s. And Magnus knew, of course, that Hallgrímur hated Magnus’s father,
although apparently the old man had been happy to see his son-in-law leave the country and Magnus’s mother.
    Magnus was a detective; he wanted to investigate. Ollie, his brother back in America, begged him not to.
    Magnus had flown to Boston for a couple of days in January. Visited Duxbury, spoken to the detective who had worked the case fourteen years before, stayed with Ollie, tried to talk him round,
but with no success.
    For the sake of his damaged little brother, Magnus had held off asking more questions in Iceland. He had felt a sense of duty towards Ollie ever since they were kids together at their
grandparents’ farm, a duty that had only increased after their father had died. And Ollie had needed Magnus’s help many times over the years as he had got himself into trouble with
women, with drugs and with money. Magnus was happy to give it: he didn’t really hold his brother responsible. If anyone was to blame, it was their grandfather Hallgrímur.
    But for once Magnus had decided to put his own interests before his brother’s. Ollie was coming to Reykjavík to stay with him in a couple of days and this time Magnus would insist
that he carry on digging.
    He took a swig of his beer, hauled himself up out of his armchair and examined the photos of Ollie lying on his desk. There were two: one of Ollie, or Óli as he was then known, taken at
Bjarnarhöfn: a curly-haired blond kid in Iceland, a nervous smile under anxious brows. The other picture was of Ollie as a thirty-year-old failed real-estate investor, hair a little darker but
still curly, smile cocky. Magnus picked up the second print and examined the wall.
    He never knew where the hell to put Ollie.
    His phone rang.
    ‘Magnús.’
    ‘Hi, it’s Vigdís. There has been a murder in the Hvolsvöllur district. Niccolò Andreose, thirty-eight, Italian national. They want our help. I’m coming to
pick you up with Árni.’
    Magnus’s pulse quickened. Murders in Iceland were few and far between, unlike his old beat in South Boston where every week brought several. But most homicides in this country were quite
straightforward to solve: one drunk hitting another too hard. The role of the detective was merely to get the paperwork right. He had been transferred to Iceland from the Homicide Unit of the
Boston Police Department at the request of the National Police Commissioner to help out the local cops with the more complex big-city crimes that the Commissioner feared would become more common.
Magnus had