Sun on Fire

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  Anna’s job was relatively cushy. She oversaw the Germans’ work, initialed all the sample labels, and regularly went out for a smoke.

  The ambassador’s office was of primary interest. The large office chair had been displaced when the body was removed, but there were white chalk marks on the floor indicating the chair’s position when the body was discovered. Chalk marks also showed where the victim’s feet had rested on the pale parquet. A brown crust indicated the outlines of a pool of blood; the people who’d removed the body had scraped up all the parts that had spilled out, but they had, correctly, not cleaned the floor. A labeled white paper bag lay on the desk. It contained a large cigar that had been lit but only partly smoked. Also on the desk was a telephone, its receiver dangling toward the floor.

  The head of the forensic team checked the desk and chair meticulously. He found a variety of fingerprint sets, but finally concentrated on a very particular handprint on the edge of the desk, facing the chair. He demonstrated to Anna how someone might have stood at one end of the desk and supported himself on this edge while lunging at the guy in the chair with his right hand. His colleague photographed him in that position. The handprint they got off the table was very clear—good enough for comparison.

  At the other end of the room there were a sofa and two chairs with a low table between them. On the table stood two large candlesticks, at least fifty centimeters tall, Anna estimated. The candle in one of them had burned down a long way before being extinguished. The other candle had been lit but snuffed out soon after—its wick was black but the wax was hardly melted.

  Anna watched the forensic specialist dust powder onto the candlesticks with a soft brush. Some coins on the table attracted her attention, along with fragments of white material that looked more like plaster of paris than fired clay. The German pointed at them, and she nodded. He carefully picked the coins up with pliers and put them into a paper envelope. He wrote something on the envelope with a marker, and Anna added her initials, “AT.” The plaster bits went into another envelope.

  The glaze on the candlesticks was covered in a mass of handprints, but the technician had trouble finding anything recoverable. In the end he shrugged at Anna, and she nodded. This would be of no use and was of doubtful relevance.

  With a gloved hand she grasped the candlestick with the burned-down candle and carefully lifted it up. Looking at its underside, she could see that the initials “HK” had been scratched, in large, crude letters, on its plaster-like filling.

  “Hello,” she said, to attract the attention of the German, who’d turned to other things. When he looked toward her, she gestured with her free hand as if taking a photograph. The man nodded, and took a few pictures of the candlestick as Anna turned it this way and that. Finally she placed it back onto the table and picked up the other one. When she looked underneath it, she saw that the plaster filling had been broken and that there was a large internal cavity inside the candlestick.

  “That’s interesting,” she said.

  “Bitte?”

  Anna smiled and shook her head. She pointed at a measuring tape in the technician’s bag, and put her finger into the hole in the bottom of the candlestick.

  Understanding her mime, the technician took out the tape and inserted the end of it into the candlestick as far as it would go. They both read the number—thirty-one centimeters.

  Anna fetched Gunnar and the ambassador from the second floor to have them take a look at the candlesticks.

  Konrad explained their presence on the table. “These objects are supposed to be featured in the exhibition in the new year, and Helgi mailed them here for us to use for promotional purposes. The box arrived two weeks ago, and we unpacked the candlesticks right away. They’ve been here ever since. The exhibition manager photographed Helgi and me with them last Sunday. He was going to send an announcement to the Icelandic papers.”

  Anna showed them the candlestick with the open end. “Could someone have hidden the knife in there? There’s plenty of room.”

  “Why in the world would they do that?” Konrad asked.

  “To be available for the killer to use.”

  “Yes, but nobody knew that Anton was going to come here,” Konrad said.

  Gunnar said, “Someone must have known it.”

  Anna showed them the coins and the bits of plaster the technician had bagged, and explained what the table had looked like. “If these coins were stacked up on the table, it would have been easy to break the candlestick’s bottom by banging it down onto them.”

  “Helgi must be able to explain this,” Konrad said. “There wasn’t anything on the table other than the candlesticks when we were sitting here.”

  “We’ll take them back to Iceland with us,” Gunnar said. “Helgi is probably on his way there, and we’ll talk to him when we get back.”

  Konrad shrugged. “The packaging is down in the basement. It was a handmade case. We kept it so we could ship them back.”

  17:55

  When the embassy driver had delivered Birkir to his meeting with Búi, he went to fetch the ambassador’s wife from the residence and take her to the embassy. The ambassador had gone over to the temporary office in the Felleshus, so it was Arngrímur who introduced her to Gunnar.

  “Mrs. Hulda Björnsson,” he announced.

  “Hello, I’m Gunnar Maríuson,” the detective said, standing up.

  The woman briefly sized him up before approaching him with a smile.

  “Ooh, an Icelandic cop. How cute,” she said and extended her hand.

  Like her husband, she was short. In fact, she was also very similar to him in shape, being quite large around the middle. Gunnar reflected that, if she weren’t obviously in her sixties, a person could be forgiven for thinking she was several months pregnant.

  “Darling, are you going to cross-examine me?” she asked Gunnar as they shook hands.

  She seemed to be in the habit of getting up close to people she was greeting, and then leaning her head back to make eye contact when they were taller than she was herself. Her face was round and pink, her blond hair elegantly coiffed.

  “I need to hear your account of Sunday evening,” Gunnar said, his chin disappearing into thick folds of flesh as he craned his head down to see his interviewee’s face.

  “Darling, I can’t remember anything. One’s always meeting all sorts of people, and one forgets everything immediately.”

  Gunnar’s neck ached from looking down like this. He retreated carefully from the woman and plopped back down into his chair.

  “Please take a seat,” he said, pointing to a chair at the opposite end of the table.

  She sat down and turned to the counselor. “Arngrímur, dear. Please have a caffe latte brought here for me—and one for the police officer, too.”

  She turned back to Gunnar. “You’ll have a latte, won’t you, darling?”

  Gunnar sensed that there was no point in declining. He looked at Arngrímur, shrugged, and said, “And a couple of sandwiches as well, please.”

  Arngrímur nodded. “I’ll call the Felleshus right away and have someone bring us coffee and sandwiches.”

  “Excellent,” Hulda said, “and the policeman and I don’t want to be disturbed here.”

  Arngrímur didn’t reveal in any way what he thought of this exchange. He disappeared into the corridor and shut the door behind him.

  “Sometimes I find he sticks his nose in things too much,” Hulda whispered.

  Gunnar switched on his voice recorder and dictated the usual identifying preliminaries.

  “No need to be so formal, darling,” Hulda said, gesturing with her hand.

  “You are married to Ambassador Konrad Björnsson, correct?” Gunnar asked.

  “Yes, that’s right. Since I was eighteen. That’s life, I suppose.”

  “Tell me about Sunday. Were you present at the reading?”

  “Yes. My parents are visiting for a few weeks, and they came, too. Afterward, I took them straigh
t home because they were tired. They’re nearly ninety, after all.”

  “But you returned to the embassy later that evening?”

  “Yes, after a dinner party at the residence with two old friends of mine from home and their husbands—and, of course, my parents. Naturally, Konrad was supposed to come home in time for dinner, but then he called with some excuse or other. Of course, I found that inexcusable. We had to eat without him.”

  “Why did you go back to the embassy?”

  “I wanted to have it out with him over his rude behavior. I called a cab after my visitors had left and my parents had gone to bed.”

  “Did you talk to the ambassador’s guests at all?”

  “Yes, it’s important to have some manners even if your husband is lacking in that respect. At the first opportunity, I pulled him aside and told him what was in store for him. After that I just focused on the guests. There were two really cute gays there, and I enjoyed talking to them. Those guys know so much about fashion.”

  “What was in store for him?” Gunnar asked.

  “Excuse me?” Hulda didn’t understand the question.

  “I mean, what did you say to your husband?”

  “Oh, that,” Hulda smiled. “I have ways of making my husband’s life miserable if he treats me badly. You don’t need to hear about that.”

  “Did you see the deceased, Anton?”

  “Yes, he said hello, of course. Why wouldn’t he? We’ve known him since my husband first ran for a seat in parliament.”

  “Did you know that he went up to your husband’s office?”

  “Yes, he went up there a few times to make calls. I was actually surprised at how long he stayed here, considering how unpleasant the other guests were to him.”

  “Was anyone in particular hostile toward him?”

  “The gays wouldn’t talk to him at all. Jón the Sun Poet made fun of him, calling him ‘the slave driver.’ Jón’s artist friend didn’t speak to anyone—he has some illness or other. Only Helgi chatted to Anton. Helgi is such a gentleman—he’s world famous, you know.”

  “World famous?”

  “Yes, his ceramic work is unique. Art galleries all over the world have been buying his work. People are really looking forward to his exhibition here in Berlin.”

  “Did you see anybody else disappear from the party when Anton went to make his last phone call?”

  “No, darling. I was otherwise engaged.”

  “Engaged?”

  “Yes—I’d slipped my shoes off while I was chatting to the gays, because the left one was pinching my heel. Somebody kicked one of them away somewhere, and when it was time to leave, I couldn’t find it. I tried to get Konrad to help me look, but he was too drunk by then. I totally lost it. The guests fled the room while I talked to him. Chickens, all of them. But then Helgi came back and comforted me. He is so polite and nice. He understands women—well, he’s been married three times, I’m told. But we couldn’t find the shoe, so I had to walk to the taxi barefoot.”

  “That can’t have been comfortable?”

  “Helgi let me lean on him. He’s such a gentleman. He even offered to carry me, but that wasn’t necessary.”

  21:00

  The German CSI technicians had finished their work and were gathering up their equipment. Anna had packed all the items of evidence into a cardboard box (once containing champagne) that Arngrímur had found for her, and with his help she stowed the two candlesticks in their special case, which was made of waterproofed plywood lined with custom-cut foam rubber and closed with sturdy wood screws.

  Arngrímur had undertaken the task of sending all this to Iceland with the express courier company the embassy usually dealt with. Also Anton’s luggage, which Birkir had brought from his hotel room. The delivery would take two days at most.

  Anna’s final task had been to take finger and palm prints from all the embassy staff, as well as from the ambassador and his wife. Now Anna could return to Iceland, and one of the staff had booked her a flight via Copenhagen the following morning.

  The ambassador and his wife had gone home, and the embassy staff had also closed its operations for the day. The Germans having departed, only Arngrímur remained.

  Birkir now turned his attention to the conference room where the dinner had taken place. There was no reason to ask the Germans to search it unless his examination turned up something that warranted closer investigation. He crawled around the floor looking for blood or other traces the killer might have carried with him from the murder scene, but without success. He did, on the other hand, find the Sun Poet’s guest pass at the bottom of an almost empty case of red wine bottles under the table. And under a chair he discovered a box that had contained a brandy bottle, and into which someone had stuffed a woman’s shoe.

  Finally Birkir used Anna’s camera to systematically photograph the whole room. That done, he told Arngrímur that it would be OK to clean in there. Arngrímur had arranged for special cleaners to be on standby that evening. He wanted the whole place clean and ready for business the following morning.

  Anna confirmed that the fourth floor was also ready to be cleaned. They needed, however, to call a plumber. The German forensic team had opened up the sink trap in the washroom and poured its contents into a plastic screw-top container. It was bloodstained water, showing that somebody had used the sink to wash blood from their hands. The technicians said they weren’t allowed to fix the plumbing themselves—that required a certified tradesman. Arngrímur wrote “Out of order” on a piece of paper and stuck it on the washroom door. This could wait.

  The three sandwiches Gunnar had eaten after talking to Hulda had done little to assuage his hunger. “Now let’s go eat,” he said to Anna and Birkir as they collected their luggage.

  Arngrímur asked if they had any particular requests.

  “Wiener schnitzel at the Mövenpick restaurant in the Europa Center,” said Gunnar without consulting the others.

  Arngrímur smiled. “That’s a very safe bet,” he said. “And it’s open late, so you’ll be well looked after. You can stop by the hotel with your luggage. It’s on the way.”

  Arngrímur called them a cab and escorted them out to the street. He said to Anna, “The embassy chauffeur will pick you up from the hotel tomorrow morning and transfer you to the airport.”

  The taxi arrived, and they climbed in. Gunnar took the front seat, and when the driver had arranged their bags in the trunk, he gave him the hotel’s name. It was a four-minute ride, and as the cab stopped by the entrance, a uniformed doorman came out with a trolley.

  Gunnar got out and said a few words to the doorman, who nodded and helped him empty the trunk.

  “Europa Center, Mövenpick,” Gunnar instructed the driver as he got back in. He then turned to Birkir and Anna and said, “The doorman’s taking all the bags up to my room.”

  Less than ten minutes later, the driver stopped the car again. Birkir paid the fare and they got out. No question, they were in the center of a major city, with heavily trafficked boulevards stretching along two sides of a large plaza. But the great number of cars didn’t attract their attention as much as the ruin of an old church that stood, brightly floodlit, in the middle of the plaza. The bombed-out remains were like an evocation from another era, a constant reminder of the worst years this great city had endured. On one side of the church was a modern pentagonal tower, less tall than the ruin; on the other side was a smaller hexagonal building, with blue stained-glass windows lit from within.

  “The Gedächtniskirche—the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, with its clock tower and chapel,” Gunnar said reverently.

  “I’ve seen pictures of these buildings,” Anna said, lighting a cigarette. “Very imposing.”

  Birkir nodded. “You really sense here how loaded this city is with history,” he said. “It’s too bad we have to work. It would have been nice to spend a few days to look around.”

  “I’m hungry,” Gunnar said and looked toward the Europa C
enter dominating the far end of the plaza. It seemed not a very interesting building—a soulless box even—but the restaurant was there, on the second floor.

  The waiter was unfazed by Gunnar’s request for a double portion of Wiener schnitzel and two large beers. Birkir and Anna both opted for a chicken breast and soda water.

  When they had ordered, Birkir asked, “So, after today, what do we know about this killing?”

  Anna replied, “We have a very interesting palm print on the desk. And the murder weapon could have been brought into the embassy in a hollow candlestick. If that turns out to be the case, it’s a big step forward in the investigation. Apart from that, the forensic examination didn’t turn up anything. Let’s hope the guests’ testimonies give us enough material to piece together a chain of events.”

  Gunnar said, “Before he left, the commissar and I experimented with carrying the knife through the exit from the Felleshus into the plaza. The metal detector instantly let out a beep, and the inner door refused to open. But the security guard did say it might have been different on Sunday. The whole area was closed, so the ambassador let his guests in with his pass card. There was no guard manning the door, and even though the metal detector may have beeped, it’s not loud and it stops if the door is opened with a card. A security guard on duty at the front desk wouldn’t notice, and there’s no computer log of exceptions like that.”

  “I don’t think the ambassador would have started searching his guests if the door gear was making noises,” Birkir said. “So let’s keep that possibility open.”

  Gunnar continued, “We figured out that the killer is probably right-handed; hopefully there’ll be some left-handers in the group we can eliminate. That would include the ambassador’s wife—or at least she holds her coffee cup in her left hand.”

  Birkir said, “The ambassador is right-handed.”

  “Then he’s still on the list,” Gunnar said. “We’ll have to take a much closer look at the footage from the security cameras. Especially the footage of the guests leaving the building at the end of the night. There are also six witnesses we haven’t yet spoken to—we’ll need to get prints from all of them.”