Free Sun on Fire by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson Page B

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, butthere 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 somethingon 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