Free Meltwater by Michael Ridpath

found his father lying in a pool of his own blood out there in the hallway.
    The case had never been solved, but not for want of trying. Jóhannes had himself been interviewed a number of times, as had all Benedikt’s friends. Suspicion had flitted from one to the other of them, even resting briefly on Jóhannes’s shoulders, but no one had been arrested. A burglar was perhaps the most likely candidate, but no one really knew.
    The irony was that the autopsy had revealed a tumour in Benedikt’s brain that would have killed him in a few months anyway. Benedikt’s doctor confirmed that Benedikt had known about it for almost a year, a knowledge that he had decided not to pass on to his children.
    Jóhannes had tried, but he found it difficult to forgive his father for that.
    Benedikt had taught Jóhannes everything he knew: his love of language; his love of literature; his respect for other people, especially the young. Teaching, in Benedikt’s eyes, was a noble profession and one that Jóhannes had been proud to follow all these years. And he was good at it, really good. It was one of Jóhannes’s greatest regrets that his father had never been inside one of Jóhannes’s classrooms, never seen how enraptured those thirteen-year-olds could be with Vermundur and Styr and Arnkell and Snorri and all those other colourful characters who beckoned from the tenth century.
    Of course Jóhannes’s teaching career wasn’t necessarily over. He could fight to keep his position. Or he could look for another: times were very tough and teachers were being laid off all over Iceland, but there might be a job for him somewhere else. It would be a long struggle, a very long struggle and it might end in failure.
    Or . . .
    Or perhaps this was one of those opportunities dressed up as disaster. For years Jóhannes had been collecting all the information he could on his father. His books and manuscripts, of course, letters both to and from him, articles written by him and about him, and in recent years the dissertations on his life and works that various literature students had produced. They were lying in a series of untidy piles next to his desk. One day, Jóhannes had promised himself long ago, one day he would write a biography of his father.
    Perhaps that day was now.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    M AGNUS STOPPED OFF at Hvolsvöllur police station where he reported back to Chief Superintendent Kristján. He decided not to wait for the press conference at nine, but to head straight back to Reykjavík. He wanted to get at that house on Thórsgata.
    He switched to his own car and offered to give Ásta a lift back with him. He could hardly leave her stranded in Hvolsvöllur.
    It was an hour-and-a-half’s drive to Reykjavík, but Ásta swiftly fell asleep in the seat beside Magnus. He considered trying to grill her, but he doubted that there was much more he could get out of her. The countryside of south Iceland sped past: clumps of sodden yellow grass with the odd horse looking cold, wet and hungry. The area was renowned in Iceland for its rich soil, and the horses for their cheerful hardiness, but it all looked a bit miserable to Magnus.
    As they reached the steep bank just beyond Hveragerdi and climbed the switchbacks on to the snow-covered heath above, Ásta woke up.
    This was an active geothermal area, with steam leaking out of fissures in the rock, and indeed there was a power station to the right fed by the heat bubbling up from the centre of the earth. Pylons marched across the bleak landscape a short distance from the road, channelling all that energy towards the light and heat of Reykjavík. Lava, congealed after an eruption thousands of years ago, rippled under the snow.
    ‘Sorry about that,’ said Ásta, yawning. ‘It’s been a long night. And a strange one.’
    ‘How did you say you got caught up with these people?’ Magnus asked.
    ‘Through my uncle. Viktor – the man you made friends with last night.’
    ‘Nice guy,’ said