Sun on Fire (28 page)

There was a brief pause and then the voice continued, “This declaration is made at the request of persons who have me in their power. Although it’s made under duress, it is, nevertheless, a relief to be able to make a statement about a matter that has weighed heavily on my conscience for thirty-four years. Why have I not done this before? Well, maybe because I was weak and unworthy. Perhaps I convinced myself that I would be in a better position to atone for my mistakes if what I had done remained under the radar. But that’s not good enough anymore, and now it is my sincere wish that the truth be told.

“In all my duties on behalf of the Icelandic state overseas, I have tried to do my very best to serve my country and my fellow countrymen. I have responded to every request, be it night or day, when anyone has needed my assistance; I have tried to show discretion and compassion; I have tried to be a good man, all in the hope that on my last day on this earth I can say to myself: I have done more good than harm during my life. But one event, a combination of blind obsession and dreadful accident, weighs heavier than all the good deeds a man can possibly perform during however long a life. All my years I have been trying to make up for the mistake I made on the evening of February thirteenth, 1975, out there in Fljótshlíd.

“In the summer of 1973, when I had been sheriff in Hvolsvöllur for just over a year, five young people—Jón, Sunna, Helgi, Rakel, and Fabían—moved to Fljótshlíd and established a hippie commune in an old farmhouse on a plot of land called Sandgil. Their efforts at making a living from peddling artwork out there in the sticks amused me, so I let it pass. Although, they should probably have applied for some kind of license. On Friday
afternoons if the weather was good, Sunna would sometimes come into the village to play the guitar and sing outside the co-op store. I began pretending I had some business there so I could listen to the music and watch this beautiful young woman. It pained me to see the self-satisfied way the locals tossed trivial amounts of small change into her guitar case after they’d stood there listening to her entrancing songs. Her music was unique, and her singing came from the heart. I fell in love with this wonderful being. As time passed, however, I realized that there was a chasm between the two of us—it wasn’t so much the age difference, but rather the fact that I represented the authority, the system, that Sunna and her friends wanted nothing to do with. To her, the uniform I wore was at least a ridiculous clown’s outfit. At most it was a threat and a symbol of power.

“I took to greeting Sun when she played outside the store, and I would sneak bank notes into her case, sometimes fairly large sums. I thought that the smile she rewarded me with meant something more than simply the joy of life she was so full of and bestowed on everybody in her generosity. I got this absurd idea that I could make this goddess fall in love with me.

“Then the authorities began to suspect that the hippies were cultivating cannabis at Sandgil. We received an inquiry from the detective division in Reykjavík, where somebody had fingered Jón and Helgi as dealers in various bars and clubs. Then we got an informal tip from an employee of the power company about the unusual amount of electricity that was being used in the house. We started watching them, and it turned out that most Fridays two or three of them would drive off to Reykjavík, staying there through Sunday and going methodically from one club to another selling their product. So one Friday, the police moved in and picked up Jón, Helgi, and Rakel with a considerable quantity
of marijuana, all neatly packaged and ready for use. I was supposed to go back to the farm and arrest the two who had stayed behind—Sunna and Fabían—and confiscate the plants and all the equipment.

“That evening, I drove with Constable Magnús Magnússon into Fljótshlíd. When we arrived at the farmyard, I asked Magnús to wait in the car, as I wanted to go inside and talk to Sun on my own. What I had in mind was to explain to her what bad company she had gotten involved with, and offer to get her out of this situation if she agreed to move into the sheriff’s house with me. It was an incredibly stupid plan, but I was obsessed with this girl. In my stupidity I imagined that my position, my personality, and my looks would make her fall in love with me on the spot. I thought she would realize I was there to save her and would appreciate that. It was the kind of delusion that could only occur to someone who has always had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter—wealth, education opportunities, a career, and the respect of his fellow citizens. Someone who has never been denied anything.

“I knocked loudly on the front door. It was unlocked, so I walked in. I found Sun in a large living room that was set up as a kind of workshop. She was sitting at a worktable, making candles. She was, of course, scared stiff when she saw me, but I took her hand and made her sit next to me on the sofa. I told her that her housemates had been taken into custody, and that she would be joining them behind bars unless she let me save her. All she had to do was to move in with me and she would be safe. I would take care of everything. I told her that I loved her and wanted her to be my wife. I tried to embrace her—and was even about to kiss her—but she tore herself from my arms and ran up the ladder into the attic, slamming the trapdoor behind her. Naturally, she
thought that I’d gone mad, that I was capable of anything—and I suppose I must have been, because I followed her and began trying to smash through the trapdoor. Then I realized that the boy, Fabían, was standing in the kitchen doorway, watching me. I decided to grab him and get him into the police car before continuing my struggle with the trapdoor, so I jumped down. But he fled through the kitchen and out the back door, and disappeared into the darkness. I chased him out there, and spent some time searching fruitlessly before returning to the house.

“What I didn’t know was that the boy had been melting candlewax in a pan on the stove. You have to watch it really carefully, because the wax easily ignites if it gets too hot. When I got back into the kitchen I saw black smoke coming from the pan, and instead of just covering it with a lid and turning off the heat, I grabbed the pan, intending to throw it out. But just at that moment the wax reached flash point, and a column of flame shot up in the air. I dropped the pan, and burning wax spilled all over the floor, which was covered in newspaper because somebody had been painting the kitchen. Wax also splashed all over my hands and arms. I had to beat out the flames with my bare hands, and I was badly burned—though I didn’t feel the pain until much later. I tried to stamp out the fire on the floor, but to no avail, so I grabbed a bowl of water from a nearby table and chucked it at the flames, but that caused an explosion, and I only just made it out into the living room. There I leapt up the ladder, yelling like a maniac to get Sun to come downstairs. At that point Magnús entered the house. He’d seen the fire and felt his way through the smoke to find me. By then I was semiconscious, and he dragged me out. My screaming must have so terrified Sunna that she didn’t dare come out until it was too late and the place was ablaze. Either
that or the smoke drove her back when the fire first started. I can’t bear to think about it.

“I was completely overcome from smoke inhalation and the pain from my burns. The constable used the radio transmitter in his car to call the fire department, but the house had almost burned to the ground by the time the men arrived. The boy had disappeared. Magnús put me in his car and drove me straight to Reykjavík, to my parents’ house. Once there, I broke down in tears and told my father what had happened—how my actions had resulted in a lovely girl’s death. I’m afraid my father had little patience for such displays of weakness. He called a doctor friend of his and got him to treat my burns and sedate me. Meanwhile, he instructed Magnús to draw up a report to the effect that the house was already on fire when we got there, and that I broke in to save Sunna but was unable to reach her. This was the cause of my burns and the smoke inhalation. He told Magnús he would arrange a good position in Reykjavík for him, and that his future would be secure. My father was a man of such influence that nobody dared oppose his wishes, and at close quarters he was quite overpowering, so Magnús decided it would be for the best to bow to his will. In any case, he had not actually witnessed what occurred inside the house, and had assumed that it was an accident that had nothing to do with me. It was simply a question of which came first, the fire or I, and this was a perfectly plausible interpretation of events. The occupants of Sandgil were an irresponsible bunch, and anything could happen in that sort of setting, in his opinion. I don’t want him to pay for my actions.

“My parents kept me in their home to recover, and during that time my father made plans for my future. He had me resign the sheriff’s office, and arranged a job for me at the Foreign Ministry, with a posting to Moscow, where my uncle was the ambassador.
When I left, he laid down some rules about my life. I was to drop the Esjar family name and instead adopt the patronymic Ingason, based on his second name, Ingi. He’d made a deal with the minister that I was to work abroad in Icelandic embassies for the rest of my life, in whatever capacity the ministry determined, provided only that they would never make me ambassador. This was documented in a protocol that successive chief secretaries at the ministry have regularly renewed. And so I left Iceland, and the gloss they gave of what I did in Fljótshlíd was that it was an ‘accident involving the reckless manufacture of candles in unsuitable conditions.’

“My father was able to maintain his reputation and status in society for the rest of his days. He died many years ago. I’ve worked abroad ever since that time and not been back to Iceland until now. My career is unusual in that I have never had to return to work in the ministry in Reykjavík—I’ve been able to remain for longer periods in each posting than others, and I have never applied for the office of ambassador. Many people in the ministry know of this arrangement, but very few people know who instituted it, and nobody knows the reason behind it. Rumor has it that I am unable to tolerate the Icelandic climate because of a lung condition, and I’ve done nothing to correct that. ‘Seek foreign fields when distant duty calls,’ the saying goes. Or in my case, when you are not welcome at home.

“The crime I committed has long since lapsed in law, and my only punishment will be whatever my captors here determine. I hope they will have more mercy on me than I showed the wonderful Sunna, whom they loved so much.”

Arngrímur finished speaking, and there followed the sound of the microphone being moved. Then they heard Magnús’s voice, feeble and tremulous, “My name is Magnús Magnússon. I was
a police constable in Hvolsvöllur when the farm at Sandgil was destroyed by fire in 1975. I can confirm that Arngrímur’s account corresponds with what I witnessed of the event. My testimony that is on file about this event may not be accurate.”

The recording stopped, but then resumed, and Magnús’s voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched as he added, “I confess that I lied when I testified about the fire at Sandgil.”

After this short declaration, there was nothing else on the tape.

“Where are they?” the chief of police asked, at a loss for what to do.

Birkir showed him the image Anna had recovered from the notepad. “I suspect that these might be directions to the place,” he said. “We need to crack this.”

He made an enlarged copy of the image and fixed it up on the board for everyone to see. Theories abounded as to what the numbers might mean: GPS coordinates; the television station Screen One, as the symbol at the top clearly resembled the logo of the station; pages in a book; a bank account number.

Anna tapped Birkir’s shoulder. “Good morning.”

“Thanks for the picture,” he said.

“No problem,” she said. “I’ve got something else for you.”

“Tell me.”

“I sent a sample from the embassy for chemical analysis. We have the results.”

“Chemical analysis?”

“Yup. The coins that were on the table with the bits of plaster. The ones that were probably used to break open the base of the candlestick to get the knife out.”

“Yes?”

“They were sticky.”

“Sticky?”

Anna nodded and said, “Among other things, two sunflower seeds were stuck to one of the coins with some sort of lotion. I sent it for analysis. They found substances that typically occur in warm underground seawater—silicon, minerals, and algae.”

“What does that tell us?”

“It’s a skin cream produced by the Blue Lagoon company. Mineral Intensive Cream. Does any suspect have skin problems?”

10:10

Gunnar snuck out after he had listened to Arngrímur’s account. Or tried to, as well as his crutches allowed. Anyway, he didn’t tell anybody that he was leaving.

A taxi was waiting for him outside.

“Bank Street,” Gunnar said, when he had managed to cram himself into the rear seat. Then he named a café. He was going to have breakfast and see his buddy Emil Edilon.

The writer was very organized, and had reserved a table for ten o’clock—a table for two, but the café owner had removed one of the chairs so that the author could drink his coffee and think in peace.

Ten minutes later, Gunnar hobbled in on his crutches. Just inside the door he spotted an empty chair at a table for four, and he hooked it with a crutch. Two young women loudly protested that they were expecting more people, but they broke off as they looked up and saw Gunnar’s face. He just grinned and said, “Disabled people have priority.” Then he pushed the chair ahead of him across the floor and plopped himself down opposite Emil.

“Hello, Maestro,” he said loudly enough to attract Emil’s attention.

The writer glanced reluctantly up from his papers and took a good look at Gunnar’s head, which was even more of a mess than usual, his beat-up appearance exaggerated by the surgical collar and ugly black eye.

“Have you been hit by a garbage truck?” Emil said.

“I’ve got a riddle for you,” Gunnar said, ignoring the question.