Sun on Fire Read Free

across the table at Birkir Li Hinriksson. They were in an interview room at the Reykjavík detective division’s headquarters.
    “What were you doing the night before last?” Birkir asked a fifth time, his dark-brown almond eyes unblinking. His work as a detective often exposed him to insults like this, and, though he would have preferred not to have to put up with such remarks, he had long since learned to ignore them. He was unfazed by mere words, especially when there was a lack of intelligence behind them. To him, this was no more than a bark from an untrained dog.
    Birkir Li was born in Vietnam toward the end of 1970—his first name at that time was simply Li. In Iceland’s National Register, however, his birth year was recorded as 1972 because people didn’t know any better, and his birth date was recorded as January 10, which was the date in 1979 when he’d arrived in Iceland with a refugee group from Malaysia. By that time, he had lost his whole birth family, and later he was left behind on his own by his Vietnamese adopted family when they disappeared to the United States. After that he was brought up by an old Icelandic couple, and he had taken his patronymic from his foster father, Hinrik.
    “What were you doing the night before last?” Birkir asked yet again.
    “OK, I’ll tell ya. I was watching your whore of a mom down at the harbor getting fucked by a bunch of Russian trawlermen with the clap.” The prisoner roared with laughter and smirked at Detective Gunnar Maríuson, who sat at the end of the table, cheek in hand, bored out of his mind; his bald patch shone pinkly under the ceiling light, and his thick double chin sagged onto his chest as he tipped his head to one side.
    “Is it lunchtime yet?” Gunnar asked when Birkir seemed like he wouldn’t continue talking.
    “It’s only ten thirty,” Birkir said.
    Gunnar looked at the prisoner. “Shall we get this over with?” he asked, and straightened himself up in his chair, towering his large frame threateningly over the table.
    In downtown Reykjavík, an international culture center had been broken into and set on fire, and a cashbox (which was, in fact, empty) removed. A security camera at an embassy right across the street had captured a good shot of a blond guy in a sleeveless leather jacket dropping the box twice before managing to stuff it into the back of an old station wagon of obscure make. In the background, flames could be seen through the building’s windows.
    It had taken a day to investigate the scene and negotiate permission to access the security-camera footage, after which the case was cracked—they recognized the blond guy as a well-known psycho, and Gunnar had found him at home at six thirty that morning.
    Looking at Birkir, the prisoner made monkey noises and scratched at his sides. Then he hooted with laughter.
    Birkir examined the man’s face. Its proportions were odd, with eyes set far apart and the head cone shaped; the nose was thick, upturned, and protuberant with flared nostrils.
    “Degeneration,” Birkir said.
    The prisoner stopped laughing. “You what?” he screeched. “Does the half-caste know fancy words?”
    “Inbreeding,” Birkir explained.
    “Whaddya mean?”
    “Are your parents brother and sister?” Gunnar asked.
    The prisoner’s face contorted with fury, and he threw a punch at Gunnar’s head. But Gunnar had evidently been waiting for this. He dodged the blow, grabbed the arm and twisted it, and slammed the prisoner face down onto the table.
    “Aargh!” the prisoner screamed as Gunnar pinned him down with his weight.
    “This freak’s hair still smells like smoke,” Gunnar said. “It doesn’t even wash.”
    “Let me go, or I’ll smash your face in,” the criminal whimpered.
    “You already tried.”
    “I’ll sure as hell get you later.”
    The door opened and Detective Superintendent Magnús Magnússon, head of the violent crime unit, entered the room.
    “Jesus, men,” he said,