Sun on Fire Read Free Page A

sizing up the situation. “What’s going on in here?”
    Gunnar stood up carefully, maintaining his grip on the prisoner with one hand while taking handcuffs from his pocket with the other. “Assaulting an officer on duty,” he said formally, and cuffed him.
    “Ouch!” the prisoner said. “That hurts!”
    “We have the arrest warrant for this suspect,” said Magnús, “but it can wait for the time being. When you get back from taking him to lockup, come and see me. Something else has cropped up.”
    11:45
    “We have a problem,” Magnús said, his customarily sunny demeanor clouded with concern. Though close to sixty years old, he was—aside from a little thickening around the waist—in pretty good shape. The suntan he still had after his August vacation in Italy looked nice against his clean-cut gray hair and thick mustache, but today he was missing his usual crispness and seemed pale and unwell under his tan.
    He closed the door to his office and looked gravely at Gunnar and Birkir for a moment before saying, “I need to send you on a quick trip to Berlin. There’s a direct flight early tomorrow morning.”
    “To Germany?” Gunnar shook his head. “No way. I never go abroad.”
    Magnús was dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”
    “I’m not going abroad,” Gunnar repeated.
    “You speak German—and you’ve been abroad, surely? You have a passport?”
    “Yes and yes and no.”
    “What do you mean?” Magnús asked again.
    Birkir replied for Gunnar. “You know his mother is German. Of course he speaks German.”
    “And he has been abroad?” Magnús looked questioningly at Birkir.
    “He went to Majorca once—ate and drank too much and got indigestion. Since then he hasn’t wanted to go abroad. He doesn’t have a passport.”
    Gunnar looked angrily at his partner. “I didn’t eat too much. I got salmonella poisoning. I had the runs for six weeks.”
    “And you’re always looking at German websites,” Magnús continued.
    “He only looks at football news and naked women,” Birkir said.
    “And the news,” Gunnar said, bridling. “I got sunstroke, too.”
    “Where?” Magnús asked.
    “In Majorca.”
    Magnús sighed wearily and said, “Berlin is hardly Majorca. You’re in no danger of getting sunstroke at this time of year, and if you eat in moderation you shouldn’t get diarrhea.”
    Gunnar replied peevishly, “I also get claustrophobic on airplanes. The seats are so cramped.”
    “Right,” said Magnús, “but I’m not asking you to go. This is an order.”
    Gunnar’s face turned bright red. “I haven’t seen anything in my job description that says I have to do police work in other countries,” he said. “Why the hell do you need to send people to Berlin to do stuff for you?”
    Magnús hesitated before replying, “A murder was committed in the Icelandic embassy last night. I got called in to a meeting at the Foreign Ministry this morning.”
    Gunnar shook his head and said, “That’s not our problem. Just let the Berlin Kripo deal with it.”
    Magnús said quietly, “We can’t do that. This is a sensitive matter for the ambassador and for the ministry. We can’t just leave it to the Kriminalpolizei .”
    Birkir asked, “How the hell are we supposed to solve a murder in Berlin?”
    Magnús replied, “Assess the situation, question witnesses, and write a report. After that, we’ll see. Anna will go with you to take charge of CSI—I’ve already spoken to her. I need my most trustworthy people on this job—people who can do the work and keep their mouths shut. Nothing can get out to the media except through the ministry.”
    “I’m not going,” Gunnar said.
    “That’s what you think.” Magnús was angry. He threw open a desk drawer and grabbed the sheet of paper that lay on top. He thumped it onto the table and said, “If you want to discuss job descriptions and such formalities, let’s not leave anything out. I received this complaint from a law office in