Sun on Fire by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson

them last Sunday. He was going to send an announcement to the Icelandic papers.”
    Anna showed them the candlestick with the open end. “Could someone have hidden the knife in there? There’s plenty of room.”
    “Why in the world would they do that?” Konrad asked.
    “To be available for the killer to use.”
    “Yes, but nobody knew that Anton was going to come here,” Konrad said.
    Gunnar said, “Someone must have known it.”
    Anna showed them the coins and the bits of plaster the technician had bagged, and explained what the table had looked like. “If these coins were stacked up on the table, it would have been easy to break the candlestick’s bottom by banging it down onto them.”
    “Helgi must be able to explain this,” Konrad said. “There wasn’t anything on the table other than the candlesticks when we were sitting here.”
    “We’ll take them back to Iceland with us,” Gunnar said. “Helgi is probably on his way there, and we’ll talk to him when we get back.”
    Konrad shrugged. “The packaging is down in the basement. It was a handmade case. We kept it so we could ship them back.”
    17:55
    When the embassy driver had delivered Birkir to his meeting with Búi, he went to fetch the ambassador’s wife from the residence and take her to the embassy. The ambassador had gone over to the temporary office in the Felleshus, so it was Arngrímur who introduced her to Gunnar.
    “Mrs. Hulda Björnsson,” he announced.
    “Hello, I’m Gunnar Maríuson,” the detective said, standing up.
    The woman briefly sized him up before approaching him with a smile.
    “Ooh, an Icelandic cop. How cute,” she said and extended her hand.
    Like her husband, she was short. In fact, she was also very similar to him in shape, being quite large around the middle. Gunnar reflected that, if she weren’t obviously in her sixties, a person could be forgiven for thinking she was several months pregnant.
    “Darling, are you going to cross-examine me?” she asked Gunnar as they shook hands.
    She seemed to be in the habit of getting up close to people she was greeting, and then leaning her head back to make eye contact when they were taller than she was herself. Her face was round and pink, her blond hair elegantly coiffed.
    “I need to hear your account of Sunday evening,” Gunnar said, his chin disappearing into thick folds of flesh as he craned his head down to see his interviewee’s face.
    “Darling, I can’t remember anything. One’s always meeting all sorts of people, and one forgets everything immediately.”
    Gunnar’s neck ached from looking down like this. He retreated carefully from the woman and plopped back down into his chair.
    “Please take a seat,” he said, pointing to a chair at the opposite end of the table.
    She sat down and turned to the counselor. “Arngrímur, dear. Please have a caffe latte brought here for me—and one for the police officer, too.”
    She turned back to Gunnar. “You’ll have a latte, won’t you, darling?”
    Gunnar sensed that there was no point in declining. He looked at Arngrímur, shrugged, and said, “And a couple of sandwiches as well, please.”
    Arngrímur nodded. “I’ll call the Felleshus right away and have someone bring us coffee and sandwiches.”
    “Excellent,” Hulda said, “and the policeman and I don’t want to be disturbed here.”
    Arngrímur didn’t reveal in any way what he thought of this exchange. He disappeared into the corridor and shut the door behind him.
    “Sometimes I find he sticks his nose in things too much,” Hulda whispered.
    Gunnar switched on his voice recorder and dictated the usual identifying preliminaries.
    “No need to be so formal, darling,” Hulda said, gesturing with her hand.
    “You are married to Ambassador Konrad Björnsson, correct?” Gunnar asked.
    “Yes, that’s right. Since I was eighteen. That’s life, I suppose.”
    “Tell me about Sunday. Were you present at the reading?”
    “Yes. My parents are