Cold Comfort (44 page)

“How was school?” Gunna asked.

“Not bad, same as usual. Mum, I had lunch at Sigrún’s today and she’s still so angry at Jörundur.”

“Well that’s understandable. It’s something that really knocks you sideways when that kind of trust is betrayed.”

Laufey nodded slowly. “Has that happened to you, Mum?” she asked quietly. “With Gísli’s dad?”

A shiver went down Gunna’s spine at the question she had expected for years, and she instinctively looked around to see if Steini were awake.

“Sort of. Gísli’s dad is a strange man and I haven’t seen him for years. Not since Gísli was about ten, I suppose. We never lived together, just were together for a little while, and didn’t get on all that well. So there was no real betrayal like Sigrún’s going through. It was a million times worse when we lost your father, sweetheart.”

“I think Gísli’s seen his dad recently.”

“You’re sure?” Gunna asked in sudden alarm, but warned herself to think rationally. “There’s no reason why he shouldn’t, and I suppose it’s something he ought to do. He’s a big lad now and doesn’t need to ask me for permission to do anything.”

Laufey yawned.

“You should be asleep soon, young lady,” Gunna observed. “Homework done, is it?”

“Yeah. Steini helped me with the maths. It’s easy when you know how, all those cosines and things,” she said, getting up and trying to stop herself yawning again.

“Put that in the dishwasher, would you?” Gunna said, handing her the plate and fork. “I need my bed as well.”

Laufey disappeared to her room and Gunna turned off the kitchen lights. In the living room, she looked down at Steini and leaned forward to place one fingertip gently on the end of his nose. His eyes opened and he looked up.

“I’m shattered, so I reckon it’s bedtime.”

“I don’t need telling twice,” he said, and smiled back.

In the darkness, Gunna stretched out, feeling her toes tingle as the fatigue drained out of them and Steini settled beside her with a sigh. Exploring fingers gently stroked her thigh and she stretched a hand to cover and encourage them when the phone on the floor beside the bed began to buzz and chirp.

“Hell!” she swore, fumbling for it in the darkness. “What?” she barked into it.

“Tucked up with Steini already, are you, you randy old cow?”

“Bjössi, always a pleasure to hear from you. Yes, I’m in bed and I’ve been on my feet since six.”

“Well you’d better get out of bed, darling. We’ve got someone out at the airport you might want a word with.”

“S
O WHAT MADE
you want to leave so suddenly right now, with so much money?” Gunna asked.

“Just trouble,” Bjarki Steinsson replied in a voice laden with despair that echoed in the bare interview room at Keflavík international airport. “Always more trouble. The phone calls and the texts.”

“What calls and texts?”

“Demanding money, more and more money. Threatening to tell Kristrún.”

“Who was this?”

“I don’t know.” He waved a hand towards the jacket hanging on the back of a chair. “Look in the pocket. You’ll see.”

Gunna gestured for Bjössi to look as Bjarki continued, speaking faster, his voice rising from a whisper to a more normal tone.

“Yesterday there was a text as well. So I thought, why bother? I’d just go. I have enough to live on. I was just going to walk away and leave whoever it is to tell Kristrún whatever he wants. I don’t care any more. The house and the business are all in her and the children’s names. She can keep the lot, all those stupid crystal knick-knacks and pictures that give you a headache. I’ve had enough.”

Behind her, Bjössi carefully unfolded a sheet of paper, typed with a dozen lines. Gunna saw with relief that he had put on gloves to read it. “Have you any idea where these demands were coming from?”

“Some man. I have no idea who. Just a phone number, nothing else.”

“And the note? How did that get to you? Post?”

“It was pushed under the windshield wiper of my car yesterday morning. I heard about Hallur and then Jónas Valur, and I decided that was all the warning I needed after I went to see Hallur in hospital yesterday.”

“What do you know about what happened to him?”

“Only that he would never have taken his own life, never,” he said with conviction. “Hallur always comes out smiling. He’s one of nature’s survivors.”

Gunna turned to Bjössi. “What is it?”

“Demand for cash. Twenty thousand euros. ‘Have it ready. You will be told when and where to hand it over,’ it says here.”

“A classy sort of blackmailer, then, wanting foreign currency.”

“Understandable, I’d have thought, considering how valuable Icelandic cash is these days.”

“All right. We’d best get that to Technical as soon as we can and see what they make of it,” Gunna said, and turned back to Bjarki. “I’m sorry. I can’t allow you to leave the country.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet. But you tried to leave the country with a large amount of foreign currency, which I’m sure a man in your position is aware is illegal. Plus you’re a key witness in a serious case. If you attempt to leave the country, I’ll make sure you’re stopped and I’ll get an injunction to prevent you from travelling.”

“I can’t go back to Kristrún,” he said with certainty.

“In that case we’ll get you a hotel room for the night. I’ll be along to see you again in the morning, and then you can make other arrangements.”

Tuesday 30th

G
UNNA BANGED WITH
a fist on the door of Bjarki Steinsson’s room, with Eiríkur behind her.

“Don’t tell me the bloody man’s not here. Eiríkur, run down to reception again, will you, and find out if anyone’s seen him. Failing that, get somebody up here with a pass key,” she instructed. Eiríkur left at a jog along the corridor, his footfalls soundless in the deep beige carpet.

Beige and boring, Gunna thought. Just like Bjarki bloody Steinsson.

“Bjarki! Open the bloody door, will you! It’s the police!” She yelled, hammering on the door again.

She paced the corridor back and forth, banging the wall with her fist and feeling her knuckles sting. Eventually Eiríkur appeared at the far end of the corridor with the portly figure of the hotel’s manager puffing at his side.

“Open that, will you?” she instructed the manager.

“It’s extremely irregular,” the manager grumbled. “I can’t open a guest’s room just like that.”

“Yes you damn well can, and quickly. We’ve had enough bodies as it is,” Gunna told him grimly.

At the mention of bodies, the manager’s eyes bulged in immediate alarm and he swiped a card through a slot. The door swung open and he stood back to let Gunna and Eiríkur enter the room first. The clatter of running water was the first thing Gunna noticed, followed by the steam coming past the slightly ajar bathroom door, and the reek of sulphur.

“Bjarki!” Gunna called out. “Are you there?”

The bedroom was empty, the duvet on the bed thrown back. Gunna took a deep breath and pushed open the bathroom door. A cloud of steam billowed past her. She peered into the gloom, the room’s light hardly piercing the steam and reduced to a white orb in the middle of the ceiling. She could see the water running at full power in the shower cubicle, and a dark shape against the cubicle wall showed her where Bjarki Steinsson was.

Here we go again, she thought, turning to Eiríkur. “We’re going to need an ambulance, I reckon. Get one called, will you?” she told him and gingerly opened the cubicle door.

Gunna looked down at the body curled against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief as Bjarki Steinsson gazed up at her with water cascading through his thin hair and down his face. There was misery in his eyes—but at least he was alive.

She gestured to Eiríkur to take a step back before she squatted down on her haunches and looked into Bjarki Steinsson’s blank brown eyes rimmed with red.

“Bjarki?” she said gently. “What happened?”

“It’s just too much,” he said hollowly.

“Look, come on out of the shower, will you? You’ve been in there for a long time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said finally, after a long moment’s thought. “None of it matters now.”

Gunna stood up. She leaned over him to turn off the flow of scalding water and there was a sudden silence. She pulled a thick towel from the rail, opened it and held it out to him.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said softly. “Come on, we’ll get you dried off and sorted out. All right?”

He nodded dumbly and dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, every movement seeming to cost him pain. Gunna was surprised at just how thin his limbs were as he stepped, shivering already, from the shower cubicle. He immediately sat on the closed toilet seat and his shoulders hunched forward, emphasizing the pale paunch that contrasted with the thinness of the rest of his body. She wrapped the towel around his shoulders and pulled another from the rack.

“Get the manager out of here, and make sure he keeps quiet,” she said to Eiríkur in a matter-of-fact voice so as not to alarm the forlorn man sitting in front of her. “And look out for that ambulance, will you?”

Eiríkur disappeared, taking the manager with him.

“All right, Bjarki. They’ve all gone. Stand up again, please.”

He obeyed as if in a trance, and she reached around him to wrap the second towel about his waist before taking his hand to lead him to the bedroom. She sat him down on the end of the bed and crouched down in front of him.

“Bjarki, tell me what happened. Have you taken any pills or anything like that?”

The question seemed to spark him into consciousness.

“God, no.”

“What then?”

“I was just going to go away. Away from everything. I’ve wanted to do it for years, just walk away.”

“Where to?”

“To the house in Spain.”

“You have a house there?”

Bjarki nodded. “Nobody knows about it, not even the witch,” he whispered. “Bjartmar fixed it up for me at a good price. I was going to go there and not bother coming back.”

“So what went wrong?”

“You did,” he said with a first flash of animation. “Stopped me at the airport yesterday.”

“Customs stopped you leaving the country with an illegal amount of foreign currency,” Gunna reminded him.

“Illegal, crap. All the top dogs can do it. If you know the right people, you can do what you want.”

“But why yesterday? What brought this on if you’ve been planning it for so long?”

Bjarki shook his head. “We went there a couple of times, Svana and I. Nobody knew us. It was perfect. Then she died.”

Gunna felt a presence behind her and look round to see Eiríkur and a green-suited paramedic. She looked back at Bjarki Steinsson, who seemed to have slipped into a trance.

“He’s all yours,” she told the paramedic. “Look after him. He’s had a bit of a tough time.”

The man nodded. He kneeled down where Gunna had squatted and patted Bjarki’s knee.

“All right, are you? My name’s Siggi and I’m here to help you,” he said cheerfully.

Gunna squatted again and looked at Bjarki’s blank face.

“It’s going to be all right, Bjarki,” she said softly. “These gentlemen are going to take you over to the hospital for a few checks and some rest. I’ll look in on you later if that’s all right.”

G
UNNA FELT HER
head spin as she sought out Ívar Laxdal. As the last few days had become increasingly complex, she had found the man’s presence in the background a reassurance that she was on the right track, even when she seemed to be getting nowhere.

“Gunnhildur,” Ívar Laxdal’s rich baritone intoned behind her. “Coffee? I’m just going to the canteen.”

“Good idea.”

“What’s happened? Did you locate Bjarki Steinsson?”

“Yup. Last night at Keflavík, trying to skip the country like all the rest of Iceland’s brightest and best criminals. Put him in a hotel and took his passport away. He seems to have suffered a breakdown during the night. He’s at the National Hospital now, under sedation and observation.”

“Has his wife been informed?”

“Not yet.” Gunna smiled. “I thought we’d spare the poor man that for the time being at least.”

“You want to question him further?”

“Absolutely, the sooner the better. Yesterday he visited Hallur Hallbjörnsson in hospital, and that’s a conversation I’d like to have listened to.”

“What do you propose to do next?”

Gunna thought for a moment, taking the opportunity while Ívar Laxdal punched buttons on the hulking machine that had replaced the canteen’s percolator.

“There are buttons for all sorts of weird and wonderful drinks here, but no mention of ordinary, old-fashioned Icelandic coffee,” he grumbled.

“You’ll find number 56 comes closest,” Gunna said.

The machine hissed, threatened and administered a plastic beaker of brown liquid that he passed over to Gunna.

“At the moment I have Högni Sigurgeirsson and Gulli Ólafs in cells, Helena Rós Pálsdóttir spitting venom in my direction, and Bjarki Steinsson and Hallur Hallbjörnsson in hospital, not to mention Svana Geirs, Jónas Valur and Bjartmar Arnarson on the slab, plus Jón Jóhannsson on suicide watch. Doing well, don’t you think?”

“It looks to me like you have all the ingredients there. All you have to do is fit them together,” Ívar Laxdal said with a rare smile.

“I hope you’re right. Helgi’s starting on Högni soon, and then I think I’ll have a run over to the hospital.”

“J
ÓNAS VALUR AND
Bjartmar are both dead, and I have every reason to believe that you were responsible for both of those deaths,” Helgi suggested.

“I wasn’t!” Högni yelped. “I never touched Bjartmar!”

“You did harm Jónas Valur, then?”

“I never said that,” Högni said, retreating and throwing an uneasy glance at Gunna, sitting behind Helgi.

“My colleague was speaking to Jónas Valur when you attacked both of them.” Helgi nodded his head slightly sideways towards Gunna. “What happened? You attempted to murder a police officer, and then assaulted Jónas Valur with fatal consequences?”

“It wasn’t like that …”

“So how was it? I’ve all day to listen to you tell us.”