Cold Comfort (5 page)

“Here, chief,” Eiríkur said cheerfully, standing up behind his partition. “Right then, gather round, gentlemen.”

Helgi stayed where he was and Eiríkur brought over a stool to sit next to him while Gunna took off her anorak and opened her briefcase.

“Right. What’s happening with Svana Geirs so far? Eiríkur?”

“I’m going through all the info the door-to-door enquiries came up with. It was a busy afternoon and the flat’s close to the petrol station and the 11-11 shop up the road, so there was plenty of traffic and we have loads of sightings of suspicious-looking persons. Trouble is we have no idea at all if we’re looking for a man, a woman, young, old or what, so we can’t discount any yet.”

“Plenty, then?”

“Too many. Dozens of descriptions, and I’ll bet that most of them were just going to and from the bakery.”

“Any CCTV?” Gunna asked.

“Not directly. There’s a camera outside the lawyers’ chambers round the corner in a blind alley. Been through it and there’s nothing to be seen on it at all. The petrol station and 11-11 both have footage that I’m going through now.”

“Prints from the flat?”

“A good few, they’re still being worked on. Technical are a bit pushed at the moment.”

Gunna drummed the table with her fingernails.

“You might have to push them a bit harder if they don’t get on with it,” she said, and Eiríkur looked dubious.

“I don’t like to. I know they’re doing what they can, and they’re short-staffed.”

“Aren’t we all? Any news of the real chief?”

Örlygur Sveinsson, their superior officer and the man nominally in charge of the unit, while well known to them by reputation, had yet to make an appearance after having been signed off on long-term sick leave.

“Lying on the sofa being waited on hand and foot while watching Police Academy 12,” Helgi cackled. They were all aware that enforced TV would be little short of torture for a man denied access to the golf course.

“Fair enough, it’s all down to us, as usual. I have the guy who fitted the burglar alarm in Svana Geirs’ flat coming over this morning to unlock a few things for me, and we need to start interviewing friends and acquaintances. Do we have a list to start with?”

Helgi laid a sheet of paper on the table, closely packed with names, addresses, phone numbers and indications of what each person’s relationship to the deceased had been.

“We’ll divvy that up between ourselves,” Gunna decided. “Now, Long Ommi. Any sightings of our errant convict, Helgi?”

“Excuse me, chief, do you still need me?” Eiríkur asked.

“Not on this, but you might as well listen in, just in case Helgi decides to go on holiday and you have to take over. Go on, Helgi.”

“Not a bloody thing,” Helgi said morosely. “But a prizewinning idiot called Kristbjörn Hrafnsson, otherwise known as Daft Diddi, was admitted to casualty at the National Hospital on Thursday morning with a fat lip, various bruises, cuts and scrapes. What with Óskar Óskarsson in hospital in Keflavík, that pretty much gives us two definite sightings. The bastard might as well have just written ‘Ommi was here’ on the pavement and have done with it.”

“All right. I’ve been fortunate enough never to have encountered this particular ray of sunshine, although I’ve met his mother. Now I’ve also spoken to both Skari and Skari’s mum. The old lady loathes Ommi with a passion and Skari says nothing. So where does that leave us?”

Helgi lifted his hands up, palms in the air. “If he wants to keep his mouth shut, that’s his prerogative. But with that sort of injury, there has to be a damned good reason …”

“Which is what we need to winkle out of someone,” Gunna finished for him. “Right, guys. I have an appointment at Svana Geirs’ flat in ten minutes, so I’ll see you two in the canteen at lunchtime.”

T
HE WOMAN HE
had lived with for fifteen years looked blank-eyed at him from the doorway of her parents’ house. Jón wanted desperately to sweep her into his arms and take her with him, not that he had anywhere much to go. Their own house had become a shell of the home they had both worked hard to make it. Practically everything that could be sold had gone. Even the living-room carpet had been exchanged for a couple of tanks of diesel.

“Have her back by eight, can you?” Linda said in the most neutral voice she could manage, although to Jón it sounded edged with barbed wire. He just nodded as his daughter skipped down the steps and put her hand in his. Didn’t the bloody woman understand that every hard word was like a smack in the face?

Linda watched with folded arms as Jón carefully strapped Ragna Gústa into the front seat and the little girl waved happily to her mother, who found suddenly that while she could wave back, finding a smile was more of a problem.

“Where are we going, Daddy? To our house?”

“I don’t know yet, darling. I thought maybe we’d go to Grandma’s place for a change. How does that sound?”

“Good,” she replied after thinking carefully for a moment. Jón spun the wheel to take the van out on to the main road, and the tools in the back rattled.

“I like this.”

“What’s that, love?”

“I like being in your work van. It’s funner than your big car.”

“Not funner. More fun…”

“You know what I mean. This car’s bigger and it smells different.” The only car now, Jón thought but didn’t say out loud. He didn’t know how to explain to her that the jeep had gone more than a month ago.

T
HE EXISTENCE OF
a canteen was something Gunna was becoming accustomed to. In her years on the city force before leaving Reykjavík for the quiet of a post at the fishing village Hvalvík, the canteen had been a fixture where practically every officer met every other one.

She loaded two lamb cutlets on to her plate, added a single potato, some salad, decided to forgo gravy and carried lunch to where Eiríkur was sipping coffee over his empty plate.

“That’s what comes of being late,” she said, cutting into the cold potato and discarding it.

“There’s no phone in Svana Geirs’ flat, is there, chief?” Eiríkur asked. “No, don’t think so.”

“That’s what’s missing. No phone. Somebody like Svana Geirs must have had an iPhone or a BlackBerry. There’s no way round it—everyone has a mobile these days. Even my dad has one and he’s the world’s most old-fashioned man.”

Eiríkur rarely mentioned his parents, but Gunna knew that his father was a clergyman and that Eiríkur had several considerably older siblings. She sometimes wondered how easily Eiríkur’s parents accepted his not being married to the girlfriend with whom he had a small child.

“It’s a thought,” she said, more to encourage him to continue than to say anything.

“She must have relied on a mobile. Even if people have a landline these days, it’s normally just for the internet connection. You just can’t function now without a mobile. So where’s Svana’s phone?”

“Do you have a number?”

“No. But I’m starting on some of her friends this afternoon and I’ll see what I can get out of them. It stands to reason. If we could get hold of it, it would give us a load of information on her movements that day.”

“Go for it. Let me know what you come up with.”

“G
OD! AND RIGHT
next door!”

Svana Geirs’ neighbour was alone at home and seemed pleased to have company when Gunna and Eiríkur called on her. She was a tiny, doll-like woman, casually and fashionably dressed.

“I mean … Svana. It’s …” She floundered for the right words and eventually gave up, letting a despairing fluttering of hands speak for her.

“It must have been a shock for you,” Gunna said.

“God! Of course! I know this is Reykjavík 101 and you should expect it to be … er, like …”

“Rowdy sometimes?” Gunna finished for her.

“Yeah. Rowdy, lively. That’s it. But, God,” she said with emphasis, dropping on to a plush sofa while Gunna and Eiríkur stood. Gunna thought better of the sofa and lowered herself on to one of the chairs arranged around a long dining-room table. The room was spotless. Gunna gazed around her with a practised eye and saw nothing cheap, from the minimalist pictures on the walls to the weighty crystal ornaments and the huge screen that filled one wall. She placed her notes in front of her and opened the folder.

“All right. You’re Arna Arnarsdóttir?”

“That’s me,” she simpered.

“My colleague Eiríkur Thór …” Gunna looked over at him, enveloped in the sofa’s grip. “My colleague spoke to you yesterday, and according to your statement you recognized some of the people seen leaving and entering Svana’s flat. Is that right?”

“Yeah, God. I saw one of them on TV last night as well,” she said in excitement.

“Who was that?”

“On the news!”

“RÚV or Channel 2?”

Arna’s excited smile stopped in its tracks. “Er, I don’t know. They’re the same, aren’t they?”

“Not quite,” Gunna said. “Were you aware of the same people coming and going regularly? Or were there people you only saw once?”

“Well, both really.”

“So, have you any idea who some of these people are?”

Arna almost bounced with eagerness and reached down to the floor beside the sofa for a stack of glossy magazines that she put on the table in front of her.

“I went through all these …”

“And you found some faces you recognized?”

“Yeah!” She opened the first one and flipped through it, peering at the pages. “Him.”

Gunna moved over to the table and looked down at the magazine to where Arna pointed with a lacquered nail at a flashed photograph of a man in a dark suit getting out of a sleek car.

“But I don’t know who he is,” Arna said.

“Jónas Valur Hjaltason, it says there,” Gunna pointed out, and looked over at Eiríkur again.

“Businessman,” Eiríkur elaborated. “Fingers in all sorts of pies.”

“Fair enough. Arna, it might be easiest if you could go through these and mark the people you recognize.”

The idea seemed to confuse her for a moment. “What, and you’ll come back later and get them, you mean?”

“No, I meant you could go through them now,” Gunna said patiently. “That way we can ask you any questions while you do it.” Arna seemed to be thinking through the idea. “OK. Do you have a pen?”

“Eiríkur? Would you?”

Eiríkur stood up and took charge.

“Could I ask you to put the magazines over here where we can both look?” he asked sweetly, patting the dining table.

Gunna gratefully left Eiríkur to it, accepting that his patient manner would be far more effective than the irritable brusqueness she was having difficulty suppressing. Every few moments there was a giggle from the table as Eiríkur’s and Arna’s heads became steadily closer over the pile of magazines.

“Arna? Do you live here alone?” Gunna asked suddenly when there was a lull.

“No, of course not. My husband lives here as well.”

“And he’s at work at the moment, I suppose?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing special. I was just wondering if he might have noticed anything. When do you expect him home?”

Gunna could see that the pink tip of Arna’s tongue was protruding from a corner of her mouth as she concentrated on the magazine pages in front of her.

“Him?” Eiríkur prompted.

“Yeah. I’ve seen him. What? Tolli’s back tomorrow night. He’s in London this week,” she added proudly.

O
N THE WAY
down the stairs to the street, Gunna welcomed the reappearance of the city sounds that had been ruthlessly excluded from Arna Arnarsdóttir’s hermetically sealed apartment on the top floor.

“So, Eiríkur, what kind of a haul do we have?”

“Half a dozen of the country’s finest to try and talk to discreetly. Two shady businessmen, Jónas Valur Hjaltason and Bjartmar Arnarson, plus Bjarki Steinsson, a high-flying accountant, and a brand new MP,” he said, counting them as he looked at his notes. “She said there were a couple of younger men who visited as well, but doesn’t know who they are.”

“Which MP?”

“Hallur Hallbjörnsson. Been a naughty boy, I reckon. Didn’t think the Social Democrats went in for that sort of thing.”

Gunna watched the street doors to the block hiss open automatically as they approached.

“Did you get any joy with that?” she asked suddenly, pointing to the security camera fitted above the door.

“No. The caretaker says it’s been broken for weeks, so no security footage.”

“Shame. Now, we’d best divvy these jokers up between us and see what we can get out of them. Do you want the MP or shall I?”

G
UNNA SENSED SKÚLI’S
awkwardness from the set of his jaw and the thin line his mouth made. She waved to him and his face relaxed as he saw her.

“Sorry I’m a bit late. Traffic,” he apologized.

“No problem. I don’t have long, though.”

Gunna sipped her coffee and glanced towards the counter, where a bored young man was waiting with a blank expression for something to do. Around them the shopping centre in Hafnarfjördur bustled with people buying their last-minute groceries under soothing artificial light.

“Already done your shopping?” Skúli asked.

“Nope. Left it to the boyfriend. D’you want a coffee?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Go on. Get me a refill while you’re there.”

He returned with mugs and a dry sandwich on a plate.

“Lunch?” Gunna enquired.

“Yup. Not much time to eat today.”

“Now then,” she said in a businesslike tone that made Skúli swallow and pay attention. “I’m sure we’ve been doing much the same sort of research on all this stuff, you and I. So tell me what you’ve found out and I’ll fill in the gaps I’m allowed to.”

“Svana Geirs was a talented dancer, did OK as a model, not very successful pop singer, even less successful actress, shameless self-publicist. Married twice, both times briefly. No kids. Numerous operations—”

“Operations?”

“Yeah, cosmetic. Thighs, tits more than once, I’m told, face lift, nose job, teeth fixed, liposuction. The works, more or less.”

“OK, understood.”

“She owns a third share of this health club, which has traded on her image from when she had a fitness show on TV. But from what I can figure out, the club has been struggling these last few months. Fewer customers since the bank crash last year, now that people don’t have so much cash to spend, and they haven’t been able to raise finance.”