Cold Comfort (20 page)

“All right, gents. We’ve done a long day’s crimebusting and I’ve had enough. Time to go home.”

T
HEY ALL THREE
took gulps of fresh, cold air in the car park after a day inside. Helgi was fumbling for his keys as a patrol car entered the car park and drove straight to the admittance bay.

“Eight tomorrow, Helgi? I have a feeling that overtime isn’t going to be a problem for the next week or two, or at least until we have Svana Geirs sorted out.”

“Suits me,” Helgi said. “My exhaust’s on its last legs and a bit of overtime wouldn’t do any harm.”

Gunna squinted into the gloom and could make out Tinna Sigvaldsdóttir, the slightly built officer who had been first on the scene of Svana Geirs’ murder, getting out of the driver’s seat of the patrol car while her beefy male colleague emerged from the rear seat and a heavily built man in a leather jacket was unceremoniously hauled out with his hands cuffed behind him. Gunna caught a glimpse of a florid face, and even in the half-light and at a distance, she sensed that the man was drunk. The face was vaguely familiar and she wondered where from.

“Another pisshead, I expect,” Eiríkur said without a second glance.

“Ach, you don’t remember what it was like when we had real drunks in this country. Hard men who’d be on the piss for a week or more and travelled round in taxis with the clock ticking and a crate of vodka in the boot,” Helgi said. “Now we just get these doped-up fuckwits instead.”

“So that feller should get an award, should he, for keeping alive a grand old Icelandic tradition?” Gunna suggested.

“Bugger that, he should practically be in a museum,” Helgi snorted. “I have to say I regret the passing of the traditional old-school Icelandic pisshead,” he added sadly, while Eiríkur stared at him and Gunna burst out laughing.

“You sound like old Haddi when you say stuff like that. Sounds like you almost mean it.”

“Well, given a choice of dealing with drunks or dopeheads, I know which I’d choose,” Helgi said with finality, swinging his keys on his little finger. “Need a lift, Eiríkur?”

Eiríkur hesitated, seeing Helgi’s Skoda lurking in a corner of the car park.

“Go on,” Gunna urged him. “I had a ride in it once, and it’s not that scary.”

Saturday 20th

S
TEINI SNORED TUNEFULLY.
It wasn’t an all-out rumble, or even the occasional thunderous snort. It was more a musical tenor hum, Gunna reflected, lying awake. It felt odd, even uncomfortable, to have a man in her bed regularly after so long. In the little house with its thin walls they had done their best to be quiet, not knowing if Laufey in the next room was asleep, awake, or blissfully unaware of anything other than what Steini playfully referred to as the stream of “Beatlemusic” coming through her headphones.

Glancing at the clock that she knew was ten minutes fast, she saw that it wouldn’t be long before it would be buzzing angrily. Swinging her legs out of bed and shivering as her feet landed on the cold tiles of the floor, she wrapped herself in a threadbare dressing gown and made for the shower.

The penetrating coffee aroma brought Steini to the kitchen, wrapped in a towel and his eyes puffy with sleep.

“G’day.” He smiled. “Been up long?”

“Long enough to have a shower and make coffee. Sleep well?” He hoisted himself on to a stool and reached for a mug.

“Working overalls today?” he asked, admiring Gunna’s black uniform shirt.

“Yup, more interviews today and uniform makes things a bit more formal, impresses the rabble. And it’s the easy choice.”

“It looks good on you, you know. Same here. When I came out of the Coast Guard it took months to get used to wearing ordinary clothes again,” Steini said, hopping off the stool to open the fridge in search of milk. As he did so, the towel came adrift and left him standing naked with a carton of milk in one hand.

“Speaking of which,” Gunna said with an easy smile, “while I’m quite happy to have a naked man running around my kitchen, I have to get Laufey out of bed. So it might be an idea if you put some clothes on before you give the poor girl the fright of her life.”

“Fair enough. Don’t want to spoil the lass for when she gets a bloke of her own,” he replied, retrieving the towel and retreating to the bedroom for clothes.

“Laufey! Laufey Oddbjörg Ragnarsdóttir!” Gunna yelled, tapping on the bedroom door. “Awake? I’m going in half an hour if you want a lift to basketball.”

The response was a barely audible groan, but soon enough the sound of movement could be heard and Laufey eventually appeared. “Hi, sweetheart.” Gunna smiled.

“What?” Laufey demanded waspishly.

“I said good morning.”

“Oh. Yeah,” the girl responded, disappearing into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her with more force than was strictly necessary.

“She all right?” Steini asked, reappearing in jeans, barefoot and buttoning a check shirt.

“I hope so,” Gunna said with more than a little concern. ‘It might just be, y’know, ladies’ lurgy. I’ll see what I can get out of her.”

T
HERE WAS NO
need to probe.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Laufey asked as they passed the Vogar turning on the main road, her voice abrupt after twenty minutes of silence.

“Yes, I suppose he is,” Gunna replied, trying to keep her own voice steady in spite of the nervousness within. “Is that a problem, sweetheart?”

“No,” Laufey replied, nose in the air and looking pointedly out of the window at the jagged lava fields stretching out on the landward side of the new double-lane highway leading to Reykjavík. On the other side an angry grey ocean gnawed at the black rocks of the coast in the distance, reminding Gunna that her son Gísli was at sea in this weather.

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” Gunna finally asked gently once she had told herself, as so many times before, that Gísli was safe on a big ship and she had nothing to worry about.

“Maybe. But I don’t sleep with him.”

“Laufey, do you have something against Steini?”

“Mum! He’s like, really old! Loads older than you!”

Gunna slowed to the legal speed and let a bright red car hurtle past in the outside lane, cursing briefly under her breath as it flung a sheet of water over the windscreen.

“He’s not old. At least not old as in really old. He’s only a couple of years older than I am.”

“Twelve,” Laufey said sourly. “That’s really old.”

“What?” Gunna demanded. “How do you know that?”

“Mum, I’m not stupid. I looked him up in the National Registry. It’s not hard and there aren’t that many people called Unnsteinn Gestsson. He’s almost thirteen years older than you.”

She sank back into accusing silence and glared out of the window while Gunna dropped a gear and peered into the thickening gloom that shrouded the sparse morning traffic. The entire world seemed to be damp and clammy with an unbroken succession of low grey clouds scudding in from the Atlantic. Ahead in the damp gloom she saw a flash of orange lights and gently braked.

“What now?” she muttered to herself.

“What?” Laufey demanded, looking up.

“Trouble ahead,” Gunna said, clicking on the hazard lights as she slowed the car to a crawl and brought it on to the gravel at the side, behind two cars half across one lane.

“Laufey, would you pass me my coat from the back seat, please?” she asked, eyes on the cloud of steam rising from the little red car that she recognized as the one that had sped past a minute before, its bonnet crumpled into the side of a larger grey car. She shrugged herself into the thick parka, checked the mirror and opened the door to get out, passing her phone to Laufey as she did so.

“Sweetheart, I want you to call 112. Tell them who you are, who I am, and that there’s a road traffic accident on Reykjanesbraut, eastbound, four kilometres past the Vogar turnoff. OK?”

“OK, Mum,” Laufey replied, eyes wide as Gunna assumed a different, unfamiliar, businesslike persona.

“I’d best go and see if anyone’s hurt. I’ll be right back, OK?” Gunna recognized one of the paramedics who arrived a few minutes later to casually ease a shocked young man from the wreck of the red car and a whiplashed elderly couple from their dented Volvo as the same young man who had attended Svana Geirs’ flat.

“Hæ again, how are you?” he enquired with a cheery smile as the shaken old couple were taken away in one ambulance and the young man sat, grey-faced and wrapped in a blanket, on the step of the other one. “Not as bad as the last one, eh?”

“Could have been so much worse,” Gunna agreed. “Silly bastard shouldn’t have been driving that fast in this weather.”

“Nope, hopefully these three will all be right as rain soon enough. Shame about their cars, though. You don’t see so many of those old Volvos these days,” he observed as a burly pair in orange all-weather overalls that made them look like cuddly toys winched the Volvo on to a truck while a uniformed officer from the Keflavík station watched.

“Hæ, Gunna. How goes it?” the officer greeted her with a smile.

“Snorri! Good to see you. It goes well enough, I suppose. Shame I have to stop and help you lot out on the way to work.”

“You saw it happen, did you?”

“No. Just saw the red car go belting past and then saw them by the side of the road a minute later.”

“Fair enough. I’ll have to get a statement from you later.”

Gusts of wind whipped rain across the road and into their faces.

“Right, that’s us done,” the paramedic announced. “We’ll take matey here away and I’ll leave the clearing-up to you guys,” he said happily, and ushered the young man to a seat in the back of the ambulance, still wearing his grey blanket like a refuge.

“Thanks, mate,” Snorri said to the paramedic and turned to Gunna. “When can I catch up with you, chief?”

“I’ll drop in at your station tomorrow, if you like. Or you can stop by at home this evening. Up to you.”

“OK. I’ll see you tomorrow. I guess you need your peace and quiet of an evening these days,” he said with a wink that bordered on a leer, waving as he got into his own car.

“The jungle drums are working overtime now,” Gunna grumbled, getting back into the Range Rover where Laufey was busily texting.

“All right, sweetheart? You’d have been quicker on the bus today,” she apologized.

“That’s all right, Mum.”

“Who are you texting?”

“Just letting them know I’m a bit late. Mum?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Mum, why don’t you see Snorri any more?”

“Because we’re not working together now I’m back on the city force.”

“Shame.”

“Why’s that?”

“Snorri’s lush. He’s loads lusher than Steini.”

Gunna sighed.

“He’d be much better for you,” Laufey continued slyly.

“Good grief, young lady,” Gunna exploded. “It’s enough that the whole bloody force seems to be clued up on my private life without you chipping in as well.”

“But why not?”

Gunna shook her head in despair. “One, Snorri is a dozen years younger than I am. Two, he has a girlfriend. Three, I don’t fancy him, even if he is lush. How’s that?”

“I suppose …” Laufey conceded, lapsing into a silence that she did not break until the red-and-white checks of the aluminium factory appeared ahead.

“Mum?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“How do you get to be a paramedic?”

“I
THOUGHT WE
needed to have another chat, Selma,” Gunna said cheerily.

Selma slouched in the chair and glared back truculently at Gunna, who had become certain that this young woman could be the key to unlocking a few mysteries.

“Had some breakfast, have you?” Gunna asked.

“I don’t do breakfast. It’s bad for you.”

“All right, that’s up to you. Now, can you account for your movements on the eighteenth of last month?”

“Duh. What day was that?”

“The day that you drove up to Rif and collected Ommi.”

“Oh, that day,” Selma said and lapsed back into silence.

“And?” Gunna prompted.

“I went up there to visit him, like I normally do, and …”

“And?”

“Well, he had a day pass so we could go out for a few hours. So we did.”

Selma sat in thought for a moment and Gunna began to wonder if she had fallen asleep.

“Then he just said, ‘I’m not going back inside. You’re taking me south’ So that’s what we did.”

Gunna consulted a page of her notebook. “If you say so. Now, I’ve spoken to the prison authorities, and normally you visit on the second and fourth weekends of each month. So why was this visit in the middle of the week? You’d only been there a few days before, hadn’t you?”

“Yeah, well, Ommi asked me to, didn’t he?” Selma shifted uncomfortably in her chair, lifting herself from a slouch to sit up and perch forward, hands in front of her.

“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”

“Yeah. That’s it. He asked me to come and see him. Said he’d got a day pass and we could go out for a few hours,” she repeated.

“Do you normally do that?”

“Yeah.”

“So where do you go?”

“Just for a drive, look around a bit.”

“Do you have a job, Selma?”

“Not any more. I’m disabled. Nerves.”

“Yet someone with your poor disposition can drive up to the far end of Snæfellsnes, pick up an absconding prisoner, drive him back to Reykjavík and then help him evade the police?”

“Yeah, well. It’s Ommi, isn’t it?”

“What does that mean?” Gunna enquired.

“Ommi’s, well …” She shrugged, as if that were answer enough.

“I’m just wondering if it really was Ommi who asked you to drive up there and collect him.”

Selma looked thunderstruck. “Course it was. Who else?”

“Plenty of people have an interest in him. Could be any one of them. I gather Ommi had some unfinished business to attend to. Tell me about it.”

Selma yawned in spite of herself, puncturing the tough image she had been trying to project. “Y’know, Ommi came back with me, like he asked. I dropped him off near the bus station and he went to do his stuff. I don’t know what.”

“Tell me about Diddi.”

“Who?”

“Don’t play the fool, Selma. You know who Daft Diddi is. Why did Ommi want to see him?”