Cold Comfort (21 page)

“Did he?”

“Ommi gave him a beating to start with. Why?”

“Æi, something about some job years ago. I don’t know what.”

“What sort of job?” Gunna asked with a new note of iron in her voice.

“Æi,” Selma repeated and pouted. “It’s Ommi’s business. I don’t know.”

“You bloody well do. Ommi’s already told us all sorts of interesting stuff that doesn’t do you too many favours. Now you’d better start talking some sense for once if you don’t want to wind up doing a stretch yourself for being an accessory,” Gunna grated, eyebrows knitted into a single dark bar of determination across her forehead.

“Diddi used to deliver stuff for Ommi. That time you lot banged him up, Diddi’d been taking some stuff somewhere and hadn’t come back with the cash. So Ommi wanted his money,” Selma gabbled. “Diddi didn’t have it ’cos he’d spent it ages ago, so Ommi told him to get it or else.”

“So that’s why Diddi tried to raid a bank?”

Selma nodded morosely.

“What ‘stuff’ are we talking about here?”

“Es and some coke,” Selma replied. “A bit of everything.”

“And where was this stuff coming from?”

“Dunno. That club, maybe?”

“Which club’s that?”

“The one Ommi used to work at.”

“Blacklights?”

“Yeah.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Gunna said. “D’you want anything, Selma? Coffee perhaps?”

Selma shook her head.

“The fight outside Blacklights. You were there that night. What do you remember?”

“That was years ago!” Selma protested.

“I know. But what did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah, but you did. You gave a statement at the time,” Gunna said, lifting typewritten sheets from under her notebook. “According to your statement, the deceased, Steindór Hjálmarsson, threatened Ómar Magnússon during an argument at the bar. Then there was an altercation later during which Steindór received serious injuries. He died in hospital two days later.”

Selma fidgeted in her seat and glared at Gunna with her face puckered in irritation. “I’m not saying anything.”

“Half a dozen people gave statements, you included,” Gunna continued as if Selma had not spoken. “Ómar confessed to having been in a fight with Steindór and to having hit him several times, both while he was on his feet and when he was on the ground.”

“Yeah. And?”

“It all fits far too comfortably. Look, Selma, I’ve been a copper for a long time and I’ve split up any number of fights. If there are five witnesses, you get five different versions. Here we have half a dozen witness statements and they all dovetail just right. Steindór threatened Ommi. Later they meet up outside and there’s a bit of fisticuffs that goes too far. Everyone agrees, Ommi is bang to rights and confesses as sweet as you like. I’d like to know what really happened. Who killed Steindór Hjálmarsson and why? Because I’m damn sure it wasn’t Ommi.”

“I can’t tell you,” Selma said finally in a small voice.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know who did it.”

“But it wasn’t Ommi?”

“No. He was with me.”

“All right. Why?”

“He got paid for it.”

“What, for doing the time for someone else?”

Selma nodded.

“Are you going to tell me who it was?”

“Don’t know. I never asked. Ommi never told me. He just said we’d be all right after he came out.”

“So what happened then? Why didn’t he just finish his sentence quietly?”

“We were going to leave. Take the cash and go to Spain or somewhere. That was the plan, just disappear somewhere hot and not come back.”

Tears had begun to roll down Selma’s cheeks, taking with them smears of make-up that Gunna guessed had been there for days. She began to cry quietly, her words coming out in fits and starts between sobs.

“Ommi was really angry. He could be just totally crazy when he was angry. Said I should come up there and get him when he next had a day pass ’cos he had business to do in town. He said that he’d been double-crossed and the man he was doing time for didn’t have the money to pay him for being there any more so he was going to sort things out himself,” Selma said quickly, the words tumbling out. She took a deep breath that ended on a sob. “I was frightened. Really frightened. Ommi can be so scary when he’s in a rage.”

“I see,” Gunna said as Selma’s sobs receded and developed into hiccoughs. “And you don’t know who this person is?”

“It’s somebody rich. That’s all I know.”

“No ideas, no suspicions?”

Selma shook her head. “No. If I knew, I’d tell you. I never wanted to ask who Shorty was.”

“Shorty?”

“Ommi always called him Shorty. He said Shorty would see us all right. And now Shorty won’t.”

“Y
ES?
C
AN
I help you?” asked a young woman who appeared around the side of the house with a disarming smile. “I was in the garden, didn’t hear the bell the first time,” she explained as a small boy hid behind her legs.

“You must be Hulda Björk?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“My name’s Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, I’m from the police, the Serious Crime Unit. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Steindór Hjálmarsson,” she said, and the smile disappeared from the woman’s face as if it had been turned off with a switch.

In the long garden Hulda Björk collected herself and they sat in the lee of the house’s back wall in a patch of sunshine that had fought its way through a break in the thick cloud.

“That’s a name I didn’t expect to hear,” she told Gunna.

“I’m sorry if I’ve reopened old wounds, but it’s a serious case and I’m afraid I might have some uncomfortable questions.”

Hulda Björk breathed deep and set her face firmly. “I’m OK now. Just ask.”

“As you can imagine, it’s Steindór’s death that I’m interested in, and particularly the events leading up to it, but especially his, your, circumstances. How were you living at the time? Were you both working?”

“We rented a flat out in Mosfellsbær. We were both from Dalvík and felt more comfortable up there out of town than down in the city. I was finishing my teaching degree and Steindór was an accountant with a job at an import-export company. It was fun, we were enjoying living in Reykjavík, but we both agreed that when we had children, we’d want to move back up north somewhere. Not Dalvík, but maybe Akureyri. Now I can’t even visit Dalvík any more without it all coming back. Every house and every street remind me of him.”

“But you’re settled here now?”

“Yes. I met someone. Never expected to. He’s been great and now we have Gunnar as well,” she said, her proud gaze following the small boy as he rode unsteadily around the garden on a bicycle with stabilizers. “I never thought I’d get over it when Steindór … died so suddenly.”

“I’m interested especially in the days and weeks leading up to his death. How was he? Was there anything odd you noticed about his behaviour?”

Hulda Björk spread her hands, palms upwards. “It’s hard to say. We were both so busy then and not seeing as much of each other as we would have liked. Steindór was a workaholic. He’d work hours of overtime and he’d always been like that—a little obsessive. If there was something that interested him, he’d absorb himself in it. It was a bit annoying sometimes and I dreaded the thought of him discovering golf.”

“But no unusual behaviour?”

“It’s so hard to think back. He was a bit preoccupied. I don’t think he enjoyed the job he was doing, but it was quite well paid and we needed the money after all those years of being poor students.”

“The night he was attacked. Were you there?”

“No,” Hulda Björk said abruptly. “It was some kind of outing with his uni friends. I wouldn’t have gone anyway. It was a boy thing.”

“Had either of you ever had any kind of acquaintance with Ómar Magnússon?”

“You mean the bastard who …?” Hulda Björk’s eyes flashed with a sudden fury. “Of course not,” she spat. “Neither of us had ever laid eyes on that scumbag. I saw him in court, sitting there with a smirk on his face. If I could meet him now, I’d …”

Her face was set in a hard mask.

“So there was no reason that you could think of for the assault on Steindór, other than, as Ómar alleged, that they had been arguing?”

“Nothing. I’m certain their paths never crossed. I suppose it’s possible they could have had an argument. Steindór didn’t drink often, but he enjoyed it when he did and could be quite boisterous. Whatever, that’s no reason for beating him so badly that he died, surely?”

“No. But these people live by different rules,” Gunna said sadly. “Can you tell me more about Steindór’s colleagues and his work?”

Hulda Björk shook her head. “Not really. He hadn’t worked there for more than a couple of months and didn’t like it much, but the money was good. I don’t think he got on well with the office manager. I met her once, a very cold woman, I thought.”

“So what was he doing there?”

“Bookkeeping and invoicing, as far as I remember. He used to tell me and it went right over my head. Sometimes he had to talk to people in Taiwan or Nigeria, places they exported to.”

“Exports?”

“Fish, mostly. Stockfish to west Africa, herring to the Ukraine, all sorts. That’s what he was working with for the most part. But there was some property as well, buying and selling commercial buildings, I think. Workshops and shops, that sort of thing.”

“Do you remember what the company was called, or if it still exists?”

“Kleifaberg Trading, at least the part that Steindór worked for. They used to have offices in the city centre, off Tryggvagata, I think.”

“And there’s nothing else that springs to mind? Nothing about Steindór’s behaviour that you recall as being anything different?”

Hulda Björk shrugged. “I’ve tried to remember everything, but there’s so much that’s too hazy. You try and recall these things but it’s like they’re just that little way out of reach. Know what I mean? Of course you don’t,” she added.

“Actually I do,” Gunna said quietly. “I know precisely what you mean and I know how hard it is when someone is taken away in a flash.”

Hulda Björk looked at her with a new recognition, half screwing up her eyes against the unaccustomed spring sunshine that shone in her face and highlighted the band of freckles across her nose. She stood up and cast about the garden for the small boy, who had gone quiet.

“He must be up to something if he’s not making a noise,” she said, forcing a smile. “I don’t think there’s anything more I can tell you.”

Gunna laid a card on the slats of the garden table. “My number’s there. I’d appreciate a call if there’s anything you remember.”

“Ah, there he is,” Hulda Björk said. She pointed to her son at the far end of the garden, using a bamboo cane to push an offcut of wood across a puddle. “I’d better stop him before he gets too filthy.”

She turned to Gunna awkwardly.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve been a lot of help to you somehow,” she apologized. “But there’s a friend of Steindór’s you might want to talk to. He was at college with us. I haven’t seen him for a long time, but he works for a magazine now. Gunnlaugur Ólafsson, his name is.”

T
HE BASTARD HAD
a big enough house, Jón thought, staring at the sprawling building on the far side of the quiet street. He’d taken a detour to see the place yet again. He had done this more than once, stopping by the curb on the other side of the road to glare at the house with its double garage, set between lines of young birch trees that already were bushy enough to shield the place from prying eyes either side.

Jón’s own house had been away down the hill in a decent, yet less exclusive neighbourhood. If things hadn’t gone so terribly wrong, Ragna Gústa could have found herself mixing with children at school from this very street.

Jón knew that Bjartmar and his snobby wife had no children. The gossip around town was that they weren’t getting on well lately, and that the man had set up some woman he’d brought to Iceland with a business in the city centre. Jón didn’t make a habit of listening to gossip, but any mention of the bastard who had tipped his business over the edge was always going to make him prick up his ears.

He sighed, gritted his teeth and started the van’s engine. A woman in the western end of town with two small children was waiting for him to again patch up the worn-out washing machine that she couldn’t afford to replace.

“Y
OU KNOW SOMEONE
called Gunnlaugur Ólafsson?” Gunna asked, phone to her ear as she marched across the street to her car.

“Er. Not sure,” Skúli said slowly. “Know anything more about him?”

“Not a lot,” Gunna replied, switching the phone to the other ear as she unlocked the car and got inside. “He’d be in his early thirties, works for a magazine.”

“Sales or editorial?”

“No idea. Editorial, I guess.”

“I’ll ask around, see what I can find. Is that all right?”

“Skúli, that would be wonderful,” Gunna said, realizing that she had been unnecessarily sharp with him.

“Cool. Leave it with me, then,” Skúli said crisply, and closed the connection before Gunna could say anything more.

She started the car and listened to the engine hum into life. She let it roll gently down the street and stopped at the end, wondering whether to go left or right at the junction. A few years of frantic property speculation had left the sprawling peripheries of the city criss-crossed with streets that she had no recollection of, as well as confusing new junctions that appeared to lead nowhere, left unfinished as the estates they were supposed to reach were boarded up.

She opted to turn left, immediately regained her bearings and decided to continue through the quiet estate of houses set back from the speed-bump-studded road. This was a smart neighbourhood, not fashionable, but populated by younger, two-and three-car families who clearly took the look of their homes seriously.

Gunna’s phone rang and she pulled over to the side of the road to answer it. “Skúli, that was quick.”

“And easy as well. Someone knew the guy straight away. He shortens his name to Gulli Ólafs, that’s what threw me.”

“Understandable. But do you know where I can find him?”