Cold Comfort (33 page)

“And this was in Keflavík?”

“Yeah. Near where he works. Shit, I’ve told you enough, and it’s cold out here.”

W
ITH
O
MMI TAKEN
away and back in his cell, Gunna remembered to check her phone for missed calls. Instead of the one that she had expected, there were fifteen, and she was scrolling through the numbers quickly, wondering which one to return first, when the phone started to buzz in her hand.

“Gunnhildur,” she barked.

“Hæ, Mum. When are you going to be home?” asked Laufey to Gunna’s relief.

“Oh, am I glad to hear you,” she said.

“Why’s that?” Laufey asked with suspicion.

“Nothing, sweetheart.” Gunna laughed. “I was just expecting a call I don’t really want to take. That’s all.”

“All right, Mum. But when will you be back?”

“I don’t know. What time is it now?”

“Two.”

“Should be around six, seven-ish. Why, do you need me for something?”

“No, not really,” Laufey said, and there was a pause that set Gunna’s alarms ringing.

“What’s up?”

“It’s not me, Mum. It’s all right. It’s Sigrún. She was asking about you and why she hasn’t seen you for a few days.”

“I know, sweetheart. But you and Steini haven’t seen much of me for a while either, have you? Things are just busy at work as usual, and these days when there’s overtime on offer, I have to take it.”

“I don’t think Sigrún’s well, Mum.”

Gunna looked up to see Eiríkur gazing at her enquiringly.

“OK, sweetheart. I’ll be back as early as I can and I’ll make a point of going to see her this evening. D’you maybe want to ask her and Jens to come and eat with us tonight?”

She could hear Laufey’s breathing.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m walking down the hill to Sigrún’s place now. I’ll tell her, OK?”

“You do that, sweetheart. See you this evening.”

She ended the call and looked at the screen to see a text message in the inbox. She pressed the button to display it.

Come and find me at H-gata before 1700. IL, she read.

That’s going to be my bollocking for losing my temper with Sævaldur, she thought, and scrolled through the numbers of the missed calls again. Ten were from withheld numbers, three from Laufey and two from numbers she didn’t recognize.

“Eiríkur, sorry about that. Time to go.”

“You know Ívar Laxdal called you a couple of times and couldn’t get through. Someone must have told him we were out together and he called me to ask where we were.”

“And you told him that we were enjoying a relaxing mud bath in the Blue Lagoon, I suppose?”

“Well, no. I told him we’re at Litla-Hraun interviewing Ómar Magnússon,” he said innocently, and then broke into a grin.

Gunna started the Range Rover and reversed out of the parking space before swinging round and heading for the main road.

“You know, Eiríkur, Ívar Laxdal is one of nature’s anomalies. There’s a lot to be admired in a man like that, but I don’t believe he’s overendowed in the humor department, at least not where work’s concerned.”

“Maybe, chief,” Eiríkur agreed. “What did you get out of Long Ommi?”

“Everything I expected,” Gunna said grimly. “Everything and more.”

On the way back to Reykjavík they stopped at a petrol station, and Eiríkur went inside while Gunna pumped diesel. He returned with cans of malt, a couple of sandwiches and a grim look on his face just as Gunna swiped her card through the pump’s reader.

“All right?”

Eiríkur simply held out a newspaper so that she could see the front page of that morning’s Dagurinn.

“Shit,” she swore. “Jump in and I’ll move off the pumps.”

She gunned the engine angrily and had the newspaper out of Eiríkur’s hands before the car had come to a halt on the far side of the forecourt. Högni Sigurgeirsson’s mournful face filled the front page in unflattering close-up.

“‘Högni Sigurgeirsson, 26, is devastated by the loss of his elder sister, well-known TV personality and fitness coach Svana Geirs, who was cruelly murdered two weeks ago in her downtown apartment,’” Gunna read out.

“‘Nothing has happened at all. There has been no progress by the police and they’ve hardly talked to us, let alone kept us up to date with what’s been going on,’ says a heartbroken Högni Sigurgeirsson, who has taken extended leave from work to stay at home and comfort his grieving mother,” she continued. “The scheming bastard! It’s not as if he’s been even remotely helpful either. Who wrote this shit?” she demanded, looking at the double-page article for a byline and reaching for her phone.

She scrolled, punched the call button and listened to the phone ring until finally it clicked into life.

“Skúli? This is the law. Just seen your front page.”

“Me too. Nothing to do with me,” he said, and coughed. “So who wrote this crap?”

Skúli coughed again. “A freelance, I’d guess. I’ll ask and give you a buzz back.”

Gunna’s anger receded as she understood that the story wasn’t one of Skúli’s.

“All right, don’t worry too much about it, but I’d like to know where it came from. It looks like Högni is telling the press stuff that he isn’t telling us, but still moaning because we haven’t caught the bastard who bumped Svana off.”

“Fair enough. I’ll email you when I’ve heard anything,” Skúli said, and rang off as he dissolved into yet more spluttering.

“And?” Eiríkur asked.

“Don’t know. At least it wasn’t my tame journalist who wrote that shit. But it’s definitely time I had another talk with Högni.”

E
IRÍKUR DISAPPEARED UPSTAIRS,
anxious to check his emails, while Gunna wondered where Ívar Laxdal might be found and whether or not he actually had an office of his own. The man appeared to come and go at will, often turning up where his presence was not necessarily unwelcome, but was certainly uncomfortable.

“A result, Gunnhildur,” he rumbled behind her, and she turned to see him striding towards her with his arms full of ring binders.

“On what?” she asked, baffled for the moment.

“The Bjartmar Arnarson killing, of course. The man’s in custody and Sævaldur’s team are interviewing him now. I’m going upstairs. Talk to me on the way,” he suggested in a tone that made it an order. “How did you get on at Litla-Hraun? Helgi told me you were following up on the Ómar Magnússon business. Progress?”

“Absolutely,” Gunna puffed, stretching to keep up with him on the stairs and wondering how he managed to shift himself so quickly without appearing to move any faster than anyone else.

“And?” he demanded, marching along the corridor and swinging into one of the lawyers’ offices.

“Confirmed a lot of what I’d suspected, plus some new leads. Ómar didn’t touch Steindór Hjálmarsson. He was being paid pretty handsomely to do the time for someone else.”

“How much, as a matter of interest?”

“Thirty million.”

“Not a lot, I’d have said.”

“Ah, but ten years ago, thirty million was twice as much as it’s worth now.”

“I’ll grant you that. But it’s still ten years in a concrete box.” Ívar Laxdal put the binders down on a desk in the corner and made for the door. “Coffee?” he asked, striding down the corridor towards the canteen with Gunna again hurrying behind him.

Hell. I’m thirty-seven years old. Why does this blasted man make me feel like I’m ten? she wondered uncomfortably as Ívar Laxdal poured black liquid into two mugs in the deserted canteen.

“A good place at this time of day, Gunnhildur, because there’s nobody about,” he said, sitting at a table in the corner and motioning for her to join him. “Tomorrow, I want to see you at nine for a disciplinary reprimand.”

His black eyes bored into hers from under his heavy brows.

“Is this because I was stupid enough to give Sævaldur a piece of my mind this morning?”

Ívar Laxdal nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Gunna said heavily. “The bloody man winds me up so much, and after what he said about Tinna when she’d taken the gun off the nutcase in the bank, I’m afraid I just saw red for thirty seconds.”

“I know. Sævaldur has some difficulties adjusting to the twenty-first century. I know he makes an effort, but that’s not always enough. But I’d appreciate it if you would cut him a little slack. Completely between ourselves, he’s an excellent officer who should never have left uniform.”

“In that case, completely between ourselves, is he likely to be taking over Örlygur Sveinsson’s duties?”

“In confidence, Gunnhildur, the likelihood is minimal. But what’s your next step on the Svana Geirs case? Where are you now? I take it you’ve seen the papers?”

Gunna pursed her lips and frowned. “I have. I’m no closer to Svana’s killer than I was a week ago. If anything, I’m further away, as Ómar Magnússon was a prime suspect and now he isn’t.”

“How so?”

“I know more or less precisely when Svana was murdered, but Ommi doesn’t. I know, but he doesn’t, that he has an alibi. Though that might not be much of an alibi unless the chap he was administering a pretty brutal beating to at just that time agrees to identify him as his assailant.”

Ívar Laxdal supported his chin in one hand and Gunna could hear his stubby fingers rasping the bristles.

“So who’s your suspect for the murder of Steindór Hjálmarsson?” he asked suddenly.

“Sindri Valsson, Jónas Valur Hjaltason’s boy. He lives in Portugal now, as far as I’m aware. He and his father have some business interests there. What’s the procedure on this? Can we ask the Portuguese police to sling him on to a flight to Iceland for us?”

“Ah, you’ll be interested to hear that there are already enquiries being made in that direction. The financial and computer crime division have been watching the gentleman for a while now, so you’d better liaise with them and see if you can pool some resources. Who knows, you might get a trip to Portugal out of it,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “But, Svana Geirs. We need some progress there. The papers are on to this and we can do without the bad publicity, or that’s the word from above that’s filtering downwards.”

“And you’re filtering it down to me? Point taken. Give me a day or two and hopefully we’ll see things start to move. But I’m practically at square one again on this.”

Ívar Laxdal nodded slowly. “A few days, Gunnhildur. Report back to me when you have a lead, will you?” He stood up, collecting both empty mugs from the table. “I’ll see you at nine, and give my regards to Unnsteinn, would you?” he added, and marched from the room.

S
IGRÚN DISSOLVED INTO
tears a second time over the remains of the pork steaks that Steini had cooked slowly to tenderness with tomatoes, onions and a few herbs that he flatly refused to identify.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffed.

Gunna and Steini glanced at each other helplessly while Laufey fed a laughing Jens with a portion of mashed-up food. Sigrún looked at Jens, gurgling and smiling to himself in the high chair that he was almost too big for, and dabbed her eyes.

“He looks so much like his father,” she said miserably. “The bastard.”

“Have you heard anything from Jörundur?” Gunna asked as a grim look passed over Steini’s face and he stood up to start collecting plates. Gunna motioned to Laufey to lend a hand, but she pretended not to notice.

“No. He’s at this place near Trondheim. His sister told me today when she called to ask about clothes that he’s working on a tunnel, and the slag he took with him’s had no trouble walking into a job. Would you believe it, I don’t even know the cow’s name?”

“I thought she was going to collect his stuff?”

“So did I, and if she doesn’t, she can pick it all up from the dump.” Sigrún poured herself another glass of wine. “Jörundur wants the house sold,” she blurted out. “But he can bloody well think again.”

“Is it worth anything these days?” Gunna asked. “I haven’t even had the heart to have a look at the property pages and see what this place might be worth now, but I guess it’s not much. Yours is quite a big place, though, so it should be worth a bit, shouldn’t it?”

“Yeah. But we’re in Hvalvík, not Reykjavík. Jörundur always was crap with figures and he can’t understand that anything we might get for the house is going to be less than what we owe on it. If we sell, neither of us gets anything and Jens and I would have nowhere to live. But he doesn’t want to see that side of it.”

It was painful to see the change that had taken place in Sigrún and the growing bitterness in her since Jörundur had left so suddenly. Gunna and Sigrún had known each other since Gunna had arrived in Hvalvík, with Laufey as a toddler and a school-age Gísli, to take over the village’s policing from the retiring officer in charge. She had found that her personal history was already well known and the subject of intense debate.

She looked up and saw the reassuring image of Ragnar Sæmundsson, complete with his uniform cap at a slightly more than officially jaunty angle and a mischievous smile on his face, laughing down at her from the top shelf in the living room.

She shook herself from brooding and felt deeply sorry for Sigrún, having watched the burgeoning romance with Jörundur from its beginnings and Sigrún’s longing for children of her own that had culminated in the difficult and overdue arrival of Jens Jörundsson almost three years ago. Gunna had known deep inside her that Jörundur would only last a few years before straying elsewhere. The hand that had unexpectedly cupped a buttock and been swiftly swept away one evening in Sigrún’s darkened hallway had confirmed that for her, and she had watched helplessly as Sigrún lavished all her love and attention on Jens, while Jörundur increasingly occupied himself elsewhere.

“Y’know, Rúna, I don’t know how I’d have managed without you that first year we lived in Hvalvík,” Gunna said as Sigrún upended her wine glass. “You remember all the trouble with the school? A real nightmare that was. If you hadn’t been there to look after Laufey, I’d never have got through it all.”

“God, yes,” Sigrún recalled. “It’s never easy in a small place like this. When I came here it was the same non-stop speculation about who I was, where I came from, who I was related to, what my bra size was, why I’d decided to live here and not in Reykjavík any more, why I was single, if I’d always been single. It was endless, and nobody asks you anything straight out. Crazy.”