Cold Comfort (35 page)

“The bugger’s gone,” she cursed, clicking her communicator. “Zero-five-sixty-one, ninety-five-fifty. ‘Where did you say you saw that grey Opel?’” she asked.

“It was right outside Pizza-K ten minutes ago.”

“OK. He’s gone. Can you keep an eye out again, please?”

“Yeah. Will do. My mate’s just booking four idiots in a clapped-out Mazda that looks like they bought it from a scrapyard, thanks.”

“Pleased to hear it,” Gunna replied. “Out.”

She checked her phone for messages and looked up to see a grey Opel pull up outside Pizza-K and the familiar bulk of Högni Sigurgeirsson haul himself out. She got out of the Audi and walked towards the shop, looking the Opel over carefully on the way.

“Yeah?” a young man with pocked cheeks and a white hat behind the counter greeted her.

“Grey Opel outside. Whose is it?”

“’Scuse me. Don’t speak good Iceland,” the man said with a pout. “Grey car,” Gunna said clearly, pointing. “Who?”

“Is Högni car.”

“And where’s Högni?”

“He here,” the man said without interest, turning away to deal with something on the counter in front of him. He looked up to see Gunna’s police badge held out in front of him, just as Högni, a red-and-white baseball cap on the back of his head, appeared from the kitchen with a pizza box in his hands.

“Högni. This look for you,” the man behind the counter announced as Högni’s face fell.

“The man I’ve been looking for,” Gunna said cheerfully.

“Look, yeah. Er, I’m working right now, see. I can’t talk to you.”

“You work here?”

“Yeah. I deliver pizzas sometimes,” he said sulkily.

“Well you’d better get someone else to deliver that one, because you and I need to have words.”

Högni made for the open door at a trot and Gunna stepped in front of him. His bulk would have been enough to bowl her over, but he stopped short.

“Now.”

Högni looked bewildered.

“Hey, Ahmed,” he called to the man behind the counter. “Can you get someone else to take this one?”

“Yeah. Z’OK. Andrzej back soon. You go. Take with you police,” he said shortly, almost spitting out the last word.

Högni followed Gunna outside and she opened the door of the Audi for him to sit in the passenger seat. Infuriatingly, the craving for a cigarette came over her as she got into the driver’s side, but she ruthlessly banished it and took a square of gum from the pack in the door pocket.

She chewed slowly and looked at Högni as he sat rigidly.

“Why did you do it, Högni?” she asked softly, and watched as he crumpled in the seat. Tears started to roll down his red cheeks and he wiped his nose with the Pizza-K baseball cap.

Gunna handed him a tissue. The overbearing bluster that had been the main feature of any conversation so far with Högni had disappeared. He sniffed and his face relaxed with what she guessed was a release of tension now that he was no longer guarding a secret.

“I’d like you to tell me exactly what happened, Högni, OK? No pressure, and this is between us. We’ll have to do it formally later, but tell me the story first. Did you find Svana?”

Högni hiccoughed and nodded. “She said I could come round and see her around half one, two. We were going to go to the gym and work on some fitness regimes for me.”

“So you were training together?”

“Yeah. She said I needed to lose ten kilos at least. She was going to try and get me fixed up as a personal trainer. But she said I couldn’t be an unfit personal trainer.”

Gunna appraised the young man’s baggy form and compared it to his late sister’s toned figure. She could only agree with Svana’s diagnosis that losing the double chin and some of the belly would probably make him a happier individual.

“So you went to her flat? You have a key?”

“Yeah,” he said, sniffing hard and pulling a ring of keys from his pocket. He picked one out and held the bunch by it. “And I knew the alarm code.”

“So you let yourself in. What then?”

“I never hurt her,” he said plaintively. “I would never have done that.”

“I can see that, Högni. But you have to tell me everything you can. Even a tiny detail could take us to the person who really did it.”

“I knocked, opened the door and went in. The alarm wasn’t on.” He gulped. “So I called out and went into the kitchen and saw her there on the floor.”

“Did you move her at all?”

Högni shook his head.

“So when we arrived at the scene she was lying just as she fell? Is that right?”

Högni nodded vigorously and his chin quivered. “I touched her cheek. And her hand.”

“But you knew she was dead?”

“Her eyes were open but she couldn’t see anything.”

“And you answered the phone, didn’t you?” Gunna asked.

“How do you know? Yeah. The phone was there on the side. It started to ring and so I picked it up.”

“Do you know who was calling?”

“Dunno. Didn’t look at the screen. It was some guy and he wanted to know where Svana was so I just said she was busy right now and couldn’t talk to him,” Högni blurted out before drawing a breath. “He got a bit angry. Asked who the hell I was and why I was answering Svana’s phone, so I told him I was her brother and he just laughed. Then he said he needed to talk to her and I should give her the phone. I said no, I couldn’t and he wanted to know why.”

“You told him?”

“It’s all fuzzy now. I think so. I think I said she won’t wake up, or something like that.”

Högni was starting to collect himself. The gasps for breath had calmed and the hiccoughs had disappeared.

“What was his reaction to that?”

“I don’t know. He must have hung up.”

“All right. So what did you do then?”

“I don’t really know.”

“You mean you panicked?”

“Ummm.”

Högni nodded a second time and Gunna sat in thought. She had suspected that Högni could have been responsible for his sister’s death in a furious outburst, but the man’s obvious distress now was going a long way towards convincing her otherwise. But knowing that Svana was already dead by the time the last conversation on her phone took place was enough to open up other possibilities.

Högni saw the look of determination on Gunna’s face and immediately quailed.

“What’s going to happen now?” he asked.

Gunna looked up and shook herself back to the here and now. She started the engine.

“You have a lot of questions to answer. Put your seat belt on, please. We’ve going to Hverfisgata to finish this. It’s going to take a while, I’m afraid.”

“But I’m supposed to be at work. I’ll lose my job,” Högni protested. “And what about my car?”

“Sorry, work’s going to have to wait,” she said sternly, and clicked her communicator. “Zero-five-sixty-one, ninety-fivefifty. Busy?”

“Not right now. What can we do for you?”

“Can you meet me by the Arnarbakki shops, outside Pizza-K?”

“Will do.”

“Give me your car keys, please, Högni,” Gunna instructed, and he meekly handed them over. “We’re going to Hverfisgata and I’ll have to ask you to make a statement and account for every single thing you remember from the second you walked in the door of Svana’s flat. Understand?”

Högni nodded as a squad car appeared at the far side of the car park and nosed through the traffic towards them to pull up next to the Audi. Gunna wound down the window to greet the two officers sitting in it.

“All right?” the one nearest to her said with a dazzling smile.

Gunna leaned out of her window and passed Högni’s keys across.

“Grey Opel over there, guys. I need one of you to bring it down to the station for me. But first, will one of you go into Pizza-K and tell the snotty bastard behind the counter that this young man’s not been arrested, but he’ll be helping us with an enquiry for the rest of the day and it’s not his fault?”

H
ÖGNI SLUMPED IN
the chair. The release of tension in the young man had already exhausted him. Although Gunna would have preferred to treat him gently, a gut feeling told her that this also needed some quick and determined handling.

Eiríkur handed her a photocopy of Högni’s newspaper interview and sat back to listen, while Gunna pushed it across the table towards him.

“This is what made me think,” she told him, tapping it with one finger. “It was the worst feeling of my life seeing my big sister, who we all loved and admired so much, lying dead in front of me,” she read out, and waited for a reaction.

“You know, Högni, Svana is still in the mortuary at the National Hospital. I know your father identified her, because I was with him. He’d already told me that you and your mother couldn’t face it, which was one of the reasons I made sure I was there as well. It’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s a lot harder on your own,” she said, quickly stifling the expected but unwelcome pangs of loss that fought their way to the surface of her mind.

Högni’s eyes were blank pools, staring at his hands in front of him. “Are you aware, Högni, how she earned a living and could afford to live in a place like that?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, looking down, his voice barely audible. “Mum and Dad don’t know.”

“I think we’ll try and keep it that way,” Gunna said. “Did you know any of the men, or ever see any of them?”

“Svana knew tons of people and she was always hanging about with someone different. I never knew who most of them were.”

“You left the flat. You didn’t think to call the police or an ambulance?”

“No. I was just really confused. I knew she was dead and an ambulance wouldn’t be able to help her. I was scared it looked like I might have done it…” His voice tailed off into silence.

“Why’s that?” Gunna asked softly.

“Because we’d had an argument a few days before. It was when she told me how she really made her money with those guys. She said she’d tried being married and didn’t like it, so this was like being married to four rich men at the same time but without having to cook or wash smelly underwear.” He sighed. “We had a real screaming argument in the street outside Fit Club. I yelled at her that she was a slag and she screamed back that I was an idiot who should go back to the fish factory where I belonged.”

“When was this?”

“I’m not sure exactly. A few days before.”

“So you made up?”

“Sort of,” Högni said. “She called me and asked if I’d come round in the afternoon. She said she had some good news and wanted to tell me, said she was going to be back on TV and she could pack in the rich men. She said she’d see if she could find herself some toyboy who would cook and wash her underwear for her.”

“So what did you do with her phone?”

“Dropped it, maybe. I don’t remember.”

“You closed the door of the flat?”

“Don’t know. Don’t think so.”

“Did you see anyone on your way out of the building?”

“Nah. Don’t think so. Or there could have been the cleaner on the bottom floor. I’m not sure.”

“Did you go anywhere else in the flat, or notice anything out of place? Anything unusual?”

“I don’t think so,” Högni said. “But the rose wasn’t there, neither was the bat,” he added darkly.

“Bat?”

“Yeah. She kept an old baseball bat behind the front door, just in case, she said.”

“What was that about a rose?”

“She had a little porcelain rose on a plate, about so big,” he explained, making a ring of his thumb and finger. “When she didn’t want to be disturbed, the rose was hung on the door.”

“You mean when one of the syndicate was there?”

Högni nodded. “Yeah. I suppose the only ones who knew about that were me and the … men,” he said with hesitation. “But I didn’t know why until the day before we had our argument. I went to see her and rang the bell, but didn’t get an answer. I didn’t have much to do, so I thought I’d wait, and sat outside. Then she came out, hanging on this guy’s arm, an old bastard, way too old for Svana.”

“What do you call old?”

“Shit. As old as my dad, I guess, and he’s past sixty. This guy was a stocky feller, bald and old.”

Jónas Valur, Gunna thought, recognizing instantly the description of the man’s domed forehead.

“Did you know any of Svana’s rich men? Did you ever see any of them?”

“Nah, only that old bastard,” Högni said, and for the first time Gunna heard a note of uncertainty in his voice. “I just knew there were four of them, because she said so, and she said she was going to stop seeing them soon.”

“Do you know if the men themselves were aware that she was planning to bring this arrangement to an end?”

“Dunno. Don’t think so.”

“Do you think she’d tell you or them first?” Gunna probed. “Dunno,” Högni repeated. “But I’d have thought she’d have told me first after we’d had that argument.”

“Right. Thank you, Högni. That will do for the moment. You’re free to go now, but I’ll certainly need to speak to you again tomorrow. Will you go home?”

“Yeah.” Högni looked down at his hands.

“Go and get some rest. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Will I go to jail?” he asked in a small voice.

“W
HAT’S THE RUSH
this time?” Helgi demanded, stifling his irritation at being bundled out of the building and into a car.

“Nothing like striking while the iron’s hot,” Gunna replied with determination in her voice. “Listen up. According to that greasy pudding, Svana Geirs was about to bring the syndicate to an end and give all her sugar daddies notice to quit.”

“Right?” Helgi said, an eyebrow shooting up. “Win the lottery or something, did she?”

“Nope, not that good,” Gunna told him, slipping the car into the stream of traffic. “It seems she was getting a second chance at TV, so I reckon that between Fit Club and telly, she reckoned she could afford to give up shagging for cash.”

“All right, so where are we going now?”

“You’re going to see Bjarki Steinsson. Push him hard on when he last saw Svana. Ask for all the details you can get, confiscate his laptop if you have to and get in touch with his internet provider if you think that might produce an alibi. Don’t forget that we know now that Högni answered Svana’s phone at thirteen fifty-three and she was already dead then. I’d been working on the premise that she answered her own phone. Miss Cruz said between twelve and three, but now we know it was between twelve and thirteen fifty-three, which shoots down Hallur’s alibi in flames.”