Cold Comfort (37 page)

“Zero-two-sixty, control. On the way. Can you advise?”

“Carbon monoxide poisoning, I’d guess,” Helgi replied, speaking as he jogged across the road.

Gunna had already dragged the unconscious man away from the car and was kneeling over him, one hand gripping his head by the chin and the other under his neck. She swooped down and locked her mouth over Hallur’s, and Helgi could see the effort she was making to force air into the man’s lungs. She lifted her head, looked to one side to see the fall of his chest, then turned to breathe again. Helgi reached for the man’s wrist and felt vainly for a pulse.

“Any heartbeat?” Gunna asked quickly between breaths.

“Not yet. Stop a moment,” he said, feeling for a pulse in Hallur’s neck. “Yeah, faint, but it’s there.”

Gunna resumed, while Helgi felt again for a pulse in the wrist of the limp hand.

“We’ve got company,” he said, as two small boys on bicycles stopped and stared at the end of the driveway.

“Hey!” Helgi called out.

“Me?” one of them shouted back. “What are you doing?”

“He’s injured. There’s an ambulance coming. Can you go to the corner and wait for it? Make sure they come to the right place?”

The two boys hurtled away just as the faint wail of a siren could be heard in the distance.

“Let me know when you want to switch,” Helgi said quietly.

“Doing all right. Turn the engine off, will you?” Gunna said between breaths as the siren whooped and fell silent, its howl replaced by the rumble of tyres as it stopped in the street and two paramedics jumped out and trotted to the scene. One of them clipped a mask around Hallur’s head and placed a clear plastic bladder in Helgi’s hand.

“Here you go, squeeze that, will you, mate? Now, what happened?”

“Turned up to interview this chap and found him spark out in his car.”

“D’you know if he’s been drinking?”

“No idea. And the house is locked up.”

Gunna sat on the tarmac and took deep breaths while the second paramedic linked up an oxygen cylinder to the mask.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked.

“Couldn’t say. D’you know how long he’d been in the car, or if he’s taken anything?”

“No idea. We just turned up and watched him I suppose for a minute or two before I went and had a look to see what was up.”

“Hard to say, then. We’ll get him off to Casualty. Might be a bit touch and go, though.”

“You reckon?” Gunna said.

“Yeah,” he said without looking up from Hallur’s face. “If it was a new Volkswagen with a catalytic converter, he’d probably be as right as rain in ten minutes, apart from a bastard of a headache. But an old heap like that Merc’s bound to be bloody deadly. Gunnhildur, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought so. If you ring up in an hour or so, they’ll tell you if he’s still with us. Who is he, by the way?”

“H
Æ, MUM. BAD
day?” Laufey asked brightly.

Gunna hung her coat on the back of a chair and then dropped into it.

“Why? Does it show?”

“Duh. Yeah.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. Since you asked, it has been a pretty crappy day. Where’s Steini?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him. Isn’t he at work or something?” Laufey asked with a trace of irritation in her voice.

Gunna realized as she pulled off her shoes just how tired she was and how draining trying to breathe life into Hallur Hallbjörnsson had been.

“What were you doing, Mum? You look shattered.”

Gunna yawned and started to undo her blouse.

“I shouldn’t tell you things like this, but I’ve had to inform a lady that her husband tried to commit suicide this afternoon and that it’s still too early to tell whether or not he’ll be permanently brain-damaged afterwards,” Gunna said grimly.

Laufey sat wide-eyed. “Wow. Heavy.”

“And when she heard that it was me and Helgi who stopped the idiot from killing himself, she told us we should have let the bastard finish the job and then burst into tears. So right now she’s sedated in the same hospital as he is.”

“Definitely a bad day.”

“That’s what it’s like when you get to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Anyway, it’s been a bloody long day and I need a shower, badly,” Gunna announced, her blouse balled in one hand and wrinkling her nose. “Is that my smelly feet or yours?”

“Yours, Mum, definitely.” Laufey laughed. “What’s for dinner?”

“Dinner? You mean you haven’t cooked something ready for your old mum?”

“I thought Steini would be making dinner tonight.”

“Apparently not,” Gunna said through a second jawbreaking yawn. “A takeaway, then. Decide what you want and we’ll go and get it when I’m out of the shower.”

“Woo-hoo! Junk food!”

Gunna stopped in the bathroom doorway.

“Not pizza, though,” she decided. “Well, you can have pizza if you want. Some of that deep-fried fish would be good if they have it. See you in a minute,” she said as Laufey pounced on the local shop’s takeaway menu. “And ice cream,” she added through the closed door as the hot water started to run.

“Ice cream? Aren’t you on a diet?”

“To hell with the diet. I want ice cream,” Gunna yelled back. “Because I’m worth it.”

Thursday 25th

“W
HAT DO YOU
have for me, Gunnhildur?” Ívar Laxdal said with no preamble, overtaking at a smart trot as she made her way up the stairs deep in thought.

“What? Oh, sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?”

“Come with me. A quiet word before we both get busy.”

Ívar Laxdal took Eiríkur’s chair, while Gunna sat scanning her own desk and the junk piled on it.

“Three primary suspects. Jónas Valur Hjaltason, Bjarki Steinsson, Hallur Hallbjörnsson,” she said. “I think one of these three either murdered Svana Geirs or possibly made sure that she was murdered. All three of them had left fingerprints in her flat in the week before she died.”

A questioning black eyebrow crept up Ívar Laxdal’s forehead.

“It could be any one of them. Jónas Valur is a vindictive old bastard and he’s supposed to be here at nine to give a statement. You’re not a Mason, are you?” Gunna asked suddenly.

“Why?”

“Just because. Jónas Valur is, and it seems he’s a mate of Örlygur Sveinsson’s.”

Ívar Laxdal grinned and shook his head.

“Bjarki Steinsson is a bag of nerves and completely distraught,” Gunna continued. “Most likely because Svana had called time on the syndicate, so there’s the theory that he was so upset, he lost it and clobbered her. As for Hallur, who knows

what his motives could be? Certainly he stood to lose his political career if the story came out.”

“Sure? Plenty of people have stayed on in politics after being caught with their trousers round their ankles.”

“Yeah, admittedly. But this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill fuck on the side. He’d been paying her upkeep for the best part of two years. Somehow I don’t think his career could have survived that.”

“And the brother?”

“Possible, but I don’t believe so.”

“Sævaldur thinks Ómar Magnússon is the killer. He’s killed before.”

“Or not. We certainly have enough to look very hard at Sindri Valsson as the man genuinely responsible for that killing.”

“And he’s gone to ground somewhere, which a cynical man would see as an admission of a guilty conscience.”

“Someone cynical like me,” Gunna agreed.

“What next?”

“Clear some of the paper.” Gunna looked with distaste at the contents of her desk. “Listen to what Jónas Valur comes up with, pay a visit to Hallur’s poisonous wife and then start putting pressure on Bjarki Steinsson. There’s something about this syndicate that none of them have been telling us, and I reckon he’s the most likely one to crack.”

“I’ll leave you to it. Let me know how you get on,” he commanded, and made for the door. “Don’t screw up on this, Gunnhildur. We have to get this one right. If we don’t …” He merely shook his head sadly.

G
UNNA WAS DEEP
in paperwork when her desk phone rang. She snapped out of updating her case notes and heard Sigvaldi on the front desk announce gloomily that she had a visitor.

“Eiríkur,” she called out, rapidly signing forms without bothering to read them a second time. “There’s a good friend of the police downstairs. How would you like to go down to reception and bring him up here to an interview room?”

“All right,” Eiríkur replied, rising from his seat. “Who’s that?”

“Jónas Valur Hjaltason. Delightful man, a philanthropist and a gentleman,” she said drily. “Tell him I won’t keep him waiting.”

But Gunna did keep Jónas Valur waiting, delayed by an encounter with Sævaldur on the way, and their disagreement over charging Ómar Magnússon left her devoid of the good humor she had acquired by having signed off long-overdue paperwork.

“Apologies,” she said irritably, bustling into the interview room where Jónas Valur lounged in one of the chairs while a dark-suited man with a greying combover who nevertheless put Gunna in mind of a wolf sat upright next to him.

“Good morning, officer. I’ve been waiting for some time now and I’d like to remind you that my time is valuable,” Jónas Valur drawled.

“And so is mine,” Gunna snapped more sharply than she had intended.

“My lawyer, Ólafur Ja–”

“Ólafur Jacobsen. Yes, we’ve crossed swords before.”

“A regrettable miscarriage of justice,” the lawyer sniffed.

“A miscarriage of justice in which your client had a bag of coke in his pocket and two more in the car he was driving.”

“There was nothing whatsoever to link my client to the narcotics. A mistake, easily explained.”

“The judge didn’t think so.”

“Evidence can be misleading.”

“If you’re implying that there was anything irregular with that particular case, which is long closed, then I’m sure you’re aware of the proper channels.”

The lawyer frowned and pouted, and Gunna wanted to laugh but restrained herself.

“Just so my client is aware of circumstances.”

“I’m sure you’ve told him everything he needs to know on the way here,” Gunna said smoothly, turning to Jónas Valur. “You’re prepared to give a statement?”

“My client has prepared a statement,” the lawyer said, interrupting Jónas Valur before he could speak and sliding a single sheet of heavy paper across the desk between them. Gunna picked it up and sat back, taking her time to read it, while Jónas Valur gradually began to twitch and the lawyer fidgeted.

“So according to this, you were at your office from nine in the morning until after three on the day that Svana Geirs was murdered? You are aware that this contradicts your answer when I asked about your whereabouts before?”

“A mistake with his diary, my client assures me. He was in his office the whole day.”

“And who will corroborate this?”

“Anna Fjóla Sigurbjörnsdóttir.”

“The secretary?”

“Yes.”

Gunna looked long and hard at Jónas Valur, who gazed clear-eyed back at her.

“When I spoke to you a few days ago, you recalled clearly that you had been working at home that morning and had lunch at the City Café before going to your office, where your secretary confirmed that you arrived at twelve thirty. Now you’re claiming that you didn’t leave your office all day long? Isn’t that unusual?”

Jónas Valur opened his mouth to speak, but the lawyer beat him to it once again.

“My client has told you that he made a mistake when checking his diary. It’s a simple enough error, and he has apologized for the oversight.”

“He hasn’t told me anything—only you have. It strikes me as highly unusual for your client not to leave his office at all for a whole day. Odd for a man who likes to take a walk around lunchtime?”

“Possibly,” the lawyer rasped, tight-lipped.

“I think we’ve established beyond any reasonable doubt that you had a phone conversation with Svana Geirs shortly before she died. What was that about?” Gunna asked, looking directly at Jónas Valur, who glared stonily back at her.

“My client has no comment to make.”

“This is the number of your personal mobile phone?”

Gunna showed him the seven digits she had noted down. Jónas Valur nodded imperceptibly, while the lawyer shook his head.

“No comment.”

“You don’t deny that you and a group of men had a simultaneous relationship with Svana Geirs, and that between you you all contributed to her livelihood?”

“My client prefers not to comment.”

“In that case we appear to be at a deadlock,” Gunna said, her patience wearing thin. “So that’s it for now,” she added. Jónas Valur immediately shoved his chair back and rose to his feet.

“Can I have an assurance that my client will not be harassed?” the lawyer asked in a flat voice but with a sneer on his face.

“As long as I can have an assurance that your client won’t obstruct a murder investigation,” Gunna snapped back. “I’m sure we’ll have reason to talk again soon,” she said as Jónas Valur and the lawyer left the room without another word or a backward glance.

In silence, Gunna escorted the two men down to the front desk and watched them leave the building, Jónas Valur holding his tie in one hand to prevent a vicious wind from whipping it up, while Ólafur Jacobsen placed a hand on the top of his head to prevent his carefully arranged coiffure from collapsing.

Eiríkur appeared silently at her side as she glumly watched the two men get into a smart Mercedes that stopped for them outside.

“Right, my lad. I’d like you on your bike this minute. Get down to City Café to start with and see if Jónas Valur was in there the day Svana died. If not, try the other eateries and whatnot round there. Go out there and ask. See if we can demolish the stupid statement that evil-minded oaf wrote for him. All right?”

P
ICTURES IN ORNATE
frames decorated every wall of the living room that stretched away into the distance. Some were garish abstracts; others were sepia-toned portraits of groups of children at various stages of adolescence, unconvincingly contrived to look as if they had been taken a century ago.

Gunna looked with unconcealed dislike at the display of bad taste on the walls while she and Helgi waited, standing uncomfortably next to a dining table that shone like a mirror, as Bjarki Steinsson carried on a muted argument with his wife just out of their earshot.