Cold Steal (22 page)

‘Accident.’

‘Go on. Tell me how this accident happened,’ Gunna said, relieved to hear that her slow English was better than his.

‘I was moving . . .’ He winced again and pointed with his good hand at the other side of the room. ‘Like that.’

‘A cupboard?’

‘Yes, cupboard for clothes.’

‘And what happened that broke all of the fingers in your hand so neatly?’

‘I drop it.’

‘On your hand?’ Gunna’s tone left Maris in no doubt that she disbelieved him.

‘Yes. It fall. From table.’

‘You put the cupboard on a table, and it fell off, onto your hand?’

‘I was not looking. It fell.’ He put out his good hand again, flat, as if this would demonstrate how the accident had occurred.

‘I think you’re lying to me, Maris. That is your real name, isn’t it?’ Gunna said. ‘In fact, I know you’re lying. I’ve seen the X-rays of your hand and there are separate breaks on each finger that don’t line up. So who did this to you?’

‘Accident.’

‘Who attacked you, and why?’

‘Accident.’ His face set firmly. ‘It was accident.’

‘Who did this?’

‘Accident,’ Maris repeated doggedly.

Gunna shook her head. ‘So whoever did this is going to walk around knowing that you’re in here and your hand will never be any use again. You realize that?’

‘What you say?’

Gunna sighed. She didn’t need to ask any more questions to know that this was going to be a struggle.

He blinked at the square of bright light on the wall and wondered where he was. His head felt heavy. It took a little while for him to work out that the intermittent buzzing he could hear was in his head. Otherwise, there was silence, but not the silence of insulated walls and windows that he was used to. This was an absence of sound, not sound carefully excluded. After a while, he lifted his head from whatever it had been resting on and felt it with one heavy hand, wondering if someone had hit him.

Eventually he forced himself to sit up and found that he ached; not just his head, but every part of him seemed to hurt. Hauling himself to his feet, he supported himself against a windowsill, a graveyard of last summer’s flies, and looked out through the cracked panes. The square of light on the opposite wall had been cast through this window, and he was instantly dazzled by the brightness that stabbed into his head. His glasses had gone and only things that were far away were in focus. The rising distant hills were clear, sparkling in the morning sun and white with a delicate scattering of snow, as a cake is dusted with powdered sugar.

He wondered where he might be. He remembered leaving the hotel and getting into a taxi that appeared by magic, as if called, and leaving it to get into the lift at . . . Where was it? Who had called him? It wasn’t easy to remember and he found himself trying to claw back memories of what he told himself had happened only a day or so ago, but which felt like ancient history.

Sounds gradually started to impinge on his consciousness. There was an occasional distant drip of water somewhere behind him. A bird sang outside beyond the cracked window. There was the slightest rustle of wind in the dry grass outside and he felt a sudden overwhelming hunger.

He was in a cubicle, a grey box that had once been a room, and the door hung at an awkward angle on one of its hinges. He shuffled to it and looked past into a corridor that he gingerly went along, hands on the walls to support himself.

At the end was another room, the glassless windows open to the elements and their long-broken panes shadows of shards in the deep layer of dust on the floor. What had once been a kitchen was open to the elements and Jóhann shivered. Spring was on the way but summer was still a long way off as he again wondered where he could be, gazing around him as he gathered his wits.

There was a gaping hole in the wall for what had once been the flue for a stove of some kind. Any cupboards or furnishing had long been stripped out, but a rickety table against one wall and a chair next to it looked clean, as if recently wiped down, and to his surprise, he saw his belongings stacked neatly on it. The jacket he had been wearing had been folded. He shook it out and gratefully put it on. In the pockets were his wallet, the cash and cards still there inside, and his phone, its battery dead. He tried to switch it on several times without success before pocketing it and finding his glasses there. The left lens had cracked with a starburst of fine lines at one corner, but he almost wept with relief as the world jumped back into focus and he was able to take in his dismal surroundings.

Work was quiet. The old boys did most of what needed to be done and Orri drank coffee as he read a weekend’s worth of newspapers in the canteen, trying not to think about the package under the seat of his car that someone had delivered during the night. The instructions were clear and the task seemed simple enough, and he wondered who the victim might be, but the thoughts were pushed from his mind as Dóri came in, poured himself a mug of coffee and fetched his sandwiches from the canteen fridge.

He sat opposite Orri and started to munch a sandwich heavy with the aroma of home-made meat paste. ‘Anything interesting?’ He asked, gesturing at the open weekend newspaper with the uneaten half.

‘Nope. Same old shit. Country going to the dogs because of the government, according to the opposition. Country gone to the dogs because of what the opposition did when they were in power, according to the government.’

‘You’re getting cynical in your old age, Orri.’ Dóri smiled. ‘It’s nothing to do with the government, as anyone who takes an interest in these things will tell you.’ His voice was soft and persuasive. People stopped talking and listened when Dóri said anything, and Orri wondered how he did it, reckoning that it was something to do with Dóri having been a teacher for many years. Retirement had not been as comfortable as it should have been and Dóri had watched his savings become virtually worthless in the wake of the financial crash. Orri wondered why Dóri wasn’t bitter, or maybe he was, though he hid it well?

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘It’s as clear as day if you look at it from the right perspective. Our elected representatives have next to no real power,’ he said with a smile that dripped sadness. ‘Business has this country sewn up tight in every way. People who own fish quotas or have access to power, or companies with monopolies on imports, that’s where the real power lies.’

‘Come on, Dóri. It’s not as bad as all that, surely?’

Dóri let his glasses drop from his forehead to the end of his nose and spun around the newspaper Orri had been browsing through. He tapped the cover.

‘Look at this. There’s been an argument about joining the European Union going on for years. It’s not a popular point of view, but it would be overwhelmingly better for you and me if we were part of Europe. Right now wages are two-thirds of what they are in say, Denmark. OK? And food prices here are roughly double. Food and power prices would stabilize, and index-linking would have to go, so the cost of living would fall, not right away maybe, but over a few years ordinary people like you and me would see ourselves better off.’

‘Yeah, but what about the fishing grounds? They’d be wide open to foreigners, wouldn’t they?’

‘You might think so, but there would still be quotas and they’d be held by the people who hold them now. So those fishing grounds wouldn’t be open to foreigners unless the quota holders were to sell up to someone in Spain or Norway.’

Orri looked confused. ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Absolutely. Look, Orri, you’re no fool but you walk around with your eyes closed. The government wants to do something that business doesn’t like, and what happens? Business whips up a storm of protest.’

‘You mean in the papers?’

‘The newspapers, TV, radio, everywhere. Who do you think owns the newspapers?’ He patted the folded newspaper on the table in front of him. ‘Who publishes this? Do you know?’

Orri looked at the paper with its bright orange logo. ‘No,’ he admitted.

Dóri opened it and flipped through the pages. ‘The gentleman who owns this also owns the supermarket that sells all this stuff,’ he said, pointing at a double-page spread of meat and vegetables on offer that coming weekend. ‘And he owns this as well,’ he added, opening it at a spread of televisions and sound systems. ‘Now, do you really think this lovely man, undoubtedly a philanthropist who loves his mother dearly, has any interest in welcoming the competition that being part of the EU would bring? Of course not. How come he can have his company’s accounts prepared in euros or dollars while plebs like you and I have no choice but to use a currency that’s being steered by hand by a government that does what the owner of
Dagurinn
tells it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Orri replied, feeling uncomfortable. ‘Does he?’

‘He does, my boy. He does. That’s why this delightful country of ours, which we proudly think of, for some bizarre reason, as a bastion of democracy, is run by a small group of men in suits who own banks, ships, land and a few other things.’

Dóri sat back with a satisfied look on his face.

‘So why doesn’t anyone do anything about this?’

‘You think people haven’t tried? Old Jörundur did his best, and look what happened to him,’ he said with a smile that ran around his face. ‘I was a radical for all the years I was a teacher, stood for Parliament and the city council a few times, marched on the Yankee base at Keflavík once or twice as well. Not a hope. The good people of this nation, like people the world over, are sheep who are happy to be led to the slaughter, in that they’ll listen to any snake-oil salesman in a cheap suit ready to convince them to vote against their own interests.’

Orri looked askance. ‘People aren’t that stupid.’

‘No?’ Dóri asked gently. ‘Maybe not everyone, but enough to ensure that nothing changes.’ He sighed. ‘But now we had better get some work done before the others notice that we’re taking it easy. Alex isn’t here. He called in this morning and said he’d be late.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Orri asked with a sideways look.

‘Something to do with an abnormal fluid intake, I gather.’ Dóri grinned. ‘It’s not what I’d call an illness, but just for this once he can have the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Anyone else would have been given the sack by now if they were as late as Alex is half the time,’ Orri grumbled.

Dóri leaned forward, elbows on the table, and beckoned theatrically.

‘What?’

‘Orri, tell me. You know who owns this company?’

‘Óli Hansen, isn’t it? Not that we see a lot of him.’

Dóri shook his head and leaned further forward, his voice was so low as to be inaudible. Orri strained to hear what he said.

‘Óli Hansen started the company and he still owns some of it.’

‘But, what?’

‘Óli is just a glorified manager these days. We have owners who have their offices in a city a long way east of here,’ Dóri said. ‘Don’t even think about why Alex is here, but he’s here for a reason and that means he can turn up late five days a week and still not get even a verbal warning.’

Orri looked baffled. ‘So, why?’ he asked as Dóri put a finger to his lips.

‘Don’t ask. Don’t look too closely at what comes in and goes out. Don’t be too friendly with Alex. That way when someone asks, you can say truthfully that you had no idea.’

‘No idea of what?’

‘Hell, Orri, you’re dense today for a smart lad like you,’ Dóri said with a knowing look that made Orri shiver. ‘I don’t ask and I don’t want to know. I have a disabled wife and a bone-headed single-parent daughter to support, and I need this job for as long as it lasts. Now, the reason I asked you to come in is because we have a fish delivery to make today.’

‘Alex always does those, doesn’t he?’

‘Normally he does, yes. But Alex hasn’t turned up.’

‘So you want me to do it?’

‘Got it in one. It’s easy enough. Hafnarfisk have seventy boxes of fresh fish to go to the airport for the London flight this afternoon. You know where the cargo terminal is at Keflavík, don’t you? Just follow the signs and someone will show you where to go.’

It was one of those impersonal blocks of flats almost as far from the city centre as you can get without being in the countryside. Eiríkur pushed at the outside door and was not surprised that the lock was broken as it swung inwards.

He’d been able to get Elísabet Sólborg Höskuldsdóttir’s address from the national registry, an easy enough exercise as there was only one person to be found with that combination of names. But he knew from bitter experience that the listed legal residence was, for many people, where their parents lived, where they had an address for work reasons, or often simply a place they had lived at one time and had long since moved on from without bothering to register the move.

Although the registry specified the address, Eiríkur’s suspicions came true when he saw it was a block, with no way of knowing which of the eight apartments would be her one – and there was no name on the list of doorbells that looked likely.

He knocked at the first door he found and got no response. The next door had pounding music coming from inside, which presumably drowned out his puny efforts at knocking, so he went a floor higher and tried again.

The door was ripped open while his hand was still in the air.

‘Who the hell are you?’

The face looking out at him from the darkness of the doorway snarled and Eiríkur backed away half a step. ‘I’m looking for Elísabet. She doesn’t live here?’

‘There’s no Elísabet here,’ the man said and made to slam the door.

‘How about the other flats here? Upstairs, somewhere?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ the man snarled and this time the door did close in his face, hard enough for the door frame to shake.

Eiríkur shrugged his shoulders and carried on upstairs, knocking at two more doors before he got a reply. This time a middle-aged woman opened the door and looked at him curiously.

‘Good afternoon. I’m looking for someone called Elísabet who lives in this block. I’m sorry but I don’t know which flat, so I’m having to knock on doors.’