Cold Steal (33 page)

‘That’s what I’m wondering. I’d be interested to know how he rented a van for two days last week and paid with a credit card belonging to Sólfell Property. Jóhann Hjálmarsson’s credit card. After all, it’s not as if they look alike or as if the names on the card and this man’s driving licence even match, but as the hire company didn’t look closely, off he went with a van.’

‘I honestly have no idea,’ Sunna María protested weakly. ‘If I could tell you, I would.’

Gunna folded the paper back into her pocket.

‘Intriguing,’ she said, looking out of the window at the occasional drop of rain hurled against the glass by the wind. ‘I feel like a walk, so I might have a look at your construction site.’

He trudged almost in a daze. The hunger cramps had abated, kept at bay with mouthfuls of water from the streams that clattered through the rocks. Jóhann stared at the grass by the track, wondering if grass could be eaten or if it would just make the ache in his belly worse. He remembered hearing somewhere that Iceland was a nightmare country for vegetarians, with a cuisine that consisted largely of lamb and fish. Nothing other than potatoes would grow in Iceland’s short summer, but at least there was enough grass and heather to support all those sheep.

He spied a couple of scruffy ewes watching him with suspicious eyes from far up the slope and he wondered if he could catch one, dismissing the thought immediately. He had no idea how to kill a sheep even if he were to catch one, let alone how to turn a dead sheep into something edible. It was the wrong time of the year for any kind of berries and he guessed it would be too early for the eggs of ground-nesting birds.

The ravens had returned and he was certain it was the same mean-eyed pair that had followed him the day before, always somewhere in the distance as the track had gone up hill and down. Jóhann knew that his strength would not last. Sooner or later he would have no choice but to sit by the side of the track and wait for someone to come to him instead of using up precious energy trying to find help before it was too late. He was uncomfortably aware of a clock ticking in the distant back of his mind.

He thought of Sunna María, imagining her concern, daydreaming of her voice and the throaty laugh he loved to hear as her clothes slipped to the floor. He still liked the idea of a week or three in the Mediterranean sunshine once he had got to safety, but it was now the idea of safety, a square meal and a night’s sleep that was preoccupying him more than the thought of a holiday.

Deep in thought, he hardly noticed the cattle grid until he stumbled and fell, one foot twisting in the process as he cried out in pain and swore to himself.

He sat by the side of the road with his back to a fence post as he massaged his ankle and it was some time before he realized the significance. A fence post meant a wire fence snaking off into the grey distance, and that had to be a sure indication that he had to be somewhere close to human habitation. In spite of the nagging pain in his ankle, which he told himself he could not afford to worry about, Jóhann felt buoyed up by the thought that a fence meant a farm somewhere nearby. Now he felt it was just a matter of time before he found himself sitting in a farmhouse kitchen with breakfast in front of him.

The track went steadily downhill in a gentle gradient, allowing him to see the landscape far ahead when breaks in the weather allowed. Jóhann had never before had to deal with weather. Weather was something that people outside worried about and he was coming to the conclusion that the elements were far more important than he could ever have imagined in his comfortable city cocoon that allowed him to shut out the climate at the touch of a button.

As the track rounded the curve of a hill and there was still no friendly pastel-shaded farmhouse roof anywhere in sight, his euphoria began to ebb as his ankle throbbed. He dared not stop or rest for fear that he would not be able to start off again. The ravens seemed to be there all the time at the edge of his field of vision and he felt they were coming closer, stopping to perch on rocks as he hobbled along the pitted track. He was sure they were waiting for him to falter and he pulled the ragged overcoat tighter around his shoulders, promising himself that if the worst came to the worst he would wrap it around his head to protect his eyes from the razor beaks that would go for the softest target.

‘You can’t come in here without a helmet, sweetheart,’ a man in a yellow vest, his own helmet perched on top of a woollen hat, told her.

‘I think you’ll find that I can,’ Gunna said, showing him her identity card.

‘Oh. In that case I suppose I’d better watch what I say. The lads are all legal,’ he added as Gunna marched past him.

‘How far have you got?’

‘Still doing the footings. The ironwork’s all in place and we’ll start pumping the rest of the concrete in a minute. Then the princess will have her foundations,’ he said with a gaptoothed smile that gaped from ear to ear.

The site stretched away across a patch of ground scraped from the slope. The basement of the house had been dug and shored up with rough plankwork and a lattice of supports ready for the walls to be poured.

‘When was this dug?’ Gunna asked.

‘Last year some time. Gvendur Bjarna started the job, but then he packed it in. Had a heart problem and had to shut up shop, plus I hear there was a liquidity problem somewhere. So in we came.’

‘By princess, I assume you mean Sunna María?’

‘That’s the lady. The fashion icon in person. She’s been keeping us on our toes.’

‘Why haven’t you been here earlier?’

‘We would have been here a month ago, but it’s taken the princess a while to stump up the cash.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Not that I know anything about that. You’d have to talk to the big man about all that stuff.’

He followed as Gunna strode through the mud around the edge of the new building, looking into the trenches with a layer of fresh concrete in the bottom, from which brown iron frames and blue plastic pipes sprouted.

‘When was that done?’

‘Yesterday. That’s just to anchor the metal before we fill in.’

Gunna turned to face him. ‘When’s that supposed to start?’

‘Right now. The mixer truck’s here.’

‘In that case, I’m about to ruin your whole day. Do you want to tell your princess or shall I?’

Everything was wet and as darkness fell, floodlights illuminated everything with a harsh, unearthly brightness. Gunna huddled deep into her parka and felt rain drip from the rim of her helmet onto her shoulders. Sunna María watched from the sidelines on her side of the police cordon, her furious discomfort palpable even from a distance.

‘Gunnhildur.’

Ívar Laxdal’s appearance always caused people to sit up straight and take notice. She had observed the phenomenon many times and the sight of Eiríkur and the others unconsciously straightening their clothes and their backs as Ívar Laxdal entered the room always made her smile. He unfolded a printout and handed it to her.

‘From Riga, with love.’

Boris Vadluga’s slim, crop-headed face stared out at her in the light of her torch. There were intelligent cornflower-blue eyes, the skin crinkled around them as if he had smothered a smile to provide a straight face for the camera.

‘A good-looking man,’ Gunna said appreciatively.

‘That’s as may be. A very smart businessman with fingers in a great many pies. He’s into logistics mainly, trucks, shipping, containers.’

‘Does he have a record?’

‘As clean as a whistle,’ Ívar Laxdal said. ‘On the surface, at least. He has investments in Iceland and Denmark and spends a lot of his time in Copenhagen these days. He’s big in fur as well.’

‘Fur?’

‘That’s it. Mink. He has a mink farm in Denmark and has been involved with one here as well. On the other hand, I gather he’s the elusive partner in Sólfell Property and his connection with Iceland is largely due to his relationship with guess who?’

‘Vilhelm Thorleifsson and Elvar Pálsson?’

‘And the dentist and his lovely wife.’

‘I see. Anything on Alex Snetzler or Maris Leinasars, or even the mysterious Juris?’

‘I’ve already emailed it all to you,’ he said. ‘The famous Alex has plenty of form, minor violence, drugs, burglary, handling stolen goods and all the rest of it, a really pleasant character. Maris, nothing at all. He’s a failed medical student, no criminal record, but his association with Alex and the fact that he’s been on Boris Vadluga’s payroll means he has been given some attention. As for Juris, not a word. He doesn’t appear to have returned to Latvia.’

‘Hell,’ Gunna swore. ‘And there’s no record of anyone of that name leaving the country. ‘So if he didn’t leave . . .’

‘Another body somewhere?’

‘I hope not. We have enough as it is, thanks. And the other man, the one with the nose?’

‘Waiting for confirmation of who he might be, which means we’re hoping that someone in the Riga police sees the photo and recognizes him. So, what now? You’ll be interested to know that some of the stuff from the flat has been traced to burglaries over the last few months, and forensics identified small traces of amphetamines there as well,’ Ívar Laxdal said, glowering. ‘We need a tent,’ he decided. ‘It’s too damned wet for this.’

Four officers in heavy overalls stood around a fifth, a burly man who handled the jackhammer as if it were no heavier than a wooden spoon in his huge hands. Lumps of broken day-old concrete had been piled on a sheet high above the trench as the newly laid foundations were broken up piecemeal. The metal frames had already been sliced off with an angle grinder and heaped by the road.

‘Break off,’ Ívar Laxdal called. ‘Give them half an hour and we can get a cover rigged up while they eat their pizzas,’ he ordered. ‘I still want to know if you seriously expect to find anything here, Gunnhildur?’

‘You know, I’m not certain,’ she said. ‘But the pressure’s working over there,’ she added, jerking her head towards Sunna María, swathed in an ankle-length coat by the perimeter.

‘It’s a damned expensive way of applying pressure, if you ask me. Have you any idea how much all this is costing?’

‘We can’t not look,’ Gunna replied, turning to follow him back to the road, where neighbours had lined up in spite of the rain to watch the fun. ‘Her husband vanishes and a few days later there’s a trench next door being filled with concrete.’

‘Hey!’ One of the officers in the trench called.

‘What?’ Gunna yelled back over the roar of the generator.

‘There’s something here.’

Water had collected in black pools at the bottom of the trench between jagged edges of concrete.

Gunna squatted down at the top of the trench and peered into the darkness ‘Where?’

One of the officers adjusted a floodlight and illuminated a training shoe emerging from the broken concrete.

‘A shoe?’ Ívar Laxdal frowned.

‘Yeah. And there’s a foot in it,’ the officer at the bottom of the trench called back.

*   *   *

This was a very simple job, Orri decided. He had taken extra precautions, parking off the road and walking across the rocks in the dark. The place seemed to be deserted, with a ghostly feeling that he was being watched, which he immediately told himself was just superstitious claptrap.

His mother had believed in aliens and vampires, and that was all rubbish, he reminded himself. But his grandmother had held a belief in the people who lived in the rocks to the end of her long life. Orri reminded himself that the old lady, who’d been one of the few people who’d had time for him as a youngster, had never lied to him or made anything up, so maybe there could be something in it after all?

He walked around the low building. There were no obvious security cameras and no alarms, not that anyone was likely to hear an alarm with the nearest house a kilometre or more away. His picks made short work of the elderly locks on both outer and office doors, which were so worn he could almost have opened them with his own house keys.

Somewhere in the distance water dripped intermittently. The place was cool, but not cold, and the radiator had a little warmth in it, so he guessed that someone had been there that day. He made quick work of the job in hand, pulling plastic bags over his shoes to stand on the desk and replace the smoke alarm in the corner with the new one from the knapsack worn over his chest, guessing that these contained some kind of recording devices but not bothering to check, and using a chair to reach the second alarm in the lobby outside.

He had finished when the roar of an engine outside shook him and he froze. The engine died and he heard the rattle of a key in the lock. Orri looked around quickly. The door on the far side of the office was the only available escape route and he closed it gently behind him as the outer door opened, banging against the wall as a blast of cold air came in with it.

In the long room that Orri found himself in, he hurried along the rows of racks in the near darkness without wondering what they might be, searching for a door that would take him back outside before stepping smartly sideways into a smaller room. Behind him he heard someone whistle in time with heavy footsteps. Orri stood with his back to the wall, his ski hat rolled over his face and ready to take to his heels if he were seen, but the footsteps passed by and the whistled tune became faint in the distance.

Orri peered with caution around the door and saw that the long room was empty. Whoever it was had taken themselves out of sight, and he wasted no time in going back the way he had come, through the office and out into the yard. The quad bike parked by the door still had the keys in the ignition and for a second he considered taking it before dismissing the idea as a stupid one. If he were to disappear into the darkness, then nobody would be any the wiser, he reasoned as he rounded the end of the building and set off back across the rocks towards his car with the familiar triumph at a job well done returning.

‘You were right, Gunnhildur,’ Ívar Laxdal admitted.

The operation at Kópavogsbakki had suddenly acquired a new urgency. Every available officer had been drafted in to help. A tent had been erected over the site and more lights added. Two officers guarded the perimeter to keep the growing crowd of curious bystanders at bay and the road had been blocked off to stop any traffic, apart from the one neighbour who had started ferrying mugs of coffee to the police team.