Frozen Assets (4 page)

‘What's he done?' Aldís asked sharply.

‘Excuse me?'

‘What's he done, the bloke you're looking for? Eiríkur gets up to all sorts.'

‘Nothing as far as I know. It's a missing person inquiry.'

‘Oh. Shame.' The woman's disappointment was palpable.

Gunna ended the call with relief, carefully noting names, numbers and the time of the call. She looked back at the list and dialled again.

‘Good morning. This is Gunnhildur Gísladóttir at Hvalvík police. Could I speak to Elmar Einar Ervík, please?'

It was long past midday when Gunna realized that she would have to be quick getting back to Hvalvík before the station closed its doors at six. But she consoled herself with a job well done that left only one name unaccounted for on the list she had started with. One person had not answered his home phone or the mobile number that the telephone company's website listed. She reflected that this was nothing out of the ordinary, as the person could be out of the country, at sea, a meeting or simply asleep. Out of curiosity, she opened a search engine on the computer, typed in Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson and clicked the search box.

The personnel page of a company website was at the top of the list that appeared within seconds. Gunna followed the link to the site and scrolled down the list of staff to the name she was looking for. Some entries had a picture alongside the staff listing, but there was no picture of Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson, just the name and the mobile phone number she had already called unsuccessfully twice.

She scrolled back through the list until she found the company's personnel manager. Gunna pulled the phone over and dialled again.

‘Good afternoon. Spearpoint,' a soft voice purred.

‘Good afternoon. This is Gunnhildur Gísladóttir at Hvalvík police. I'm trying to contact Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson.'

27-08-2008, 2114

Skandalblogger writes:

So what's going on here with the health service? We hear whispers from the inside that times are hard at the coalface of government and plans are being floated to open ‘areas of health provision' to the ‘private sector' as we've been told.

Excuse us? Isn't this Iceland, not some tinpot banana republic run as the President's personal bank account? Or is it? We're supposed to be the pinnacle of well-being and happiness. So what's gone wrong? Why is government floating these proposals in secret and coming over coy when anyone asks about it?

It seems uncomfortable to contemplate, but all the signs are there that the parts of the health service that actually produce a few quid for the state coffers are likely to be flogged off cheap to friends of the party, while the taxpayer continues to prop up the bits of it that aren't profitable.

So let's cast our minds back a year or two to when the guys at the top sold off our state-run telephone system to their golfing buddies. Now, wasn't the rationale at the time that the proceeds would be used to give us, the Icelandic taxpayers, a second-to-none health service? In which case, did the fat guys in suits simply trouser the cash they got for the phone company, considering health is now in such a poor financial state that the only option is to privatize?

Flummoxed . . .

Bæjó!

3

Thursday, 28 August

Gunna drove into Reykjavík late in the morning when the roads should have been fairly quiet, but still found herself caught up in a straggle of traffic crawling along main roads. In spite of the falling housing market and the jittery business environment that dominated the news, things seemed busy enough as the second-best Volvo swung on to Miklabraut and down towards the city centre. New buildings and cranes dotted the skyline.

Passing Lækjartorg, she reflected that while much had changed, there were undoubtedly more changes to come. The city had altered out of all recognition. What had been a quiet town centre when she moved south and joined the Reykjavík force all those years ago had become a buzzing sprawl of boutiques and bars. Stopped at the lights, she checked what had once been the quiet restaurant with dark wooden tables and solid food where she and Raggi had celebrated their secret wedding. The place had gone entirely, replaced with three storeys of steel-framed opaque glass.

The lights changed and Gunna pulled away along Sæbraut, passing the Ministry buildings at the corner of Skúlagata now dwarfed by the rows of new offices and apartment blocks facing the sea and the shell of the huge Opera House rising where the fish auction had stood. She wondered which of the glass-fronted giants housed the offices she was looking for.

The top of the building wasn't quite as smart as the ground-floor entrance had indicated, and the back of it, overlooking building sites and car parks, wasn't as exclusive as the front with its view over Faxa Bay and the brooding presence of Mount Esja in the distance.

Gunna found the office suite and was about to push open the door emblazoned with a Spearpoint sign, its curved logo ending in a sharp point, when a raised voice inside made her pause. She stood still and listened carefully. It was clearly a woman's voice, in a state of fury she would normally have expected to hear outside a nightclub in the early hours.

The voice ranted with hardly a break, occasionally pausing, possibly for breath, before continuing with its tirade. No answering voice could be heard. Although few distinct words could be made out, Gunna was caught between concern and admiration for a woman who could rant at quite such length and volume.

Eventually, tired of waiting for the tirade to come to an end, she shoved at the door and heard a buzz inside as it swung open. The voice came to an abrupt halt and Gunna found herself in front of a high reception desk where a young woman with a pinched face looked up in surprise to see a police officer in uniform.

‘Morning. I'm looking for Sigurjóna Huldudóttir. I believe I'm expected.'

‘She's here. A moment,' she replied in a dazed voice. As Gunna stowed her cap under her arm, she wondered if the receptionist had been on the receiving end of that magnificent rant.

The girl stood up and went to a door behind her, knocked and opened it gingerly, before putting her head inside and muttering a few words of which ‘police' was the only one Gunna could make out as she stood with her back to the desk and admired the building site next door. A tower crane stood almost level with the office window and Gunna could see the figure of the operator in his tiny cage at the top, concentrating as he deftly lifted and swung steel bars into place in the framework of a new building.

More bloody offices. As if there aren't enough already, Gunna thought.

‘. . . the hell do these bastards get away with this . . . ?' a strident voice barked suddenly, cut off in mid-sentence as the office door hissed shut.

The receptionist smiled wanly as Gunna looked around inquiringly.

‘She'll see you in a few minutes. Could you wait a moment for her to finish her meeting?' the receptionist asked sweetly. ‘Take a seat if you like.'

Gunna sat on a hard leather couch and flipped through a gossip magazine, wondering why she didn't recognize the faces of all the country's top people plastered across the pages.

‘Out of touch,' she muttered to herself.

‘Excuse me?' the receptionist asked, and Gunna realized that she had spoken out loud. ‘Nothing. Just thinking out loud,' she apologized.

‘She'll see you now,' the girl said, as the door behind her opened and a beefy young man in a suit, his face burning, made his way out, giving every impression of being on the point of breaking into a run and leaping through a window.

Gunna stopped for a second in the doorway and took in a large corner office, thickly carpeted and with a desk topped in smoked glass dominating the far end, facing away from a window that filled one entire wall. Although the view was better from here, Gunna was pleased to note that the jib of the tower crane still protruded across it.

‘Good morning. Come in, please.'

The voice was warm, and apart from a slight heave of prominently displayed bosom there was no trace of the fury of a few minutes before from the statuesque woman with an unmistakable air of decision about her sharp features. Gunna took in a smartly tailored suit and dark blonde hair cut simply.

She extended a hand which was quickly taken and firmly shaken.

‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, Hvalvík police.'

‘Hvalvík? OK. Well, I'm Sigurjóna. My PA told me that you had called. Is this something to do with the site?'

‘Which site do you mean?'

‘The Hvalvík smelter project, of course.'

‘Are you involved with that?'

‘Our subsidiary company is playing a prominent part in the project development,' Sigurjóna said smoothly.

‘No, nothing to do with the site. Actually this is an inquiry about one of your former employees and I spoke to one of your people yesterday afternoon. Ósk Líndal?'

‘Ósk handles human resources and stands in for me when I'm away.'

Gunna looked down and flipped through the sheaf of papers, going past the picture of the dead man taken at the morgue by a police photographer and moving on to the driving licence photo from the national archive.

‘Do you recognize this man?' she asked, handing the picture across.

Sigurjóna took it and looked carefully. Gunna watched for a reaction, but there was none to be seen.

‘Einar,' Sigurjóna said finally. ‘Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson. He works here, although we haven't seen him since last week and he hasn't called in, so I can't say I'm delighted with him right now.'

‘No explanation?'

‘No, not a word.'

‘Did you make any inquiries?'

‘Of course. He's a highly valued member of the team here and we can certainly use his skills. He's one of our best account managers — it's very difficult to explain to his clients that he just isn't here. I'll be very pleased when he comes back, not that I'd tell him so.'

Gunna nodded and scribbled on the notes, more to give herself a second to think than to write anything down ‘And who have you contacted to find Einar?'

‘Well, it's not easy because I don't believe he has much in the way of family and he's from somewhere in the east originally. I'm not sure that his parents are still alive, even. I recall that he mentioned once that he had been an afterthought, the child of elderly parents.'

‘No brothers or sisters? No friends? Girlfriend?'

‘Well, Dísa, the girl on reception, moved in with him for a while, but I believe that didn't last for long and you'd have to ask her about it. But, no. I assume he has a circle of friends, but not people that I'm aware of.' Sigurjóna was starting to sound irritated. ‘Look, inspector, just where is this going? What's he done, if you can tell me?'

‘It's sergeant, actually. I have reason to believe he's dead.'

‘Oh my God!' Sigurjóna gasped, hands flying to her mouth in a gesture that Gunna found a touch too theatrical to be fully convincing. ‘Hvalvík? You mean he's the dead man they found there? On the news the other night?' Her voice shook slightly, and one finger tapped furiously on the polished surface of the desk.

Gunna nodded, and looked down at the papers in her lap. She wondered what the reaction would be to the morgue photograph, but decided against showing it.

‘The identification is only preliminary at the moment, as we'll need someone to identify him formally. But as he had his initials tattooed on his arm, identification wasn't difficult. I need to know a little more about him and what his work was, what he was working on. Can you tell me when he came in to work last?'

Sigurjóna opened a slim laptop on the desk in front of her and tapped with swift fingers.

‘He was here last week,' she said slowly, circling a finger on the mouse pad. ‘Here. Last Friday. I know he had a meeting on Monday this week but I'd have to ask Ósk about that. He was due to meet the same client in Copenhagen on Wednesday, and never showed up. The client called us and we had to reschedule. Luckily it wasn't anything delicate, only a preliminary meeting with a new prospect, so no harm done.'

‘So, if you can tell me which airline he was travelling with, we can find out easily enough if he really did travel or not.'

‘Dísa can tell you that. She books flights for our people, but it was probably the Express airline.'

‘Cheaper?'

Sigurjóna nodded. ‘And more flexible.'

‘How had he been getting on here until last week?'

‘Fine. Like I said, he was a very competent and successful account manager.'

‘No tensions? Arguments?'

Sigurjóna flushed noticeably. ‘No. Not at all.'

‘Did Einar have any disagreements with you or his manager?'

‘Spearpoint is growing very fast,' Sigurjóna said proudly. ‘But this is a small company and everyone reports to me. No, we did not have any disagreements. We got on very well. He was entertaining some Danish clients for a few days and was due to meet them again in Copenhagen on Wednesday, but didn't show up. My assumption was that he had gone over there, found himself a nice little Danish lady and decided to stay. It's hard to say. He could be impulsive.'

Gunna scribbled in the file. Noticing that this was making Sigurjóna uneasy, she also took the time to note down on the side of the page that she needed to buy butter, milk, bread and some fruit and vegetables in Hagkaup before driving back to Hvalvík.

‘Do you know if Einar had any enemies? Anyone who might wish to harm him? Anyone with a grudge?'

‘No idea. In personal terms, the others here had a closer relationship with him than I did. You might want to speak to them. Dísa probably knew him best and he often worked with Jón Oddur, so he might know something about his movements.'

‘I will need to, but at present I'm mostly trying to build up a picture of his movements so that we can establish a time of death and who the last people he saw were. Can you tell me what your movements were on and after the weekend?'

Sigurjóna's eyes opened wide. ‘Surely you don't suspect me of anything.'

‘Of course not,' Gunna said smoothly, noting down that she would also have to stock up on toilet paper, so much cheaper in town than at the Co-op in Hvalvík. ‘Purely routine. We have to ask and I assure you I'll want to know the movements of all your staff at the same time if that's possible.'

‘I was with my husband in Akureyri. A business trip.'

‘Anyone other than your husband who will confirm that?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘Just routine, you understand. Anyway, thank you for your time. But if you recall anything that could help the investigation, I'd appreciate it if you could give me a call. Now, it would be useful if I could talk to Jón Oddur and Dísa.'

She stood up and Sigurjóna did the same, coming around the desk to accompany her to the door. Gunna felt a whiff of something powerful on her breath as Sigurjóna held the door open for her and called out to the girl at reception.

‘Dísa, would you call Jón Oddur? This lady would like to speak to him,' she instructed and closed the office door behind her.

At the reception desk, Gunna looked down at where Dísa sat at the switchboard, speaking quietly into the microphone of a headset. She pressed a button to finish the call and looked up with eyes that Gunna could see were full of concern.

‘Are you here about Einar?' she asked immediately, with a backward glance to make sure the door was shut.

‘Yes. You knew him pretty well, Sigurjóna tells me.'

‘I did. Where is he?'

‘He's dead, I'm afraid.'

Dísa dropped her head and looked down at the desk in front of her. Then she buried her face in both hands for a moment before sweeping them up and through her hair, looking up bright-eyed. ‘Do you know who killed him?'

‘Why do you ask? Is there anything you want to tell me about?'

‘I don't know. Maybe,' she said dully as the young man with the red face Gunna had seen earlier escaping from Sigurjóna's office appeared.

‘What does the old witch want now?' His harsh tone did nothing to hide the trepidation behind it. The expression on his face was briefly of panic when he saw Gunna standing by the desk.

‘It's not the boss. This lady wants a word with you,' Dísa said quietly.

‘That's a relief. You'd better come to my office.'

Jón Oddur sat with his back to the window and fiddled with a laptop on his desk as he spoke.

‘Is it Einar Eyjólfur you're here about?' he asked nervously.

‘What makes you think that?'

‘We haven't seen him for a few days and I can't get through to his mobile.'

‘As it happens, we have every reason to believe that he drowned in Hvalvík harbour in the early hours of Tuesday morning.'

‘So it was him,' Jón Oddur said with a sigh. ‘Dísa was right.'

‘When did you see him last?'

‘Monday,' he replied promptly. ‘He didn't come in, but we met in the evening with some clients from Denmark he was supposed to meet again on Wednesday.'