Reykjavik Nights (24 page)

‘Where the hell has he got to?' asked Gardar, as a second patrol car drew up noiselessly beside them.

The burglar showed no signs of flagging as he pounded rhythmically along Lindargata. Erlendur, beginning to fall behind, was afraid of losing sight of him. In spite of his aching legs and shortness of breath, he refused to give up and kept pushing himself on. His heavy boots might have been fine for forming a guard of honour but they were clearly not designed for marathons.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw the thief skid on a pile of sand and fall headlong into the road. Erlendur managed to cut down the man's lead before he leapt to his feet again and fled, limping slightly, in the direction of the abattoir buildings. By now Erlendur could hear his gasping breaths and the rattling of the jewellery in his holdall. It looked as if he was planning to jettison the bag after all. As the man glanced from side to side, Erlendur managed to tackle him in front of the abattoir gates.

They rolled over and over in the street until Erlendur got the upper hand. Straddling the thief's back, he pushed the man's face down on the paving stones while he tried to catch his breath. Then, with something of a struggle, he handcuffed the thief, dragged him to his feet and shoved him against a wall. An appetising aroma of dung-smoked meat wafted from the smoking ovens of the abattoir, reminding Erlendur how hungry he was. The night shift had been so busy he hadn't eaten a thing since coming on duty.

Erlendur had begun to hustle his prisoner back up the hill towards Skólavördustígur when it dawned on him that it would be quicker to take him straight down to the station on Hverfisgata and throw him in a cell. As he didn't have a walkie-talkie on him he couldn't pass on a message to Gardar and Marteinn but he didn't think it really mattered. He'd caught the culprit: their work was done.

He pushed the man ahead of him along Hverfisgata, the burglar objecting all the way, refusing to be hurried and complaining that this treatment was unreasonable since he was cooperating. Erlendur told him to shut up. He had never seen the man before. He was around twenty, slim, with long legs, built for running; his hands and face were covered in grazes from the fall. His hat had come off, revealing a thick mop of hair.

The sports bag, which Erlendur had slung over his own shoulder, clinked at every step with watches and jewellery.

‘How did you lot know I was doing the shop?' asked the burglar.

‘Keep walking,' snapped Erlendur.

‘Did someone see me?'

Erlendur didn't answer.

‘I nearly got away,' remarked the thief.

‘If only you hadn't fallen flat on your face,' said Erlendur.

‘I didn't think you'd chase me that far. Thought you'd give up. I've never run that fast in my life.'

Erlendur gave him a shove.

‘Do you train?' asked the prisoner.

‘Why don't you just shut up?' Erlendur pushed him on.

‘Been a cop long?' continued the thief after a brief pause.

Again Erlendur ignored him.

‘Or are you a summer temp?'

‘Look, will you just shut it?' said Erlendur. ‘I have no desire to talk to you. Why did you break into that shop, anyway? Can't you be bothered to work for a living? Think you're too good for that? Stop asking questions and get a move on.'

The thief took a few more steps, then baulked again.

‘I need the money.'

‘Who doesn't? Try working for it.'

‘No, I need it right away. Lots of it. In a hurry. I can't go to prison.'

‘Then you shouldn't steal.'

‘Yes, but –'

‘Take it up with someone else,' Erlendur interrupted him wearily. ‘I'm not interested in your bullshit.'

They walked on, but the silence didn't last long.

‘Just take it,' said the thief.

‘Take what?'

‘The bag. I won't spill the beans. You can say I got away. You lost me by the abattoir and I still had the bag. You'll get a good price for all that.'

‘What, I keep the bag and you get away? Is that what you're suggesting?'

‘You could say I'd made off with it. No one'll guess. I won't squeal. Honest. I won't say a word.'

‘So I sell the goods and everyone's a winner?'

‘I don't mind.'

‘Cut the crap. Let's go.' Erlendur gave him another push. ‘And no more nonsense or the report will look even worse.'

‘Please, just take it and let me go. You can return the stuff to the shop. No harm done. A bit of broken glass, that's all. Anyway, shops like that are insured. The owner won't have to pay a króna.'

Erlendur couldn't be bothered to respond any more.

‘What's the point in arresting me? I'm a complete nobody. Let me go.'

As they approached the police station the burglar was barely moving. Since pushing him was having no effect, Erlendur seized the man's shoulder and began to drag him along.

‘They'll kill me,' the thief cried. ‘You don't get it. I owe them. They ordered me to do it. Even told me which shop. Said I could repay my debt with the stuff I nicked.'

‘What debt?'

‘Drugs.'

‘That's a new one on me,' said Erlendur.

‘What?'

‘Breaking in just to pay for drugs?'

‘They said it was the only way. That's what they said. And I … what was I supposed to do? They threatened to … they're totally mental.'

‘Who?'

‘The brothers.'

‘What brothers?'

‘I can't tell you.'

‘I see.'

‘I'll tell you if you let me go.'

They had reached the police station at last.

‘Enough.'

‘One of them's called Ellert,' said the thief. ‘That's all I'm saying. I won't tell you any more unless you let me go.'

‘Ellert?' repeated Erlendur. ‘You don't mean Ellert and Vignir?'

It was the thief's turn to fall silent.

‘Has he got a brother called Vignir?' asked Erlendur.

‘Do you know them?' The thief had forgotten about withholding the other brother's name. ‘You mean you know who they are? What they're up to? What was I supposed to do? They threatened me.'

Erlendur ignored him. He was trying to remember everything he knew about Ellert and Vignir, and think about what had happened on Kringlumýri.

What if there had been more than one person?

What if there had been more than one person at the pipeline the night Oddný went missing?

Erlendur froze on the steps of the police station; he was staring at the thief. What if he had it all backwards? Suppose it wasn't Hannibal who had seen Oddný's death but the other way round? What if she had witnessed Hannibal being attacked and drowned?

He had taken it for granted that Oddný had been the victim of an assault and that Hannibal had died because he had seen too much. But suppose she had seen Hannibal's murderers? Suppose she was the one who couldn't be allowed to get away?

Now he came to think of it, hadn't Bergmundur said something to that effect about the brothers? That he was sure they wanted to bump Hannibal off and had succeeded in the end.

What did Hannibal have on them?

Had they gone to the pipeline to look for him?

Were they the ones who attacked him?

Did they silence Oddný?

‘So are you going to let me go then?' The thief sounded hopeful as he stood there on the steps in his handcuffs, having played his trump card in a bid for mercy. Erlendur looked so preoccupied that the young man thought he was seriously considering his offer.

‘I can't let you go.' Erlendur gathered his wits.

He grabbed his companion and pushed him ahead of him into the station, announcing that the Skólavördustígur burglar had been detained and the stolen goods recovered.

43

The drug squad was extremely interested in the thief's account. It was still early morning when the detectives sat down with the young man, whose name was Fannar and who had no previous record. It didn't take them long to persuade him to cooperate. Fannar had never been arrested before, never needed a lawyer and was keen to avoid prison if he possibly could – as he said himself. They took advantage of his inexperience and almost childlike naivety. In fact, the interview went so smoothly that by the time the detectives paused for lunch he had told them all he knew about the brothers, Ellert and Vignir; how to go about scoring drugs from them and why he owed them money. They were particularly interested to hear that the brothers had ordered the robbery. The Reykjavík police had not encountered this method of debt collection before.

Fannar's life had been a sad mess since his early teens: he had started drinking heavily, had dropped out of school, then started taking drugs – dope, mainly – and had fallen in with a bad crowd who kept him supplied. His parents had done everything in their power to make him quit, but his habit had only grown worse and he had plunged ever deeper into the abyss. From time to time they had succeeded in locking him in the house, getting him to a doctor or into a home for delinquents, once even managed to get him admitted to Kleppur, the mental hospital, but it was all futile. Instead of coming to his senses, Fannar took harder, more expensive drugs, and was in serious trouble by the time Erlendur tackled him outside the abattoir.

CID immediately ordered close surveillance for the brothers and over the next few days gathered sufficient information for their arrest. They had been smuggling pills and powder, resin, amphetamines and the increasingly popular marijuana on cargo ships. They would bag them up and they'd be ready to sell. Originally the brothers had worked as crew members on the ships, smuggling small quantities of alcohol, but the drugs proved far more lucrative and took up less space on board. The brothers had established contacts in both Hamburg and Boston, and now had no fewer than five men working for them on various ships. The drugs were stashed either in an old baiting shed at Grandi, to the west of Reykjavík harbour, or at a property in the Vogar district, where they ran a carpentry workshop. Both premises were rented from landlords who had no involvement with smuggling or drug dealing and were stunned when the police knocked on their doors to inform them that their tenants were dealers. The brothers had covered their tracks so well that the police had been totally unaware of their existence.

Some of this they gleaned from Fannar's statement, the rest from police contacts in Reykjavík's rather half-baked underworld. Among other things, the investigation revealed that the brothers had recently received a shipment from Boston. When the police arrived with back-up from Customs and Excise, the haul was found as yet untouched in the baiting shed. The brothers had been under surveillance for only three days before the arrests took place. They seemed to have become remarkably lax about security. The police decided their moment had come when the brothers went to check up on their goods. They did not resist arrest. They mostly seemed astonished at getting caught, though they did try to assert that the contents of the shed did not belong to them; they only rented it.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that the arrest of Ellert and Vignir uncovered a complex network of dealers and suppliers, since the brothers had worked more or less independently, apart from two or three other contacts in Iceland and the men on the ships. Although they had made a huge profit from their imports, they were careful to show no sign of it, continuing to work as carpenters, scrupulously filling in their tax returns, and avoiding buying new cars or anything else that might suggest they were wealthier than they appeared. Not one króna of their illegal earnings was paid into their bank accounts. This had caused them something of a headache. In the few years they had been in business, they had amassed a vast quantity of banknotes which they kept in plastic bags and boxes, some stored in the bait shed and workshop, the rest at home. Their profits had partly financed the house they moved into on Fálkagata.

As the police gathered more information about Ellert and Vignir, there was one thing that struck them. The men employed unusually brutal methods to call in their debts. Although they had never been charged, various cases of assault could be attributed to them now that their identity was known. They also had someone only too happy to do their dirty work. This individual was well known to the police; it was none other than Ellidi, the thug Erlendur had encountered in Austurvöllur Square when searching for people who knew Hannibal. Ellidi was brought in for questioning and remanded in custody as a result.

In the end a total of eight men were arrested after Fannar named the brothers. Prior to the arrests, it was thought inadvisable, in the interests of the investigation, for Fannar to be on the streets, so the police had applied for permission to detain him for breaking into the jeweller's. The only person he was allowed to see was the solicitor he had finally got around to hiring.

When Erlendur looked in on him in the cells at Hverfisgata, Fannar was in a terrible state, exhausted from being pumped for information about the brothers all the time, unable to sleep or eat. He now deeply regretted the burglary and the fact that he had snitched on Ellert and Vignir.

‘I should have kept my mouth shut. They'll find out who grassed them up and then … shit! I don't know what I was thinking. What was I thinking?'

‘I doubt you're even on their radar,' Erlendur said to reassure him. ‘They would have been exposed sooner or later.'

‘Yes, but it's happened
now,
and they'll find out it was me.'

‘Try not to worry about it.'

‘Do you think I'll be allowed to go home when it's over?'

‘To be honest, I can't tell you,' said Erlendur. ‘Probably. You'll be charged with burglary, but I don't know if you'll have to do time for that.'

‘One of the cops said I'd avoid the nick if I helped them.'