Summerchill (9 page)

‘Sometimes. He didn’t often tell me where he was going. He just went out.’

‘And he did this regularly in the evenings?’

‘He went to the gym three or four evenings a week.’

‘All right, what did Axel Rútur do during the day? What was your routine?’

‘He’d be late at the gym a few evenings a week, so then he’d sleep the next day. I go to work at ten and I’m back at five-ish, normally. We’d have a meal together or we’d go out if he wasn’t training.’

‘It’s mainly Axel Rútur’s acquaintances we’re interested in speaking to, anyone involved with his work. Who would that be?’

‘Well, there’s Stebbi,’ she said and thought. Helgi and Gunna exchanged glances. ‘There’s only Stebbi, really. Axel Rútur didn’t have a lot of close friends except Stebbi. Not that I knew, anyway.’

‘Have you been in touch with Stefán?’

‘Erm . . . No. Not really.’

Gunna frowned, sensing something wrong, both in the girl’s demeanour and in the atmosphere, as a draught whispered around her ankles. Helgi looked up, another question on his face.

‘Aníta Sól,’ Gunna said sharply. ‘Is there someone else here?’

‘Er, no. Not really.’

Gunna stood up quickly and looked into the hall. A bulky figure stood by the door, shoes in hands.

‘Who are you?’ Gunna demanded, stepping quickly towards the man, who pulled the door open and made to leave, hiding his face with his hand as he slammed the door behind him. ‘Stop right there. Police,’ Gunna said loudly and clearly, jerking the door open and hurrying along the corridor behind him. He was out of the front door and ran across the grass outside, missing the group of children on bikes and skateboards, and vaulting a fence into a neighbour’s garden, where Gunna lost sight of him.

‘There he goes,’ Helgi said, shading his eyes with one hand as a black Land Cruiser hurtled along the next street and vanished into the traffic amid a flurry of blaring horns. ‘That was Axel Rútur’s friend Stefán, who is apparently Aníta Sól’s close friend as well. A few questions to be answered there, I think.’

‘I feel like shit.’

Brynja looked like shit, Logi thought, but he didn’t want to say so as she sat at the kitchen table opposite him and held her head in her hands. Her eyes were puffy and her hair hung in lank rats’ tails. He dropped a couple of tablets in a glass of water where they fizzed.

‘Good night out?’ he asked, putting the glass in front of her.

‘Don’t have a clue,’ Brynja moaned. ‘I don’t remember much, just getting to Highliners, and there was a taxi, wasn’t there? Did you put me to bed?’

‘I did.’

‘Did you undress me?’

‘I did.’

‘Did we . . . ?’

Logi smiled sorrowfully. ‘You weren’t in any condition to do anything but sleep.’

One hand on her forehead, she reached forward to trail the fingertips of the other hand down his cheek.

‘I’m sorry, lover,’ she whispered, wincing at the pain in her head. ‘I’ll make it up to you.’

Aníta Sól looked downcast. Gunna gave her the opportunity to howl for a few minutes and made herself some coffee in the flat’s pristine and, she told herself, rarely used kitchen. The cupboards were largely bare of anything other than cereals and bags of pasta, while the freezer was stacked with microwave meals. There was fruit in bowls in the window, and Gunna guessed that this was part of Axel Rútur’s fitness regime as none of it appeared to have been touched for days.

They held a quick conference while Aníta Sól did her best to repair the damage half an hour of tears had wreaked to her face.

‘You’re sure that was Stefán?’

‘Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it.’

‘How much had he been listening to, I wonder?’

Gunna sipped the surprisingly good coffee. The kitchen may have been filled with an odd array of things, but it was quality stuff. ‘We have to accept that he listened to the whole conversation, so he knows we suspect him of doing enforcement jobs.’

‘That’s one thing,’ Helgi said. ‘But considering he was here, shacked up with his best friend’s wife on a Sunday morning, we can assume that he knew his best friend wasn’t likely to show up at an awkward moment, don’t you think?’

‘You think he could have murdered Axel Rútur? Over the girl?’

Helgi darted a glance into the living room. ‘There’s not much to fight, is there? I’m not sure she’s bright enough to cope with a revolving door on her own.’

‘There must be something about her, surely?’

‘You mean apart from the hourglass figure?’

‘Yeah,’ Gunna admitted. ‘I see what you mean. Plastic, I’d guess.’

‘Undoubtedly.’ Helgi grinned. ‘But you know how superficial we men are when there’s a sniff of minge about.’

‘Get an alert put out for Stefán Ingason, black Land Cruiser with tinted windows. Get the registration from traffic and hopefully we’ll be able to pick him up later today. Now, I’d best get back to the princess.’

‘You need me?’

‘I’d prefer to have you here as well. Why? What are you thinking?’

‘Stefán bumped off Axel Rútur so he could have the walking Barbie Doll in there to himself. That’s one possibility. The other one’s that Stefán knows what happened to Axel Rútur, and my guess is it’s to do with their freelance enforcement work.’

‘All right. Stefán as Axel Rútur’s murderer is the quick and simple option, and murders normally are quick and simple. I’m not convinced, but you know the case better than I do.’

‘There’s no motive to kill Axel Rútur,’ Helgi said, jerking his head towards the living room. ‘Except for . . .’

‘But like you just said, men can be terribly superficial creatures when there’s a sniff of minge about,’ Gunna said, and Helgi grinned uncomfortably at hearing his own words, which sounded incongruous coming from Gunna. ‘So what are you thinking?’

‘I’m thinking of pushing the girl they intimidated into telling me who’s doing the loan sharking. That way we can apply some real pressure and find out who’s been employing these two to collect black-market debts. What do you think?’

A door shut down the hall and they could hear a tap run in the kitchen.

‘I think the princess has finished her make-up and we need to ask a few more questions before we go any further.’

He left the policewoman puffing and panting in his wake as he effortlessly vaulted a fence and made off across the gardens. Stefán was confident that she hadn’t seen his face, although Aníta Sól was bound to tell them who he was. It had been a strange night. He hadn’t meant to rekindle the illicit affair that he’d felt so guilty about, but he had gone to see how she was, expecting her mother and a few other friends and relatives to be there. But Aníta Sól had been at home alone in the pristine apartment and she had practically fallen into his arms.

The Land Cruiser felt like a second home and he relished the understated burst of power as the turbo kicked in. The only worry was that the policewoman might have seen it, but hell, if Aníta Sól had told them who he was, then that would hardly matter anyway.

He didn’t go far, the gym on Fossháls was only a kilometre away and he pulled up outside Car World. Tossing the keys from hand to hand as he sauntered inside, he looked around.

‘Benni!’

The salesman turned around and grinned.

‘Quiet today. Looking for a car, are you?’

‘I might be,’ Stefán said. ‘But not in the way you mean.’

‘Right . . .’

He registered Benni’s suspicion. ‘It’s all right. Nothing to worry about. I just need to be a bit discreet, so can you help me out for a day or two?’

Benni’s eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’

‘Can I park the Land Cruiser near the back somewhere and borrow some old lady car for a day or two?’

‘What’s in it for me?’

‘I’ll see my pal in a while. Don’t you worry. I’ll see you all right.’

Benni sighed, opened a drawer and came up with a set of keys.

‘There’s a blue Megane out there. Don’t do any damage and bring it back with a full tank tomorrow after five when the boss has gone home. Nobody’ll be any the wiser.’

Stefán grinned. ‘You’re a mate. Want me to park the Cruiser?’

Benni shook his head. ‘Give me the key and I’ll tuck it away out of sight. It’s not as if there’s a lot to do today.’

Brynja spent a long time in the shower. Her headache had started to lift after a few minutes under the hot water as she shampooed and conditioned, scrubbing herself from top to toe, humming in anticipation as she tidied up down below with a disposable razor and then set the pounding water to run ice cold for as long as she could stand it.

‘Logi!’ Hair wrapped in a towel and her body swathed in a thick dressing gown, she emerged from the bathroom fragrant and feeling a million times better than she had half an hour earlier. ‘Sweetheart!’

She had expected to see him waiting in the bedroom with a lopsided, knowing grin on his face and his clothes scattered on the floor. She went into the kitchen and saw he wasn’t there, frowned and looked in the living room, where he liked to lie flat on his back with his head and feet on the armrests. The flat was a small one and there wasn’t anywhere else to look. Logi’s holdall, which he’d arrived with last night and had left in the hall, had gone as well.

Brynja sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, overwhelmed with disappointment and cursing for not reining herself in the night before, but the excitement of a rare night out had been too much. She leaned over the table and twitched the curtain aside, knowing without having to look that his pickup was gone from the car park outside.

Alli looked ill, sicker than he had ever seen him before, and Stefán wondered how much longer he had to go.

‘What can I do for you, Stebbi?’

The razor smile hadn’t been lost in Alli’s illness. He held a mug of something hot that gave off a fruity smell, sipping it at intervals.

‘I’ve a problem, Alli.’

‘People always bring me their problems. I wish they wouldn’t.’

‘I’m sorry. But you’re the only one who might be able to help.’

Alli acknowledged the compliment with a slow blink and an almost imperceptible nod of his jaw. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s Axel Rútur.’

‘Ah. What’s he done now?’

‘That’s the problem. He’s dead.’

‘Accident?’

‘I don’t think so. He’s been missing since Thursday night. I thought he’d just taken off for a couple of days.’

That wouldn’t be like him,’ Alli said thoughtfully, his voice hoarse. ‘He’s never had a lot of imagination.’

‘That’s as may be. So I’d really like to find out who hurt him before the police get to him.’

‘So what do you want from me?’

Stefán thought quickly. He didn’t want to take the dangerous step of offending Alli. The man was nowhere near as frail as he looked and he was wealthy enough to be able to make a great many bad things happen very fast.

‘Aníta Sól thought he went out to do a collection job, and he wouldn’t be doing that kind of business for anyone other than you.’

Alli’s watery blue eyes bored into Stefán for long enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

‘You could be right.’

Alli shrugged off the blanket he was wrapped in and stood up. He took a small book from a pocket on the leg of his combat trousers and leafed through it with the pages close to his face.

‘Here,’ he said, passing Stefán a sheet of paper and a pencil. ‘Some names and numbers for you. Write this down.’

‘Aníta Sól, we have a lot of questions we need to ask,’ Gunna said as the girl sat awkwardly on the sofa again. She seemed calmer after the flood of tears, and Gunna wondered if she were upset at Axel Rútur’s death, Stefán’s sudden disappearance, or a combination of the two. ‘When did Stefán arrive here?’

‘Last night. After his training session.’

‘You understand what this means, don’t you?’

Aníta Sól looked back blankly.

‘What?’

‘Has this been going on for a while?’

‘A few months. Sometimes.’

‘You’ve been sleeping with your boyfriend’s best friend? That’s what you’re telling me?’ Gunna asked, wanting to be certain.

Aníta Sól nodded. ‘I don’t see what business that is of yours,’ she said sharply.

‘It’s my business if I have reason to believe that either Stefán, or you and Stefán between you, could be responsible for Axel Rútur’s death. So what really happened on Thursday evening?’

‘Like I told you, he went out.’

‘And Stefán turned up?’

‘No! I was here on my own. I think Axel went to meet Stebbi somewhere.’

‘You think so, or you know so?’

‘I think so. I’m not sure. He didn’t say where he was going, but he never did.’

‘So when did you make up your mind to call the police and report him missing?’

Aníta Sól looked blank again. ‘My mum said I should.’

‘Your mother?’

‘Yeah. She was here on Friday so I could do her nails.’

‘You weren’t at work?’

‘Half day because mum wanted her nails done. She asked after Axel Rútur because he’s normally around in the afternoons and he wasn’t here, hadn’t come home in the night and didn’t answer his phone. Mum thought I should report him missing,’ Aníta Sól said in a single breath of explanation.

‘Do you think he had any idea you and Stefán had formed a relationship?’

Aníta Sól shook her head. ‘We hadn’t done it for a while. Weeks.’

‘You said you didn’t know where he was going on Thursday evening. Where do you think he was going if he was only going to be an hour?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Were you aware that Axel Rútur was doing some freelance debt collecting?’ Helgi broke in. ‘Strong-arm stuff?’

‘What?’

‘We know that Stefán had been collecting money with menaces,’ Gunna said. ‘Was Axel Rútur doing the same?’

Aníta Sól looked from one to the other. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Really,’ she added.

Gunna sighed and caught Helgi’s eye.

‘I think that’s enough for the moment.’

‘Is that all?’ Aníta Sól asked, her voice gaining a sudden buoyancy.

‘I mean, we’re going to have to ask you to come to the station and continue there so you can make a formal statement. You’ll be prepared to formally identify Axel Rútur?’