‘No. Of course not. I didn’t come here to cook, any more than you did.’
Tommi stuffed the gloves into a plastic sack he’d brought along. The spray bottle he was holding still had a bit of liquid in the bottom, which suggested he hadn’t been as thorough as Thormar. Or else he’d just wasted less of the stuff. Thormar had to admit he’d been splashing it around pretty liberally. ‘Are you sure window cleaner gets rid of fingerprints?’ Tommi met Thormar’s eye anxiously. ‘Might it leave a trace behind, like when people try to clean up blood?’
‘It cleans up everything. I’m positive.’ There was nothing positive about it. The fact was, Thormar hadn’t a clue. The spray had been all he could think of when he told Tommi what to bring. He chucked his empty bottle at the bin bag and missed by a wide margin. Blaming the gloves, Thormar peeled them off. ‘That bastard Gunni. We’d have finished ages ago and be home by now if it wasn’t for him.’
Tommi mumbled something noncommittal. He didn’t like to bitch about the other members of their gang. Or admit to having any opinion of his own. He just went along with whatever everyone else thought and did. Since he was standing closer to the bag, he bent down, picked up the bottle and put it in. While he was doing so, he spoke, but not about Gunni. ‘I’m going to tell Silla.’
‘Tell her what?’ Thormar genuinely wanted to know. He couldn’t immediately think what Tommi meant.
‘About this. About everything.’ Tommi waved towards the bedroom.
They had closed the door behind them after scrubbing the room from top to bottom. It had been vital to make sure all the fingerprints had been obliterated in there. They had even discussed removing the headboard and throwing it in the sea. If it was missing, the police couldn’t be sure this was the flat they were looking for as it was the only piece of evidence they had. But there was a risk that the two of them might be spotted carrying it out of the flat. There were so many other apartments in the building and the last thing they wanted was to attract attention. As a precaution, they’d both arrived wearing anoraks with the hoods up, kept their eyes lowered and strode briskly along the landing to the flat. They wouldn’t be able to make an inconspicuous getaway if they were trying to manoeuvre the headboard between them.
Thormar was staring at Tommi as if he’d lost his mind. The fumes must have got to him, he decided. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while.’
Thormar groaned under his breath. On the rare occasions when Tommi thought for himself, the results were invariably disastrous. No doubt that was why he usually went along with the others’ opinions. Especially Gunni’s. ‘You can’t do that. Are you mad?’ Thormar was so shocked that he raised his voice, though up to now they’d been careful to talk in murmurs so as not to be overheard by the neighbours.
Tommi avoided his friend’s furious glare. ‘I know it sounds bad, but it’ll be much better if she hears it from me. Than from the police, I mean. She’d never forgive me if she learnt about it that way. I’ve got a chance if I come clean to her first.’
Thormar laughed sarcastically. ‘Don’t kid yourself. She wouldn’t forgive you if you hired a plane and wrote “Sorry” across the sky. Besides, you’ve no right to do it. It’s not your secret.’
Tommi looked hurt. ‘It is if it affects my relationship with Silla.’
‘How stupid can you get?’ Thormar whispered angrily. ‘As soon as you tell her, Silla will be on the phone to Sigrún. It wouldn’t only be your marriage you’d be wrecking but mine as well, and you’ve no right to do that.’ Thormar broke off and took several deep breaths to calm himself down. ‘We’ve destroyed all the evidence that we were here. The police won’t be able to prove anything. If you go and tell Silla, all our hard work will have been wasted.’
Seeing that Tommi didn’t look convinced, Thormar tried again: ‘You just need to hold your nerve for a few more days. We both know that it wasn’t one of us who killed Helgi. The police will find the killer soon and once they’ve done that, they’ll lose interest in us and in this flat. In a few days’ time this whole thing will have blown over and everything will go back to normal.’ What bullshit. Nothing would ever go back to normal. But, oddly, Thormar felt nothing but relief at the thought. They weren’t twenty any more. It was high time they started behaving like responsible adults. ‘Just a few more days, Tommi. You have to hold out. You owe it to us.’
‘Hmmm.’ Tommi met Thormar’s eye. ‘You don’t think the pregnant woman they mentioned on the news – Sigurlaug, was it? – could have been murdered as well?’
‘No. Of course not. Definitely not.’ It was amazing how persuasive Thormar managed to sound, considering he had zero evidence for what he was saying. If the bottom fell out of the dental business, perhaps he should go into PR.
But for once Tommi wasn’t buying it. ‘Oh, come on. Where is she, then? She must have been killed. Do you reckon it could have been her husband? The one the police are appealing for information about?’
‘Bound to be.’ Thormar forced himself to sound confident. The truth was, he didn’t know what to think. Neither of his friends had mentioned the message from the administrator or the photo of Helgi lying in the back seat of the unidentified car. But they must have seen it, unless they were avoiding the site in case it was being monitored by the police. Of course, it was also conceivable that they were all waiting for one of the others to take the initiative. It wouldn’t be the first time. He’d lost count of all the gigs and matches they’d missed because none of them ever wanted to be the first to suggest anything or stick their necks out, for fear of being ridiculed. And while they were all hanging back, the tickets invariably sold out. Such a stupid waste.
But of one thing he was sure: in the unlikely event that one of his friends turned out to be behind the username administrator, he’d bet his life it wasn’t Tommi.
‘Look, it’s obviously some kind of marital problem. The man must have killed her and Helgi as well. That’s the only possible explanation.’ Thormar said this not only to allay his friend’s fears but his own as well.
‘Why Helgi, though? I just don’t understand.’
Thormar didn’t either. ‘Maybe he caught Helgi in bed with his wife. Helgi could have picked her up in town after he left us and gone home with her.’
‘But isn’t she supposed to be heavily pregnant? I really can’t picture it.’
‘No, neither can I, actually.’ Thormar blew out a breath while casting around for another explanation. ‘Or Helgi could have accidentally come across the guy murdering his wife. Anything could have happened.’
‘You don’t think it’s connected to … you know?’ Tommi couldn’t bring himself to put it into words. But then none of them could. They’d all done their best to try and wipe the incident from their memories.
‘No. Out of the question.’ Thormar managed to control his face, though of course the same thought had crossed his mind. Together with all the other things they’d done. ‘Look, you can’t tell Silla. You’ve got to promise me you won’t.’
Tommi sighed heavily. ‘OK, OK. I’ll wait a few days. But if the police are still on our backs then, I’m going to have to think again. I don’t want to lose Silla.’
Thormar couldn’t think why, since in his opinion Silla was a boring, pushy, stuck-up bitch. She would just love the chance to break the news to Sigrún. ‘There’s no risk of that.’ He glanced around the flat again. ‘Shall we get going then?’ As he said this, his gaze fell on the floor-length curtains that were drawn across the living-room windows. ‘Shit. What about the balcony? Hadn’t we better wipe down the furniture? I’ve sat out there a few times.’
‘Me too.’
Thormar checked the time. ‘Oh, fuck.’
‘It’ll only take us a minute.’ Tommi retrieved the window spray from the sack and started to force his hands back into the bright-yellow gloves. Thormar didn’t envy him. They must be as damp and revolting inside as his own had been after all their efforts. H
e was quite content to leave this job to Tommi.
Thormar watched as Tommi drew back the curtains, infuriatingly slowly. They’d been in this flat far too long already. He doubted he would ever set foot in here again once they’d shut the door behind them.
Distracted by this thought, he was caught unprepared when Tommi suddenly let out a shrill scream, a noise Thormar hadn’t heard him make since they were teenagers. Then Thormar froze with shock and only just stopped himself from yelling too.
A chair had been drawn up to the balcony door and a man was sitting there outside in the dark.
Chapter 29
Erla wasn’t in her office. The man at the nearby desk told Huldar she’d been called to a meeting with the top brass and had left looking anything but happy. Huldar doubted her mood would have improved by the time she returned. However important the news he had, he knew he wouldn’t be well received if he barged in on her meeting with her bosses. Instead, he sat down at his desk, tilting his monitor so he could see her office out of the corner of his eye.
Since this prevented him from doing anything that required much concentration, he decided to go on scrolling through the file-sharing platform where there was a chance the same sort of video as they’d found on Helgi’s computer might show up. Following his conversation with his colleague in Sexual Offences, he had started checking the posts on there whenever he got a minute. They’d divided up the task between them, Huldar beginning with the oldest uploads and the other man working backwards from the most recent ones. The content Huldar was watching now had been posted four years ago. He hadn’t been combing through the site very methodically or for long at a time, and his colleague was also doing it whenever he got a moment between other jobs. Since he hadn’t heard from him yet, presumably nothing had cropped up on his radar either.
Post after post turned out to be repetitions of what he’d already seen: pictures of naked or semi-naked teenage girls and young women. Some were obviously selfies that hadn’t been intended for a wider audience. Most had no doubt been sent to boyfriends who had then betrayed the girls’ trust. There were also pictures of fully clad girls that the site users had digitally manipulated to make it appear they were nude. Huldar didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he saw the results.
The most unpleasant of the lot, though they were all pretty sickening, were the photos of girls who had passed out drunk and had their clothes pulled up to expose them. Huldar scrolled quickly past these.
He came across the occasional video of couples having sex but these were very few and far between. Presumably the creeps who used the platform didn’t enjoy much success with women and rarely got the opportunity to make a video. He guessed they had to make do with these pathetic photos and a tub of their mother’s hand-cream.
None of the videos he did come across were anything like the ones from Helgi’s computer.
It wasn’t until he had scrolled through several months’ worth of posts that he hit the jackpot. The post in question was from three and a half years ago.
‘Gudlaugur. Come and see this.’ Huldar stood up to catch Gudlaugur’s eye. He wanted to get hold of him before he made yet another call to one of Margeir’s former employers, for whom, on the evidence of his bank statements, he had worked in a freelance capacity. From what Huldar had overheard, the employers were often reluctant to admit to having hired him, since the majority of the jobs had been cash in hand, however trivial that seemed in relation to the crime under investigation. ‘I reckon I’ve found a video of Helgi on this Icelandic porn-sharing site.’
Gudlaugur didn’t exactly leap out of his chair and Huldar couldn’t blame him for his lack of enthusiasm. But he did come round to stand beside Huldar and bent down to peer at the screen. ‘Is that the headboard we’ve been looking out for?’
‘Yes. I should recognise it by now.’ Huldar was the only member of the team who had watched all the videos from Helgi’s computer. The others had only been shown stills, carefully edited to omit the women’s faces. Apart from that, only a few, who’d been at work when IT first discovered the recordings, had seen a couple of videos all the way through, though none of them were prepared to admit it. Gudlaugur hadn’t been among those who had given in to the temptation.
Huldar pressed ‘Play’ and they watched as a blonde woman approached the bed with her back to them, sat down and slid the straps of her dress off her shoulders. It was hard to get a glimpse of her face while she was taking her clothes off, but when a fully dressed man appeared, also with his back to the camera, she looked up at him and smiled, giving them a clear view of her features.
‘I recognise her.’ Gudlaugur said. ‘Pause it a sec.’ He bent closer to the screen and peered at the woman, frowning. ‘What’s her name?’
‘I haven’t got that far. The user who posted it didn’t give a name. He just said: You’ll never believe this, guys! Then followed it up with some crap about what a pro he was.’
They both stared at the woman until Gudlaugur shook his head and shrugged. Huldar was also beginning to think he recognised the woman after concentrating hard on her face for a while. He pressed ‘Play’ again and they watched the back view of the man taking off his clothes, then sitting down beside the woman and starting to fondle her. It was unquestionably Helgi. At one point they briefly saw his face but, even without that, the white patch on his back was a dead giveaway.
‘He didn’t post it himself, did he?’ Gudlaugur asked.
‘Given that he didn’t post the other videos online, it seems unlikely. Though this one’s a bit older than the rest. Perhaps he used to share them, then stopped. Maybe he didn’t like the comments he got. There aren’t many videos on this site that show the bloke. The camera angle normally cuts out the man. And they tend to look as though they’ve been filmed on a phone, usually when the woman’s being taken from behind. I get the feeling that the guys who hang out on this site are mostly kids, though there may be a few adults among them. It seems implausible that Helgi would have been one of them.’
Huldar stopped the video and the original post reappeared, along with the comments. An unusual number of users seemed to have felt compelled to express an opinion about it. The top comments didn’t give away anything about the woman’s identity. Instead, they were all in the form of questions: Who is that? Name? WTF? And so on.
‘Can’t we find out which user uploaded the video?’ Gudlaugur asked.
‘No. The site’s on the Deep Web, which means that anyone who follows the URL can see the content, but to post something you have to use a Tor browser, which covers the user’s tracks. The names of the users on this platform give nothing away either. They’re just numbers. The whole thing’s designed to preserve their anonymity.’
Huldar clicked to see more comments. Many of them were full of praise for the man who’d posted the video. His own claim to be a ‘pro’ was modest compared to the enthusiasm expressed by the other users. Huldar had never seen so many positive responses on the site. Nor as many comments. He noticed that the usernames often appeared in numerical order, which suggested that many of them had signed up to the site at around the same time. And his attention was particularly drawn to a comment towards the bottom of the screen, in which the person who’d posted the video finally supplied the woman’s name.
Sigurlaug Lára.
Though her patronymic was missing, it could only be Lárusdóttir.
Huldar jabbed his finger at the screen. ‘Christ! It’s Siggi’s mother. No wonder her face looked familiar.’
The pictures he’d seen on her Facebook page had confused him. In those she’d had short, dark hair and worn little make-up. She’d appeared very ordinary – unusually ordinary, in fact. In the video she could have come straight from the Miss Iceland contest, with her long blonde mane and heavy make-up. Her image had certainly undergone a dramatic transformation over the last three and a half years. Huldar guessed that Margeir had been the reason for that. Abusive partners were often pathologically jealous a
nd the poor woman had probably been trying to make herself less attractive to the opposite sex. If so, she’d done a good job.
Huldar leant back. ‘So now we know why Margeir had it in for Helgi.’
‘Because she slept with him, you mean?’
‘Because she cheated on him with Helgi. This was posted three and a half years ago. They were already married by then.’
‘The video could be older.’
‘True. But Margeir may have believed the affair was still going on. And it can be hard to reason with nutters like him.’
Huldar was still keeping half an eye on Erla’s office. Now he not only had information about where the bed was located, he’d also uncovered the link between the two cases. It was almost enough to make it worthwhile knocking on the door of the meeting room upstairs. All they needed now was to track down that bastard Margeir. And Sigurlaug, of course. For that, Erla’s meeting would have to be curtailed and the team would have to get their arses into gear. He sent her a text.
‘What’s with all the messages? Emails, texts … what the fuck next? A telegram, a smoke signal? That should be no problem for you.’ Erla’s temper came as no surprise to Huldar, considering that she’d just emerged from the lion’s den. He needn’t have bothered to turn his monitor towards her office because she came storming straight over to his desk a few minutes after he’d sent the text. Gudlaugur had scuttled back to his seat, snatched up his phone and dialled the next number on his list. No one wanted to be in Erla’s firing line. No one except Huldar, who had become inured to it.
‘Come on, admit it – I threw you a lifeline.’ He grinned at Erla. She didn’t return it but neither did she contradict him, which proved he was right. She’d used it as an excuse to escape, but he would wait forever and a day before she thanked him. ‘What do you say to a quick trip over to Sudurhlíd?’ he asked. ‘You never know what we’ll find there.’
Gallows Rock - Freyja and Huldar Series 04 (2020) Page 25