Winterlude

by Quentin Bates

  Helgi’s phone diverted straight to voicemail. She cursed, flipped through a chart on the wall, found the number she was looking for and dialled again.

  ‘Hæ, Anna Björg? Gunnhildur. Is Helgi behaving himself?’

  ‘He’s being a good boy, most of the time anyway,’ Anna Björg said with what Gunna felt was a catch in her voice. ‘He’s in the interview room with Reynir Aronsson now. We’ll probably have to let him go this afternoon if there’s no progress.’

  ‘Ah, that’s what I wanted to talk to him about. Could you get him to call a halt and give me a buzz back?’

  ‘Yep. No problem. Give me five minutes and he’ll call you back.’

  Gunna tapped the desk with her index fingernail, the one that seemed to grow irritatingly faster than the others, scrolling through her other messages and deleting as many as could safely be ignored while she waited for Helgi to call. She was deep in a report when her desk phone finally buzzed.

  ‘Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Hæ, Chief,’ Helgi said. ‘What news?’

  ‘How are you getting on?’

  Helgi sounded tired, as if two days in his sparsely populated home territory had exhausted him.

  ‘We called in some reinforcements last night and cleared out Össur’s and Reynir’s distillery at Tunga, except that Össur and Ingi obviously did some very sharp work and managed to get the still and some of the production equipment hidden away somewhere,’ Helgi chuckled. ‘I can hazard a guess as to where it is, but that’s for Anna Björg to follow up if she feels inclined.’

  ‘And Reynir Aronsson?’

  ‘He’s bloody hard work, that’s all I can say. He won’t admit to anything. He reckons the CCTV footage of his vehicle is falsified and swears blind he wasn’t in Reykjavík on Sunday even though Anna Björg has been working on his girlfriend and demolished his alibi.’

  ‘Some good news for you, in that case. According to forensic, we have a positive identification of a set of Reynir Aronsson’s fingerprints at the murder scene. Sigmar found a couple of handprints on a section of galvanized pipe that had been thrown in with a lot of other old tools under a workbench. So I guess you can have a quiet word with the sheriff, formally arrest Reynir for the murder of Borgar Jónsson, and we can ship him south.’

  Gunna could hear the sigh of relief. ‘Perfect, Chief. Just what we needed. I was dreading having to let him go this afternoon. So that’s cut and dried, is it?’

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure,’ Gunna said, re-reading the email from Sigmar. ‘The fingerprints are definitely there, but they’re not as clear as we would like them to be. There’s no doubt that Reynir handled this piece of pipe and I’ll email you the photos so you can show them to him. But Sigmar said that it looks as if the prints aren’t fresh, as if they were made quite some time ago.’

  ‘But if it places Reynir in the NesPlast unit, that’s good enough grounds for arrest, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s grounds to haul him south and take our time getting the story out of him,’ Gunna decided. ‘So go for it.’

  Helgi wanted to punch the air, but maintained a sober expression as he and the lawyer who had gone outside for a quiet smoke made their way back to the interview room.

  ‘Can’t have been good news if you don’t have a smile on your face,’ Reynir said as Helgi sat down opposite him.

  He fanned out the photographs he had printed out and laid them on the table so that Reynir and the lawyer could see them.

  ‘You and your Land Cruiser at four locations in Reykjavík. Tryggvagata and Bankastræti, and two in Hafnarstræti, all within forty minutes of each other on Sunday morning,’ he said in a flat voice as Reynir stared. ‘Then there’s this one of your vehicle driving past an incident in Hafnarfjördur that same afternoon that I showed you yesterday. I take it you did your deliveries and then went off to find Borgar Jónsson in Hafnarfjördur? How come Elmar wasn’t doing the deliveries as usual? Because you wanted to find Borgar and did the run south with the week’s production at the same time? Is that how it worked? Killing two birds with one stone, if you’ll pardon the expression?’

  Reynir lifted his shoulders in a careless shrug. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘In that case, how about this?’ Helgi asked softly, placing two more pictures on the table. ‘Recognize this?’

  ‘No. Why? Should I?’

  ‘I’d say so. It’s more than likely the metal bar used to beat Borgar Jónsson to death, and it has your fingerprints all over it as well as blood traces from the victim.’

  Reynir stared at the picture and a vein began to throb in his temple. Helgi braced himself for an explosion and the lawyer gently shifted his chair sideways, as if sensing the tension in the air. Reynir picked up the printout and looked at it at arm’s length for a long time while Helgi and the lawyer sat in tense silence.

  Helgi opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it as Reynir sat back and squared his shoulders.

  ‘I admit it,’ he said finally. ‘I killed the bastard.’

  ‘In that case, I arrest you, Reynir Aronsson, on suspicion of the murder of Borgar Jónsson. You do not have to say anything, but you are required to answer truthfully any questions put to you,’ Helgi intoned as Reynir bowed his head. ‘Just so you know, we’ll be travelling south later today.’

  Mæja’s eyes flashed from side to side. With the only interview room already occupied by Helgi and Reynir, Anna Björg made space in her office for Mæja to perch nervously on the edge of a chair.

  She glanced at the door.

  ‘Is that closed? Can anyone hear us?’

  ‘Nobody’s listening, Mæja. Don’t worry.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she shot back.

  Anna Björg squared away her notebook and watched Mæja fidget nervously. ‘Is Hjörtur back at Blanda today?’

  ‘He left this morning.’

  ‘Four days?’

  ‘Yep. Back on Sunday night.’

  Anna Björg pursed her lips, wondering how to start. ‘Look, Mæja. You’ve had a long-running affair with Reynir Aronsson for . . . what? Five years at least. I’m not out to judge. Your private life’s your private life. Understand?’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Mæja said hesitantly. ‘So what’s this about? I’ve already told you Reynir was with me on Sunday.’

  ‘Are you afraid of Reynir?’

  Mæja’s gaze dropped to the desk between them. ‘Not afraid of him, but I take care not to upset him, if that’s what you mean. You know what Reynir’s like. He has a temper.’

  ‘But you still see him?’

  ‘Nobody’s perfect. He’s a good man. It’s just deep inside.’

  ‘You’re not being coerced at all?’

  Mæja’s brows knitted in concentration. ‘You mean saying he was with me when he wasn’t?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘No! I haven’t even seen him since he left on Sunday night. It’s not as if we’re teenagers texting each other all the time,’ she said angrily, her face reddening.

  ‘So give me the times,’ Anna Björg said sharply. ‘When did Reynir arrive and when did he leave?’

  ‘He turned up on Friday night about nine and left early in the morning. Then he was back Saturday evening some time. I can’t remember what time and he stayed until about four.’

  ‘Four in the morning?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All right. So you say he was with you on Sunday as well. When did he show up?’

  ‘About four, five, something like that. It was after the football was on TV and he was happy that his team had won. I made some dinner, Reynir washed up. We watched TV, had an hour in bed and he left just after midnight. OK? Are there any other details you’d like?’ Mæja asked in a snide tone. ‘Curious about what other people get up to, are you? No secrets in this town – and there are all kinds of things going on that people think nobody knows about. Like at the hotel on a weeknight when it’s quiet.’

 
‘I’m not being curious by choice,’ Anna Björg retorted, stung by Mæja’s jibe. ‘But there’s a man here who may well be facing a murder charge and years in prison, so maybe you can see why I have to be sure.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose there is that,’ Mæja mumbled.

  ‘I saw your husband here in Blönduós on Sunday morning. He wasn’t on shift on Sunday night. So how come Reynir was able to be with you on Sunday evening? That’s what I want to know.’

  Gunna arrived back at her desk with a mug of coffee in one hand to find Ívar Laxdal sitting in Helgi’s chair and looking through the pile of books under the table.

  ‘I never thought of Helgi as an admirer of Laxness,’ Ívar Laxdal said, flicking through a much-thumbed hardback and placing it reverently back where it had come from. ‘Independent People. Marvellous stuff, I always thought.’

  ‘Why, did you think he was more of a one for Westerns and whodunnits? He’s a dark horse, is our Helgi. You know what these country boys are like. Speaking of which, he’s up in Húnavatnssysla and he’s made an arrest.’

  ‘This is the killing in Hafnarfjördur?’

  ‘It is,’ Gunna confirmed and sipped her coffee. ‘Actually, Helgi has done all the important work on this one.’

  ‘You mean you feel he deserves an afternoon off?’ Ívar Laxdal asked with a trace of a smile.

  ‘Steady on. I wouldn’t go that far, but a bag of sweets, maybe.’

  ‘So who’s the killer?’

  ‘Reynir Aronsson. The brother of the man whose son was run over by Borgar Jónsson. But there’s a hell of a lot of ground to go over here. There are four brothers and they have a long history of sorting out each other’s grudges – going back decades, or so Helgi says.’

  ‘You think you can tie this in with any cold cases?’

  Gunna shook her head. ‘I doubt it. It’s more a case of figuring out if any of the other brothers were party to this and how much of it was arranged in advance.’

  ‘So this was premeditated murder?’

  ‘Without a doubt, I’d say.’

  ‘And the young man who had an accident? Was he part of this too?’

  ‘I’d say so. There’s been a little business going on here as well. Two of the brothers were brewing moonshine on a practically industrial scale up north, and the man, Elmar, was delivering it to bars and people who were selling it by the half-bottle to the city drunks. He was close to his father’s brothers and they supplied him with a van so he could deliver for them, or that’s the way it looks. That lad has a lot of questions to answer once that morphine feed is turned off. But my guess is that he was the one who had tracked down Borgar Jónsson and shadowed him. Maybe he found out about Borgar’s plans to skip the country and they decided between them on some rough justice. Who knows? He’s still in hospital and too doped up to answer questions – not that he’s going far, so it can wait a day or two.’

  ‘We might have to open a whole new wing at Litla-Hraun just for them. Anyhow, an announcement needs to be made. A man is helping police with enquiries, etc, do you think?’

  ‘A man has been arrested, kind of thing, I’d say. But no names, obviously. Not that the press won’t work out who he is soon enough.’

  ‘Excellent. The commissioner will be relieved. I’ll tell him.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, don’t forget to mention Helgi as well. It’s his work that’s done this.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ívar Laxdal said, levering himself from Helgi’s chair. ‘Credit where it’s due. Just so you know, the gentlemen of National Security were very interested in what I had to show them yesterday. The passport is, however, a fake.’

  ‘So Borgar must have bought it for some reason. In case he needed to make a quiet exit, maybe?’

  ‘Who knows? Anyhow, it’s a fake, but a very good one of the kind that when it was made eight or nine years ago would have cost a lot of money. They doubt it would pass inspection now. Airport checks are so much more rigorous and he probably wouldn’t have got far with it, although it’s not easy to say if it would be a problem somewhere further south in Europe with a fifty-euro note tucked between the pages. There’s no Turkish embassy here, so the unit is in touch with their Oslo embassy. If anything more surfaces, I’m sure they’ll let us know.’

  ‘So Borgar could have left the country as himself, gone to Rome or somewhere, and travelled on from there under another identity?’ Gunna speculated.

  ‘Quite. But the bankbook is very real and the figures in it are euros, so there’s a respectable amount of money there, the deposits all made over six years or so, and the last one just a few months before Borgar was convicted. There were no withdrawals,’ he added.

  Gunna sat back and looked at the ceiling for a moment. ‘I’m sure he was going to vanish,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s not as if he had all that much to keep him here. So,’ she said, ‘I owe the gentlemen of National Security a favour, do I?’

  ‘Let’s say that I do. But if they decide you owe them a favour as well, then I’m sure they’ll let you know soon enough.’

  It was a journey he wasn’t looking forward to and he spent half an hour longer than he had meant to sitting moodily in Rúna’s kitchen. His big sister talked about grandchildren without apparently being concerned as to whether or not he was listening. Helgi left Rúna’s house with a promise to drop by later, by which time his brother-in-law would be home, and drove slowly through Blönduós past the petrol station where he had spoken to Mæja. He wondered how she would cope with Reynir being so suddenly removed from her life, probably for five or six years assuming he were to behave himself in Litla-Hraun. Maybe Mæja and Hjörtur would rekindle their relationship with Reynir off the scene, but Helgi thought it more likely that she would find a replacement soon enough.

  Turning off the main road and out towards the long coastline where farms were dotted between the highlands and the sea, he thought to himself what a peaceful childhood it had been where a car passed no more than half a dozen times a day and he had been on horseback or driving the tractor at an age when city boys were riding bicycles. Where he had grown up at Hraunbær and where his father had tended sheep and a few cows was a less prosperous farm. On higher ground on the valley slopes, the winters were colder than on a good farm like Tunga close to the shore where there had once been driftwood and seals to be had in the spring, as well as the wild salmon that could be discreetly caught in nets and which visiting city dwellers these days would pay a fortune just for the sight of.

  He could see the turning for Tunga in the distance and slowed down long before he reached it. A knot of ponies in a field watched him as he stopped by the sign to the farm and got out to walk over to the fence where a piebald mare stood with her head over the wire. He scratched her ears while behind her the rest of them stood warily watching this strange man who got out of his car to talk to horses by the side of the road.

  The Daihatsu bumped down the track to Tunga and the same dog barked at him as he rolled into the yard. The old lady’s face appeared at the window and a moment later the door opened.

  ‘Hæ,’ Helgi greeted her as he got slowly out of the Daihatsu and walked towards her.

  ‘The boys aren’t here,’ she said shortly, her face strained. ‘Össur and Ingi are down at the long barn, though I don’t know how pleased they’ll be to see you.’

  ‘I have to speak to them,’ he said simply.

  ‘Be it on your own head, Helgi,’ she said, looking past him as Ingi’s van drove into the yard and stopped by the farmhouse door. The old lady watched with her arms folded just as Reynir had done in the interview room.

  ‘You’ve a nerve, showing up here,’ Össur said shortly and walked straight past him, kicking his boots off at the door and disappearing inside. Ingi got slowly out of the van and stretched his legs.

  ‘Helgi. What’s the news?’

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘Come inside.’

  ‘Your mother and Össur aren’t exactly going to welcome me w
ith open arms, are they?’

  Ingi spat into a puddle. ‘Ach. Össur’s Össur. We all know what he’s like. The old lady doesn’t like it but she knows you don’t have a choice. When are you taking Reynir south?’

  In the kitchen Ingi folded his arms over his broad chest and leaned against the stove while the old lady sat at the table and lit a cigarette, waiting for Helgi to say something.

  ‘We’ll be going south this evening,’ he said finally and the old lady nodded in reply.

  ‘That bastard deserved everything he got,’ she said finally. ‘It’s a scandal that he took away Kjartan’s boy like that and they just let him out after a couple of years. He should have been in prison for life. An eye for an eye,’ she said in a bleak, harsh voice. ‘That’s what the book says.’

  ‘I’m truly sorry,’ Helgi said as the clock ticked accusingly on its high shelf over the door. ‘But I don’t make up the rules.’

  ‘You should never have gone to live down there, Helgi. You used to be one of us when you lived here. You’re not any more.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that I couldn’t stay here, and what was there to stay for?’

  The old lady coughed and ground out her cigarette in a saucer. ‘I don’t know, Helgi. But you’re not the man your father expected you to be,’ she said, getting to her feet with some effort. ‘I’ll pack a bag for Reynir and Ingi can take it with him into Blönduós.’

  Helgi drove faster this time and Ingi followed him in his van. It was getting dark already and he was not looking forward to the long drive south with Reynir and probably Arnar in the back of the Daihatsu. The street lights were already on as they drove into Blönduós, shining on a film of black water. Clouds had collected over the distant mountains and Helgi could almost smell snow in the air as he wondered whether to postpone travelling south until the morning. The previous night’s escapade and Anna Björg’s good-humoured dismissal of his concern had made him increasingly anxious to get home, but at the same time he wanted to be cautious.