Cold Breath (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 7)

by Quentin Bates

  ‘Well, I’m not entirely happy either,’ Gunna said. ‘It takes me away from my family, which isn’t ideal. Steini never complains about anything I do, but we were going to take Gísli’s boat over the bay at the weekend if the weather’s reasonable. And I don’t want to be away from Laufey for long at the moment either as she’s having a tricky time.’

  ‘How’s the lad?’

  ‘He’s fine. They’ve managed to find a place to buy and he’s on one of the Grindavík longliners. It’s decent money and he gets regular trips off.’

  ‘That’s good. You shouldn’t be away too long when you have youngsters,’ he said absently. ‘You haven’t complained about the lack of promotion for a while, have you?’ he added in a throwaway tone.

  ‘Well, no, I haven’t. But I can if you’ve been missing it.’

  Ívar Laxdal stroked his unfamiliar beard.

  ‘Let’s say that if you carry out this assignment successfully then I can assure you there’ll be no obstacles to promotion.’ He jerked his chin upwards. ‘As I said, this comes from upstairs. They want to be sure this person remains safe and sound, and I’ll make damned sure a good job done doesn’t escape their notice.’

  The Glock was an uncomfortable lump under her armpit. Gunna shifted awkwardly, telling herself to get used to it, then a moment later reminding herself that this operation would only take a few days, so there would be no need, or even opportunity, to become accustomed to carrying a firearm.

  The weapon made her nervous, even though the pistol was empty and the clip was in her pocket. She wondered how to tell Helgi and Eiríkur that she was going to be away for a few days as she elbowed the door open and looked inside. Eiríkur waved from his desk where he sat with the phone to his ear and held up one finger.

  Gunna went to the coffee room and poured herself a mug of dark brown liquid, which she sipped absently, looking at the cartoons pinned to the walls, most of them clipped from newspapers, and most of them poking fun at the upper echelons of the police force or the various ministers of justice who had been the force’s overlord at one time or another.

  ‘Leaving us for pastures new?’ Eiríkur asked with a grin.

  ‘Why? What did the Laxdal tell you?’

  Eiríkur poured himself a mug of hot water from a Thermos, sat down and dunked a teabag in it.

  ‘He didn’t say a lot. Just that you’re off normal duties for a while. You haven’t upset someone, have you?’

  ‘Not yet, Eiríkur. Well, no more than usual.’

  He squeezed the teabag and sipped. Gunna could sense the host of unasked questions he wanted to put to her, and realized that he and Helgi had probably been told to not ask too much.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you will soon enough.’

  ‘You cheeky . . .’ Gunna began and returned the grin to let him know the rebuke wasn’t to be taken seriously.

  She and the middle-aged Helgi had clicked from the first day they’d worked together. Much the same age and both of them from coastal regions, they had a great deal in common, while the younger Eiríkur, a city child born and brought up in Reykjavík, had taken longer to become part of the team. It was only in the last year or so that he had started to give rein to an irreverent sense of humour. Gunna had taken a while to get to know him properly, and had wondered if he would remain with the force, or if the church would one day reclaim him.

  ‘I’ll be off for a day or two. To be honest, I can’t tell you what it’s all about because I don’t know myself yet.’

  ‘But you’ll have something to tell us when you’re back, I hope?’

  Gunna drained her mug and put it in the sink.

  ‘I would hope so. Unless I completely screw things up and get demoted to running the canteen.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think so,’ he said slowly, looking at her with one eye half closed, and Gunna felt a surge of discomfort when she realized that in spite of the loose-fitting fleece she’d kept zipped up, Eiríkur had still detected, with obvious alarm, the bulge under her left arm.

  ‘All on one level. No basement. Garages there; keep your car in the one on the right,’ Ívar Laxdal instructed, striding from his black Volvo towards the house while Gunna levered herself out of the car-pool Daihatsu.

  The house was a long, low building, its walls the pale blue of duck eggs and the high roof set with a shallow pitch and tiled in matt-red shingles.

  She surveyed the low-slung house, its barren garden and the view of the shoreline and the deserted promontory of Geldinganes lurking on the far side of a few hundred metres of white-capped waves.

  ‘Is the causeway passable?’ she asked, jerking a thumb at the long hump of Geldinganes.

  ‘At low tide and with a four-wheel drive it might be. At this time of year, don’t even think about it.’

  ‘Is there anything over there?’

  ‘Nothing. There’s an old shelter that goes back years, but otherwise it’s deserted, and it’s likely to stay that way until the developers finally move in,’ he said. ‘That’s if they ever get permission to build there. There are plans for houses eventually, but it’s a few years away yet.’

  ‘And this place,’ Gunna said, nodding towards the house. ‘Lonely, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know,’ Ívar Laxdal replied. ‘Perfect, isn’t it? It’s called Einholt. Or the farm that used to be here was called Einholt, until the farmhouse was pulled down and this place was built. Shall we continue?’

  He opened the door and handed Gunna the key as the alarm system chirped.

  ‘Seven-two-seven-six,’ he said, punching in the code so the sound died away. ‘The alarm goes on at night, please. All the windows and doors are linked to it, so if you get a visitor, you’ll know about it. So will the emergency line, and they’ll treat it as an absolute priority, so no false alarms, please.’

  ‘The garage doors are on the same circuit?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Check,’ he said, striding through the living room on two levels that seemed to disappear into the distance.

  ‘Four bedrooms, all of them en suite. You use the one at the end, closest to the front door. Our friend gets the master bedroom. Kitchen’s there,’ he indicated with a wave of his hand. ‘Stores will be delivered as required. Let us know what you need.’

  Gunna stopped in her tracks.

  ‘Hold on a moment. How many people are going to be in this place, and for how long?’

  ‘Two of you. Our friend and you.’

  ‘So I’m a cook and housekeeper, as well as a bodyguard?’

  Ívar Laxdal scratched his beard and a sly smile appeared behind it.

  ‘That’s for you and our guest to work out between you, isn’t it? If you want takeaways for every meal, then that’s fine by me.’

  ‘Who’s doing the deliveries?’

  ‘Over here, Gunnhildur.’ He walked to the end of the long living room and took the two steps to the higher end of the split-level living room in one bound. The long wall of the living room was taken up with a picture window that almost filled it, providing a view across the sound. The lights of Akranes on the far side of Faxaflói Bay could be seen between the Geldinganes promontory and the island of Viðey. There was a single window in the end wall and Ívar Laxdal tapped the glass with his finger. ‘Up there, you see the first house on the end? We have that place as well, for a few weeks. The owners were very happy to get an all-expenses paid holiday in Sicily. In the meantime, two officers from the Special Unit are there around the clock. If there’s a panic, that’s what they’re there for.’

  ‘So to get back to my original question, did you want an officer with ovaries for this role because a suitably domestic type was required, or what?’ Gunna demanded, wondering if she could still turn down the assignment.

  ‘Far from it, Gunnhildur,’ Ívar Laxdal said. ‘I’m aware that you’re not entirely the domestic type,’ he added, his sly smile returning. ‘I wanted you for this particular job because I can trust you not to fuck things up, because
you’re competent without being intimidating, in the way that a six-foot guy with designer stubble might be, and finally, because I felt you deserved the opportunity. I’m not saying it won’t be a challenge, because it will be.’

  ‘A feminine touch, you mean?’ Gunna growled, mollified but not convinced. ‘So when does he get here?’

  ‘Ah, I expect the minister will want to bring him here herself.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Very soon.’

  Gunna made coffee, while Ívar Laxdal rolled up his sleeves. She watched with amusement and then mounting admiration as he cracked six eggs into a bowl, one-handed and two at a time, chopped onions, added a crushed clove of garlic and sliced a pepper and two tomatoes.

  She sat back and watched his concentration on the task in hand until he split the omelette neatly onto two plates.

  ‘Some fresh bread would have been good, and so would a salad, but we have to make do with what we have,’ he said.

  ‘It’s good,’ she told him after the first few mouthfuls. ‘You’d better give Steini the recipe.’

  ‘I assure you Steini knows how to cook an omelette. It’s all in the wrist and the timing.’

  ‘I hope our friend has an idea of what he’s letting himself in for if I’m supposed to be feeding him as well.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. Just make a list of what you want.’

  Gunna nodded as she wolfed the omelette, surprised at how hungry she had been.

  ‘It’ll be bog-standard Icelandic food, I reckon.’

  ‘Meat and potatoes?’

  ‘That’s about the shape of it.’

  ‘His diet is the least of my worries.’

  ‘So what are you worried about?’ Gunna asked. ‘And when are you going to tell me who this character is and why I need to have a Glock stuck in my armpit.’

  ‘You have your phone with you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Keep it on silent, and you can log into the wifi network. In any case there’s a jammer in your room that blocks mobile traffic within about ten metres of the house. There’s a landline with an extension in every room. If you need to call, use that. If anything personal crops up, then it’ll have to wait.’

  ‘Ívar, just how long is this expected to last?’

  ‘A week, I would imagine. We’ll rotate after a couple of days.’

  Gunna sat back, trying to take it all in. ‘And who’s my relief?’

  ‘I am, probably. We have to keep this discreet, and we achieve discretion by involving as few people as possible,’ Ívar Laxdal said, finishing his omelette. ‘The Special Unit guys up the road only know there’s an VIP here and that they’re to keep watch for intruders; they don’t know who’s going to be here and they aren’t to know unless something crops up.’

  The new office was a relief, Skúli Snædal told himself, adding that having an office at all, at long last, was the real relief. He shivered as he waited for the bus that would take him to work, and reminded himself that in spite of the biting spring wind, the sun was appearing earlier with every passing day, winter was almost behind them and he was again working in his chosen profession.

  The last couple of years had been difficult ones. He had left a comfortable and secure but low-paid position as a staff journalist on one of Reykjavík’s freesheets to take a precarious but interesting job on an established newspaper that had only a few months later been taken over by new owners. The new proprietors had installed a new manager whose task was to weed out those without a history of toeing the company line, and as one of the last in, and with a known habit of taking little at face value, Skúli had found himself among the first out.

  He had even resorted to teaching to make ends meet – he shuddered at the thought. Then the new venture had been nerve-wracking, and he had put everything he had into throwing in his lot with a group of other young journalists in much the same position as himself in setting up a news website. It had been an anxious few months as Reykjavík Pulse had launched with fanfare, immediately becoming popular, only for the readership to gradually fall away in the ensuing months before surging again in the wake of a couple of government scandals that Pulse’s small team had been able to report in a way the established media had failed to do, achieving a vivacious style that bordered on satire.

  Pulse was now steadily gaining ground. Its readers seemed to like its lack of political affiliation and its habit of asking embarrassing questions, and the growing readership was bringing in advertisers. In spite of some of them having reservations about Pulse’s frequently irreverent tone, advertisers were aware that the age demographic they were anxious to reach was reading it, without understanding that the abrasive tone was precisely what brought those readers in.

  Skúli heard his phone buzz in his pocket as he got on the bus, but waited until he was seated before digging it from his pocket and scrolling through his messages, peering at the screen.

  A headshot of a man with curly dark hair, gazing at a point somewhere to one side and far behind the camera, filled his screen. At first glance there was something attractive about the shape of the man’s sculpted chin and elegant, narrow nose, a reassurance about the straightness of the man’s shoulders. But a closer look showed an unsettling hardness behind the deep brown eyes.

  He scrolled down to read the message that went with the photo and saw that it had come from a contact in Europe, someone he had worked with in his brief stint on a local newspaper in Jutland who had moved on to work with an NGO in Brussels.

  You know who this guy is?

  Skúli was perplexed. There was something familiar about the face, although he couldn’t place it. He thought of doing a web search, so as not to have to admit that he didn’t recognize the man, but decided it was too much bother.

  He keyed a reply into his phone.

  No. But I guess you’re going to tell me?

  The two black Patrols, one with its windows tinted to match the bodywork, turned up exactly as Ívar Laxdal had predicted. Gunna was half expecting a group of black-uniformed Special Unit officers to tumble out, but instead the two Patrols were manned by young men who looked out of place with the spring wind tugging at their office suits.

  She saw the minister’s blonde head emerge from the back of the second Patrol with the black windows, smiling and glancing about her. A moment later a lanky figure stepped out, a man with olive skin, a trimmed black beard and obsidian hair that curled over his ears. He hugged a laptop bag, looking around as if he hadn’t seen daylight for a long time. He was reassured by the minister, who stopped herself, about to place a hand on his arm as he slung the bag over his shoulder.

  The group swept past. Once inside, the suited young men shivered with relief to be out of the wind and the minister’s eyes darted around the living room.

  ‘Ívar, everything’s ready, I assume?’

  ‘Of course, Steinunn. Just as instructed.’

  ‘And the team?’

  ‘Two officers at the last house you passed on the way here, one officer here.’

  The minister looked around again. Gunna had seen her often enough in print and on the screen, but was unprepared for the fact that the politician often depicted as the government’s most senior female rottweiler looked decidedly homely close up, tired and with cheeks delicately pitted by ancient acne. Her trademark blonde mane looked attractively windblown and her piercing eyes had an unmistakably determined ruthlessness about them.

  ‘Who?’ she asked, looking at Ívar Laxdal with one eyebrow lifted.

  ‘This is Gunnhildur Gísladóttir from the Serious Crime Unit. She will be looking after our friend. I’ll be relieving her myself.’

  The minister looked Gunna up and down before her unsettling gaze stopped to rest on her face, staring into Gunna’s eyes. Gunna longed to snap back, but resisted and held the minister’s eyes. She had the distinct feeling of being searched.

  ‘If you say so, Ívar,’ she said and extended a hand to Gunna. ‘Look after our friend, please,’ she said quietly. �
��He’s a remarkable man.’

  Gunna took her time grasping the minister’s hand. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ the minister said, and the young men in suits were suddenly silent. She turned and took the tall man’s hand in both of hers, looking into his eyes with an intensity that did not escape Gunna, before turning to leave, the young men in suits making haste to follow her.

  The man looked from Ívar Laxdal to Gunna and back.

  ‘My name is Osman,’ he said in English, his voice warm and with a clear, soft accent.

  ‘Ívar Laxdal. I’m a senior officer with the city police force,’ Ívar Laxdal said, with no less of an accent in his English. Gunna wondered if she would sound as harsh with those rough consonants dropping off her tongue. ‘This is my colleague Gunnhildur Gísladóttir.’

  Gunna felt herself being inspected as the stranger’s heavy-lidded eyes travelled from her boots to her eyes, and the slow smile that finally gave some light to his face was clearly one of appreciation, as well as surprise.

  ‘Gunna,’ she said and watched him nod as she met his eyes and inspected him in return; seeing a tall man with a spare frame, soft brown eyes, black curly hair and a thin beard with a touch of grey.

  ‘Arrangements are for Gunnhildur to be here with you at the house. We have a squad deployed close by to keep an eye on the approaches and they are a minute away from here,’ Ívar Laxdal said. ‘I will relieve Gunnhildur periodically. Only Gunnhildur and I know of your presence here, as do, of course, the minister and her staff. We have taken every possible precaution to ensure that your presence here remains between ourselves.’

  ‘Good. Tell me, this place has been swept, has it not?’

  ‘It has. And it’s clean,’ Ívar Laxdal said.

  ‘Good. You have internet here?’

  Ívar Laxdal’s lips pursed. ‘In the interests of security, we would ask you to be careful with any device that could indicate your location.’