‘So we start knocking on doors again?’ Eiríkur said.
‘Exactly. We can start on Laugavegur and see what we can dig up.’
Now it was Steingrímur’s turn to look tired. There were black folds under his eyes and his cheeks were red from a morning in the biting wind.
‘Any joy?’ Gunna asked, handing him a mug of coffee that he cradled in his huge hands to warm them.
‘Not much. The wind’s taken away anything that might have been lying around and the rain’s washed out any footprints. So we’re back at square one there. I knocked on a few doors further up and asked if anyone had seen any unusual traffic, but nothing. Hell, it’s bitter out today. Roll on spring.’
He shivered and sipped coffee gratefully.
‘Still you and your pal up at the other place?’
‘Nope. We have reinforcements. Two more guys so we can take turns and get some sleep as well. There’s one with his eyes glued to a pair of binoculars watching this place and another one watching the road. One asleep and me here for the moment. What’s the thinking at the moment? Any ideas who John Doe is, or was?’
Gunna shook her head.
‘Nothing so far.’
‘Will you stop beating yourself up, Gunna?’ Steingrímur said gruffly. ‘You did what any one of us would have had to do in the circumstances. He fired first and he had four more rounds in the chambers of that revolver.’
Gunna sighed.
‘I know. But it was a lucky shot on my part. A few inches one way or the other and he’d still be alive. He’d be badly hurt, but he wouldn’t be dead.’
Steingrímur shrugged.
‘You did what you had to do,’ he repeated. ‘It’s not as if you had time to think about it. You did a fine job and you deserve a medal, in my opinion.’
‘You think so?’ Gunna brooded for a moment. ‘I’m sure his wife probably wouldn’t agree, or his children.’
‘If he had a wife and children. You couldn’t know. We don’t even know who he was or where he came from, or even what he was doing. Like I said, stop beating yourself up about it.’
‘Looks like we have another one to run with right away,’ Arndís said, a ballpoint between her lips and her eyes locked on the screen in front of her.
Agnar was on the phone, muttering into the microphone in his hand as he lounged in his chair.
‘What’s that?’ Skúli asked.
‘Thór the Boxer. The police have released a description of the guy they want to interview in connection with the killing the other night.’
‘I thought they’d arrested that dope dealer?’
Arndís shook her head.
‘It turned out he had an alibi, and now they have a new suspect they want to track down. Unidentified male, aged thirty to forty, one metre ninety, dark hair.’
‘You’re putting the story up?’
‘Of course. Right now, this very minute,’ she said. ‘Everyone else will have this, so we can’t be left behind.’
Skúli retreated into his own thoughts. He had gnawed his fingernails since his conversation with the two police officers and he was under no illusions about what their role was.
At the same time, his own anger and frustration were starting to boil over as he wondered if the story he had worked on with Lars and Sophie had led in one way or another to his friend’s death. He was startled by the sudden thought that Sophie might also be in danger, or that he himself could become someone’s target. The thought set him shuddering with a sudden terror and he felt faint for a few seconds.
Skúli stood up and walked a few paces to what they laughingly referred to as the boardroom, a small room with a ceiling that sloped at one end under the eaves of the building, where they would go for privacy, a confidential interview, or simply to take a break from the screen. This was just what he wanted, and he lay down on the lumpy sofa, closing his eyes as he fought to keep his mind from the thoughts that made him shiver with uncertainty.
Instead, he concentrated on Lars, the two-room flat they had shared in Århus for a year, the amicable arguments over beer and pizza, and the occasional girls who could be persuaded to pay them a visit.
He asked himself whether Lars had lost his life because he’d exposed a side of Ali Osman that had been kept carefully out of sight, or if there was another reason?
Skúli told himself he couldn’t afford to be brave, that his family were now his priority and he couldn’t place them in any jeopardy just to fuel his own ambitions – or to seek out what had happened to an old friend he’d hardly heard from for three years.
The key had to be Valgeir. He was the only route he had to Osman and the truth that he might be better off pretending didn’t exist. But maybe he would be better off taking Osman’s example and hiding in plain sight?
Gunna told herself that Úlfur and Birna weren’t twins, not even siblings, but it was hard when they looked so alike, with similar suits and haircuts. She toyed with the idea of telling them to dress differently so she could tell them apart at a glance.
‘Who has access to the minister?’ Ívar Laxdal rumbled. ‘I mean, there must be someone she actually listens to, surely?’
‘Apparently not,’ Birna said, putting down a cup of coffee that Ívar Laxdal had poured for her. She pushed the cup to one side and opened a sleek silver laptop. ‘She listens to people within her party, but doesn’t pay much attention to her department’s advisers. We may have to take this higher.’
‘That’s practically treason, isn’t it?’ Ívar Laxdal asked. ‘After all, she is the minister with responsibility for justice, law and order and public safety. She’s our boss.’
Birna allowed herself a hint of a smile. ‘For the moment,’ she said quietly. ‘You can never tell with politicians, can you? There could be a reshuffle next week, and someone new in charge.’
‘And if this blows up in Steinunn’s face and her position becomes untenable, then that’s just what’ll happen,’ Úlfur said.
‘After she’s denied everything and declined to stand down for a week or two,’ Ívar Laxdal added. He frowned and glanced around. ‘And where’s our guest, Gunnhildur?’
‘In his room, feet up and watching the TV.’
‘Good.’ Ívar Laxdal squared his shoulders. ‘Now. What do we know, and what do we need to find out? Birna? Úlfur? Start with the dead man.’
‘We don’t know any more than we knew yesterday. His face isn’t known anywhere.’
‘Flights have been checked?’
‘It’s being done. We’ve been going through CCTV from Keflavík airport, which could narrow down which flight he might have arrived on, but it takes time and we don’t have the option of bringing in additional manpower on this, so we have to do it ourselves. We’ve been through four days’ worth so far and we’ll be going through more today.’
‘Go back another four days. Then another four if you don’t get anywhere,’ Ívar Laxdal decided. ‘The only thing I can add is that Miss Cruz feels his dentistry work could be Eastern European, which doesn’t narrow things down a great deal.’
Úlfur shrugged. ‘That could give us something to go on. We’re waiting for enquiries to be answered.’
‘Let me know when you’ve chased it up.’
‘I’m not exactly overworked here,’ Gunna pointed out. ‘If you can get me access to the footage, there’s no reason why I can’t go through it when I’m not darning our guest’s socks for him.’
Birna looked sideways at Ívar Laxdal, who nodded.
‘Good idea. Fix it up, will you? Now, Osman. Tell me anything I haven’t already seen in the confidential report I wasn’t supposed to see.’
‘What we know is that Osman has some determined enemies,’ Birna said, one finger on the trackpad of her laptop as she peered at the screen. She looked up. ‘I spoke to Brussels this morning and they’ve been keeping an eye on him for a while. Osman has been linked to several groups in the Middle East, but only on a peripheral basis, family links as much as anything
else. Nothing concrete. The organization he runs – the White Sickle Peace Foundation that supports refugees from war zones – is very wealthy. My contacts in Brussels tell me that he more or less treats the foundation as a personal piggy bank, but it’s not easy to tell where all this wealth comes from.’
‘We ought to know something about that in Iceland, surely,’ Gunna said.
‘Precisely,’ Birna said with a touch of frost in her voice. ‘But in this case we don’t. Brussels say he has accounts here and there, including what’s effectively a working account at a Dutch bank with a balance of around a quarter of a million Euros. Then there’s the fact that White Sickle is registered in Panama and maintains its finances there, so that’s also where the trail ends.’
Gunna crossed her arms and laid them on the table in front of her. She wanted to yawn, but resisted.
‘All right. Let me be devil’s advocate here. Let’s suppose our man really is what he says he is, a philanthropist who runs a peace foundation and has managed to make a few enemies. What do you have that tells us that’s not the case?’
Úlfur looked startled and Ívar Laxdal stifled a smile.
‘Well, to start with, someone tried to kill him.’
‘Do we know that? Can we be sure Osman was the target?’ Gunna asked.
Birna shrugged. ‘I think we have to assume that.’
‘Birna’s right,’ Ívar Laxdal decided. ‘Even if Osman wasn’t the target, we have to work on the assumption that he was until we know better. Next question?’
‘As I asked, can we be sure that whatever information you’re getting about him is accurate?’ Gunna said. ‘Does he have terrorist links? Is this simply conjecture and hearsay? Could he genuinely be a peace advocate?’
Birna and Úlfur exchanged glances.
‘I’m not quite sure where you’re taking this?’ Úlfur said, his voice rising in irritation.
‘I’m asking you to be certain of your ground, and to convince us.’
‘I’m not sure we need this kind of scrutiny from uniform,’ Úlfur said, his eyes flashing towards Ívar Laxdal.
‘Valid questions, young man,’ he growled in reply. ‘This is extraordinarily sensitive and we must be sure of where we stand. If there’s a terror angle, then this becomes a national security matter and we’ll all be taking early retirement if we fuck things up.’
His words hung in the air as Úlfur looked taken aback and Birna looked intently at her laptop.
‘We have to assume a few things,’ Ívar Laxdal decided, counting them off on his fingers. ‘One, we have to assume a terror link until we know better. Two, we have to assume whoever tried to kill Osman wasn’t working alone. Three, we have to keep this under wraps as Osman is a guest of the minister, who wants his presence to be kept strictly confidential. This also ties our hands as we can’t bring in help from outside. Four, we have to convince the minister that Osman may well be something other than an advocate for world peace, rainbows, unicorns and all that stuff. Five, we have to keep him alive and send him back where he came from unscathed. Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ Birna said. ‘We need to convince the minister that we ought to ship him out of the country as quickly as possible, and if she won’t do it we have to go over her head.’
‘You mean if she doesn’t play ball, her head’s going to roll?’
‘Exactly. And if this comes out, which could happen if we’re not very careful, then it will roll, and our heads with it. Steinunn has never been known for being what you might call a generous politician.’
‘Not bad,’ Ana said. ‘Other entrance?’
‘Fire escape through the kitchen.’
The apartment was centred around a large kitchen-living room with the blank white cupboard doors of the kitchen occupying one end.
‘Bathroom?’
‘Through there,’ Michel said, jerking a thumb towards a passage that opened out from between two stylish bookcases. ‘Two bedrooms. Or are you staying somewhere else?’
Ana hung up her coat and scanned the room. ‘How long do you have this place for?’
‘We can stay here until the end of the month. The owner is studying abroad somewhere and won’t be back for a while. We won’t need it that long.’
‘So he’s not going to come knocking on the door?’
Michel grinned. ‘I don’t think so. When she gave me the keys, his ex-wife took care to let me know that she was his former wife and was only looking after the place under protest. I think we could trash the place and she wouldn’t care.’
Ana sat on a handsome but worn couch and sank deep into its upholstery as she tucked her legs under her. Her eyes travelled around the room, taking everything in, the window locks, and the bolt and chain on the outside door.
Michel watched his companion and liked what he saw; young but not too young, wiry rather than petite, but with muscular curves under a stylish business suit and a confident way of moving that told him she could handle herself. She had already proved that the other night when that idiot mugger had been stupid enough to try his luck. He was sure that after what she’d done to him, even with the best medical treatment, the man’s shoulder would give him pain and trouble him for the rest of his life.
‘So,’ she said, ‘do you have the hardware here or stored somewhere safe?’
‘It’s hidden. We’d have to be incredibly unlucky for anyone to find it, and even if they do, it can’t be traced,’ he assured her. ‘How are we off for intelligence? Do we know for sure what happened?’
Ana’s face hardened.
‘No. And my contact doesn’t have access to everything. I’ll see what I can find out.’
Helgi felt he had stepped into a different world. What had once been Reykjavík’s main street was a place he rarely went near now that it had become largely devoted to the booming tourist business.
He dimly remembered the street as having been studded with jewellery shops, but now the gaps between them had been filled with cafés and eateries, with signs in their windows in English and German, and only occasionally in Icelandic.
It didn’t take long, and he silently congratulated himself as the young woman who managed the pizza place scrolled through Sunday night’s CCTV recording.
‘Is that what you’re looking for?’ she asked, as Helgi stared at her computer screen.
‘Looks like it,’ he said. ‘Scroll back a little, will you?’
The girl did as she was asked and the pair walked jerkily backwards across the screen in the Sunday night darkness.
‘You were already closed at that time, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah. We close at eleven. There’s normally someone still here until about midnight, clearing up and prepping for the morning, but they’d have been out the back.’
‘That wasn’t you, was it?’
‘Two nights ago?’ She thought. ‘No. That would have been Ewa. But she wouldn’t have seen anything from the prep room.’
The image on the screen wasn’t as clear as he would have liked, but it showed a heavily built man and an average height woman walking side-by-side, and the time stamp on the recording matched perfectly.
‘If you were closed, why didn’t you turn the recording off?’
‘It’s easier just to let it run all the time. That way nobody forgets to switch it on,’ she said. ‘Plus there’s stuff that can happen when we’re closed. You’d imagine the camera would discourage people from taking a piss in the doorway, but we get two or three of them on camera every weekend.’
‘Can you save that for me?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I can email it to you.’
‘Yeah, please. But let it run for another minute, would you?’
The wide angle lens above the door showed a deserted street, then a minute later Thór Hersteinsson’s distinctive round-shouldered bulk appeared, slouching in the same direction with Fúsi at his side.
‘That’s what I need. Can you give me that clip, from eleven thirty-six to eleven forty-on
e?’
‘No problem,’ the girl said, clicking the mouse. ‘Give me your address and I’ll send it to you right now.’
‘Thanks. Are there any more cameras about?’
‘Try the bank. There’s one above the cashpoint further down.’
Osman’s schedule had been arranged and had to be adhered to, regardless of events. Valgeir drove the Patrol, with Osman and Gunna in the back, while Ívar Laxdal followed in his sinister black Volvo.
The minister had planned on an informal day’s travel around some of the sights that could be easily reached from Reykjavík – Gunna guessed that Thingvellir and Gullfoss would be on the agenda. She could have asked Valgeir, but didn’t feel inclined to speak to him and was just relieved that their guest would be someone else’s responsibility for a few hours.
Steinunn Strand’s residence was in a suburb on the northern outskirts of Reykjavík, a newish spread of big houses, of which hers was one of the largest, stretching back deceptively far from an unimposing frontage.
‘Ali, good morning,’ the minister greeted Osman as Valgeir opened the door for him, and he stepped out of the car. ‘We have a lovely day planned for you. I do hope you enjoy it. Come in,’ she said with a welcoming smile, flashing a quick glance at Gunna and then a questioning look at Ívar Laxdal as he arrived seconds later.
The minister took Osman’s elbow and guided him into the living room, where her husband was waiting. Gunna could sense the husband’s discomfort and tried to recall if he had any political links other than being married to a woman who had politics running through her bone marrow; she decided the unfortunate man had just been unlucky.
There was an imperceptible nod to Ívar Laxdal as Steinunn’s husband shook Osman’s hand. The minister’s children had been persuaded to make an appearance and introductions were made to a young woman Gunna guessed was in her early twenties and a young man a year or two older whose features were a youthful version of his mother’s.
Cold Breath (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 7) Page 17