Thin Ice: An Inspector Gunna Mystery (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 5)

by Quentin Bates

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘And you know what I really like about you, Magni?’

  ‘No, go on.’

  ‘You’re practical. You can cook and fix stuff.’

  ‘Well. You pick that sort of stuff up.’

  ‘And you haven’t tried to get my knickers off. I like that.’

  Magni was suddenly clear-headed.

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said.

  ‘Because you can, if you like,’ Tinna Lind said, lifting a hand and draping it around his neck to pull him down to her. ‘I think I’d like that.’

  4

  Sunday

  Erna’s voice was as harsh as grinding gears. Magni opened one eye to see Erna staring down at him, hands on her hips, and Tinna Lind’s face nestled in the thick mat of reddish hair on his chest.

  ‘This is a hotel, you know. You could at least have found a room.’

  ‘Shit . . . what time is it?’ Magni asked.

  ‘It’s almost nine,’ Erna said, and Magni closed his eyes again as her footsteps faded into the distance. He stroked Tinna Lind’s cheek with a finger. ‘Hey, sleepyhead. It’s daytime and your mum isn’t impressed.’

  ‘So? What’s new?’ Tinna Lind replied, eyes firmly closed and huddling deeper into Magni’s chest.

  ‘Sorry, sweetie. You’re going to have to move.’

  ‘Don’t want to. I like it here.’

  ‘Yeah. I really need to pee, and I don’t want to worry you but the pressure’s about to go critical down there.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better let you go.’

  Tinna Lind opened one eye, reached up and planted a kiss on the end of his nose. She rolled off him, wrapping herself in the duvet as Magni struggled into his jeans.

  He was halfway through his business at the urinal when an ear-splitting electronic alarm began wailing. Magni cursed, finished as quickly as he could and didn’t bother shaking off the drops before he ran to the kitchen, passing Tinna Lind on the sofa, her eyes now open in confusion.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  Erna stood in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes darting around the room in confusion. Two ink-black slices emerged guiltily from the toaster.

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ Magni yelled over the squealing alarm. ‘I know what you did. But how the hell do we switch it off?’

  In the office he ran his eyes over the flashing lights of a grey control box. A loudspeaker above it continued to wail its deafening alarm as he searched for a reset button. He tried several of the unmarked buttons until a dialogue box appeared on a screen and he selected the flashing cancel/reset option. The wailing stopped and the sudden silence was deafening.

  In the kitchen Erna stood forlorn. ‘I was only making some toast for breakfast.’

  Magni saw her lower lip tremble briefly and guessed the inner turmoil was pushing her to limits she had never experienced before.

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘This stuff happens. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  Össur stood in the doorway, the Baikal in his hand and fury on his face as he glared at them, taking in Erna and the barefoot and shirtless Magni standing next to her.

  ‘It’s all right, Össi, panic’s over. It was just the smoke alarm.’

  ‘Was that you?’ Össur snarled at Erna.

  ‘No, it wasn’t her,’ Magni answered quickly. ‘It was me. Just trying to make a bit of toast for a change. Now put that thing away, will you? Before you hurt someone.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Össur growled, lowering the pistol. ‘It’s off now, right?’

  ‘Well, it’s stopped making a noise.’

  ‘So that’s all right and I can go back to sleep.’

  Magni scratched his head and yawned. ‘I hope so. I’m just concerned that it might be linked to the phone system. If it is, then the fire service will have had an alert as well and we might see a fire engine bumping up the road any minute. Or as soon as it takes them to get here from wherever the nearest fire station is. That’ll be Selfoss, I guess, which is an hour away.’

  Össur’s eyes bulged for a second and he turned to leave the room, and then spun on his heel. ‘Check it, can you? See if it’s linked to the phone line?’

  In the office Magni unscrewed the fire alarm’s front panel and surveyed the bundles of wires and sensors inside. He traced the phone line and followed where it went through a hole in the wall. His finger hovered over it as it went up the wall under many layers of paint and past the control box.

  ‘The phone line’s dead and I don’t think it’s connected,’ he said without a great deal of confidence. ‘Of course, it could be wireless, but I don’t think so. It’s quite an old system.’

  ‘Is the car still outside? You’d better hide it away again,’ Össur snapped. ‘Just in case some nosy bastard starts looking around.’

  Helgi was at his desk early. He looked up and nodded as Gunna appeared, tapped at his keyboard and clicked the mouse before he sat back.

  ‘How was the game? Did they win?’

  ‘Slaughtered them, absolutely took them to the cleaners in the first round.’ Helgi grinned and rubbed the top of his head. ‘Then they lost in the second round, not by much, though.’

  ‘Your lad wasn’t disappointed, then?’

  ‘He was furious.’ Helgi laughed. ‘There’s a hell of a competitive streak there. Don’t know where he gets that from.’

  ‘That’ll be his mother, surely?’

  ‘Probably,’ Helgi said. ‘She always was good at wanting to keep up with the neighbours.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’

  ‘Not really. I never could see the point of splashing out on a new car just because Magga down the street’s husband had one. Hey, ho. That’s life, I suppose. Good weekend?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Gunna decided. ‘Not that it’s over yet. Today’s Sunday, in case you hadn’t noticed?’

  ‘I had, and I have been given to understand that it’s not a great day for a husband and father to be at work, but she’ll get over it.’

  ‘I do sometimes wonder if your Halla knew what she was letting herself in for with you, Helgi.’

  Helgi coughed. ‘I sometimes wonder if I knew what I was letting myself in for, if it comes to that. You’d have thought second time around would be easy, but it’s no bed of roses.’

  Gunna mumbled something non-committal. She knew that Helgi led a hectic life with two young children by his second wife, as well as two boys in their late teens with his first. He was constantly shuttling between the two families, much to his wife’s disquiet, as he did his best to not let the two older boys disappear from his life.

  ‘So what’s new?’ Helgi asked, leaning back dangerously far in his chair and stretching out his legs. ‘On the good news front, I can tell you that Halla and I are off for two weeks in January.’

  ‘Really? Just the two of you?’

  ‘Yep, going to Portugal with her parents, her brother and his wife. You know Halla’s family’s loaded? They have a villa out there and there’s room for the whole herd, and Halla and I are going to rent a car for a few days and go off on our own for a bit.’

  ‘Sounds great.’

  ‘Yeah. The only downside is that the old boy will want to drag me around the bloody golf course and make sure I lose by a decent margin.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘I’ll make sure I do. No point upsetting him.’

  ‘Good. Sensible man. Now, back to business. The fire in Hafnarfjördur on Thursday morning.’

  Helgi raised his hand in a mock salute.

  ‘Your word is my command, dear lady,’ he said. ‘May I ask what you’re up to?’

  ‘I thought I’d go and get my hair done and then go shopping for shoes while you and Eiríkur do the hard work. Then when you two have the bad guys under lock and key, and all the paperwork’s in order, I’ll take the credit for it. How does that sound?’

  ‘I’d expect nothing les
s of you.’

  ‘Good. Because I’m going for a drive in the country while you do all that hard work.’

  * * *

  Össur liked having an en-suite room. He had never had as much space as this to call his own, and while he would have liked a drink to go with it, now that he had cigarettes, a bag of good grass and a television, he was as content with the door locked behind him as he could ever remember being.

  He tried to swat away the recurring thought that it couldn’t last. They would have to leave soon, or he would have to leave soon, regardless of what the others decided to do, and he would prefer to get away without taking them with him. The best option would be to get to Akureyri and hope to get a flight from there. It didn’t really matter where to as long as it was far enough away from Alli the Cornershop. The thought of the vindictive old man sitting in his gloomy sitting room and issuing orders made him shudder.

  He thought idly of taking the car, but deep inside he knew he wouldn’t get far on his own. He wondered if there might be another way to get to Akureyri. The main international airport at Keflavík would be better as from there he could fly anywhere, but he had the nagging feeling that Alli the Cornershop would have his feelers out for him there, and he preferred the idea of what he hoped would be a sleepy regional airport, hopefully with a more relaxed attitude to security. Or maybe a ship? Could he get a berth on a ship going abroad? Magni would know about things like that, and he reflected with chagrin that the half-drunk beefcake he had taken on, imagining him to be fairly dull-witted, had proved to be anything but stupid.

  It was time to take some emergency measures. He counted out a hundred thousand euros in the highest denomination notes and wrapped them in a towel, ripped in half to make a tight bundle, which he secured with a roll of tape taken from the office while Magni had been out the previous afternoon.

  Then he wrapped the towel in a carrier bag, and then a second bag, taping both up tightly. In the bathroom he stood on the cistern and gently lifted a panel in the ceiling. It was a struggle, and by the time he’d jumped up to haul himself into the roof space, he was perspiring. The hotel was an old building and the surprisingly low roof space was deep in dust. He decided against finding a special hiding place and just placed the package between two rafters, easily reached but out of sight of anyone who might casually poke their head up through the access hatch.

  He slid the panel back in place and sat on the toilet seat to get his breath back. His arms were covered in dust and he ran a hand over his head to find it was caked in cobwebs. Although it wasn’t a comfortable idea, Össur decided it might be time to make use of the en-suite shower for the first time, but felt happier knowing that at least part of the cash had been hidden away for a rainy day.

  The wind whistled through the partly open window as she sat in the car pool Golf and looked at the petrol station, a lonely building that had the look of having been planted in one piece in the middle of a bare plain between the sea and the mountains, hardly visible in the thick clouds that were heavy with snow ready to be scattered. The reason for its position was clear enough, placed as it was opposite a junction where an unmade road turned off to snake into the distance.

  ‘This is the place,’ Lárus Erlendsson of the Selfoss police force said. ‘Doesn’t look much at this time of year, but it’s a busy enough road in the summer.’

  ‘You spoke to the manager?’

  ‘He’s waiting for us,’ he said, pointing to a large 4x4 that almost dwarfed the building. ‘His truck’s over there.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  The filling station’s manager was almost as large as his car, a broad-shouldered character with a belly that preceded him.

  ‘G’day, Lárus,’ he said, popping open a can of Coke and looking at Gunna. ‘You’re the copper from Reykjavík, I take it?’

  ‘That’s me. You must be Ástmar?’

  ‘That’s me. We run three of these places, one in Selfoss and two out here in the country.’

  Gunna flipped open her folder of notes.

  ‘This is what I’m interested in,’ she said, tapping the scanned transaction document the bank had sent. ‘Someone bought fuel here at 16:28 yesterday. Do you know who was here then?’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone here then. This time of year the place is open ten to four only, Monday to Saturday. Summertimes we’re open from seven until ten at night all through the week, but there’s so little traffic in winter we don’t open more than we have to.

  ‘Everything is logged here, isn’t it? Can you find that in your system?’’

  More than my life’s worth,’ Ástmar grumbled. ‘If we don’t keep track of every penny and every drop of fuel, then we’d be in no end of shit. Like gold dust these days, petrol is.’

  The petrol station’s computer whirred into life and Ástmar clicked at the screen.

  ‘Eighty-five litres of unleaded, so something with a big tank that wasn’t far off being empty, I reckon. Finished pumping at 16:28, like you said. That’s the only one between . . .’ He scrolled up and then down. ‘One at 15:05 and then there was one more at 19:49. That’s it. Not much business yesterday and the margin on every litre is pennies,’ he grumbled.

  ‘How do you make a living on this if it’s that low?’ Gunna asked.

  ‘Cans of drink, hot dogs and that kind of shit during the summer. I’d close the place completely in the winter if I could, but the franchise stipulates we have to stay open all year round, and to be honest, it’s a public service as much as anything else.’

  ‘And how about CCTV?’

  He took off a pair of thick glasses and polished them on a fold of his shirt.

  ‘Well, we do have CCTV, but it’s not all that reliable. Hang on, it’s a stand-alone system so I’ll have to go and get the memory card from the camera.’

  Outside a white van pulled up and a man swathed in a heavy blue padded overall with his hat pulled down to his eyebrows slotted his card into the pump and waited impatiently for the machine to accept it before he could pump fuel.

  ‘Here it is,’ Ástmar said, and slotted the card into the computer. ‘It has a motion sensor so it’s supposed to start recording when it senses something. The trouble is it’s a bit too sensitive and a fox running over the forecourt or even long grass waving in the wind will set it off,’ he muttered as he scrolled through the files. ‘Ah, here we are.’

  Some very clear footage with the camera at an alarming angle showed a pickup truck at the pump, the driver chewing a toothpick as he gazed around before driving away.

  ‘That was the 15:05 sale, and it keeps going for a minute or so after,’ Ástmar explained. ‘Here it is.’

  Gunna leaned close to the screen while Lárus Erlendsson sat back and watched with little apparent interest. This time the vehicle had pulled up on the opposite side of the pumps, so the view of the driver and the car was obscured, but Gunna could still make out the white Ford Explorer, and instead of Erna Brandsen or Tinna Lind, a bear of a man stood for a long time as the tank filled.

  ‘Must have been almost running on fumes. Those things have a seventy-five litre tank, if I recall correctly,’ Lárus observed. ‘How come he bought eighty-five litres of fuel?’

  ‘That’s how,’ Gunna said, watching as the man opened the back of the car and took out three five-litre cans. ‘You can’t see his face at all,’ she said.

  ‘You can see he’s clocked where the camera is. He’s being careful not to look at it and his coat’s pulled up over his face,’ Lárus added, and watched as the transaction was completed with the man standing with his back to the camera.

  ‘Pause there, please,’ Gunna instructed as the car began to pull away. She peered at the screen. ‘That’s it. That’s definitely our missing person’s vehicle.’

  ‘He’s a cheeky bastard, isn’t he?’ Lárus said.

  ‘Either cheeky or desperate. My guess is he had no choice. He had to get petrol there because he was probably already running on empty. So where did he go
after that? He must have gone to Selfoss, or through Selfoss? Lárus, are there any cameras in the town that might have picked him up?’

  * * *

  Magni noticed that Össur had, at last, taken a shower, and that could only be an improvement. The Explorer was back in the restaurant, this time without any additional scratches to the bodywork, and Erna seemed, for the moment, mollified.

  The police would soon come looking, he decided. Before long there would be a search for the two women and there had to be a trace of them somewhere providing a trail that could be followed. Then there was the old man down the valley, and Magni had no doubt that he would turn up again. Unlike the others with their city-dweller habits, Magni knew perfectly well that country people keep an eye on each others’ comings and goings, and he was certain that movements would be watched even in somewhere as remote as the district around Hotel Hraun.

  ‘Is there a radio anywhere?’ he asked as a thought occurred to him.

  ‘There’s one in the lounge,’ Tinna Lind said, her mind elsewhere. ‘Why?’ she asked, turning to him.

  ‘Because I’m an idiot and ought to have more sense,’ he said.

  ‘My big idiot,’ she said fondly.

  ‘I ought to have figured out that there’s bound to be something on the news about you and your mum. If you’re reported missing, that’s where there’ll be an appeal or an announcement or something. Why didn’t I think of that before? Shit, I can be dumb sometimes.’

  ‘Not that dumb. You’ve thought of it now, haven’t you?’

  It took a while to find the radio. Magni switched it on and the muted sound of Channel Two whispered through the speakers.

  ‘There. Now we wait for the news, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re worried, aren’t you?’ Tinna Lind said.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘You don’t show it, but you are.’

  Magni chopped an onion on the kitchen table with more force than was strictly necessary.

  ‘It’s Árni. Össur’s sure he’s the one who died in that fire.’

  Tinna Lind’s eyebrows knitted in puzzlement. ‘All right, so just who is this Árni?’