Frozen Out

by Quentin Bates

  More bloody offices. As if there aren’t enough already, Gunna thought.

  ‘… the hell do these bastards get away with this …?’ a strident voice barked suddenly, cut off in mid-sentence as the office door hissed shut.

  The receptionist smiled wanly as Gunna looked around inquiringly.

  ‘She’ll see you in a few minutes. Could you wait a moment for her to finish her meeting?’ the receptionist asked sweetly. ‘Take a seat if you like.’

  Gunna sat on a hard leather couch and flipped through a gossip magazine, wondering why she didn’t recognize the faces of all the country’s top people plastered across the pages.

  ‘Out of touch,’ she muttered to herself.

  ‘Excuse me?’ the receptionist asked, and Gunna realized that she had spoken out loud. ‘Nothing. Just thinking out loud,’ she apologized.

  ‘She’ll see you now,’ the girl said, as the door behind her opened and a beefy young man in a suit, his face burning, made his way out, giving every impression of being on the point of breaking into a run and leaping through a window.

  Gunna stopped for a second in the doorway and took in a large corner office, thickly carpeted and with a desk topped in smoked glass dominating the far end, facing away from a window that filled one entire wall. Although the view was better from here, Gunna was pleased to note that the jib of the tower crane still protruded across it.

  ‘Good morning. Come in, please.’

  The voice was warm, and apart from a slight heave of prominently displayed bosom there was no trace of the fury of a few minutes before from the statuesque woman with an unmistakable air of decision about her sharp features. Gunna took in a smartly tailored suit and dark blonde hair cut simply.

  She extended a hand which was quickly taken and firmly shaken.

  ‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, Hvalvík police.’

  ‘Hvalvík? OK. Well, I’m Sigurjóna. My PA told me that you had called. Is this something to do with the site?’

  ‘Which site do you mean?’

  ‘The Hvalvík smelter project, of course.’

  ‘Are you involved with that?’

  ‘Our subsidiary company is playing a prominent part in the project development,’ Sigurjóna said smoothly.

  ‘No, nothing to do with the site. Actually this is an inquiry about one of your former employees and I spoke to one of your people yesterday afternoon. Ósk Líndal?’

  ‘Ósk handles human resources and stands in for me when I’m away.’

  Gunna looked down and flipped through the sheaf of papers, going past the picture of the dead man taken at the morgue by a police photographer and moving on to the driving licence photo from the national archive.

  ‘Do you recognize this man?’ she asked, handing the picture across.

  Sigurjóna took it and looked carefully. Gunna watched for a reaction, but there was none to be seen.

  ‘Einar,’ Sigurjóna said finally. ‘Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson. He works here, although we haven’t seen him since last week and he hasn’t called in, so I can’t say I’m delighted with him right now.’

  ‘No explanation?’

  ‘No, not a word.’

  ‘Did you make any inquiries?’

  ‘Of course. He’s a highly valued member of the team here and we can certainly use his skills. He’s one of our best account managers – it’s very difficult to explain to his clients that he just isn’t here. I’ll be very pleased when he comes back, not that I’d tell him so.’

  Gunna nodded and scribbled on the notes, more to give herself a second to think than to write anything down ‘And who have you contacted to find Einar?’

  ‘Well, it’s not easy because I don’t believe he has much in the way of family and he’s from somewhere in the east originally. I’m not sure that his parents are still alive, even. I recall that he mentioned once that he had been an afterthought, the child of elderly parents.’

  ‘No brothers or sisters? No friends? Girlfriend?’

  ‘Well, Dísa, the girl on reception, moved in with him for a while, but I believe that didn’t last for long and you’d have to ask her about it. But, no. I assume he has a circle of friends, but not people that I’m aware of.’ Sigurjóna was starting to sound irritated. ‘Look, inspector, just where is this going? What’s he done, if you can tell me?’

  ‘It’s sergeant, actually. I have reason to believe he’s dead.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Sigurjóna gasped, hands flying to her mouth in a gesture that Gunna found a touch too theatrical to be fully convincing. ‘Hvalvík? You mean he’s the dead man they found there? On the news the other night?’ Her voice shook slightly, and one finger tapped furiously on the polished surface of the desk.

  Gunna nodded, and looked down at the papers in her lap. She wondered what the reaction would be to the morgue photograph, but decided against showing it.

  ‘The identification is only preliminary at the moment, as we’ll need someone to identify him formally. But as he had his initials tattooed on his arm, identification wasn’t difficult. I need to know a little more about him and what his work was, what he was working on. Can you tell me when he came in to work last?’

  Sigurjóna opened a slim laptop on the desk in front of her and tapped with swift fingers.

  ‘He was here last week,’ she said slowly, circling a finger on the mouse pad. ‘Here. Last Friday. I know he had a meeting on Monday this week but I’d have to ask Ósk about that. He was due to meet the same client in Copenhagen on Wednesday, and never showed up. The client called us and we had to reschedule. Luckily it wasn’t anything delicate, only a preliminary meeting with a new prospect, so no harm done.’

  ‘So, if you can tell me which airline he was travelling with, we can find out easily enough if he really did travel or not.’

  ‘Dísa can tell you that. She books flights for our people, but it was probably the Express airline.’

  ‘Cheaper?’

  Sigurjóna nodded. ‘And more flexible.’

  ‘How had he been getting on here until last week?’

  ‘Fine. Like I said, he was a very competent and successful account manager.’

  ‘No tensions? Arguments?’

  Sigurjóna flushed noticeably. ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘Did Einar have any disagreements with you or his manager?’

  ‘Spearpoint is growing very fast,’ Sigurjóna said proudly. ‘But this is a small company and everyone reports to me. No, we did not have any disagreements. We got on very well. He was entertaining some Danish clients for a few days and was due to meet them again in Copenhagen on Wednesday, but didn’t show up. My assumption was that he had gone over there, found himself a nice little Danish lady and decided to stay. It’s hard to say. He could be impulsive.’

  Gunna scribbled in the file. Noticing that this was making Sigurjóna uneasy, she also took the time to note down on the side of the page that she needed to buy butter, milk, bread and some fruit and vegetables in Hagkaup before driving back to Hvalvík.

  ‘Do you know if Einar had any enemies? Anyone who might wish to harm him? Anyone with a grudge?’

  ‘No idea. In personal terms, the others here had a closer relationship with him than I did. You might want to speak to them. Dísa probably knew him best and he often worked with Jón Oddur, so he might know something about his movements.’

  ‘I will need to, but at present I’m mostly trying to build up a picture of his movements so that we can establish a time of death and who the last people he saw were. Can you tell me what your movements were on and after the weekend?’

  Sigurjóna’s eyes opened wide. ‘Surely you don’t suspect me of anything.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Gunna said smoothly, noting down that she would also have to stock up on toilet paper, so much cheaper in town than at the Co-op in Hvalvík. ‘Purely routine. We have to ask and I assure you I’ll want to know the movements of all your staff at the same time if that’s possible.’

  ‘I was with my hus
band in Akureyri. A business trip.’

  ‘Anyone other than your husband who will confirm that?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Just routine, you understand. Anyway, thank you for your time. But if you recall anything that could help the investigation, I’d appreciate it if you could give me a call. Now, it would be useful if I could talk to Jón Oddur and Dísa.’

  She stood up and Sigurjóna did the same, coming around the desk to accompany her to the door. Gunna felt a whiff of something powerful on her breath as Sigurjóna held the door open for her and called out to the girl at reception.

  ‘Dísa, would you call Jón Oddur? This lady would like to speak to him,’ she instructed and closed the office door behind her.

  At the reception desk, Gunna looked down at where Dísa sat at the switchboard, speaking quietly into the microphone of a headset. She pressed a button to finish the call and looked up with eyes that Gunna could see were full of concern.

  ‘Are you here about Einar?’ she asked immediately, with a backward glance to make sure the door was shut.

  ‘Yes. You knew him pretty well, Sigurjóna tells me.’

  ‘I did. Where is he?’

  ‘He’s dead, I’m afraid.’

  Dísa dropped her head and looked down at the desk in front of her. Then she buried her face in both hands for a moment before sweeping them up and through her hair, looking up bright-eyed. ‘Do you know who killed him?’

  ‘Why do you ask? Is there anything you want to tell me about?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe,’ she said dully as the young man with the red face Gunna had seen earlier escaping from Sigurjóna’s office appeared.

  ‘What does the old witch want now?’ His harsh tone did nothing to hide the trepidation behind it. The expression on his face was briefly of panic when he saw Gunna standing by the desk.

  ‘It’s not the boss. This lady wants a word with you,’ Dísa said quietly.

  ‘That’s a relief. You’d better come to my office.’

  Jón Oddur sat with his back to the window and fiddled with a laptop on his desk as he spoke.

  ‘Is it Einar Eyjólfur you’re here about?’ he asked nervously.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘We haven’t seen him for a few days and I can’t get through to his mobile.’

  ‘As it happens, we have every reason to believe that he drowned in Hvalvík harbour in the early hours of Tuesday morning.’

  ‘So it was him,’ Jón Oddur said with a sigh. ‘Dísa was right.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘Monday,’ he replied promptly. ‘He didn’t come in, but we met in the evening with some clients from Denmark he was supposed to meet again on Wednesday.’

  ‘In Copenhagen? So he was due to fly out there on Tuesday?’

  ‘That’s right, Tuesday afternoon. He didn’t show up, so I’m going there next week to pick things up.’

  ‘What business is that?’

  Jón Oddur smiled sourly for the first time. ‘It’s a Danish sweet company that manufactures chewing gum. They want to see if Iceland’s a market for them, so we’re doing market research, putting them in touch with retailers, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’

  ‘Yeah. Right,’ Jón Oddur said bitterly.

  ‘Not an exciting prospect?’ Gunna probed gently.

  ‘Einar Eyjólfur didn’t think so, and neither do I now that it’s been dumped on me.’

  ‘What was he doing before that?’

  ‘The Hvalvík smelter was his project. He’d been on that since it started. He wasn’t very pleased when he was taken off it and put on this chewing gum thing instead. What happened to him?’

  ‘Drowned,’ Gunna repeated. ‘In Hvalvík harbour.’

  ‘God. What the hell was he doing in that dump?’

  ‘That’s what we’d like to know. What do you know of his movements?’

  ‘We took the chewing gum guys to dinner at that Chinese place on Hverfisgata and then we went to a few bars after that.’

  Gunna sat in silence, waiting for him to continue.

  ‘The Danes bowed out about eleven and went back to their hotel. We went for a few beers.’

  ‘A few?’

  ‘Yeah. Einar Eyjólfur liked a drink, but he didn’t have much of a head for it.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Gaukur á Stöng. Then that really loud place with all the lights on Laugarvegur and then the Emperor.’

  ‘Quite a night, then. So when and where did you part company?’

  ‘At the Emperor. About one. I told him he needed to get some sleep if he was going to catch his flight in the morning, but he said it was an afternoon flight so he didn’t need to be up early.’

  ‘Did anything happen that was unusual?’

  ‘No. We had a few beers and I left him in the Emperor. That’s it.’

  ‘Will anyone else corroborate that?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know,’ Jón Oddur said wearily. ‘The barmaid might recognize us, I suppose. But it was a busy night. I got talking to a group of tourists and there was some really drunk bloke who bumped into Einar Eyjólfur and wanted to start a fight, but nothing out of the ordinary.’

  Jón Oddur transferred his attention from the keyboard to a rubber band that he wrapped repeatedly around his fingers.

  ‘You seem nervous,’ Gunna said as the rubber band flew off his hand and hit the wall.

  ‘You would be if one of your best mates had just drowned,’ he snapped back. ‘What the fuck was he doing in Hvalvík, anyway?’

  ‘Like I said, that’s what I’m trying to find out and the more you can tell me, the more likely it is I’ll be able to get to the bottom of it all.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jón Oddur apologized with a sigh. ‘That’s it. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘Thank you. Now I’d better have a word with Dísa. She was his girlfriend, right?’

  ‘Sort of. They kind of split up when he moved out, but they were still sort of together.’

  Sort of, thought Gunna as she stood up to leave Jón Oddur to his fidgeting.

  ‘If you recall anything else that might be useful, then I’d appreciate a call,’ she said, placing a card on the desk.

  Jón Oddur nodded vaguely, his attention split between her and the laptop in front of him.

  ‘Yeah. I’ll let you know,’ he said half-heartedly, his attention back on his computer screen. ‘Dísa’s at reception. She normally leaves at four, so you’d better be quick.’

  Dísa sat behind the reception desk and Gunna could see that she was watching her approach.

  ‘What did Jón Oddur say?’ she asked before Gunna could speak.

  ‘That you knew him better than almost anyone. Is that right?’

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  Gunna could see the anxiety and waited to see tears well up in those wide eyes.

  ‘Do you know who killed him?’ Dísa whispered.

  ‘Why do you say that? There’s no indication of foul play.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘He drowned, in the harbour at Hvalvík.’

  ‘What was he doing there? He’d been taken off the smelter project,’ Dísa said angrily.

  ‘That’s just what I think I need to find out,’ Gunna replied grimly. ‘Have you finished for today?’

  Dísa nodded, eyes awash with tears.

  ‘In that case, do you need a lift home?’

  28-08-2008, 2041

  Skandalblogger writes:

  It’s our birthday! Two years down the line and we’re still here. It’s been two whole anonymous years of providing the nation with completely reliable, totally unsubstantiated and extremely libellous gossip about the great and the good of Icelandic entertainment, business and politics. So happy birthday to us! We’d like to ask all our readers – and there are plenty of them! – to raise a glass to the Skandalblogger tonight and wish us plenty more years of risking
our necks bringing you malicious libel for your delectation. We know you love us and you’d hate to see us go …

  Just to keep in the spirit of things, we’d like to know who says gentlemen prefer the real thing?

  Here are Skandalblogger’s top five falsies. Here we are, for your delectation, in reverse order, the top five society ladies who have gone under the knife in the noble cause of chest enhancement.

  5. A certain notorious fitness expert who went from 32A to 34C overnight. She must have been getting a discount for bulk, so to speak, as she had her schnoz done at the same time.

  4. The lady who looks after the extramarital needs of a particularly needy businessman who owns a newspaper, a record store, a chain of grocery shops and a transport company. Judging by his girlfriend’s impressively upholstered new frontage, he can’t be quite so needy any more.

  3. A well-known PR guru had hers done in the States. There’s nothing like mixing business with pleasure, is there, Sugarplum?

  2. Pop stars have to look a million dollars, but our guess is that, this warbling national treasure’s boob job was a cut-price deal, as it looks like her arse has simply been sliced off and stuck to her chest. We like it, though.

  And number 1 … is, tan-tan-tara. Sorry, but it has to be our favourite newsreader. They looked better before, darling. And we decided to put you at number one for outright daring. Who do you think you’re fooling?

  See you soon!

  Bæjó!

  Dísa’s flat was in the basement of a large house in Vogar, twenty minutes’ drive out of the city on the road to Keflavík, among the black lava crags of the peninsula that ends with the airport and was until recently the NATO air base.

  Much of the main room was filled by an ornately framed double bed stacked with neatly folded clean laundry and piles of magazines. In the corner a light winked on a computer with a darkened screen.

  ‘Let’s sit in the kitchen,’ Dísa said, dropping her bag on the kitchen table and draping her jacket over the back of a chair.