The Fine Art of Invisible Detection

by Robert Goddard

  ‘But we shouldn’t meet either if they’re holding Kristjan. So, what do we do?’

  ‘I will contact you. When it’s safe.’

  ‘Kristjan will tell them nothing about you. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’ She was actually surprised by her confidence on the point.

  ‘And I’ll say nothing either.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But Ragnar …’

  ‘He doesn’t know enough for them to find me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I cannot talk any longer now. You will hear from me. Thank you again. And I’m sorry again also. About Kristjan. Now I must go.’ She ended the call.

  A direct route back to the Sol took Wada along largely deserted streets. She felt certain Erla was right about Kristjan: he wouldn’t breathe a word about her to the police. Ragnar didn’t even know her real name. And none of them knew where she was staying. But if Ragnar had betrayed them, the police would be aware Kristjan had a Japanese accomplice. Whether they launched any kind of search for her depended on just how seriously they regarded what had happened. Trespass on business premises, with no evidence of an actual robbery, didn’t sound like something that justified a huge expenditure of effort on their part. They mightn’t even keep Kristjan in custody for long, despite his previous conviction.

  But that assumed they’d handle the case in a routine fashion. If Driscoll wielded a lot of influence with the Icelandic authorities – a possibility she couldn’t dismiss – the police might be required to devote more resources than usual to the inquiry. The speed with which they’d arrived at the scene suggested this was disturbingly likely.

  What was the best thing to do? Make a run for the airport? That would feel like betraying Kristjan and Erla – and Kodaka. If there was a route to the truth, it surely led through the tangled workings of Quartizon, here, in Iceland. On balance, she reckoned the Sol was as safe as anywhere else. And she certainly needed to be somewhere where she could study what was on the pages she’d hidden inside her coat.

  The night porter at the Sol paid her little attention. Once again, her inconspicuousness – the cloak of obscurity she seemed to walk around wearing, even in Iceland – was in her favour. She headed up to her room and made herself some tea. The first time she’d used one of the sachets of green tea the hotel supplied the results had been uninspiring, which was only to be expected considering it was of Chinese origin, but any tea was better than no tea when she needed to concentrate. And she did need to concentrate.

  Looking through the document confirmed her first impression. The grouped sets of six numbers, each followed by north or west, had to be geographical locations by latitude and longitude. And with latitudes in the sixties it stood to reason many of them were in Iceland.

  She downloaded an app on to her phone that offered mapped locations for specific coordinates and looked several up. They were, as she’d suspected, in Iceland – mostly remote, hilly parts of the interior. Some actually impinged on the vast Vatnajökull glacier in the south-east of the country. She checked those three times and there was no mistake.

  Based on the lengths supplied by the app for longitudinal and latitudinal degrees, minutes and seconds, each group of four appeared to cover about the same area, amounting more or less to half-kilometre squares. According to Kristjan, Quartizon had been buying up any Icelandic landholdings they could get their hands on. If the list she was looking at was anything to go by, their acquisitions exceeded his worst fears. And she was only looking at a fraction of the whole. There were all the other parcels they hadn’t got the chance to print out to be taken into account.

  She picked her way through the notes appended to the list for clues to what was really going on. Kodaka had taught her that details were often more revealing than overall appearances. Details contained unfiltered information. And unfiltered information was exactly what she needed now.

  Mostly the notes detailed how and when the land they referred to had been purchased, although what had actually been purchased was an option to buy, within varying timeframes, none less than twenty-five years, some fifty years, some seventy-five. The amounts paid out weren’t specified. They fell into different categories – lower, middle, higher, premium – of what were called disbursement levels. Nor were the sellers of the land named. They were described as accredited vendors. Dates and conveyancing lawyers’ names were recorded, though. And in almost every case the concluding phrase in the note was the same. Available for final stage with full title on exercise of option subject only to company lien.

  Exactly what that meant Wada wasn’t sure. Final stage? Company lien? This was all part of some overarching plan, but the nature of the plan itself wasn’t referred to, probably as a security precaution.

  In the hope of enlightenment, she delved into the few cases where the concluding phrase was different. Generally, the note indicated that some small legal snag was still being resolved but that the operative responsible was confident of early resolution, in any event no later than – and this was a date several times mentioned – Wednesday 17 April.

  That was in just two days. It had to be the launch date for Emergence. Something was brewing, as Ragnar had said. But exactly what?

  Wada found herself wondering if the answer was to be found in the single note that ended differently from all the rest. It referred to a piece of land about ten kilometres square about a hundred kilometres east of Reykjavík. There were no legal details and no indication of availability, just the curt phrase Refer to CEO. Presumably it wasn’t going to play a part in the launch on Wednesday. And the only person who seemed to know why was the CEO of Quartizon: Peter Driscoll.

  Wada studied the satellite map of the plot of land. There were rivers, tracks, lakes and hillsides of densely bunched contour lines. And a habitation of some kind. A farmhouse, maybe. The map gave it a name. Stóri-Asgarbær.

  Even at maximum magnification, though, the image was only that: an image. There was no way to tell from it what was going on there or who, if anyone, lived there. There was no inference she could draw that might explain Driscoll’s particular interest in the place. Refer to CEO. That was all she knew.

  Wada must have fallen asleep at some point. She woke to find herself propped up on the bed, still fully dressed, with the phone lying beside her and daylight shafting through the window. She took a shower and tried to order her thoughts.

  Order them how she pleased, however, the way ahead remained unclear. It was just gone seven and she decided to go down to breakfast in the hope that eating something might sharpen her reasoning.

  The breakfast room was deserted, apart from a zombie-like waiter. The buffet was well stocked, however. And seeing all the food on display reminded her just how hungry she was. She retreated to a table with a plate of fruit, a bowl of muesli and a mug of black coffee.

  She’d eaten the fruit and most of the muesli – and been joined by two other guests, a quietly spoken Swedish couple dressed for hiking – when another man entered the room. Wada glanced in his direction. And her heart sank.

  ‘Hi there,’ said George Guptill, waving cheerily to her as he approached her table. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Found myself passing your hotel and thought I’d look in. I had you down as an early bird, Miss Wada, and it seems I was right. The guy on reception said I’d find you in here, so I signed myself on for breakfast as well.’ George sat down opposite her and looked around, grinning at the Swedish couple, who failed to reciprocate.

  ‘Is breakfast not served at the Hilton?’ Wada asked.

  ‘Oh, sure. Quite a spread. But I needed to get out of there. I needed some … fresh air. So I drove out to the headland west of here. My hire car was dropped off at the Hilton yesterday and I reckoned I should give it a run. They’ve got a golf course out there, would you believe? Kinda windy, you’d think. And you’d be right. You wouldn’t want to loft your tee-shots on that
course, let me tell you. Anyhow, I decided to drive back a different way and then I saw the sign for this hotel and … well, I thought of you.’

  ‘That was … nice of you.’

  ‘Glad you think so. I’ll just go grab a bite to eat. Can I get you a refill?’ He nodded at Wada’s empty coffee mug.

  ‘Er, thank you. Yes.’

  With a parting grin and the mug clasped in his large hand, George bounced up and headed for the buffet.

  He returned with a heavily loaded plate and two mugs of coffee. Wada tried to tune out his good-humoured ramblings and concentrate on the problem of what she should do for the best, but it proved impossible.

  ‘Truth is, Miss Wada, I needed to see a friendly face this morning, I truly did, which is why I came here in hopes of catching you. Bad news caught up with me yesterday. Some boardroom head-to-head went the wrong way for my boss. He’s out. And so, it seems, am I.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that, George.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But a man like you will surely be able to find another job quite easily.’

  ‘Dunno about that. I’m not getting any younger. But I’ll give it my best shot.’

  ‘When are you returning to New York?’

  ‘Switching to an earlier return flight than planned would be a personal expense for me. So, since my new and soon to be ex-bosses have already paid for the hotel and the hire car, I plan to see out the trip. But as a tourist, obviously. I’m off the clock.’

  ‘Well, I hope you enjoy … seeing the sights.’

  ‘All on my lonesome doesn’t sound like a riot. I wondered if you’d care to join me. They reckon Thingveller is the place to go. Birthplace of Icelandic democracy plus some spectacular canyon where the island’s literally but very slowly tearing itself apart. Teutonic plates or some such. We could maybe go on to Gullfoss after: Iceland’s answer to Niagara Falls. Make a—’

  Wada held up her hand. ‘I am sorry, but I have other plans.’

  ‘Really? That’s too bad. But you don’t have a car, do you? And these coach tours are kinda take it or leave it, not to mention pricey. So, I’m probably your best bet. Let me show you where we’d be going.’

  George took a slurp of coffee and spread out a tourist office map of Iceland on the table, swivelling it so that it was at right angles to both of them. His podgy forefinger traced a route east out of Reykjavík to what he’d called Thingveller but was spelt on the map Þingvellir, and on beyond that to Gullfoss.

  Wada looked at where George’s forefinger had ended up, lingering somewhere in the emptiness east of Gullfoss. An idea formed suddenly in her mind. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said. ‘I must check something.’

  She called up the satellite map showing the location of Stóri-Asgarbær on her phone. Þingvellir was only thirty or so kilometres away. She doubted talking George into taking her there would be difficult. And the chance was too good to miss.

  ‘Could we maybe … take a diversion … after Thingveller?’

  George smiled. ‘Sure we could. As many diversions as you like.’

  ‘There is a property in that area … I need to visit.’

  ‘Sounds intriguing.’

  ‘Not really. It is simply, er …’

  ‘A matter of business?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘But what business, hey? No, don’t tell me. I said you were a woman of mystery and I like that, so you’ll just have to let me guess … as the day goes by.’

  Nick had to set off at dawn to be sure of making it to Heathrow in plenty of time for the eight fifty flight to Iceland. Kate was barely awake when he left. He’d felt ever guiltier about holding out on her as the weekend had progressed. He was relieved to be on his way now.

  The plane took off into a benign spring morning, but, as the three-hour flight proceeded, ever more disheartening reports of conditions at the other end were passed on by the co-pilot. Rain. Three degrees. Snow flurries.

  By the time the plane landed at Keflavík, it was snowing quite steadily. Nick knew Iceland from a half-term trip to see the Northern Lights five years previously, so the bleakness of the landscape was no surprise, nor the fickleness of the weather. He and Kate hadn’t seen any lights in the sky beyond the street lamps of Reykjavík, although she’d fallen in love with the Blue Lagoon and Nick had enjoyed exploring Icelandic art.

  They’d hired a car on that trip, but Nick didn’t anticipate needing to leave Reykjavík, so he took the transfer bus into the city. He’d stayed with Kate in some luxury at the Borg, but he’d settled this time for a cheaper hotel, the Foss, at the eastern end of the city centre.

  The snow hadn’t settled in Reykjavík, but still it was much more like winter than spring when he left the Foss shortly after checking in and headed along Laugavegur for a first look at the building where the Emergence auction was to be held on Wednesday.

  It covered a wide street frontage and had probably once been a large shop. The high windows had been tricked out with modish tinting since then. There were three floors and a basement, with little sign of activity beyond the ground floor, which proclaimed itself to be an art gallery called Aldrei Ađur – helpfully translated on the door as the Never Before Gallery.

  Nick went in, passing a broad staircase leading to the upper floors across which a velvet rope had been strung bearing a bilingual STAFF ONLY sign. He was greeted in the gallery itself by a willowy young Icelandic blonde who’d have fitted right in as a gallerina in London’s West End. She handed him a catalogue for the exhibition. The artist had a Spanish name: Elena Herrera. Nick had never heard of her.

  ‘You’re not a showcase for homegrown talent, then?’ he remarked casually.

  ‘Our mission is to promote Reykjavík as a showcase for world talent,’ came the cool reply.

  ‘Who owns the gallery?’

  ‘The Quartizon Foundation.’

  ‘And who owns them?’

  ‘This will explain the foundation’s work.’ She handed him a pamphlet printed on expensively milled paper. ‘Enjoy the paintings.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He moved on past her and did his best impression of someone earnestly studying the pictures and the biographical notes on the artist. The paintings were small but luminous. Despite their modest size, they were best appreciated from a distance. To his surprise, Nick liked them rather a lot. Perhaps the Quartizon Foundation was a good judge of artistic ability.

  If so, it seemed their judgement also inclined towards the benefits of reticence. Three paragraphs of well-turned phrases, supplied in English, Icelandic and either Chinese or Japanese – he wasn’t sure which it was – told him more or less nothing about the Quartizon Foundation apart from its commitment to bringing inspiring and transformative new figures in the art world to an ever more cosmopolitan Icelandic audience. As to who ran the Quartizon Foundation or where it was based or what else it did, the document was silent.

  And of that cosmopolitan Icelandic audience there was currently no sign. Nick was the only browser. What he knew of the art world suggested the cost of running the Never Before Gallery was likely to outstrip the proceeds – Elena Herrera’s paintings were optimistically priced, to put it mildly – by a long way. Which suggested it might exist to serve some purpose not declared in the blurb.

  Nick was tempted to tease the gallerina with an oblique reference to Emergence. But he left without doing so. Like the Quartizon Foundation, he could see the value of reticence.

  For now.

  The rain that started shortly after George and Wada set off on their drive soon turned to sleet and, as the road took them ever higher into the Icelandic moorlands, snow. According to the car’s thermometer, the outside temperature was creeping towards zero. The car was a large and well-appointed four-wheel-drive, which, according to George, virtually drove itself. This show of modesty on his part rather surprised Wada. When she commented on the conditions, he merely said, ‘It snows in New Jersey too.’

  The
y hadn’t been on the road long before he wheedled her first name out of her and brushed aside her pleadings that everybody simply called her Wada. ‘Umiko’s a beautiful name. You can’t expect me not to use it.’ It wasn’t much longer after that before he established how and when she’d been widowed. ‘A thing like that can make or break someone, Umiko. It’s pretty obvious you’re a fighter.’ This was all blatant flattery, of course. And Wada was dismayed by how pleasant it was to be on the receiving end of it.

  The windchill and slanting snow that greeted them at the Þingvellir visitor centre came as a shock after their cosseted journey. Wada wasn’t dressed for such weather and, after George had prevailed on her to borrow his coat, which enveloped her like a duvet, he wasn’t dressed for it, so their exploration of the rift valley carved out by the tearing apart of the North American and Eurasian continental plates was short-lived.

  Cutting short their visit suited Wada, since it meant they could head on to Stóri-Asgarbær, but George argued lunch had to be factored in. There was said to be a good restaurant on the road to Gullfoss that served steaks from a local farm … and he was driving.

  It was mid-afternoon when they left the restaurant. George argued they really should see Gullfoss now they were so close and there’d still be time to take in Wada’s detour on the way back to Reykjavík. Wada didn’t have much choice but to agree.

  According to George’s bellowed enthusings, the falls were an awesome sight, but she had to pull the hood on her borrowed anorak so low to keep out the wind-driven snow that she couldn’t really tell where the spray ended and the snow-bearing clouds began. Warming up over hot chocolate in the visitor centre would have been welcome in other circumstances, but she only wanted to get to Stóri-Asgarbær and eventually George registered her impatience.

  ‘It’s OK, Umiko. It’s your business opportunity in the boondocks next, I promise. Don’t worry. There’s hours of daylight left.’

  And so, with Wada navigating now, they set off.