Vilhjálmur looked horrified. ‘Is this true?’ he demanded, looking hard at Sævaldur.
‘Who the hell knows? The man confessed and he didn’t have an alibi anyway.’
‘Not that anyone looked too hard for one,’ Gunna added. ‘And from what I hear, he’s not the only one to sit out someone else’s time.’
Vilhjálmur frowned. ‘Gunnhildur, are you sure that this man is not connected with the death of Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson?’
‘He may be, but only indirectly as one of the last people to see him alive. I’m completely confident he’s not the killer.’
‘Sævaldur, you have this man in custody?’
‘Of course. We’ve charged him with theft and fraud already for the credit cards.’
‘In that case, keep hold of him as long as you’re able. Gunnhildur, you have until Monday to give me a convincing reason why Sævaldur’s suspect shouldn’t be charged with the murder.’
10
Friday, 5 September
Gunna immersed herself in the national vehicle records and quickly came up with dozens of cars with JA in the number. She was able to eliminate the majority immediately, taking out all of the smaller cars that could not possibly be mistaken for a jeep, even on a dark night.
She worked through the remainder of the list. When Haddi appeared at her door with an expectant look on his face, he found her among a pile of paperwork with a pencil behind one ear and the phone firmly at the other.
He waited expectantly for her to finish speaking.
‘OK. No, not a problem. Thanks for your help,’ she said before putting a finger out to end the call, keeping the receiver in her hand.
‘Any joy?’
‘Not much,’ Gunna admitted. ‘A few possibles. Plenty eliminated.’
She replaced the receiver, leaned back and held up the long list in front of her.
‘There are more than two hundred cars with JA in the number. Around ninety of them are jeeps of some kind and I’ve eliminated all but a dozen or so. There’s a Toyota in Stokkseyri, haven’t reached the owner yet, four of Swiftcar’s rentals which are all BMWs, a few Toyotas and Fords in Reykjavík, even a couple of Hummers. That’s it so far.’
‘Still, it keeps you occupied.’
‘Just a bit. It’s not as if we don’t have enough to keep us out of trouble,’ she grumbled. ‘Anyway, what time is it?’
‘Gone five.’
‘Hell. I’d better be on my way. Laufey’ll be back from school in a minute and I ought to clean the place up and buy some food before she gets home.’
Haddi nodded sagely. ‘Y’know,’ he observed, ‘that’s the kind of thing I’d have expected Laufey to say if you’d been away, not the other way around.’
‘Come on, Haddi. I’m never going to win any perfect housewife prizes, am I?’
Haddi spluttered with what Gunna’s long experience told her was laughter. ‘God, no. Which reminds me, there was a bloke here this morning looking for you while you were over at Keflavík hobnobbing with the chiefs.’
Gunna straightened her stack of papers and placed them in the middle of her desk.
‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘Haven’t a clue. Old bloke. Moustache. Said it was just a personal call and he’d drop in again later.’
‘Can’t have been important, then,’ Gunna said, squaring her cap. ‘Are you on duty tomorrow, or is it Snorri?’
‘Me tomorrow. Snorri’s off until Monday.’
Haddi waved and retreated as the phone began to ring, while Gunna debated whether or not to answer it, well knowing that she would.
‘Gunnhildur.’
‘Hi, sweetheart.’
At the sound of the familiar voice, she pushed the chair back and lifted her feet on to the upturned waste paper bin that had taken on a new role as a footrest. ‘Get stuffed, Bjössi.’
‘Come on, what kind of language is that?’
‘Bjössi, my dear friend, it’s the only language that you understand. Don’t forget that I’m a tough country girl from the westfjords and I’ve sorted out bigger and nastier men than you.’
Bjössi sighed.
‘You say the nicest things, Gunna.’
‘All part of the Hvalvík force’s service. Being rude to outsiders is what we do best. Now. What do you want?’
‘That blue jeep from the harbour at Sandeyri. Just as you thought, it’s the one that was reported missing.’
‘I knew that already, so what do you have that’s new?’
Bjössi continued, oblivious of Gunna’s interruption. ‘Owner, Rögnvaldur Jónsson, aged thirty-four, Eggertsgata eighty-seven, Akranes. Left it parked at the airport while he went to get pissed in Tenerife. Got off the plane with his straw donkey, and there it was, gone.’
‘Are you going to stop telling me stuff I already know?’
‘Probably not. Forensics have given it a going-over. There are a few dents that the owner couldn’t be sure about, says they might have been there before. Apart from that, no fingerprints. Nothing out of the ordinary apart from those binoculars you found. Good quality ones, the sort that serious bird-watchers use.’
‘Do you really think some twitcher stole a jeep to go bird-watching and then rolled it off the quay at Sandeyri?’
‘Haven’t a clue. We’re up to our ears in it here and I’m going to have to leave it with you. I’ll email you the report. All right?’
‘All right. What are you so busy with over there, if you’ve got better things to do than give us a hand?’
Bjössi groaned. ‘Don’t ask.’
‘Go on. What is it?’
‘The usual, trying to interrogate dodgy Eastern Europeans who don’t speak Icelandic and pretend they don’t speak English either.’
‘Fair enough. Rather you than me.’
‘You said it. See you tomorrow morning if you’re here for the briefing.’
‘Briefing? On a Saturday? Nobody’s told me.’
‘Vilhjálmur Traustason’s new efficiency review procedures. You’re better off out of it, believe me,’ Bjössi told her. ‘Bye, sweetheart.’
Gunna sat back again with her hands behind her head as she thought. She looked at the clock, saw that she had time in hand and prodded the computer into life. Ten minutes later she locked up behind her, nodded to the woman in the post office next door and walked up the hill towards home with a thick printout under one arm.
05-09-2008, 0216
Skandalblogger writes:
Don’t say we didn’t tell you.
It seems it’s all starting to unravel at last, and don’t forget we warned you all a long time ago that these guys weren’t to be trusted.
We know that the Ministry of Environmental Affairs set up a small think-tank a few years ago, under the innocuous name of Energy Supply Consultation, otherwise known as ES Consult, or just plain old ESC. But has anyone noticed that ESC is now a limited company listed on the stock exchange?
Have a look, click here* for the stock exchange website and dig a little further to find out who the main shareholders are. It’s enlightening reading.
But the really interesting reading would be the internal report commissioned a month or two ago by the major lender set to bankroll ESC, which it now seems is too explosive for anyone but a couple of the top dogs to see. Come on, guys, what did the economists from London have to say about you? And why don’t you want your shareholders to know about it?
Well, enough of the corruption in high places, as we can hear you baying for us to get back to the usual filth. So here it is, in an easily digested format.
Which owner of a fashionable downtown tanning parlour has been laying off some of her staff, replacing them with fit young things from further east? It seems that some of the local staff weren’t too happy about the ‘executive happy finish’ service that the place likes to offer its exclusive (for ‘exclusive’, read ‘rich’) customers, and walked out. Luckily, Eastern Europe is awash with leggy beauties who can’t affor
d scruples. So business as usual, even with the krona taking a dive!
And which presenter of a primetime popular slot on national TV was this week observed making his way along Laugarvegur in odd socks and bumping into walls, people, parked cars, etc? There’s nothing unusual about this extremely thirsty motormouth, well known for a flamboyant lifestyle, becoming . . . what shall we say, overwrought after extensive hospitality, but at 10.30 on a Tuesday morning? Incidentally, it seems that the odd socks were particularly visible, as our presenter friend was clearly wearing someone else’s trousers and the someone else must be a good bit shorter than our flamboyant friend.
It’ll all come out in the wash . . .
Bæjó!
‘Can I go out, Mum?’
‘No, my love. It’s late.’
‘But the others are out.’
‘I know, but it’s gone ten.’
‘Aw.’
Laufey Ragnarsdóttir frequently found it difficult to be a police officer’s daughter. Other parents could let their children stay outside until after dark. But Gunna knew that there would be whisperings and complaints if she were to do the same and she wondered how long her authority would remain unchallenged.
‘Half an hour, Mum? There’s no school tomorrow.’
‘Laufey, I said no. All right? Come on, you’d better be off to bed soon. Aren’t you going riding with Sigrún tomorrow? Get your stuff ready now and you can have the TV on for a while,’ Gunna added as gently as she could.
Laufey shrugged and began slowly picking up schoolbooks scattered across the living room.
‘Make sure you’ve got clean clothes for the morning,’ Gunna instructed.
‘I’m not thick, Mum.’
Gunna bit back a sharp reply. She left Laufey to get on with it and went to the kitchen to read the report on Egill Grímsson which she had printed out from the police records and which had been waiting for her all evening on the table.
She scanned the first page of the printout, frowning as she saw that the investigating officer was Helgi Skaftason. They had been recruits together at training college where Helgi had been a latecomer to the force and the oldest man in that year’s intake. He was now a painstaking but unimaginative officer.
Egill Grímsson had been run down and killed, crossing the road outside his own house, by an unknown vehicle, possibly blue according to some neighbours who had racked their brains to remember seeing any unfamiliar cars in an otherwise quiet neighbourhood of Grafarvogur.
There had been no witnesses and death was judged to have been instantaneous, although Egill Grímsson could have been lying in the road for as long as an hour before he had been found by the neighbour who called for an ambulance.
Routine questioning of people living in the street revealed nothing beyond the fact that the man had been a clean-living, rather private person, a middle-aged schoolteacher at a comprehensive college. An odd person for a character in his twenties such as Einar Eyjólfur to be associating with, Gunna thought, until a burst of sound from Laufey’s room had her jumping to her feet.
‘Turn it down, will you?’ she demanded, banging on the door before opening it. Inside, the music stopped abruptly as Laufey turned the stereo down to a whisper.
‘Sorry, Mum.’
Back in the kitchen, Gunna returned to Egill Grímsson. The man had been out all day on Sunday, 9 March and it appeared he had just parked his own car on the other side of the road when the accident had occurred at between seven thirty and eight that evening. There had been no other traffic along the dead-end street and the man’s glasses, some notebooks, maps and a camera had been found scattered near his body. All of these had been identified by the distraught widow as being the dead man’s property.
According to Helgi Skaftason’s report, there had been no progress in finding out who had been responsible for what was regarded as a tragic accident. Nobody had seen anything and the assumption was that this was a hit-and-run accident in which the perpetrator had panicked and fled. The only unusual aspect of the case was that the driver of the car had not been found. The description of a possibly blue car, according to a bored petrol station clerk on the main road a kilometre away, was far too broad for any kind of search. Although the case was still open, it was clear from the text that little was being done to take it any further as there was no indication of any kind of foul play.
Gunna sighed out loud. She decided against calling Helgi Skaftason, knowing that he would resent what she was sure he would see as interference. She stood up, leaving the report on the kitchen table, and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, noticing as she did so that Laufey had gradually increased the volume of the music in her room so that it could again be heard throughout the house.
Toothbrush in hand, she tapped on Laufey’s door.
‘Come on, sweetheart. Turn it off. Time to go to sleep.’
11
Sunday, 7 September
The car park’s manager would dearly have liked to go home, but with Gunna and Snorri in his office he had little choice but to stay while they went through the surveillance tapes. Snorri sat in the manager’s chair and watched the computer screen, fingers idly tapping the mouse, while Gunna peered over his shoulder and the manager tried not to look at his watch.
‘So, how far back do the tapes go, and how long do you keep them?’ Gunna asked.
‘It’s not tape any more. It’s all digital files and now we keep it all for ever.’
‘So how far back do these go?’
‘Since the system was installed last year.’
‘Good. Should be long enough, then.’
‘See, that’s the jeep there,’ Snorri said, pointing at the grainy monochrome as the jeep entered the car park. ‘That was the eighth of March at 13.25, so that ties in with Rögnvaldur Jónsson’s statement.’
‘Yes,’ said Gunna. ‘Now we’re just going to have to sit here and watch until it’s driven out again, which hopefully won’t be too long.’
A pained look crossed the manager’s face as Gunna turned to him.
‘Do you know exactly where this vehicle was parked while it was here?’
‘Er, no.’
‘But you must have more than one set of cameras covering the car park, don’t you? I thought they were everywhere?’
‘They are. But one or two of them are dummies.’
‘That’s just brilliant. Right, you’d better tell me which ones are which.’
She slapped the statement Bjössi had sent that morning on to the man’s desk, turned it over to the blank side and handed him a pen.
‘There you are. Draw me a plan.’
Leaning over the wrong side of his own desk, the man sketched an outline of the car park, marking crosses where cameras covered the lanes of dormant cars. He was squinting with concentration when Snorri yelped.
‘There it is!’
‘Where?’
Snorri clicked the mouse and scrolled back, stopping the blurry picture with the jeep parked in a bay off centre and squashed by the camera’s perspective. Gunna fumbled with her glasses and jammed them on her nose. ‘Well?’
‘Well, like you said, now we just have to sit and wait until it moves.’
Gunna turned to the manager. ‘What other information do you have? There must have been a payment of some kind?’ She reeled off the jeep’s registration number.
‘I’ll see when I can get to my computer,’ he replied morosely.
Gunna turned back to peer over Snorri’s shoulder as he fast-forwarded through the footage. A few cars moved in stop-go motion and occasional people could be seen walking at high speed across the car park, even those weighed down by heavy suitcases.
‘Five o’clock and nothing yet,’ Snorri pointed out, a finger on the time indicator at the bottom of the screen.
‘Keep going.’
When the clock reached 17.03, Snorri slowed the replay as a tall man with no luggage approached the jeep. ‘Chief. Look.’
‘OK. Play it sl
owly. Can you get the picture any better than that?’
‘This is as clear as it’s going to get, I reckon.’
The man went straight to the jeep’s driver’s door and within a few seconds it was open. A moment later it surged forward, out of the bay and out of shot. Snorri paused the replay and summoned the manager.
‘I need to switch viewpoint to here,’ he explained, finger on the makeshift diagram.
The manager clicked and a new window opened on screen. ‘Do you have a time?’
‘Yeah. 17.03.’
‘Right.’ The manager tapped at the keyboard and a view of the gates appeared with 17.03 on the clock.
‘Scroll there,’ he said, needlessly as Snorri was already fast-forwarding until the jeep appeared at the bottom of the screen and bumped towards the gates. At the barrier, the jeep stopped, and the window rolled down. An arm emerged, put a ticket in the machine, and was gone. The barrier swung jerkily upwards and the jeep rolled forward and again out of shot.
‘Is there another camera on the gate?’ Snorri demanded.
The manager pointed and Snorri clicked. An image of the driver’s window appeared and moved jerkily until the man’s short hair, square face and dark coat could be seen, with clear eyes looking impassively at the camera.
‘At least we have a face and a time now. 17.07 on the eighth of March. The engine must have still been warm. The cheeky bastard.’
Gunna turned to the car park manager ‘Judging from that, is there any way we can find more footage of this?’
The man sighed and mentally wrote off his afternoon’s golf for good. ‘No, that’s it.’
‘All right, any payment details?’
‘Do you mind? Can I get to my desk and I’ll see what I can find for you?’
He tapped at the keyboard, opened new documents and studied them carefully.
‘Like you saw, it came in at 13.25 on the eighth of March, and left at 17.07 the same day. Paid by credit card. I’d have to go to head office for the card details. We don’t have that information here.’
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