The man remained silent and Guðgeir sipped his lukewarm coffee. An undissolved granule caught between his teeth, and his picked it out with a fingernail, before leaning back on the lumpy sofa, making it plain that he was in no hurry. He glanced out of the window, and at the clock on the wall. It was getting late, but he decided that a few more minutes would be worthwhile. Maybe the old man had nothing to say, but had dragged out his answers to keep them there. Solitude could be painful and a visit from the police was better than nothing. They would have to be on their way before long. Guðgeir leaned forward to place the cup on the table in front of him.
‘And you’re trying to find out where this Sajee has disappeared to?’ the man asked, enunciating her name clearly.
‘That’s right. We believe that something may have happened to her,’ Guðgeir said.
The man got stiffly to his feet. To their surprise, his manner made it clear that their visit was over. His expression changed and he appeared anxious to be rid of them as soon as possible.
‘Take a look at the flat in the basement,’ he said in a low voice as he limped towards the door.
‘Who lives there?’ Særós asked.
‘That miser Ísleifur knocked together a flat out of a storeroom and a laundry room. It’s completely illegal, but he has those women under his thumb,’ he said quickly, as he mimed zipping his lips shut. ‘But you didn’t hear it from me.’
36
The visit to the old man and Sajee’s whereabouts had been in Guðgeir’s thoughts through the whole of the day-long drive from Reykjavík back to Höfn, and now he felt restless, anxious to again pick up the trail.
There was an upside-down ‘welcome’ woven into the mat as he pushed open the Hostel by the Sea’s door and stepped inside. The last time he had been here he hadn’t noticed the doormat, so maybe it was new. The reception area was deserted, but on the reception desk stood a heavy copper bell with a long wooden handle. He picked it up and rang. There was no immediate response, so he rang again, sending the bell’s tones echoing through the building. After a while a dark-haired young woman appeared in the corridor, in no obvious hurry and more interested in her phone than in the customer waiting at the reception desk.
‘Good morning, is Thormóður here?’ Guðgeir asked.
‘I don’t speak Icelandic,’ the woman replied. ‘You speak English?’
‘Sure. Is the owner here?’
‘You can speak to me.’
‘I’d prefer to speak to the owner,’ Guðgeir said courteously. ‘His name’s Thormóður, isn’t it?’
‘He’s not here,’ she said sharply, apparently satisfied that she had done everything required. Her attention went back to the phone in her hand.
’Do you know where he is?’ Guðgeir asked. ‘Or when he’ll be back?’
‘No,’ she replied, running fingers through her spiky hair.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course? Do I look like some sort of idiot?’ she snapped, clearly in no mood to hide her annoyance.
‘No, of course not, and no offence intended,’ Guðgeir said with an apologetic smile. It was obvious that she had little time for customer service and wanted to be rid of him as quickly as possible.
‘Any rooms available?’
The woman shook her head, eyes on the screen of her phone as she swiped it quickly with her thumb.
‘No.’
‘I’m asking for a friend,’ he added, in case the woman had taken a personal dislike to him.
‘Fully booked,’ she said, glancing at him. He noticed that she didn’t trouble to ask when his friend would be needing a place to stay.
‘Sure?’ he asked.
‘Yes!’
‘In about ten days’ time?’ he said, acting as if her display of ill temper had gone unnoticed.
‘Full up,’ she said.
‘Ach. That’s a shame. But don’t you need staff, considering the place is so busy? My daughter’s looking for work here in Höfn,’ he lied. ‘How many rooms are there here?’
She finally put the phone aside and gave this awkward man who asked endless questions her full attention. Her expression was one of deep fatigue and irritation, but all the same, she managed an artificial smile. He had seen this young woman before, with her cropped hair and sleepy eyes. That time there had been a rucksack hanging from her shoulder.
‘I’m so sorry but we have no rooms available and we don’t need any more staff,’ she said in a mechanical voice. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’
‘No,’ he said, and left.
With his shift almost over, Guðgeir drove slowly up to the top of the town and parked outside the old workshop that was the Hornafjörður Security’s home. The sign on the building was a big one, reaching from wall to wall, as the twenty letters of the company’s name required space. His opposite number, Helgi, hadn’t arrived yet, and had already let Guðgeir know that today he would be late. They had agreed that there would be no harm in the later security round being delayed an hour. Guðgeir walked along Hafnarbraut to where his own car was parked once his shift had finished, and at the shopping centre he picked up a cheese roll and a coffee before driving back down towards the hostel. He stopped along the street, switching off the engine with the car parked next to a hay binder parked outside a workshop, and started on his sandwich. His phone buzzed, Særós’s name appearing on the screen.
‘Did you try the place on Snorrabraut again?’ he asked right away, not bothering with a greeting.
‘Twice today. Rang the bell and banged on the door. I could hear movement inside the second time, so I’m certain there’s someone in there. But if those women are there, then they might be scared.’
‘More than likely,’ Guðgeir agreed. He sipped his coffee and eyed the hostel. They would have to find another way to get in touch with the women in the cellar flat.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m sitting in the car and if this cheese roll was a doughnut, then I’d be a perfect American cop show cliché,’ he said with a sarcastic laugh. ‘But all the same, I’m doing what I can to keep tabs on Thormóður’s hostel. It feels like I’ve reached peak ridiculous right now. You’ve no idea how difficult it is to be inconspicuous in a little place like this.’
‘You could try a false beard,’ Særós said, giggling at the thought.
‘One joke after another,’ he said with a grin. ‘That tells me you’re onto something.’
‘Just a bit. Leifur in crime scene has been a big help .’
‘Let’s hear it,’ Guðgeir said, chewing quickly as Særós – in her usual meticulous manner – went over what she knew; no long descriptions, just the key points in strictly chronological order.
Leifur had found that Thormóður was not only the individual registered for the Hostel by the Sea in Höfn, but also something similar in Reykjavík, Hostel by the Shore, with both places apparently letting rooms. When Leifur had taken a look at the place, he found it suspiciously quiet, considering the number of tourists in the city. Further checks told him that Thormóður Emilsson was also the individual registered for a charity called Children in Crisis, which boasted a magnificent website with grand claims about its achievements, which as far as Leifur and Særós had been able to ascertain had in fact amounted to very little. The site also had links for donations, two phone numbers and an email address, but next to nothing about what the charity actually did. Nobody replied to repeated calls to one number and the other turned out to have been disconnected, as did the site’s mailbox. All the same, making a donation to Children in Crisis was not a problem.
Thormóður also had a chequered career behind him, and had been charged once, but this had been dropped. After that, nothing about him had attracted police attention until eighteen months ago.
‘For what?’ Guðgeir asked.
‘A tip-off about dope being sold at the hostel in Reykjavík, but no evidence was found. But you know who the directors of Children in Crisis are?’ S
ærós asked, palpable excitement in her voice.
‘Go on. Tell me,’ Guðgeir said, although he already had a suspicion.
‘Thormóður Emilsson, Ísak Kristoferson and Selma Ísaksdóttir. The unholy trinity.’
‘That’s quite something. Very interesting,’ Guðgeir said, scratching at the stubble on his chin. He could feel the familiar buzz of excitement well up inside him.
‘I’m going to dig deeper into this,’ Særós said, her voice distant. ‘Hold on a moment,’ she added and Guðgeir took the opportunity to look up the charity’s web page. It offered three levels of sponsorship, all of them fairly low, and with only a small amount separating them.
‘Yes, the personal ID numbers match the mother and son at Bröttuskriður,’ Særós said.
‘There’s definitely something spooky going on there. Can you ask Leifur to check out the sponsorship on the web page? It looks all wrong to me, as if this is a front for something else. Those sponsorship buttons could be a way of sending messages, some kind of system of alerts. It would be interesting to see the payments going into that account to see if they tie up with the sponsorship tabs.’
‘Exactly. We’ll do everything we can to get to the bottom of this right away,’ Særós said. ‘It’s suspicious that this charity has no profile and doesn’t seem to have done any kind of fund-raising. At least, Leifur said that he’s found nothing at all, and he mentioned just now that Hostel by the Shore doesn’t have a valid trading permit, so that gives us a reason to take a look. I’m wondering if we could bring Environmental Health in on this with us.’
‘You’re doing a great job,’ Guðgeir said. He was back on a roll, and waved to Linda who was crossing the road. He pointed at his phone, indicating that he couldn’t speak to her right now. She waved back, gesturing that she was also in a hurry.
‘What was that?’ Særós asked. There wasn’t much that escaped her notice, even over the phone with half the country separating them.
‘The woman who works in the café right opposite the flat I’m staying in. Linda, you remember? The one who told me she had seen Thormóður with Sajee,’ Guðgeir explained, brushing breadcrumbs from his front. ‘How about Hostel by the Sea’s trading permit? Is that in order?’
‘It seems to be,’ Særós said. ‘I see the place in Höfn opened two months after the one in Reykjavík was raided. It looks like Thormóður made tracks out east, presumably to avoid attention.’
‘Interesting timing, or a coincidence? It’s a shame his trading permit in Höfn is in order. I was hoping we’d be able to trip him up on that,’ Guðgeir said with clear disappointment.
‘Hold on, though,’ Særós said. ‘There’s more. The farm at Bröttuskriður was drowning in debt. The bank pretty much had the place in its pocket. All that was left was the legal repossession process. Then the whole lot was paid off a year ago, in a single payment, and the place is now mortgage-free.’
‘An inheritance?’ Guðgeir suggested.
‘Hardly.’
‘Drugs, money laundering or…’
‘That seems most likely,’ Særós replied.
‘You remember I told you about all the kitchen appliances out there, and how that didn’t add up.’
‘Yes, it’s clear there’s a flow of cash going in that direction.’
‘I’m half-certain I could smell acetone when I went into the house there, and it reminded me of Ólöf because she’s constantly painting her nails. The it slipped my mind, but now it’s starting to fit together…’
‘And where does Sajee fit into all this?’ Særós interrupted.
‘That’s what I can’t quite figure out,’ Guðgeir said, kneading his temples. There was a vague memory just beneath the surface of his mind, something about the basement windows at Bröttuskriður. ‘Listen, I’m going to ask a few questions about Selma and Ísak. Linda, the one I mentioned just now, knows the people at the next farm. I’ll ask her to go with me up to the Lagoon.’
37
There were only two tablets. Her condition was again deteriorating. Ísak was at a loss, while any pity he had was reserved for himself. He suspected that Thormóður was planning to leave the country as soon as their work was done. Sajee tried to make sense of his disjointed grumbling, but she had little strength and most of the time she was in a daze. Ísak retreated into a world of his own, and the hopes she had harboured that he would come to her help were vanishing.
In the fleeting moments when she came to her senses, her thoughts turned increasingly to the little girl who had been born, as she had been, with a cleft palate. It couldn’t have been that long ago, as she had been interred in the family plot, the tiny rib kept in the cellar. Would it be her fate to lose her life in a filthy pit? Once again, Ísak sat by the hatch, yet again telling her that if only she and Selma had been able to keep calm and stay at home, then none of this would have happened.
38
The backdrop to the farm at Gröf aspect was nowhere near as spectacular as at Bröttuskriður. Instead of high, jagged peaks, Gröf stood by a hill not far from the glacial river’s banks. There was a wider spread of open land here, although Guðgeir quickly noticed that there wasn’t a great deal of usable land around the farm. All the same, it was a pretty place, like most of the farmsteads in this sparsely populated region, and the figures on the car’s dashboard told him that from here to Bröttuskriður would take no more than twenty minutes.
Linda jumped at the idea of going with him once he had explained that his reasons for wanting to visit Gröf were to follow the trail of the mysterious Asian woman, and spun a tale that the woman’s story had touched him. He mentioned Thormóður a few times, but took care not to make him too central a figure in his narrative. Linda made herself comfortable in the passenger seat and listened patiently to his hypothesis. It was all a little far-fetched, he felt as he listened to himself talking, but there was also so much that he couldn’t tell her for the moment.
‘It helps that your grandmother knows these people,’ Guðgeir said.
‘Yeah, whatever. It just makes a change to get away, and I need it,’ she said, gazing out of the window and Guðgeir saw her smile. ‘Why don’t you go up to Bröttuskriður?’ she asked, turning to look at him.
‘I went there the other day and now I want to take a look at Gröf.’ To change the subject, he pointed at the mountainside above. ‘I saw a reindeer when I was here last. A magnificent stag. That’s special, isn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ Linda replied. ‘There are reindeer everywhere and they come down to the lowlands after a hard winter, like this one was. You can see whole herds of them, plus a few lone stags that don’t have a place in the herds.’
‘So that explains why I felt we had something in common,’ Guðgeir said with a smile, and noticed that Linda looked back at him with sympathy in her eyes. Hell, he thought. She feels sorry for me… Why had he mentioned that lone stag? He wanted to bite his own tongue.
‘Very poetic,’ she said. ‘But I thought you had been in the police?’
‘Just thinking out loud,’ Guðgeir said, switching off the engine. ‘We can walk up to the farm from here?’
‘Sure,’ Linda said. ‘Speaking of herds, I wouldn’t mind moving away from here and studying down south. For a couple of years, at least. But it’s not easy to stand on your own feet with a child and without the family support.’
She wrapped a mustard yellow scarf around her neck, but left her coat unzipped. They took the rutted path towards the farmhouse. Their feet squelched in the mud, splashing their calves.
‘It helps to have the herd behind you, and I don’t like the thought of being in some flat that costs a fortune to rent in a block in Reykjavík, where I know hardly anyone,’ she said.
‘And the Dad?’ Guðgeir asked. ‘Where’s he?’
‘That’s a long and unpleasant story that I can’t be bothered to go into. Let’s say he’s not as lovely as you,’ she said cheerfully, hooking her hand into the crook of his arm
and he felt an inner warmth as she did so. ‘Come on, let’s go inside, talk about my grandmother and pretend to be secret agents.’
Over the next couple of hours Guðgeir had no regrets over having asked Linda to go with him to visit Gröf, as she had an easy relationship with Karl and Marta. Without her presence, this could easily have become an awkward solo visit, instead of a relaxed chat over coffee. Linda had a knack of putting people at their ease to draw information effortlessly out of them, and Karl talked almost non-stop. Marta appeared more reserved, sitting at the kitchen table and laying one hand of patience after another, and interrupting her garrulous husband with an occasional comment.
Before long Linda was telling the tale of the trip she and her brother had made during the worst of February’s weather to check on the family’s summer cottage. Guðgeir took a large bite of a chocolate biscuit and sipped his coffee so as to not appear to be paying too much attention.
‘The alarm system went off and I went rushing off up there with Jói because we thought the place would have been wrecked. You know what happened to Gurrý’s and Siggi’s cottage up by the Jökull river? Anyway, whatever. The weather was absolutely atrocious that day,’ she said.
‘It’s been a hard winter, especially after Christmas,’ Marta muttered, shuffling the cards. ‘Tell me about it…’
‘February was just horrendous,’ Linda said. ‘The main road was closed both ways sometimes.’
‘And this went on well into April!’ Karl added, rubbing his bald head. ‘It’s not always easy living out here, I can tell you. Not like for you people who get the roads cleared. We don’t get that kind of luxury out here in the countryside.’
‘No, of course not,’ Linda said with a touch of guilt in her voice. ‘But that day was particularly bad, the last day of February.’
‘You’ve a good memory,’ Marta said. ‘Was the cottage damaged at all?’
The Fox Page 18