Chilled to the Bone

by Quentin Bates

  ‘Fair enough,’ Gunna said. ‘Where’s Eiríkur?’

  ‘On his way. Won’t be long.’

  ‘Good,’ Gunna said, sipping daintily at the coffee the tall, dark-haired young man placed wordlessly on the table. ‘When he gets here, start him off checking the passenger lists to see when our boy was due to travel and then get him to see if he can track down the man’s wife. If she’s still in Húsavík, he’d best get the police there to speak to her and break the bad news that she’s a widow.’

  ‘Right, will do. And me?’

  ‘Talk to the staff, and see what you can find by way of CCTV. We need to speak to whoever tied Jóhannes Karlsson to the bed, even though it looks like he’d probably paid whoever it was handsomely to do just that.’

  ‘Yup. And you, chief?’

  ‘Oh, you know. I’ll just take a walk around the shops while you and Eiríkur do the hard work.’

  ‘Nothing unusual there, then?’

  ‘Get away with you. I’ll start with the chambermaid who found our boy and then the duty manager, and hopefully the forensic team will have done their business by then. But first I’m going to have another cup of this rather fine coffee.’

  ‘Are we paying for this?’ Helgi asked dubiously.

  ‘Good grief, no. It’s an integral part of the investigation.’

  Haraldur sat on the bed in his underwear, breathing heavily. Hekla stood in front of him and unzipped her black dress with one hand behind her. His hands reached forward and his face was flushed.

  He groaned. ‘God, you’re gorgeous.’

  ‘God, you’re gorgeous . . . ?’

  ‘Sorry. Mistress.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Hekla warned, lifting his hands from her hips and pushing them firmly back. ‘You’re a bad man and now you’ll have to wait. If you’ll just get yourself in the mood, I’ll be right back.’

  She let the dress fall, turned and stepped towards the bathroom, her heels clicking on the warm tiled floor, knowing that Haraldur’s eyes were glued to her buttocks, which he could just see below the hem of her shift.

  She washed her face in cold water and dried it with a towel that felt as soft as fur. She could hear Haraldur’s breathing in the bedroom and the sound of him moving about on the bed. She pulled on the tight PVC one-piece suit that she had ready in the bathroom and took a deep breath, picking up a handful of scarves and a small leather strap on the way.

  Hekla dimmed the lights as far as they would go and sent a slow smile towards Haraldur where he lay on the bed. She added a low chuckle and stepped towards him, standing over the naked man, hands on her hips.

  ‘So, Haraldur, you’ve been really bad and I’m going to have to teach you a little lesson, aren’t I?’ She pitched her voice deep and reached forward to tie one of his wrists to the headboard with practised ease. He moaned as she leaned over him, her breasts encased in electric blue plastic and skimming his face as she tied the other wrist back in the same way.

  The fingertips of one hand brushed his chest and down to his belly. A reasonably attractive man and in good condition for his age, she thought. Hekla walked along the side of the bed, trailing the leather strap down the length of his body and along one leg to his ankle, where she stooped and planted a kiss on his instep.

  ‘Have you been bad, Haraldur?’

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ he responded dutifully.

  ‘Then a little more correction might be needed.’

  Another scarf was swiftly tied around the ankle and secured to the bed frame.

  ‘Bad, bad man,’ she growled in the deepest voice she could manage and the other ankle was quickly tied, leaving Haraldur spreadeagled across the king-sized bed.

  Hekla sashayed back to the top of the bed and showed him the ball gag. ‘Since you’ve been such a bad, bad man, I’m going to show you what a bad, bad girl I can be,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Please, mistress,’ Haraldur panted.

  ‘You really want me to hurt you?’

  ‘Yes, mistress.’

  ‘Then watch this, Haraldur.’

  Hekla pushed the ball into Haraldur’s mouth and put her hands quickly behind his neck to clip the strap shut. As she stepped back, he immediately began to breathe heavily through his nose, struggling to draw breath and splaying his cheeks to get some air around the ball.

  ‘Now you’re going to be patient and wait right there and think about how bad you’ve been,’ she said, disappearing back into the bathroom.

  After what seemed an age, she reappeared. The plastic suit had gone, replaced with a hooded sweater, jeans and trainers. The makeup had been scrubbed off and the golden hair was gone, replaced with dark curls that reached her shoulders. Hekla dropped a large holdall on the floor next to the door and, as his heart sank, she went over to where his clothes had been hastily discarded, systematically going through the pockets. She switched off his phone and put it on the dresser, before opening his wallet and removing the notes, stuffing them into the pocket of her pullover without counting them. Next she extracted all of the cards and brought them over to the bed.

  Hekla looked down at Haraldur, lying mute and helpless in front of her. She sat down by his head and looked into his bewildered eyes, unclipping a ballpoint pen from the neckline of her sweater.

  ‘Are you listening carefully, Haraldur?’ The only response was a limited straining of his arms and legs against the scarves holding him down and a desperate growl from behind the rubber ball.

  ‘You know that’s not going to help, don’t you?’ she told him as he went limp. ‘Now, listen. I’m going to go shopping for an hour or so while you ponder the error of your ways and remember how much you love your wife. All right?’

  Haraldur’s eyes bulged.

  ‘Your credit card. Tell me your pin number. Clench your right fist for the numbers. Once for one, twice for two, and so on. Four numbers. Go.’

  Haraldur’s fists remained obstinately clenched and Hekla sighed. ‘Look. There’s an easy way and a hard way. If you give me the number and it works, when I’ve been shopping I’ll call the hotel’s reception and tell them there’s a man in room 406 who is in trouble and needs some help urgently. If the number doesn’t work, then I won’t and nobody will come in here until the chambermaid comes to clean your room tomorrow morning.’

  She looked at her watch.

  ‘It’s half past four now, so that’s in about sixteen hours’ time. You might be a bit cold and thirsty by then. It’s up to you.’

  Haraldur’s fist clenched and unclenched in a series of numbers.

  ‘Two-five-two-seven. Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. And your debit card? Same number, maybe?’

  Haraldur nodded furiously as she wrote the number on the back of her hand.

  She held up a second debit card. ‘And this one?’

  Another series of nods.

  ‘Good. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Haraldur. Don’t worry about your cards. The bank will give you new ones easily enough. I’ll destroy them when I’ve been shopping and I won’t sell them on to anyone else.’

  She dipped into her pocket and drew out a small digital camera, pointed it at the helpless, naked Haraldur in front of her and pressed the shutter. Haraldur strained against the scarves that were holding him down and his face went a deep red as she took several pictures. She looked him up and down, screwed up her face in sympathy and spat in her palm.

  ‘The least I can do for you under the circumstances, I suppose,’ she said as she set to work. It didn’t take long. A minute later Haraldur stiffened, arched his back as far as his bonds would allow him and relaxed, while Hekla looked at him indulgently. She went to the bathroom, washed her hands and came back with a fluffy towel, which she used to wipe the man’s belly clean.

  ‘Be careful in future, and no hard feelings, eh? Business is business,’ Hekla said with a cheerful smile, looking down at the forlorn man in front of her as she swung the holdall onto her shoulder. ‘Goodbye, Haraldur. Someone will
be up to untie you in an hour.’

  A light lunch of salad, soup and bread full of so many seeds that they stuck between his teeth gave Jóel Ingi the energy to wake up, and half an hour later he was stripped down to shorts and a grey T-shirt as he pedalled his habitual ten kilometres at the gym, surrounded by like-minded professionals with the same aim in mind. There was a sharp aura of dedication in the air as Jóel Ingi passed the ten-kilometre mark in the time he usually took to do eight. He wondered if that might be enough, but forced himself to continue.

  ‘Hi, how goes it?’

  The question took him by surprise as he was emerging from the shower. He looked round and saw only the back of someone he didn’t recognize until the face appeared from beneath the towel that was rubbing a mop of dark hair dry.

  ‘Hi, not so bad. And you? How’s things on your side? Not that you’re allowed to tell me anything about what you guys do,’ he joked.

  ‘I can tell you exactly what we do,’ Már Einarsson replied, opening the packaging around a new shirt and taking it out of its cellophane wrapper. He grinned. ‘But I’d have to send someone to kill you afterwards.’

  ‘And then you’d have to kill him after that, I suppose?’

  ‘Yeah, probably,’ he said it dismissively. The humour had gone from his voice. ‘We have a minor problem. Can we have a quiet word later today?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jóel Ingi agreed. He knotted his tie and looked at himself in the mirror. ‘Urgent?’

  ‘Hmmm. Could be. Let’s say it is, shall we?’ Már continued. ‘Wait for me at the door, would you? We can talk there and it’ll only take a minute.’

  The shower had been too hot and had left his pores wide open. In the warmth of the gym’s lobby, Jóel Ingi found himself sweating uncomfortably. He considered taking off his coat, but that would only mean putting it back on as soon as Már appeared, so he decided to be too hot for a few minutes before plunging into the welcome chill of the cold afternoon.

  By the time Már appeared silently at his side, Jóel Ingi was almost asleep, his eyelids drooping.

  ‘Ready?’

  He shook himself awake. ‘Sorry. I’ve not been sleeping well recently,’ he explained.

  ‘You need more exercise. Or are you pushing yourself too hard?’

  ‘Ach. I don’t know. A bit of both, probably.’

  Már made for the door. ‘Walk with me. There are too many ears around here,’ he murmured.

  The sun shone outside for the first time in days, a pallid sunlight with no warmth, but welcome all the same in the dead of winter.

  ‘Problem,’ Már announced once they were clear of the gym and anyone who might overhear. ‘A whisper from the Brits, of all people. Three men and a woman who disappeared from Germany two years ago turned up in Libya. Dead, and not from old age.’

  ‘And what does this have to do with us?’

  ‘Nothing at all, I hope. You tell me.’

  ‘This was the four who . . . ?’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Shit. What do you know? What do they know?’

  Már slowed his pace; he obviously had no intention of reaching their destination too soon. ‘I’m not sure. But they decided to tell us this, which is what makes me wonder. You realize the implications, don’t you? There could be heads on blocks all over, starting with yours and mine, and all the way up from there.’

  ‘But we did what—’

  ‘What we were told? Come on. We can’t use that excuse.’

  Chastened, Jóel Ingi nodded. ‘Does our guy know about this?’

  ‘I doubt it. He’d have blown his stack by now if he did. Or he’d have blogged about it,’ Már said with a snigger. ‘But Ægir wants to be briefed.’

  ‘Give me an hour,’ he said as the back door of the ministry building loomed. Jóel Ingi turned to face Már. ‘I’ll do a few discreet checks,’ he said, keeping his nerves under control, his hand on the door and his mind already focused uncomfortably on what had happened to his computer.

  The expression on the minister’s political adviser’s face showed that the meeting was not going to be a happy one.

  ‘Is there any link to these men?’ Ægir Lárusson demanded in a tone caustic enough to strip paint from the wall.

  ‘Not as such,’ Már Einarsson replied.

  ‘And what does that mean, or is it just bullshit?’

  Már winced. People with political rather than ministry backgrounds could be tiresomely rude. ‘It means that as far as we know, there are no links.’

  ‘As far as you know? So you mean there could be? What am I going to tell my boy in there when he’s up on his hind legs and one of those hairy-legged lesbians asks him straight out if those four terrorists came to Iceland?’

  ‘There was no evidence that they were terrorists,’ Már protested. The man was simply too crude.

  ‘Or if the press get hold of even a whisper of this?’ Ægir’s voice was rough, with a scratched quality that reminded Már of fingernails scraping down a wall. His face was redder than Már had ever seen in a man who was seldom far from an angry outburst.

  ‘Listen. There’s one of those lesbians with hairy armpits in the office next to mine. She’s the human rights and gender equality officer, and if she gets a sniff of this, even a hint, she’ll raise the roof, and I personally will ensure that your pickled testicles are lovingly put in a jar for your wife to keep by her bed as a shrivelled memento of what could have been. Understand? Now, will you tell me just what “as far as we know” means in plain language?’

  Már took a deep breath. ‘There’s nothing on paper. Not a scrap. I’ve checked records and been through the archives. There were phone conversations at the time. There are no notes and no memos here. I can’t speak for the minister,’ he said in an attempt to hold his own.

  ‘I’ll speak for my boy. But?’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I can see it in your face. You were about to say “but . . .” weren’t you? So, but what?’

  Már took a deeper breath. ‘There were emails. I’ve already done some housekeeping on that score. There’s nothing here. But . . .’

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Ægir snapped.

  ‘There’s a laptop. It went missing.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not long ago. A few days before Christmas.’

  The expected outburst didn’t materialize. Instead, there was an even more disturbing silence while Ægir sat down and placed his hands together on the desk, intertwining his fingers. ‘Then I would suggest, Már, that you and your people set about finding that laptop with all due speed. That is, providing your wife doesn’t want to abandon every ambition she has of arranging the seating plans at ambassadorial dinners in Paris or Washington one day in the distant future. Because the alternative is that she might end up as a fishery officer’s wife in Bolungarvík, possibly in the not-too-distant future.’

  ‘I have already . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me what you’ve done,’ Ægir cut in. ‘Just let me know when it’s fixed.’

  The girl looked uncomfortable in the shabby magnolia-painted canteen that contrasted with the opulence of the hotel’s lobby and sumptuous rooms. Gunna smiled and wished that Yngvi would stop fidgeting.

  ‘Hæ, my name’s Gunnhildur Gísladóttir and I’m a detective sergeant in the city police. What’s your name?’

  ‘Valeria Hákonarson,’ the girl replied uncertainly through dark eyes that flickered towards Yngvi in his suit, which was beginning to look a lot less smart than it had a few hours earlier.

  ‘Where are you from, Valeria?’ Gunna asked. ‘You speak Icelandic well enough, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m from Romania, but I’ve been here for a few years,’ she replied in passable Icelandic, but with a distinct accent. ‘My husband’s Icelandic.’

  ‘Been working here long?’

  ‘Two years,’ she said, her eyes flickering towards Yngvi again.

  ‘All right, I’d like you simply to take me throu
gh what happened today. No pressure, I just want you to describe what you did and what you saw, that’s all.’

  Valeria took a deep breath and collected her thoughts. ‘I knocked and there was no answer. So I knocked again. Still no answer, so I call out, “Chambermaid”, and open the door. I go into the corridor and the light is off, so I go into the room and the man is there on the bed,’ she explained with a curl of her lip.

  ‘Did you touch anything?’

  ‘Just the light switch in the hall, I think.’

  ‘You touched the body?’

  ‘I touch here,’ Valeria said with a shudder and put a hand to her neck. ‘Check for heart. Nothing, then call for help.’

  ‘Who did you call?’

  ‘Ástrós, the supervisor. She was in the linen cupboard down the hall and came straight away. She saw the guy on the bed and called Yngvi,’ she said, nodding at Yngvi as he sat gloomily twisting his fingers in knots.

  Gunna nodded. ‘Apart from the man on the bed, was there anything that you noticed was out of place?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I was only in there a few moments.’

  ‘All right, then. Thank you, Valeria, that’ll do. My colleague will scan your fingerprints before you leave so that we can identify which are your prints in the room.’

  ‘Then I can go now?’ Valeria asked, relieved.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Just speak to my colleague, the tall youngish guy, and he’ll do the fingerprint scan for you.’ Gunna turned to Yngvi as Valeria left the room. ‘Is Ástrós about anywhere?’

  ‘I’ll get her,’ Yngvi said, half-standing until Gunna waved him to sit down.

  ‘No big hurry; I need a statement from you as well. I take it Ástrós alerted you?’

  ‘She did. We have these bleep machines so the managers and supervisors can be located. Ástrós bleeped me and I was there a minute later.’