Chilled to the Bone

by Quentin Bates

  Sif rooted through the bag the laptop had come in. It was a good one, she noticed, not new by any means, but classy leather rather than some cheap crap. She was wondering who Jóel Ingi Bragason might be when she found a little wallet of business cards. Peering closely at the tiny image on the cards of a man in glasses and a grey suit, and noticing the crest of some government department next to it, she immediately dismissed Jóel Ingi Bragason as being of no interest whatsoever. However, something about the man might yield a clue to his password, so Sif dug deeper into the laptop’s case.

  ‘I’m off home as well,’ Ívar Laxdal said, ‘so we can talk and walk.’

  He shoved open the door of his rarely used office and was on his way down the corridor, buttoning his coat as he went, before Gunna had taken his words in. She hurried after him.

  ‘Jóhannes Karlsson, the haddock baron from Húsavík. Shot his bolt at the glorious Gullfoss Hotel in more ways than one. How the hell is there a connection with this lad the dog walker found this morning?’

  ‘There isn’t one. Or at least so far there isn’t one that’s staring me in the face.’

  ‘But it smells that way, does it, Gunnhildur?’

  ‘That’s about it. It stinks.’

  A hint of a smile played around Ívar Laxdal’s black-bristled face as he punched a button to summon the lift. ‘Well, you’ve been right once or twice before when the rest of us thought you were losing the plot, so the benefit of the doubt is yours,’ he said, and Gunna recognized that this was high praise from a man so sparing with his compliments.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said finally. ‘There are links, of course, but they’re tenuous so far. I have a feeling there’s a whole racket going on that we haven’t had a clue about, and it may be that the haddock baron giving up the ghost on the job is what brings it to our attention.’

  ‘Right. Good.’ He stepped into the lift with Gunna behind him. Standing close together, she was uncomfortably reminded that Ívar Laxdal was half a head shorter than her, putting his eyes in line with her chin. ‘I can authorize overtime,’ he said after they had travelled to the ground floor in silence. ‘But keep it within reasonable limits, would you?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘More bodies, or what?’

  ‘Nothing right now. Eiríkur and Helgi will do just fine for the moment. But it would be helpful if you could keep Sævaldur off my back.’

  Gunna had already clashed more than once with the force’s newest chief inspector, Sævaldur Bogason, and while her team wasn’t part of his immediate department, she suspected that he wanted it to be.

  ‘Don’t you worry about Sævaldur. I’m trying to persuade him to apply for a post in Afghanistan. He won’t go for it, as the man hasn’t a shred of imagination between his flapping ears,’ he said. Gunna was almost shocked to hear him speak so freely about another officer and wondered if he were joking. ‘I’ll leave you to it as much as I can, but . . .’ he said.

  ‘Is this where you tell me that Jóhannes Karlsson has influential friends who don’t want to see any dirty washing aired in public?’

  Ívar Laxdal flashed a sharp look at Gunna as they stepped out into the cold of the car park, and she wondered if it had been a remark too far.

  ‘No,’ he said with a chuckle in his baritone. ‘Not yet, at any rate. I know very little about the man, but I’d guess that as he owned quotas, he probably had some influential friends. I understand that he dabbled in politics, and that he was probably a mason, a councillor and a pillar of his community, so I’m already being given encouragement for this to be dealt with promptly. Nothing for you to worry about, but the quicker you can get this wrapped up, the better.’

  He clicked the fob of his car keys and a brooding black car on the far side flashed its lights in recognition. This time Ívar Laxdal really did laugh, albeit fleetingly. ‘I hear congratulations are in order. Is that right?’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Gunna asked, nonplussed.

  ‘Imminent grandparenthood, I’m told.’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes. Thanks. But I didn’t have anything to do with it and wasn’t asked if I wanted to become a grandmother.’

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ Ívar Laxdal said almost wistfully. ‘It’s rather enjoyable, in fact. I’ll see you in the morning,’ he added, stalking across the car park in the dark and leaving Gunna with an incongruous mental image of Ívar Laxdal dandling an infant on his knee.

  The car stank and Baddó was concerned that the reek of petrol would cling to him as well. He stood upwind as the flames began to lick at the car, waiting for the fire to catch properly. He backed away, expecting a sudden blaze, and was rewarded with a burst of flame and a roar of sound as the fire caught the petrol the seats had been soaked with, sucking in oxygen and illuminating the rusted containers and abandoned vehicles on what was left of the shrinking patch of wasteground near Reykjavík’s harbour.

  Baddó turned and walked quickly, making his way along the unlit path and around the next corner towards the new shops and, ironically, he thought, the Harbourside Hotel, where the car’s owner had worked until his unfortunate accident. He was still cursing the interfering dog walker who’d found the boy’s body out there in the lava fields, where he should have been able to lie for years without anyone stumbling across him. He was also cursing himself for not making the whimpering fool of a boy walk a few hundred metres further through the lava crags before wringing his miserable neck.

  Leaving the darkness, Baddó went along the wall at his side; as far as anyone watching would be concerned, he was just another city dweller walking home from one of the new harbour-area shops.

  He would have preferred to dispose of the car somewhere more discreet, preferably somewhere out of town that would take the fire brigade half an hour to reach, by which time there wouldn’t be much of a fire left to put out. But with no other transport and no appetite for asking that boneheaded thug Hinrik to help him out, it had to be settled somewhere uncomfortably public. He just hoped that the intense heat generated by ten litres of unleaded splashed over the interior would be enough to make the car unidentifiable, at least until he had finished the job in hand and figured out how to make a little extra from it that Hinrik wouldn’t expect or even need to know about.

  This time he needed to run; he felt he had to exhaust himself physically to match the emotional turmoil within. He stared at the screens above the bank of running machines, the chainsaw heavy metal that accompanied him bearing no relation to the subtitled news footage on the screens as he felt his legs ache and complain, forcing himself to ignore the pain until he could run no further. He collapsed onto a bench and chugged a bottle of chilled water, the muscles in his legs trembling.

  He closed his eyes, held his head in his hands and made himself stand up. Half an hour later, showered and clean, but no less tense, he shouldered his sports bag and made his way to the lobby, stopping short in abrupt amazement as a heavy figure in a parka and a baseball cap appeared in his field of vision.

  Unable to restrain himself, he marched up to the figure leaning against the counter and grabbed a shoulder of the oversized parka, hauling its wearer around in an undignified half-circle.

  ‘Hey, what the hell . . . ?’

  ‘Why are you following me?’ He yelled, trembling as his fingers clung to the slippery material, shaking it until the figure’s baseball cap fell off to reveal blonde curls and an earring.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, you idiot?’ the girl shot back. ‘I don’t know who you are.’

  ‘You’ve been following me. Yesterday in town, and the day before. Why? Who are you? Who sent you?’

  ‘Look, pal. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just come here to train, the same as you,’ the girl protested and stood up to her full height, equalling his, as a pair of bulky young men in shorts and tight singlets appeared on either side of him.

  ‘Anything the
matter?’ one of the two lifeguards asked politely.

  ‘Yeah, this perv just came and grabbed my coat,’ the girl said quickly as the woman behind the counter nodded sadly in corroboration.

  ‘I think you’d best leave, don’t you?’

  ‘No, you’ve got it wrong. She’s been harassing me,’ Jóel Ingi protested.

  The two men looked at each other.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the second one said, looking at the blonde girl. ‘D’you want us to call the police?’

  ‘No . . . it must be just a mistake.’

  ‘You’d best be leaving, pal, before someone does call the law,’ the first one said slowly.

  The two men nodded and between them they marched him to the door by his arms, Jóel Ingi’s feet half dragging on the floor until he found himself outside with the cold air rapidly clearing his head as he asked himself what he had done.

  The two lifeguards stood inside the glass door and watched as Jóel Ingi got into his car and sped faster than was wise through the slush out of the car park towards the main road, his tyres kicking up a spray of grit and water as it passed. The last they saw of him was an upraised finger with a furious face behind it as he passed, and a battered Renault that bumped along in its wake and followed at a discreet distance.

  Baddó’s phone buzzed as he walked past Ellingsen’s darkened windows. He looked at the screen and saw only ‘private number calling’. Hoping that Sonja had decided to call after all, he replied.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, whose phone is this?’ a woman’s voice asked. It was a strong voice, not deep, but a voice with a mind of its own, Baddó decided.

  ‘This is Jón,’ Baddó said. ‘Is that Sonja?’ he asked and immediately kicked himself for asking so quickly. There was a long silence and he wondered if she was still on the line.

  ‘Could be. Why?’

  ‘It’s just that I’m looking for some information and I think you might be able to help me,’ Baddó said. ‘I could put a little business your way,’ he added with a cheerful chuckle just as two fire engines with howling sirens passed him on their way – surprisingly promptly, he noted – to the blazing car. He hoped they wouldn’t put it out too fast, although he was sure that any fingerprints would have been scorched off by now.

  ‘What sort of business?’

  ‘Let’s say I think you could operate more effectively as part of a team.’

  ‘What sort of team do you have in mind?’

  ‘So you’re not retired, then?’ Baddó asked.

  ‘Let’s say I’m not tiring myself out.’

  ‘Well, if you’re interested, there are opportunities for both of us.’ There was another long silence and Baddó again wondered if she was still on the line. ‘Hæ. Still there?’

  ‘Yeah. Let me think it over.’

  ‘Up to you. No pressure,’ Baddó said. ‘Can you give me your number? I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk more.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so,’ the voice said decisively. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll think things through and get back to you,’ she said and Baddó found himself looking at a lost connection.

  Gunna bounced her phone in her hand and wondered to whom she had been speaking. Jón was presumably not the man’s real name any more than hers was Sonja. She was relieved that she had called herself; Eiríkur or Helgi would never have been able to carry off that kind of pretence.

  She dialled quickly and there was an instant response from the police communications centre.

  ‘Hæ, is that Siggi? It’s Gunnhildur here.’

  ‘Hang on, I’ll just get him.’

  She pondered whether or not to call ‘Jón’ back. He seemed keen and interested to meet Sonja, as indeed was Gunna, but she wondered how to go about setting up a meeting without being identified as a police officer.

  ‘Gunna, sweetheart, how have you been?’ A robust voice boomed in her ear.

  ‘Not so bad. Listen, did you have something going out with lights and bells just now? About three minutes ago?’

  ‘Yeah. Two appliances went out in response to a fire down at Grandi. Sounds like some kids set fire to an abandoned car.’

  ‘At Grandi, you said?’

  ‘That’s it, the wasteground at the back of the harbour. It was too close to the oil tanks down there for comfort, so we got the engines down there quick.’

  ‘All right. All out now, is it?’

  ‘Should be.’

  ‘Fair enough. Can you put a trace on a phone for me?’

  ‘I’ll do what I can. Give me the number will you? I’ll get on to the phone company.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s almost certainly an unregistered mobile,’ Gunna said, reading out the number of Baddó’s phone. ‘It would be handy to know where this guy is, if you could do that.’

  She leaned forward and switched on the engine, yawning as she did so.

  ‘Been a long day, has it?’ Siggi asked, hearing the yawn.

  ‘It has, I’m afraid, and I’ve had enough for today. I’ll check in with you tomorrow about that number.’

  The front of the house was dark and Gunna’s heart sank. Increasingly, these days she came home to an empty house, and although she would have welcomed the idea a few years ago when both Gísli and Laufey were still under her feet, now that there was a level of peace and quiet, she wasn’t comfortable with it.

  Once inside, a sliver of light and the muttering of a television coming from under Laufey’s bedroom door told her that she wasn’t alone after all. Gunna filled and switched on the coffee machine, started up the laptop Gísli had left behind when he bought himself a new one and wondered whether or not to knock on Laufey’s door.

  She decided against it, went to the bathroom to turn on the shower and was soon letting the scalding water untangle some of her knotted muscles as it pummelled her shoulders. When she emerged wrapped in a towel, the coffee maker had filled the kitchen with an aroma that made the place seem like home again, and the mutter from Laufey’s room had become an insistent beat. Dried and dressed in the baggy, comfortable clothes she felt at home in, she poured herself a mug of coffee and sat in front of the laptop, feeling her stomach make its first complaints and wondering if she should suggest a takeaway to Laufey.

  Gunna tapped at the laptop and watched as personal.is loaded, a nondescript website she had heard of but never looked at. Jokes about the desperate people looking there and on other similar sites for companionship, or something more basic, had been enough to extinguish any interest.

  She browsed curiously through the registry of users, startled to see that the site had several thousand with a sidebar listing those online and ready to interact. Blue for men, she guessed, pink for women. She wondered what the purple indicators meant, until she explored a few of their profiles and realized they were couples, mostly looking for adventurous young singles or like-minded couples.

  Gunna shook her head in disbelief at the idea that all these people were online on a Sunday at dinner time. The registry revealed several Sonjas, and she wondered if TinySonja or Sonja2 were who she was looking for. Frustrated at being told that a direct message could not be sent to either of them unless she set up a profile of her own, Gunna baulked at the idea. She read through both profiles a second time and saw that they had a coded email address within the details; she wrote a short message to each, asking for them to get in touch and including her mobile number.

  The sheer variety of requirements and requests on the personal.is pages was bewildering, as Gunna read through the profiles and requests for men looking for women and vice versa, men looking for men, women seeking women and couples looking for discreet adventures. She had to resort to a search engine to decode some of the English language terms and unfamiliar acronyms, and in some cases she was still unsure of what they actually meant, although she looked approvingly at some of the tools available and decided that a fully adjustable spreader bar in black lacquered steel might make a useful addition to the police’s armoury for
dealing with difficult drunks.

  The key clicked in the lock and there was a blast of cold air as the front door opened and quickly shut again. Gunna thankfully closed personal.is and opened her email page instead as the double thump of Steini’s boots landing on the floor in the hall preceded him.

  ‘Hæ,’ he said. ‘Home alone?’

  ‘Don’t think so. There’s a light in Laufey’s room but I don’t know if she’s in.’

  ‘And Drífa?’

  ‘No idea. Her car’s there so she may be in Gísli’s room, or she might be watching the TV with Laufey, or they might have both walked down to Sigrún’s place. I’ve not been home long and I haven’t seen either of them.’

  ‘Hungry?’ He dropped a plastic bag in the sink, washed his hands and dried them on a cloth before bending down to look over her shoulder. ‘Not doing work stuff, are you?’ he asked.

  Gunna could feel the droplets of moisture clinging to his moustache, which was on her neck as he wrapped his arms around her and the chair at once, one hand sliding inside her T-shirt.

  ‘Yes, unfortunately,’ she said. ‘What’s going on here? Feeling lucky, are you?’

  ‘Who knows? When a man arrives with a bag of fresh fish and is ready to cook it, there’s no knowing how lucky he can get.’

  Gunna stretched, feeling the ache in her legs and shoulders, leaning back in the chair as his arms wrapped themselves a little further around her. ‘What sort of fish? Boiled haddock’s not going to get you far, you know.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ he assured her, withdrawing the exploring hand and standing up. ‘But it’ll be something good, so stay hungry.’

  5

  Monday

  The feeling of being watched stayed with her and she was unable to shake it off. Hekla woke early and made her way silently to the kitchen while Pétur slept. The pain that prevented him from sleeping soundly had receded for a few days, kept at bay by painkillers, which he had finally and grudgingly resorted to. The last year had been a difficult one. Pétur’s health problems had caused him to retreat increasingly into a world of his own, especially when the pain in his leg kept him awake at nights, and he would sleep much of the day. Sometimes Hekla felt as if she’d become a lone parent, missing Pétur’s company and the activity and companionship they’d enjoyed before the accident had half crippled him.