Chilled to the Bone

by Quentin Bates

  They had been friends long before they’d become the unlikely couple their friends saw them as. Their long acquaintance and the disparity in their ages gave them a closeness but also a distance that Hekla valued. She knew Pétur worried that one day she’d leave with a man closer to her own age and interests. She had sometimes scolded him for what she felt was a lack of trust, but then had to remind herself that the lack of trust could be justified. She hoped he knew nothing of the occasional adventures she’d indulged in with like-minded people Pétur would never be able to connect with. Those erotic adventures had eventually become the lucrative sideline that kept the family on an even keel financially, and as domination had become work before desperation had driven her to rob a few clients, her own desire for it had faded, although, she reminded herself, her expertise was undiminished.

  Hekla brewed coffee and enjoyed the silence. Normally the house echoed with the games and activities of her two robust younger children, while her stepdaughter Sif was the quiet one of the house, an intense, withdrawn girl who kept to her own strange hours. Hekla had tried to connect with her, but felt that she had failed to reach the girl who now spent most of her time either in her room or staying with friends closer to college in Reykjavík. Hekla wondered if Sif had a boyfriend among the circle of odd friends she occasionally mentioned. She felt hurt and disappointed that Sif hadn’t allowed her well-meaning stepmother past her defences. Or maybe there were no defences? Perhaps there were things that Sif just didn’t concern herself with.

  In the early darkness she could see the lights of Reykjavík in the distance across the bay and her thoughts went back to the day before and the picture of Jóhannes Karlsson in the newspaper. She dug out the paper from the recycling box and smoothed it out on the table in front of her. The fold had creased across the man’s face, a younger, smiling version of the man she had left angrily kicking at his bonds in one of the Gullfoss Hotel’s shabbier rooms. Angry, but very much alive, she recalled.

  Jóhannes Karlsson had been sixty-six years old, according to the obituary that listed his parents, two brothers, a sister and several wives before going on to list his children from two marriages. The man had been wealthy, she assumed. He had sat briefly in Parliament, owned fishing vessels and a factory. According to the newspaper, he had been a wonderful father and grandfather, a much-respected employer and a pillar of the community.

  Not such a wonderful character that he hadn’t been averse to being tied up and whipped hard in a dark hotel room by a strange woman he had asked to talk as dirty as she could, she reflected, wondering what other skeletons might have been in Jóhannes Karlsson’s closet but not made it into the newspaper obituary.

  At any rate, it seemed, her lucrative sideline was at an end. She might have to seek out a proper job at a time when her usual line of work was thin on the ground; living so far from the city was always going to make a regular job in Reykjavík awkward.

  Hekla munched her toast as her thoughts drifted back to the arrogant old man at the Gullfoss Hotel, and the uncomfortable thought occurred to her that his death might have been linked to their session in the hotel room as she groped desperately through her mind for any details. He had been angry enough, but helpless, and his credit and debit cards had been carefully harvested. The old man’s eyes had blazed with fury when he realized he was being robbed rather than given the rough treatment he had asked for so specifically in his emails before the meeting. It had been a pretty good day. The second guy that afternoon had been just as lucrative and a decent enough old boy compared to the one whose obituary she was reading. He was polite enough at least for something of a happy finish before she emptied his wallet. Between them the two wealthy out-of-towners had been skinned for enough to keep the family afloat for several months if they were careful, and Hekla was inclined to keep her head down and stay out of sight.

  She wondered if it was time to delete her listing on personal.is and allow Sonja to cease to exist completely. Hekla poured coffee into two mugs, added milk to both and sugar to one and carried them along the corridor. Alda and Alli were asleep in their bunk beds, and out of habit she listened to their breathing. There was a strip of light from around Sif’s bedroom door, the faint rattle of a keyboard inside and a low rumbling sound. Hekla guessed the girl was playing another of those interminable online games she played with people in Japan or Spain. Pétur turned over in bed as she came into the room; she shrugged the dressing gown off one shoulder and handed him the two mugs.

  ‘There’s sugar in the blue one,’ she said, pleased to see him smile. ‘Sleep all right?’ She asked.

  ‘Yeah, fine. First time for a while.’

  ‘That’s good. Don’t forget your pills.’

  ‘No chance,’ he smiled, counting white tablets into the palm of his hand and washing them down with coffee. ‘Cold out, is it?’

  Helgi had bags under his normally cheerful eyes. He was the kind of man who enjoyed practically any kind of work that was varied and interesting, so it was a surprise to Gunna to see him grumpy and answering questions in monosyllables.

  ‘Can you find out about that car, Helgi?’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘The one that burned out at Grandi yesterday.’

  ‘Car? What does that have to do with the Gullfoss Hotel stuff, for crying out loud?’

  Gunna’s voice hardened. She had never had to pull rank on Helgi in the year they had worked together. ‘Look, just do it, will you? It may have nothing to do with anything, but I want it eliminated. All right?’

  Eiríkur listened to the exchange in confusion, almost as if he had surprised his parents in the middle of an argument.

  ‘And you, Eiríkur, first of all, I want you to start with the credit card statements you got from Jóhannes Karlsson’s son – start looking up those places where his card was used on the day he died. They’re all pricy establishments and hopefully they’ll be able to remember something useful.’

  Eiríkur nodded. ‘All right. I’ll let you know what I find out,’ he said and scuttled from the room without another word.

  Helgi sighed. ‘And you, chief?’ he asked. There was a fatigue in his eyes that hadn’t been there the day before.

  ‘Me? I’m off to meet Magnús Sigmarsson’s girlfriend to start with, and then probably his next-door neighbour again.’

  ‘If you ask me, the key to all this is somewhere in these hotels,’ Helgi said abruptly. ‘I’d bet anything there are staff at these places who know just what’s been going on. I’m not sure that this Sonja could have operated without someone on the inside to smooth the way for her.’

  ‘More than likely, but none of them are saying a word,’ Gunna agreed. ‘Are you all right, Helgi?’

  ‘Yeah. Just had a rough night, that’s all. I’ll see you when I’ve found out about this car.’

  Gústav Freysteinn Bóasson was uneasy. There was something about the hard-faced man in the leather jacket that was both disturbing and intriguing, irresistible qualities that he knew he would later regret his interest in.

  He turned the beermat over in his fingers, inspecting the hotel’s logo on one side and the ‘250k’ that the man had written on the reverse in neat letters, along with the seven digits of a mobile phone number. A quarter of a million krónur wasn’t a lot of money, barely enough to cover the bills for a month in the tiny flat he occupied in the eaves of an old wooden house at the top of Reykjavík’s Thingholt district. On the other hand, times weren’t easy. The company that owned the hotel group had instituted a pay freeze, supposedly across the board, but it was rumoured to apply only to junior staff, and 250,000 tax-free krónur would sit happily in the piggy bank for a rainy day.

  Gussi wondered idly if it would be worth asking for more, maybe enough for a weekend in London and a little culture: the Tate, the Globe, Drury Lane. He sat back and smiled weakly at his daydreams while his thoughts drifted to poor Hekla. A striking and thoroughly talented girl, he remembered. He had to hand it to her, she had worked a
scam that anyone could be proud of. Sadly it was a scheme that couldn’t last in a small place like Reykjavík. In London or even in Copenhagen, she would probably have been able to get away with robbing wealthy elderly men indefinitely, so long as she didn’t do it too often, and as long as her looks lasted. But Gussi reflected that Reykjavík was a terribly provincial city and eventually she would undoubtedly be caught out.

  He stood up and looked out of the narrow window with its view over a slice of the winter city in its shades of dull grey. If he stood with his face close to the window and craned his neck, a partial view of the spire of Hallgrímskirkja could just about be seen. He weighed things up in his mind. It was years since he had last seen the girl, back when she was young and green, before she disappeared from the business. He wasn’t even sure if she had recognized him in his cheap polyester company suit behind the check-in desk on the couple of occasions he had noticed her at the hotel. Probably not, he thought. He was greyer and not as trim as he’d once been, and his heavy horn-framed spectacles were as good a disguise as any.

  It went against the grain to give the girl away to a hoodlum like the hard-faced man who called himself Jón. Jón, he thought, chuckling. The man was no thespian. Any name but the most commonplace one imaginable would have been more convincing. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if he had any obligation to Hekla, apart from the fact that they shared a profession they’d both left, temporarily, he told himself, and the money would come in very useful if he could bargain the man into doubling his offer.

  His mind still wasn’t made up as he left the house huddled in a coat that had once been stylish. It was his day off. He’d meant to sleep late and give himself a few extra hours under the duvet before the switch from a few days of evening shifts to a week of nights. A coffee in town would settle his stomach, he felt, and he could think while he walked through the crisp frost that he hoped would wake him up properly.

  Ægir Lárusson was fuming. There was no mistaking it, and Jóel Ingi could feel his heart pounding at the same time as he told himself not to be frightened of this ugly man with the bad hair and short legs.

  ‘Explain, will you? How the fuck did this happen?’

  ‘Well, it was back in 2009.’

  ‘Before my time, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Before the minister’s time?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So nobody thought to mention this, considering I’ve been sitting here for two long and miserable years surrounded by fuck-witted daddy’s boys in poncy suits?’

  ‘Er . . .’ Jóel Ingi mumbled, remembering Már’s adage as Ægir’s face went even redder. Don’t be scared of Ægir too much as long as he’s shouting. It’s when he goes quiet you should start to worry.

  ‘You mean to tell me that that inquisitive journalist I just laughed at and told to go and screw himself was right on the money after all?’ Ægir roared.

  Jóel Ingi was thankful that the door was closed behind him for a change, although he was sure that every word could be heard in the corridor outside.

  ‘Er, there may be some truth in what he said,’ he mumbled. ‘But there’s nothing he can substantiate, I’m sure.’

  ‘Something about a stolen laptop?’ Ægir asked in a silky voice. Jóel Ingi’s blood ran cold suddenly and his fingers went numb.

  ‘I . . . er, it was misplaced. I have someone working on locating it.’

  ‘The police, or someone else?’

  ‘Someone else. It’s a private investigation.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jóel Ingi ventured. ‘I don’t know who he is and he doesn’t know me or where I work.’

  ‘Ah. That’s the first sensible thing I’ve ever heard you say. Sometimes it’s best not to know things. Such as I haven’t the faintest idea that you lost a ministry laptop containing sensitive information that would crucify the government if it were to come out.’

  ‘It’s secure; password protected.’

  ‘If it’s so secure, how did this kind of crap get out? And when I tell the minister it’s only hearsay when I speak to him in half an hour, can I be sure it’s only a foul rumour put about by the opposition to discredit the government?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it could be that.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ Ægir said, his voice dropping so low that Jóel Ingi strained to hear. ‘To start with, the former minister, your old boss, is a young guy who needs a job and he expects to be in this politics business for a good few years yet. God knows, that brain-dead piece of garbage needs to stay in politics because he sure as hell can’t do anything else.’

  Ægir’s face cracked into a smile and Jóel Ingi felt for a second that the man understood his predicament.

  ‘But, that said, he’s a cunning bastard who knows better than to shit in his own nest. You get my drift? Look, Jóel Ingi, you’re a smart guy. Did well enough at the bank before you were clever enough to get out while the going was good. The government needs young men with good legal minds like yours,’ Ægir said and Jóel Ingi’s brief warm feeling began to evaporate. ‘You’re a civil servant and you people don’t understand politics, do you? You just sit tight and wait for a new man in the job, don’t you? Because that’s the way the game is.’

  Jóel Ingi cleared his throat awkwardly, desperately wondering where this was leading.

  ‘No, don’t answer that, because I know you couldn’t,’ Ægir said without pausing. ‘But what happens is this. If something goes wrong, what we do is blame someone else. First we blame the previous government, of course, for landing us in this mess. And if that doesn’t work, we blame our officials,’ he said, smiling, and slowly pointed a finger at the centre of Jóel Ingi’s fluttering chest.

  ‘You’ve been to Ikea often enough, haven’t you?’ he asked, leaving Jóel Ingi mystified.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘You’ve seen the guy in the paper hat behind the food counter, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Ægir smiled his smooth smile again, transforming his ugly face into a visage of sincerity that any man would trust. ‘Because if you don’t get this fixed quickly and quietly, before I get any more questions from nosy bastard journalists, then that’s the only job that you’ll be able to apply for once you’ve been made redundant. If your personal fuck-up brings down the government and the minister, and results in an international outcry, then I’ll personally make sure that your future lies nowhere more glamorous than deep-frying fucking Swedish meatballs in the Ikea canteen. Clear?’ he snarled, his voice rising once again to a menacing growl. He sat back and Jóel Ingi could see Ægir’s thin lips were white, pressed together in fury as a single blow from one clenched fist landed like a hammer on the desk in front of him, sending a picture in an ornate frame flying so that it landed on its back. The pretty, dark-haired woman in the photograph smiled at the ceiling.

  ‘Now get the fuck out, and I don’t expect to see your stupid, smug face anywhere near me again until you come and tell me that information is safe.’

  Sara’s mother sat tight-lipped, perched on a corner of the sofa while her daughter sobbed in an armchair, her face bloated. Her father stood behind her with his arms folded and a dour look on his face, as if he blamed Magnús for being stupid enough to get himself murdered.

  ‘I have to say I didn’t think much of the lad,’ he said, prompting a further outburst of sobbing from his daughter.

  ‘Sara, I really need you to think back and tell me everything you can,’ Gunna said, certain that there was little the distraught girl would be able to say with her parents in the room.

  ‘Not that I’d have wished anything like this on him,’ Sara’s father continued. ‘A pleasant enough lad, but no energy, I thought.’

  ‘When did you last see Magnús Sigmarsson, Óskar?’ Gunna asked. ‘You clearly didn’t have much time for the man, did you? What were your movements the night before last? Were you here?’

  ‘No. I, er . . . I wen
t out for a couple of hours. I had a class,’ he floundered.

  ‘And someone will confirm that, I hope?’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘In that case, I’d appreciate it if you two would leave me and Sara to talk in private.’

  Sara’s mother stood up stiffly to leave the room and her father grudgingly followed. Gunna could hear them go into the kitchen and stood up herself to shut the door firmly behind them. Sara sobbed and immediately collected herself.

  ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry. It’s been such a shock,’ she gulped.

  ‘I get the impression your parents didn’t approve of Magnús?’

  ‘They thought he wasn’t good enough.’

  ‘So what was the state of your relationship?’

  Sara dabbed her eyes and Gunna could hear a silence from the next room that told her the girl’s parents probably had their ears to the door.

  ‘We had finished,’ Sara said. ‘We had a flat in Grafarvogur, but then I lost my job a few months ago and we couldn’t really afford it any more.’

  ‘So you moved back here? And Magnús?’

  ‘Well. We were going to get a cheaper apartment.’

  ‘The place that Magnús was living in, I suppose. Why didn’t you move in there with him?’

  Sara twisted her fingers and looked down at them. ‘I was going to,’ she said in a small voice, ‘but my parents were really against it, and I didn’t have any money, and they talked me into moving back home. So I did.’

  ‘So you split up with Magnús and moved in with Mum and Dad? How did Magnús take it? Did you continue a relationship with him, or did you break it off?’