Chilled to the Bone

by Quentin Bates

  ‘So we’ll just keep to the old-fashioned way, shall we?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten minutes every other Saturday night before I put my curlers in, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. Something like that,’ he said with a grin and Gunna could hear relief in his voice, which he tried to conceal.

  She stood up and looked at her watch. ‘Well, as officially I don’t have to be in at eight tomorrow, and Laufey’s at Sigrún’s place, we can give it a trial run if you feel like it.’

  Steini’s grin spread across his face. ‘In ten minutes before the curlers go in? I should be able to manage that.’

  6

  Tuesday

  It took hours for the doctor to clean up Baddó’s wound as best he could, lips pursed in concentration and frustration.

  ‘It’s going to be painful,’ he said long after midnight when the job was done, pushing his glasses back up his nose with the back of his hand. The nurse who had assisted whispered in the doctor’s ear and he nodded.

  ‘It’s going to leave you with something of a scar,’ he told Baddó sorrowfully, who wanted to snap back that the guys in the boots and combats had probably been paid a decent wedge of cash to do just that.

  ‘I know, doctor,’ he sighed, his face stiff and numb with local anaesthetic. ‘Looks like my catwalk days might be over, doesn’t it?’

  The doctor ignored the quip, although Baddó could see that it had been registered and wasn’t appreciated. He stood up and looked down at him disapprovingly. ‘I’d like to keep you in overnight for observation,’ he said. ‘And I believe there are a couple of police officers who would like a word with you.’

  ‘It was an accident, doc. Honestly,’ Baddó told him. ‘I had the knife in my hand and fell down. It caught my face as I tried to break my fall,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ the doctor replied absently. ‘That’s as may be,’ he said, making it clear that he didn’t believe a word of what Baddó was saying, ‘but we have an obligation to report anything that could possibly be an injury with an edged weapon to the police and they’ll be here to speak to you in a moment.’

  The doctor left the room and Baddó stood up to get a look in a mirror for the first time.

  ‘Shit!’

  The wound’s ragged edges had been fixed together as well as possible with tape sutures and Baddó was shocked at how raw the cut looked, not least as part of his beard had been roughly shaved away to give access to it.

  ‘If you’d like to come this way, Jón,’ the nurse suggested as she put her face around the door, beckoning him to follow. Baddó heard a blast of laughter from down the corridor as a door quickly opened and closed, cutting it off abruptly. ‘There are two police officers here to speak to you, but I’ll get you bedded down and then I’ll go and fetch them. All right?’

  Baddó nodded, too numb and tired even to check out the nurse’s figure as he followed her along the passage, his leather jacket over his arm. He sniffed the musty air of the small room she showed him into.

  ‘You can take a shower, but you might want to be careful of your face. The sutures won’t come off, but you really don’t want to get your face wet for a day or two,’ she said, disappearing behind the door as it shut behind her, leaving Baddó alone.

  He sat down on the crisp white bed, wondering how long he would be able to pretend to be Jón Daníelsson, a name he had picked from the phone book, along with an address and a national ID number that he’d stored away, ready to reel off when needed. He quickly ran the ten digits over in his mind to ensure they were there, ready for use. Baddó wondered if he should just get into bed and be asleep before the cops arrived. He suddenly felt exhausted, as if he’d run a race, and the bed looked so inviting. But thinking back to the attack cleared his mind and the rekindled anger at being jumped by two thickheads made him want to punch the walls.

  He took a final look in the mirror, grimaced at the sight of the ragged cut running along his jaw and made a decision. He slipped out of the room, being careful not to let the door slam. Baddó could hear the soles of his trainers squeaking on the floor, so he trod carefully as he pulled on his jacket. The place was quiet apart from a buzz of conversation from the staff room, from where he’d heard a gale of laughter earlier. He tiptoed past, catching sight of some police uniforms inside the half-open door.

  He headed for where he reckoned the door should be, guided by instinct and a faint whiff of fresh air, but a rush of hurrying feet saw him smartly step to one side into a doorway as the doctor who’d treated him and two nurses hurried past in response to an unheard summons.

  He emerged into a waiting area, which was empty but for two figures surrounded by white coats. Baddó watched and stopped himself from smiling. It hurt his face, but he couldn’t help grinning at the sight of the heavy man in a blood-soaked pair of combat trousers being lifted onto a stretcher, clearly not far from losing consciousness, while his distraught friend looked on.

  Baddó walked purposefully and quietly towards the entrance, where he turned and stood in the doorway. The victim’s friend looked on helplessly as the big man was wheeled away at a smart pace. He sank into a seat where he buried his head in his hands for a moment. Baddó watched as the man looked up; he could see the tears in his eyes, followed by the shock of recognition as he saw Baddó looking at him with a malevolent gleam in his eye.

  The man’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to shout, stopping only when he realized there was nobody present to shout to. He was unable to drop his eyes as Baddó put a finger to his throat, made a slow, deliberate cutting movement and pointed at the man transfixed in the plastic chair with shock all over his face.

  Baddó turned and was gone into the night. As he walked quickly away from the hospital entrance and past a waiting taxi with its driver asleep behind the wheel, he felt a surge of fierce pleasure at having terrified one of the idiots who’d jumped him. He would have to take a taxi, but not somewhere so obvious, he thought, deciding to flag one down closer to town.

  ‘What a beautiful morning,’ Helgi observed as the very first glimmerings of daylight appeared, mirrored in the national hospital’s windows. ‘You weren’t asleep when I called, were you?’

  ‘Of course I was. What the hell do you expect me to be doing at six thirty when I’m not due on shift until ten. What’s it all about, then?’

  Helgi grunted as he pushed through a heavy pair of swing doors. ‘A dead stoner. Name of Ásmundur Ásuson. Record as long as your arm. A bit of strong-arm stuff, but mostly dope and petty thievery,’ he explained, walking fast to keep up with Gunna’s pace.

  ‘You realize I’ve been to this hospital to see dead people more times than living ones? That’s not great, is it? I know where the morgue is, but I couldn’t find much else here without having to ask. What happened to this character?’

  Helgi opened a second set of doors and the temperature dropped as they stepped into the mortuary.

  ‘It’s not so much this guy as his friend you’ll be wanting a word with,’ Helgi said, and turned as the doctor who’d been on duty that night came in. The fatigue in his face was plain.

  ‘Not much to tell you, I’m afraid. You’ll get the post-mortem results soon enough, but that’s not my department,’ he said with resigned distaste.

  ‘You treated this man when he was admitted? When was that?’

  ‘Just after two this morning. He appeared in casualty out of the blue. His friend brought him in a taxi, not an ambulance.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Gunna asked.

  The doctor jerked a thumb at a steel table with a sheet over it. He strode over to it and lifted one edge, exposing a thigh with a deep gash that extended out of sight behind the leg.

  ‘That’s the cause of death?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘He left it too late. It looks like this happened some hours before he turned up here. A combination of shock and blood loss, probably some self-administered medication as well, and lights out,’ he said, snapping his fingers. ‘If he�
��d come in right away, we’d have stitched him up, kept him in for a few days and he’d have had a limp but he’d still be alive.’

  Gunna moved to the end of the table and lifted the sheet covering the man’s head. She looked carefully but quickly, and shook her head as she let the sheet fall. ‘Nope. Not someone I recognize. Helgi?’

  ‘Ási Ásu? Yeah. I remember him from my days in uniform. Never out of trouble. I’d be amazed if the post-mortem doesn’t tell us he was buzzing merrily when he went.’

  ‘And did anyone speak to him? Any idea of when and where this happened?’

  ‘We got his name and ID number,’ the doctor said, frowning. ‘He wasn’t properly conscious and we were more concerned with keeping him alive than getting his life history. Look, do you need me any more? I’d very much like to get out of here sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you should have questioned him. There were some police officers here last night, weren’t there?’

  ‘There were,’ Helgi said. ‘Tinna Sigvalds and Big Geiri were on duty and were called in to interview another suspected knife wound.’

  ‘Then this gentleman turned up and things suddenly got very busy,’ the doctor said. ‘I saw to the other casualty as well and I gather the man in question discharged himself, even though we were going to keep him in for observation.’

  ‘Someone else was cut?’ Gunna asked and looked sideways at Helgi with a frown. ‘Serious?’

  The doctor scowled. ‘Said he tripped with a knife in his hand, but that’s bullshit. Someone clearly cut the man’s face with a double-loaded knife.’

  Helgi looked blank. ‘Double-loaded?’

  ‘You’ve not heard of that? It’s an ordinary carpet knife, but they put two blades in it instead of one. It’s common enough in other countries, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it here.’

  ‘Why do they do that?’

  The doctor sighed, as if losing patience with a child who’s slow on the uptake. ‘It means there are two cuts side by side. It’s very difficult to stitch and it leaves a much nastier scar.’ A thin smile crossed his face. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll have much of a problem finding him. His face is covered in tape sutures and there’s a cut along his jaw and cheek this long,’ he said, holding his thumb and forefinger to his face to indicate a four-inch gash.

  ‘But I take it that as this guy wasn’t in such a bad way you didn’t get a name out of him?’

  Jóel Ingi’s neck was stiff. He had been awake for hours, lying on the white sofa underneath an old duvet he had found in a cupboard in the spare room. He could have slept in the single bed in there, but he’d felt that sleeping on the sofa instead would help emphasize his disgruntlement at being excluded from sleeping with his wife under their twin crisp eiderdown duvets.

  He lay wrapped in the scratchy old duvet, a relic of happy student days, and stared at the ceiling, wondering how long Agnes would sleep. Eventually he gave up and made for the shower, emerging twenty minutes later fresher and ready to try and repair the damage of the day before.

  He gently pushed open the bedroom door and saw Agnes was still hunched in bed in a posture that indicated she had no intention of being disturbed. Jóel Ingi dressed in silence, taking one of the sober suits he kept for the office. He could tell that Agnes was awake: the timbre of her breathing told him she was waiting for him to leave the room before she made a move herself.

  He took his time, knowing it would irritate her, before taking a seat at the breakfast bar and putting a spoonful of honey into a mug of weak tea. His head felt heavy, as if the air were crackling with an approaching storm, and he thought back to the previous day.

  What if he had been wrong? What if that nosy woman had lied? Maybe she wasn’t being paid by Agnes to keep tabs on him? In that case, who had sent her? The horror of the idea flooded him and he found himself absently stirring his tea long after the honey had dissolved. He left his slices of toast, his appetite gone, reminding himself that the damned laptop still needed to be located before either his work or his marriage could be satisfactory again.

  ‘Good morning.’ Her formal greeting was a rebuke in itself.

  ‘Agnes. About yesterday,’ he began, and felt sick at his own words. ‘I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.’

  She shrugged and he could see her porcelain features set in the same suppressed anger as yesterday.

  ‘I’m going away,’ she said, dicing an apple with a razor of a kitchen knife. ‘With Sunna and the children. Just so you know.’

  ‘All right. When?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘Going for long?’

  Jóel Ingi watched, fascinated by the deft movements of the knife as a banana and slices of pineapple got the same treatment as the apple, before she replied.

  ‘I’m not sure. I need a little space.’

  Jóel Ingi knew better than to argue and waited for the sudden screech of the blender to stop before saying anything more. He nodded as Agnes poured the thick pulp into a bowl and added a spoonful of yoghurt, stirring slowly.

  ‘Will you text me when you get there? How long will you be staying?’

  Agnes shrugged. ‘A few days, maybe,’ she said absently.

  ‘Look, about yesterday . . .’ Jóel Ingi said before Agnes cut him off.

  ‘Shhhh. It’s not important.’

  ‘Hólmgeir,’ Gunna read off the report in front of her.

  ‘Yeah?’ The sharp-faced little man with greasy hair which fell into his eyes responded.

  ‘You’re Hólmgeir Sigurjónsson and you have a record that stretches back to kindergarten as far as I can see. Your friend Ásmundur Ásuson’s dead and you’re going to tell me just what happened.’

  Hólmgeir’s eyes shifted rapidly from side to side and he licked his dry lips. Gunna could sense the wheels turning in his mind as the man quickly considered how much he could get away with keeping back. He’d made no obvious reaction to the news of his friend’s death and he reminded Gunna of a rat in a trap.

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? You turned up with Ási at casualty in a taxi. How did he get cut like that, and why didn’t he get to casualty earlier?’

  ‘I don’t know what happened. He just appeared at home like that.’

  ‘Where’s “at home”?’

  ‘My place. Ási rents—’ he stopped and corrected himself. ‘He rented a room from me.’

  ‘So you don’t know what happened to him? You weren’t with him when this happened?’ Gunna asked. ‘Because I’m damn sure you know just what went on.’

  Hólmgeir licked his lips; even without the trembling of his fidgeting hands, his nerves were palpable. ‘I don’t know anything. Ási turned up with blood all down his leg and I tried to get him to go to hospital but he wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘You could have called an ambulance, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, yeah. There was that,’ he admitted.

  ‘So why didn’t you?’

  ‘Ási wrapped it all up in a bandage and said he’d be all right. He had a spliff and went to sleep on the couch and I reckoned he knew what he was doing so I went out for a bit.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And when I came back he wouldn’t wake up properly. He was spaced, woozy. So I got him in a taxi and took him to casualty.’

  ‘Who slashed Ási’s leg, Hólmgeir? Who did he have a fight with?’

  ‘I don’t know! I wasn’t there,’ he said, his voice rising in pitch with anger and excitement. ‘Look, where’s my lawyer?’

  Gunna sat back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Why? You’re not under arrest, not yet, at any rate. Why do you reckon you might need a lawyer?’

  ‘I don’t trust you bastards.’

  Gunna opened her mouth to speak and stopped as Helgi quietly came in. Hólmgeir’s mouth shut like a door as Helgi leaned over Gunna’s shoulder and murmured in her ear.

  Hólmgeir’s eyes swive
lled from one to the other. His growing panic could not be mistaken and he struggled to hear the muttered conversation.

  ‘Yeah. No problem,’ Gunna said finally and Helgi straightened, picked up Hólmgeir’s file from the desk in front of her and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  ‘What’s he taken that for?’

  ‘Just an administrative matter,’ Gunna said. ‘Hólmgeir, are you sure there isn’t anything you want to tell me?’ She asked, standing up and smiling in a way that she could see set his pulse pounding with nerves. ‘Don’t go away.’

  She hurried across the lobby and reached the lift with only a second to spare.

  ‘Hæ, Jóel Ingi,’ Katrín giggled, breathing hard after her headlong run for the lift. She opened her thick coat and fanned herself. ‘Phew . . . not used to exercise, I’m afraid,’ she said, slowly unwinding her scarf and smiling at him, a rosy glow in her plump cheeks.

  ‘You’re very smart today,’ she said, looking sideways at his suit while Jóel Ingi tried to stop himself looking down at her billowing chest, which seemed to be trying to escape from the low-slung blouse imprisoning it.

  ‘Coming out for lunch with the rest of us today?’ she asked. ‘Már was talking about a place by the harbour that does a lunchtime seafood buffet.’

  Jóel Ingi scowled and quickly adjusted his features into the best smile he could manage. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I have a few meetings this morning and I might have to miss lunch if they overrun.’

  Katrín sighed. ‘I do like a man who’s dedicated to his work,’ she said. ‘But not too dedicated. Bye!’ She grinned, stepping out of the lift as the door hissed open on the third floor and leaving him alone in the steel box, wishing that he could stay there for the rest of the day.

  He took a deep breath as the door shut and a moment later it slid back again to reveal Már looking at him.

  ‘Stay there,’ he ordered, stepping quickly into the lift and stabbing the button for the ground floor. ‘You’re in the shit. Ægir’s had some journalist from Reykjavík Voice on the phone already this morning; he chewed him out and said no comment, but he’s on the warpath right now.’