Summerchill

by Quentin Bates

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m going to leave your phone and the keys right there. If you want to come and get them and call the police or an ambulance, then that’s up to you. But leave it ten minutes. I’ll be over there by the road and if I see you come and get it too early, I’ll just take them with me. Understood?’

  Stefán gulped and closed his eyes. ‘Understood.’

  The Pajero wasn’t the most economical thing on four wheels, but it was comfortable, and having something bigger made a difference to the hour’s commute each way in the winter, though the fuel costs were a worry and Gunna once again told herself to count the diesel as the price of peace and quiet in her coastal refuge away from the city.

  She was on Reykjanesbraut at just over the speed limit when her phone buzzed. She cursed for a moment that she had, as usual, left her earpiece on her desk at work and picked it up, hoping there were no patrols about at that hour of the morning.

  ‘Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Siggi at comms here. The phone you wanted tracked popped up about half an hour ago. Thought you might like to know.’

  ‘Stefán Ingason’s phone, you mean?’

  ‘That’s the one. He’s somewhere in Hvalfjördur, and he’s made one call.’

  ‘You tracked it?’

  Gunna heard Siggi laugh. ‘Didn’t need to. He was calling us.’

  ‘What? 112?’

  ‘That’s it. He’s injured, or so he says; he asked for an ambulance. Says he thinks he’s on the road on the north side of Hvalfjördur near the Grundartangi plant.’

  ‘Thinks? There’s an ambulance from Akranes on the way?’

  ‘Yep, and a squad car. They’ll be there in five minutes.’

  ‘OK. Let me know. I’ll be at Hverfisgata in twenty minutes. Call Helgi and let him know as well, will you?’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And can you pass a message to Unnur at the station on Borgarnes for me? I don’t have her number with me.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Tell her to get a squad car out to the place in Kaldidalur right away. There’s already an alert out for Logi Gunnarsson’s car so she should have all the details.’

  ‘No problem, will do.’

  Gunna cursed and tried to think. Had Logi and Stefán met, and Stefán come off worse? It seemed unlikely, considering Stefán’s formidable fighting skills and track record of breaking noses. But then again, Logi would be a tougher nut to crack than either Brynja or Danni, and a man forced into a corner could stoop to desperate measures.

  She was at the Bústadavegur lights when the phone buzzed again.

  ‘Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Hæ. Unnur here. Your hoodlum is on his way to hospital. They’re going straight to the National Hospital with him as it looks difficult.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Not life-threatening, but unusual. He’s had his hand nailed to a plank.’

  ‘What? Nailed? Good grief . . . Can you get someone up to Kaldidalur right away? I’m certain the man Stefán was expecting to beat the shit out of is or was at that building project. But be careful, don’t take any chances. There’s a possibility he may be armed.’

  ‘With a firearm? Don’t you think he would have used it before?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Gunna said, holding the phone to her ear with difficulty as the traffic moved off. ‘But there was a report of a shooting a few days ago, which we weren’t able to confirm. If in doubt, back off and call the heavy brigade. Listen, I’ll be at Hverfisgata in ten minutes. Can I call you back?’

  ‘Do that. My officer should be able to report back within twenty minutes or so and let me know if he’s there or not.’

  They spilled out of the van, yawning in unison. Only Hassan, the dark-eyed Moroccan, had even noticed that Tadeusz had stopped the van to pick up Logi while the others dozed in the back.

  ‘Logi, what’s happening?’ Tadeusz asked, clearly concerned.

  ‘I had to take care of some business and now that it’s taken care of, I’m away.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yep. Nothing to hang around for. If you speak to your cousin Veronika, tell her I’ll be in touch in a few days.’

  Tadeusz’s mouth opened in surprise. ‘You really mean it?’

  ‘I don’t fuck about, Tadeusz. And it’s not safe for me to hang around here.’

  ‘All right. I’ll email her tonight.’

  Logi grinned and Tadeusz had the feeling that a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  ‘She’s not good looking, is she?’

  Tadeusz shook his head. ‘Logi, she’s the same age as my mother and she has three sons who are bigger than you are.’

  ‘Sounds good. No complications, then. Listen, my tools are upstairs. They’re yours.’

  ‘Until you come back,’ Tadeusz said, taken aback.

  ‘We’ll see. That’s not going to be soon, I hope.’

  He put out a hand and Tadeusz eyed it for a moment before grasping it. He put a hand on Logi’s shoulder.

  ‘Be careful, Logi. But enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Give my regards to Pétur when he gets here, and my apologies. If there’s any money due to me, ask him to give it to my old woman, not that she’ll be impressed.’

  Tadeusz watched the pickup disappear in a trail of summer dust, and it was only when it had gone that he realized it was heading in the wrong direction, away from the main road leading to Reykjavík. He walked back to the site, where the crew was carrying materials inside while one crouched over a stove to make the first coffee of the day. In the distance a cloud of dust on the road indicated a visitor and Tadeusz watched it approach until the police 4x4 pulled up in a flurry of sliding gravel and a young officer jumped out.

  ‘G’day. I’m looking for Logi Gunnarsson. I hear he’s working here?’

  ‘Sorry, Polish,’ Tadeusz replied. ‘You speak English?’

  The officer repeated his question in quick English and Tadeusz made a play of looking around.

  ‘Logi not here today. He was here yesterday, but his truck is no there.’ He spread his palms helplessly to the sky.

  ‘But he has been working here?’

  ‘Yes. But not today,’ Tadeusz repeated, waving an arm towards the site. ‘No truck, so no Logi.’

  Gunna privately wanted to fend off rising panic. Her landline and mobile were ringing at the same time while what she really wanted was a moment’s quiet to collect her thoughts.

  ‘Gunnhildur’s phone,’ Helgi said calmly, answering her desk phone for her. ‘No, she’s busy at the moment. I’ll ask her to call you back.’

  ‘Gunnhildur,’ she announced into her mobile, relieved that Helgi had taken the other line.

  ‘My officer has been up to Kaldidalur and there’s no Logi Gunnarsson there,’ Unnur said. ‘Just a bunch of Polish workmen who hardly speak any English.’

  ‘Hell and damnation.’ Gunna swore and immediately apologized. ‘Sorry, Unnur. Not your fault. What’s happened with Stefán?’

  ‘He’s on his way to Reykjavík. In fact, he might even be there by now.’

  ‘That’s fine. I can deal with Stefán once he’s at the National Hospital. D’you know what happened to him yet?’

  ‘I spoke to the paramedic and he said it looked like he’d been nailed to a piece of wood with a nail gun. They’re ribbed nails, so very difficult to extract, but it’s a length of wood only a metre or so long, so it went in the car. It’s downright weird, though. I can’t see how he managed to drive like that.’

  ‘If he did drive himself,’ Gunna said. ‘That’s why it’s so urgent to track Logi Gunnarsson down. I gather the two of them have been at loggerheads before, and my feeling is that Stefán may have gone up there to finish things off and that Logi turned the tables on him somehow.’ Gunna saw Ívar Laxdal slide silently into the room with a grim look on his face. ‘By the way, I need the Megane brought down here for forensics to go over, so I’ll get it fetched. Can you make sure nobody goes near it?’

&n
bsp; ‘Will do.’

  ‘Thanks for all you’ve done. I’ll need to speak to the officer who went out to Kaldidalur later today, but I’ll call you back when I have something to be going on with.’

  ‘Gunnhildur,’ Ívar Laxdal said as she put the phone down. ‘Progress?’

  ‘Progress? Confusion, more like. We have one suspect on his way to Reykjavík in an ambulance with his hand nailed to a plank, and the other one’s vanished.’

  ‘Vanished from where?’

  ‘We think an abandoned farm right up in Kaldidalur at the top of Borgarfjördur. I think he was probably there during the night. I’ll give you the details later, but it seems that an altercation took place last night and the injured character is on his way to the National Hospital in an ambulance, and the perpetrator, Logi Gunnarsson, is . . . who knows?’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘A dark blue Toyota pickup, and this is the owner,’ she said, flashing Logi’s driving licence photo up on her screen.

  ‘Number?’

  ‘Here,’ Gunna said, tapping the pad on her desk.

  ‘Leave it with me and I’ll see if I can get the Coast Guard Dash to search for it. Starting in Kaldidalur more than an hour ago? Could be in Reykjavík by now, but I’ll request a search anyway,’ he said, and left the room at the closest thing to a run Gunna had ever seen him achieve.

  Logi didn’t go far. Guessing that there would be a hunt mounted for him soon enough, he took the rarely used country road from the site that took him deep into the countryside along a rutted track, while he prayed the old pickup wouldn’t fail him out here. Soon he was able to head south again towards the city, but instead of heading for the main road, he chose the one that skirted the cobalt blue waters of the Skorradalur lake, meeting the occasional car coming the other way. The bright, dry weather was a concern, as he was easily visible, and the trail of brown dust the wheels kicked up meant he could be seen at a distance.

  He was also tired. It had been a short night’s sleep before Stefán had come creeping along, trying to take him by surprise, and his nerves were still jangling after he had surprised himself by getting the better of the big thug. He really needed to sleep and he was aware that he was struggling to think clearly as he looked for a place to stop out of sight.

  Logi got out and opened the gate. He wasn’t sure if it was private land or what, but the barred gate wasn’t locked, and there were plenty of trees on the other side of the fence. He guessed it was a plantation of some kind as the tall conifers waved gently in the light breeze and stretched almost as high as the power cables strung from the pylons that passed over the little woodland.

  With the gate closed carefully behind him, Logi took the pickup up the path and into a clearing, where he turned it round to face the road with the car tucked as tight into the trees and as far out of sight as possible.

  Then he stretched out across the two front seats, stuck his feet out of the open passenger window and was asleep in seconds.

  It wasn’t until well into the afternoon that Gunna was able to get to the National Hospital, where Stefán sat dazed and drugged, his left hand held awkwardly.

  ‘Remember me?’ Gunna asked, standing over him, fists on her hips.

  ‘The fat bitch cop,’ Stefán whispered.

  ‘That’s right. And now you’re going to tell me your life story,’ she said, swinging a chair across and planting herself on it.

  ‘You don’t have anything on me. I haven’t done anything.’

  Gunna pointed to his damaged hand. ‘That’s why somebody nail-gunned your hand to a plank? I’m sure that happens all the time and there has to be an innocent explanation. If that’s the case, I’m really looking forward to hearing it. Right handed, are you, Stefán?’

  ‘Yeah. Why?’

  ‘I’d love to know how you managed to nail your own right hand to a plank. That really must take skill.’

  ‘It was an accident. I dropped it.’

  ‘And where’s this nail gun now? Did a passing fairy whisk it away and hide it in the hills? Where’s Logi?’

  Stefán started at the mention of Logi’s name.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said, and winced. ‘I mean, I don’t know any Logi.’

  ‘I’m not convinced. Now, let’s backtrack a little, shall we? Saturday evening, tell me what you did.’

  ‘I was at Aníta Sól’s place. She made some dinner, we watched the TV for a while and I stayed the night. Didn’t go out until the next morning.’

  ‘What was on the TV?’

  Stefán hesitated for a tell-tale moment. ‘It was a DVD. We watched a Die Hard movie.’

  ‘Which one?’

  He paused again. ‘Three, I think. They’re all the same anyway.’

  ‘And what was for dinner? What did Aníta Sól cook for you?’

  ‘Pork chops,’ he said after a moment. ‘With sugar potatoes and gravy.’

  ‘Old-fashioned stuff. And who washed up?’

  ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ Gunna said. ‘Who washed up?’

  ‘She did. You want to know who was on top as well?’ he sneered.

  ‘That’s surprising, because we have a reliable sighting of that Megane you’ve been driving since Saturday morning, when Benni at Car World lent it to you, near Ellidavatn lake at around ten on Saturday evening, which is a good twenty-minute drive from where Aníta Sól lives, and I’d be very interested to know how you came by that injury to your upper arm on the same day. The doctor who examined you when you came in with a nail through your hand said it looked like a gunshot wound. So, Stefán, who was the shooter? Logi?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Logi’s the gentleman I believe nailed your hand to a piece of wood last night and left you sitting in your borrowed car by the roadside. Incidentally, your friend Benni has been fired from his job and the elderly lady who owns the car is delighted because Car World has no choice but to buy the car from her at the price they had valued it at. So maybe we do have a few winners,’ Gunna said. ‘But apart from that, let’s backtrack a little further, shall we? Thursday evening.’

  Stefán’s eyes swivelled in alarm, in spite of the painkillers.

  ‘Tell me about Thursday.’

  ‘I had a class at the gym until ten. Then I went home, watched the TV, went to sleep.’

  ‘What was on TV that night?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I had the TV on, but I didn’t take much notice of it.’

  ‘So what were you doing?’

  Stefán waved his good hand in panic. ‘I don’t know, just hanging, I suppose.’

  ‘So you didn’t meet Axel Rútur that night? After your class, maybe? Did he come to the gym?’

  ‘No, not that night. We didn’t interfere with each other’s classes. I’d take one for him and he’d take one of mine sometimes, but that’s it.’

  ‘You filled in for each other? And was it one of his classes you were teaching that night?’

  ‘No, one of mine.’

  ‘Let’s suggest that you followed Axel Rútur that night after your class because you knew where he’d be. I know both of you were doing enforcement work. I believe you followed him, there was an argument, probably over his wife since you were both sleeping with her, and you killed him with a hammer.’

  Stefán made to stand up, but found himself grimacing at the pain in his hand instead. ‘I didn’t touch him, all right?’

  ‘That’s interesting. I’m wondering why there’s a hammer in the back of the Megane, and I’m also wondering what else the forensic examination is going to turn up.’

  ‘I didn’t do it!’

  ‘We’ll see. I didn’t think so to start with, but now the hammer’s turned up in the car you’ve been driving I’m inclined to change my mind,’ Gunna said, reaching for her phone as it buzzed.

  ‘Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Laxdal. Something’s come up. Will you be back at Hverfisgata soon?’

  ‘We have a situati
on,’ Ívar Laxdal said, and Gunna noticed a woman in a leather jacket that didn’t suit her homely face. ‘You know Sædís from narcotics?’

  ‘Hæ, Dísa. Yes, of course we know each other. What’s the problem?’

  Ívar Laxdal sat back and looked from one to the other, silently inviting Sædís to explain.

  ‘It’s about Logi Gunnarsson. I gather from Ívar that he’s a suspect in a case you’re dealing with?’

  ‘That’s right. He’s on the run at the moment and we haven’t been able to catch up with him yet. It looks like he nailed an enforcer’s hand to a plank – in self-defence, probably, but it’s still extreme.’

  Sædís looked shocked. ‘Ah. We have an idea of not so much where Logi is as where he’s going to be soon,’ she said.

  ‘That’s great. How? I’m looking forward to picking him up.’

  Sædís coughed and Ívar Laxdal looked at the ceiling. ‘You tell her,’ he said.

  ‘Logi has been doing some work for the Undertakers.’

  ‘The bike gang in Gardabær?’

  ‘The same. Actually he’s been doing some legal work for them, or legal as long as the taxman doesn’t find out about him. We have an informer who let us know there’s a new mule going to be making a trip back from Europe in the next day or two. Our guess is that it’s Logi, as we’ve been monitoring a couple of phone numbers, including that of Rafn Sigmarsson, who appears to be the nearest thing the Undertakers have to a strategic director.’

  ‘So my guess is you want me to lay off Logi and let him do his trip to Europe, then you can nab him when he turns up at Keflavík with a kilo of white powder in his suitcase?’

  ‘I have a feeling it’ll be more than that. But yes, that’s the gist of it.’

  Gunna looked at Ívar Laxdal. Her instinct told her that this was wrong, and she tried to gauge Ívar Laxdal’s expression. ‘Ívar, what do you reckon?’

  Ívar Laxdal let his chair snap upright and slapped his hands onto the desk. ‘It goes against the grain to let him walk, it really does. But you have your perpetrator, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I thought so at first, but now I’m not convinced. I have a strong feeling that Logi may well be our man, although I’m not sure we can prove it.’