Cold Steal

by Quentin Bates

  Sunna María stood with her back to the window, saucer in one flat hand, coffee cup held delicately in the other. She was dressed for business, an ivory blouse buttoned to the neck and a fine silver chain artfully arranged over it.

  ‘Jóhann and I had a row on Friday after you were here, if you really must know,’ she said, and Gunna could sense her gritting her teeth at the admission. ‘Normally that ends with one or other of us storming out, and this time it was him. It’s not the first time and I don’t suppose it’ll be the last.’

  ‘Are you telling me you’re not worried about him?’

  ‘He’s never been away more than twenty-four hours like this. And by the way, I’m checking out of here today and going home.’

  ‘You’re reporting Jóhann as a missing person?’

  ‘Yes. He took his mobile phone, his passport and credit cards, but he should be back by now. I’m hoping he’s fine; he’s probably holed up somewhere comfortable for a few days while his temper settles. He might even be on the next floor,’ Sunna María tittered and the cup in her hand rattled musically against the saucer.

  Gunna stood up. ‘In that case, I’d appreciate it if you could let me know what your movements are. As far as I’m concerned, there’s still an element of danger as the killers of your business partner haven’t been identified.’

  Sunna María flashed pearl-white teeth. ‘Come on. This is Iceland. People don’t kill each other in Iceland.’

  The photograph of the little pile of gold lay on the table between them.

  ‘It was my mother’s,’ Orri said simply, hardly looking at it. ‘I needed the money, so I sold it.’

  ‘This was stolen from a house in Kópavogur a couple of weeks ago. The owner has identified it as hers and we have pictures of her wearing it, which prove it had been in her possession. So how did you get hold of it?’

  ‘Like I said, it was my mother’s and she had it from her mother. They’re both dead now. It came to me from my mum’s estate and I just left it in a drawer for years. Then I needed the money so I sold it.’

  Eiríkur sat back and surveyed Orri Björnsson. There was no bluster to the man, just a quiet, dogged refusal.

  ‘You’re going to have to come up with a much better story than that,’ she said. ‘The evidence is against you. The clasp’s owner has identified beyond any reasonable doubt that it’s hers and she has pictures to prove it.’

  ‘Then the shop has fucked up somehow. I sold this stuff, but I didn’t steal it.’

  ‘The woman in the shop has identified your photo as the seller and we have CCTV images of you going to the shop that bought this stuff.’

  ‘Really? You mean you have some pictures of me walking along a street?’

  ‘Close enough, Orri. It ties in with the shop manager’s statement. So why the false name? Who’s Halldór Birgisson?’

  Tinna looked up from the kitchen cupboards. She had emptied every cupboard and drawer while Geiri watched impassively. There were packets of porridge and the usual items you would expect, as well as exotic things – galangal, chillies and fresh ginger – things that Eiríkur reflected played a limited part in Svala’s cuisine.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Tinna said in answer to Eiríkur’s unspoken question.

  Eiríkur nodded. ‘Living room next.’

  This time they switched roles. Geiri and Tinna together went carefully through every drawer in the old-fashioned dresser while Eiríkur sat with Orri and watched for his reactions while he asked questions.

  ‘So I don’t get a lawyer, then, like they do in the movies?’

  ‘I told you the moment you sat down that you have the right to a lawyer at any stage of the proceedings.’

  Orri shrugged. ‘Whatever. I haven’t been arrested, have I?’

  ‘Not yet. Why did you give a false name to Aunt Bertha when you sold the clasp?’

  ‘I suppose I thought they might declare it to the taxman and I already give the government enough of my cash.’

  ‘Good answer, Orri. But not good enough. You still have to convince me and you haven’t done a great job yet.’

  ‘It was Mum’s. She’s dead now and it came to me.’

  ‘What are these for?’ Eiríkur asked as Geiri placed a set of lock picks on the table.

  Eiríkur thought he saw the briefest flash of concern in Orri’s eyes as he saw the picks, although he hid it well and shrugged.

  ‘I’ve had those for years. Somebody gave them to me and they’ve been in that drawer ever since.’

  ‘Who’s this?’ Eiríkur said, pointing at a picture of a woman with facial features so similar to Orri’s that they had to be relatives. Apart from a Bruce Springsteen poster that Eiríkur had seen tacked to the back of the bathroom door, the woman with her two children in their Sunday best was the only picture in the place that showed any people.

  ‘My sister and her kids,’ Orri said.

  ‘You have a sister? I’m wondering why something like a gold clasp for a set of national dress would go to you rather than to your sister?

  ‘I don’t know. The old woman didn’t give us anything much.’

  ‘When did your mother pass away?’ Eiríkur asked as Geiri went down on hands and knees to check under the sofa

  ‘She didn’t pass away. She rolled a car on Hringbraut and broke her neck when I was seventeen,’ Orri said savagely. ‘She never had a lot of time for us and I don’t miss her, and neither does my sister as far as I know.’

  ‘You work at Green Bay Transport, right?’

  ‘Green Bay Dispatch.’

  ‘What do you do there?’

  ‘Drive the van, drive the truck, drive the forklift, stack boxes on pallets, listen to the old guys whine about how great the old days were. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Done,’ Geiri announced, standing up. ‘Let’s take a quick look at the basement, shall we, before we go to the station?’

  He shivered and gnawed at the fish. Once he had eaten most of it, he knew that he would have to use the strength it gave him to get more from the rack. This time climbing the rough triangular frame at the end was easier and he came down with four fish, which he put on the table in the old kitchen.

  It was the glittering of the intermittent sunshine on the stream as he bent to drink that gave him the idea. He gathered handfuls of dry grass and in the most sheltered spot he could find he made a small pile on top of the dried skin of the cod he had just eaten. Desperately trying to recall what he had learned as a scout fifty years ago, he held his glasses between the sun and the dry grass, experimenting to focus a spot of light and finally watching a wisp of smoke rise from it.

  The grass smoked and died. Jóhann cast about for more grass, added it to the pile and tried again, cursing as the sun vanished behind a cloud. He waited impatiently for it to return, collecting handfuls of heather and some crumbling sticks of rotten timber from under the racks of fish.

  As the sun appeared again, he set to, kneeling over the kindling and concentrating on keeping the bright spot focused in one place until it smoked and smouldered. Remembering long-forgotten skills, he lay full length with his face inches from the ember and blew the gentlest of breaths on it until tiny flames appeared, which he fed with more clumps of grass. Finally tongues of flame ate hungrily at the handfuls of dry heather he added to the little fire.

  The slivers of wood were quickly devoured and Jóhann realized that the fire would burn itself out if there were no more fuel. In spite of being light-headed from hunger, he hurried back to the racks and gathered as many splinters and offcuts of wood as he could, using his shirt held out in front of him as a basket.

  The flames demanded constant attention. More grass and more heather were needed constantly until the fire gained strength enough for bigger pieces of wood to be added and these sent up acrid smoke. Inside the old house he hunted for anything that would burn and a smashed window frame in one room became more fuel as he huddled as close to the glowing warmth for as long as he could, eventually retreating
inside as darkness fell and wrapping himself in the overcoat once again.

  Gunna found the number of the taxi she had written down and it was the work of a few phone calls to track down Snorri Helgason. She found him at the bus station with a mug of coffee and a doughnut that he had sliced carefully into cubes.

  He shrugged as Gunna showed him Jóhann Hjálmarsson’s picture.

  ‘Maybe. It’s been busy these last few days. You sure it was me?’ He asked with a supreme lack of interest, popping a morsel of decimated doughnut into his mouth.

  ‘Friday morning, outside the Harbourside Hotel. A few minutes after eleven.’

  ‘Could be, darling. What’s he done?’

  ‘I’m not your darling and if you don’t start remembering, we might have to take this down to the station.’

  ‘Whoa, no offence, darling.’ Snorri Helgason’s eyes widened and he rapidly backed off. ‘I’m due back on the rank in ten minutes when the bus from the north gets in.’

  ‘Then start remembering quickly.’

  ‘Picked him up outside the hotel, like you said.’

  ‘A call or were you waiting?’

  ‘I was just in the queue. I stopped and he got right in.’

  ‘Did he say anything? Where did he want to go?’

  ‘That’s all he said. “Ármúli, thanks.” Then he sat there with his nose in his phone and didn’t look up until I asked where on Ármúli he wanted to be dropped off.’

  ‘And?’ Gunna said, not bothering to mask her impatience.

  ‘He didn’t want Ármúli at all,’ he said with satisfaction, chewing another chunk of doughnut. ‘He wanted to go round the corner and I dropped him off outside that big block on the end instead, the one next to the hotel there.’

  ‘Did you see him go inside?’

  Snorri Helgason shook his head. ‘He paid in cash and walked off, still looking at his phone. He went that way, but I didn’t see him go inside.’

  Gunna’s heart sank. The block was at least nine storeys high and she guessed that it housed dozens of offices, any one of which could be where Jóhann Hjálmarsson had been heading.

  ‘And he didn’t say anything?’

  ‘Only “keep the change”. That’s all.’ He smiled, showing off a gap between his teeth. ‘So what’s he done?’

  ‘Listen to the lunchtime news and you’ll find out,’ Gunna said, handing him a card. ‘If you remember anything else, call me.’

  The first security guard was an overweight young man with dead eyes. His reservations were overcome by Gunna’s warrant card, throwing his hands in the air in despair and calling his supervisor when asked for security tapes. Ten minutes later a flustered but slightly less corpulent young man appeared, shaking off a jacket that was a size too big for him. He checked Gunna’s identification before closing the door to pointedly shut out his junior colleague.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ He smiled ingratiatingly.

  Gunna produced the picture of Jóhann Hjálmarsson. ‘I have reason to believe this gentlemen walked in here a few minutes after eleven o’clock on Friday morning last week. So, to start with I want to get that confirmed as I see you have a CCTV camera covering the entrance, and then I’d like to know where he went and what he did.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ The young man’s fingers flickered over a computer keyboard and he called up footage of the lobby. People walked back and forth with speeded-up steps, oddly foreshortened by the camera looking down on them. It took a few minutes to identify Jóhann Hjálmarsson walking in with a jaunty step and a smile on his face. Gunna was surprised that a man with a price on his head should look so cheerful as he walked through a set of revolving doors and out of the frame.

  ‘Now what? Where’s the next camera?’

  ‘By the lifts,’ the young man answered and the image switched to a bank of doors as people entered and left. He speeded up the replay and caught Jóhann Hjálmarsson entering a lift on his own. ‘There you are. He went upstairs at . . .’ He peered at the screen. ‘Eleven fifty-one.’

  ‘And you have cameras on the other floors as well?’

  ‘No, we don’t. Individual companies can do that for themselves. We just watch who goes in and out. What happens up there is their business.’

  ‘So there’s no way of telling which floor he went to?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Hell.’

  ‘Well, not as such,’ he said, and he went back to the computer. He recalled the footage of Jóhann Hjálmarsson getting into the lift and ran it slowly. The doors closed and he pointed at the indicator.

  ‘Your friend got in the lift on his own, so you can see the light above the door? That’s the number of the floor.’

  ‘I can’t see the number, it’s not clear enough.’

  ‘Look. It’s on one for ground there. So if you watch the indicator, it flashes every time there’s a new number.’

  They both watched intently as he slowed the replay down and counted.

  ‘I make that eight,’ he said finally. ‘It hasn’t moved for a while, which means the lift stays where the last person got out, until it’s called to go either up or down.’

  ‘And what’s on the eight floor?’

  Orri sat back in the interview room chair, his hands in the pockets of his fleece.

  ‘Nice sweater,’ Eiríkur said, looking at the logo on the right side of the chest. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘It’s my girlfriend’s. It’s too big for her, so I wear it.’

  ‘It’s distinctive, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Orri said, the distrust in his voice coming to the surface as he wondered where this was leading.

  ‘I have it on very good authority that someone wearing a fleece exactly like this one, including that distinctive logo, was seen on six occasions walking along Kópavogsbakki in the last couple of weeks.’

  ‘Kópavogsbakki? Where’s that?’

  It was Eiríkur’s turn to sit back. ‘Nice try, Orri. You’re a driver. Don’t try telling me you don’t know every street and alley in the city, including Kópavogsbakki.’

  ‘So what? There must be hundreds of fleeces like this one around.’

  ‘Not so. The Kjölur Equestrian Club in Selfoss had a hundred made about five years ago and they still have about half of them. So that means there are another fifty in circulation, and more than half of those women, I’d guess. That means that at a rough guess there are twenty-odd men with fleeces like this, most of them living near Selfoss and with no reason to be anywhere near Kópavogsbakki.’

  Orri shrugged and said nothing. Eiríkur leaned forward and looked into his eyes. A flash of uncertainty appeared and was immediately hidden as Orri regained his impassive expression.

  ‘I need to borrow your fleece for a few minutes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We need to compare it with what our witness claims to have seen.’

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘Up to you. You haven’t been arrested, so you have every right to,’ Eiríkur said. ‘But it would confirm for me that you’re lying through your teeth.’

  With a sigh of resignation, Orri pulled off his fleece, emptying his pockets of keys and oddments as he did so, and hung it from one finger to hold it out.

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be right back.’

  ‘No luck,’ he said. ‘I’ve watched the whole footage for the rest of the day and the guy you’re looking for hasn’t come out of the building. At least not before five o’clock.’

  ‘There’s only one exit?’

  ‘There’s a service entrance.’

  ‘And a fire escape?’

  ‘The service exit is the fire escape,’ he said. ‘It’s an old building.’

  ‘Right, but first you were about to tell me who’s on the eighth floor of this building.’

  Gunna left the lift and stepped into a wide corridor with glass doors to the right and left. On one side the door had ‘Ath!’ etched in
to the glass in a splash of lettering that looked as if it had been done with a broad brush. On the other side the opaque glass of the door was etched with an image of a schooner under full sail, which she guessed must have cost a fortune. There was a group of companies sharing office space and the names were immediately ones she recognized with a feeling that she should have spread her net wider and earlier.

  The doors were firmly locked on Blue Steel Investment, Sólfell Investment, Blue Steel Management, Bright Spring Shipping and Sólfell Property. She rattled the door and rapped on the glass, but although there was a distant light on somewhere deep inside, nobody came to answer the door. A distant telephone that nobody answered rang for a long time inside and finally gave up. After half a minute’s silence the ringing resumed, and Gunna decided not to wait for anyone to answer it.

  Back downstairs the security guard had reached the end of the day’s recordings.

  ‘The door’s locked at six and people use the service entrance to get out,’ he explained.

  ‘And if someone needs to get in?’

  ‘Then they call whoever they want to see, and they’ll have to go down and open the service door for them.’

  ‘And there’s no CCTV at the back.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. People aren’t supposed to use the service entrance for day-to-day stuff, and hardly anyone does anyway, so I suppose we don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Maybe you should. After all, it’s the people who don’t want to be seen that are the ones you might want to check up on, not the law-abiding types at the front.’

  Orri got out of the police car and slammed the door without a word. He scanned the car park and saw with relief that Lísa’s car was nowhere to be seen. He had no desire to spend any time evading her questions and made for the stairs just as the door of the bottom floor flat creaked open.

  ‘The police were here today,’ the sharp-faced woman who lived there told him with satisfaction. ‘I suppose it was you they were looking for?’