Orri sat silent and the lawyer pursed her lips in frustration.
‘Enough,’ Gunna decided and stood up. ‘Eiríkur, will you finish up, please, and then escort this gentleman upstairs to the executive suite?’
Orri opened his mouth and glanced at the lawyer sitting next to him. ‘I, er . . .’ he mumbled.
Gunna sat down again and glared at him. ‘What?’
‘I want to speak to you in private. Just you and me.’
‘Orri,’ the lawyer began. ‘This isn’t clever.’
‘Without prejudice,’ Orri said. ‘That’s the legal term, isn’t it? I have stuff to tell you, but no recordings, no witnesses. Just you and me.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘I’m advising you against this,’ the lawyer said sharply.
Orri shrugged, looking Gunna in the eyes. ‘Up to you. I’ll go off to Litla Hraun and keep quiet if you don’t want to hear it.’
Gunna hurtled out of the city with the wipers fending off the spring drizzle that had left the roads slippery with water. Passing through Gardabær she overtook more cars than she should have done and told herself to slow down, rattling a fingertip rhythm on the wheel as she waited by the lights outside Hafnarfjördur.
She curbed her impatience on the slope and put her foot down to surge past a truck the moment the road was wide enough, again reminding herself that there was no need for this kind of speed, but frustrated with herself that her mood demanded it.
She crunched the car to a halt in the gravel outside Green Bay Dispatch and hurried inside, spying out Dóri immediately a second before he saw her and grimaced at the sight of her.
‘Dóri, a word,’ Gunna demanded and swept him along in her wake to the canteen. ‘Out of here please, gentlemen,’ she ordered unzipping her coat and opening her wallet to show them her warrant card.
‘When did you last see Alex?’ Gunna fired at Dóri as he limped into the canteen and she shut the door behind him.
He looked at her suspiciously, pushing his wire-framed glasses up to perch them on his thinning crown.
‘Alex was here on Friday. He hasn’t shown up since.’
‘He hasn’t asked for any holiday or anything like that?’
‘No, nothing. Why? Where is he?’
‘And Orri? When did he leave yesterday?’
‘He went home as usual yesterday and hasn’t been back. What’s going on?’
‘Just so you know, Orri is in a cell right now and Alex is on a slab at the National Hospital. He was murdered some time at the weekend, I guess, and his body was dumped in a trench that was about to become the foundations of a new house.’
Dóri went pale and sat down, shaking his head in short, sharp movements, as if unable to comprehend.
‘Is there anyone here that Alex used to go around with?’ Gunna demanded. ‘Any special friends? How long had he worked here? And while I’m asking awkward questions, who is Juris?’
‘To start with,’ Dóri said, ‘I’ll answer your questions in order if I may. Alex and Orri are the youngest staff here and they both kept fairly much to themselves. Alex has always been a sociable sort of character, but no. No particular friends as far as I’m aware. He started here a little under two years ago. Juris is a young man who used to work here and who left suddenly. One day he was here and the next he wasn’t. He left a forwarding address for his outstanding wages to be paid by cheque, which as far as I know was done. What else would you like to know?’
‘Alex spoke reasonable Icelandic, right? So he must have been here in Iceland for a few years. Do you know where he was working before?’
‘Building work. That’s all I know. But his work permit was in order.’
‘Orri and Alex, how do they get on?’
‘Well enough, I think. I gather there has been some tension on occasions, but nothing they weren’t able to sort out between themselves. We’re all adults here, you know. It comes from having an older workforce.’ Dóri looked dazed. ‘This is serious stuff, isn’t it? What happened to Alex?’
Gunna extracted a print from her pocket. ‘Recognize this face?’
‘Sorry.’ Dóri shook his head. ‘Should I?’
‘Not necessarily. It was a long shot,’ Gunna said and poured herself a coffee from the flask on the table without being invited. ‘What did you make of him? Be honest.’
‘Alex? A sweet enough boy, but he was a crook.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I’m an observer of people, officer. I haven’t always been a clerk in a transport company, you know. I was a teacher for many years. You grow a sixth sense after dealing with adolescents for all those years and I was rarely wrong about which ones would come off the rails somewhere. I could sense it with Alex. He was charming enough, but abrasive at the same time. My suspicion is that he was shipping things that weren’t part of the company’s regular business.’
‘Stolen goods? Drugs?’
‘I don’t know. I need this job so I take care not to ask.’
‘What brought Alex to work here?’
‘He just appeared and I was told he was the new driver.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Óli Hansen. He owns this company. Or rather, he’s one of the owners now,’ he said as Gunna raised an enquiring eyebrow and he continued. ‘None of us have been told this, you understand, but we see things change and it’s easy enough to find this stuff out if you know where to look. The majority shareholder now is a gentleman called—’
‘Boris Vadluga,’ Gunna said, finishing his sentence for him.
He felt unaccountably warm, for the first time in days. He carefully opened one eye and found himself somewhere dark, but swaddled in something heavy. His stomach was complaining and he realized that the smell of food had woken him.
Jóhann put out a hand and felt for the side of whatever it was he was lying on. He found to his alarm that his clothes had disappeared and the rough blanket he had under him was making him itch. His head swam as he put out a foot to the floor, but he pulled himself upright, his eyesight getting used to the gloom.
He found that he could stand, although his feet were sore. A table in the middle of the room had the remains of a meal on it and his hands shook as he poured milk into a cup and drank it, savouring the sweetness of it. He immediately felt stronger and let himself drop onto a chair. The rest of the table swam in to view and he wondered what had become of his glasses as he squinted at the loaf of bread in a plastic bag, a pot of yoghurt and some slices of cheese under a plastic wrapper.
The taste of the cheese was so sublime it almost brought tears to Jóhann’s eyes. He tried to remember how long he had been without food other than the dried fish he’d pulled from the drying racks where he’d woken up, how many days ago now?
Sunna María had lost none of her usual bluster as she sat, straight-backed, in the interview room. ‘I suppose you want me to answer all kinds of questions, do you? If that’s not Jóhann you found under the concrete, then I have no idea who it is.’
‘Were you expecting it to be Jóhann?’
Her cheeks reddened in anger. ‘Of course not. Who is it, anyway?’
‘Who was it, you mean,’ Gunna said, opening her notes and taking out a file. She gave Sunna María a print of Alex’s face, enlarged from the driving licence in his pocket, gazing into the camera with a louche smile. ‘Anyone you recognize?’
This time the reaction looked genuine enough, but the momentary hesitation and the flash of uncertainty in her eyes told Gunna that Sunna María was stalling. She handed it back with a shake of the head. ‘No idea, sorry.’
‘Alexander Snetzler,’ Gunna said and thought she detected a tremor in Sunna María’s face as she continued. ‘He’s a Latvian citizen. Any ideas?’
‘None whatever.’
‘Vilhelm Thorleifsson and Elvar Pálsson were doing a lot of business in Latvia, weren’t they, with a company that you and your husband were partners in? I understand that S
ólfell Investment crashed leaving a lot of people out of pocket. They are both dead, your husband has vanished, there’s a dead criminal in the foundations of a house you’re building and you’re telling me you have no idea what’s going on? Don’t give me bullshit, Sunna María. I can smell it a mile off.’
Sunna María froze and Gunna wondered how many years it might have been since anyone had spoken to her so abruptly.
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jóhann handled our business affairs.’
‘Except that he didn’t. You were at university with Vilhelm Thorleifsson and Elvar Pálsson. You all did business studies, but they both dropped out and you finished with a very good degree. So don’t pretend to me that all this business stuff is too complicated for you. Who is it that has a grudge against you? Who killed your friend and has probably done the same with your husband in a slightly more subtle way? And why do a not very good job of hiding the body of a small-time Latvian criminal in the basement of your house? I’m wondering if whoever did that actually wanted to get rid of the body or if they wanted to implicate you?’
Sunna María’s mouth hung open. ‘I didn’t think of it like that,’ she said with an effort and after a painfully long pause.
‘Where is Boris Vadluga?’
‘Latvia, I guess. He travels a lot.’
‘And do his travels coincide with Jóhann’s, maybe?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘You and he are pretty good friends, I understand?’
‘He’s a business acquaintance. That’s all.’
‘You seem happy to do him favours, such as supplying an apartment for his staff to live in.’
‘Well, yes. Look, it wasn’t easy for foreigners to buy property in Iceland back then and he was looking for somewhere for his staff. So we bought the place and rent it to Boris.’
‘Who’s this?’ Gunna laid the blurred screengrab of the hook-nosed man on the table.
‘I haven’t a clue,’ Sunna María said immediately, eyes darting to one side.
‘Bullshit. I think you know exactly who this is, and I suspect that this person also knows exactly where your husband or his remains are to be found.’
Sunna María burst into tears. ‘You don’t understand,’ she sniffed eventually.
‘I’m starting to think I do. Where did the money for all this construction come from?’ Gunna demanded. ‘Your husband pulling teeth doesn’t pay for this kind of venture. So come clean, where did it all come from? Who did you rip off?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘In that case, who are the two men who rented the house at Kópavogsbakki fifty, the ones you told the estate agent were friends of yours so he didn’t need to go through any formalities?’
‘That was Jóhann.’
‘No. Óttar Sveinsson the estate agent told me himself: “Sunna María told me she knew them and we could skip the formalities.” That was you. Someone was brutally assaulted in that house just before those people left. Who were they?’
‘Boris asked if we could accommodate some friends of his. I don’t know any names.’
‘They paid? Bank transfer? Cash? To you?’
Sunna María nodded and Gunna tapped the picture of the hook-nosed man on the desk. ‘This man?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So why did they repaint the whole basement from floor to ceiling?’
‘What?’
‘You heard. The whole of the basement was repainted from top to bottom. Walls, floor, ceiling. Óttar Sveinsson says he had nothing to do with it. So why would two tenants do a thing like that?’
True to his word, Eiríkur had tracked Emilija down and she was sitting fearfully with him in the section’s hired Polo as Gunna drove in.
‘Why am I here?’ Emilija asked as Gunna approached. ‘I have done nothing wrong.’
Gunna took her arm and propelled her through the door into the building, with Eiríkur behind them stumbling over the steps in his efforts to keep up. Instead of using a formal interview room, Gunna sat Emilija down in a quiet corner. The now much-folded picture came out and she turned first to Eiríkur.
‘I sent this to our liaison officer in Riga yesterday but haven’t heard back yet. Check if there’s been a reply, will you? We really need to know who this man is,’ she said and Eiríkur departed at a trot.
‘Now, Emilija. When did you last see Alex?’
‘Not for a long time.’
‘Alex is dead.’
Emilija’s eyes bulged. She stared at Gunna, who watched her shake her head violently and her small fists clenched into tight balls.
‘No! Alex? How?’
‘He was murdered. His body was found late last night.’
‘Who did this?’
‘I don’t believe your ex-husband is involved, although he certainly had a grudge against Alex. When did you see Alex last?’ Gunna repeated.
The reply came grudgingly. ‘Sunday morning. He stayed the night.’
‘You didn’t see him or hear from him after that?’
‘No. I told him not to come back,’ she said in a blank voice. ‘But I expected he would. Alex doesn’t give up.’
Gunna considered what Emilija had said. Alex had been alive on Sunday morning. His body had been uncovered on Tuesday night and must have been placed in the trench before the concrete had been poured the day before. He had probably been murdered within a few hours of leaving Emilija’s bed, she decided.
‘Did Alex say anything? Did he mention where he was going?’
‘I thought he was going to work as usual.’
‘Was there anything unusual that morning? Tell me what happened and what he said.’
Emilija flared in resentment. ‘It’s not every day a man stays with me, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘It’s not,’ Gunna snapped. ‘It’s Alex I want to know about. Why did you tell him not to come back?’
Emilija’s anger subsided. She sighed. ‘I suppose I can tell you. He was doing something illegal. I don’t know what. Alex always had money, more than enough money. More money than someone in that kind of shit work should have.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He used to buy presents for the children, really expensive toys, until I said stop. He used to buy me things. Never anything useful, but perfume, that sort of stuff.’ She reddened. ‘Underwear,’ she whispered. ‘Expensive. Designer. But it wasn’t comfortable so I never wore it.’
‘I understand,’ Gunna said. ‘What else?’
‘He didn’t work long hours. Half days mostly. So where did all that cash come from?’
‘You never asked him?’
‘Why?’ Emilija snorted in derision. ‘Why ask a question when you know the answer will be a lie? Sometimes it’s best not to know. So I didn’t ask where his money came from.’
‘Drugs?’
‘I suppose so.’ Emilija shook her head. ‘But what do I know? I’ve been wrong so many times that you shouldn’t take my word for much,’ she added bitterly. ‘I would never have dreamed for a moment that Ingi would stoop as low as he did, unless it was his bitch of a mother pushing him.’
‘Alex was driving the day you last saw him?’
‘Of course. He had his keys in his hand as he left. He had a red Accord. I don’t know the number, quite an old one.’
‘What time did he leave you on Sunday morning?’
‘Around nine thirty. That’s when I left for work as well. I know he should have been at work earlier, but being on time never worried Alex much.’
Jóhann had no idea what had become of his own clothes, but he pulled on the outsized shirt and trousers that had been left folded by the couch he had slept on. With food in his belly, not too much as he knew that overeating would be as bad in his condition as starvation, he hobbled around the chalet on painful feet. It was tiny, one room lined with bunks and bookshelves, and with a small bathroom at one side and a verandah at the front.
; He had no desire to go past the door, and simply watched the rain course down the window against the unbroken blackness beyond, revelling in being warm and no longer hungry. He had found his glasses, phone and wallet on the windowsill, but there was no charger to be found that would fit, so his phone remained obstinately dead, refusing to give him more than a second of life before the red warning flagged up on the screen and it died yet again.
In the chalet’s only comfortable chair, he sat hunched with his arms around his legs, reflecting that a week before he would have been frantic at not having checked his email for more than a few hours, but now he was thankful to have simply escaped the ravens; the thought of them made him shudder.
‘You’re awake, then?’
The door banged open and an elderly man and a younger woman came in, kicking off their boots by the door.
‘Don’t stand up, man,’ the woman said, as Jóhann struggled to get to his feet. ‘Helga Dís,’ she said, giving him a hand to shake and then opening the fridge to throw packets onto the table.
‘Jóhann Hjálmarsson.’
‘Bjarni,’ the man said, proffering a calloused hand. ‘You look better now than you did last night, I must say.’
‘I don’t remember. Where was I? Was I still conscious?’
‘You were in the middle of the road, spark out as far as I could see, like a bundle of rags with that old coat wrapped around your head. What the hell happened to you, then? How did you find your way up here?’
‘I’m really not sure. What day is it?’
‘Wednesday today.’
‘Five days,’ Jóhann said, suddenly animated. ‘It’s been five days since I was abducted.’
‘What’s that you say? Kidnapped?’
‘I think so, I don’t remember very well. Where am I?’
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