Sadly, he didn’t know where to go looking for his ideal woman, but he did know he wouldn’t find her in his brother’s garden. It had been years since he’d found a woman he thought might be the one. He remembered how he had taken her and her daughter out on the boat and believed the trip had been a success. He had really thought it might be the first step towards a more serious relationship. But fate had had other plans. He had never seen the woman again and her sudden death had put him off dating – for far too long if he was honest.
His brother brought him back to the present. ‘Your type, my ass. Eyjalín’s everyone’s type, man.’
Frikki muttered something about not everybody having the same taste, only to regret the comment, though it had hardly been audible. Why the hell was he discussing some woman with his brother, like they could decide between them that she should be his? ‘Great burger,’ he said loud and clear, to be sure his brother caught it. Fjalar would be off any minute now that he’d finished his beer, and Frikki had to say something positive about the barbecue. They might have been chalk and cheese, but they were brothers. Fjalar meant well by inviting him to his endless round of parties. Frikki mustn’t forget that.
‘Shit, man. I need another beer.’ Fjalar rose to his feet. ‘Drink up. That’s a pathetic effort.’
Frikki nodded in a pretence that he would step it up. He sat there until he had finished his burger, then tipped out the beer on the lawn when no one was looking – or so he thought. Glancing up, he caught the eye of the woman who had waved at Fjalar. She was staring at him in astonishment and didn’t return his embarrassed smile, just raised her eyebrows, pouted and turned away. She’d certainly picked her moment to finally become aware of him.
Frikki got up and waited until Fjalar was standing with his back to him, absorbed in talking to his guests, then slipped away without anyone paying him the slightest attention.
He knew his brother would be hurt when he realised he’d left without saying goodbye, but the night was young and the beer was flowing. When Fjalar woke up in the morning with a headache the size of the Vatnajökull ice cap, the memory would have gone, purged from his mind with spirits.
Frikki parked on the drive in front of his small terraced house. He got out, aimed the key fob behind him and locked the car as he was walking up to the front door.
He unlocked the outer door and called as he closed it behind him: ‘Hi! I’m back!’
Fjalar had been wrong when he’d said there was no one waiting for Frikki at home.
Or had he? There was no answering call from inside the house.
Frikki called out again as he slipped off his shoes. ‘Rósa! I’m back! What do you say to a trip on the boat tomorrow morning?’
She didn’t answer. Only then did he notice that her shoes weren’t in the hall. She wasn’t back yet, but then he could have told himself that as it was still relatively early. So he was alone at home after all.
Chapter 22
Saturday
Gudlaugur had shadows under his eyes and stubble on his cheeks; his shoulders were sagging and he couldn’t stop yawning. He was like a dusty edition of himself. The night shifts were clearly taking their toll. It was ridiculous that he should have been called in on a Saturday but they were all having to sacrifice their days off due to the shortage of manpower. They had been promised a rest on Sunday, though.
‘Get some coffee down you.’ Huldar had found this the best cure when he himself had been working late shifts as a uniformed officer. In fact, it was his cure-all for any number of ills. Everything appeared a little more manageable after a shot of caffeine. Perhaps that was why they provided coffee free on tap in A&E.
‘No thanks, I’ve already had my daily allowance.’
‘There’s no such thing as a “daily allowance” of coffee, Gudlaugur. Any more than you can have a daily allowance of breath.’
Gudlaugur gave him a weary look. ‘You can breathe too much, actually.’
Huldar decided not to argue with him, as he suspected Gudlaugur was right. This was confirmed by Lína’s expression. She was standing in the station yard with them. She and Gudlaugur had come out for a bit of fresh air; Huldar for the poisoned variety; the kind that no one doubted could kill you. He took a drag and the wind carried his smoke up the wall and in through an open window on the second floor. Huldar just hoped the person sitting next to it was a smoker. Not that it mattered if they weren’t, since Erla wasn’t around to complain to: she had rushed off to a meeting of the Identification Commission in the hope of hearing some news. The fact the commission had come together on a Saturday was almost certainly due to her persistent phone calls. When she came back, she’d be too busy processing the information to bother with the complaints of delicate flowers who you literally couldn’t even breathe on.
Gudlaugur yawned. When he prised his eyes open again, they were no more than slits.
‘How are you getting on with sorting through the lost property, Lína?’ Huldar asked, to deflect her from commenting on how tired Gudlaugur was and delivering a lecture about the regulations on statutory rest periods.
‘Me? Oh, I finished that ages ago. I did it so systematically that it took me no time at all. Good organisation is key.’ Lína made no attempt to disguise her smugness. She looked at them both in turn from under her thick red mane, which she had for once allowed to fall loose to her shoulders. She was so much shorter than them that she had to tilt her head back to see their faces. ‘Every minute spent planning a job saves you quarter of an hour in the execution.’
Gudlaugur rolled his eyes, too tired to snipe at her. But Huldar smiled. ‘Did you find anything of use for the inquiry?’
Lína’s smugness evaporated. ‘No, actually. There was nothing of interest on the phones.’ Then, recovering her composure, she added: ‘Shame it took IT so long to unlock them. It’s infuriating having to waste so much time waiting in suspense, only to be disappointed. It’s better to get the bad news straight away. I can’t understand why they don’t take on more summer support staff. More students like me, who can lend a hand, even though we haven’t graduated yet.’
‘No, it’s extraordinary that it hasn’t occurred to anyone.’ Huldar suppressed an ironic grin by taking another drag on his cigarette. ‘What about the diary?’
‘It didn’t contain anything of relevance to the abuse case. Tristan’s mentioned twice by name, and Rósa once, but not in connection with abuse. I took the diary down to the Drug Squad because the girl wrote quite a bit about using. She was an addict herself, poor thing, and I came across details about how she got hold of her drugs and other stuff that might be useful to the police. She also mentioned that she’d been asked to do some dealing in return for getting her dope cheaper or even free. But it won’t be easy to decipher the information because she doesn’t name any names. She was prostituting herself as well and the descriptions of that are horrible. Unfortunately, she didn’t mention any names there either. I just hope the Drug Squad can do something with the info.’
‘Maybe they could ask her directly. Or don’t they know who the diary belonged to?’
‘Yes, they do. But she’s dead. She killed herself.’
Huldar blew out a thick stream of smoke. He couldn’t begin to describe what was going through his head, at least not in words he could use in front of Lína. After a moment, he pulled himself together and said: ‘It’s possible you’ll be asked to sort through more stuff like that.’
‘Oh?’ Lína’s eyes widened. No doubt she’d already started mentally planning the task. ‘Where from?’
‘From a storage unit. It belongs to the man who was murdered on Grandi. It’s not impossible that his murder was linked to something that happened in his past. Unlikely, but not impossible.’ Huldar watched Gudlaugur lean back against the wall and close his eyes. If he nodded off in that position, perhaps he’d slide gently down to the wet tarmac. If so, Huldar was tempted to watch until Gudlaugur had almost reached the bottom before prodding him. He wan
ted to see what would happen. With an effort, he turned his attention back to Lína: ‘With any luck, the stuff should be delivered to the station early next week, so it would be great if we could borrow you from Sexual Offences.’
‘Fine by me.’ Lína was radiant, in stark contrast to the exhausted and indifferent Gudlaugur beside her, who looked ready to conk out any minute.
‘Tell me, Lína. You’re young, closer in age to Rósa than we are. Plus, you’re a girl. Where would you hide if you decided to run away?’
‘Why should a girl be any different from a boy?’
Huldar shrugged. ‘Just humour me for a minute. Where would you go if you ran away?’
‘Ran away? Why would I want to run away? I’m not a prisoner, I can go wherever I like.’
Huldar regretting asking. Lína was too literal minded to enter into the spirit of the thing. ‘I realise that. But say you did want to run away, where would you hide?’
Lína frowned as she thought about it. ‘I’d try to find somewhere indoors. Not outside, because there are too few places where you can stay warm and dry – and safe. It’s more dangerous for women to sleep rough than it is for men, so safety considerations would play an important role in choosing a place. But where? An underpass, maybe, though I’d be reported immediately if someone saw me sleeping there, and of course it would be risky for a woman alone.’ She paused again to consider. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I could pretend to be a backpacker and hang around at the airport. But it wouldn’t work – a friend of mine works there and she’d recognise me. There’s really nowhere you can go outside without the risk of being recognised. Iceland’s such a small country. Unless you can stay with someone you trust not to give you away.’ Lína frowned again. ‘But then why run off in the first place? If you’re going to end up a prisoner anyway, stuck in someone’s house, unable to set foot outside?’
Huldar turned to Gudlaugur. ‘Have we definitely checked all her associates to see if they’ve been sheltering her?’
Gudlaugur answered sleepily. ‘Yeah, we’ve asked school friends, relatives, even her boss and co-workers at the bakery where she had a summer job. She’s not staying with any of them. Or at any of the homeless shelters. She hasn’t got a credit card and there haven’t been any transactions on her debit card since she took off. Which means she can’t be at a hotel, a hostel or an Airbnb. We’ve checked everywhere. All we can think of is that she must have holed up somewhere that’s not immediately obvious.’
Lína gnawed at her upper lip, trying to think of a possible hiding place that everyone else had overlooked. It was a new experience for her to be stumped like this. Still, there was a first time for everything, and if she couldn’t come up with an answer, then it was pointless for Huldar to go on racking his brains over it.
He had almost finished his cigarette by the time Erla drove into the yard. He nudged Gudlaugur, whose breathing had become suspiciously slow and deep. However much Huldar had wanted to see him slide down the wall, he’d rather Erla didn’t witness it. Gudlaugur started, pulled himself upright and did his feeble best to look alert. Lína didn’t have to pretend; as usual she looked as if her batteries were fully charged.
‘What are you three doing out here? Plotting a mutiny? Or a strike?’ Erla was looking uncharacteristically pleased, which must mean the meeting had exceeded her expectations. Perhaps the Swedes had delivered the results of the DNA analysis on the bones. ‘Drop by my office, Huldar, once you’ve finished your little meeting.’ She smiled and went inside without waiting for an answer.
‘Am I imagining things or was Erla actually in a good mood?’ Lína couldn’t have been more amazed if Erla had turned up carrying a live great auk.
‘It’s not totally unheard of, you know.’ Huldar took a final puff, then stubbed out his cigarette and threw the butt in the overflowing bin on the wall. Then he hurried inside after Erla, leaving Gudlaugur and Lína behind in awkward silence. It would do them good to have to talk to each other, if only on their way back upstairs.
Erla’s coat was hanging on the peg and she was sitting behind her desk. She beckoned Huldar into her office, still looking uncharacteristically sunny. She had also been jubilant when she returned from her boat trip the day before. Thanks to the good weather, they had managed to sweep quite an extensive area beyond the one they had already searched, in the process recovering several more bits of skeleton, including a jaw bone, a skull, a number of vertebrae and a hip bone. The jaw bone and skull didn’t match but at least they now had the upper jaw from one person and the lower jaw from another. None of the bones displayed any signs of injuries that could explain the cause of death. Even more puzzling was the fact that no remnants of clothing had been found. The searchers had thought they’d spotted a zip in one of the photos taken by the submarine, but they hadn’t managed to track it down with the gadget that was used to recover the remains from the seabed. The conclusion was that the bodies must have been either scantily clad or naked.
‘What did you find out?’ Huldar plonked himself down on the chair in front of the desk.
‘The results of the DNA analysis are in. They managed to get them onto the priority list.’ Erla’s smile was triumphant. ‘The remains belong to a man and a woman, neither of them Icelandic, or at least neither of them of Icelandic descent. The bulk of their DNA comes from the British Isles. Only two per cent originates from Scandinavia in the man’s case and one per cent in the woman’s. Then there’s a sprinkling from southern Europe, but that’s irrelevant. The main thing is that the results rule out the possibility that they’re Icelanders, unless they’re immigrants, of course. But we can find no incidents in which a British or Irish tourist has gone missing here. Let alone two of them.’ Erla rubbed her neck. ‘I also got some findings back about the bones. The couple appear to have been in the twenty-five to thirty-five age bracket and, judging by their leg bones, they reckon one was about one eighty-five, the other one sixty-seven metres tall. Presumably the taller one was the man.’
‘What are you thinking, then? Could they have come from a ship or a boat?’
‘They must have done. Nobody in the Register of Missing Persons fits their description. And the same applies to all those who have been lost overboard in Icelandic waters. How they got here is a complete mystery. The Identification Commission are inclined to believe that they must have fallen overboard but that their disappearance wasn’t reported. From a cruise ship, possibly. Anyway, they’ve sent the information to Interpol and, as the people are very likely to be from the UK, to the British police department responsible for missing persons. We should get an answer soon, especially now that we’ve got their teeth. It’s just as well since apparently about two thousand people go missing every year in Britain, so it’s a bloody long list.’
Huldar raised his eyebrows. ‘Wow.’ Their foreign colleagues had a whole different world to contend with. ‘If they’re foreigners from a cruise ship, it’s pretty clear that Rósa can’t have been a witness to what happened or have any information about them. It must have been a coincidence that she talked about people in the sea.’
Erla shrugged. ‘I reckon it must have been. She can hardly have been in contact with a foreign ship. At the end of the day, she’s only a little girl. I’m coming round to the idea that she’s just a bit unbalanced, which wouldn’t be surprising when you consider what she’s been through. But don’t think I’ve lost interest in finding her. She’s still a potential witness to murder. Speaking of which, what a fucking nightmare. Have you seen the news sites?’ Erla’s mood darkened suddenly in the kind of swing that she had perfected during her time as head of department.
Huldar nodded. He could understand why Erla was pissed off about the coverage. In the opinion of those working on the investigation, the articles were unfair. Stories about police incompetence were interspersed with reports on the appalling neglect suffered by the homeless and drug addicts in Iceland. But in practice there was little the police could do other than let these people sp
end a night in the cells when they were desperate. Anything else was outside their remit. This should have been clear to the public, but some readers no doubt regarded the police as the chief obstacle to these people being given humane treatment, while the institutions who were in fact responsible for their welfare were unlikely to leap to the police’s defence.
‘If we don’t make any progress soon, the press are going to have a field day. I can just imagine the rash of articles about how we’re not giving the inquiry our proper attention because we don’t give a shit about people living on the margins of society and whether they live or die.’ There was no trace left of Erla’s earlier good mood. Instead, her habitual scowl was firmly back in place. ‘And what’ll happen then? I’ll have the top brass on my back, giving me a bollocking for ruining the image of the force.’
Huldar felt a frisson of pure pleasure at not being in her shoes. ‘Why not remind them that our image is still shite after a suspected rapist was allowed to carry on working in a care home while his case was supposedly being investigated? The hostile coverage we’re getting now is a step up from that.’
‘Huh,’ was Erla’s only reaction to this suggestion. ‘What the hell’s going on with that girl? How is it possible that they haven’t managed to trace her? Could she have left the country? Have they checked the passenger lists?’
‘Yes, they have, from what I hear. Her name wasn’t on any of them. Of course, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that she’s left the country under a false name. But in that case somebody else must have bought the ticket for her. You can’t pay in cash and there’s no transaction on her debit card for the purchase of a plane ticket. So she has to be in the country.’ He paused. ‘I just hope to God she’s alive.’
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