‘He can be dreadfully heavy-handed,’ she said. ‘He’s a monster.’
Unsure how to react to this, Sonja did not dare agree, although she was convinced that Mr José was certainly a monster. She stood awkwardly, wrapped in the towel in front of this strange woman who had shepherded her, helpless and almost unconcious, into the shower, undressed her and washed her as she would a small child.
‘I thought he was going to kill me,’ she whispered.
Nati looked up and their eyes met in what Sonja interpreted as mutual understanding.
‘I’ll lend you some clothes,’ Nati said quickly, and was gone. Sonja wrapped the towel more tightly around herself and followed her out of the bathroom into what appeared to be a guest bedroom. Her legs still felt shaky and she steadied herself with a hand against the wall so as not to lose her balance. She had never been so terrified before. She had genuinely believed that he was about to kill her.
As she sat in the taxi on the way back to the hotel, everything about this trip seemed to have taken on a shade of unreality. It was like a long nightmare, her mind playing tricks on her, stress and fear stacked up into an absurd hallucination. But the sparkly blue leggings that Nati had lent her and the soreness in her throat when she swallowed convinced her it had been real.
She tried to concentrate her thoughts elsewhere, to look to the future and focus on the job in hand. She sat with a bag in her arms, five kilos that she now needed to pack and take to Iceland, and from there to Greenland, if everything was as she thought it would be.
She was still unsteady on her feet as she walked into the hotel, and her mouth was full of saliva because it hurt too much to swallow. The lobby was quiet; there were only a group of women sat in armchairs with desserts and three men in suits stood with beer glasses in their hands as they watched the TV news. It took Sonja a while to realise that the familiar footage was from home. For a moment it occurred to her that this was old news, until it dawned on her that this was something that was going to wreck her plans. The running text under the footage of a thick pall of smoke rising to the heavens like a gigantic mushroom read: Icelandic Volcano Erupts.
57
‘What’s special about that guy?’ Atli Thór asked for the second time. Bragi’s eyes were fixed on the screen where he was sure he had found the right person, the man whose name had been on Sonja’s slip of paper: Illugi Ævarsson. He had googled the name, found him on Facebook and painstakingly looked through the pictures. According to the passenger list, he was arriving from Glasgow and was one of the few men travelling alone on the flight. Normally this man would not have attracted Bragi’s attention. He was dressed in a light-grey suit, with an open-necked shirt, and he pulled a large computer case on wheels behind him along the terminal walkway.
‘Shouldn’t we just call it a day and go home?’ Atli Thór patted Bragi on the back. He was in a fine mood, as the eruption had resulted in the airport being closed down and this was the last of the afternoon’s flights. The evening flights had been turned back, so the only thing for it was to send the staff home. Nobody was going to be unhappy at the prospect of an unexpected weekend off.
‘Wait a moment,’ Bragi said and peered at the man’s face on the screen. He wasn’t the best at recognising faces, but this certainly seemed to be him.
‘What is it?’ Atli Thór asked quietly, his voice now filled with tension. ‘Goose bumps? The sixth sense?’
‘There’s something about him,’ Bragi said. He was certain this was the man.
‘We’ll check him out,’ Atli Thór said and was gone, heading for the arrivals hall.
Bragi strolled after him; the pain in his knee was getting worse.
Even though Atli Thór had emptied the man’s case in the inspection room, the case itself remained suspiciously heavy. He took it to the next room to be scanned; according to the rules there had to be an indication of organic matter there before the case could be cut open.
While he was out of the room, Bragi sat quietly and looked the man up and down. His dark hair was cut short and greying slightly at the sides. He was clean-shaven, his clothes were of good quality and even his shoes were polished. This was a good-looking man and somehow there was nothing remarkable about him. He didn’t appear to be nervous, nor was he impatient. He just sat, watched Bragi and waited.
Bragi felt in his pocket and took out Sonja’s slip of paper. He read the second name: Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson. He folded the slip of paper and put it back in his pocket.
‘Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson,’ he said, staring at the man. ‘Is that the lawyer you’ll be wanting to call?’
The man snorted in surprise. ‘No. Who told you that?’
‘Isn’t that what you said?’
‘What? I didn’t say anything. You’re the one who mentioned this Thorsteinn.’
‘…Thorsteinsson.’
‘I didn’t say anything about a lawyer,’ the man growled. There was an angry look on his face. He stood up and took off his jacket, and Bragi decided that he must be starting to sweat.
‘So you’ve decided not to ask for a lawyer?’ Bragi sat still and tried to maintain a neutral expression as he watched the man.
‘I didn’t ask for any fucking lawyer,’ the man said, folded his arms over his chest and looked away, focusing on the wall next to Bragi.
Atli Thór returned with the case and there was an amusing look of wonder on his face.
‘There appears to be a considerable volume of organic material in the case,’ he said, placing it on the table. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to cut it open.’
Bragi stood up and took a pocket knife from his tool belt.
‘He just said he didn’t want a lawyer,’ Bragi told Atli Thór, and that was enough.
‘I didn’t say I didn’t want a lawyer,’ the man snapped. ‘I just said I didn’t want that Thorsteinn.’
‘Thorsteinsson?’ Bragi said. ‘The Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson you mentioned just now?’
Atli Thór listened to the exchange carefully. That was perfect, as it would find its way into the police case file. The report would state, in both his statement and Atli Thór’s, that the man had asked for this Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson, and then changed his mind. As Bragi’s knife punched through the lining of the case, there was no doubt that there would be a report: a river of white powder flowed out through the hole.
‘You’re amazing,’ Atli Thór whispered to him as he took out his own knife ready to cut the side out of the case. ‘Totally amazing.’
58
The most reliable information about the eruption seemed to come from the Icelandic news media, so Sonja went through their websites anxiously, hoping to find anything that would tell her that the volcanic activity would not last long, and that she would be able to get home soon to deliver the goods. Sipping her morning coffee in the hotel restaurant, she looked through the images of south-coast farmers battling to save their livestock – to get them under shelter, away from the ash, and she knew she was being selfish. While her compatriots back home struggled to tape over every tiny gap in their houses so they could sit it out, and new-born lambs suffocated in the deluge of ash, her only worry was to be able to get home with five kilos of cocaine. But that’s simply the way things had to be. Cocaine provided her living, just as the lambs did the farmers – and now her livelihood was threatened.
Staying in the same place in London with the goods was always hazardous and a hotel room was far from ideal. Chambermaids would come in to clean the room and other staff would be there to replenish the minibar. Each visit brought with it the risk of someone sensing something suspicious in the room – or simply deciding to do some snooping. But it was also dangerous to move around with it. She had hardly begun to think through her options when her phone rang.
‘Buenos dias, Sonja,’ Nati said.
Of course, they must have seen the news and were aware she wouldn’t be travelling to Iceland with the shipment today.
‘Good morning,’ S
onja said, unsure of what she could say that would put their minds at ease.
‘I’m sorry to see what has happened in Iceland,’ Nati said. ‘You must be worried for your son.’ The concern in her voice seemed to be genuine.
‘No,’ Sonja replied. ‘The volcanic ash cloud is over the south of Iceland and my son lives in the west. So he shouldn’t be in any danger.’ She could hear the artificial levity in her own voice as she discounted any mention of concern.
Of course she was worried about her son, although not because of the volcano. That could upset things, but it still wasn’t what threatened her relationship with Tómas. What was constantly in her thoughts, reminding her that her son was not safe, was the situation she was in, and Nati had a part to play in that.
‘Good, good,’ Nati said. ‘It’s comforting to know he is not in danger. But you are not going to be travelling for the moment, so it’s best that you bring the merchandise back here and we will keep it until the eruption is over and the flights are back to normal.’
This wasn’t a suggestion. It was an instruction.
‘Sure,’ Sonja said. ‘I’ll bring it right away.’
Although she had no desire whatsoever to set foot again inside this couple’s house, this was unquestionably the most sensible thing to do. The goods would be safe, and she could wait without having to worry. Now she just had to hope that the eruption was going to last only for a matter of days, rather than weeks or months.
59
There was a buzz in the air, as there always was when something big happened. Most of the staff were in the concourse area, where the television was, talking excitedly among themselves about the eruption, but not loudly enough to drown out the newsreader describing the terrible effects it was having on the south of the country. María had seen enough clips of drifts of ash and gloomy farmers, and there seemed to be no respite from the volcano. Predicting the behaviour of these things was hopeless, although Iceland’s leading volcanologists gave it their best effort. When a volcanic eruption began it was impossible to tell how long it might continue to spew out ash and lava. That made standing in there with a mug of coffee, listening to colleagues guessing how long it might last, a pointless exercise.
Her phone rang.
It was Finnur. He offered no polite greetings and got straight to the point. ‘Have you figured out who Ingimar is yet?’
María wanted to bite her tongue to stop herself snapping at him in irritation. ‘I’ve got as far as working out that there’s someone called Ingimar who Agla was talking to on some of the recordings,’ she said. ‘And if you knew that already, why didn’t you say so?’
‘So you haven’t?’
‘Ingimar Magnússon; lives on Tjarnargata, and I have his identity number, but apart from that I haven’t had time to chase up this sideline. As you’re aware, I’m up to my neck in a big tax-evasion case.’
‘Hmm.’ Finnur’s voice echoed oddly over the phone. ‘I can promise you that you’ll find Ingimar a lot more interesting once you’ve taken a closer look.’
He put the phone down and María shook her head. She had a pile of tax-avoidance documentation to go through before she could allow herself time to dig into Ingimar’s background. She stood up, shut the door and sat down in front of the spreadsheet she had been examining. Her eyes flickered over the figures on the screen for a while before she realised that her mind was not on her work.
‘Hell…’ she growled to herself, and closed the spreadsheet. Finnur had destroyed her concentration.
She opened Google and punched in Ingimar’s name.
To her surprise there were only a few entries. The most recent was a link to a newspaper interview that was all about the house on Tjarnargata. He had bought the badly neglected building and restored it to its original condition. The picture was of him standing with his stick-thin wife in front of one of the handsome wooden houses that stood on the street. He was a burly man in middle-age, dark-haired and wearing a suit but with an open-necked shirt. María zoomed in on the man’s face as far as the browser would let her, checking to see if she had seen him anywhere before; but she didn’t have much success, as the further she zoomed in, the coarser the image became. There was little to the next entry, where his name appeared in a document detailing the shareholders in a shipping company. He seemed to be one of the smaller shareholders, and that was of little interest. In the third link she didn’t find his name anywhere, in spite of reading it all the way through, and was about to close the page when she noticed the name in a picture caption. The photo showed the minister of health shaking hands with the managing director of an aluminium smelter that had donated a new X-ray machine to the National Hospital. Behind them stood the people whose names were listed in the caption: Húni Thór Gunnarsson, chairman of the parliamentary health committee; the smelter company’s CFO, Jón Jónsson; two doctors; a radiographer; and at the far right stood Ingimar Magnússon. He had been given no job title or description, and had no obvious reason to be there, other than that he seemed to be happy to congratulate the hospital on its acquisition of new equipment, and had a grin that stretched across his face.
María tried other search terms with the name, but with no results. Words such as hospital, health and X-ray all took her back to the same article, so there was apparently no other connection to be made. Next she tried smelter as a search term, alongside Ingimar’s name and had two hits. One was an account of the AGM of the smelter’s operating company, in which Ingimar was mentioned as a consultant. The second was a blog by some weirdo who called himself The Voice of Truth, and who seemed convinced that the Moon landings were one big hoax and that the CIA had bombed the Twin Towers. The blog post about Ingimar was written as if in a fever, going from one thing to another, and the sentences seemed to go on forever, with only a few breaks. The Voice of Truth appeared to be someone with a lot on his mind. The title was no more sane than the rest of it: ‘The Smelter’s Spin Doctor – the Man who Milks Iceland’.
60
As Sonja approached the house, she found the door already half open. She tiptoed up the steps and knocked softly on the heavy hardwood. She had taken a cab to the gardens outside Burton Court and walked from there, and although she was puffing and hot, for some reason she held her breath. There was something strange about the place. She wondered whether to venture inside, or if she should simply turn back and call Nati to ask if she could come right away. But before she could come to a decision, Nati appeared in the doorway and Sonja could tell immediately that something was very wrong. Her mascara had run down her cheeks, her hair was askew and her dark eyes were full of fear.
‘Come inside,’ she whispered. There was consternation in her voice and she grasped Sonja’s wrist to pull her inside. Then she carefully shut the door. ‘I opened the door so you would not have to ring the bell,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure if any of the servants are in the house.’
She led Sonja into the hall and then into the living room, where she quietly shut the door behind them. Like the rest of the house, the room was overheated. It was sparsely furnished, with two big leather chairs and an overstuffed sofa, that looked like it would be uncomfortable to sit in, but where you could easily fall asleep in front of late-night TV.
‘What am I going to do?’ Nati whispered, walking on tiptoe across the floor and pointing to something behind the sofa.
Sonja’s instinct was to turn and run as far as she could from this unlucky house. Whatever was waiting for her behind the sofa had to be something bad. But the fear in Nati’s eyes was such that she could not abandon her, even though she had the feeling as she stepped forwards towards the sofa that she would forever regret not having taken to her heels right away.
She edged closer, leaned forwards and looked over the end of the sofa. Then jumped back quickly at the sight that greeted her.
Mr José lay there in a pool of blood.
Sonja pulled herself together, looked again, and when she saw that he lay motionless, she moved closer
and scanned the scene before her. There was no need to feel for a pulse or to check if he was breathing to see that the body was lifeless. His eyes stared blankly upwards and the blood pooled around him was already congealing at the edges. A kitchen knife had been sunk up to the handle in his chest.
‘I found him like this,’ Nati said. ‘And I can’t call the cops. I can’t have the police snooping around the place. What am I going to do?’ She shuffled awkwardly from one foot to the other, her eyes flashing from Sonja to the bloody corpse on the floor.
‘Who stabbed him?’ Sonja asked, her mind in a daze.
‘I don’t know!’ Nati whined, the terror in her eyes growing. ‘I went to take a bath and when I came back, I found him like this. You know what he was like – he was a complete monster. There are plenty of people who wanted to kill him.’
Sonja had no doubt there was a long list of people who would have wanted to see Mr José dead. If there had been a kitchen knife on the table the previous day when his hands had been choking her, she would undoubtedly have stabbed him herself. And for some reason, she had the feeling that Nati would have helped her.
‘Do you know anyone who can help you?’ she asked, certain that Nati had no shortage of dubious acquaintances who would have a better idea than she did of how to dispose of a bloody corpse.
‘I can’t trust anyone,’ Nati whispered. ‘I don’t know who did this, so I can’t go to any of José’s people. You’ll have to help me. I know I can trust you.’
‘I don’t know what you think I can do,’ Sonja said, inching backwards towards the door. She longed to run. Every fibre in her demanded that she flee, as fast as she could, far, far away from this house and its endless horrors.
‘I’ll help you with your boy,’ Nati said. ‘I can see to it that Mr José’s promise to make sure Adam lets you have your son stands.’
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