Chilled to the Bone (36 page)

S
HE HAD PICKED
up his trail easily enough, and now she watched Jóel Ingi disappear up the stairs and into departures with the woman on his arm. They were traveling light, hand baggage only. She shrugged. There was nothing more that she could do other than report back. Under the street lamps that lit the car park outside with their harsh glare, she keyed a message into her phone, looking pensively out of the window as the Renault’s heater whined and fought to disperse the thin film of frost on the windscreen.

She pulled off her ski hat, massaging her scalp, then prodded gently at the tender part of her face, relieved that it was no more painful than it was. It was close to midnight on a dark, cold night, and she asked herself yet again why she had given up a stable but frustrating job for this life of anti-social hours, awkward clients and unreliable payments. She wasn’t expecting a reply until the morning, but the phone on the seat flashed once and hummed briefly.

She read the message, nodded briefly and punched in a one-word reply before putting the car into gear. It was rolling forward when the phone flashed a second time and she stopped to look at the message. Her eyebrows rose as she read it, before heading for the main road back to Reykjavík.

G
UNNA SLEPT BADLY
and was on her feet long before the alarm started to buzz to the muffled sound of Drífa retching in the bathroom, the faint but unmistakable sound carrying along the corridor of the silent house. Her thoughts immediately went back to Gísli as she looked at the ceiling in the darkness, and how—or if—he would resolve things with his two expectant mothers when he came home in a few weeks’ time.

Laufey was asleep and Gunna decided to trust her to get up on time and head off to school. She listened for a second at the door of what had once been Gísli’s room, where Drífa had settled herself like a nesting hen.

She pulled on her coat and padded into the bedroom, where Steini lay on his side with one hand under his head and the other stretched out as if looking for her. Gunna sat on the edge of the bed and put out a hand to tickle his neck, her fingernail rasping briefly against his bristles. He muttered and shifted, his eyes still closed. She leaned forward and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek.

“Wakey, wakey, big boy,” she whispered.

Steini’s eyes opened wide in a flash. There was a brief look of disappointment as he took her in, sitting next to him fully dressed and with her coat on.

“You’re up early.”

“I know. Couldn’t sleep, so I decided to get up.”

“You could have given me a poke. I’d have told you stories
until you fell asleep.” He yawned, sitting up and sliding one hand under her coat.

“But that would have ended up being more than a story, wouldn’t it? And then you wouldn’t have got much sleep either.”

“It’s a tough call, but I’d have done it for you.”

“You’re a saint.” Gunna grinned. “There’s fresh coffee. The girls are still asleep. All right?”

Steini nodded and flexed his shoulders. “Any idea how long Drífa’s going to be staying?”

“None at all. She’s a pain, but I don’t have the heart to send her home.”

“You’re all heart,” Steini grunted. “Beneath that tough exterior …”

“Hides a woman who eats broken glass for breakfast. Yeah, I know. Even Helgi and Eiríkur have started saying that now.”

“I’m doing a job in Keflavík today. Nothing difficult, but it’ll take a while and I’ll probably be back late. How about you?”

Gunna sighed and Hekla, Baddó and Jóel Ingi all came back to her. “No idea. This is a tough one and I’ve no idea how long it’ll take, not that there isn’t pressure to get it sorted out quickly. It doesn’t help that there’s a government department involved, but I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“I didn’t hear a word.” Steini swung his legs out of bed as Gunna stood up. “I’ll see you when I see you, then?”

“That’s about it.” She blew him a kiss from the doorway. “See you tonight.”

The cold north wind had strengthened overnight, bringing with it cold air that was almost painful to breathe and which stung her face as she hurried to the car. The car’s wheels jerked and initially refused to move, held in place by the ice that had formed around them as the ground froze overnight. A healthy foot on the pedal broke the grip with a crack, and the car
crunched through puddles and pools that had formed overnight. Fortunately the road had already been gritted, as Gunna could feel the brittle hardness of the road surface instead of the slush of the past week.

Being early was a way of beating the rush hour and Gunna found the usual hour’s drive pleasantly shortened as she parked in the yard behind Hverfisgata police station, next to Ívar Laxdal’s hulking black Volvo. She wondered just how early she would have to be to get to work before the boss. The chance to ask the question came and went as she encountered him on the stairs.

“Were you planning to bring that insolent yuppie in for questioning today?” he asked.

“That was the plan, although there’s other stuff that’s closer to the top of the priority pile, like getting hold of Hróbjartur Bjarnthórsson before he does any more damage.”

“Just as well, because Jóel Ingi skipped the country last night.”

“What? Where did he go?”

“Initially, Paris. Where he’s gone from there, who knows?”

Gunna fumed. “Hell and damnation. I should have had him headed off.”

Ívar Laxdal dropped one of his rare smiles. “Don’t worry about that. He was traveling on a service passport, so it’s unlikely that anyone at Keflavík would have even checked someone like that. He’ll be in trouble if he tries to use it again, though. Jóel Ingi may be an abrasive young man, but he’s no fool. He’ll know better than to do that.”

“So what the hell can we do about him?”

Ívar Laxdal stopped on the top step and paused before heading along the passage to the office he rarely seemed to use. “Nothing for the moment, Gunnhildur. Nothing at all. He’s not our problem any more. I have a feeling he’ll show up sooner or later, and his absence may turn out to be for the
best,” he said, turning and walking away with one finger in the air. “Keep me informed, would you?”

S
HE WAS AWAKE
early, munching toast and looking out of the window to check the weather. The laptop open in front of her showed the old house at Kjalarnes that the man with the scarred face had been so interested in, and after a few false starts going between the online phone book, mapping websites and the national registry, she managed to tie the address to names.

“Pétur Steinar Albertsson. Who the hell are you?” she wondered. “Or Hekla Elín Hauksdóttir? Which one of you nice people has done something to warrant being watched by that nasty piece of work?”

A search engine drew a blank when presented with Pétur Steinar’s name. But Hekla Elín Hauksdóttir showed a handful of results and she trawled slowly through them. Amazed at what the internet could store by way of obscure information, from sources as far apart as a school reunion page to the TV and radio listings guide, she quickly built up a picture of Hekla Elín Hauksdóttir and her patchy career as an actress and more recently as a voice-over artist. The only photograph she could find of Hekla Elín was one showing a young actress as part of the cast of
Othello
, standing between a well-known actor made up for the title role and a short man in a doublet and hose.

“…  as Othello, Gústav Freysteinn Bóasson as Iago and Hekla Elín Hauksdóttir played Desdemona in her first leading role,” the caption read.

Looks like her only leading role, she thought, moving on to Facebook, where she was presented with a complete blank for Pétur Steinar, as there was no entry for that name. Hekla Elín’s name showed up, but with an anonymous avatar and an almost blank page. She saw that Hekla Elín had a relatively small number of friends, with an accessible list. She clicked and
scrolled through them, looking for potential family members and alighting on Sif Pétursdóttir as a candidate. Her phone began to hum a discreet, insistent tune and she looked at the display and answered quickly.

“Yes?”

“Can you talk?”

“Sure.”

“Where are you?”

“At home. It’s not even seven yet,” she said. “Job done. It’s not as if I could have followed your man into the departure lounge,” she said. The man on the other end of the line sounded harassed. His usual manner, a combination of abrasive and jovial, peppered with off-color jokes, had disappeared. “Problems?” she asked.

“And how,” he replied. “Listen. This has to finish today. It’s of paramount importance that you finish the brief today, as quickly as possible. That machine has to disappear. You get my meaning?”

“This isn’t the same brief,” she said doubtfully. “This isn’t about who goes where and who they talk to, is it?”

“Call it what you will. Just put in your invoice as soon as the job is done and I’ll square it.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she said, listening to the labored breathing that gave away his impatience. “But I don’t have a lot to work on and I’m not promising anything.”

“Just get it done. I don’t care how. All right?” the voice said sharply and the phone went dead in her hand, leaving her to finish her toast and replay the conversation back in her mind, mulling over the option of simply sending in an invoice and calling an end to an impossible job before she went back to the computer screen and Sif Pétursdóttir’s family pictures.

“Ah,” she said to herself, clicking through them. “So that’s what you look like now.”

T
HE TAPPING ON
the window of a bare branch of one of the stunted trees outside roused Baddó from a deep sleep. He was awake instantly and a hand went to his face as he awoke, fingering the drying scabs that had formed overnight. His jaw still ached and he washed painkillers down with a gulp of water so cold it was practically ice.

He had slept soundly, a relief after two days of running on adrenaline and keeping himself out of sight. Peering in the tiny mirror over the kitchen sink, he could see that his face looked no worse. The cut had lost some of its livid color and wasn’t quite so obvious, not that anyone looking him in the face was going to miss it. He wondered if his beard would grow back where the cut had sliced his cheek into ribbons.

Baddó stretched and looked out of the window at the snow-covered valley beyond. Although barely more than a few kilometers from the new main road, the summer house hadn’t been easy to reach. The Hyundai had been left by the side of the road on a bare stretch of ground where the driven snow would be carried off by the wind, although he was certain that a drift would now have collected in its lee. The hard part had been struggling through the snow, which had been untouched since the last person had been there in the autumn. He had been on the point of giving up and returning to the car when he finally found the place with the key hanging on a string inside the outer of the two doors, exactly where it had been kept the last time he’d been there more than twenty years earlier.

He had been exhausted and realized that hypothermia had been setting in as he fought through the snow. It had been bitterly cold, clear weather, while a stately dance was played out by the green and white bands of the northern lights shining on the crust of snow, undisturbed but for the tracks of a fox that had sniffed at the deserted cottage and gone elsewhere to hunt for food.

The microwave pinged and Baddó again privately thanked a God he had no belief in that the electricity supply hadn’t been cut off. The instant meal from the freezer was a welcome first hot meal in a couple of frantic days, and he flipped through a six-month-old newspaper as he forked up what the packet claimed were Cantonese-style noodles with chicken. Looking out of the window, he wondered whether to stay for another day to recuperate, admitting to himself that he was deeply tired. The attack and everything after it had taken their toll and his whole body ached, from his head to his feet.

He wondered about the men who had attacked him and if the one he had bottled had been badly hurt. He sincerely hoped so and his thoughts turned to whoever had sent those slack-jawed low-lifes to teach him a lesson. Turning things over in his mind, he decided there were a few candidates: people he had upset in the past who had long memories and harbored grudges. He smiled to himself, feeling the stiffness in his face. He could be patient and nurture a grudge as well as anyone.

With a start he remembered the fat envelope that Jóel Ingi had unwillingly handed over, and with his mouth still full of Cantonese-style noodles, he hunted through the zipped-up inside pocket of his coat and placed the package on the table in front of him, smiling to himself. He swallowed, pushed the remainder of the instant meal aside and tugged at the flap, pulling out a wad of notes. He thumbed the end of the first fat wad and froze.

He snapped off the rubber bands and lifted the 100-euro note on the top. Beneath it was a blank piece of paper, and beneath that was another. Apart from one note on top and another at the bottom, the whole of both wads of notes, the agreed 20,000 euros, was worthless, neatly guillotined paper.