Chilled to the Bone (35 page)

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I really can’t comment.”

“Was the minister aware of this?”

“I told you, I can’t comment. Listen, I’m not well. I’m on sick leave right now. You need to contact the ministry about this, not me.”

“I’ll have to say that you declined to comment, even though you’re implicated personally.”

“You need to speak to Ægir Lárusson. Do you want his personal numbers?”

S
HE ALMOST MISSED
the Hyundai move off and had to accelerate hard to keep it in sight as it rounded the corner. She bullied her way into the road, ahead of a pickup truck whose driver flashed his lights angrily at her, and put her foot down in spite of the icy road, praying that the nails in the tires would keep her from sliding. As darkness fell, the frost accompanied it. The air was so cold that her first breaths almost hurt and the road under the Renault’s wheels crackled as the water on it became glassy ice.

Her eyes were glued to the Hyundai’s lights as she watched it drive along the Hafnarfjördur seafront before taking the road back toward Reykjavík. With two cars between them, she waited at the lights, pulling away fast and taking note as the mud-colored car swung sharply right and drove through yet another industrial area, this one a series of workshops and offices. As the car stopped on the forecourt of an empty workshop, she cruised past to the end of the road, did a quick U-turn and came slowly back, stopping outside a pizza place in the middle of an untidy knot of badly parked cars.

She reached down and picked up a small pair of binoculars from the pocket in the door, confident that she couldn’t be
made out by the Hyundai’s driver as she focused them on the brown car and it’s occupant, his elbow resting on the wide open driver’s window as he scanned the road. Her heart beat faster as a second car pulled up alongside it, and she recognized the black Audi, and Jóel Ingi getting out of it to walk toward the Hyundai.

She desperately wanted to know what words passed between them, as well as what was in the package that went from Jóel Ingi’s hand and disappeared inside the brown car. A moment later Jóel Ingi was gone, the Audi speeding away. She realized it was too fast for her to follow, but the tracker she’d discreetly stuck inside a wheel arch of the Audi meant that his trail could be picked up whenever she felt like it.

She wondered what was going on as the Hyundai headed out of town in the steady stream of rush-hour traffic, northwards past Mosfellsbær, and she decided that anything north of the tunnel under Hvalfjördur would be far enough.

Staying just far enough behind to keep the mud-brown car in sight and trying to keep at least one car between the two of them, she saw it overtaken by a grey van as it slowed and pulled off the road into a lay-by occupied only by a dormant roads department bulldozer. She slowed down as well, dropping her speed low enough to see the driver hunched over the wheel, his phone to his ear.

She kept her speed as low as she could, watching the mirror for the brown car’s reappearance, but she saw nothing. She decided to give up, and at the Kjalarnes turn-off she slowed down and pulled into the middle lane to turn off, disappointed that she’d wasted the best part of an hour on a futile trip out of town and determined to get back to the job of tailing Jóel Ingi, which had now been made more difficult by the fact that she would have to remain out of sight.

She stopped at the Kjalarnes petrol station, pulling up by the pump and taking the opportunity to fill the car’s tank.
Inside the shop she bought a newspaper, a sandwich and a bottle of water as a belated lunch, deciding to take a break, but was surprised to see the mud-brown Hyundai appear on the forecourt. Instead of coming into the shop, the car nosed up to the drive-by service window, where the driver, his face partly hidden by a hood, ordered a hot dog and a bottle of fizz, which were handed to him by the bored boy behind the counter.

As the car pulled away, she dropped her sandwich onto the seat beside her and followed, trying to keep the same discreet distance as before. This time the man with the scarred face took a detour around Kjalarnes, stopping for a few minutes at the far end of the village with the engine running as the driver stared at an old house a little way outside the settlement. After a few minutes, he turned back the way he had come to the main road and, worryingly, again headed north. With the tunnel entrance approaching, she decided the chase had to be cut short, and slowed down in order to use the turnoff for the old Hvalfjördur road the tunnel had replaced for a U-turn. The Hyundai did the same. Keeping it as far ahead as she could without losing sight, she watched it slow down and turn off.

She wondered why he was going along a road that was only occasionally cleared of snow and which would lead to nowhere but a few isolated farms and summer cottages. Deciding that the Hvalfjördur road would be too much for the Renault, she watched the Hyundai’s lights disappear into the distance, before turning back to town, and the job in hand, wondering about the significance of the old house at Kjalarnes.

G
UNNA RUBBED HER
eyes with the heels of each hands. She shook herself and went through a list of numbers. Frustrated, she called the number and was rewarded with a “this number is not available” message, with no invitation to leave a message of her own. She drummed the desktop with her fingertips and instead dialed Pétur Steinar Albertsson’s home
number, listening to it ring a dozen times. She was about to put the phone down when there was a click.

“Er … hello?”

“Hello, my name’s Gunnhildur and I’m with the city police force. I’d like to speak to either Pétur or Hekla, if either of them are home.”

“There’s nobody here. Just me.”

“That’s a shame. Are they going to be long, do you know?”

“I dunno.”

“Is that Sif I’m speaking to?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” was the surprised response. “Who are you?”

“I’m Gunnhildur. I really need to speak to your dad or to Hekla. It’s important.”

“I don’t know where they are. Why don’t you call the mobile?”

“I would if I had the number.”

“Wait …”

Gunna drummed the desk with growing impatience as a muffled conversation could be heard in the distance before Sif returned.

“You there?”

“I’m here.”

Sif reeled off seven digits and Gunna wrote them down and repeated them.

“Is that your dad’s phone or Hekla’s number?”

“It’s hers. Dad never goes anywhere, so he says he doesn’t need one.”

“Who’s there with you, Sif? You said you were alone.”

“My friend,” she retorted. “What’s it to do with you, anyway?”

“No reason. Just wondering. Thanks, bye.”

She quickly dialed the number Sif had given her, comparing it to the communications division’s list as it rang, nodding as
she recognized it as one of the numbers Baddó had called that afternoon.

“
Hæ
. This is Hekla. I can’t take your call right now, so leave a message. Thanks.”

Gunna put the phone down in disgust.

“Helgi, why the hell do people never answer their mobile phones?” she demanded as he backed into the room and sat down at his desk with a mug of coffee, which he wiped the base of carefully on his trousers before putting on the desk.

“Beats me. My kids tried that for a while, not answering when I called.”

“Do they still do it?”

“Nope. I told them that as I was paying for their phones, if they didn’t answer when I called they could pay for their own airtime. Why? Laufey being awkward?”

“Not at all. It’s Hekla Elín that I’m trying to get hold of. No reply, blast her. Are you off?”

“I am, and so should you be, chief. It’s getting late.”

“I’ve a good mind to drive out to Kjalarnes and sit by her front door until she turns up.”

“You should be going home.” Helgi said firmly, snapping his glasses into their case. “It’s late and we’ve been here since we were called to the hospital at some ungodly hour of the morning. Remember?”

“Was that really today? It feels like it was weeks ago.”

“It feels like I’ve spent a week on that idiot Hólmgeir Sigurjónsson’s paperwork, and I have to say I feel I’ve done the community a service having locked that waste of skin up.”

“Yeah. Until a magistrate pats him on the back and tells him not to do it again.”

“Well, there is that, I grant you. But if you’re going out to Kjalarnes, then I’ll go with you.”

Gunna shook her head. “Go home, Helgi. Let’s pack it in for the day. I’ve asked for a uniformed patrol to run out to
Kjalarnes a couple of times tonight to check there’s nothing untoward going on there.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to track the bloody woman down all day and haven’t been able to get hold of her, and I can’t help feeling there’s some part of all this that we haven’t figured out yet.”

Helgi pulled on his coat. “Come on then,” he prompted.

“Come on, what?”

“I’m not going home until you’re out of the building, so will you get a move on, please?”

Gunna stood up and stretched, knotting her fingers and cracking her knuckles. “All right. You sound like my dad,” she said. “In at seven?”

“Yeah. That’ll do me.”

“You can be early and go with Eiríkur if you want.”

“Why?”

“He’s tagging along with the drug squad tomorrow for an early start. Rather him than me.”

J
ÓEL
I
NGI PARKED
the Audi behind Katrín’s Saab and looked across the snow-filled garden at the basement flat’s windows. A dim light was shining from one window and he could see the flickering of a television behind the curtains. Still nervous about being followed, he locked the car and looked about him before making his way past the garden gate, which was permanently open in a drift of snow, and knocking at the door.

He had left his coat in the car and it was cold. He shivered, rubbing his hands to warm them, and was about to go back to the car when the door opened a crack. An indistinct face and some dark hair that didn’t belong to Katrín could be seen in the narrow opening.

“Hello?”

“
Hæ
. I’m looking for Katrín. This is her place, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but she’s not here at the moment. I’m not sure when she’ll be back.”

“Her car’s there.”

“She can’t have gone far if she’s not driving. D’you want to give her a call?”

“I don’t have a number. I work with her, I was just wondering if she was going to be long?”

The door opened a little wider. “You’re Jóel Ingi, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

This time the door opened fully and a petite girl with a sharp nose and inquisitive eyes looked him up and down.

“You must be Ursula. I saw you at the sushi place we went to the other day.”

“You’d best come in. It’s freezing out. You want a coffee? Or a beer? You know Katrín talks about you all the time?”

He sat down in the flat’s tiny living room and stretched out his legs while Ursula clattered in the kitchen.

“Lived here long?” he asked.

“No. Katrín split up with her guy about the same time as I did with mine, so we’re renting this place together for the time being. How long have you known Katrín?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been at the ministry since two thousand and eight and she’s been there at least as long. But she’s on another floor so it’s only recently that I’ve got to know her.”

“At the lunch club?”

Jóel Ingi grinned. “Yeah. Már Einarsson’s famous lunch club.”

Ursula looked at her watch. “I called her but she’s not answering. She’ll ring me back when she sees there’s been a missed call. She’s organized, our Katrín.”

The coffee was thick and fragrant, giving him a new rush of alertness.

“Where do you work?”

Ursula looked sour. “I was the accounts manager for a building company until last week.”

“New job?”

“I’ve been made redundant.”

“That’s a shame.”

Ursula shrugged. “That’s the way it goes. Last in, first out. Business hasn’t been great and they were optimistic when they took me on.”

“No other job to go to?”

“Some freelance work, doing people’s tax returns and stuff, but not a lot.”

“That’s a shame,” Jóel Ingi repeated, at a loss for anything else to say.

In spite of the coffee having given him a momentary rush, he felt inexplicably drowsy, blaming the heat of the little flat.

“I’d like to go away for a while. I’ve been in boring jobs for years now and I want to see a little color, so I might go traveling for a few months, and maybe go back to university in the autumn. That’d be nice.” She glanced down to check her phone. “Katrín normally calls back right away.”

“Maybe she’s busy?”

“Could be …”

“Where would you go if you wanted to do some traveling?”

“I don’t know. Spain, maybe. Or France.”

Jóel Ingi smiled broadly. He liked her already, solid arms and legs in spite of her petite figure, nothing like Agnes’s willowy frame.

“Then this could be your lucky day.”

Ursula looked at him sharply. “How so?”

“I’m flying to Paris tonight.” Jóel Ingi pulled a package out of his coat pocket, put it on the table and spread the notes in a fan. “If we don’t go too wild, I reckon that should keep us for at least a year.”