Chilled to the Bone (38 page)

Ægir simply shook his head and said nothing. Már opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.

“All right,” Gunna went on, watching the pair of them for reactions. “This morning we picked up a lowlife who it seems your precious Jóel Ingi used as a go-between to commission an old friend of ours to track down guess what? A mislaid MacBook and the person who stole it from him, more than likely under some rather startling circumstances. We also have two deaths on our hands that this character is responsible for so far. Am I making myself clear?”

“Abundantly so, Gunnhildur,” Ívar Laxdal rumbled. “Maybe now it would be worth your while explaining what’s behind all this, and just why the disappearance of a clapped-out laptop has so far resulted in two corpses. Just so you’re aware, neither of them went happily.”

Ægir opened his mouth but no sound came out, apart from a belated cough, while his face had begun to change from its usual ruddy complexion to something approaching beetroot.

“I think what my colleague is trying to say is that we are not at liberty to tell you any more than we already have, but this is a very serious matter and one that could cause the government a great deal of embarrassment internationally,” Már said in a diplomatic tone, graced with a smile that conveyed apology, but no flexibility.

H
IS FACE STUNG
as he stepped out into the cold air and loped down the slope toward the solitary house along the tracks left by the Land Rover. It was still half dark and there
was a single light to be seen in one window. He thought about knocking on the door, but decided against it. This would have to be quick and it would have to be brutal if necessary.

A strip of plastic was enough to deal with the worn lock on the back door, after which he found himself in a workshop with his feet swishing through wood shavings as he made for an outline of light leaking through an ill-fitting door. The moment he opened it, he felt his eyes itch and he swore quietly to himself as he stepped into the hall and went toward the sound of a radio and clattering dishes.

The woman’s back was to him as she stood at the sink. Baddó looked at the tall figure with the spiky hair and surveyed the old house’s kitchen. He leaned across one of the worktops and clicked a switch, shutting off the radio.

“
Æi
, Sif, what did you do that for?” The woman said in irritation without looking around.

“Hello, Sonja,” Baddó said quietly. “We meet at last.”

Hekla spun around and her mouth dropped open. Baddó looked her up and down, appreciating what he saw, a strong young woman with long legs hidden in baggy tracksuit bottoms and a man’s white shirt covering plenty in the chest department. A shame to slap her about, he thought. But it has to be done, he reflected with a pang of regret. Business is business.

“Who—?”

He stepped forward rapidly, taking her by surprise, delivering a swift punch to the stomach that knocked the breath out of her and made her gasp for air, while a slap with the back of his hand left her dazed. As she doubled up in shock, he buried a hand in her thick, short hair, pulled her head back and growled.

“Not a word. Not a fucking word. Understand?”

Hekla nodded mutely, desperately fighting for breath, which came slowly as she began to pant in panic.

Unexpectedly, Baddó sneezed, swore and glared at the woman in front of him.

“I know who you are, I know what you’ve been up to. I know where you live and I know where your kids go to school. So don’t fuck about. Understood?” Baddó rasped, his eyes watering, and Hekla nodded mutely. “You have something I want. Where is it?”

“The pictures? They’re in the camera,” Hekla gasped.

Pictures? Baddó wondered, quickly realizing this could be a bonus. “Where are they?”

“In the other room,” Hekla said, regaining her breath, and Baddó saw her eyes widen as she looked past him.

“What’s going on here?” A cross, youthful voice demanded, and Baddó spun around to see a gawky teenage girl standing in the doorway.

“Sif, don’t ask any questions and do as the man says,” Hekla instructed, her voice husky and faltering. “Go to the desk in the living room and get the small camera from the bottom drawer, right at the back. Now.”

The girl disappeared and Baddó stared into Hekla’s eyes, seeing nothing but terror as they listened to Sif rummage in the other room. It seemed like an age before she returned, her hand held out. He took the camera from her and pressed the recall button, scrolling through the pictures with a grin on his face.

“You have been a busy girl, haven’t you,” he said and Hekla flushed.

“What’s this about?” Sif asked, peering through the untidy hair that framed her face.

“Never you mind. Now where’s the computer?”

“What computer?” Hekla asked and Baddó grasped a fistful of her white shirt, dragging her face to within a few inches of the ugly cut that ran down his cheek.

“I said, don’t mess me about. The one you took off one of your punters a few weeks ago.”

“I don’t know where it went,” Hekla said, desperately trying to avoid telling him that Sif had taken it.

“Stop, will you?” Sif squeaked, stepping forward and stopping as Baddó raised a hand. “It’s in Dad’s workshop. I put it back yesterday.”

“Show me.”

Baddó spun Hekla around, twisted one hand hard up behind her back until she gasped in pain, and marched her out of the kitchen and along the passage, bumping against the walls as she stumbled in front of him. In the dimly lit workshop, Sif fumbled among piles of boxes for the laptop case she knew should be there.

“Come on, will you? I don’t have all day,” Baddó growled, wiping his running nose on the sleeve of his free arm as the other hand held Hekla over a workbench, her face in the sawdust and shavings. “For fuck’s sake, there it is,” he said in disgust as Sif held out the laptop case, and at the same moment a fat black and white cat emerged from under the bench, purring and calling as it saw people in its domain.

Slackening his grip on Hekla’s arm, he reached for the laptop case and aimed a vicious kick at the cat as it stalked amiably toward him, its tail in the air.

“
Æi
, no, Perla!” Sif screeched, dropping the case and sweeping up the nearest thing she could grab on the bench. Hekla stumbled, steadied herself, and heaved with all her strength just as Baddó let fly with his boot, missing the cat and losing his balance so that he stumbled against the bench.

“You stupid cow,” Baddó snarled, snorting through his half-blocked nose, the laptop case clutched in one fist while he raised the other and moved toward the girl. Sif squealed in fright, flung one arm up to cover her face and lashed out wildly with the other hand as Baddó swung, just as he was shaken by another thunderous sneeze.

I
N HIS OWN
rarely used office, Ívar Laxdal hunched over a sleek laptop, reading from the screen.

“ ‘According to information that has reached
Reykjavík Voice
, four asylum seekers who arrived in Iceland in May two thousand and nine promptly disappeared and their whereabouts remained unknown until a Dutch human rights group uncovered evidence that all four were executed in Libya later that same year. Following the Libyan revolution, a great deal of documentation from the former regime has come to light, including evidence that the three men and one woman were rendered to Libya in contravention of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,’ ” he read out.

“What’s that about?” Gunna asked, peering at the laptop screen and continuing to read over Ívar Laxdal’s shoulder. “ ‘
Reykjavík Voice
has copies of emails purported to have been sent by senior Icelandic officials sanctioning the immediate transfer, without passing through formal immigration channels, of four Libyan nationals who arrived on a scheduled flight from Amsterdam to a military aircraft that departed from Keflavík airport later that night to an unknown destination.’ Ívar, is there any truth in this?” Gunna asked. “Is this anything to do with Jóel Ingi and why he’s skipped the country?”

“I don’t know, Gunnhildur,” he said, his face grey and set like rock. “If it’s true, there’ll be hell to pay in all kinds of ways.”

“If it’s true, then we should be able to find out, surely. Immigration is part of the force, so can’t you demand the truth about it from the airport police?”

“I could. But I’m not sure that I should.”

“Come on, surely …”

Ívar Laxdal’s deep-set dark eyes looked back at her with no visible expression, but his face, sagging and exhausted, told her everything.

“I daren’t,” he admitted. “This needs to go upstairs. But in the meantime, I have to deal with the ministry, and there’s going to be some serious trouble later today if, or rather when,
there are questions in Parliament. I have a feeling that this is what that damned lost laptop is all about.”

“If this is all public, is there any reason to worry about it? It’s not as if we’ve been looking all that hard for it anyway.”

“There hasn’t been much to look for,” Ívar Laxdal snorted. “If that pompous fool Ægir Lárusson had the sense to tell us the truth at the start, we might have got somewhere. It was always going to be a hopeless task and that’s not something I’m going to worry about. The ministry can sort out its own dirty laundry. I’m more interested in you catching up with this hoodlum who’s responsible for two murders in our back yard.”

Gunna sat on the bone-hard chair that Ívar Laxdal kept in his office, designed to encourage visiting dignitaries not to linger.

“If this is what the droids at the ministry are shitting themselves over, then it’s out in the open now.
Reykjavík Voice
is a bit off-center, and not that many people read it, but all the same, this can’t be hushed up now, surely? They even published this on their website in English, so it isn’t just a local thing that can be contained.”

“If this is the same thing, then you’re quite right,” Ivar Laxdal agreed. “On the other hand, the ways of civil servants are not to be understood by mere low-grade jobsworths such as ourselves.”

“We’re civil servants as well,” Gunna pointed out, amused by his description of himself as “low grade.”

“We are,” he agreed. “But we’re the kind of civil servants who actually achieve something, as opposed to the type who build themselves little empires and attend conferences while they wait for their pensions to kick in.”

His thumbnail scratched at the stubble under the point of his chin as he thought.

“Leave it with me, will you?” he said finally. “I need to talk to upstairs. You have a pet journalist at
Reykjavík Voice
, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call him that, exactly.”

“Maybe not, but if you could sound him out discreetly, it wouldn’t go amiss.”

“It’ll have to wait. I can’t put off a visit to Sonja any longer.”

T
HE PLACE SEEMED
deserted. She watched and waited. The mud-brown Hyundai, its sides caked with snow that the driver had barely bothered to brush from the windows, squatted unhappily a hundred meters from the solitary house.

She patted her pockets for her phone and took a can of pepper spray from the glove compartment before walking cautiously down toward the house. She listened for the slightest sound that would tell her that the man with the scarred face was on the move. She gently eased open the back door, the spray can held out in front of her, then slowly dropped it down as she took in Pétur’s wrecked workshop.

Sif and Hekla were collapsed against the bench by the wall, while the big man was sitting with his back to the other workbench that filled the middle of the workshop, legs splayed out in front of him and his eyes staring, focused on nothing as a rivulet of saliva leaked down his chin. He was still hugging the laptop case, and it was only when she stepped closer and squatted down in front of him to tug it out of his grasp that she took in the rusty end of the narrow file protruding from the man’s temple an inch behind his left eye. A ring of red surrounded it, gradually seeping along the tiny grooves in its surface and staining the metal dull red.

She instinctively put out a hand to touch it, then drew back before looking first from one shocked face to the other, and then to the bench where an assortment of files and chisels with and without their wooden handles had been scattered as Sif had snatched one up in panic.

“Are either of you hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” Hekla said, shakily getting to her feet.
“Sif, are you all right, sweetheart?” She asked, stroking the girl’s face.

“Is the man dead?”

“I don’t know. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

She put out her hands and pulled Sif to her feet, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she supported her out of the workshop and back into the house. Back in the workshop she knelt in front of the man with the cut face and felt for a pulse in his neck. Satisfied, she pulled out her phone and dialed 112.

“Police and ambulance. I’m at Strandargrund thirty in Kjalarnes,” she said in a measured voice. “It’s an old house on its own at the far end of the street. There’s one casualty with a serious head injury and two people in shock,” she said, answering the police operator’s questions.

“And your name?”

“Bára Kristinsdóttir,” she answered and listened to the moment’s pause.

“Bára who used to be in the force at Keflavík?”

She smiled grimly. “Yes, Siggi. That’s me.”

“All right. In that case you know what to do, don’t you? There’s an ambulance on its way, but it’ll be a while before it gets there.”

“I reckon you might need to get the air ambulance out for this one. It’s not pretty.”

“Fair enough. I’ll alert them, but it’s the ambulance crew’s decision when they get there.”

“Okay, thanks. I’d best get back to the casualties. You can reach me on this number if you need to between now and the cavalry getting here.”

“Fine. Thanks, Bára. It’s an F-two, so fifteen minutes.”

H
ELGI
’
S COMMUNICATOR BUZZED
and he looked over at Gunna, his finger on the earpiece.

“You’d better step on it, chief,” he said. “F-two, and guess where?”