Chilled to the Bone (4 page)

The young man shrugged and rubbed the card hard on his sleeve before swiping it through the machine a third time as the queue continued to fidget and sigh audibly.

“Shit,” the young man muttered with a glance at the impatient line of shoppers behind Hekla and the lengthening queues for every till in the shop, which snaked their way into the spaces between the aisles. He reached beneath the counter, came up with old-fashioned card-swipe machine and quickly made an imprint of the number.

“Sign, please,” he said as Hekla treated him to the most dazzling smile she could manage and the queue let out a collective sigh of relief. She threaded the trolley quickly through the throng and out into the darkness.

S
HE WAS A
tired woman with wisps of greying hair that floated around her face. She swept them back, and when she saw him the lines around her mouth became dimples and the fatigue vanished as a grin swept across her face. A second later Baddó’s face was crushed into her shoulder and she hugged him with an unexpected ferocity.

“It’s still a surprise to see you here,” she sighed, hugging him close a second time. “It’s so good to have you back after such a long time.”

“I’m not sure yet if it’s good to be back,” he said uncertainly, his nose sending him warning signals as he sneezed violently. He could feel his eyes start to sting and water.

“What’s the matter?” María asked.

“Nothing,” Baddó said, shaking his head and sneezing a second time. “Where have you been?”

“Of course. Hell, I’m really sorry, it slipped my mind,” she said as Baddó splashed his face with cold water from the kitchen tap. “I stopped to see old Nina on the way home and her cat was all over me. I’d forgotten they make you sneeze.”

“It’s all right, María,” Baddó said, the sneezing fit over as she hung up her coat. “I’m wondering, how long do you think you can put up with me?”

“You know you can stay here as long as you need,” she said, straightening up from stacking packets in the fridge. “As long as … you know,” she finished, lips pursed in disapproval.

“Yeah, I know,” he said morosely. “Just wondering what I’m going to do here. It’s not as if there’s a demand for my skills.”

María dealt cutlery and crockery onto the table like a croupier. “There’s work for those that want it.”

“I’m not fussy, but my CV doesn’t look great.”

“You’ll find something,” María said, but Baddó caught the uncertain waver in her voice. “Sit down. I’m sure you’re hungry, aren’t you?”

He munched a sandwich made with the heavy bread and solid, bland cheese that he remembered from his youth, while María spooned fragrant herring fillets onto a plate and sliced black rye bread, as thick and soft as any rich cake.

“I expect you’ve missed this.”

“María, I’ve been in prison for eight years,” he said. “I’ve missed everything.”

“Dad’s not well,” she added, clearly wanting to change the subject. “I go and see him a couple of times a week now. There’s only so much he can do for himself these days.”

Baddó nodded. Family matters were something he would have preferred to avoid discussing.

“He wrote to me once. Sent it through the Foreign Affairs Ministry, or some such government department.”

“Really?”

“Aye. Just half a page to say that whatever situation I was in, it was nothing to do with him and that as far as he was concerned, I wasn’t his son any more. Just what you need when you’re looking at eight years of four concrete walls.”

María said nothing, but Baddó could see that she was taken aback and the shadow of a tear slipped down her cheek.

“So that’s that. How did they find you, then?”

“It was someone from the prisons department. He said that you were being released and deported home. They’ve been keeping tabs on you, mostly because several of us have badgered the government to make sure you weren’t forgotten over there.”

Baddó laid chunks of herring fillet on a slice of black bread and bit deep into it, lingering over the texture of the bread and revelling in the aroma of the pickled herring. He wondered if this was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted and thought that it might well be.

“How’s Freyr?” He asked. “You hear from him?”

A spasm passed over María’s face. “Sometimes. He said he doesn’t want to see you right away and that he needs to square things away in his mind that you’re back first.”

Baddó nodded. “That’s more than I expected, I suppose. It’s not as if I’ve seen much of him.”

“He changed his name. He’s Freyr Jónínuson now.”

“Ach. Can’t say I’m surprised. Jónína always was a prissy bitch and I suppose she didn’t want him being Hróbjartsson after everything that happened back then. She found a new man, I suppose? Poor bastard, whoever he is.”

“A
WORD
?” M
ÁR
said to Jóel Ingi as he passed his office, smiling at Hugrún, the human rights and gender equality
officer, as she bustled along the corridor with a smile for everyone.

“
Hæ
, Már, could you let me have yesterday’s reports when they’re ready, please?” She asked, her smile fading. “Absolutely terrible what’s happened in Libya, don’t you think? It could be such a wonderful place if it were run properly. It could be Norway in Africa with all that wealth,” she said sadly, continuing past him and hurrying past Ægir Lárusson’s lair.

With Hugrún having faded into the distance, Már hissed. “You have a handle on this, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Look, I’ve asked someone to help out, discreetly.”

“You’re not serious, surely? Who?”

“A friend,” Jóel Ingi said uncertainly. “It’s not as if we can expect the police to deal with this, can we? Or maybe we can? Just a friend. Someone who can be trusted.”

“Jesus. I hope so. It had better be someone we can all trust. Otherwise …” he jerked his head in the direction of the minister’s and his political adviser’s end of the office. “Otherwise you can have your balls ripped off and pickled instead of me.”

H
ELGI YAWNED IN
front of the screen. The hotel manager’s office contained a computer that held all of the hotel’s CCTV footage and a plump middle-aged man was sitting alongside Helgi as he ploughed repeatedly through the same scenes.

People scuttled across the screen at double their usual speed while Helgi’s companion, one of the reception staff, kept up a relentless commentary.

“My dear, it’s quite amazing some of the things a person gets to see in a place like this. Especially at night. The graveyard shift can be most entertaining,” he said with satisfaction.

“You work nights as well, do you?” Helgi asked, just to say something.

“Oh, yes. I prefer the night porter’s shift. I’m the lord of all I survey at night when all the stuffed shirts are asleep,” he said with a wink that Helgi missed as his eyes were on the screen. He froze the picture.

He pointed at a figure standing at the reception desk. “Who’s that?”

“That gentleman is a Russian businessman. He’s something to do with herring, I believe. A regular winter visitor to these shores.”

Helgi set the sequence to run again and watched the crowd around the reception desk, only looking up briefly as Gunna came into the room quietly and pulled up a chair behind them.

“Any joy, Helgi?”

“Nobody so far that … I’m sorry. Your name’s slipped my mind …” he said apologetically.

“Gústav Freysteinn Bóasson, at your service. Known to his friends as Gústav and the staff and clientele of this place as Gussi,” he replied grandly, waving a hand to indicate his surroundings. “And you are?”

“Me? I’m Gunna.”

“Known as detective sergeant Gunnhildur to us food soldiers,” Helgi added wryly. “Who’s that character?”

Gussi hooked a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles onto one ear at a time and peered at the screen. “Ach,” he said dismissively, “that’s nobody.”

“And what do you mean by ‘nobody’?” Gunna asked sharply and saw Gussi flinch at her tone.

“He works in the bar. He’s a rather silly young man by the name of Kolbeinn, I believe.”

“Here,” Helgi interrupted. “That’s Jóhannes Karlsson, isn’t it?” The black and white figure moved jerkily through the lobby, looked from side to side and disappeared from view. “Gussi, where does that door lead?”

“That leads to the bar. It’s quiet at that time of the morning.”

“You were on duty this morning. Didn’t you notice him?” Helgi asked, pausing the replay.

“I may have,” Gústav shrugged. “I was at the reception desk and we were quite busy. I can’t keep tabs on every person who walks through the lobby,” he said without hiding his impatience.

“Is there CCTV in the bar?”

“There most certainly is. In this city, Big Brother is everywhere.”

“All right,” Helgi said with immense patience. “How do I switch this machine here to the recording from the camera in the bar?”

“Choose number six from the menu at the top.”

Glasses on the end of his nose as he switched camera, Helgi grunted with satisfaction as almost instantly Jóhannes Karlsson appeared in view. He was a tall, broad man with a deliberate way of walking. The camera caught him stalking across the empty restaurant and taking a seat at a low table where he opened a newspaper. A minute later a waiter appeared and spoke to him briefly.

“No sound on this, I don’t suppose?” Gunna asked.

“It’s just supposed to be good enough to recognize faces,” Helgi said, eyes on the screen. “This is exciting, isn’t it, watching someone reading the paper. Gussi, what’s the waiter’s name? The guy he spoke to just then?”

“As I told you only a minute ago, that young man is Kolbeinn, one of the lowly staff like myself who keep this ship on an even keel.”

“Kolbeinn,” Helgi wrote down. “Whose son?”

“Ah, there I fear I fail you. Yngvi will be able to tell you his name, patronymic, his mother’s name and his ancestry going back eight generations.”

Helgi directed a sideways glance at Gunna and lifted his eyebrows with a despairing shake of the head.

“Ah, company,” Gunna said, looking past Helgi to the screen. “Gussi, did you notice this?”

All three of them watched as Jóhannes Karlsson folded and put down his newspaper, standing up as a woman approached him. They shook hands and both sat down, Jóhannes Karlsson at ease in his chair, looking toward the camera, while the back of the woman’s head faced the lens. All Gunna could see was a black coat with a high collar and fair hair that spilled over it. The two sat and talked for a few minutes before Jóhannes Karlsson beckoned the same waiter as before and sat back. As far as could be seen on the grainy footage, he was smiling.

“No ideas, Gussi?” Gunna asked.

Gústav spread his hands wide and his face was a picture of innocence. “Do you see me there anywhere? I was on the reception desk all morning. I didn’t see what was going on in the restaurant. The bar is Kolbeinn’s domain today, not mine.

The waiter returned with coffee. The pair at the table in the corner of the empty restaurant sipped and talked, although it seemed that Jóhannes Karlsson was doing most of the talking. The woman crossed and uncrossed her long legs several times, and leaned forward to sip from her cup.

Eventually the woman stood up, slipped the straps of a holdall over her shoulder and strode from the room. Jóhannes Karlsson could be seen admiring the expanse of long legs in knee-high boots reaching to a short skirt that peeped below the hem of her coat. She looked around her and gave the camera a quick glance, looking right into it.

“Stop right there,” Gunna ordered. “Can you get that as a still picture, Helgi?”

“No idea. Gussi?”

His fingers tapped at the keyboard and Helgi inserted a flash stick into a slot. “Save it onto that, would you?” he instructed.

Gunna studied the face, blurred but with a piercing look directed straight at her from beneath an ash-blonde fringe.
The lips were full and too dark to be anything other than painted. The woman’s coat was open enough to show a pale colored dress or blouse underneath, while the hand that held the straps of the holdall on her shoulder sported a broad ring, which was distinct even on the grainy image.

“I wonder,” Gunna muttered to herself.

“What, chief?”

“Nothing. This is someone we ought to have a word with sometime very soon. Roll the tape, would you? I’d like you to root around the other cameras and see if you can find out where the girl went, but first let’s see what Jóhannes Karlsson decides to do.”

They watched as he unfolded his newspaper unhurriedly, sipped his cup of coffee and read quietly, occasionally looking up. Gunna watched the clock ticking in the corner of the screen; five minutes passed before Jóhannes Karlsson stood up, refolded his copy of
Morgunbladid
, tucked it under his arm and strode from the room, looking neither to the right nor left. As soon as he had gone, the waiter appeared, cleared the table, wiped it carefully and retired, leaving the bar deserted.

“B
ADDÓ
.”

It was a familiar voice, and not a welcome one.

“I thought I’d be able to live the rest of my life without hearing you wheezing in my ear again. What the fuck do you want?” Baddó asked without turning around.

“That’s not a nice thing to say to an old friend who has your best interests at heart, is it?”

Baddó wondered if the best move would be to simply abandon his beer and walk out, but a sneaking curiosity as to why Hinrik the Herb had made the unwelcome effort to find him held him back.

“Tell me what you’re looking for. You have as long as it takes to finish this beer, and then I’m out of here.”

Hinrik beckoned to the barman, who scuttled over as quickly as his feet would carry him, ignoring the line of people already waiting to be served. “Vodka, neat, and not the piss you give the usual customers.”

“You run this place, do you?” Baddó asked, curiosity getting the better of him. “Come up in the world, haven’t you?”

A smile that made Hinrik’s narrow face look even more menacing appeared briefly and then vanished. “Let’s say I have an interest in this place, as well as a few others.” He sipped the vodka that appeared at his elbow. “Insurance,” he explained modestly.