Chilled to the Bone (9 page)

He ran a hand through his hair, scowled at the boxes and reflected that if Sara had moved in with him instead of going back to her parents, all the crockery and ornaments would have been put in cupboards and on shelves weeks ago.

Peering through the spy hole, he could see a middle-aged man in blue overalls with his finger on the doorbell button again, as he yawned and scratched his beard with the other hand.

“Who is it?” he called through the door.

“Maintenance. There’s a water leak somewhere in the building and we’re checking all the bathrooms.”

“There’s no leak here,” Magnús called irritably.

“What? I can’t hear you?”

He could see the man on the other side cupping one ear and Magnús cursed at having had to move to a cheaper apartment with no intercom.

“Plumbing,” the man called out again. “Got to check the valves. It’ll take two minutes.”

Magnús groaned and considered going right back to bed, but in the end he gave way and opened the door to let the man and his toolbox inside.

“Where’s your bathroom, pal? Sorry to disturb you. It won’t take long.”

Magnús scratched under the baggy T-shirt he slept in and walked ahead of him along the passage. “In here. But there’s nothing wrong here,” he began, and yelped in surprise as the man pushed him forward into the bathroom, looked around quickly and put a hand firmly onto Magnús’s shoulder. A second later he was lying in the bath, dazed and with blood running down his face, wondering how the rim of the bathtub had flown up and hit his nose. The man’s hand felt huge as it descended on his face, stifling the howl of alarm that welled up inside him as his mouth was filled with a foul-tasting ball of cloth.

With a knee planted firmly in the small of Magnús’s back, the man bound his hands together with swift movements and a roll of tape, completing the task before his victim had even realized what was happening. Magnús kicked out as the man
grasped his feet to bind those as well, and was instantly rewarded with a merciless jab in the ribs that left him gasping and cross-eyed with a pain he could hardly have imagined.

The man smiled and nodded, as if satisfied with his own handiwork. He leaned over him and spun the taps; ice-cold water poured into the tub, blending with scalding water that reeked of sulphur. The bulky man sat on the edge of the tub and lit a cigarette, gazing down sadly like a father contemplating a naughty child. Magnús wondered what he had done and spluttered to mumble past the ball of cloth in his mouth.

“Not a word. Understood?” The man reached forward and gripped his shirt to spin him onto his back. He then delicately pulled from his mouth what Magnús recognized as a pair of his own underpants, taken from the washing basket by the door. He felt instantly sick and sour vomit cascaded down his chest as he retched while trying desperately to protest his innocence.

“Shhhh,” the big man said. “Magnús. You’re not going to cause any fuss, are you? Of course not. Because if you do …” A hand swept forward, gripped the hair of his fringe shoved his head beneath the surface and held it there until bubbles began to appear, before hauling him back up. Magnús gasped and barely managed a lungful of air before he was back below the surface. He writhed and a maelstrom of bubbles broke the surface. The big man counted to three and hauled his head back up while Magnús gasped and retched, shuddering as he gulped down precious air.

“As you can see, Magnús, I’m not playing any games. You can see that, can’t you?” The man asked in a warm, avuncular tone, as if regretting that things had come to this.

“I haven’t done anything …” Magnús groaned, too drained of energy to offer resistance.

“Let’s just say that you haven’t done anything that you’re aware of, shall we?” The man smiled. “A woman showed up at
your hotel yesterday morning. Tall, blonde, grey dress. What’s the scam and who’s in on it? Talk.”

Magnús hesitated. The man grasped a handful of hair and again propelled Magnús below the surface, reappearing what seemed like half a lifetime later with a gasp and the words tumbling out of his mouth.

“I don’t know, I swear. It’s nothing to do with me and I just saw her come in and go up to the room,” he gabbled, the words tripping over each other in his desperate haste to explain before his head was thrust below the surface again.

“All right, Magnús. Now, you tell me when she left. How long did she stay in the hotel. Whose room did she go to?”

“It was four-oh-six. There was a businessman in there. There was a phone call at reception at about twelve o’clock to say that there was someone in four-oh-six who was in trouble and would we send one of the staff to check, and that it was urgent. I went up there myself and there was a guy who had been tied to the bed. That’s the truth, and I didn’t see the girl again. She went in but I didn’t see her leave.”

“And the guy who was in the room?”

“He was packed and gone about ten minutes later.”

“You checked CCTV to see if she had left, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, of course. But I didn’t see her anywhere. She disappeared.”

The man stood up and Magnús could see him thinking. “The victim. Name?”

“Haraldur, I think.”

“Whose son?”

“I … I’m not sure.”

Again his head disappeared below the surface of the water.

“Any ideas?” The man asked.

“Samúelsson, I think. From out of town somewhere.”

“He settled his bill and left?”

“He’d paid for the room in advance.”

The man nodded slowly. “You know, Magnús? You’re working this afternoon, aren’t you?” he asked and continued without waiting for a reply. “You’re going to go to work as usual and you’ll get a phone call a few minutes after four, which is when you’re going to give me this guy’s name, address, phone number and his credit card number as well? You can get all those off the computer system, can’t you?”

Magnús nodded, prepared to agree to anything that involved not being drowned in the bathtub of a cheap rented flat.

“You’ll also go into the phone records and get me the number of the phone that called to tell you this guy needed some help upstairs. Understood?”

“I’m not sure I can—”

“Do it,” the man said in a cold, hard voice. “I’m not going to play games. I know where you work. I know where you live. I know where your girlfriend lives. You get my drift? And if anyone else asks you about this shit, you don’t know anything.”

He stood up and picked up his toolbox. Magnús strained against the tape holding his wrists as the man made for the door. “Can you …?” he pleaded.

“Use your teeth, can’t you?” the man replied with a smile that was even more unnerving than his scowl. “It’s only sticky tape. It’ll give you something to do while you think through what we’ve been talking about.”

I
T TOOK
G
UNNA
an hour to tease just part of the story out of Valeria in a session that came to a halt halfway through when she ordered Hákon out of the room. Without her overbearing husband present, Valeria had spoken more freely, but Gunna could see that much of what she said was hearsay and gossip. A hard worker, she had only worked at the Gullfoss for a few months after its new owners, who owned several hotels in and around Reykjavík, had acquired it and set about modernizing its systems and standards. One of the city’s older and
more respected hotels, the new owners wanted to smarten it up discreetly and make it more efficient, but without losing the patina of age and respectability that their more trendy hotels lacked. Staff from the other hotels had been brought in to start making those changes. Ástrós had been promoted to a supervisor’s job when she was transferred from the Harbourside Hotel and chose Valeria as the hardest worker to go with her.

Gunna wanted to track down Ástrós and push her harder than she had the previous day now that it had virtually been confirmed that Jóhannes Karlsson’s experience had not been a one-off—apart from its abrupt ending.

She stalked back into the lobby of Hotel Gullfoss at three, hoping that Ástrós would still be there. There she found her and two men struggling to remove the bed from the room that Jóhannes Karl had died in the previous morning.

“It has to go,” she panted as she hauled the mattress out of the door. “Policy. Someone kicks the bucket in the hotel, everything in that room has to go. Just as well it doesn’t happen too often. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s just as well the forensic team had finished in there,” Gunna said, half to herself, as Ástrós shuffled along the corridor with the mattress behind the two men carrying the bed’s frame. There were a dozen black bin bags that Gunna presumed contained the curtains, bedding and anything else from the room, which now looked stripped. A shadow of clean red carpet marked out where the bed had been, and showed just how old the carpet was.

Gunna peered at her phone, found Albert’s phone number and listened to it ring. To her surprise, it was answered after only a few buzzes.

“Albert.”

“
Hæ
. Gunna. Any news? Sorry. I know it was only yesterday. I thought you’d seen the directive,” Albert said caustically.

Suspicious, Gunna was immediately on her guard. “Directive? Who from?”

“Upstairs. Due to budgetary restrictions forensics are now only able to attempt to perform miracles on even dates between one and five, weather permitting.”

“Sorry, Albert. Of course I saw that, but I didn’t think it applied to you. Look, I’m in this room that you went over yesterday. It’s been stripped so I hope you got everything you needed.”

“Yup, and I can tell you the name of the person who left that hair in the wash basin.”

Gunna was silent for a moment. “Already? I thought getting DNA analysis results took weeks? Go on, then. Make my day.”

“Barbie.”

“Barbie?”

“That’s right,” Albert laughed. “Barbie. It’s not real hair. It’s fake, from a wig. Plastic hair.”

“I see.”

“So we reckon it’s either Barbie or Elton John. Take your pick,” he said and paused. “Are you a bit slow today, Gunna? A blonde moment or a senior moment?”

“Ach. Sorry, Albert. No, just a bit preoccupied. There’s a lot going on at the moment.”

“I know. Knitting booties …”

“Get away with you,” Gunna retorted, and found that the reminder was not a welcome one. She stifled the urge to yell at Albert. “Do you reckon you can get any more information from that hair, whatever it is?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll have a stab at figuring out what the material is and you might be able to track down the supplier, that’s assuming it was bought in Iceland and not abroad.”

“Yeah, or through eBay or something. It could have come from anywhere.”

“I suppose so,” Albert said and she could hear the sound of
voices behind him as his attention was no longer on what she was saying. “There can’t be that many wig suppliers in Iceland, surely? But that’s your department, something for the detectives to detect.”

“That’s as maybe. But we only perform miracles on special occasions these days, unlike you guys, who have to come up with them every other day.”

Á
STRÓS WAS NERVOUS
, frightened and reluctant to speak. Gunna pondered her words as she drove through the city center, past the slipways and old whaling ships to where the square block of the Harbourside Hotel occupied what had once been a hardware shop with shipping companies on the floors above. The shipping companies had long ceased to exist, although a few of their crests were still displayed prominently high on the walls, and the hardware store had moved to shiny new premises in an industrial park on newly reclaimed land across the road.

Inside the building nothing remained of what had once been there, as if everything had been stripped from the shell of the building and replaced. Gunna guessed that this was roughly what had been done. A smooth tiled floor stretched into the distance to a reception desk where, not that many years earlier, there had been shelves of nails, shackles and cans of paint.

“I’m looking for the manager. Is he on duty today?” she asked, taking advantage of the empty lobby and bored receptionist.

“Uh. I think so.”

Gunna waited. “Where can I find him, then?”

The receptionist shook herself from her reverie and tapped at the computer.

“He should be here.”

“Right here?”

“Yeah. He’s in charge of reception today.”

“But he’s not here?”

“No. Can I ask who wants him?”

The girl looked sharper having seen Gunna’s ID and took a decision. “You need to see the operations manager,” she said.

After some whispered phone calls, Gunna found herself in a plush office, an aromatic coffee at her elbow.

“Símon Arnarson,” the short man with a grey-streaked goatee and a twinkle in his eye introduced himself, extending a hand to be shaken. “What can I do for you?”

“My name’s Gunnhildur Gísladóttir and I’m with the city CID. We have an investigation in progress and I’m looking for someone who may or may not be involved with the death of a guest at the Gullfoss. I take it you’ve heard about that?”

Símon nodded enthusiastically. “Nothing official, but I heard from my colleagues. Word gets around fast. You know both hotels are owned by the same company? Part of the same group, not that we like to use that word too much these days.”

Gunna put the pictures on the desk, next to the rapidly cooling coffee. “This is the person I’m looking for, and I have reason to believe there was a similar incident here as well yesterday?”

“I …” Símon hesitated. “I was away yesterday and Magnús was the duty manager. He didn’t leave anything in the notes about an incident,” he said, looking at the two pictures. “Which one?” Símon asked, looking from the elegant blonde to the track-suited brunette, clearly perplexed.

“I’m working on the theory that they’re the same person. So either version.”

“This was taken at the Gullfoss. I recognize the bar. So was this, on the back stairs.”

“You know the Gullfoss well, do you?”

“There aren’t that many hotels in Reykjavík, not smart ones, whatever the tourist industry likes to tell people. There
are a few of us who have worked in most of the city hotels at one time or another,” he said thoughtfully. “I was the bar manager at the Gullfoss Hotel a few years ago and came here when this place was opened. Then the company that owns this and several other hotels bought the Gullfoss as well. We tend to swap staff between hotels when it’s convenient, so I could find myself back there.”