Cold Comfort (10 page)

“So you wouldn’t be able to get into a house on a day when you weren’t cleaning?”

“No. Only if the code is not changed. But still no key.”

“Understood,” Gunna said, reflecting what an opportunity such an arrangement provided for scams of all kinds to be set up. “It’s a very security-conscious operation.”

“Of course. Rich people in smart houses don’t trust foreigners in their homes,” Justyna said with a mischievous smile that lifted the fatigue from her face. “Too many criminals come from other countries.”

G
UNNA BROUGHT THE
car to a halt in a puddle that widened visibly as the rain pelted down from a belt of black sky chased by a distant blue promise of sunshine to come. She waited, toying with the idea of going for a hot dog at Bæjarins Bezta, until the sight of Skúli running through the rain towards her put the idea out of her mind.

“Not going to drip everywhere, are you?” she asked as Skúli sat in the passenger seat trying not to shake excess water from his head. “Can’t help it. I’m soaked.”

“You could have waited a couple of minutes. But it’s all right, this is a rental car,” Gunna told him as the rain stopped beating on the roof and sunlight began to glimmer again on the puddles.

“You rent cars?” Skúli asked.

She hauled the Golf out into the stream of traffic and kept pace behind a lorry as it trundled towards the harbour. “When there aren’t enough in the pool, they rent a few for us to use.”

“A fine use of taxpayers’ cash,” Skúli observed, and lapsed into silence as Gunna drove the short distance to pull up outside Kaffivagninn. They sat in the café as a second wave of rain hammered on the iron roof over their heads.

“What’s happening at Dagurinn, then?” Gunna asked when Skúli had made short work of a sandwich. He shrugged.

“No idea. I’m on compulsory unpaid holiday. Got to keep the wage bill down, or so they say.”

“Oh, right. I thought you were still at work.”

“I am. I’m doing some freelance stuff for Reykjavík Voice.

And Dagurinn doesn’t mind?”

“Dagurinn can go to hell,” Skúli said with a sudden flash of anger. A new side to him, Gunna thought. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if there’s no job to go back to when my two months off are up, so what the hell?”

“And this other one you’re working on, what’s that?”

“It’s a freesheet with daily news on the web, half in English, half in Icelandic. It’s not bad, but the money’s lousy.”

Gunna nodded and wondered at the change that had come over Skúli since the previous summer, when he had been finding his feet in his first real job since leaving university. Iceland’s financial crash had taken him by surprise, and Gunna had followed his growing disillusionment.

“But at least Reykjavík Voice is more or less independent and we’re not just plugging Rich Golli’s business interests and political chums, which is more or less what Dagurinn is there for,” Skúli grumbled.

“Will you go back to Dagurinn if you can?” Gunna asked.

“I’ll have to. Jobs aren’t easy to find, and even though it’s shit, if there is a job once my mandatory unpaid holiday is over, I’ll still have to stick with it. Unless Rich Golli’s closed it down by then.”

“Ach, you’ll be all right,” Gunna tried to reassure him. “Things’ll pick up soon enough.”

“Yeah. That’s the Icelandic way, isn’t it? ‘It’ll work out’ is what everyone always says. But I don’t know …”

“When the force finally decides to employ a press spokesman, I’ll put in a word for you,” Gunna said with a thin smile.

“Would you?” Skúli asked, the serious tone of his reply taking her by surprise.

“Of course. I don’t know if they’d even look at it, what with the state of the finances. There’s nothing spare anywhere. I’m even bringing in light bulbs and toilet paper myself now and again.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Skúli muttered. “You realize the amount of money the taxpayer will eventually have to fork out for the Icesave thing would be enough to run the Greater Reykjavík police force for more than a hundred years?”

“No, I didn’t,” Gunna admitted. “I’m afraid that with those sorts of figures it just becomes telephone numbers, completely unreal. Anyway, do you have anything you can tell me?”

“About Svana Geirs?”

“Anything from a new angle would be useful.”

Skúli sipped his coffee and grimaced.

“Strong.”

“Good grief. What do you expect in a dockers’ café? And people wonder why the descendants of the Vikings have become a bunch of weaklings,” Gunna observed seriously. “Now, Svana?”

“Prostitution,” Skúli said quietly, wiping his mouth and looking around him.

“You’re joking.”

“Nope. From what I can gather, and absolutely nobody wants to be quoted or interviewed on this, you understand, Svana Geirs had turned herself into a top-class hooker.”

“Bloody hell. That explains a few things,” Gunna said as Skúli put down his mug, fumbled in his coat pocket for a notebook and flipped through it.

“Here we are,” he said, reading with his finger on the page. “‘A skilled and enthusiastic purveyor of some highly specialized services who really enjoyed her work’ is what one bloke I spoke to said with a huge grin on his face, so I got the impression he was speaking from personal experience.”

“And who’s this guy?”

“Can’t say. He said it was a while ago, though, a good few years.”

“Fair enough. What I could really do with knowing is if she worked alone, or if there’s someone fronting for her. This is something that’s becoming a real problem these days.”

“Since the law was changed, it’s certainly been driven even further underground,” Skúli agreed.

“Didn’t you interview some Eastern European woman last year about this?”

“Yup. Could have been a fantastic front page, but it was the same week that the banks went belly-up and I suppose there was bigger news and my story got buried near the back.”

“All right. Tell me what you can, then. D’you want a refill?”

“Yes please.”

“Get one for me at the same time, will you? I’m going to nip to the loo.”

Gunna returned to find Skúli sitting in front of two mugs and reading through his notes.

“That’s better. Now, where were we?”

“Svana Geirs,” Skúli replied, and sipped. “As far as I can see, there wasn’t anyone fronting for her business, if that’s what you can call it. The whisper is that there’s a little club who quietly shared her services. I don’t know how many there are, but she didn’t do what you might call freelance work, and I gather she was well paid enough by her group of ‘friends’ not to need to.”

“Hell, so this was an organized operation, then?”

“Absolutely. Very small and discreet, the most exclusive club in town.”

“And some exclusive members, I suppose?”

“Very much so. Not men who would welcome publicity.”

Giving in to temptation, Gunna put a lump of hard sugar between her teeth and filtered a mouthful of coffee through it.

“Don’t stare, Skúli,” she admonished.

“Sorry. I thought it was only old men who did that.”

“Y
OU’RE SURE?” THE
National Commissioner’s deputy asked. For a second Gunna looked at Ívar Laxdal’s knitted brows and wondered how this thickset barrel of a man managed to wear a hat as ridiculous as a beret and still radiate authority.

“I’m sure enough. Sure enough to warrant leaning hard on some of these people.”

“What sort of people?”

Gunna ticked them off on her fingers. “The regulars are two businessmen, one accountant and one MP.”

“Which party?” Ívar Laxdal demanded.

“Social Democrat.”

He snorted. “Wishy-washy liberal types. But they’re part of the government right now and therefore able to kick us where it hurts. And they’ll close ranks to protect their own,” he rumbled. “These politicians worry about their own skins first and the rest of us afterwards.”

“It’s probably best I didn’t hear you say that,” Gunna said quietly to remind him that politics and policing should stay separate.

“No coppers on that list?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“That’s something to be grateful for. But I suppose even a chief superintendent wouldn’t be taking home enough to get him into that sort of club,” he said, almost as if to himself. Gunna reflected that she hadn’t given him names and he hadn’t asked for them.

In the park behind the Hverfisgata police station they stood next to her son Gísli’s treasured elderly Range Rover. Gunna frequently reminded herself that one day she would have to buy a car of her own, reliable enough to commute in, and stop borrowing Gísli’s car while he was at sea. Gunna had deliberately waylaid Ívar Laxdal outside to preclude any chance of being overheard. He stood in thought, one hand clasped in the other, then spun round and glared at Gunna as if she had dropped a hand grenade into his lap.

“If this is mishandled, it could be a disaster. I’m warning you, Gunnhildur.”

“Warning me of what, precisely?” she asked with a shiver of trepidation and anger.

“I’m warning you that if this isn’t dealt with sensitively, it could blight a lot of people’s careers. Yours included,” he added.

“By ‘dealt with sensitively,’ just what are you trying to tell me? Not to look too hard in any particular direction?”

“Hell, no,” Ívar Laxdal thundered. “It’s a bloody disgrace. And don’t be so damned suspicious. I mean you’re going to have to keep this very discreet and be sure of your ground. You know what this country’s like. Just a whisper out of place and everyone knows. Shit always sticks and I don’t want to see it sticking to anyone without good reason. Understand? You included.”

“Thanks. That’s what I thought you meant. Just wanted to be sure.”

Ívar Laxdal deflated slightly and Gunna felt there was a ghost of a smile about him for once. Maybe the man could thaw out occasionally, and she wondered idly what kind of life he led out of uniform.

“In that case, you’d better get on with it. All right?”

“Understood. Er …”

“What? Anything else?”

“The usual,” Gunna sighed. “Manpower. There’s only three of us in the department. My superior officer is on long-term sick leave. We’re all working flat out as it is.”

“Who’s your chief inspector?”

“Örlygur Sveinsson.”

“That old woman …” Ívar Laxdal grumbled, smacking one fist into the other hand as he thought. “Leave it with me. Report to me on this. I’ll square things with Örlygur if he comes back.”

Gunna noted the “if” rather than “when” and wondered whether there might be something that she should be aware of.

“Anything else?” he barked.

“Well, yes. I’m still a sergeant. I expected to be made up a grade with this post.”

“Still? Damn. Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can swing, but we’re going through tough times, you know, Gunnhildur. Tough times,” he repeated, marching across the car park towards his own car, which looked suspiciously like this year’s model.

F
OR ONCE THERE
was no wind, and a pall of black smoke hung in the still air. Gunna parked along the street and fought her way through a crowd gathered a respectful distance from the ambulances and fire engines that hid the house, set well back from the road in a well-heeled suburb.

A pale-faced young police officer was slowly unrolling Police—Do Not Cross tape and stringing it between the skinny trees in the front garden.

“You can’t go in there,” he barked as Gunna lifted the tape to step under it.

“Serious Crime Unit,” Gunna barked back, aware once again that being out of uniform was going to take some getting used to.

“In the garage at the side,” the young man advised her. “It’s not pretty,” he added, shaking his head.

“Thanks. Didn’t think it would be, somehow. Who’s here so far?”

“Fire, ambulance.”

“I can see that. Who’s the senior officer?”

“That’s me, I suppose, until Pétur Júlíusson gets here from the station,” he said ruefully. “We’re a bit short on manpower these days.”

Gunna nodded and crunched her way along a gravel path between scrubby lawns by the side of the house. A trampoline that looked as if it had spent all winter outside occupied the middle of one of the lawns in front of a thick hedge at the garden’s boundary.

No view, so no witnesses, I’ll bet, Gunna thought as she reached the double garage, one door closed, the other half open, the white paint on it blistered into bubbles and the ground in front of it scorched black. A paramedic and a fireman she recognized were standing by the garage’s open side door.

“Evening, Röggi,” Gunna offered. “I heard the F2 call on the way home. What do we have?”

“Hæ, Gunna. It’s a bloody mess,” the fireman replied grimly. “Garage went up in a right old fireball. Can’t have lasted more than a minute, but the heat must have been phenomenal.”

“Casualties?”

“One, in the ambulance. Not a happy lady, shock and smoke inhalation. Could have been a lot worse.”

“What happened, d’you reckon?”

Röggi spread his hands. “No idea. Absolutely no idea.”

“A massive fireball like that, could it have been an accident?”

“I’d say not. There’s nothing sensible you can keep in an ordinary garage that will produce that kind of thing.”

“Chemicals?”

“Could be. Or just petrol, a lot of petrol.”

Gunna nodded and thought. “I take it we can reckon this wasn’t an accident, unless it’s proved otherwise?”

“Sounds reasonable,” Röggi admitted. “There’ll be an investigation, and with a casualty involved, they won’t give up until they know what caused it, especially in a posh place like this.”

“Whose house is this?”

“Bjartmar Arnarson. You know, the businessman. I reckon that’s his missus they’re taking off to hospital.”

“Sounds interesting.” Gunna frowned, the name instantly setting off alarm bells in her head.

“You have a suspicious mind, Gunna.”

“It’s in the job description. What are you up to now?”

“We’ll stand one of the appliances down and send it off home. I’ll be here with the other one until the site’s secure and nothing else is likely to go off pop.”

“Good. I’d better marshal my forces, then,” Gunna decided, knowing that there would be no access to the scene itself for some time.