Cold Comfort (22 page)

“You’re not going to give him a story before me, are you?” Gunna could hear the grin behind his voice.

“Of course not. Hey, are you back at Dagurinn?”

“Yeah, just covering a few shifts for someone else.” Skúli’s cheerful tone vanished. “Two days a week at the moment. Gulli Ólafs works for a business magazine called Verslun. It went bust last year and someone came along and bailed them out, so it’s still running and he is one of only about half the staff they kept on. They used to be in smart offices on Borgartún, but now they’re above a garage down at Grandi.”

“Excellent. Thanks, Skúli.”

“No problem. Just wondering, do you have anything to tell me?”

“Not right now. But progress is being made. I’ll let you know when I can say anything. Keep your eyes open, though. This could be bigger than I thought. But not a word out of place. All right?”

“You know, Gunna? Anyone else saying that and I wouldn’t believe them for a second.”

“But you know you can trust your Auntie Gunnhildur, don’t you?”

“If you say so,” he said dubiously.

“O
H YES.
A
RE
we just the finest detectives around or what?” Eiríkur asked, rubbing his hands with pleasure.

“We are, Gunna and me. Don’t know about you, young feller,” Helgi grunted in reply.

“Don’t mind him, Eiríkur. He’s had a bad night,” Gunna said. “Teething again, Helgi?”

“Yup.” Helgi yawned.

“Put ’em to sleep, boys. Calpol works wonders. I’d have cheerfully strangled both of mine without it,” Gunna said. “What have you found that’s making you so happy, then?”

Eiríkur put a stack of printouts on his desk and patted them. “Witness statements from the Ómar Magnússon case. Dug them out from the archives, and guess what? There are a couple of very interesting witnesses who say they saw Ómar having an argument with Steindór Hjálmarsson the night he was murdered.”

He paused for effect.

“Go on, get it over with,” Helgi grumbled.

“There’s a statement from the lead singer of the band, Svanhildur Mjöll Sigurgeirsdóttir, and also from one of the doormen, Óskar Óskarsson, currently in hospital in Keflavík.”

“Weren’t you on that case, Helgi?” Gunna asked.

“Not really. I was with the team that arrested Ommi, but it wasn’t actually him we were looking for. If I recall correctly, we were searching Evil Eygló’s summer house for stolen goods when Ommi came wandering out of the bedroom rubbing his eyes. I don’t know which of us was more surprised.”

“So Skari and Svana both gave witness statements saying that Ommi and Steindór had a ruck?” Gunna asked.

“Yup. That’s it. There are plenty more and I thought I’d check through the rest of them, just to see if there might be a name that pops up anywhere, and there’s one that made me think. Sindri Valsson, the man’s name is. He was also interviewed at the time and claimed not to have been aware of anything. So I did a bit of a check and it seems he lives overseas now, Portugal.”

“Any relation to …?”

“Spot on. Jónas Valur Hjaltason’s son. It threw me to start with because he calls himself Valsson and not Jónasson. But he’s still a director of a few of his dad’s companies, including the one that owns property in Portugal and Spain, and he’s also a director of one of Bjartmar Arnarson’s companies, Rigel Investment.”

“So how did you stumble on all this?”

“Well, I’d already been checking out the ownership of Rigel Investment and saw the name there as a director. It wasn’t until I saw the witness statement in his name that it jogged my memory and I put two and two together. But guess what? He was here last week, left on Friday on a flight to London.”

“How did you find that out so fast?”

“I had a look through the passenger list archive and it seems he’s a regular traveller, four or five times a year normally.”

V
ERSLUN
OCCUPIED A
cramped space with a row of desks along one wall decorated with posters from the magazine’s more prosperous days. A sharp-faced young man with gelled hair looked up from the front desk.

“Yes?”

“Gunnlaugur Olafsson?”

He looked at her suspiciously.

“Gulli’s in a meeting. Is it important?” he demanded sharply. “What’s it about?”

Gunna felt her hackles rise. She dug in her pocket and flashed her police ID card at him.

“Yes, it is important, and no, I’m not going to discuss it with you. Where is he?”

The young man deflated and retreated, opening a glass door and holding a conversation in whispers, punctuated with quick looks over one shoulder.

“Gulli’ll be right with you,” he said, returning and sitting back at his desk, where he proceeded to ignore Gunna and concentrate on the computer in front of him. In the glass door behind him, Gunna noticed a reflection of the young man’s screen and saw he was devoting his attention to his Facebook page. Finally the glass door opened and a tall man with a harassed manner came out, sweeping a lock of untidy hair away from his face and frowning.

“You’re looking for me?” he asked doubtfully.

“Yup, Gunnhildur Gísladóttir. Serious Crime Unit. A quiet word would be useful.”

“I recognize you,” Gulli Olafs said, eyes narrowed. “There was a feature about you in a newspaper last year, wasn’t there?”

“There was,” Gunna said gravely. “I can see that my notoriety goes before me.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Can we go somewhere quiet?”

Gulli Olafs held his hands up and looked around the cramped office with its desks and a few booths. “There’s nowhere right now. The meeting room’s in use and I don’t know how long they’ll be. Is it something particular you want to ask me about?”

“Yes. Steindór Hjálmarsson.”

Startled, Gulli Olafs took a step back and then looked around him. “I think we’d better go outside,” he said heavily, nodding his head almost imperceptibly at the young man at the front desk.

They walked the few hundred metres to Grandakaffi, one of the workmen’s cafés. It looked to be thirty years behind the times in the increasingly smart dock area, but still saw a thriving trade for its traditionally down-to-earth food.

“Been here before?” Gulli Olafs asked as they went into the quiet café with the lunchtime rush over.

“Many times,” Gunna assured him, taking coffee and a roll, and fumbling for coins.

“No, on me,” Gulli Olafs said, handing over a note and asking for a receipt, which he folded carefully away.

They sat in the far corner of the glass-fronted extension and Gunna noticed that deep stress lines ran across Gulli Olafs forehead, making him look older than he was.

“Steindór Hjálmarsson. You knew him well, or so Hulda Björk tells me?”

“Yes. I was one of his closest friends, one of his few close friends. You’ve spoken to Hulda?”

“I have. Steindór’s death is linked indirectly to an investigation that we have in progress at the moment, not something I can say too much about. But I’m trying to get a picture of what happened, and why.”

“Omar Magnússon, I suppose?” Gulli Olafs asked with a sideways look.

“Well, yes. It’s not hard to put two and two together.”

“Not when you’re dealing with gossip all day long it isn’t. I knew he had escaped from prison and wondered why. His sentence must be almost up by now.”

“Well, no. There’s about a third of it left to go, but he would have been up for parole at the end of this year and would probably have been out if he’d kept quiet and behaved himself. He’s not someone you ever had any dealings with?”

“God, no,” he said with a shudder. “I saw him at the trial and I have to say that he was one of the most evil people I have ever set eyes on. He just radiated arrogance and … How should I put it? There was a ruthlessness about him that was quite unnerving. Absolutely no shred of remorse to be seen.”

“That about sums up Long Ommi,” Gunna agreed. “I’m particularly interested in Steindór in the weeks before his death. Was there anything about him that was odd, different, maybe?”

Gulli Ólafs stared out of the window across the wasteland between the café and the empty dock and to the shell of the unfinished opera house on the far side of the harbour.

“Steindór had graduated the year before and had fallen into a fairly decent job at that import-export company. He wasn’t happy there. He was being given more work than he was able to do comfortably and he was also doing work for other companies within the group, which had a very wide portfolio of business. There was fish, there were cars, scrap metal, electrical goods, all sorts,” he said finally, speaking slowly as if trying to recall every detail.

“Kleifar? Or Kleifaberg, maybe?”

“That’s it. But they were getting into property as well. This was before the banks were privatized and property prices hadn’t started to shoot up. If I’d known, I’d have bought a house then,” he added ruefully. “But about a fortnight before the, um, incident, Steindór came to see me. I was in my first real job as well, as a reporter on a daily back then. Steindór said that he was sure there was something going on that he wasn’t comfortable with. Kleifaberg and a couple of others were buying up property at an unprecedented rate, a lot of it owned by the city, at some surprisingly low prices. It was being practically given away. This was land that has housing estates and hypermarkets on it today.”

“A bit of insider trading going on?”

“Exactly. Some highly placed people within the city council were allowing potentially very valuable properties to be sold quietly to their friends.”

“So what did you do? What did Steindór want you to do?”

“He was giving me a fantastic story, but unfortunately it was a bit too dynamite. It reflected badly on his employers and several municipal authorities. He promised me more information and some documents to back him up.”

“But then he was killed in a fight?”

“Precisely.”

Gulli Ólafs stared out of the window, where a fat black fly buzzed in the corner. He sighed deeply. “I had nothing to go on. No evidence, no documents. I asked some uncomfortable questions but got only fudged answers in response. The guy who was my editor at the time didn’t want me to pursue it and discouraged me from digging into it.”

“So what did you do?”

“There wasn’t anything I could do. There were no real avenues open to investigate. Look, I was the new boy in the office. I’d been told in no uncertain terms that if I were to continue digging into this, my career would finish before it had begun. Then I had a warning.”

Gunna frowned. “What sort of warning?”

“I remember it like it was yesterday. I left the office late one evening and was surprised when I got to the car and found it wasn’t locked, but just thought I must have forgotten. So I got in and was about to turn the key when there was a hand around my neck.”

“What? Someone was in the back seat?”

“Yeah, and a rope. Whoever it was pulled a rope round my throat and round the back of the seat until I was practically choking. He said, very clearly, “Back off. Leave it. You know what.” That was it. A deep voice. That’s all I can say. Didn’t see anything.”

“You didn’t go to the police?”

“God, no. I was terrified. Went home, threw up, bolted the door and stayed in for a week. It’s a long time ago now, but I still wake up in the night sometimes. That’s the first time I’ve told anyone about this, ever.”

“I see. It may be a stupid question, but do you have any idea who it might have been, or who was sending you a message?” Gulli Ólafs shrugged. “I’m as sure as it’s possible to be that it was something to do with Kleifaberg or the people who owned it, and still do.”

“And that is … ?”

“He doesn’t do quite so much these days, but I guess Jónas Valur has made his pile and prefers to spend most of his time on a golf course in Portugal, especially now that he’s a highly respectable figure and a well-known party stalwart.”

J
ÓNAS
V
ALUR
H
aJALTASON
glowered. The urbane businessman with the convincingly sincere smile Gunna had spoken to before was gone, replaced by a snarling man who radiated suspicion.

“Where’s your son?” she asked without any kind of preamble, after she had brought him unwillingly to his front door. “He’s overseas.

He doesn’t live in Iceland these days.”

“Where?”

“You’ll have to ask him that yourself.”

“You’re aware that obstructing an investigation is an offence?” Gunna snapped.

“I’m not obstructing anything. I don’t know his whereabouts.” Jónas Valur stood defensively in the doorway of the expensive flat that Gunna could see glimpses of behind him.

“Come on. Don’t try and spin me a line. The man’s a co-director of several of your companies. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you don’t know where to find him?”

“I have email addresses. But I don’t have a physical address.” Gunna’s look told Jónas Valur that she knew he was lying blatantly. “What do you want to talk to him about? Maybe I could send him a message and ask him to contact you?” he suggested with the ghost of a smile.

“He was in Iceland last week. He flew to London on Friday. Why did he leave so suddenly?”

“Sindri was here to see his mother, who is seriously ill. I only saw him for an hour before he flew back to Europe. I had no foreknowledge that he was going to be here.”

“So where is he now?”

Jónas Valur spread his palms in answer.

“When do you expect to see him again?”

“I have no idea. Sindri has his own business interests overseas and has steadily had less and less involvement with this company, to the point that he takes practically no active part in the running of Kleifar any more.”

“What about Kleifaberg?”

“What?”

“You heard.”

“Kleifaberg is a company we wound up years ago.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know what you know about these things, officer, but Kleifaberg had served its purpose. That particular line of business came to an end, so the company was wound up. It’s as simple as that.”

“What kind of business?”

“Haven’t you done your homework?” Jónas Valur asked. “I’d have thought you’d know already.”