Cold Comfort (28 page)

“Not necessarily. Tell me what your movements were on the day Svana Geirs died.”

“Are you still on that? God, I’d have thought you’d have caught the bastard by now,” Hallur said.

“A little more co-operation and we might have,” Gunna retorted.

“Is this anything to do with Bjartmar?” he asked warily. “Are these murders linked?”

“That’s what I need to find out. Now, details. Tell me what happened that day, without leaving anything out this time.”

Hallur groaned. “I left here around six thirty, as usual, and went to my parliamentary office. There I went through paperwork, answered emails, all that kind of crap, had a meeting with a couple of colleagues—”

“About what?”

“The oil refinery proposal in the Westfjords. Basically it’s an environment-versus-employment question. So whatever stand we take on it, we’re going to be wrong,” he said bitterly. “Personally I’d like to see the effort going into aquaculture, but I’m only a junior MP and so nobody pays much attention.”

“You can give me the names of these parliamentary colleagues?”

“Certainly. Eyrún Valgeirsdóttir, Pálmi Marteinsson, Fannar Jónsson. There were others, but those are the ones that spring to mind. They’ll vouch for me.”

“And then?”

“The meeting came to an end at around ten thirty and I went out.”

“To meet Svana?”

“I went to Fit Club and was expecting to meet her. She wasn’t there so I did an hour of running and weights, showered and went back to work. Simple as that. I was due to speak at two, as you know.”

“You say you were expecting to see her? Had you arranged to meet?”

“Not specially. But she was normally there at that sort of time.”

“You had something particular to discuss?”

“No.” He shrugged. “I enjoyed her company. Svana was a fun person to be around. Even though she was shallow in many ways, she was a lively personality and an antidote to dry meetings that go on too long.”

“It seems she had an appointment. Any idea who with? Another of the syndicate?”

There was a sour look on his face.

“I have no idea. I hoped to see her. She wasn’t there,” he said with rising impatience.

“You’ve no idea who she was expecting to meet?”

“Not the faintest, officer, and if you don’t mind, we have guests for lunch.”

“I’m sure they’ll leave some for you. When did you last see Bjartmar?”

“Before his trip to the US,” Hallur said with a sour expression on his handsome face.

“And the rest of the syndicate?”

“I’ve seen Bjarki once or twice in the last few weeks. His firm looks after the books for my wife’s media business and we’re old friends.”

“He doesn’t have an alibi.”

“Bjarki? Good grief, he’d never hurt a fly, let alone a person. Svana was so fit and healthy, she could have made mincemeat of him.”

“Bjartmar was abroad. You were in Parliament. Jónas Valur doesn’t have much of an alibi and Bjarki doesn’t have one at all. I’m not assuming that one of the syndicate killed Svana Geirs, but you have to admit that you all make a good starting point. You had a motive in that if she were to reveal the arrangement, your political career would be in trouble.”

“You think so?” Hallur asked with a grim laugh. “If the truth were known about the goings-on between political bedrooms in this country, more than half of us would be out of office tomorrow.”

“Did you meet any of Svana’s other acquaintances?”

“What? Her friends? No. I don’t think she had friends like normal people do. She just had people who were useful to her. I’d sometimes run into her with people at Fit Club, normally the sort of fashionable women she used to associate with, sometimes men, but not often. Once I saw her laughing and joking with a troll of a man at Fit Club, who turned out to be her brother. That was a bit strange, because Svana never seemed to have anything like a family, ever.”

“How so?”

“She never mentioned family at all. I knew she was from out of town somewhere, but didn’t know where. I know it sounds funny, but it didn’t fit somehow.”

“How so?” Gunna asked again.

“I don’t know,” Hallur answered. “She’d never had any relations like the rest of us do, never mentioned parents. Finding out there was a family behind her was a bit like discovering a shameful secret that she’d have preferred to keep quiet about.”

G
UNNA LEFT
H
ALLUR’S
smart house with his wife’s farewell scowl vivid in her mind and drove back to Hverfisgata thinking over the conversation. She made a mental note to find Björgvin in the financial crime department and ask if he had any knowledge of Bjarki Steinsson’s activities. As an accountant, Bjarki undoubtedly handled affairs for his friends’ companies, and although she knew little would be divulged beyond generalities, she felt that the man’s demeanour would tell her enough.

Some of what Hallur had said triggered a mental note she had made to herself a few days earlier that had become submerged beneath a tide of other matters. She hurried through the rain, grumbling to herself that rain shouldn’t fall from a virtually clear sky. Instead of going to the detectives’ office, she climbed an extra flight of stairs to the cells and could hear someone snoring sonorously inside one of them.

An elderly man padded uncertainly from the toilet back to a cell, followed by a woman prison officer. Hearing her approach, both of them turned.

“Hæ, Gunna, sweet thing,” the grey-haired man croaked.

“Had a night on the tiles, did you, Maggi?”

“Æi, Gunna. You know how it is sometimes. A little drink doesn’t go far these days,” he said, and yawned.

“Come on, Maggi,” the prison officer encouraged. “You can have a few more hours’ sleep and that’s your lot.”

The old man tottered forward, one hand on the wall, and the prison officer locked his door behind him, watching through the peephole as he settled himself back on the mattress inside.

“Gunnhildur, isn’t it?” she asked. “I thought I recognized you.”

“That’s right,” Gunna said, surprised. “You’re Kaya?”

“Saw you in the paper last year.”

“Ah, so you must be one of the half-dozen people who actually read Dagurinn instead of using it to line the litter tray.”

“Sort of.” Kaya grinned. “We don’t have any pets, so I suppose we have to read it. What can I do for you?”

“Chap brought in last week. Thickset, pissed. Tinna Sigvalds and Big Geiri brought him in but they’re both off duty today, otherwise I’d have asked them. Who was he?”

Gunna followed Kaya to the office, where she scrolled through the log on the computer.

“Last Friday? He was brought in about six thirty?”

“That fits.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Not much. Just who he was. The face looked familiar and I wanted to be sure.”

Kaya scrolled through the notes. “Nothing special. His name’s Elvar Marínósson, legal residence at Hólabraut 60, Djúpivogur, date of birth twentieth of March 1986.”

Gunna nodded, writing the man’s name and date of birth down on the last page of her notepad. “What was he brought in for?”

“Being an idiot, basically. Pissed, had an argument with a cashier in a shop on Posthússtræti. He lit a cigarette in the shop, refused to put it out and they called the police. He slept it off, the shop decided not to press charges and so we let him out the next morning with a thick head and told him not to do it again.”

“OK, thanks. That tells me what I needed to know.”

“Any time,” Kaya said with a saw-toothed smile.

Gunna clattered down the stairs to her own office and waited impatiently for her computer to start up.

When it had stopped whirring and had settled down to its usual irritating hum, she went to the traffic database and typed in Elvar Marínósson’s name and date of birth. A second later the man’s driving licence details appeared, confirming his full name, legal residence and date of birth, just as Kaya had said. But the picture alongside it, although not a recent one, showed a pale-faced, fair-haired man with deepset blue eyes, not the beefy red-faced man who had appropriated his identity.

“Ah, Högni Sigurgeirsson. What game are you playing at?” Gunna asked herself quietly.

“C
AUGHT HIM YET?”
Gunna asked as Helgi appeared with Eiríkur behind him.

“Caught who?” Eiríkur said with a dazed look in his eyes.

“I don’t know. Anyone, plenty out there to choose from. What have you been up to, then?”

Helgi shook his head in despair. “Have you any idea? Any idea at all how many vans there are in this country that are either white or light grey? I’ve just spent an hour with the old feller who thinks he saw our mysterious white van down the hill from Bjartmar’s house, showing him pictures of vans in all shapes and sizes, every model under the sun. Guess what? It’s a white van. That’s the nearest he can get. Oh, but there might have been some lettering on the side. Or there might not.”

He dropped the folder of photographs and brochures on his desk and sat down.

“How far did the Special Unit go with their hot search?” Gunna said, standing up and going over to a much-annotated map of Reykjavík on the wall. “They don’t mess about, those guys. If it was there when they did their search, they’d have logged it. If it wasn’t, then it must have disappeared at the critical moment,” she decided. “If it was ever there at all.”

She traced the road in which Bjartmar’s house stood with one finger, before skipping across the next road to the one beyond it.

“Bjartmar’s house is in the furthest street but one in that district,” Eiríkur observed. “So if our man escaped on foot, he must have gone downhill, because there’s only one street of these yuppie mansions, and then lava fields behind it.”

“Until some bright spark like the late lamented Bjartmar feels a need to build on it,” Gunna added.

“Yeah, chief. Look, though. Our friend does a runner. No point going uphill, there’s nothing there and no way out. Downhill, back towards Hafnarfjördur. So even if the van was nothing to do with him, he would have gone down there anyway,” Eiríkur continued.

“Yes, and look here,” Gunna pointed out. “In case neither of you had noticed, there are only two ways out of that district. So if you can find some CCTV footage from a minute or two after the shooting that shows a white van, then we might be on to something.”

“You should apply for promotion, Gunna. With brains like that, you’re wasted on us,” Helgi assured her, while Gunna took a moment to decide that the comment didn’t warrant a sharp reply. “As it happens, my young colleague has already been busily searching out CCTV footage. But what have you been doing, chief?”

“I’ve been annoying our elected representatives once again.”

“You’ve made something of a habit of that over the years, I hear,” Helgi said.

“That’s what those idiots are there for,” Gunna retorted. “Remember Högni Sigurgeirsson?”

“Who?”

“Svana Geirs’ little brother.”

“Yeah, a leery bastard if I recall correctly.”

“Hmm. A very insightful analysis, Helgi, and right on the money. He was here last week.”

Helgi’s brows knitted. “What for?”

“Pissed and making a nuisance of himself, or so Kaya upstairs says, but he passed himself off as someone else.”

“You’ve been to see Kaya?” Eiríkur asked, awe in his voice. “Alone?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Watch yourself, chief,” Eiríkur said as Helgi laughed. “She’s a right lezzie, that one is.”

“Ach, get away with you.”

“True, chief,” Eiríkur said. “An out-and-out lady in comfy shoes.”

“Private is private, boys. Leave that stuff outside work, will you?” Gunna admonished. “Eiríkur, you were with me when we interviewed Svana’s parents. Can you find the phone numbers, please, especially the number for Högni.”

Pink at the ear lobes after having been gently scolded, Eiríkur went to do as he was told and disappeared behind his partition.

“Don’t encourage the boy, Helgi,” Gunna murmured to him. “Gossip is one thing, but it’s different when it’s in here. I know Kaya lives with a woman, but she doesn’t need her personal life raked over by everyone in the building.”

“Sorry, chief.”

“Will you get on to Steingrímur and find out how far his team extended their hot search around Bjartmar’s house? All right?”

“Already on to it. What about you?”

Gunna sighed. “Sævaldur’s holding another briefing at five. You know, I have a nasty feeling he’s angling to take over Örlygur Sveinsson’s duties, assuming Örlygur’s back finally gets him retired. Now, that would be fun and games, wouldn’t it?”

Helgi looked blank.

“But right now, I’m going to have a little drive in the country while you gentlemen get some real work done,” she said cheerfully. “See you at Super-Sævaldur’s briefing.”

• • •

T
HE DOOR CLANGED
behind them and the warder took his place next to it as Ommi lounged behind the table. Gunna eyed him curiously. She suspected that his tough veneer was thinner than before.

“You know who I am, Ommi, so let’s go straight to it, shall we?”

“You know my mum, don’t you?” Ommi asked. “How is the old bag these days? Haven’t seen her for years.”

“She’s fine, as far as I know. It’s not as if I see her very often.”

“And how are the rest of the idiots in that dump?”

“You tell me, Ommi. You were there not long ago.”

“Haven’t been there for years,” he said sharply. “You’d have to pay me to go near that hole.”

Gunna looked him squarely in the eyes. “Ommi, let’s leave out the crap, just for once. I know that you and another man, probably that deadbeat Addi the Pill, went out to Hvalvík looking for your old friend Óskar. I have enough witnesses and evidence to place you there on that day and I’m not interested in listening to you arguing about it. Understand?”

“Evidence, yeah. You can fix up a few witnesses easily enough to lie for you in court.”

Gunna declined to rise to the bait. “It’s your pension scheme I’m interested in, Ommi. Tell me what the arrangement was.”

Looking him in the face, Gunna was silently pleased to see a moment’s panic behind the façade before Ommi’s sharp-cut features returned to their normal sneer.