Cold Comfort (29 page)

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Who really killed Steindór Hjálmarsson? Ommi, I know it wasn’t you, so who have you been doing the time for?”

“You’re talking shit now.”

“Am I? You’ve been inside for the best part of nine years and would have been out next year. In those nine years there have been some fantastic advances in forensic science. There’s all kinds of evidence from the crime scene that’s been carefully preserved that we can take a much better look at these days. A victim’s clothes, that sort of thing. We don’t throw anything away and you’d be amazed what we can come up with now.”

“Don’t be stupid. The guy got in my way, so I smacked him. That’s what happened. He saw me outside afterwards and wanted another go, so I gave it to him.”

“No, Ommi. You were inside the whole time. I have witnesses who state that you didn’t leave the building.”

“What witnesses?”

“Never you mind. They’re there,” Gunna said. “You know, it’s very strange, this is. Normally it’s the other way round: crims trying to tell me they didn’t do things. Why are you so keen to be guilty, Ommi? Normally you’d have been screaming blue murder about police brutality, fabricated evidence and miscarriages of justice.”

“Show me these witnesses.”

“All in good time. This isn’t a formal interview. You’re not going anywhere and we’ve plenty of time to go through it all with you in every painful detail.”

This time Ommi looked genuinely uncomfortable. “What have you been told?”

“All kinds of interesting stuff. You’d be surprised what clear memories people have, even after all these years.”

“Was it Selma?”

“I can’t tell you now, Ommi.”

“Skari?”

“So you have seen Skari?” Gunna asked quickly.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But I’ve spoken to him, and very interesting it was. He’s not the brightest, is he?”

This time Ommi glared sullenly, but Gunna could sense that there were a dozen questions eating away at him.

“I’m interested in what happened that night when Steindór Hjálmarsson was murdered, but you know what, Ommi? It’s ancient history now, water under the bridge. It doesn’t look good for us to be reopening a case after almost ten years, admitting that we got it wrong.”

“So what the hell are you here for?” Ommi demanded, angrily enough for the warden standing by the door to stiffen and frown.

“It’s all right,” Gunna assured him and turned back to Ommi. “What I’m really here about is Svana Geirs. I can place you at the scene. Your dabs are right there in her kitchen, where she was killed.”

“That’s stupid,” Ommi protested. “I’d never have hurt Svana.”

“Come on, be serious. Skari testified against you and was beaten to within an inch of his life. Svana testified against you and gets killed. I can place you at both locations.”

“But I didn’t hurt Svana. I’d never hurt her.”

“So why did you go and see her?”

Ommi glared back sullenly.

“A quick shag for old times’ sake?” Gunna suggested.

“Fuck you, you old bitch,” Ommi retorted furiously.

“I can hang this one on you, Ommi. Between ourselves, this’ll mean another ten years inside, and with your past form, it won’t be in some soft open nick like Kvíabryggja. Think about it,” Gunna said quietly and turned to the warder. “Ómar would like to go back to his cell now,” she told him.

G
UNNA JUST MADE
it in time for Sævaldur’s briefing. Out of breath after trotting from the car park, she took a seat at the back.

In her precise, heavily accented English that Gunna knew practically every male officer found deeply exciting, the severe Miss Cruz drily described Bjartmar Arnarson’s injuries. As Albert had predicted, there was little relevant information that hadn’t been known at first glance.

“Caucasian male, good general health, one hundred and ninety-one centimetres in height, one hundred and fifteen kilos in weight. No illnesses, no evidence of drug use. The injuries were caused by a shotgun with small-gauge lead pellets that resulted in multiple lacerations of the feet, which were bare at the time the injury occurred,” she intoned, using one finger to push her glasses back up the bridge of her nose.

“I would estimate that the perpetrator was standing no more than one metre from the victim and he would certainly have been splashed with blood from the victim’s injuries.”

She paused to draw a deep breath and push her glasses up a second time.

“The fatal injury was undoubtedly administered at very close range, within thirty centimetres of the victim’s chest, with a second round delivered from the same weapon. Mortality was instantaneous,” she said flatly, and sat down.

“Er, how long between the two shots, do you think?” Eiríkur ventured.

“Not more than a few seconds. Very soon after. With the first shot, the victim fell to the floor. He collapsed first on to his knees, which show evidence of the impact marks on the floor, and then on to one side. The floor was also badly damaged by the shot and there are slivers of glass from the surface of the ceramic tiles everywhere. It’s possible that these may have hit the perpetrator as well, but there are slivers of glass in the victim’s right buttock and side, indicating that he fell on to that side. He was lying flat on his back when the second shot was delivered, so he may have rolled that way by himself or he may have been moved by the perpetrator into a suitable position. The victim’s chest was completely destroyed by the second shot, with extensive damage,” she said.

Extensive damage—an interesting understatement, Gunna reflected, thinking quickly to cope with Miss Cruz’s English.

“Do the footprints tell us anything?” Eiríkur asked, more confidently this time.

“Just that the perpetrator stepped towards the victim to fire the second round,” Miss Cruz said. “There are three footprints. I believe he stepped forward, right foot first, then left, fired, then stepped left foot back and right foot out of the door. There’s nothing remarkable about the prints, nothing special. Training shoes that are quite well worn, size forty-eight, I estimate, so we could be looking at a perpetrator around two metres tall.”

Helgi and Gunna looked at each other, thinking back to the witness’ recollection of seeing a tall man in dark clothes walking fast. “Thank you, Miss Cruz,” Sævaldur said.

“What’s the situation with the criminal profiler?” Gunna asked, knowing that this would elicit a sour response from Sævaldur.

“Coming from Denmark and should be arriving tomorrow,” he said shortly. “Now, ideas? What are we looking for? To my mind this was a professional job.”

Gunna shook her head and scowled to herself, which Sævaldur immediately picked up on.

“You don’t agree, Gunnhildur? Reasons?” he asked.

“The weapon, mainly,” she said firmly. “A shotgun’s messy. Someone setting out to kill and wanting to keep it quick and simple would use a handgun, probably with a silencer, not a shotgun.”

“Handguns are illegal. Have been for years,” Sævaldur objected.

“Yeah. Anyone who wants to can get hold of one for the right price,” Gunna said. “If this guy was a professional, it would have been a handgun. This wasn’t a professional job.”

The rawboned figure of Steingrímur from the Special Unit nodded in agreement.

“I agree with Gunna,” he said. “A shotgun’s awkward. From the way the pellets spread out, even at such short range, I’d guess we’re dealing with a sawn-off weapon here. It looks premeditated, but sawn-off says home-made to me.”

“And there are shotguns everywhere,” Gunna added. “Anyone who wants a shotgun can find one somewhere. Is there anyone here who doesn’t know someone who shoots? See?” she said, as not a single hand went up. “This may well have been a perfectly legal, licensed weapon for all we know.”

“All right, so what the hell are we looking for?” Sævaldur demanded. “I’ve no idea,” Gunna replied. “I think what’s certain here is that this isn’t the usual Icelandic murder. This wasn’t carried out by some doped-up bum who didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Whoever did it knew exactly what he was doing, and we need to find out if it can be linked to the fire at the same house. What I have been able to ascertain is that all the locals who would normally be mad enough to do something like this are already behind bars, or have solid alibis.”

“Either this was premeditated and carefully planned, or else whoever did it was very lucky,” Steingrímur said absently, as if he were thinking out loud. “I mean, we were there within minutes. You don’t get all that far in a couple of minutes on foot, unless he—assuming it’s a he—lives nearby and just went home.”

“Or unless he had a car parked nearby and was able to drive off without attracting attention?” Helgi suggested. “There’s the white van that was parked a couple of streets away that might have disappeared about the time of the killing, except that nobody remembers seeing it coming or going.”

“What do you want to do? Check every one of the hundreds of white vans in the south-west corner?” Sævaldur sneered.

“That’s just what we’ve been doing,” Helgi said.

Behind him, Ívar Laxdal nodded in tacit agreement.

T
HE ELDEST OF
the three children was the last one to fall asleep. The little boy looked angelic as his head lolled to one side and Jón lifted him gently into the top bunk.

“I always struggle with that,” Elín Harpa said.

They had spent the day together in the little flat, with the children engrossed first in the television and later in a game they made up for themselves in their room.

“I thought kids didn’t do that any more,” Jón said, pleasantly surprised.

“Do what?”

“Play by themselves. I thought it was all TV and video games these days.”

“It is most of the time,” Elín Harpa said. They drank cans of beer from the fridge and talked about themselves with difficulty in staccato sentences.

“How about you?” Elín Harpa asked finally. “What went wrong?”

Jón shrugged. “Same as so many people, I suppose. Debts, lost the house. Not enough work. Wife pissed off back to her mother’s.”

“So where have you been living?”

“At my brother’s. It’s only a one-bedroom flat and we don’t get on. He’s a spoiled little poof. And you?”

“Boyfriend walked out three months ago, said he’d had enough and wanted some fun again.”

“That’s shit,” Jón said bluntly.

“Yeah. I thought so.”

“Is he the father of all of your kids?” Jón asked, and his voice faltered. “I mean, I know it’s personal and I shouldn’t ask, really.”

“I don’t care. No, the eldest two are from boyfriend number one. We split up when the second one was born and I moved south to the refuge.”

“He beat you up?”

“A bit. Enough to get into the refuge, and then I got this place. Boyfriend number two moved in with me and it was fun to start with, while that lasted.”

“What went wrong, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“He’s only nineteen and couldn’t handle the whole kids thing, especially the baby. So he just went.”

“Do you see him?”

“Not since the day he left.”

“God, doesn’t he even want to see his baby?”

“I guess not.”

Jón’s mind wandered to Ragna Gústa and the thought brought tears to his eyes. They sat in silence as Jón drained his can and opened another.

“You can stay, if you want,” Elín Harpa said suddenly. “You’re quite a nice man.”

“Thanks. I’d like to but I don’t think it’ll be for long.”

“Why’s that?”

Jón hesitated. Because I shot a man in cold blood yesterday and tomorrow I’m going to shoot another one, he wanted to say. And after that I’ll be in prison for the rest of my life.

“Æi, there’s just so much shit going on at the moment. I need to try and get my head straight,” he said lamely.

“Up to you. The offer’s there,” Elín Harpa said simply. “You were kind to me the other day, and it’s nice to return the favour.”

“I couldn’t do anything else,” Jón said helplessly.

“Whatever. The kids will be awake early and I have to get them to playschool in the morning. So I’m going to bed,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head. “You coming?”

• • •

L
AUFEY WASHED THE
pots while Steini loaded the dishwasher. Gunna sat herself back on the sofa and lifted her feet gratefully from the floor.

“What shall I do with the leftovers, Mum?” Laufey yelled from the kitchen.

“Put it all in the fridge, will you?”

The clattering from the kitchen came to a sudden end as the dishwasher hummed into life and Gunna heard the percolator start to hiss and spit to itself. She had never fully got to grips with the TV remote and its rows of buttons, sticking to the half-dozen that she needed, but finally she managed to find the evening news.

The chief constable looked tired as the picture cut to him from a view of the street where Bjartmar Arnarson had been shot the night before. The statement was short and sweet, naming Bjartmar as the victim of the shooting and stating very little other than that the police were following a number of positive leads towards apprehending the killer. Gunna knew vaguely that the chief constable normally enjoyed these encounters with banks of microphones, but this time he seemed less at ease. As he spoke in short, sharp sentences, she could make out the stocky figure of Ívar Laxdal behind him.

“Is that the case you’re on, Mum?” Laufey asked, appearing from the kitchen with a cloth still in her hand.

“It’s just one of many, sweetheart. But right now that one’s at the top of the list.”

“Are you going to catch him?”

“I expect so. When we find out who he is.”

“What makes people kill other people?”

Gunna looked up at Laufey, who still had her attention on the screen. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m just interested. Psychology. There must be reasons for it.”

“The theory is that there are a very small minority of people who are capable of committing violent acts just like that,” Gunna said, snapping her fingers. “Nobody really knows how many of these people there are, maybe only one per cent of the population, maybe less. The rest of us are fairly law-abiding. But when these supposedly normal people commit a serious crime, there are all sorts of reasons for it.”