Cold Comfort (31 page)

Gunna wanted to grit her teeth. “Phone number, maybe?”

“Er, yes. There’s a mobile number.”

“Which is?”

“Look, I’m not sure I can release that sort of information. Data protection and all that, you know.”

Gunna breathed deep. “Where’s your office?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, where’s your office?”

“Well, I’m in Borgartún, but I don’t see what—”

“You will if I show up in front of your desk in ten minutes’ time. Look, this is not a trivial case in any way. What’s the guy’s phone number?”

Árni reeled off seven digits that Gunna scribbled down.

“Thank you. How long is it since there was any contact with him? I mean direct contact, not just you sending out a letter.” The man’s keyboard rattled again.

“Last week. His personal financial adviser spoke to him last week and I can see from the notes that they have a meeting scheduled for today.”

“When and where?”

“I presume it’ll be Kópavogur, as that’s the branch he uses, but I couldn’t tell you when for sure. You’d have to speak to the personal financial adviser yourself.”

Gunna drummed the desk with her fingers. “And do you have a name and a number for this person?”

“It’s Hrannar Antonsson, and his direct line is the bank’s usual number, but the last three digits are 967.”

“Thanks very much, you’ve been a great help,” Gunna said, putting the phone down. “Eventually.”

She wondered whether to call Hrannar Antonsson’s number or the mobile number for Jón Jóhannsson. A call to him could alert him to the hunt, but surely the man would know already that he was being searched for—assuming he had been responsible for Bjartmar’s death. She quickly punched the seven digits of the mobile number and listened to it ring for a long time before a small voice spoke at the far end.

“Hello …?”

“Hello. Who am I speaking to, please?” Gunna enquired politely. “Elín Harpa.

Who’s this?”

“This is Gunnhildur Gísladóttir at the CID Serious Crime Unit. I’m looking for Jón Jóhannsson.”

“Police?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s gone out and he forgot to take his phone,” Elín Harpa said defensively. “Why? What’s he done?”

“This number came up in connection with an investigation and I just need to make some checks,” Gunna said carefully, wondering who this woman was. “Are you his wife?” she asked, hoping that this would elicit an explanation.

“No. He just stayed here a few nights.”

“Elín, look, I don’t want to alarm you, but this could be in connection with a serious incident and there’s a possibility that you could be at risk. I’d very much like to talk to you, but face to face would be better. Can you tell me where you live? I can be there right away,” Gunna said, trying to keep her voice calm.

But the connection closed and the dialling tone wailed in her ear.

“Damn and blast …”

“What’s up, chief?” Helgi asked. “Just been speaking to our man’s wife, a nice enough lady, understandably worried about him. Says it takes a while to wind him up, but when he’s angry, he has a right temper on him.”

“Anything that sheds light on all this?”

“The man’s a plumber, had his own business but they lost a load of money when a big customer went tits up. In a nutshell, they lost the house, the jeep, all the rest of it, and the bank’s still pursuing them for this and that, all bought on foreign currency loans, even though they don’t have anything left.”

“That bloke at the bank I spoke to didn’t tell me any of this,” Gunna said angrily.

“Well I don’t suppose they want to tell the whole world what a bunch of grasping bastards they are,” Helgi observed. “Anyway, Jón and Linda went their separate ways around the time the house was repossessed. She took the kid and went back to her mother’s, who lives in Hella, and she hasn’t heard a lot from him since then. She reckons he’s been staying with his half-brother, doesn’t know where the man lives, but he’s a schoolteacher called Samúel Ólafsson.”

“Eiríkur!” Gunna called.

“Yes, chief?”

“One for you. Can you track down a schoolteacher called Samúel Ólafsson? No idea which school, but do your best. Looks like he’s our boy’s brother and that’s where he’s been living.” Gunna turned back to Helgi. “But I’d like to know who this Elín Harpa is and why she answered his phone.”

Helgi raised an eyebrow. “No idea …”

“Can you alert the Laxdal and Steingrímur and warn them that we may be looking at an encounter with our man in Kópavogur, either in or close to the bank on the corner of Hamraborg?”

She pulled the phone back across, punched in the number for Hrannar Antonsson and listened to it ring.

“Hello, Hrannar’s phone,” a cheerful female voice greeted her.

“Good morning, this is Gunnhildur Gísladóttir at the CID Serious Crime Unit,” Gunna said for the tenth time that morning. “I’m trying to get in touch with Hrannar Antonsson and it’s urgent.”

H
IS STOMACH RUMBLED
as he sat with his coat wrapped around him and his hands deep in the pockets, pushed through the lining to give him a grip on the shotgun. He looked around repeatedly, watching the time tick past ten o’clock, wondering where the bloody boy had got to.

The tension that had been building up in him all morning had disappeared as if it had evaporated suddenly the moment he had pushed the door of the bank aside. He felt slightly lightheaded, but fully in control, as if he were watching the scene from above. He imagined looking straight down on himself, sprawled in what passed for an easy chair while the bank’s activity went on around him in a blur of people moving between offices and desks. He felt his feet begin to numb and wondered just how long the bloody man was going to take.

At last the familiar pink shirt appeared and came across to him, a hand extended.

“Good morning. I’m so sorry I’m late. There was an accident on Vesterlandsvegur and the traffic backed right up. Shall we?” Hrannar asked with a smile, gesturing towards an interview room.

Jón grasped the proffered hand, gripping it for slightly longer than was comfortable or necessary, and noticing a flash of discomfort in the boy’s smile. He kept the coat closed around him as he followed Hrannar to the glass-sided interview room and took a seat opposite him.

“I can see you’ve had a really rough time of it these last few weeks,” Hrannar said, tapping at the computer on the desk. “I’m just calling up all your details so we can review your status.”

Jón grunted in response. There was nothing to say. He didn’t need a youngster with a ridiculous haircut to tell him that he was broke and bankrupt. He looked at Hrannar, thinking to himself how stupid it would be to have that patch of hair in the middle of your head slicked up like that.

He looks like Tintin, he thought.

The numbness in his feet had spread to his fingers and he could barely feel them. He flexed his toes and fingers as much as he could, but still felt ill at ease, not uncomfortable, but not quite right. Suddenly he realized that he had not listened to a word of what Hrannar had been saying and the boy was staring at him with a concerned expression.

“Jón, are you all right?” he asked. “Would you like a glass of water?”

“Yeah,” Jón grunted, tightening his grip on the shotgun and slipping off the safety catch. As Hrannar made to stand up, a young woman with a name badge on a chain around her neck knocked on the glass door and put her head around it.

“Hrannar, there’s a personal call for you,” she whispered, her voice rising on the final syllables. “Urgent, she says.”

Hrannar sat back down and dragged the desk phone towards him with a frown.

“Thanks, Sigga,” he said as the girl made to shut the door behind her. “Could you bring this gentleman a glass of water, please? He’s not feeling well.”

She nodded and departed, while Hrannar peered at Jón, who was sitting wrapped in his coat in spite of the office’s stuffy warmth.

“I hope you don’t mind, I have to take a call quickly,” he said, and saw Jón nod imperceptibly. “Hello, Hrannar Antonsson speaking,” he said smartly into the phone.

Jón’s eyes began to move, boring into Hrannar as he sat flustered behind the desk. The world began to move in slow motion. The cashiers at their desks smiled and tapped at their keyboards as if their world had been turned down a notch.

“Of course,” he heard Hrannar say. “It’s very difficult for me to speak right now. It’s really not a good moment.”

Jón’s eyes lifted to meet Hrannar’s, which filled with fear and he almost dropped the phone.

“Yes, he’s with me right now. W-w-would you like to speak to him?” he said into the mouthpiece, eyes wide as Jón let his coat fall open and he found himself staring into the two gaping barrels that looked as deep and wide as tunnels. He stared at the two circles, scarred and raw where the hacksaw had cut through the metal, ringing the black openings with silver hoops.

The girl with the name tag pushed open the door with one hand and stood frozen for a moment as she took in the shotgun trained on Hrannar’s chest. The glass of water dropped from her hand and shattered on the floor as she screeched and took to her heels. A second later the clatter of hurrying feet could be heard, but Jón sat still with Hrannar petrified in front of him.

“You took everything away from me,” he said steadily. “I had a home, a business and a family. Everything I worked for all those years, taken away. It’s all gone,” he repeated.

“I-I-I’m so sorry,” Hrannar stammered. “I couldn’t do anything. There are rules—”

“Rules?” Jón roared. “What sort of rules say you have to snatch everything away from someone? Everything, not just the cash. There’s the dignity, self-respect, all that stuff. There’s nothing left, just more fucking debts. You’re nothing but lying, thieving bloodsuckers, the lot of you.”

Outside, a siren began to wail.

“The police will be here soon,” Hrannar ventured.

“That’s fine. I’ve all the time in the world now,” Jón said with the merest hint of a smile, the first one for weeks.

G
UNNA,
E
IRÍKUR AND
Steingrímur’s Special Unit looked over the bank’s interior. A technician dusted for fingerprints in the glass-walled interview room, wrinkling his nose at the smell.

“And? What’s happening?” Sævaldur Bogason demanded, bursting in through the front door.

“All over, mate,” Steingrímur told him. “Nobody’s hurt and our boy’s cuffed and on his way to Hverfisgata right now in the back of a van.”

“I came as soon as I heard,” Sævaldur said lamely, clearly furious that their man had been located and arrested quickly and with a minimum of fuss. “So what the hell happened?”

Gunna picked up a chair that had been sent flying when the bank staff had evacuated the building, stood it back on its legs and sat herself down on it.

“He was right there, pointing a shotgun at the poor bastard who had sold him a bunch of foreign currency loans. It seems that the lad was the focus of all that anger when he lost his house and his business,” Steingrímur explained. “But I’m sure that’ll all come out at the station. I have to say, I feel sorry for the poor bugger.”

“Sorry for him or not, what’s that fucking awful smell?” Sævaldur demanded.

‘Ah, it seems the lad he was threatening crapped himself with fright, right there in his office chair. He was gibbering when they drove him off to hospital. I reckon he might be off work for a while now,” Steingrímur said with satisfaction.

“And how did you find him so fast?”

“Gunna found him. You just have to look in the right places, I guess,” Steingrímur said with a smile that was guaranteed to provoke Sævaldur to further impotent rage.

“Well done, people,” he said through a forced smile. “Is he definitely the one we’ve been searching for over Bjartmar Arnarson?”

“I’d say so,” Gunna said. “Looks like he was going to give the personal financial adviser the same treatment as he gave Bjartmar, but thought better of it at the last moment.”

“Lucky bastard,” Sævaldur frowned. “Who was the arresting officer?”

Helgi grinned. “Tinna Sigvalds.”

“Her?”

“Yup. Tinna and Big Geiri were the first on the scene when the F1 went up. She walked in, asked him nicely to put the weapon down and come with her, and he did, easy as you like.”

“Hell and damnation. A little girl like that,” Sævaldur fumed, and Gunna felt her own anger boil up inside her.

“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?” she barked.

“Tinna did a fucking magnificent job that takes a bloody sight more guts than most of us have, and all you can do is whine that it was some slip of a girl who took the gun off him! The man’s locked up and nobody’s hurt. If that’s not a result, then I don’t know what is.”

Sævaldur quailed at the virulence of Gunna’s outburst.

“Yes, well …” he blustered.

“You should be bloody ashamed of yourself,” Gunna continued. “The girl deserves a fucking medal.”

“Of course she did a fine job, but we all played our part in it.”

“We didn’t all play our part in it. You spent your bastard time in fucking meetings making sure you got noticed by someone upstairs while the rest of us did the legwork,” Gunna shouted.

Sævaldur paled. “We’ll continue this conversation at Hverfisgata,” he said finally as Gunna headed for the door with Eiríkur at her heels.

E
IRÍKUR SAT IN
silence while Gunna drove out of the city and towards the east. She was collected and hummed to herself, as if a gathering storm was the thing that brought her inner peace. Eiríkur wondered how long it would be before Sævaldur initiated a disciplinary procedure.

“You’re very quiet, Eiríkur. What’s eating you?”

“Well …”

“Well what?”

“I was just thinking how great it was that you should yell at Sævaldur like that,” Eiríkur blurted out.

“Ah yes,” Gunna sighed. “I’ll probably get a rap over the knuckles for that.” She smiled wanly. “But I’m a big girl and I can take it. It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before.”

“Is Sævaldur after Örlygur’s job?”

“Don’t know, but I’d be amazed if he wasn’t.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t you want to work for the big man, then?” Gunna teased. “He gets results, as we’re constantly being told.”