Cold Comfort (4 page)

“I saw her last week. Seemed all right.”

“Was there anything unusual about her?”

“No,” he said eventually, looking Gunna in the face. She guessed him to be in his mid-twenties, which would have made him a child of around ten when his big sister had left home.

“Was she her normal self? Did she appear concerned about anything?”

“She was all right.”

“Do you know how long she had lived in the flat?”

Högni shrugged in exactly the same way as his father. “A while.”

“A month? A year?”

“Since before Christmas sometime, I guess.”

Gunna decided that this line was going nowhere. “We’re doing what we can to track Svana’s movements, but with no diary, mobile phone or anything like that, we don’t have a lot to go on. It would be a great help if you could point out any particular friends she had.”

Sigurgeir and Margrét looked blank.

“Svanhildur Mjöll never bothered to contact any of her childhood friends after she moved south,” Margrét explained. “She cut home off completely. If we didn’t live there, she’d have never set foot in the place again. She came home occasionally for Christmas or family funerals. That’s it.”

Margrét’s face was composed, in contrast to those of her husband and son, both of which radiated anger and loss. Gunna guessed that the woman had long ago done her grieving for her lost child.

“Do you have any knowledge of her finances? We know she owned a stake in a fitness club, but are there any other businesses she was involved in?”

“She seemed to be doing well for herself,” Sigurgeir said. “Bought a nice flat and everything.”

Gunna wondered whether to mention that the flat and car were owned by a company, but decided against it. “Friends, acquaintances, business partners?”

“Don’t know,” Högni said, dropping his gaze.

“Svana had been married, hadn’t she?”

“Twice,” Margrét said through pursed lips. “The first one was a nice enough boy, but that only lasted five minutes. We never met the second one. That didn’t last long either.”

“We may need to interview both of them. Do you have their names?”

“The first was Sigmundur Björnsson. The second we only heard of as Bjarni; he’s a sportsman, or so we were told.”

“Bjarni Örn Árnason, the weightlifter,” Högni broke in.

Behind her, Gunna could hear Eiríkur writing the names down. “When will you release the, er … When can we have her back, I mean?” Sigurgeir asked uncertainly. “Where is she now?”

“At the National Hospital. I can’t say yet how long it will take to release Svanhildur to you,” Gunna said apologetically. “I’ll find out later today what the situation is and let you know. Where are you staying?”

“With my aunt in Kópavogur,” Margrét said quietly. “Álfhólsvegur 202.”

“Thank you for your co-operation,” Gunna said, rising from her seat as the three on the other side of the table did the same. “We appreciate you coming to us so promptly. If you could give my colleague a contact number, he’ll show you out. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can with any information we can share, and I expect there will be a few more questions as well.”

Sigurgeir nodded his head, shoulders rounded as if with a great weight, while Margrét held herself proudly upright and Högni carried himself like a clone of his father. Gunna left Eiríkur to lead them out to the car park behind the building and made her way back to her office, reflecting on how little the parents knew of their daughter’s life once she had cut herself off from her own roots. But the young man was a different matter. The way he had dropped his eyes told her that Högni knew or suspected more than he was prepared to let on, at least in front of his parents.

I
T WAS LATE
in the day when Gunna dropped herself into what had once been her office chair and put her folder of notes on the empty desk. “Haddi!”

She was answered with silence and cursed quietly to herself until the sound of a distant flush confirmed that she was not alone in Hvalvík’s police station. Haddi appeared with that morning’s Dagurinn folded under one arm.

“You called, ma’am? Decided to come back, have you?”

“Indeed. Park yourself down and tell me everything you know. But not until we have lubrication,” she instructed.

Haddi shuffled out, returned with two mugs, and made himself comfortable in the office’s other chair. Gunna opened the window and longed for an illicit Prince from the dwindling pack in what had been her desk, while Haddi fussed with a pipe in defiance of both law and regulations.

“Now. What do you want to know?”

“Óskar Pétur Óskarsson. Tell me about him.”

“Who?”

“The guy who had his jaw smashed up.”

“Oh, Skari Bubba. Not much to tell, really. He was a bit of a bad lad as a youngster. Seems to have settled down since he took up with whatshername.”

“Born in Keflavík fifteenth of April 1977,” Gunna read from the notes in front of her. “Parents are Óskar Kjartansson and Fanney Ágústsdóttir, couple of older siblings. He has convictions for breaking and entering, vehicle theft, assault, drugs, drunk and disorderly, the list goes on. Nothing after 2001. Why’s he called Skari Bubba?”

Haddi’s pipe gurgled. “Well, the story goes that his dad, old Skari, isn’t actually his dad at all. You know Bubbi, the feller who runs the pumps at Hafnarkaffi? Rumour has it that old Fanney had a bit of a fling one summer while the old man was away on the prawn fishing and next spring along came little Skari. Not that old Skari ever put two and two together. He’s a decent chap, but not the sharpest chisel in the box.”

“Fair enough, that’s the man’s ancestry sorted out. What else?”

“Skari left Hvalvík around the time you came here, I suppose. He went to Reykjavík for a bit and was in all kinds of trouble for a couple of years. Then I reckon he met this woman he’s been living with and she must have straightened him out. Anyway, they’ve got some kids and about a year ago they turned up here. He’s been working over in Keflavík in some warehouse and she waddles round the village with a pushchair full of children. You must have seen her; a tubby lass with lots of frizzy hair.”

“They live in that little house near Jón Kidda’s place?”

“That’s the one. It was his granny’s house. She must have left it to him when she popped off, and I suppose that’s why they came to live here.”

“All right. Now, what about Skari when he was a youngster, before his girlfriend straightened him out?”

Haddi sucked his teeth. “He was a right bloody tearaway. He and that damned Ommi caused all kinds of mayhem.”

“Long Ommi?”

“Yup. Gulla the Post’s eldest lad.”

“Ah. The one who’s escaped from Kvíabryggja nick?”

“And hasn’t been seen since,” Haddi said. “He was put away for murder ten years ago, beat up a chap outside a nightclub. Or so they say.”

Gunna raised an eyebrow. “And what else do they say?”

Haddi coughed and cleared his throat noisily. “Well, according to the gossip, it wasn’t Ommi at all, but he took the rap for it.”

“We got the wrong man?”

“In a manner of speaking. Ommi confessed and everything, and from what I’m told, strictly on the quiet, you understand, he was made a generous offer to do the time in return for a decent payday and a good drink at the end of it all. It’s not as if he wasn’t used to being in and out of the nick as it was. Litla-Hraun must have been pretty much a second home for him, and being shifted up to Kvíabryggja’s more like being at a holiday camp.”

“Did Ommi and Skari fall out at some time?”

“Couldn’t tell you, they both left here all those years ago, and when Skari came back he settled down like a good lad, or at least as good as he could manage.”

“How far back do these two idiots go?”

“Right back to playschool. They grew up in the same street and knocked about together since they were learning to walk. A right pair of troublemakers; spent my first couple of years on the force knocking their heads together, not that it did much good.”

“It sounds like I need to ask Skari a few more questions.”

Haddi shrugged. “Rather you than me. I’ve seen enough of those bastards to last me a lifetime.”

Gunna nodded absently as she thought. The atmosphere was different and it felt decidedly uncomfortable to be back in what had been her office for so long. The place felt unfamiliar, even though she had only transferred to Reykjavík a few weeks before and still went past the Hvalvík police station every day. “You know I’m not gone yet, don’t you, Haddi?”

“What’s that?”

“You ought to know I’m only seconded to this new unit on what Ívar Laxdal calls a permanent temporary basis, whatever that means.”

Haddi wheezed with what Gunna recognized as laughter. “I suppose it means that as long as you’re a good girl you keep the job, and if you screw up they can send you back to us with a boot up your arse?”

“Probably, and it means that Keflavík is still paying my huge salary. Thought maybe they’d bump you up to sergeant. I did recommend it, you know,” she added.

This time Haddi looked surprised. “That’s good of you, but I’m too old and past it, you know. Maybe young Snorri’ll get it instead.” He grinned slyly.

“I’m afraid not, Haddi. We’re just going to live with the recruitment freeze for a good while to come and there won’t be a lot of promotion if it means going up a grade in salary. It seems my inspector’s grade has yet to be approved, so I’m still on a sergeant’s salary.”

Saturday 13th

G
UNNA STOOD OUTSIDE
the Co-op. Eventually the elderly woman she was waiting for appeared, the shop’s first customer of the day, buttoned up in a thick herringbone coat of a kind that had become unfashionable forty years before but which was hard-wearing enough to have lasted. Fanney’s hair was covered with a scarf that whipped up around her shoulders in the stiff breeze as she stepped outside.

“Need a lift?” Gunna asked, nodding at the bags the woman held in each hand.

“I don’t need a lift, but if you’re offering I’ll accept one,” Fanney answered, looking about to see who was watching.

She sat silent and stiffly upright, as if a ride in a car was a rare treat to be savoured.

“I suppose you want to come inside now?” she asked with resignation as Gunna pulled up outside the modest house one row up from the harbour.

Gunna sat patiently at the kitchen table while Fanney made coffee and set about emptying her shopping bags. The kitchen of the little house reminded her of a museum, so little had changed in the last thirty years, from the antiquated fridge to the old metal kettle on the stove.

“What was Skari like when he was a lad?” Gunna asked softly.

Fanney pulled the scarf from her head and clattered cups on to the table.

“Nothing but trouble, that boy, from the moment he was born,” she snapped. “I don’t know what he’s been up to now but he’ll be off work for a good few months, I reckon. I don’t know how his Erla puts up with him.”

She poured for both of them and leaned back to reach for a milk carton.

“He’s not a bad boy, you understand,” she went on. “Not bad at all. But he’s easily led, follows the others all the time, always has done. Wants to fit in with the crowd. If it wasn’t for Gulla’s boy, you know, the one in prison, he’d have been fine. But no, my Oskar just had to do everything Omar told him to do. I thought when he took up with Erla he was letting himself in for too much, what with her having a couple of children already and being older than him, but I was wrong there and they seem happy enough.” She sighed again and paused for breath.

“Have you been over to Keflavík to see him?”

“No,” Fanney said bitterly. “Erla’s been to see him, but she hasn’t thought to ask me along to see my own son yet.”

“Well. I have to go over there tomorrow, so I’ll drop you off at the hospital if you like.”

Gunna watched Fanney stifle an internal battle between pride and anger.

“I wouldn’t want to put you out,” the older woman said icily. “As I said, I have to go over there anyway, so it’s no trouble at all.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll pick you up at ten.”

Fanney reached for the coffee jug and filled the cups.

“Now, what can you tell me about Omar Magnússon?” Gunna asked. This time Fanney’s face stiffened.

“That evil boy. Trouble follows him like a ghost with no house to haunt,” she said with a shiver. “He and my Skari were the best of friends as kids and that arsehole of a boy did nothing but thieve, lie and fight. Led my lad a merry dance, he did, what with all the trouble he caused. He set fire to the old fishmeal plant for a bet, and that cost a dozen men their jobs. Then he stole cars and all sorts as soon as he could get behind the wheel, and talk about picking locks and thieving from peoples houses. The things I could tell you…” Fanney’s voice faded away.

“Please do,” Gunna invited.

“You don’t think it’s him as had anything to do with my Skari getting hurt like that?”

“I’ve no idea,” Gunna admitted. “I’m simply trying to put together some picture of these boys. I came to live here about the time they both left Hvalvík, so I don’t have the local knowledge and the background to go with it.”

“You’ve been here so long now that people forget you’re not from round here.” Fanney sniffed, and Gunna almost felt a flush of pride at what was an unintentional compliment. “Omar and my lad knocked about as boys do and I suppose they were more troublesome than most. There was never anything bad about Oskar, just high spirits. But that Omar’s a bad lot. They met up in Reykjavík, and his father and I never did find out what it was they got up to there.”

“Oskar didn’t tell you?”

“And we didn’t ask. If he didn’t want to say, that was his business.” She sniffed again. “But I’ve no doubt that Omar was up to no good. He always was a wicked bastard, even when he was little.”

“A
H, DECIDED TO
join us, have you, chief?” Helgi asked, glasses on the end of his nose and the phone slung precariously between shoulder and ear.

“Thought I might drop in,” Gunna answered. “Been helping you out, as it happens. Now, where’s Eiríkur? It’s time we put our heads together.”