Cold Comfort (8 page)
“I had complete faith in you, Albert. OK, what do we have?”
“Everything. There’s a trace of every piece of data that has ever gone through this phone. What are you looking for?”
“Calls to and from, especially over the last ten days or so. SMS messages, stored numbers.”
“No problem. D’you want me to email it all to you?”
“Can do. How long will that take?” Gunna asked dubiously. “Not sure. Where’s your office?”
“At the end.”
“In that case, I reckon I can get it to your computer quicker than you can get there.”
“In that case, I won’t hurry.” Gunna smiled. “I’ll need the phone as well. Evidence.”
Albert nodded. “It’s a nice one. Quite a new model that came in at the end of last year. It’s had a lot of use, I reckon. The keypad’s quite worn and you can see it’s been in someone’s pocket a lot from the way the lacquer’s gone off the corners. Where did it come from?”
“Murder victim.”
“Svana Geirs?”
“That’s the one.”
“You’d better take the charger with you as well and charge the battery right up,” Albert said, squinting at the screen and scribbling on a scrap of paper. “I’ve reset the security code to 4321, just in case,” he added.
“Thanks, Albert. Much appreciated,” Gunna said, unplugging Svana Geirs’ phone and weighing it in her hand. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
Albert was already deep in his laptop as she swung open the door, and she was startled when he called out with the door closing behind her. She poked her head back in the room.
“Yes?”
“The leather mini, I reckon,” Albert grinned.
G
UNNA REGRETTED THE
decision to print out the document that was waiting on her PC when she reached her desk after hurrying from Albert’s workshop downstairs. Pages spewed unrelentingly from the printer, crammed with lines of numbers, times and dates.
Scanning the list of logged calls, she saw that at the top was a withheld number from that morning and guessed that this was Helgi’s call that had helped her locate the phone under the dishwasher. Below it were a dozen more calls from withheld numbers over the past few days, as well as from mobile and landline numbers that Gunna marked with a highlighter.
The last call that had been answered was on the same day that Svana Geirs had been found with the side of her head crushed on the kitchen floor, the call timed at 13.53 and lasting less than three minutes.
“So she was still alive at five to two,” Gunna mused.
“Say something, chief?” Helgi enquired.
“Albert got all the data out of Svana Geirs’ phone. The last call that was answered was at 13.53 on the day she died, so she was alive then. Narrows things down a bit, I suppose. Her cleaner turned up just before five, by which time Svana had already been dead for a while.”
“We showed up just after five, and Miss Cruz said that Svana could have been murdered between midday and three, so that fits. But 13.53 is only an indicator if we assume that Svana answered her own phone.”
“Don’t make things complicated yet,” Gunna admonished. “Although you’re right. We have to take into account that someone else could have answered it.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Under the dishwasher. Got you to call the number and listened out until it rang. Remind me to let you hear her tasteful ringtone properly sometime.” Gunna riffled through the top sheets of the printout. “That’s it. That’s the last activity on the phone, except for a load of missed calls from mostly withheld numbers.”
“So how about she had the phone in her hand when she was actually attacked?” Helgi said slowly. “Surely if the attacker wanted to get rid of it, he’d have taken it with him and dropped it off a bridge. I reckon we can be sure that Svana didn’t deliberately put her own phone under the dishwasher. What d’you think?”
“It sounds more likely. You’d have thought an attacker would have taken it and disposed of it rather than stash it under the dishwasher,” Gunna agreed, staring at the heaped printout. “Where’s Eiríkur? I need some help going through all this stuff.”
“He’s off today.”
“OK. You know, Helgi, I have a strong feeling that you’re absolutely right. Svana gets a bang on the head, hits the ground like a sack of potatoes and anything in her hand’s going to go flying. Which means that there’s a real possibility that she was taking this call when she was attacked—which could give us a very precise time of death.”
“What’s next, then?” Helgi asked dubiously.
Gunna felt her stomach growl. “It’s all boring detective work, starting with going through the names and numbers in Svana’s call log. Are you still looking for Long Ommi?”
Helgi rolled his eyes and Gunna saw his shoulders droop. “God, yes. The bastard’s about somewhere, but I’m damned if I can find out where he’s holed himself up. Normally there’s someone who’s only too ready to pipe up and it takes about two days to track these deadbeats down, but I don’t know what Ommi’s doing right this time.”
“I’d better leave you to it. Can you put Eiríkur on to this tomorrow?”
Helgi’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not here tomorrow?”
“Yeah, afternoon shift. See you at lunchtime,” Gunna said, pulling on her anorak.
“H
Æ! ANYBODY LIVE
here?” Gunna called out, kicking off her shoes in the back kitchen of Sigrún’s house among all the boots scattered in front of the wire-mesh cage that occupied the corner. She swung open the kitchen door to be greeted by steam and the aroma of fish soup from the pot on the stove. Baleful eyes glared from the cage.
Sigrún looked up and gently closed the laptop on the kitchen table in front of her. “All right? Good day?”
“Not bad, apart from a smarmy git trying to smooch his way into my knickers.”
“But you say it like it’s a bad thing?” Sigrún grinned.
“Hallur Hallbjörnsson.”
“The handsome-and-knows-it MP?”
“Yup.”
“Yuck. You can lock people up for trying it on with a police officer, can’t you?”
“If only.”
Gunna fumbled in her pocket for the packet that wasn’t there any more while lifting a mug from the tree on the worktop behind her without having to look. She placed it in front of her and Sigrún poured.
“Is Laufey here?”
“I sent her to the Co-op with Jens.”
“Ah, peace and quiet for five minutes.”
“Not for long.” Sigrún looked preoccupied and frowned.
“What’s up?” Gunna asked, recognizing the signs. “Jörundur behaving himself?”
“Well …” Sigrún began.
Gunna sipped her scalding coffee and waited.
“I don’t know what you think… and I really hope it’s not going to be a problem for you, what with Laufey and everything. But Jörundur and I have been, well, you know, talking about everything. And he’s been offered a job.”
“That’s great,” Gunna said warmly. Sigrún’s surly bear of a husband had been one of the first victims of Iceland’s financial turmoil, as the construction business had ground to a halt even before the banks had admitted that their coffers were empty. “But it means moving, right?”
Sigrún nodded. “Norway.”
“Norway? Good grief.”
Gunna wondered, as so many times before, how she would ever have managed to juggle work and family without Sigrún down the street to feed the children when police business called. With Gísli now away at sea much of the time and Laufey turning into an independent young woman in her next to last year of secondary school, Sigrún’s help was less frequently needed, but still invaluable.
“He’s been unemployed for the best part of a year, and things don’t look like getting any better. It seems that one of the guys he used to work with up at the Kárahnjúkar dam got a job there on some tunnel-building project and they need people with experience, so he called Jörundur up and told him to apply. Jörundur’s good at what he does, you know. They told him to come over as soon as he can and the job’s his.”
Sigrún looked suddenly tearful before taking a deep breath.
“We’ve been over it again and again, but he’s set on it,” she continued. “I’ve told him often enough that if we’re careful we can live on what I bring in. There wouldn’t be any holidays in the sun, but I can live with that.”
“But not Jörundur?”
“Ach. You know what blokes are like, and my Jörundur’s not what you’d call a new man. As far as he’s concerned, a man provides, and if he can’t, he’s a waste of space. I suggested he could go back to college for a year and retrain, but that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.”
“So when are you leaving?” Gunna asked softly.
“Next month, probably.”
“You’ll be fine,” she forced herself to say. “Something new.”
“We thought about him commuting. You know, a week at home and two weeks over there, something like that,” Sigrún continued as if Gunna hadn’t spoken. “But that’d never work out. You know what Jörundur’s like. A couple of beers with the boys and he’d be off on one again.”
“I understand. What about your job? What happens there?”
“That’s no problem. The council’s so desperate to cut the wage bill that they couldn’t wait to tell me I could have a year’s unpaid leave whenever I want.”
“So it’s there if you want to come back to it?”
“That’s it. But it’s not as if work’s going to disappear. People keep on having children, so the demand for nursery school teachers isn’t going to go away.”
“More, if anything. There seem to be more and more pregnant women than ever around these days. You’d have thought the recession would put people off having kids, but it seems it’s the opposite.”
“Got to find something to cheer yourself up when times are hard,” Sigrún grinned, a smile returning to her round face at last. “There’s nothing like do-it-yourself entertainment. Are you eating? There’s enough fish for everyone.”
Suddenly the back door opened and swung in with a bang as the wind caught it.
“Mum! Guess what?” Laufey yelled from behind the gurgling toddler as she steered the pushchair through the door.
“Hæ, sweetheart. What should I guess?”
“Didn’t Sigrún tell you? She’s moving to Norway and she said we could look after Krummi.”
Gunna sighed.
“All right, young lady,” she said, trying to sound stern. “But you’ll have to look after him. And I still think Krummi’s a ridiculous name for a rabbit.”
J
ÓN LAY IN
the dark, unable to sleep. The sofa wasn’t as comfortable as it had looked, but it was better than sleeping in the workshop. That afternoon he’d toyed with the idea of splashing petrol over the house and putting a match to it before handing the keys over to the bank’s representative, a silver-haired man in a long overcoat who had seemed genuinely sorry to be doing his job.
The sofa belonged to Jón’s younger half-brother Samúel, a secondary school teacher in his twenties who lived alone during the week but at weekends shared the flat with a boyfriend, another teacher who arrived joyfully every Friday evening from his weekday job in a flyblown town a couple of hours east of Reykjavík.
Jón and Sammi were too far apart in age to have spent much of their youth together. Sammi was the late and accidental result of their mother’s second marriage, and had been pampered in ways that had made Jón furious with envy over the toys and treats he had never enjoyed. Sammi had made it plain enough that the sofa was Jón’s during the week, but when the boyfriend turned up on a Friday evening, the two of them preferred to have some privacy. The trouble was, Jón didn’t have anywhere else to go.
He tried to blot out the murmurs of conversation and the muffled laughter coming through the thin wall of the flat’s only bedroom, and concentrated instead on the faces of people he held grudges against. First was that bastard at the bank, the one who had encouraged him to borrow so much. It wasn’t even as if the personal financial adviser was someone with experience; just a lad with a stupid haircut and a pink shirt who had done a week’s personal banking course.
Second was the bastard who owned all those flats. It had been a big job and just what a small company keen to make a name with the quality of its workmanship needed. It had meant working evenings and weekends, as well as calling in a few favours and bringing in some mates from the trade as sub-subcontractors. But it had been worth it, and Jón had proudly handed over a completed set of kitchens and bathrooms a week ahead of schedule in time for the flats’ buyers to move in before winter.
Unfortunately Ingi Lárusson’s company had gone into receivership a few weeks later. No money was available and Jón could only become one of a great many creditors. When he finally spoke to Ingi, he understood that the developer had defaulted and they were all in the same boat. Everyone down the line had been out of pocket, with Jón’s mates who had done some of the work also cursing him.
A couple of hours on Sammi’s computer told him who the real bastard was, and he couldn’t find it in his heart to blame Ingi Lár when Bjartmar Arnarson’s development company had failed to honour its debts.
He tried to go to sleep, but whispers and muffled giggling continued to seep through the wall. Eventually he wrapped the pillow around his head to blot it out.
“N
INETY - SIX.”
Diddi took a number and waited. He used to enjoy going to the bank when he was a boy, depositing half of his week’s money every payday and watching the total add up to a tidy sum. These days a visit to the bank was a different affair, the savings book long since emptied, and this was a shame, as Diddi still liked the place. The lights were bright and friendly, the ladies behind the counters smiled and there was always unobtrusive music that didn’t hurt his head like the music his neighbours played.
“Ninety-seven.”
Diddi looked at his ticket again, even though he knew his number was ninety-nine. Three of the cashiers’ desks were open, so that meant only a few minutes to wait. He perched awkwardly on an uncomfortable plastic chair, sweating in his thick parka, knowing that what he was about to do was wrong. He badly wanted the toilet, but that would mean missing his turn and having to get another number and queue all over again.
“Ninety-eight.”
