Frozen Assets (11 page)

‘Is it, like, a criminal car?' There was a new note of excitement in the boy's voice.

‘I'm not sure. It could be. Can you do that for me?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Oh, Siggi. Ask your grandad as well if he remembers what colour it was. All right?'

Gunna smiled as the line went dead, imagining Siggi racing up the stairs to his computer. She sat back and waited for the phone to ring while she looked at the rough photocopy of Gunnar Ström's passport picture and the blocky image taken from the airport parking lot's surveillance camera of the blue jeep's driver. The two looked similar, but the images were not clear enough for her to be certain.

Siggi worked faster than Gunna had expected. The phone buzzed after only ten minutes.

‘Gunnhildur.'

‘Hi. It's me. Grandad says yes. He's certain it's the same kind of jeep.'

‘Absolutely certain, or just fairly sure?'

‘Grandad says ninety per cent certain and he isn't sure what colour it was, but it was dark — dark blue or grey, or maybe black.'

‘That's excellent, Siggi. There might be a future for you with the police one day,' she said. ‘Give your grandad my regards and tell him I'll pop in and see him in the week.'

She sat back and looked at the rental forms again, even though there was no need to check the colours of Swiftcar's jeeps. She knew that they were all black.

13

Tuesday, 9 September

Fat Matti stuck a thumb under the waistband of his trousers and snapped the elastic. Switching from jeans to tracksuit bottoms had made his life so much easier that he couldn't understand why he had put it off for so long.

He reached forward to turn on the engine. The taxi had been still for so long that it was starting to cool and he needed to burn a little diesel to warm up. This wasn't just for his own sake. Customers like a warm cab as well.

He peered over his shades into the mirror, hoping to see a customer hurrying towards him. At this time on a Tuesday morning a few revellers were still making their way home. Weekday mornings were good with business people hurrying to meetings, but evenings were best when the nightclubs, parties in people's houses and revellers with a deep need to score could keep a man busy well into the small hours.

Matti peered into the mirror and examined his eyebrows. He took out a comb and swept back his thick black hair before giving each eyebrow a tweak and then clenching his buttocks to lift himself in the seat and bring his moustache into view. This too needed a minor readjustment. In fact, the long-out-of-fashion Zapata tache was Matti's only remaining gesture towards elegance. A porn star moustache, one very refreshed customer had called it, before being dropped miles from his destination and outrageously overcharged.

For a man who habitually wore jogging bottoms and hadn't seen his feet for years, Matti was a keen follower of fashion. He thoroughly approved of the new fashions for young women to wear ever tighter clothes and delighted particularly in the warm spring weather that brought the short tops and miniskirts out as sure as the geese started flying north. Not that this applied on the night shift, when all year round skimpy skirts could give him a flash of knicker — or better — as the young things jumped into the big Mercedes to be ferried between bars, nightclubs and parties.

Matti was deep in reverie when a phone rang. He patted his pockets until he found which one was buzzing.

‘Yeah?'

He listened briefly, grinned and ended the call. Matti put the big taxi into gear and pulled out of the taxi rank, switching off the For Hire sign as he did so. Private jobs, paid for in notes, were always worth having.

Gunna spread the newspaper out on her desk and waited for Skúli to turn up. He had spent anything from a day to an hour or two shadowing her doing routine work. She admitted to herself that it was quite enjoyable having someone so young tagging along behind her asking questions — frequently questions so simple that she wondered how someone with a university education could know so little.

She was about to give up trying to work out the newspaper's recipe for a beef casserole when she heard Skúli greeting Haddi at the front desk.

‘Madame's in the executive suite,' Haddi grunted when Skúli asked where she was.

‘He means I'm in here, Skúli,' Gunna called and Skúli's windblown face appeared in the doorway, with a young woman half a head taller at his shoulder.

‘Hi,' he said awkwardly. ‘Er, this is Lára. She's come to take some pictures today if that's OK.'

Lára extended a hand and Gunna crunched it in hers.

‘Fine by me. But preferably nothing embarrassing.'

‘Have you heard about the march?' Skúli asked excitedly.

‘What march?'

‘So you haven't. Clean Iceland Campaign are organizing a march to protest against the aluminium industry. You must have heard about it. It was on the news this morning.'

Gunna stared. ‘In case you hadn't noticed, this a TV-free zone. The only news here is yesterday's
Dagurinn
. So you should at least be pleased that we're reading your newspaper. When's this march supposed to happen?'

‘It's next weekend, but it starts tomorrow morning.'

‘Skúli, make sense, will you? It's Wednesday tomorrow, so how can it be happening at the weekend?

‘What he means,' Lára broke in, ‘is that the march starts outside Parliament tomorrow morning and they plan to be here on Saturday afternoon.'

‘Here?' Gunna demanded.

‘That's right,' Skúli went on breathlessly. ‘They plan to march from Reykjavík to here. It's a hundred kilometres, so if they cover thirty or so in a day they'll be here for Saturday and they're planning a public meeting outside the InterAlu compound on Saturday afternoon.'

‘Bloody hell.'

‘They reckon on a thousand people at least taking part,' Skúli added.

Gunna's desk phone rang and she picked it up with the frown still on her face. ‘Gunnhildur.'

‘Good morning, Gunnhildur. Vilhjálmur here. I was just wondering if you were aware of the events that are being proposed for next weekend?'

She could feel the distaste in the chief inspector's voice.

‘Ah, you mean the Clean Iceland Campaign march?' she asked smoothly, grinning at Skúli. ‘As it happens, yes. But if you want to tell me more, then go ahead.'

Matti only had to drive a few hundred metres and as he pulled up at the lights to wait for the turning on to Sæbraut, the door swung open and his passenger appeared silently in the seat.

‘Where to today, Mr Hardy?'

‘Out of town this time. Borgarnes.'

It was a bright day with unbroken sunshine in an azure sky as Matti gunned the taxi up the main road out of town, leaving trucks and old ladies in Skodas standing. Hardy sat and looked as if he were enjoying the scenery as they passed the sprawling grey concrete suburbs of Grafarvogur and Mosfellsbær until they found themselves bowling through open country at the feet of Esja, the hulking mountain that dominates Reykjavík from across the bay.

Matti effortlessly hauled the taxi past tractors and coaches, carefully keeping not too far over the speed limit. Hardy enjoyed the unaccustomed ride through the dusty green countryside, so much harsher than the wooded landscape he was used to.

‘Aren't there any trees here, Matti?' he asked lazily.

‘No. No trees here. The Vikings cut them all down for firewood and they never grew back.'

Matti cut his speed as they approached the tunnel at Hvalfjördur and was careful to keep under the limit until they emerged, blinking in the bright lights after the dim tunnel, past the toll booths at the far side.

He forced himself not to be curious. Matti knew that any discussion of Hardy's work was strictly off limits unless his opinion was invited, which it seldom was.

The road became a switchback of turns and hillocks through the lush farmland north of the tunnel. Hardy wound down the passenger window to let in the breeze that brought with it the rich aroma of cut grass. With every farm along the route making the most of the dry weather for haymaking, Matti kept a cautious eye out for tractors pulling vast trailers of hay along the highway.

Hardy's phone didn't ring. It just buzzed discreetly in his top pocket. Matti pretended to hear nothing as Hardy, sitting casually in the passenger seat, took the call.

‘Of course. I'll call you right back. I'm not alone right now but I'll return your call when we can speak confidentially,' Matti heard him say smoothly into the slimline phone. ‘Of course. Yes, a few minutes,' Hardy continued before snapping the phone shut. He looked over at Matti, who was trying not to catch his eye.

‘Can we stop somewhere? Somewhere there's a landline phone?'

‘Yeah. I reckon so. We'll be in Borgarnes soon and you can make a call from the gas station, I guess,' Matti hazarded, inclined to ask why a mobile wasn't good enough, but then thinking better of it.

Matti pumped fuel while Hardy went inside to find a payphone. He filled the tank and ambled inside to pay, deciding on the way that this would be as good a time as any to eat. He paid in cash at the desk and looked around for Hardy but failed to see him.

‘Excuse me, darling. Is there a phone here?' he asked.

‘Over there,' the cashier replied, jerking a thumb behind her towards the toilets.

He made his way over and shoved open the door of the Gents. On the way out, relieved, he spotted Hardy leaning against a wall, handset to his ear. Matti went over to him and made an eating gesture, raising hands to his mouth. Hardy frowned and looked away. Matti shrugged his shoulders and went towards the cafeteria where Hardy found him ten minutes later.

‘I thought you might be hungry,' he said through a mouthful of burger, simultaneously skewering half a dozen chips on his fork and dipping them in a tub of bright pink cocktail sauce.

‘I might be,' Hardy admitted. ‘But I don't eat shit like this.'

‘You should have said.'

‘I was busy.'

‘And I was hungry.'

‘Big man, sometimes I think that you are a little too hungry for your own good,' Hardy said with a hint of acid in his voice that passed Matti by.

‘Yup. Always been hungry, me. We was hard up when I was a kid and there wasn't never enough to go around. Scars you for life, that does.'

Hardy nodded sagely and stood up. Matti was almost finished when Hardy returned with a bottle of water and a sandwich for himself, and mugs of black coffee for each of them. He carefully used Matti's discarded knife to scrape more than half of the mayonnaise from his prawn sandwich on to the empty plate before taking a bite.

‘So, who are we going to visit this afternoon?' Matti asked through yet another mouthful of food. Hardy was disgusted by Matti's table manners, but enforced confinement had taught him not to comment on other people's behaviour without good reason.

‘The man I have to speak to is a consultant who advises a lot of companies on various things. It's not important for you to be present. The man speaks English perfectly and I don't expect I'll need you to translate.'

‘Going to be long?'

‘I doubt it. Twenty minutes, maybe. Then I have to be back in Reykjavík in good time after that.'

‘Another job?'

‘You could say that. I have to go to Spearpoint, so you can leave me there.'

‘Suits me. Right, I'm going outside for a puff before we go and find this guy. You got an appointment with him?'

‘In a way.'

‘What do you mean — in a way?'

‘He doesn't know about it yet.'

Matti pulled up outside what looked like a dilapidated farmhouse. The building needed a coat of whitewash and the windows on the seaward side were caked with grime and salt.

‘This is the place?' he asked Hardy doubtfully.

‘It should be. Wait here for me, will you?'

Matti switched off the engine and opened the door. There was almost perfect quiet outside. Only a few songbirds and the distant chatter of a brook broke the silence.

Matti levered himself out of the car and perched his backside on the bonnet, listening to the faint tick of cooling metal under the bonnet as he lit a cigarette. He watched Hardy walk purposefully up the path and open a garden gate that needed both oil in its hinges and a coat of paint.

He was halfway to the front door when it opened and a man appeared with spectacles perched among sparse hair that nevertheless curled about his shoulders.

‘Can I help you?' he asked vaguely. ‘I heard your car pull up outside.'

‘I'm looking for Arngrímur Örn Arnarson,' Hardy replied, hurrying to reach the man before he came too far from the house's front door. ‘I've been told you can help me out with some information.'

‘I don't know about that,' the man said doubtfully.

‘Ah, but I'm sure you can. Einar Eyjólfur said you would be able to give me some answers.'

‘I'm sure I don't know who that is,' the man said quickly.

‘But you are Arngrímur Örn Arnarson?' Hardy asked softly, hoping his voice would not carry as far as where Matti was basking in the sunshine. ‘Can we sit down and talk for ten minutes? I know you're a busy man and I won't take much of your time.'

The man cast about as if unsure and gestured towards an iron table flanked by a barbecue and a pair of garden seats near the door of the house. Matti looked lazily across at the two men sitting face to face outside the house and wondered what could be so important that it was worth driving all this way when a phone call could have done the trick. He hauled himself forward and sauntered around the back of the car to get a cloth. He busied himself polishing dead flies from the car's windows while he caught snatches of the conversation that carried in the still air. In spite of himself, he couldn't help straining to hear more.

‘You're telling me you're unaware of this?' Hardy asked.

‘It's not something I'm involved with,' Matti heard the man say.

‘But how easy would it be to set something similar up? It would have to be secure and in an environment where interference is not easy,' Hardy asked casually.

‘It can be done easily enough. Full access and any questions are ignored as long as suitable payments are made in the right places.'

Matti willed himself not to be nosy and straightened up from polishing the windscreen. As he did so, the two men at the table also stood up and came forward a few paces. He saw Hardy stretch out a hand and the man uncertainly put forward his own hand to shake it, while Matti hastily dropped the cloth and the cleaning fluid back in the boot to be ready to move off.

As he closed the boot, he heard a howl that set his teeth on edge. Looking up, he could see the two men with their hands locked, but by now Hardy was on his feet over the man who cowered on his knees, his right arm extended and twisted unnaturally into Hardy's grip.

Hardy whispered something that the man clearly missed as Matti stood transfixed.

‘This is a message to your friend the Skandalblogger that it has to end and it has to end now,' Hardy repeated. ‘Do you understand?'

The man nodded furiously.

‘This is just to make sure the message is taken seriously,' Hardy added, leaning forward sharply as he put his weight behind his grip on the man's arm. Although no stranger to a little persuasion himself, Matti shuddered at the sharp crack of the man's wrist snapping and the thin screech that followed it.