Frozen Assets (8 page)

7

Tuesday, 2 September

‘Gunnhildur?'

Vilhjálmur Traustason's hair was not so much carefully brushed as painstakingly sculpted. Youthful dark waves had long since given way to a thick distinguished grey that swept back from a parting as straight as a line ruled on a page. Admittedly the grey made him look older than his years. But all the same, it suited a senior officer, it suited his spare frame that had once been athletic, and he felt it suited the gravitas he wanted to project.

‘Yes, Vilhjálmur, what can I do for you?'

Gunna turned to face the chief inspector. She had hoped to make one of her regular visits to the Keflavík station without running into Vilhjálmur Traustason, but there was no such luck on this occasion.

‘I wanted to speak to you about, er . . .' he mumbled. ‘I wanted to speak to you. We had better go to my office,' he decided.

Vilhjálmur shut the door and waved Gunna to a seat, where she watched him as he scanned his desk.

‘Sævaldur has charged this man, Ágúst Ásgeirsson, with the murder of Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson.'

‘What? Gústi the Gob? He's a nasty piece of work, but he's not up to murder,' Gunna said angrily. ‘That bloody Sævaldur, always taking the shortest cut he can.'

Vilhjálmur looked pained. ‘Sævaldur is a very competent officer and he—'

‘Gets results, as you keep telling me,' Gunna finished for him. ‘And how often do they get released as soon as it comes to court? How many times have Sævaldur's victims sued the police for wrongful arrest or whatever?'

Vilhjálmur Traustason was certain that he had a winning smile that he could treat his staff to when they needed his support. But in reality the sight of a slab of pearly dentistry without a shred of warmth to go with it was chilling rather than encouraging.

‘Well. Your record of arrests is actually rather impressive,' he smiled. ‘Very good work with the arson case and with that fisherman landing over his quota.'

‘The arsonists were a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who didn't need a lot of tracking down and you know perfectly well that Albert Jónasson's case was all down to the Fisheries Office and not me.'

‘Still, you were the arresting officer and that's what counts. Results,' Vilhjálmur said with an imperious lifting of his angular nose. Gunna suddenly realized that he reminded her of nobody more than a Roman emperor. A toga would suit him.

‘It's a crying shame we have to arrest people like Albert for just catching a few bloody fish. The man's a perfectly law-abiding character and—'

She stopped short, seeing Vilhjálmur's eyes glazing over.

‘We'd best leave the politics to the politicians, shall we?' he said, unable to conceal his lack of interest. ‘What I wanted to discuss with you is the review procedure.'

‘Review procedure?'

‘I've already had the files emailed to you, so you can assess your team's performance against a set of criteria and we can collate statistics on effectiveness, initiative, et cetera, all of which can be cross-referenced against age, experience and a whole range of other factors. You'd be amazed at what a useful tool this can be in assessing which staff are best placed in which spheres of activity. Which areas our training needs to be focused on. That kind of thing. Spreadsheets are marvellous things.'

‘More paperwork?' Gunna asked, trying unsuccessfully not to sound sarcastic.

‘The thing is, Gunnhildur,' he continued, as if she had not said a word, ‘we have been working on identifying officers who might be suitable for new roles, and you are one of those we have identified.'

Gunna stared, waiting for the next revelation.

‘You see,' he went on smoothly, ‘in some divisions we have isolated personnel resource shortfalls that we are looking at rectifying.'

‘Which means you're short of staff here and there, and you want to shuffle people about to plug the gaps?'

‘Erm. Those weren't my words, but in essence, well, yes.'

‘And?'

‘As you are aware, there are difficulties with personnel and although recruitment is improving we have a problem with retention. So we have a need to deploy people to meet their optimum potential.'

‘Which means?'

Vilhjálmur grimaced. He was getting a familiar sinking feeling that he was no longer running this meeting. Leaning forward, he looked down his nose at Gunna sitting in front of his desk.

‘Which means,' he continued in what he hoped was a tone of voice that would spin the conversation around, ‘that as a skilled investigator, if you were to put in an application for a vacancy in detection, there is every possibility that you would be successful.'

Gunna sat in amazed silence for a moment.

‘Does this take you by surprise?'

‘It does,' she was forced to admit.

‘It would mean stepping up a grade, as the post carries an inspector's rank.'

‘And what's the catch?'

Vilhjálmur looked pained. ‘Catch? What do you mean?'

‘I'm sorry. I've never believed in free lunches. So, being an experienced investigator, I'm naturally always looking for what's underneath. Force of habit.'

He cleared his throat, looked upwards and Gunna thought again of how a laurel wreath would suit him, nestling around those grey waves.

‘New grade effective from the first of October, you'd take over your new post on the first of December and you would have two months' leave after stepping down at Hvalvík to relocate.'

‘Aha. Where to?'

‘There would be a reasonable relocation grant. The post is with the Egilstadir force, based in Seydisfjördur.'

‘So there is a catch,' Gunna said with satisfaction.

‘It depends how you wish to look at it. Some officers would see it as an opportunity. A small force, fairly quiet, a chance to make an impression with the switch to plain clothes. You aren't tempted?'

She thought quickly. The east coast, deep fjords and high mountains, virtually as far away from Hvalvík and Vilhjálmur Traustason as could physically be possible without leaving the country. A pay grade up in salary wouldn't be unwelcome, though.

‘I'm wondering what I've done, or haven't done, to deserve this. To be honest, it's rather unexpected. Have I upset someone, or what?'

‘Not at all,' he purred. ‘There's a changing demographic in the east, a large immigrant population, and a major narcotics problem with smuggling that urgently needs to be addressed, so the Egilstadir Sheriff's Office has put together an action plan with funding for additional officers to bolster their efforts on narcotics in particular.'

‘How long do I have to think about it?'

‘Not long. There are other candidates in the running.'

‘All right. I'll think it over. Anyway, is that all?'

The man's face was grey with fatigue, even under the orange cast of the lights in the interview room at Reykjavík's Hverfisgata police station. All the pride had disappeared from Gústi the Gob as he leaned forward on the table, stubbled head in his hands.

‘Look. I've told you. I saw him that night in the bogs, told him and that other bloke to shut it or fuck off out. That's it. End of story.'

Sævaldur sat back in his chair as Gunna stood uncomfortably by the door.

‘Come on, Gústi,' Sævaldur said in a patient voice. ‘You've got plenty of form. You and your mates turned the guy over and dumped him out of town when it went wrong. Come on, come clean.'

‘No. No. No.'

‘Gústi, we've been here all day yesterday and all day today and we've got all night and all day tomorrow. And all day the next day.'

‘It wasn't me.' A hint of desperation crept into his voice as this time he smacked the table between them with the flat of one vast hand. ‘I'm telling you, it was nothing to do with me.'

Sævaldur's voice hardened. ‘So where did the cash come from?'

‘Savings,' Gústi mumbled. ‘I saved it all up.'

‘You mean you had a spending spree on Einar Eyjólfur's credit card? Come on, Gústi. We found the receipts in your flat. We know it was you.'

‘'No. It wasn't me did him in. I want a lawyer, now.'

Sævaldur tried to outstare him but failed.

‘All right,' he admitted. ‘All right. We'll get your legal eagle in. But it doesn't look good for you, Gústi. You could get ten years for this. You did five years before, so you know what it's like.'

‘It wasn't me. I found the wallet in the bogs after we closed. All right, the old woman bought a few things with the bloke's card, but that's all.'

‘OK, so that's your story.'

Sævaldur stood up, reached for the tape recorder and switched it off.

‘Now I'm going outside for a smoke and you're staying here,' he sneered, shoving his chair back. ‘D'you want to take over?'

Gunna shook her head. ‘I'd like a word outside. Can Viggó sit in for ten minutes?'

Sævaldur knocked on the door and it whispered open.

‘Viggó, would you?' Gunna asked the thickset officer outside as he waddled into the room and sat down with the air of a man ready for the long haul.

‘Well, Gústi. Haven't seen you for a while. How's tricks, then?' he asked as Gunna and Sævaldur left the room.

At the back of the building, Sævaldur and Gunna lit up. Although she had been inside the bowels of the building since the middle of the day, she was still surprised to see that night had fallen. It had started to rain and fat drops pattered around them.

‘I don't like it,' Gunna said. ‘It stinks.'

‘Come on. We have a crim with form and a link to the dead guy.'

‘Did you search his place yesterday?'

‘Yup. Found your guy's credit card under the bathroom sink, receipts in the kitchen bin. It fits.'

‘It doesn't fit. Einar Eyjólfur disappeared around midnight. We know that Gústi was on the door until after four in the morning.'

‘We can work around that. Gústi has mates.'

‘The barmaids confirmed Gústi was there until they locked up. Even that Thai girl who doesn't speak Icelandic.'

Sævaldur ground out his cigarette against the wall. ‘What's the matter with you? Don't you want to get a result on this? Is this PMS week, or what?'

‘Oh, for crying out loud . . .'

‘No, come on, tell me.'

‘Inside. It's bloody cold out here.'

In the empty cafeteria they sat face to face over a table and Gunna wondered if Sævaldur felt he was back in the interview room. In the far corner of the room a TV set showed a topical news programme with a Member of Parliament being interviewed. Gunna turned the sound down to a murmur.

‘So, what's the problem?' Sævaldur asked pugnaciously. ‘Crim. Link. Dead man. It adds up.'

‘It doesn't add up. You won't get a conviction without more evidence and I don't think you'll find any.'

‘We can make it fit. I can get a confession and a result on this,' Sævaldur argued and Gunna noticed how ‘we' had been replaced with ‘I'.

‘And whoever did this gets away while a brainless minor crim with a record of nothing but petty crime is banged up. That leaves someone very dangerous out there.'

‘Upstairs wants this sorted out quickly.'

‘Quickly doesn't mean hanging a murder on an innocent man.'

‘Gústi the Gob isn't innocent.'

‘He is of this, whatever else he may have on his conscience.'

‘He's done plenty. Gústi doesn't have a conscience.'

‘If you think you can get a confession out of him, good luck to you. There's no evidence on Einar Eyjólfur's body, no marks, no bruises, nothing to show any rough handling. I think you're wasting your time.'

Sævaldur drained his mug and rattled his chair back as he stood up. ‘Well, I'm going to batter it out of him whether he likes it or not.'

‘Sit down, will you? There's something I want to know about,' Gunna said sharply and the tone of her voice prompted Sævaldur to do as he was asked.

‘What?'

‘Egill Grímsson. Tell me about him.'

‘Who?'

‘He was run over and killed in Grafarvogur in March.'

‘What the hell's that got to do with anything?' Sævaldur demanded, refilling his own mug but forgetting to offer Gunna a refill.

‘They were close friends, Egill Grímsson and Einar Eyjólfur. I'd like to know if there's a link.'

‘Christ, what are you playing at? It's staring us in the face. All we have to do is haul it out of Gústi the Gob without having to drag all kinds of other stuff into it,' Sævaldur fumed.

‘Fair enough. Have you found the car or the driver responsible for Egill Grímsson's death yet?'

‘Well, no. But whoever it was will show up soon enough.'

‘Have you ruled out a link between them?'

‘Between a schoolteacher in his forties and a nerd in his twenties? Come on, Gunna, talk sense, will you?'

‘There are links and we need to look into them. There's more here than meets the eye, Sævaldur.'

He shifted back in his chair and swung his feet outwards to cross his ankles, throwing his head back in mock despair. ‘All right. If you want to follow trails that go nowhere, that's up to you. As far as I'm concerned, we have our culprit right here and he just needs to be cracked.'

Gunna sighed. ‘OK. There's enough to charge him with theft or fraud for the credit cards. That gives you plenty of time to try and get a confession out of him, but I don't reckon you will.'

‘Why not?' Sævaldur demanded with a sneer in his voice.

‘Because Gústi didn't do it. Even if you charge him, you won't get a conviction.'

‘You're wrong. Gústi's our man.' Sævaldur levered himself to his feet. ‘What's the matter with you, Gunna? Don't you want a result on this? That's what upstairs wants to see, and that's what they're going to get. Come and watch the master at work, you'll see,' he said and swaggered from the room, leaving his mug on the table for Gunna to pick up.