Summerchill (2 page)

‘Nothing wrong with a little fire in the engine room, I guess,’ Danni said dreamily, twisting round to catch the barmaid’s eye. ‘Miss! Another beer here, would you?’

‘What’s this job you’re on about?’ Logi asked, anxious to get down to business.

‘It’s a showroom, of sorts. Nothing fancy. It needs a suspended ceiling, a few stud walls to put up and generally tart the place up.’

‘How big?’

‘Three hundred square metres, roughly, a small showroom and a workshop behind. You don’t know a good electrician who needs some ready cash as well, do you?’

‘I might do. I can probably find someone easy enough. Where is this place?’

‘Hellnahraun. It’s been empty for a while. Used to be a car rental’s storage depot until they went bust.’

Logi sipped the beer the waitress put in front of him. ‘Cash?’

‘Cash,’ Danni agreed. ‘Fuck me, will you look at that?’

One of the girls at the table outside had stripped down to almost nothing, squawking while her friends poured water over her bare back.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Logi said. ‘Kids aren’t my thing. I’m not going to ask what this place is for. It sounds as dodgy as hell and I can make my own guesses. How soon does your mate want this done? I’m assuming it’s not on your account, is it?’

‘Soon as,’ Danni said, eyes on the group outside as another of the girls took off her T-shirt and was splashed with cold water that rapidly evaporated in the still summer heat. ‘When can you start?’

‘Not sure. I’m busy at the moment. Can’t walk off a job halfway through.’

‘You would if the price was right.’ Danni smirked. ‘And it will be, believe me.’

‘Go on.’

‘A million and a half. Maybe two, but that would have to include the electrics.’

Logi shrugged, trying not to be impressed. ‘It depends how long the job takes, doesn’t it? If there’s ceilings to do then it’ll have to be more than just me doing it.’

‘I’ll help you with it.’

‘No chance.’ Logi shook his head. ‘We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work out, remember? You don’t turn up on time and you’re always running off to see some bloke about a car or whatever. No, if it needs labour, then it had best be proper labour, and paid for. Otherwise no deal. And if there’s labour then it’s going to have to be two million.’

Danni smiled in triumph, sure that his persuasion had worked. ‘We’d better go and have a look, then.’

‘Now? You’re joking. I have to be up at five.’ He tipped half of his beer down his throat. ‘Listen, I can feel this has to be dodgy. I’ll start the day my current job’s finished. All right? Just tell whoever wants the job done that I want all the gear there to get started on the day, and that it’ll take as long as it takes. No questions and no comebacks. Happy with that?’

Danni looked longingly at the girls outside. ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he said finally. ‘Will you look at the legs on that one?’

‘Leave it, Danni. They’re out of your league and way below your age group.’

‘That’s what you think.’ He grinned. ‘Flash a wedge of cash and buy a few drinks, and they’re yours, my friend, every one of them.’

‘And what does your Gulla think about that?’ Logi asked and watched the mention of his wife wipe the smile from Danni’s face and be replaced with a petulant pout. Logi wondered if he had prodded him a little too hard. For someone ostensibly so easy-going, Danni had an occasionally volatile temper that had more than once landed him in trouble when a drink or three had been involved.

Danni never felt comfortable around these guys. It was nothing personal, he decided. He just didn’t like them and they scared him.

‘And?’ Rafn asked with that impassive look on his face that gave nothing away.

‘I’ve found a chippy who’ll do the job. I reckon he can do it in ten, twelve days, easy.’

‘Cash and no questions?’

‘If he’s paid to, he’ll keep quiet.’

‘I hope so, for his sake,’ Rafn said softly. ‘And yours,’ he added as an afterthought graced with a glacial smile. He handed over a wad of cash so thick that Danni tried and failed to fold it in two.

‘How much is that?’

‘Two. That’ll get you started, won’t it?’

Danni shook his head doubtfully. ‘I’m not sure. I have to give the chippy a down payment to keep him on the job, and he’ll need to give his labourer a few notes. Then I need to pay for all the gear upfront.’

‘I’m sure you can work it out, can’t you?’

‘Sure, Rafn,’ Danni said with a bravado he didn’t feel. ‘I’ll figure it out.’

‘There’s a deadline,’ Rafn said with the same impassive look from under his long forehead, the fair hair pulled back in a ponytail and thinning at the crown. ‘We want to open the shop in three weeks.’

‘Sure,’ Danni assured him as he stood up to leave.

Outside he made his way past a black van with tinted windows and three hulking motorcycles that squatted on the forecourt of what had been a small factory until the Undertakers had taken the place over and turned it into a clubhouse. His old car looked out of place parked in the street opposite, and he felt the sweat trickle down his back as he imagined Rafn looking out of the window at him.

Danni drove home through the evening traffic in a daze, the bundle of cash whispering to him that it was time to spend his cut right away on something smarter than the squeaky Fiat the traffic was currently whizzing past as he filtered off the main road and onto the slip road above the Fossvogur churchyard. The Fiat complained as he brought it to a halt at the lights and, still in a daze, he looked over the wheel at the stream of cars heading towards town. It was definitely worth looking at some of the car-sales places, he told himself. It wasn’t as if there was any harm in looking, and there’d be plenty of Rafn’s cash left over, especially if he could trade in the Fiat for something else. As if it could read his mind, the engine stalled as the lights turned green and was reluctant to restart. He turned the engine over a couple of times, and by the time it was running again, the lights had gone back to red.

Danni cursed and hammered the wheel with one fist, swearing at the useless piece of crap he was condemned to drive while everyone else he knew had a decent set of wheels. The throaty rumble of a bike engine shook him from his anger as a vast motorcycle pulled up in the lane next to him. Danni looked sideways at it and quailed as he recognized the machine. The bike’s owner looked slowly over at him, smiled and gave him a brief acknowledgement, two fingers lifted in a salute that sent shivers down his spine as the bike pulled away with an animal roar, leaving him stalled at the lights a second time, all thoughts of a replacement for the Fiat gone from his mind.

He preferred to keep Danni at arm’s length these days. While he had been married to Danni’s sister they had knocked around together, but that was firmly in the past. His parting from Sandra had been acrimonious and became increasingly so as the backlog of maintenance grew, and as a result his relationship with Danni had become less easy.

Logi made sandwiches and packed them in a knapsack, a garish yellow and electric green bag that his son had left behind after one of their rare weekends together, much to Sandra’s fury. It wasn’t as if he saw the children often, a weekend once a month at most. He hadn’t fought particularly hard for access and he admitted to himself that children didn’t really interest him a great deal. It was Sandra who had been desperate to have them, her body clock ticking ominously, he presumed, while he would have been just as happy without them. Probably happier, he brooded, though he hoped that as they grew up they might seek him out, and that he would get on better with them as adults.

He could hear Tadeusz revving the van’s engine outside and he emerged into the cool of the pre-rush-hour morning. Logi nodded and grunted a greeting, got in the back and wedged himself in a corner at the back of the van with his eyes closed and no intention of speaking to anyone.

He dozed fitfully all the way past the tunnel under Hvalfjördur and into the countryside beyond, opening his eyes, refreshed and awake, as it rattled to a halt outside the half-gutted farmhouse. Without saying anything to the others, and while Marek rolled the first joint of the day and another of the Poles set about lighting a fire from the abundant tinder-dry shards of floorboard to boil a kettle, Logi made his way upstairs. The tools were exactly where he had left them, and although there was no reason they shouldn’t be, he was relieved.

Logi retrieved the weighty bag from under the boards by the wall and felt its thick paper crackle as he stowed it under the sandwiches in his knapsack. He went to the window and glared out.

‘You’d better move away, guys. I’m going to be slinging stuff out any minute.’

‘Hey, what’s the hurry? We have all day,’ one of the men called back, aggrieved.

Logi ignored him and started hammering the jemmy under the first floorboard. It splintered as it came up and he didn’t bother to check if the Poles had moved away from the pile outside before he launched it through the window. He heard it clatter outside and, as there were no yells of pain, he assumed they had heeded his warning.

An hour later and with the floor stripped back to the rafters, he decided to take a break. There was coffee in the pot outside that the others had brewed, and it was still hot. He listened to the chatter from inside as the others ripped down ceilings and stripped cracked plaster from the walls. Another two days would do it, he reckoned. That would take them up to the weekend and he might push Pétur to have the team in on Saturday as well. That would get the job done ready for the plasterers, electricians and plumbers to do their work, and he guessed that they would take two weeks, maybe more if the roof needed attention as well. That would give him a window to work on Danni’s dodgy project out at Hellnahraun, and the money would easily allow him to settle a few debts and even make a dent in the maintenance.

In the afternoon the smell of smoke took him to the window of the bare room. Tadeusz and one of the others laughed and joked as the dry timbers snapped and spat in the flames. The fierce heat of the fire brought Logi out in a sweat, and he remembered that he hadn’t taken a break as the others had. Outside, he chugged half a bottle of water, poured some into his hand and wetted his face, then lit a cigarette as the Polish boys laughed and whooped, watching the old wood it had taken a week to strip out vanish in the fire with barely a puff of smoke.

‘Hey, Tadeusz,’ Logi called and leaned against the hole in the wall that had been the door until the frame had been levered out to go on the fire.

Tadeusz walked over, eyes on the fire, then looked at him enquiringly.

‘Busy next week, are you?’

‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure Pétur has any work for us until the pipes and wires have been fixed.’

Logi jerked his head towards the boys shouting across the roaring fire, the flames invisible in the bright sunshine as they scorched the grass black. ‘How about them?’

‘Janek’s going home to Poland on Sunday,’ he said. ‘Lubo has a job in a factory when the fishing starts next month. I don’t know about Marek. Why do you ask?’

‘Might have a week’s work for you. Maybe Marek as well.’

Tadeusz’s eyes widened and he grinned. ‘That would be great. But what about Pétur?’

Logi shrugged. ‘What about Pétur? If he doesn’t have work for you next week, he can hardly say anything if you go somewhere else, can he?’

‘Well, no,’ Tadeusz admitted. ‘I suppose . . .’

‘Listen. I don’t know how much of a job it is yet. I’m going to check it out when we get back to town, all right? I’ll let you know how it looks tomorrow, but I guess we’d be starting work on Sunday.’

‘Sunday?’

‘Yep. It’s a job that needs doing fast, so it’ll be every day.’

Tadeusz frowned and Logi saw his enthusiasm begin to evaporate. ‘But work on Sunday? How much for a day’s work?’

‘That’s my number-one question. There won’t be a daily rate. Just a flat rate for the job and we’ll split it between us. The quicker we finish, the happier the customer will be.’

‘Cash?’

‘Definitely cash.’

This time Tadeusz smiled broadly. ‘I like that. Cash is good. Don’t want to give the government too much.’

‘In that case I’ll count you in. Talk to Marek, will you? But keep it quiet. You understand?’

‘This is something not legal?’ Tadeusz asked, a note of doubt creeping into his voice.

‘Well,’ Logi said. ‘We’re legal enough. What the customer does afterwards is none of our business, is it?’

Logi hadn’t been able to hide his surprise when they had turned up to start the job. Everything seemed to be there. The pallets of wood and wallboards were all there ready for them, along with everything else on Logi’s shopping list. The boxes of screws and fixings were all present and correct. Admittedly, Danni had bought cheap stuff, but that was only to be expected.

‘So what’s this place supposed to be?’ Logi asked as Danni yawned. They had started work on a quiet Sunday morning, and by Monday they were already ahead of themselves. ‘What’s the matter, not used to being up this early?’

‘This isn’t early. This is late,’ Danni growled. ‘Did you sort an electrician as well?’

‘Marek can look after electrics,’ Logi said. ‘As long as it’s nothing complicated. He’ll be fine with lights and sockets.’

Danni looked dubious. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t we have someone qualified for that?’

Logi shrugged. ‘Depends on your budget and how quickly you want this done.’

‘OK, just get it done.’

‘Cash?’

‘When the job’s finished.’

Come on, Danni. I know you’ve been given a wedge to get the job going. Let’s at least have a sub for the boys, shall we?’

Danni scowled and delved into his jacket to come up with a wad of cash that was thinner than he would have liked it to have been. He counted off notes.

‘Three hundred thousand. That’s a hundred thousand each to be going on with. Balance on completion.’

Logi counted the bundle of cash into three and called Tadeusz and Marek over. They accepted their down payments gratefully and went straight back to work.