Thin Ice: An Inspector Gunna Mystery (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 5) (18 page)

‘How about a name?’

Matti scowled as if he’d felt a sudden stab of pain and Gunna wondered if she’d pushed him too far, as her phone chirped and she looked at the screen before answering.

‘Gunnhildur.’

‘Can you hear me, chief?’ Helgi said, standing somewhere outside where the wind snatched at his words. ‘That Ford Explorer you were looking for has turned up. Unlocked and keys in the ignition.’

‘Where?’

‘The car park behind the Digranes Church.’

‘Great stuff. Get a forensic team on it right away, and I don’t care how busy they are with something else. I’ll be right there.’ She looked back at Matti and stood up. ‘I need to get back to work and I guess you do as well?’

‘Should be back on the rank already, but it’s quiet today so no harm done.’

She put a hand on his shoulder and pecked him on the cheek.

‘Good to see you. Look after yourself.’

‘And you, Gunna. Don’t forget, you didn’t hear anything from me,’ Matti said, shrugging on his thick fleece. He dropped his voice. ‘And you definitely didn’t hear me mention anyone called Össi.’

* * *

Össur locked the bridal suite’s door behind him and sat on the bed. What had been a pristine white duvet was now grubby and grey, and he sat in the patch where his feet had left black marks. Moving as if in a trance, he felt numb, as if he were looking down on himself from above as he sat cross-legged on the bed where he had been for most of the last few days, surrounded by shreds of tobacco and grass scattered across the duvet. A brimming ashtray sat on a corner of the bed and a half-litre glass of water was on the bedside table. The contents of both had overflowed, leaving trails that Össur hadn’t noticed.

The dead man outside was something he had to think about. How to get out of this place was something he had carefully not been thinking about, other than dreaming about a carefree existence somewhere where Alli the Cornershop would never dare venture. But he realized with a sinking feeling that now there was stuff he would have to deal with – the last few days had been a blissful idyll of non-stop television and one spliff after another, with the occasional noseful to adjust the balance.

He also noticed with regret that he could see the bottom of the bag of Alli the Cornershop’s finest quality homegrown grass, probably produced in some big old house with heavyweight hydroponics, converted for the purpose and still not discovered by the filth. Not that Alli would be too worried. He never came anywhere near this stuff in person, and by the time the law caught up with the production side of things, he would have another workshop up and running somewhere else.

It was time to take charge again. These last few days he had kicked back and taken it easy. He had allowed Magni to take decisions, although he admitted to himself that the boy was no fool, contrary to what he had expected when he’d offered him an easy payday and a holiday in return for an hour’s work. He found the sober and capable Magni a threat, much preferring the more amiable and compliant man he had got to know in the Emperor, the Magni who liked to take the edge off the day with a couple of cold ones.

This efficient and practical character was someone new, as far as Össur was concerned, and he didn’t like it. Yes, it was definitely time to assert himself again, he decided. But first, a quick smoke to settle his nerves. It’s not every day that you get to shoot someone dead, and Össur wasn’t sure this was going to end happily. But the bastard had pushed him, hadn’t he? Sent him flying. So that had to be self-defence. Magni and the girl with the weird hair, who he was sure Magni had been screwing these last few nights, had both seen it. Even the dried-up old bag had seen it. What was her name again? Erla? Or Erna? Not that it mattered, but dear God how that woman had screeched. He’d wanted to give her a slap, but fortunately the girl had taken her inside and Magni had hidden the guy’s car away where nobody would be any the wiser.

He lay back and dragged the fragrant smoke deep, holding it there as he felt his toes and fingertips tingle and then go numb. It was definitely time to leave, but now the snow was coming down hard, and while that would stop them travelling, it would also keep unwelcome visitors away. He’d have to go downstairs and take charge soon, throw his weight about. But first he’d have a puff, he told himself. Magni and the girl were pretty capable, after all. They’d sort things out. As soon as the weather let up, they’d be away.

‘Nobody’s touched anything, have they?’

The white Ford Explorer was parked as far from the road as it comfortably could be.

‘The patrol that checked it out opened the door and then shut it up tight,’ Helgi said. ‘It was the priest who reported it. Said it wasn’t parked here yesterday but it was when he turned up here this afternoon.’

Gunna looked around. ‘It’s pretty well hidden, isn’t it? Any idea when it showed up here?’

‘Not yet. We’re knocking on doors but nothing’s turned up so far. Late last night’s my guess.’

‘The forensic team on the way?’

‘Should be here any minute.’

‘Good. Fingerprints to start with. I don’t believe for a second that Erna Björg Brandsen and her daughter parked this thing here, so the absolute priority is to find out who did. The second there’s a match, I want to know. I have to give something to the Laxdal today, and he has to be able to report something upstairs to keep all hell from descending onto his shoulders, which will in turn . . . You get the picture?’

‘Vividly, thanks.’ Helgi looked up and screwed up his eyes. ‘They’re here,’ he said.

‘Good. Then I’m off. Where’s Eiríkur?’

‘With the fire investigation team at the house fire scene in Hafnarfjördur,’ he said, as the two forensics investigators got out of their van and began pulling on sterile clothing. ‘It’s this white one,’ he called to them. ‘And it’s urgent.’

‘It always is,’ one of them grumbled as he pulled on a mask and lifted the hood of his white suit.

‘Leave them to it,’ Gunna said, taking his arm and leading him away from the parked Explorer. ‘You can chivvy them once they’ve got started. Listen. About Árni Sigurvinsson, a fairly reliable contact tells me that Alli the Cornershop got seriously rolled last week. Somebody stuck him and his goon up with a pistol, grabbed a bag of cash and ran for it. He seemed to think that Árni might have either been involved or could have known something about it.’

‘Shit,’ Helgi fretted. ‘A prize scumbag like that’s all we needed to make things more fun. You think it might be a revenge thing?’

‘No idea, and my contact didn’t really want to talk about it.’

‘But you forced it out of him?’

‘Let’s say I got as much as I’m likely to out of him.’

‘You want to pay Alli the Cornershop a visit?’

Gunna pondered. ‘No. Not yet at any rate. Listen, our man left this car here and the next we see of him he’s in a Skoda and on his own. So where did he go from here? Check stolen cars, all right? We know when he bought fuel, so we have a pretty good idea when the car must have been parked here, so let’s knock on doors and ask questions before we turn up at the Cornershop.’

* * *

As he trudged back across the hotel yard Magni saw that the man in blue overalls had been practically covered by snow. The tip of his nose was still visible but his eye sockets had been filled with the white flakes that had started to cover his body like a blanket. He guessed that in an hour or so the corpse would be completely hidden.

Magni hadn’t realized just how cold he was. He pushed through the door and dropped into the first chair he found, shivering and beating the snow from his arms. He pulled off his gloves and saw that his fingers were white. He rubbed them but the feeling obstinately refused to return.

‘You OK?’

He nodded in reply to Tinna Lind’s question, unable to speak, hunched in the chair and with each hand thrust deep into the opposite armpit.

‘You’re frozen stiff,’ she said, the concern in her voice clear as she took his arm and hauled him upright. In the lounge she made him sit on the deep sofa next to Erna, who sat there red-eyed and in shock while Tinna Lind pulled off his coat and boots. She wrapped a heavy duvet around his shoulders and he shivered next to Erna, who sat immobile, staring at the wall.

It took Magni half an hour to recover enough to stand up and stretch his legs. The feeling had returned to his fingers, and with it the pins and needles that stung as he ceaselessly rubbed his hands together, wincing at the pain and wondering if he’d done permanent damage. The walk back had taken him longer than he’d expected and he had become dangerously cold, he realized now. It scared him how close he had come to disaster so near to the warmth of the hotel.

‘What are we going to do now?’ Tinna Lind whispered, hugging him tightly in the kitchen once he had finally managed to get to his feet.

‘I don’t have a clue,’ he replied despairingly. ‘I hate to say it, but probably the best thing we can do is get in the car, drive to the nearest police station and give ourselves up, except that I’m not sure I trust myself to drive that far with the snow coming down this hard.’

‘Is that what you want to do?’ Tinna Lind pulled her shoulders back and cocked her head to one side as she looked into his eyes. ‘If it is, then that’s what we’ll do, but you’ll go to prison, won’t you?’

‘Probably. But not for as long as Össur will.’

‘I don’t want you to be locked up.’ She disentangled a hand from behind his back and tugged at his trousers, snaking a hand down and cupping the tight, cold ball of his testicles through the heavy denim. ‘I’d miss these.’

‘Me, too. So what’s the best way out of here that lets us pass go and still collect our two hundred?’

‘We have to be out of this place soon, don’t we?’

‘The sooner the better,’ Magni agreed. ‘Someone will come looking for that guy eventually and we have to be out of here as soon as the snow lets up. We might be able to get away tomorrow if there’s a thaw tonight.’

‘Can we move him? Hide him?’

Magni stopped with his mouth half-open. The thought of moving the man in the blue overalls had not even occurred to him.

‘We could,’ he said slowly. ‘But you realize we’re digging a deeper hole for ourselves, don’t you? Concealing a crime is only going to make things worse.’

‘We had to, didn’t we?’ Tinna Lind whispered. ‘Don’t forget your pal Össur has a gun and he tells us what to do.’

‘His name’s Össur Óskarsson,’ Gunna told Ívar Laxdal, entering his office with a perfunctory knock to find him reading through a report, an old-fashioned fountain pen in his fingers as he unhurriedly initialled the final page and closed it.

‘And who is the gentleman?’

‘Gentleman’s not exactly the word I’d use. He’s a minor criminal with a string of convictions stretching back into the last century; dope offences mostly, some drunk and disorderly, housebreaking and one assault charge a long time ago. On top of that there’s a stack of old motoring offences that includes one which was a massive smash that killed the poor bastard he ran into. Össur’s blood-alcohol level was practically off the scale and he did time in Litla Hraun for that.’

‘This is in connection with the house fire that Helgi and Eiríkur are investigating?’

‘Too early to say. But Össur Óskarsson is the guy whose prints are all over the back of Erna Björg Brandsen’s car, which we found this afternoon tucked away behind the Digranes church in Kópavogur,’ Gunna said, deciding to keep some of what Matti had said her to herself until she could be certain of it. ‘It looks like someone made a half-hearted attempt to wipe the prints off the car, but didn’t do a great job of it. We’ve already identified Erna’s prints, her daughter’s and her husband’s, plus there’s an unidentified set of prints in the back, over the petrol cap and the steering wheel.’

Ívar Laxdal sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. Gunna took the opportunity to sink into a chair.

‘Two missing persons, a known criminal and an unknown set of prints? Sounds interesting. What do you make of it?’

‘I have no idea. It’s bizarre, especially as Össur Óskarsson’s prints are only in the back of the vehicle.’

‘The drivers are Erna Björg Brandsen and the unidentified man?’

‘That’s the shape of it.’

‘The woman picks up two hitchhikers who then steal the vehicle?’

‘And what do they do with the two women?’

Ívar Laxdal lifted his shoulders in a shrug. ‘Who knows?’

‘From what I’ve gathered from the husband, picking up a hitchhiker would be totally out of character for Erna Björg Brandsen.’

‘The daughter, maybe?’

‘I need to talk to the husband again, and then try and track Össur Óskarsson’s movements.’

‘No response from the appeal on the radio or the newspaper?’

‘Nothing,’ Gunna said. ‘Not even any crank calls, which is unusual.’

‘Sitrep on the house fire investigation?’

‘There’s a lot of knocking on doors going on in Hafnarfjördur all over the district around the house. The victim had been beaten up quite recently, possibly only a few hours before the fire, plus there are indications he was intoxicated.’

‘You’re leaving it to Eiríkur and Helgi?’

‘As much as possible. They have a couple of uniformed officers with them doing the legwork. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.’

‘Cooking again?’

‘This is for tomorrow. I’m getting it ready now in case we need to move out tomorrow.’

Tinna Lind helped herself to slices of onion and chewed them thoughtfully. ‘We could get that gun off him easily enough,’ she said in an undertone.

Magni shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said absently, turning a panful of minced beef with a spatula. ‘Pass me the pepper, will you?’

Tinna Lind jumped down from the worktop she had been sitting on. Magni gave the pepper mill a couple of twists over the sizzling meat.

‘Why not?’

‘Because Össur is dangerous with or without a gun. He doesn’t have any brakes and he doesn’t have a conscience. The pistol makes him feel safe, and I’d rather he felt safe than threatened.’