Thin Ice: An Inspector Gunna Mystery (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 5) (7 page)

‘Idiot? He has a gun, a real one! He scared my mother half to death.’

‘Well, he had me a bit worried as well,’ Magni admitted, scratching his head.

‘Have you known him long?’

Össur? Yeah, a while.’

‘You’ve been friends for a long time?’

‘Not really. I used to see him with all the deadbeats around the Emperor sometimes, but it was only after I got laid off that I sort of got to know him.’

‘Laid off, how?’

‘Lost my job a few months ago.’

‘Wow. Can’t you get another one?’

‘D’you think I’d be running around the countryside in the middle of winter with a nutcase like Össur if I could get a proper job?’ Magni said, and for the first time there was a note of irritation in his voice.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tinna Lind said, backing off and sounding contrite. ‘How did you lose your job? Were you sacked for something?’

‘We all lost our jobs. I was working on a factory boat and earning some damned good money, but the old bastard who owned it died and his heirs sold the lot.’

‘What, the ship?’

‘Yep. They sold the quotas to other companies and the ship to someone in Russia. So we all lost our jobs, forty of us, all at once.’

‘What? That’s terrible!’ Tinna Lind sounded shocked. ‘You must have got something out of it, didn’t you?’

‘A bit of redundancy money and we finished the trip with a decent load of fillets. But there’s not a lot of that left now.’

He poured water from a jug into the pan and put the lid on it. ‘That’ll do for an hour or so,’ he decided, turning the heat down to a simmer.

‘Magni?’

‘Yeah?’

‘There’s something I’d really like to do?’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Can you turn on the hot water so I can have a shower?’

‘That’s my next job,’ Magni said, scratching his chin so his fingers rasped on the stubble. ‘I’ve put your mum’s car inside, I’ve got the telly to work so Össur can see the motor racing, I’ve cooked the dinner and next I’ll see if I can get the hot water routed to the rooms.’ He sighed, turning on the kitchen tap and waiting for the steam to rise in the sink as the hot water rushed into it. ‘There’s hot water here, so there must be a valve or something to divert it upstairs.’

‘I’d be really grateful, Magni, if you would,’ Tinna Lind assured him.

Össur lay in the bed with half a dozen pillows banked behind him and an ashtray at his side as he looked at his mobile phone for the hundredth time and threw it down on the bedspread in disgust; no signal. On top of that it didn’t help that he was also going to run out of cigarettes in the next day or so.

The cars whizzing around a track somewhere far away in Europe on the TV were ignored as his thoughts drifted again to how to extricate himself from the hotel, preferably leaving his companions behind, and ideally taking himself away somewhere warm, although he would happily settle for somewhere cold if it were out of the reach of Alli the Cornershop and the Reykjavík police.

The whining of racing cars brought him back to reality and reminded him how much he would have to rely on Magni. Twenty years had passed since he had last sat behind the wheel of a car, cut free of the three-way smash that had left him with a broken arm, a jail term for reckless driving under the influence and a lifetime ban, as well as shattered nerves that never failed to bring on an anxiety attack when he sat in the front of a car. He could probably get Erna’s Explorer to the edge of the car park, but he knew that by the time he reached the road his legs would be like jelly and he’d be sweating with nervous tension.

Össur shivered at the thought. Could the police pin a kidnapping charge on him? Was that a crime, as the snooty woman seemed to think, he wondered? It was unlikely that Alli would have gone to the police to complain that someone had relieved him of a few hundred thousand euros of used notes that should have been on their way to Amsterdam to finance a heavy shipment of marching powder. He nodded to himself and decided that the police and Alli would be looking for some very different things if they were to catch up with him and wondered if there might be something like a drink to be found in this godforsaken dump in the middle of nowhere.

The motor racing came to an end without him noticing and he was surprised to look up and see football on the screen. Had he not been watching, or had the channel changed without him noticing it? He shook his head and decided that it must be him, and it wasn’t like him to miss Formula One when it was on. It must have been the smell of food that had brought him round, as a meaty, fragrant aroma wormed its way through the building. It had been a surprise that Magni was so practical. Was he cooking again? Or maybe it was the girl? Össur had no doubt that the older woman wouldn’t dirty her hands with food. After all, Magni had hidden the car, got the TV to work and even cooked a damned decent meal, in spite of all the green stuff he’d served up with it. It was just a shame he’d have to rely on him to get him out of their present mess.

Inga Jóna Steinsdóttir stood at the till and looked at Eiríkur’s warrant card with confusion.

‘My Árni?’ she asked.

‘We believe so. Can we talk somewhere private?’ The queue for the till was tapping its impatient collective feet. Eiríkur turned to the line of people. ‘I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but this till is closed,’ he said firmly. ‘Try the next one. The manager will be along in just a minute.’

By the time Inga Jóna led him to the canteen there were tears streaking her makeup. The manager looked up at her with questions all over his round face.

‘Good morning. My name’s Eiríkur Thór Jónsson and I’m a police officer. I’m sorry for the interruption but I need to speak to this lady in private. Can we use this room?’

‘Er . . . yes, of course,’ the manager squeaked as he saw Eiríkur’s card. He hastily gathered together the paperwork he’d been studying and made for the door.

‘There’s a long queue waiting for you at till three,’ Eiríkur added as the man vanished through the door.

‘What’s happened to my Árni?’

‘Sit down, please,’ Eiríkur said and pulled out a chair for her.

‘So what’s all this then? Is he badly hurt?’

‘I’m sorry to tell you that Árni Sigurvinsson is dead. There was a fire in his flat early this morning and we believe that the body of a middle-aged man firefighters found in the apartment is probably his.’

‘Christ . . .’

‘And the body will have to be identified.’

‘God . . .’

‘I’d like to offer my sympathy for your loss, and I understand completely that this must be a terribly difficult time for you. But there are questions we really need to have answered as quickly as possible.’

Inga Jóna sniffed. ‘Yeah, of course. Go ahead.’

‘Where had Árni been working? I mean, had he been working?’

‘He’d been doing taxi shifts a few nights a week. That’s all.’

‘And had he been doing any other work? Anything that might not have been strictly legal?’

‘Why? What makes you think he’d been up to anything?’

Eiríkur sighed, knowing this wasn’t going to be easy. ‘I know you both have criminal records, so I have to ask, and the circumstances of the fire are suspicious.’

‘That was years ago! And what are you saying? That someone murdered my Árni?’

‘I’m sorry, but we have to look at every angle,’ Eiríkur said. ‘And yes, I’m sorry to say so, but it seems that someone may have helped him on his way. We can’t tell yet for certain, but it seems the fire may have been started deliberately.’

‘Christ,’ she muttered and buried her face in her hands and then lifted her head, clear-eyed. ‘I should have known. I should have fucking known.’

‘Known what?’

‘Those friends of his, nothing but trouble the lot of them. It’s why I moved out.’

‘You weren’t living together?’

‘We haven’t . . .’ she said, then gulped and corrected herself. ‘We hadn’t for a few months. All right, Árni was doing taxi work, but he was also doing something that stinks, and I never really found out what. He was out most nights and he had more money than usual, so I knew he had to be doing something a bit more than just driving drunks around.’

‘So what do you think he was doing?’

‘My daughter told me he was delivering stuff.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

‘You know. Stuff. Snort.’

‘Ah, who for? Or was this on his own account?’

Inga Jóna laughed mirthlessly. ‘On his own account? Hell, no. Árni didn’t do anything on his own account. He did what other people asked him to do.’

‘Go on. Like what?’

‘Like what I said. He was delivering snort to people who ordered it from somewhere. I don’t know where, and from what Bogga told me, he was delivering girls as well.’

‘Girls? Prostitutes?’

‘Call it what you like, but yeah, something like that.’

‘Sounds like I need to talk to your daughter.’

‘Go ahead. She lives at the end of Strandvangur. Number nineteen. Second floor. Borghildur Sævarsdóttir her name is.’

‘Who had Árni been working with, or going around with, who was enough to make you move out?’

‘His miserable pals. The worst one’s a guy called Össi. I could never stand him. Anyway, it seems that Össi was bringing Árni the work, and that’s all I know.’

‘You know Össi’s proper name?’

Inga Jóna shrugged. ‘Össur, maybe. I don’t know. A mean little bastard with a sharp nose. I’ll bet anything you like he’s in your files somewhere.’

‘You’re prepared to identify him?’

‘If it means that little shit gets locked away in Litla Hraun for a few years? Hell, yeah.’

Magni looked around the kitchen and wondered where he’d left the knife, shrugged and decided to worry about it later.

‘Hey!’ he yelled through the kitchen door. ‘Come and get it!’

He threw cutlery on the table, set the water to run from the cold tap and put a jug next to it as he gave the pot a stir for the last time, letting the fragrant aromas of onions and the few dried herbs he’d been able to find in half-empty jars well up from it. He breathed deep and looked around as Erna came into the kitchen, her eyes red, and sat at the table.

‘Smells good,’ Tinna Lind said as she took four plates from the draining board and Magni drained the potatoes over the sink.

Without a word, Össur planted himself on a chair at the end of the table and wrinkled his nose. ‘It’s not spicy, is it?’

‘That’s for you to find out,’ Magni said.

‘I don’t do spicy shit.’

‘What the fuck do you eat?’ Magni demanded, banging the pot of potatoes on the table harder than he had intended to. ‘You don’t eat vegetables. You don’t eat fish, and now you don’t eat anything spicy either. It’s no surprise you’re as skinny as a starved cat.’

Össur scowled and ladled stew from the casserole dish onto his plate. He flicked half-moons of onion aside with his fork, leaving meat on one side of his plate, which he scooped up quickly.

‘Any bread?’

‘Sorry, haven’t had time to get to the shops today,’ Magni snapped back. ‘Of course there’s no fucking bread. There’s no milk either, not many spuds or onions, and there’s only enough chops and fish and stuff in the freezer to keep us going into next week. After tomorrow we’re down to one meal a day.’

Tinna Lind’s and Erna’s eyes swivelled back and forth between them during the exchange.

‘So we find some way to get out of here by next week or we starve?’ Tinna Lind said in a soft voice. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Össur sat back, the meat on his plate eaten. He lifted the plate and scraped the remainder back into the pot.

‘We’ll see,’ he snarled over his shoulder as he stalked from the room. ‘We might just have to eat one of you two bitches if we don’t find a way out of here before the food runs out.’

Magni speared a potato and started to peel it with his knife, quickly lifting the skin from it and placing it on the edge of his plate. Tinna Lind followed suit, dropping alternate potatoes on her plate and Erna’s.

‘You don’t get on very well with your friend, do you?’ Tinna Lind asked.

‘He’s no friend of mine,’ Magni said. ‘He’s a proper miserable fucker.’

Erna quailed at the savagery of his tone and pushed food around her plate.

‘Eat, Mum,’ Tinna Lind ordered, and Erna forked up some of the meat nervously, then faster as it turned out to taste better than she’d expected. ‘So why are you hanging around with him?’

‘Needed the money, simple as that.’

‘Can’t you just get a job, like everyone else?’ Erna said in a tone that was close to hysteria.

‘I had a fucking job until it was sold out from under my feet, and a good job it was too.’

‘Magni used to work on a trawler and then it was sold,’ Tinna Lind explained.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Erna said. ‘I thought you were . . .’

‘Thought I was what?’ Magni asked, mashing potatoes into his gravy.

‘I thought you were some kind of scrounger or a criminal.’

‘Like him?’ Magni jerked his head to one side, indicating the door Össur had exited through. ‘No chance. Össur’s never had a proper job in his life, and until a month ago I’d never been without one.’

For the first time, Tinna Lind saw Magni looking frustrated.

‘Is he a real criminal?’ Erna asked.

Magni shrugged. ‘Össi? He’s a chancer. He’s done bits and pieces of work here and there, but he can’t stay off the piss and he’s never held down a job.’

‘So how does he live?’ she asked, perplexed, her eyes wide in confusion.

‘Össur sells a little dope, does a little enforcement. That keeps him going,’ Magni replied and pushed his practically clean plate aside. ‘I gather he knows enough about a few people to call in a favour when he’s properly in the shit.’

Magni put his finger to his lips.

‘Your old lady’s gone to sleep, hasn’t she?’

Tinna Lind looked up suspiciously from where she lay on the sofa in the hotel’s lounge, a duvet from the bedroom wrapped around her. She put aside the book she had found in the office and sat up.

‘Yeah. Why?

Magni winked. ‘You look like a girl who appreciates a drink. Or am I wrong?’