Winterlude

by Quentin Bates

  ‘Don’t remind me. I’ll be a pensioner by then.’

  ‘I don’t know how you do it, Helgi. Supporting one family’s hard enough, let alone two.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Overtime helps, I assure you.’

  ‘Speaking of which, what progress on Borgar Jónsson?’

  Helgi replaced his glasses, flipped through his notes and took a breath. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Fire away, my good man.’

  ‘The boy’s name was Aron Kjartansson. Borgar ran him over, didn’t stop and was arrested an hour later by officers Sævaldur Bogason and Thorfinnur Markússon. The boy was an only child. The boy’s father, Kjartan Aronsson, and his mother, Katla Einarsdóttir, split up a few months later. Kjartan made some very public threats towards Borgar at the time, both in court and in newspaper interviews afterwards.’

  ‘That’s all in the police records?’

  ‘Only the stuff about the arrest. I had a quick browse through the papers at the time, and there’s plenty about it all in there.’

  ‘All right. Continue,’ Gunna instructed.

  ‘Borgar owned a small import business that handled tyres and a few other odd bits and pieces – exercise bikes, cheap electronics, that sort of junk. Plus he had a garage and car wash that was on the verge of bankruptcy and the yard where the boats were built. Apparently that was the most successful business. Borgar knew practically nothing about boats; it was run by this Henning guy and Borgar hardly came near it.’

  ‘So what do we have?’ Gunna asked, leaning back. ‘We have Kjartan and Katla, both with a strong motive to bump Borgar off. Plus we have Henning, who presumably lost his job through this. Any others?’

  ‘Any number of dissatisfied customers over the years, or so it seems. But I reckon if I can find Henning he’ll give us an insight into them.’

  ‘Borgar’s family?’

  ‘Wife left the country soon after he was put away. There’s a rather strange daughter who does stuff with crystals and a son who doesn’t want to have anything to do with his father, both living overseas now.’

  Gunna nodded. ‘Quick work, Helgi. Where did all that come from?’

  ‘A lot from Ásrún, the manager at the hostel,’ Helgi said, then hesitated. ‘Gunna . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ she replied and looked up from her screen.

  ‘It’s Kjartan. Kjartan Aronsson. I’ve come across him before.’

  ‘He has a record of some kind?’

  Helgi looked briefly uncomfortable. ‘He does, but nothing to do with this,’ he said finally. ‘Kjartan’s the eldest of four brothers and they’re all as hard as nails. I was at school with his youngest brother and we were close friends when we were teenagers.’

  ‘So he’s from Blönduós or somewhere round there?’

  ‘Almost. Their father farmed out at a place called Tunga. My dad had the farm at Hraunbær, which was a good way further inland. All of us country boys went to boarding school at Reykir for a couple of terms and that’s where I was at school with Kjartan’s brother, Ingi. I went out to Tunga quite a few times when I was a lad. My dad knew old man Aron as well and he used to buy a few litres of moonshine off him now and then.’

  ‘So what do you reckon?’ Gunna asked thoughtfully. ‘You have an idea of what Kjartan’s capable of. Do you think he could have murdered Borgar?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Helgi said without hesitation.

  ‘Do you want to talk to Kjartan, considering you know his background?’

  Helgi thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s probably best if you do it. I’d be interested to know what you make of him, and I reckon someone he doesn’t know would get more out of him. But I’ll have a quiet chat with Ingi later if he’s in Reykjavík.’

  Gunna decided that the industrial estate where Borgar Jónsson had been murdered was a relic of an earlier age when buildings were thrown up with less bother, and progress had left the street behind before there had even been an opportunity to tarmac it. Deep puddles filled the road and Gunna’s car pulled up outside the deserted and locked unit covered with brown water. She had been on the way home, but had found herself unable to pass the turnoff to the sprawl of industrial estates that had spread over the lava fields outside Hafnarfjördur, and found herself driving around curiously in the gathering darkness, which was slashed by the glaring lights from offices and workshops.

  Thankful that she had worn a decent pair of boots, she splashed around the deeper puddles. Borgar Jónsson’s unit at the end was the only one that was clearly deserted. Although she could see that while Jón Geir on the opposite side of the road was still at work, the office window upstairs was black, so presumably Lára had left.

  She pushed open the door of the unit three doors along from NesPlast and was greeted by Tammy Wynette from a cracked speaker urging a woman to stand by her man, accompanied by a mournful baritone in poor harmony coming from an unidentified source.

  ‘Hello! Anyone there?’ Gunna called and a figure in overalls, its face hidden behind safety glasses, appeared from behind the car that filled the workshop.

  ‘Hi. What can I do for you?’ the figure asked, sliding the glasses up with grease-covered hands.

  ‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, CID,’ she announced, flashing her wallet. ‘You have a spare minute?’

  ‘Is this about Borgar’s place down the road?’

  ‘It is. Were you about yesterday?’

  The man turned his back and as Gunna made her way around the car, she saw he was scrubbing his hands at a sink in the corner. The hand he dried and extended to be shaken was still black.

  ‘What year?’ she asked, nodding at the rusty Ford Bronco.

  ‘Seventy-two, or so it says on the registration docs,’ he replied, his face lighting up. ‘You know something about these?’

  ‘My dad had one years ago. It practically broke his heart when he finally had to scrap it, but there wasn’t a panel left that wasn’t rusted through.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘You’re Stefán? One of my colleagues spoke to you this morning.’

  ‘That’s right. The baldie.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not how he’d describe himself, but yes, that’s him. I know he asked you about yesterday, which is when we believe Borgar was probably murdered.’

  ‘That’s right. Didn’t see anything.’

  ‘You’re here on your own?’

  ‘Yeah. Most of the time, but I wasn’t here yesterday,’ he said. ‘There’s an old chap comes in two days a week, but I can’t afford to employ anyone at the moment. There’s work to be had tarting up old cars for rich collectors, but not as much as there used to be.’

  ‘I know you didn’t see anything yesterday, but I’m wondering about the week or two before. Have you noticed any activity in Borgar’s unit? Or anyone new poking around?’

  Stefán gingerly inserted a little finger into one ear as he thought, scratching deep inside with a thoughtful look on his face.

  ‘There have been lights on at Borgar’s place during the last week or two. I reckoned it was his nephew Óli pottering around there. Thought he might be showing someone around, so I didn’t poke my nose in.’

  ‘Did you see Óli?’

  Stefán removed the finger from his ear and looked more relaxed now that the blockage was cleared. ‘No. Now that you mention it, I don’t recall seeing that fancy Freelander of his, either. Mind you, it’s not as if I was keeping an eye on the place.’

  ‘Any unusual traffic? There can’t be many people coming up here without good reason, surely?’

  ‘Well, no. This place is a dead end. But I spend most of my time looking at the inside of a car, not staring out of the window in case someone comes down the street.’

  ‘Fair point. How long do you reckon since you started seeing lights at Borgar’s unit?’

  Stefán frowned and thought. ‘It was while we had Jói Jóa’s Cadillac in here,’ he said slowly, and brightened as he went to the workbench and consulted a dia
ry. He ran a finger down a page of entries written in a surprisingly neat hand. ‘It came in two weeks ago yesterday. So it would have been some time that week. That’s about as exact as I can be.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gunna said. ‘That’s a big help. Any particular time of day you saw lights on?’

  ‘Afternoons, mostly, I reckon – as far as I remember. I didn’t pay that much attention.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gunna repeated, handing him a card. ‘If anything else springs to mind, I’d appreciate a call.’

  Stefán tucked the card in a pocket. ‘Yeah. Will do,’ he agreed. ‘But if you find the bastard who did it, I’d appreciate it if you nailed him to the wall. Borgar had his faults, but he was a decent enough character.’

  ‘You knew him well?’

  ‘Not really. He was always busy with whatever new business he was immersed in, but he always had time to stop for a coffee and a few of those dirty jokes he always seemed to pick up. Mind you, I had the sense to always be too busy when he wanted his car serviced.’

  Gunna left the workshop and made her way along the street. An hour later she had learned little other than that the long-deserted workshop had seen a little activity recently. Nobody had seen anything unusual. Like Stefán, the carpenter next door to him, the refrigeration engineer and the soft-drinks importer further along the same street had little time to watch for passers-by.

  Night had fallen when Gunna unlocked her car and sat behind the wheel. She was writing notes, waiting for the heater to clear the windscreen when there was a tap on the window. She looked up to see Stefán looking in.

  ‘Any ideas?’ she asked, winding down the window.

  ‘Not sure,’ he said, his forehead knitted with lines as he scowled. ‘There’s a blue Nissan van I’ve seen a few times in recent weeks and thought nothing of it. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘Any registration number?’

  Stefán shook his head. ‘Nah. No such luck. A dark blue van, with a white panel on each side as if someone had peeled off a company name or a logo.’

  ‘Did you get a look at the driver?’

  ‘No. Sorry. Wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I couldn’t tell you if it went to Borgar’s unit or somewhere else. I just saw it go past a few times.’

  ‘Definitely more than once, though? So this wasn’t someone who was just lost?’

  ‘This street is a dead end. Nobody comes down here more than once without a good reason,’ Stefán said. ‘That’s one reason I like being here. But I reckon I saw the Nissan two, three times, for definite.’

  ‘Thanks. It all helps,’ Gunna replied, and Stefán smiled diffidently at her before turning and walking back to his open door.

  Tuesday

  A biting wind swept in from the sea, whipping up whitecaps that spat spray while gulls hovered and swooped gracefully above the black rocks of the shore a hundred yards away across scrub grass. Gunna was sure it would be a delightful spot in summer, but the November cold did little for its charms, even with Esja and the row of distant mountains across Faxa Bay picked out in startlingly bright sunshine.

  Kjartan Aronson looked impassively through the glass of his front door and ushered Gunna inside, his expression giving nothing away. The terraced house was a mess. Dust was everywhere and Gunna felt her nose protest.

  ‘There’s been some work going on here while I’ve been away. I thought they’d be finished by the time I got back, but they haven’t. Sorry,’ he said, not sounding at all apologetic, as he gestured at the sawhorse in the middle of the living room and the new parquet floor that only reached halfway across it. ‘My brother’s been working on it in between other jobs, but I guess he must be busy with paid work these last few weeks. So big brother gets the short end of the stick.’

  ‘That’s Ingi, is it?’

  Kjartan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Could be. What does Ingi have to do with the police?’

  ‘You came home last night?’ Gunna asked, ignoring the question.

  ‘Docked at midday yesterday in Dalvík. I flew back from Akureyri.’ Kjartan waved Gunna to an armchair, the only one in the half-finished room, while he sat down on an upturned crate, flexing his shoulders as he did so. Gunna could not fail to notice the muscles that bulged beneath the man’s snug shirt and the biceps that left no doubt that Kjartan was not a stranger to hard work or the gym, or both. ‘Anyway, what do the police want with me? Not that I need to make too many guesses.’

  ‘You’re aware that Borgar Jónsson is dead, I take it?’

  ‘I am, and I gather he was helped on his way.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Kjartan gave the first hint of a smile. ‘It was on the news last night that a man had been killed in suspicious circumstances. Someone told me that it might have been Borgar. I put two and two together when I saw the pictures of the hostel on the news and wasn’t surprised.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘You’re the detective. I’m sure you have a pretty good idea,’ Kjartan said, and his eyes crossed the room to the only picture on display anywhere, a black and white portrait of a boy of ten or eleven, Gunna guessed, grinning at the camera from the pillion of a motorbike while the driver was undoubtedly a younger and happier Kjartan than the impassive, bristle-headed man sitting on a box in front of her, the low winter sunlight slanting through the room’s picture window and glancing off the flat surfaces that he seemed to be made of.

  ‘You can confirm you weren’t in Reykjavík yesterday, I take it?’

  ‘I didn’t get back to Reykjavík until five. Four o’clock flight from Akureyri and a taxi home. That’s a perfect alibi, I reckon.’

  ‘How do you know? Are you aware of when Borgar’s killing took place?’

  ‘Well, no. Of course not. But it was on the news while we were still steaming home. It was only later I found out it was that bastard getting what he deserved.’

  ‘You have to understand that anyone who might have had any kind of a grudge against this man could be a suspect.’

  ‘Except me. I have a perfect alibi,’ he repeated, a hint of satisfaction in his voice. ‘I’ll happily sing and dance and piss on his grave after what he did. I make no apologies for it.’ He paused and Gunna looked into hate-filled black eyes. ‘But I didn’t kill the man.’

  Gunna nodded, taken aback by the virulent anger that spilled out of Kjartan’s voice, accompanied by his heavy hands balling unconsciously into fists.

  ‘You made threats against Borgar Jónsson several times, some of them very specific.’

  ‘I did. And I stand by them. I’m just sorry that someone beat me to it.’

  ‘You knew he was out of prison?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what? What do you expect me to say? Did you expect me to be waiting outside Litla-Hraun for him as the gate opened? Look, I’ve been away for a while. I’m at sea for two, three weeks at a stretch and this is the first time I’ve been off for more than a couple of days since we went back to sea in September. You get it? I’ve hardly been here. In fact, I’ve deliberately not been here and I’ve been working trips for other people who wanted time off.’

  ‘Because of Borgar?’

  ‘Exactly. Because of that piece of filth. I knew that if I were to even see the man I wouldn’t be able to hold back. I was told he was about to be let out, so I decided to make myself scarce,’ he said, the angles of his face sharpening as his loathing became apparent. ‘If I’d seen the man, I’d have killed him. End of story. Except somehow I don’t suppose I’d have been let out with a pat on the back halfway through my sentence to go and live in a luxury hostel.’

  ‘I understand,’ Gunna said as Kjartan’s mouth opened to speak and he closed it again, his breath coming in sharp bursts.

  ‘How the fuck can you understand?’ Kjartan replied with scorn in his voice. ‘How can you understand what it’s like to have someone taken away like that? One moment they’re there, the next they’ve been wiped out as if they’d
never existed.’

  ‘You’d be amazed, Kjartan,’ Gunna said softly as a heavy silence followed his outburst. ‘Sometimes it’s best not to make assumptions about people you don’t know. Who told you that Borgar was being released?’

  Gunna wondered if Kjartan was wiping tears from his eyes as he kneaded his face with the heels of his hands. ‘My wife told me,’ he said eventually. ‘My ex-wife, considering we went our separate ways after Aron died.’

  At the café by the quayside, day was breaking and the chef was banging stainless steel pans into their slots ready for lunch. The place was quiet with the morning coffee break over, as Helgi sipped his drink gratefully and Gunna flicked through her notes.

  ‘Kjartan Aronsson has an alibi that’s pretty damn fireproof,’ she said morosely.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. I phoned the fleet manager at the company he works for. He’s been at sea more or less non-stop since September. His ship docked yesterday and he flew home late afternoon.’

  ‘Hours after Borgar Jónsson’s body was found,’ Helgi said.

  ‘And a day after he was murdered. Assuming Borgar was killed the day before his body was found. It could be longer – the hostel had only reported his disappearance on Sunday night. Had he been missing for longer than that? Did you ask Ásrún?’

  ‘I did. She said he was there for breakfast on Sunday morning and left around nine. He’s been working at a supermarket in Kópavogur these last few weeks, and having that job to go to was what got him out of the nick.’

  ‘Taking work away from someone else,’ Gunna growled.

  ‘Depends how you look at it,’ Helgi mused. ‘Borgar wasn’t a hazard to anyone else. It’s not as if he was going to embark on a crime spree. So he’s out of jail and keeping his nose clean instead of occupying a cell needed for someone who could well be dangerous.’

  ‘That’s a very tolerant viewpoint for a man who’s always been a dyed-in-the-wool Progressive,’ Gunna said with a smile. ‘Not turning into a bleeding-heart leftie, are you?’

  ‘It’s the kind of opinion you’d expect from a lifelong communist such as yourself,’ Helgi said gently.