Cold Breath (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 7)

by Quentin Bates

  ‘That’s what I was going to ask you,’ Michel said, snapping a poppadom and helping himself to pickle.

  ‘What’s happening? Tighter security?’

  ‘Surprisingly, he’s still there. Comes and goes.’ He drew breath sharply as the spice hit his tongue. ‘There’s no pattern to what he does; he just seems to spend his time holed up in the house. When he goes anywhere there are always two official cars that collect him and he’s not away for more than a few hours.’

  ‘What’s the security?’

  ‘A minder at the house,’ he said. ‘And some goons with heavier artillery keeping watch at a house up the hill. They’re watching the road.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re watching the road. Not the way we go in.’

  ‘And?’ Ana asked, regarding him carefully.

  ‘By water. Easy.’

  Ana shifted in her seat, still sizing up the bear of a man she had been told to work with. ‘They don’t suspect?’

  Michel shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I spent an hour this morning observing them. They don’t have a clue. Pino has spent longer watching them than I have, and we’re sure of it.’ He grinned and fell silent as a waiter appeared and made a performance of placing each dish in the right place, flicking imaginary dust away with a spotless cloth.

  He drained his beer and put it down.

  ‘Another of those, please,’ he said to the waiter and looked over at Ana. ‘Same for you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘This one will last me for a while. But some water, please.’

  The waiter bowed almost imperceptibly and departed.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he asked, spooning rice onto his plate.

  ‘I don’t know yet. I need to scope the place out.’

  ‘It’s pretty straightforward, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Like I said, I want to take a good look first.’ Her voice was firm and Michel’s eyes widened for a second at her tone.

  ‘If that’s what you want to do.’

  ‘That’s what I want to do,’ she responded and tasted her lamb curry.

  She fell silent as the waiter appeared with a full glass of beer and placed it in front of Michel. He lifted it and held it out, waiting for Ana to do the same.

  ‘Here’s to a successful and quick operation,’ she said as they clinked glasses.

  *

  Hanne wondered how Carsten could sleep so soundly, before she realized that he was lying in the semi-darkness with his eyes wide open.

  ‘You’re awake,’ she said, making a statement rather than asking a question.

  ‘Of course.’

  They had left the camper van for the night, booking into a hotel for a change, to make the most of a real bed and a shower with as much hot water as they could wallow in. Tomorrow they would be back on the road and would stop where they felt like it for the next few days. They had vague plans, but with no deadlines and no jobs to return to, there was no hurry.

  ‘I keep thinking of . . .’ Hanne said, eyes on the ceiling. A single street light cast a dim orange glow through the gap in the curtains. The shaft of light shook slightly as the lonely light at the top of its metal pole vibrated in the fierce wind coming off the sea.

  ‘I know,’ Carsten said quickly. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  For the last two days hardly a word had passed between them, only the occasional few functional sentences, but each knew what the other was thinking and feeling.

  The day before, Carsten had found Hanne sitting in the back of the van with tears streaming down her face and a handkerchief twisted into a tight strip between her fingers.

  There had been nothing he could say. All he had been able to do was take her hand and squeeze it.

  Osman stretched and she could hear his back click as he sat straight and flexed his shoulders.

  ‘I have been to Turkey, Greece and Italy. I have seen what has happened to the people from my country, washed up on the beaches and living in doorways and tents, hoping for a little charity. Men who were dentists and lawyers begging for a few handfuls of rice or fruit, children with swollen bellies and girls being led away to be sold. I made a stand. That was my crime in their eyes. I named some of them, and that made them angry. I called them what they are, which is criminals. But worst of all, I did something.’

  Gunna sat in silence, watching him and hearing a clock tick somewhere in the room.

  ‘I used the money I had to make more. I set up an organization to help the people who are washed up on the beaches or left in leaking tubs far out to sea. The Aegean is a beautiful sea, but in winter it can turn angry.’

  His voice dropped to a warm, dark murmur, mesmerizing as it acquired a rhythm.

  ‘I have been to the beaches. I have seen the people staggering ashore with only the clothes they are wearing and what they can carry, children in each hand. I have seen the bodies, mourned those of my compatriots who lost their lives within sight of safety, some sort of safety, the chance to stay alive for a few more days. Do you hear what I am saying, Gunnhildur?’

  Gunna nodded, fascinated by the depth of passion and anger in his words.

  ‘I know exactly what they are fleeing. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Ruined cities, ravaged villages, a dry, sunburned countryside that once was fertile and now is gradually becoming a desert. The trees are dying, the crops refuse to grow without water and the livestock are long gone. People became desperate and went to the cities and found there was no help for them there.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Gunna asked, looking into Osman’s piercing eyes, points of light with his face in shadow.

  Dagga lifted Markús from his chair and took him through to the other room, where Skúli could hear her crooning to the little boy as he fell asleep in her arms. He was fairly sure that within a few minutes they would be asleep together on the sofa.

  He was happy with his article as he read it through. It was punchy and he had picked out the key points so they hit the reader right between the eyes, editing it for busy people who skim the news on a phone rather than a computer.

  Osman’s face, with its striking cheekbones and an enigmatic, faraway look, was prominent, and he peppered the article with a couple of links to both Sophie’s and Lars’s websites. Satisfied that everything was uploaded, he double-checked the dates and times for the article to go live, and sat back, hands behind his head, listening to the silence in the other room, wondering how much of a storm would erupt around his ears tomorrow.

  He twisted around in his chair, clicked the kettle and tried to congratulate himself on a job well done, telling himself that this was the tip of an iceberg, that once the initial furore had died down, he would have to do whatever he could to get close to Osman himself. The man must have a tale of his own to tell, but as far as he had been able to find out, he had only given short interviews in elegant French to a couple of TV stations, answering slowball questions about the wonderful work the White Sickle Peace Foundation was doing.

  He wondered what he would ask Osman if he could one day track him down, and decided that he would have to apply some more pressure to Valgeir. He wondered if he could approach Elinborg at the ministry once her anger had cooled, although he had the feeling that after tomorrow’s story had appeared on the Pulse website, he would be persona non grata for some time to come, at least until the next elections had taken place and new people had been appointed.

  Skúli’s mood darkened as the sun dipped behind the house across the street and he tried to stop his thoughts going to places that would leave him jaded and dissatisfied. He had come to recognize that this restlessness was part of finishing a story that had some value to it, as if he knew he had done well but wanted to do better and was unable to work out exactly how.

  The light faded and a street light outside flickered into life. He listened to Dagga’s steady breathing in the next room, trying to force himself to ignore the fizzing buzz in his ears and keep his thoughts, as always w
hen he was alone or trying to sleep, from turning to regrets and mistakes, things he had managed to do spectacularly wrong, people who had got the better of him, petty humiliations from his younger days.

  ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it,’ he muttered angrily, telling himself not to be such a fool, not to brood on things he could not change, none of which mattered, and hating the fact that there was no way on earth that he could banish from his mind these things that troubled him so relentlessly.

  Osman’s hand stretched out across the table in front of him, fingers spread wide, palm down, one finger tapping a slow beat.

  ‘Those in charge were not capable of understanding. Their only tool is the stick and so they used it unsparingly. At first people were surprised there was no help for them, then angry, and after that they fought back. You have seen the news, I’m sure,’ he said with a deep sigh. ‘Civil war, family against family, extremists and opportunists taking the chance to snatch power, foreign governments desperate to extend their influence and supplying arms to both sides. It’s frighteningly complex, much more so than the Western news reports are able to convey. There are so many groups of men with guns desperate for power, forging and breaking alliances, settling old scores under new pretexts, betraying people who were their allies the day before. There’s oil, land and influence to be fought over. What began as a desperate need for water and food turned with terrifying speed into a bitter, vicious war, and millions of people losing their homes.’

  ‘And needing somewhere to go?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Osman said. ‘Many are in Turkey, and Turkey does not want any more of them. The number you have seen reaching Europe is a drop in the ocean, the handful who could afford a place on a boat – a chance, and only a chance, of ending up somewhere safe.’

  ‘And you were able to escape?’ Gunna asked.

  ‘Ah. I had already left, Gunnhildur. I was already an émigré. I had offended people who do not take kindly to criticism, and their response to that kind of thing is to make sure the critic does not see many more sunrises. I was warned. I was lucky. My family was wealthy enough that I could slip away.’

  ‘But you wanted to help?’

  ‘I may be an outcast, an unwilling emigrant, but these are my people, and I understand better than anyone their anguish. This was the place where we had settled only a generation before, where we had arrived ourselves as refugees, and it was turning to chaos and violence. Can you imagine? You have to leave your home now, and all you can take is what will go in your pockets and a bag you can carry on your back. You have no idea if you will be able to return one day, or if there might be anything to return to. You don’t know if you will be welcome anywhere else, but you expect not. So I have tried to do what I can to help.’

  Osman half closed his eyes, clasped his hands together and folded them over his chest.

  ‘You see, Gunnhildur? Trying to help people is much more dangerous than doing nothing. It shines a spotlight on other people’s shortcomings. I raised money to set up an organization to provide practical things; I attracted attention to the plight of these people. For a while I was a prominent figure, in the newspapers and on TV, acting as a spokesman for these refugees, advocating that they should be helped, while some people wanted to string barbed wire along the beaches or drive them back into the sea. Have you any idea what it’s like to be hated?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I do.’

  Osman shook his head.

  ‘There was hatred in the media, fury at what I was suggesting. You see, I’m the kind of émigré they like, the kind who has come to a new country with a degree and four languages. Not a hungry refugee who smells bad because he has no other clothes and nowhere to wash. Now I have people on every side who would do me harm.’

  ‘So what can you do? What options do you have?’

  Osman’s face flattened into an impassive mask.

  ‘I don’t think there are many options. Steinunn was generous enough to invite me to Iceland for a rest and I hoped that everything could be kept secret so that I would have at least a little time without having to look over my shoulder. The price on my head is high enough to tempt anyone.’

  ‘You know this?’ Gunna asked.

  Osman’s musical laughter broke through the gloom.

  ‘Of course I know. Some millions of dollars, or so I’m told.’

  ‘How do you know that? How can you be sure?’

  His eyes shone.

  ‘I know, Gunnhildur,’ he said, his voice dropping. ‘I know because they made sure I knew. They wanted me to know that it’s very much worth someone’s while to take my life, and that I would spend the rest of the time I have left looking over my shoulder.’

  Thór gave Fúsi a low whistle and jerked his head. Fúsi looked, grinned and gave him a thumbs up. Easy money.

  They followed at a distance, watching the couple, who looked like they had just emerged from a restaurant. The pair walked side by side, in no hurry, but there were no interlinked hands, no outward displays of affection. It was a date that hadn’t struck sparks, or else the pair had been together for years and felt no need to be in each other’s pockets.

  Not that it mattered. They’d corner them somewhere quiet between here and whatever hotel or rented apartment they were staying in and quietly relieve them of wallets and phones. Thór’s sheer bulk and the raw anger that came off him in waves was enough to terrify any normal person who preferred to stay in one piece.

  An apartment, Fúsi decided as he followed fifty metres behind them, fingering the flick knife in his pocket. The pair seemed deep in conversation, and they didn’t seem to be heading for any of the myriad hotels that had sprung up around central Reykjavík.

  He could be patient. Thór had gone around the corner and would be hurrying along a parallel street; any moment now he would appear in front of the hapless couple. Two phones, which he had to admit wouldn’t be worth a lot once their erstwhile owners had locked and remotely wiped them, and a handful of cash would be enough for them to call it a good night’s work.

  He walked faster, sensing that the next corner, leading to a quiet street off Snorrabraut, would be the spot; it was one they had used before.

  The couple up ahead came to a dead stop, just as Fúsi knew they would. Thór had bustled round the corner and walked straight into the man, who had taken a step back, hands raised defensively in front of him as the woman stood to one side. Fúsi took the knife from his pocket. It wasn’t much of a knife, and he knew it would barely cut through butter, but it didn’t need to. The sight of it had always been enough to make tourists dig into their pockets.

  ‘Sorry, man,’ Fúsi heard the man say to Thór, who bridled, sticking out his chest and giving his natural anger full rein.

  ‘You walked right into me,’ he complained in his gruffly accented English.

  ‘I didn’t mean to. You just came round the corner; you’re the one who walked into me.’

  The man made to step around him and be on his way, but Thór moved to block him.

  ‘I think you owe my friend an apology,’ Fúsi said, pressing the button and hearing the snick as the blade clicked into place. ‘So if you’ll hand over your phones and cash, we’ll leave you to it.’

  The man half-turned and took in Fúsi standing there with the blade held in front of him. A smile flickered across his face.

  ‘So this is a robbery, is it? I thought there wasn’t any crime in Iceland?’

  ‘Don’t give us any shit,’ Thór rumbled, grabbing the arm of the woman, who had taken a step aside. He hauled her roughly off her feet, wrapping a thick arm around her neck. ‘You don’t want your bitch to get hurt, do you?’

  The look of amusement stayed on the man’s face and Fúsi suddenly felt uneasy. Normally valuables were handed over with hardly a word, and by now they should have been on their way.

  ‘Just do it, all right?’ Fúsi snapped, the flick knife pointed at the man’s chest.

  He felt sick as he wondered what had gone wrong.
He saw the woman twist herself out of Thór’s grasp in a single fluid movement and spin in a circle, his hand in her grasp as his arm twisted grotesquely. As Thór howled and stumbled, trying to retain his balance, her left arm whipped upwards, the heel of her hand catching his nose to send his head snapping backwards. A stabbing blow to his throat brought Thór’s head forwards onto his chest and, as another connected with his temple, Thór dropped in an undignified, unconscious heap.

  Fúsi heard the clatter of metal on stone and realized the knife in his hand had been sent flying across the pavement. A second later the breath was knocked out of him as he was propelled rapidly backwards and slammed against a wall.

  ‘Bad idea, pal,’ the man said.

  There were already flashing lights and blue and white tape fluttering in the night breeze as Eiríkur appeared, still yawning. On the way out of the house, he had given himself time to brush his teeth but not his hair, and as he lived closer to the scene than Helgi, he had beaten him to it.

  The scene was only a short walk from the central police station on Hverfisgata and the response had been rapid. Someone walking home had stumbled across the two comatose figures and a panicky call had altered the emergency services.

  ‘What do we have?’ Eiríkur asked the motorcycle officer standing guard at the scene as he looked round instinctively for Gunna before remembering that she was busy on other duties.

  ‘One dead, one unconscious. They’ve both had the shit beaten out of them,’ the officer replied.

  ‘Do we know who these guys are?’

  The officer’s eyes twinkled. ‘The stiff is Thór Hersteinsson and the one with the broken bones is Fúsi Bjössa.’

  ‘Thór’s dead?’

  ‘They don’t come much deader. May he rest in peace.’

  ‘You almost said that as if you meant it,’ Eiríkur said.

  ‘We can probably disband half the police force now that thug’s off the streets for good.’

  ‘Indeed. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. All right, do we know anything?’

  ‘Not a lot. A drunk guy walking home found them and called in. That’s all. The ambulance got here a minute before we did and they’ve already taken Fúsi away. Thór hasn’t been touched, other than to confirm that he’s dead.’