Cold Breath (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 7)

by Quentin Bates

  ‘Of course the minister ought to know. But this minister has ambitions, or don’t you keep an ear to the ground? People who thwart political ambition tend to pay dearly for it sooner or later. Look, Valgeir. It’s not even seven o’clock yet. The minister doesn’t need to have heard anything until, say, nine, ten, maybe even later. By then we’ll have some answers, we’ll have done all the damage limitation we can and, hopefully, we will have a nice tidy package to hand to the minister instead of a shit sandwich.’

  ‘What have we done, Ívar?’ Gunna asked. ‘Is there any sign of an accomplice?’

  ‘Steingrímur did some scouting around. Nothing to be found, but we’ll see what tracks we can find once it gets light. The trouble is I daren’t call in extra bodies. I had patrols watching for anything suspicious leaving the district last night, without giving them anything specific, but you know how short-handed we are these days.’

  ‘Any idea who our boy might be?’

  ‘Absolutely none.’

  ‘He’s still out there?’

  ‘He’s in the morgue now. Steingrímur and his team took the body and got Miss Cruz out in the middle of the night to take delivery. Now I’m wondering what to do with him.’

  Gunna’s eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Surely we need to go through the proper channels?’

  ‘Well, we don’t exactly need a post mortem. If I thought we could get away with it, I’d have rolled him into a hole in the ground before it gets light, but there are too many flapping ears about already,’ he said meaningfully, with a pointed glance at Valgeir.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Valgeir demanded. ‘Are you saying I can’t keep my mouth shut?’

  ‘Yes. There are too many people who would know where the bodies are buried, to put it crudely. I don’t trust you to keep your mouth shut, or Steinunn’s honoured guest, who I suspect is a lying, thieving opportunist crook, or the minister’s decorative-but-dim niece in the other room.’

  ‘And the Special Unit,’ Valgeir added, before jerking a thumb at Gunna. ‘And her.’

  ‘I can trust the gentlemen in black, and I can trust Gunnhildur implicitly,’ Ívar Laxdal said with quiet menace. ‘You’re the one who’s the problem, and I have my doubts about our boss as well.’

  *

  Gunna scanned the shoreline and saw uniformed figures scouring the surf-rounded rocks, walking back and forth, heads down as they searched for anything that could indicate where the assassin had approached from and where his partners had disappeared to. Even if they were to find a few fading footprints, that wouldn’t tell them much, Gunna decided, musing that the wind and rain had probably erased any traces of the man or men by now.

  The man she had shot, with what she told herself was the luckiest shot imaginable, was probably now on a slab at the National Hospital, where Miss Cruz was undoubtedly scrutinizing the body in fine detail, checking his teeth for any distinctive dentistry, examining old scars and tattoos, any marks that could be significant. Maybe she would be slicing and dicing, as she liked to put it herself, looking for any sign that could provide a much-needed clue to the mystery man’s identity – Gunna tried to push that uncomfortable thought to the back of her mind.

  ‘I’m disappointed in you,’ Helgi said gently and watched Fúsi’s better eye snap open.

  The swelling had gone down slightly, but his face was still a colourful mass of bruises. Helgi took a seat by Fúsi’s bed and sat back, hands clasped comfortably over his stomach as he surveyed the room.

  ‘What’s that?’ Fúsi croaked. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘You heard. You told me a pack of lies. A complete load of bullshit.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Fúsi protested, but there was a helplessness in his voice.

  ‘I’m guessing the delightful Hallveig got wind of Thór’s premature demise some time early in the morning from one of her clients, and that said client sees Rikki as competition and reckoned it was the perfect opportunity to put Rikki the Sponge out of circulation for a good few years,’ Helgi said, leaning forward. ‘They knew the police would jump at the opportunity to lock him up, if only a suitable witness could be found to point the finger.’

  Fúsi’s eyes swivelled as Helgi sat back in his chair.

  ‘How does that sound? Plausible?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Fúsi. Rikki was hauled out of bed and down to Hverfisgata yesterday morning. He’s still there and he’s not happy; not happy at all,’ Helgi said cheerfully. ‘Now this is the interesting part, because Rikki has an alibi. Not as solid as I’d like, but good enough to tell me he wasn’t anywhere near Njálsgata that night.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Fúsi said, lisping through the gap left by a missing tooth.

  Helgi leaned forward again, planted his elbows on his knees and glared at close range at Fúsi’s battered face.

  ‘Rikki’s a guilty man, I know that,’ he said in a low, slow voice. ‘But this is one thing he’s not guilty of. So, Fúsi, you’re going to come clean and give me the whole story. Exactly what happened and who was it who put you in hospital and your mate Thór in the morgue.’

  ‘I don’t know. Honest.’

  ‘Because Rikki’s going to be released pretty soon. He knows he’s been in a cell for twenty-four hours on the say-so of someone who wrongly fingered him for the murder. So it would be terrible, wouldn’t it, if he were to get even an idea that it was you? Not that I’m going to say a word, obviously,’ Helgi said and paused, ‘but I’m not the only one working this case, and you know what a vindictive bastard Sævaldur can be.’

  Gunna recognized one of the two officers as they arrived at Einholt, wiping their feet carefully as they came in, looking around at their surroundings.

  ‘Úlfur, isn’t it?’ she asked, shaking his hand. ‘You spent a summer at the station in Hvalvík.’

  ‘Hæ, Gunna.’ The lanky young man’s face broke into a smile. ‘That’s right. Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? This is my colleague, Birna.’

  Gunna almost did a double take, the angular young woman was so similar to Úlfur, both of them tall, looking younger than their years with their short fair hair and dark business suits.

  ‘You shot our John Doe, Gunna?’ Úlfur asked in an undertone once the introductions had been made and the two officers had expressed a preference for water rather than the strong black coffee that Ívar Laxdal poured for himself and Gunna.

  ‘So it seems,’ Gunna said.

  ‘Fantastic work. That must have been some quick thinking.’

  Gunna shrugged. It wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. ‘He fired. I fired back. It all took a few seconds and then it was over.’

  ‘All the same,’ Úlfur said, a note of respect in his voice.

  ‘Just looking forward to the inquiry now.’

  Úlfur grinned. ‘I’m not sure there will be one. But we’ll see,’ he said. Gunna sent him a questioning glance, but he had already locked his gaze on Ívar Laxdal, who had instinctively taken the lead.

  ‘What do we have?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Birna said. ‘Nothing in the man’s pockets. No identification. Nothing on a chain round his neck, no rings, no tattoos, a very old scar on his right forearm. The revolver is anonymous, no serial numbers on it and he had fired two rounds.’

  ‘That fits,’ Gunna said. ‘I heard two shots.’

  ‘We’re getting a ballistics test to see if there’s a match anywhere but I’m not hopeful. His face doesn’t show up anywhere and his fingerprints don’t match any records we have.’

  ‘Description?’ Ívar Laxdal asked.

  ‘Mid to late thirties. One metre eighty-four, no health problems. It looks like he was very fit, someone who did more than just an hour at the gym once a week. Fair hair, clean shaven. There’s a mark on his left ear where there may have been a piercing that healed over a long time ago. That’s it.’

  ‘It’s his clothes that tell us more,
’ Úlfur said softly, as if he were apologetic at breaking into Birna’s flow of words. ‘The jacket, shirt, hoodie and trousers are all old, nothing special about any of them and there are no labels, except the label on John Doe’s underpants which has Cyrillic lettering on it.’

  ‘Russian?’ Ívar Laxdal snapped.

  Úlfur lifted his hands in question. ‘Who knows? It looks like his underpants came from Russia. But they could have come from Bulgaria or Serbia, or Ukraine. We can’t tell if he’s from one of those countries or if he just went there to buy himself some underwear. It could be either. At any rate, I’ve sent pictures of the label to our Ukrainian translator and asked her to track down which language it is. That might give us at least a pointer in the right direction.’

  ‘What’s the strategy, Ívar?’ Birna asked. ‘How does the ministry want to handle this?’

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough, I expect. For the moment it’s complete radio silence and we keep this totally under wraps until we know more. Not one single word to anyone. The corpse is at the National Hospital and only Miss Cruz gets to see it,’ he said, counting items off on his fingers. ‘Steinunn is off with her honoured guest for a trip round the tourist spots today, which is a bad thing if we need to get authorization for anything, or a good thing as we’ll be left in peace and quiet.’

  ‘Lovely day for it,’ Birna said with a scowl, jerking her cropped head towards the rain tapping at the window. ‘We don’t think this can be kept quiet, but we can dress it up if it’s done right.’

  ‘In what way?’ Ívar Laxdal asked, his forehead creased as he frowned.

  ‘Listen. You have Osman. There’s Valgeir from the ministry, and there’s the Steinunn’s niece in the other room,’ she said, her voice dropping. ‘Osman’s an unknown quantity, as I told you a few days ago. Valgeir is under a ton of pressure from Steinunn; we’re aware he has other problems as well. As for Sif . . .’ Her voice tailed off. ‘We can keep this hushed up, John Doe gets an unmarked grave up at Gufunes, but it’s a ticking bomb. What if Valgeir or Sif have a skinful and blab? Then the damage is done. It’s the kind of thing that will come back to haunt us all, especially the minister if she’s not careful.’

  ‘Careful isn’t her style,’ Ívar Laxdal said. ‘Never has been. If it was, she’d never have invited Osman to Iceland to start with.’

  ‘So we agree on that,’ Birna said. ‘Then there’s the minister’s husband.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He has links with oddballs at universities overseas, all kinds of strange types.’

  ‘You have files on everyone, do you?’ Ívar Laxdal asked sharply.

  ‘Not everyone. You have to be more than a member of the Left-Greens to warrant being watched.’ She grinned. ‘But only just.’

  ‘Hello?’ Skúli asked, his voice louder than it needed to be. ‘Is that Plain Truth?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’ retorted a curt voice on the other end of the line, and he was sure there was an underlying note of trepidation. It sounded like a young man or maybe a woman, but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘I’m a friend of Lars Bundgaard.’

  The line immediately went dead and Skúli slapped the table hard with the flat of his hand, wincing as it stung.

  He typed in another number and tried again, listening as a phone somewhere in Europe rang.

  ‘Yeah?’

  This time it was definitely a woman’s voice.

  ‘My name’s Skúli and I’m calling from Iceland. I’m a friend of Lars Bundgaard,’ he said and listened to the silence. ‘Hello, are you there?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m here. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what happened to Lars.’

  ‘What’s your name again?’

  ‘My name’s Skúli and I’m calling from Iceland. What happened to Lars?’

  ‘Lars is dead.’

  ‘I know that. What happened?’

  There was a moment’s tense silence and Skúli could hear the click of a lighter.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because Lars was my friend,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t remember him ever mentioning you.’

  ‘Who are you, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I do mind your asking. You don’t need to know about me.’

  ‘All right. Look, Lars and I were at university together and we both used to work in Denmark, on Jyllandsposten. It’s a local newspaper. Last week he called me with a lead for an article and we worked on it together. Then I tried to call him yesterday, and some policeman answered his phone. That’s all I know.’

  ‘What was this lead?’

  ‘It was about someone called Ali Osman.’

  ‘And how do I know you’re not a policeman yourself?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Skúli said with a feeling of helplessness, wondering how he could prove himself. ‘I work for an online magazine in Reykjavík called Pulse. You can look it up online. You’ll see my name there, Skúli Snædal. You’ll see the article about Osman.’

  He heard a sigh through his laptop’s speakers as the woman took another long lungful of smoke.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to trust you, Skúli. I don’t know if I dare trust you. I don’t know if you’re alone or if there’s someone sitting next to you listening in to this conversation. I don’t know if this call is being traced or recorded. We can’t trust anyone at the moment.’

  ‘What can I say? I want to know what happened to my friend and I want to know if it’s anything to do with this guy he mentioned.’

  ‘What did Lars say about him? Osman, I mean.’

  Skúli could detect an interest there behind the feigned lack of it.

  ‘He said that Osman is in Iceland. That’s why he gave me the lead.’

  ‘Ah. And what have you found out?’

  ‘The article’s online, you can see what we found out.’

  ‘OK, I see,’ the voice said after a long silence. ‘I’ll call you back later.’

  ‘Please do that. I’ll see what else I can find out before then.’

  ‘Do that,’ the woman said in an impassive voice. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Hold on!’ Skúli yelped. ‘Don’t go . . . Listen, what happened to Lars? I still don’t know.’ He wondered if the connection had been broken as the silence continued for half a minute. But when the voice came back, it had a catch to it.

  ‘One shot. Back of the head. Execution-style. In the hall of his flat on Veemarkt.’

  ‘Who? Do you know who did this?’

  ‘Speak to you later. Goodbye.’

  ‘You fucked up.’

  It wasn’t a question and Michel felt a flush of resentment which he immediately suppressed. He had no choice but to admit she was right. There was a coldness in those grey eyes that made him deeply uncomfortable.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said at last.

  ‘What went wrong?’

  Michel sighed.

  ‘I’ve no idea. But my instinct is that they got lucky and we didn’t. If they’d known we were coming up the beach, then there would have been a squad of them, not one person with a popgun.’

  Ana digested his words and looked over the car’s bonnet at the drops of ice-cold rain pattering onto the street.

  ‘Now they know there’s someone out there, which is us. That means security will be ramped up and that makes our job so much harder.’

  ‘True. But it won’t be long before they get back into a routine again. That never takes long.’

  Ana shrugged.

  ‘All the same, they’ll be more careful now. How about Pino? Anything they could use to identify him?’

  Michel shook his head.

  ‘No. We stuck with procedure. No marked clothing, no paperwork, nothing that could put anyone onto a trail.’

  ‘And the weapon?’ she asked.

  ‘A revolver. No trail to follow there,’ he said and fell silent.

  Ana clicked her fingers softly a couple of times as she thought.

/>   ‘All right. I’ll check in later and see if anything’s changed.’

  ‘And until then?’

  ‘We watch and wait.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘Instructions to eliminate or pull out, or the chance of an opportunity we can’t ignore.’

  Hans looked even more self-satisfied than usual as he arrived at the Hverfisgata police station to take Rikki away. He sat in reception, his leather-gloved hands elegantly folded in his lap.

  ‘He’s all yours, Hans,’ Helgi told him as Rikki rolled his shoulders and pulled on an anorak.

  ‘Thank you,’ Hans replied smoothly. ‘So pleased you saw sense on this one.’

  ‘You behave yourself, Rikki,’ Helgi said, ignoring the lawyer. ‘I’ll be wanting a word with you later on, so don’t go into hiding.’

  The lawyer’s eyes darted from one to the other.

  ‘What’s that about?’

  ‘All part of the service,’ Helgi told him. ‘Public relations. Keeping the general public happy.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rikki grunted, scowling in frustration. ‘Get me out of here, will you?’

  Helgi watched the mismatched pair walk away, and once they were out of sight, he took the lift back upstairs.

  ‘Where’s Sævaldur?’

  ‘Fuming somewhere, I expect,’ Eiríkur said. ‘You and I are now public enemy number one and two as far as he’s concerned.’

  ‘Until Gunna’s back and she can take over the role again.’

  Eiríkur jerked a thumb at a newspaper on the edge of his desk.

  ‘Seen the papers?’ he asked sourly. ‘Thór Hersteinsson’s obituary is in DV, and an interview with his mother. You’d imagine from reading it that he’d been some kind of sweet angel who spent his days off reading stories to orphans in hospital rather than a thug who liked nothing better than punching anyone who stood up to him.’

  ‘I’ll keep that pleasure for later,’ Helgi decided.

  ‘Do that. You’ll have tears in your eyes by the time you’ve finished it. Anyway, we have descriptions, so it’s noses to the grindstone. The description you got from Fúsi pretty much matches what Ketill gave me.’

  ‘Fúsi said he and Thór tracked these two from Laugavegur, where they crossed at the lights, and followed them up Snorrabraut. Fúsi followed them and Thór doubled around the block to head them off, so we have a time and that street from Laugavegur up as far as Njálsgata, where they disappeared towards Rauðarárstígur.’