Cold Breath (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 7)

by Quentin Bates

  Steinunn’s face hardened as soon as Osman was out of immediate earshot.

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  There was no greeting or pleasantry, just a direct, sharp question.

  ‘We have a casualty. He was observed outside the property where Osman is staying. He had made it past the lookouts. When he was challenged, he didn’t respond,’ Ívar Laxdal said in terse phrases.

  ‘And he’s dead?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’ The words sounded jarringly out of place on the lips of a woman who normally spoke so smoothly in Parliament or in TV interviews. ‘Who is this bastard? Or was?’

  ‘No idea. We’re working on that. No identification. He was armed, and he also fired two rounds before my officer returned fire.’

  ‘Armed? With what?’

  ‘A handgun – an old-fashioned revolver. It’s a nasty piece of work that doesn’t have a safety catch, just a long-reach trigger. Not exactly an amateur’s weapon.’

  ‘Good grief. Ívar, this has to be kept absolutely quiet,’ Steinunn said in an urgent undertone. ‘Don’t let this get out. I’m counting on you to wrap this up. I don’t want to hear any more until it’s dealt with. Understand?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  Steinunn’s expression hardened again.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’s unlikely that this person was operating alone, so we can’t rule out the fact that he may have an accomplice with him, or even a team.’

  ‘Come on. You can’t be serious?’

  ‘I’m deadly serious,’ Ívar Laxdal retorted. ‘This man didn’t find his way to Einholt on foot, and he didn’t blunder into the place by accident. It was pure chance that my officer was outside and saw him approach. We daren’t assume this was some kind of solo effort by an amateur fanatic. I can’t advise you to go haring around the country with this man while there could be someone else gunning for him. And I can’t guarantee to keep this quiet. There are too many people involved who can’t be trusted.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Valgeir for one, and your niece.’

  ‘Sif?’ Steinunn’s mouth tightened into a white line as she thought. ‘Sif spent the night there with Osman? Shit. The little slut. I should have known better than to invite her last night,’ she muttered. ‘Leave Valgeir to me. And leave Sif to me as well. Where is she now?’

  ‘Still at Einholt.’

  ‘Good. Keep her there. On my authority. Spin her whatever yarn you like, but keep her there and keep her away from the phone. Now, where’s Valgeir?’

  Ívar Laxdal jerked his head towards the living room.

  ‘In there with your husband.’

  ‘Good. Tell him to come here. We’ll call you when we have an ETA for this evening.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to commend my officer for protecting your guest?’ he asked as Steinunn was about to walk away.

  ‘Why? Who was it?’

  Ívar Laxdal nodded at Gunna and Steinunn took a step back, as if noticing her there for the first time.

  ‘You shot this man?’

  ‘Not willingly. But yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Steinunn seemed at a loss for what to say. ‘Good work, I’m sure. Good work,’ she finally said lamely. ‘Quick thinking.’ She looked past Gunna and her eyes zeroed in on something behind her. ‘Valgeir, a word, if you please,’ she said, beckoning him to follow. ‘Berlin,’ Gunna heard her say in her familiar crystal-clear voice. ‘Was it Berlin or Washington that you were so keen on?’

  It was a twenty-minute drive back to Einholt and it passed in silence as Ívar Laxdal glowered and Gunna wondered how she could tell him that he ought to get someone else to babysit Osman for the rest of the assignment.

  ‘Well, we have a few hours to think things over and take it easy while Steinunn shows our guest around,’ he said, switching off the engine. He turned to her and placed a hand on her forearm. The sudden moment of intimacy was such a surprise that Gunna almost jerked her hand back. ‘Gunnhildur, are you all right? If you want to bail out of this, then I’ll understand.’

  Gunna retrieved her hand, ran her fingers through her hair and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she decided. ‘I could do with an hour’s sleep.’

  ‘Good.’ Ívar Laxdal grinned and she could see the relief in his eyes. ‘But you had to think about it, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did. But I don’t like to walk away from something that’s not finished.’

  ‘Come on. We deserve a chance to put our feet up for half an hour.’

  The atmosphere inside the house was tense. Steingrímur sat at the breakfast bar looking through the previous day’s newspaper while Sif sat on the sofa, her knees drawn up and her arms hugged tight around them. She was still wrapped in the dressing gown she had thrown on that morning.

  ‘She all right?’ Gunna muttered to Steingrímur.

  ‘No, I don’t reckon she is. Refuses to speak to me and she’s just sitting there without a word.’

  Gunna wanted to yawn and lie down for an hour, but instead she went over to where Sif was huddled on the sofa and sat next to her.

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry about everything last night. It wasn’t what any of us had expected.’

  Sif turned her head to look at her, eyes wide and blank.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re caught up in something more serious than anything we could have expected and we’re trying to work out how to deal with it,’ Gunna continued. ‘Osman is rather an enigma, and we need to find out who was trying to kill him.’

  ‘Are you sure he was trying to kill Osman?’ Sif asked, speaking for the first time, her voice cracking.

  ‘I think it’s fair to assume that. There were only three of us here and I doubt he was after an obscure middle-aged police officer. Or is there something about your private life we ought to know?’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘I’m just asking. You suggested this character might have been after someone other than Osman, and since I’m unlikely to be the target, the implication is that it’s you. Do you have any reason for someone to come after you with a firearm?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course not.’

  Gunna nodded. ‘So this person must have been looking for Osman.’

  ‘The person you shot.’

  Gunna shivered. ‘You were watching. He fired first.’

  ‘You didn’t have to kill him.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ Gunna said, with more heat than she’d intended. ‘You think I want someone’s life on my conscience?’

  ‘No,’ Sif allowed. ‘I don’t suppose so.’

  ‘Did Osman seem nervous? Did you get the impression he might be expecting anything like this?’

  ‘He had something on his mind,’ Sif said sourly. ‘And once that was out of the way he had a nap before suggesting a repeat performance.’

  ‘So what did you talk about?’

  ‘We talked all evening at Steinunn’s house. About all kinds of things: travel, films, art, all that stuff. I’m sure she put me next to him deliberately. Once we got here he didn’t want to talk a lot. Like I said, there was only one thing he was after. It was only when he heard you shouting outside that he woke up and went to look out of the window. Look, when can I go home? I asked your gorilla there to drive me home earlier and he said he couldn’t leave the building.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but he’s right. Nobody’s leaving here for a while,’ Gunna said, an added decision creeping into her voice. ‘Until we know more about all this, we’re all staying put.’

  ‘And when Osman’s back tonight, we’re just one big happy family again, are we?’ Sif sneered. ‘Well, if he wants company then you can keep him warm because I’m not inclined to.’

  ‘We must.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘All these years, we’ve never disagreed on anything important. We both know what’s right.’

  Hanne shook her hea
d violently and banged the table with the flat of her hand, setting the plates rattling.

  ‘I know what’s right, and my family comes first,’ she hissed.

  The people at the next table looked up in surprise and then turned their eyes away in embarrassment at the sight of a couple in respectable middle age arguing so quietly and yet with such vehemence.

  ‘We should go to the police and tell them what we know, tell them what happened.’

  ‘Don’t you dare even think of endangering my family,’ Hanne said, glaring at him. ‘Dorthe is my daughter. Inge is my grandchild. I won’t have their lives put in danger.’

  Carsten sat back as if she’d slapped him. His astonishment could hardly have been greater if she had taken a fork from the table and stabbed it into his hand.

  ‘Thirty-four years,’ he said. ‘Thirty-four years ago I accepted that child in your belly wasn’t mine and I’ve brought her up as if she was my own. How dare you suggest . . .’

  ‘You’ve never threatened her life before.’

  Carsten felt a flush of heat and his breath came in gasps. After a moment the dizzy spell passed and he brushed the back of a hand across his forehead to find it damp with sweat.

  ‘I need to . . .’ he muttered, struggling to his feet.

  ‘You need to what?’

  ‘I need to stand outside, get some air. I feel sick.’

  Hanne sat still, numb with her own anger at the two men who had appeared from nowhere one evening on the way to the ferry, politely telling them that they had no choice but to do as they were told. Her hatred for them ran deep, a loathing more virulent than anything she had ever felt before.

  She stared through the window, watching Carsten in the cherry-red anorak he’d bought in Copenhagen for their dream trip to Iceland as he walked to and fro in the evening darkness, his breath a plume of vapour in the freezing air.

  Hanna clasped her hands together, squeezing them tightly, until she could almost feel the bones of her fingers crack with the pressure.

  ‘Hey, lady.’

  The voice seemed to come from somewhere distant, a sound that had no relevance to her as she sat and waited for something she knew could never come.

  ‘Hey,’ the voice repeated, this time with greater urgency, and she heard the scrape of chairs being shoved back as people quickly got to their feet. ‘Is that your husband?’

  They were running for the door, while others looked up from their half-eaten meals, wondering what had happened.

  Registering their urgency, Hanne looked up. A young man in a blue work overall was looking into her eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The guy in red? He’s your husband?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her heart hammering as she looked out the window and saw, with horror, a small group gathered around a figure on the ground, one of them tugging open the red parka while another felt for a pulse in his neck.

  ‘They’re at Thingvellir,’ Ívar Laxdal said.

  ‘You spoke to the escort?’

  ‘Yep. Steinunn’s showing him around in the rain and Osman’s pretending to enjoy himself.’

  ‘So what else? Any word on the dead man?’

  ‘He’s in the morgue at the National Hospital. No way around that, sadly.’

  ‘And Steinunn seriously thinks this can be kept quiet?’ Gunna asked. ‘She must be nuts. She’d be better off making a clean breast of it all.’

  ‘There are ways and means, Gunnhildur. Ways and means.’

  ‘And there’ll be an inquiry at some point – soon, I’d guess. Staff at the hospital must be aware that there’s a gunshot fatality in the morgue, and they’ll all be carefully not asking questions while they wonder what happened and who it is.’

  ‘It’s being contained as far as possible. Miss Cruz is in charge. We have key people who have been taken aside and told this is a sensitive matter of national security.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’

  ‘I don’t know. We have to assume it is until we know different. There’ll be someone from the National Security Unit along soon to brief us, once they’ve asked as many questions as they can.’

  ‘How time flies when you’re having fun.’ Gunna yawned. ‘Do you think Steinunn has told her boss about all this yet?’

  Ívar Laxdal looked startled. ‘The Prime Minister? I doubt it. Not if she has any sense.’

  Ana jogged across the road, ordered a coffee and sat at one of the computers in the almost empty café. It was one of the rules she took care to adhere to, and she made sure the others did the same.

  She used a smartphone only when necessary and made sure the others used only old-fashioned nineties-style mobiles, switched on when needed and regularly discarded. All other communication was through a series of rotating social media profiles accessed through computers in cafés and libraries to avoid building a trail that could easily be followed.

  She logged in and reflected that this was becoming more difficult. Smartphones that contained everything in a single device had begun to sound the death knell for internet cafés, making access to public computers less easy.

  Once she’d checked both accounts, she sat back and digested the information she’d received while finishing her coffee and sandwich, logged off and looked around the empty café. The bored barista looked up, wondering why his customer had frozen with her eyes on the TV screen behind him.

  A few seconds showed her a face she couldn’t fail to recognize, before going back to a newsreader.

  ‘What’s that about?’ she asked the barista.

  ‘That? Oh, there was someone murdered in a fight a few nights ago. The police are looking for the guy who did it.’

  ‘And that’s him, is it?’ she asked. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Four thousand six hundred,’ he replied. ‘Yeah. They think so.’

  ‘Who got murdered?’

  ‘Him? He was a proper bastard. He sold drugs and had a protection racket going with a few places in town.’

  ‘But not here?’

  ‘Nope. I suppose we’re too far from the centre for him to bother with us.’

  He handed her change.

  ‘So nobody’s shedding tears for this guy?’

  ‘Thór? Hell no,’ the barista muttered. ‘Maybe his mother. But nobody else.’

  ‘Hi, how’s things?’

  ‘All right. Why?’

  Skúli knew he was pushing friendship further than was wise. Valgeir sounded flustered, answering the phone with a monosyllable instead of cracking the usual joke.

  ‘Coffee? Usual place in half an hour?’

  ‘Well . . .’ The uncertainty in Valgeir’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Yeah, but not right now.’

  ‘Steinunn’s keeping you busy, is she?’

  ‘She has been, no doubt about that.’ This time Valgeir chuckled. ‘Actually, I’m off.’

  ‘Off? Off where?’

  ‘Vienna. It turns out I’ve been a good boy and good boys get rewards.’

  Skúli hid his surprise. Valgeir’s unexpected departure would deprive him of one of his best ministry contacts, someone with an unofficial insider’s insight into the workings of government. Valgeir might be a relatively low-level official, but it had been clear for some time that he was a bright candidate being quietly groomed for better things. His occasional meetings with Valgeir generally gave him a snippet of information that cast the ministry’s workings in a different light to the official viewpoint, and Skúli had also taken care to be discreet in using information gleamed from these occasional meetings.

  ‘Wow. Vienna. That sounds good. More money as well?’

  ‘Yep. Up a pay grade and a promotion.’

  ‘No time to say goodbye to your old pal?’

  ‘Look, Skúli, I’m packing as we speak. I’ll have time in the next couple of days, but it’ll have to be really quick.’

  Hanne closed her eyes and kept them shut tight, willing herself not to watch and wishing she could blot out the whine and whipl
ash crack of the defibrillator.

  It was the relief in the voices of the people around that told her Carsten was still alive, prompting her to open her eyes to find one of the filling station staff by her side, her hand in his.

  It seemed a long time before a police car arrived with a pair in uniform who calmly took control, making sure that Carsten was brought inside, and watching the trio of volunteers holding his hand and keeping him awake.

  Hanne stood frozen to the spot until one of the officers took her to one side, sat her down with her back to the scene being played out and wrote down a string of details. A mug of coffee turned cold on the table in front of her.

  ‘What happens now?’ Hanne asked, her teeth chattering.

  ‘The ambulance should be here shortly. They’ll take him to Blönduós if things look stable, or south to Reykjavík if it looks risky. But Blönduós is closest.’

  ‘I know. We spent the night there,’ Hanne said, as if in a dream. She wondered if they could have spent their last night together, both of them angry and hurt, with hardly a word passing between them.

  The officer cocked his head to one side as he listened to his earpiece.

  ‘They’ll be here in a couple of minutes,’ he said. ‘I expect the medics will do what they can to stabilize Carsten and they won’t hang about. They’ll want to be off right away and you’d best go with them.’

  ‘What about . . . ?’

  The first tear found its way down Hanne’s cheek, not so much because of Carsten as in frustration at her own helplessness.

  ‘Give me the keys to your truck and my pal will drive it to Blönduós. He’ll only be half an hour behind you,’ he said, as if he knew what she was going to say.

  Hanne fumbled in her pocket and dropped the keys with their big cork fob onto the table.

  ‘It’s the . . .’

  ‘The only one outside with Danish plates? Listen, the police station is just across the street from the hospital in Blönduós. I’ll hang on to the keys until you’re ready. All right?’ he said and looked up, listening to his earpiece again. ‘That was quick. They’re here,’ he said, standing up. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll look after him.’

  She sat numbly as the crew appeared in the doorway, the ambulance’s light bouncing through the windows and flashing off the walls.