Cold Breath (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 7)

by Quentin Bates

  Gunna’s communicator burst into life and she listened.

  ‘Understood,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be back to you in a few minutes.’

  ‘Problem? Another one?’ Ívar Laxdal asked from the driving seat.

  ‘Something’s up,’ Gunna replied as the squad car ahead of them took the next slip road off into another cloverleaf and the traffic lights ahead of them changed neatly to green as they approached. She clicked her communicator again.

  ‘Steingrímur, we have a problem. Pull over when you get a chance, will you? There’s a trading estate up ahead at Fossaleynir and we should be out of sight there.’

  Osman’s eyes went from Gunna to Ívar Laxdal and back.

  ‘What’s going on, Gunnhildur?’ he asked.

  ‘We don’t know, but we don’t want to take any chances,’ she replied as the lights of the squad car ahead turned off and they followed it down a side road, coming to a halt outside a row of industrial units.

  ‘Come and talk to us, will you?’ Gunna muttered into her communicator and saw the squad car’s door swing open and Steingrímur’s long figure unfold itself.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, shutting the Volvo’s door behind him as he twisted round in the passenger seat.

  ‘An intruder at Einholt. The pair from the watch post yomped down there as soon as they saw this person show up and took him by surprise. No identification so far. That’s about all we know.’

  ‘Shit, hell and damnation.’

  Ívar Laxdal’s fist hammered the steering wheel in front of him.

  Gunna glanced sideways at Osman.

  ‘As you’ve probably guessed, we have a problem. There’s an intruder at Einholt and we’re not going anywhere near until we have an idea of what’s going on.’

  ‘It’s not just that we don’t know what’s going on up there,’ Ívar Laxdal said. ‘We also don’t know how far security has been compromised, who knows you’ve been staying at Einholt, and so on.’

  ‘And I thought Iceland was such a safe country,’ Osman said softly.

  ‘It was until you turned up. Now suddenly we have two corpses and a possible international incident to deal with,’ Ívar Laxdal rasped back. ‘So what are the options? A cell at Hverfisgata would be my ideal choice,’ he said. ‘We need somewhere so secure it’ll throw off any pursuit, reset the clock.’

  ‘We can do that,’ Gunna said. ‘It won’t be comfortable, but we can do it.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Michel asked. He lay behind the rifle, huddled with his arms folded in front of him, watching through a pair of binoculars balanced on a stone.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ Ana said, frowning as she watched the blue dot that hadn’t moved for twenty minutes. ‘And it’s going to be dark really soon.’

  ‘So this is a no-show?’

  ‘Let’s see. We don’t need to be in a hurry, but we need to figure out if they’re coming this way or not.’

  Michel got stiffly to his feet and stretched his arms.

  ‘Careful,’ Ana admonished. ‘Don’t let yourself be seen.’

  ‘Just going to empty the tank,’ he said, unzipping his drysuit and walking away.

  Ana shifted into his position behind the binoculars and watched as a vehicle came down the track to Einholt. It came to a halt in front of the door and three figures got out.

  ‘Anything?’ Michel asked.

  ‘Luc, there you are,’ Ana said to herself and chuckled, this time with her eye to the rifle’s sight as she made out the figure of the little man in his shabby grey suit.

  ‘Someone you recognize?’ Michel asked, lying down next to her. ‘An old friend?’

  ‘Not exactly a friend; he’d happily lock us both up and throw away the key. It’s a guy from State Security. He looks like a cuddly teddy bear with a bad hangover, but he’s as sharp as a razor.’

  ‘You speak from experience?’

  ‘No. Fortunately not. But he has a reputation and he’s someone to keep clear of.’

  ‘Change of plans,’ Ívar Laxdal said as Steingrímur got out and went back to the squad car, and Osman’s eyes opened wide in unspoken question.

  Ívar Laxdal swung the black Volvo out of the car park back into the traffic. Darkness was falling, bringing a sharp frost with it as the weak winter sun dipped out of sight.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked as Ívar Laxdal’s Volvo rejoined the afternoon crush of traffic heading for the city centre.

  ‘Since your safety’s compromised, we have something special lined up for you,’ Gunna told him, suppressing a smile.

  ‘We aren’t going back to Steinunn’s house?’

  ‘No. We’re going somewhere else.’

  ‘And my things? My computer and the rest?’

  ‘Steingrímur will bring your belongings.’

  Osman looked suspicious.

  ‘Gunnhildur, what is this?’ he asked, his voice hardening in concern. ‘Have they bought you?’

  ‘What?’ Gunna said in surprise. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Like I told you, we’re going somewhere these people won’t be able to follow, and as Ívar and I are the only ones who know where we’re going, there’s no chance of a security leak.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Ívar Laxdal kept the Volvo moving through the traffic, slowing for lights and powering through them as they changed to green, ensuring there would be no opportunity for anyone to approach the stationary car anywhere along the way. It was only when they were in the thickest of the late afternoon traffic that Ívar Laxdal had no choice but to stop, his eyes darting from mirror to mirror.

  Gunna leaned over to Osman, who was sitting very straight, concern on his face as the orange lights by the road flashed across his face, rigid with concern.

  ‘Tell me, Osman. Who knew you were here?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he replied quickly, startled by her question.

  ‘Because someone knew about your movements and we want to either find them and put them away, or at least keep you away from them. The man who came to Einholt . . .’

  ‘The man you killed, Gunnhildur.’

  Gunna gulped, felt her heart race for a second, and told herself to concentrate.

  ‘The man with a gun who was looking for you. He was here in Iceland several days before you, before we knew you were coming. They were prepared. So who knew? The aircrew of the jet you arrived in?’

  Osman shook his head.

  ‘The jet is owned by one of our benefactors. The crew didn’t know until an hour before we left that I was the passenger.’

  ‘All right, your staff?’

  ‘The foundation only has three staff and I can vouch for them all. They are all thoroughly dedicated and I trust every one of them. As well as that, without me there is no foundation and they would have no jobs.’

  ‘Unless they were paid a serious amount of money? Or blackmailed, threatened?’

  ‘Of course it’s possible. But I don’t believe so.’

  ‘All right. Who else?’

  ‘The obvious ones. Steinunn. You.’

  ‘Not me,’ Gunna replied. ‘I didn’t know who you were until you got off the plane, and whoever is after your skin knew long before that you were on the way to Iceland, long enough to prepare.’

  ‘That’s it. Steinunn. My three colleagues.’

  ‘And the American guy,’ Gunna reminded him. ‘He knew you were here. When did the Children of Freedom know about your movements?’

  Osman glared.

  ‘Kyle is like a brother to me. I trust him completely.’

  ‘Maybe. But maybe Kyle told someone he was coming here to meet you, and what about the guy he was with?’

  ‘James . . . ? I don’t know,’ Osman admitted and the first glimmer of doubt appeared on his face.

  ‘Almost there,’ Ívar Laxdal grunted from the front seat.

  ‘So,’ Gunna continued, ‘from my point of view, it seems your security is full of holes. Steinunn may have informed her staff that you were coming, an
d they may have told someone else. You understand? Or it could have been one of your people, although I’m inclined to discount that if you’re so certain they’re trustworthy. Or the Children of Freedom? If you had to make a guess, which one would it be? What’s your gut feeling?’

  Ívar Laxdal brought the Volvo to a gentle halt.

  ‘Where are we?’ Osman asked, looking out in to the darkness and leaving Gunna’s question unanswered.

  ‘This is your route out of the city, and nobody has a hope in hell of following you,’ Ívar Laxdal said, grinning over his shoulder in the darkness as he opened his door. ‘But it’s a windy night so it’s not going to be comfortable.’

  ‘We’ve lost him,’ Ana said.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yeah. The signal’s back in the city centre now and there’s something strange going on there.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The signal’s right down by the harbour.’

  ‘It’s all restaurants down there. Maybe they’ve gone for dinner and we can sit it out until they get back?’

  She switched off the smartphone and stowed it in an inside pocket.

  ‘We disengage. They wanted a snatch, but we can’t pull that off here. I reckon they really want this guy alive so it doesn’t look like they’re going to authorize a kill. My decision, we pull out and wait for the target to relocate. It’ll be a lot easier to deal with him once he’s back in Europe.’

  ‘Yeah? So no bonus.’

  ‘No bonus . . . yet,’ Ana told him. ‘Come on, break everything down and we’ll make our way back.’

  He got to his knees and began to dismantle the rifle and pack it into its case, while Ana watched Einholt in the distance. Nothing had changed and nobody had left the building.

  ‘Done. Are we taking this with us, or stashing it here?’

  ‘Bury it,’ Ana instructed, disappearing into the deepening gloom. A fierce rain shower had come out of nowhere and beat down for a few moments, simultaneously hiding the lights at Einholt across the bay.

  Ana carried the two packs down to the beach, where their kayaks lay on the stones. She quickly turned over the one Michel had used and knelt down, fumbling at the same time for a stone big enough to fit her hand comfortably. She dealt the kayak one sharp blow with the stone, hoping it would be enough, and was satisfied to see that a long crack had appeared in the plastic before she righted it again.

  At the lookout position Michel scraped a hole in the wet earth, rolling aside stones until it was deep enough for the black case to be covered with a thin layer of soil.

  ‘What was that noise?’ he asked when Ana reappeared.

  ‘What noise?’

  ‘Just now. A bang.’

  ‘Nothing. I slipped on the rocks and caught my elbow on one of the kayaks.’

  She knelt down beside him and together they rolled a few stones on top of the hole where he’d placed the weapon, in a rough triangle shape that was enough to mark the spot.

  ‘Happy with that?’

  ‘No. Not really. But we don’t have a lot of choice. Come on. There’s no point hanging around here.’

  Steingrímur appeared out of the darkness, with Osman’s bag slung over his shoulder and a laptop case in his hand.

  ‘Here’s the gear,’ he grunted. ‘You’re sure about this, Gunna?’

  ‘If I wasn’t sure, we wouldn’t be here,’ she replied. ‘Drop those by the gate. Our pal can carry his own luggage from now on.’

  Steingrímur sniffed the wind.

  ‘Rather you than me on a night like this,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll be fine. A bit of a breeze blows away the cobwebs. All I want you to do is go back to Einholt and make it look like nothing’s changed. All right?’

  Steingrímur vanished back into the darkness. Gunna punched a series of numbers into a keypad on a high steel mesh gate and watched it swing open. Osman followed, bags in his hands, the wind tugging at the tails of his coat.

  ‘Gunnhildur,’ he said, his voice plaintive with anxiety. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Watch your feet,’ she instructed. ‘It can be slippery here.’

  The pontoon echoed under her feet as she marched past the boats tied up to their finger berths.

  ‘Here we are,’ she told Osman, sitting on the gunwale and swinging her feet over and onto the deck of the boat. ‘Pass me your stuff and jump aboard.’

  Osman followed in a daze, watching as Gunna unlocked the door to the little wheelhouse. She used the torch in her phone to light her way, and pointed to a narrow bench at one side.

  ‘Sit there,’ she instructed and disappeared through a low opening. A moment later lights flickered into life and her face appeared at the top of the couple of steps to the cabin.

  ‘Bags?’

  Osman handed them to her without a word and they disappeared into the cabin. A grubby orange overall was thrown into the opening and Gunna clambered over it back to the wheelhouse, before going back out into the darkness on deck.

  Osman could hear the bang of a hatch being opened, and he peered into the night and saw Ívar Laxdal swing himself over the gunwale.

  ‘Everything in order, Gunnhildur?’

  Gunna scrambled back on deck and closed the hatch behind her.

  ‘All shipshape. I’ll just turn her over, then you can throw the ropes off.’

  ‘I should be doing this, you know.’

  ‘I reckon I can manage as the skipper on my own boat.’

  ‘Your boat?’ Ívar Laxdal asked in surprise.

  ‘Well. Let’s say it’s half my boat and I know my way around it, so it’s going to be fine. I’ll tell you the story later. Right now I’m more concerned about our guest.’

  Ívar Laxdal shrugged grudging agreement as Gunna turned the key on the wheelhouse dashboard, pressed the starter and the engine grunted, hesitated and gurgled into life before settling into a reassuring rumble below their feet. An alarm whined for a few seconds and faded away.

  Osman sat on the bench, his smart topcoat and polished shoes incongruous under the brightness of the wheelhouse lights. Gunna watched as the electronics came to life and nodded to herself, satisfied that everything was working.

  ‘Ready,’ she called out to Ívar Laxdal and followed him out on deck. He stepped onto the gunwale, steadied himself with a hand on the wheelhouse roof and jumped for the pontoon.

  ‘Let go aft,’ he intoned and Gunna coiled the rope away.

  ‘Let go forward,’ she said. ‘We don’t need to spring off here.’

  Ívar Laxdal stretched to hand the forward rope over the gunwale and Gunna stowed it away.

  ‘Have a good trip. Give me a call when you’re there,’ he instructed as Gunna slipped the engine into gear and eased the lever forward until the engine’s rumble grew to a roar.

  The boat moved smoothly away from the pontoon and its pool of light. Gunna waved to Ívar Laxdal as he became an indistinct shadow on the quay. She left the wheelhouse door hooked open, went to the controls inside and clicked off the lights, leaving Osman in the gloom, with only the faint glow from the radar to see by as she spun the wheel with one hand, the other on the throttle.

  ‘Gunnhildur,’ he asked. ‘Where are we going?’

  Gunna pressed a button a couple of times to increase the scale on the radar display and pointed at the corner of a green shape that covered the top half of the screen.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s where we’re going. And you’d better put that on,’ she added, pointing at the orange suit on the top step. ‘It’s a cold night.’

  Skúli had been propped on a chair in a bedroom. Once the two men in black had heard him speak Icelandic, their guard relaxed and one of them snipped the cable ties at his ankles, although the handcuffs still manacled his wrists together.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked, trying and failing to sound angry and truculent. ‘Why am I being held like this?’

  The two men exchanged glances and one shook his head. />
  ‘Well?’ Skúli demanded. ‘Do you . . . ?’ he said and stopped himself.

  He realized with a sick feeling that he had almost asked them if they knew who he was, and while Eggert Snædal’s name undoubtedly carried weight, he immediately despised himself for having almost fallen into the trap of using it.

  ‘You’re not supposed to say anything, right?’

  ‘Right,’ one of the masked men confirmed.

  ‘Who are you? Police, or what?’

  ‘The National Commissioner’s Special Unit,’ the shorter of the two men said, leaving the room and closing the door behind him. ‘And that’s all you need to know, so save your breath.’

  Skúli sat in the half-darkness for what seemed an age, listening to doors open and close as people came and went. He wondered whether to shout and complain, but decided to follow the man’s advice and sat quietly until one of them finally came to fetch him, leading him to the kitchen and pushing him onto a chair.

  Ívar Laxdal walked straight past him, went to the counter and filled the percolator.

  ‘All quiet apart from . . . ?’ he asked, jerking his head in Skúli’s direction.

  ‘All quiet.’

  ‘Good,’ Ívar Laxdal said as the percolator hissed and bubbled. ‘Thanks for your efforts, gentlemen. Good to know that you’re on the ball. You can stand down now.’

  The two figures in black withdrew silently without a word or a backward glance. Ívar Laxdal pottered in the kitchen while the two men and the woman muttered in English over a laptop on the table where cups and plates had been pushed aside.

  ‘Well, Skúli,’ Ívar Laxdal said at last, handing him a mug of coffee that he had no choice but to take in both hands. ‘Ah, I see the gentlemen of the Special Unit have been thorough,’ he muttered to himself and fished in his trouser pocket for a bunch of keys.

  He unlocked and snapped open the handcuffs, depositing them on the table. Skúli rubbed his wrists.

  ‘They were fairly gentle with you, I gather. No broken bones, just a little injured pride, maybe?’

  Skúli recalled the indignity of being slammed against the wall outside and the speed and force with which he had been cuffed and hauled inside.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he admitted. ‘A few bruises, though.’