‘I’m not sure we should take these without his consent . . .’
‘He’s had eight months to come and get them, and I’m moving, so I have to do something with his shit. It’s up to you,’ she replied. ‘I’d rather someone had some use out of them. If you don’t want them, they’ll just be thrown out with the rest of the rubbish.’
He smiled and Ana knew that he had his eyes on Michel’s multi-pocketed trousers.
‘In that case, your ex’s loss is the Mission’s gain.’
‘You’re taking me off this, are you?’ Sævaldur said, his habitual surly tone betraying even more irritation than usual.
‘Not at all,’ a brusque Ívar Laxdal said. ‘You’re doing a fine job under difficult circumstances, but there are aspects of this case that you’re not familiar with, and that’s why I wanted to bring you up to date.’ He paused, as if for effect. ‘Or as up to date as I can.’
Sævaldur sat back, arms folded, glancing around the room at Birna and Úlfur, and glaring at Helgi and Eiríkur. He looked Luc Kerkhoeve up and down without a word.
Ívar Laxdal immediately recognized the signs and inwardly braced himself for a struggle.
‘We have a shitstorm to deal with,’ he said. ‘Three dead people, and somehow it all ties in together.’
‘Three?’ Sævaldur snapped. ‘I know of three. The American at the hotel and the drunk who was hauled out of the water over at Gufunes this morning, plus Thór the Boxer. Are we talking about the same three?’
‘This is where I have to be secretive as there are things I can’t tell you. All I can say is that if you’re counting Thór the Boxer, then we have four. That’s Thór, James Kearney, and we have two dead males, one of whom appears to have drowned in the creek on the west side of Gufunes,’ he said, counting them off on his fingers. ‘Now we must switch to English, for Luc’s benefit,’ he said, watching Sævaldur scowl again. ‘Luc is from State Security in Brussels and has some knowledge of the two fatalities that we’re not going to go into too much detail about. But Helgi and Eiríkur have established that the unnamed Gufunes guy was involved in Thór the Boxer’s death. Right, Helgi?’
Helgi raised a finger. ‘Er . . . Well, Eiríkur did a lot of this,’ he said in awkwardly stiff English. ‘Do you want to . . . ?’
‘We found the Gufunes guy on CCTV twice on Laugavegur,’ Eiríkur said. ‘That’s once outside a pizza shop and once on an ATM camera. Thór and his pal Fúsi were following them.’
‘Them?’
‘Yes, them. Thór and Fúsi were following a couple. Fúsi finally admitted that this was their usual tourist mugging technique. They’d follow someone leaving a restaurant or a bar, corner them once they were somewhere out of sight, and lift their phones, cash or whatever.’
‘This was a mugging that went wrong,’ Helgi chimed in. ‘They thought they were safe, and cornered this couple on Njálsgata, round the corner from the cinema. But it didn’t work out as they’d planned.’
‘The Gufunes guy beat the two of them up, you mean?’ Sævaldur said.
Luc’s patience could no longer be contained and he slapped the table.
‘Will you please understand,’ he said. ‘These people are not amateurs. A couple of clumsy muggers are not going to be a problem for them.’
‘It was the drowned man who put Fúsi in hospital,’ Helgi said. ‘But the woman was the one who put Thór in the morgue.’
Skúli was surprised at himself. After the previous day’s ordeal he had found his way home almost on autopilot, relieved that he had made his way through the city; it was almost as if the Peugeot with the cracked windscreen knew its way home.
Dagga had growled and pursed her lips as he’d told her the story. Her eyes narrowed in anger, she shook her head in disbelief and Skúli wondered how she could be more angry about the whole thing than he was.
He had slept for almost twelve hours, called in to let Arndís and Agnar know that he was ill and wouldn’t be in that day, then spent the morning writing down every detail of what had happened at Einholt.
He sat back and read through what he had written, made a few additions and notes, and was satisfied, even though he was sure these words would never be read. All the same, he wanted his own record of what had taken place before the details faded from his memory. He rubbed his wrists, still sore from the handcuffs, and wondered what his next move should be. Osman had clearly been moved from the minister’s house. But where to?
Halfway through the morning, the phone buzzed at his side, and seeing Arndís’s number, he answered.
‘You all right, Skúli?’
‘Yeah, I think so. Tough day yesterday.’
‘What was that all about?’
‘I’ll tell you later. What’s new?’
‘The reshuffle. Wondering if you have any inside info from your pal?’
‘Reshuffle?’ Skúli scratched his head and had the immediate sinking feeling that he had been asleep on watch.
‘That’s right,’ Arndís said patiently. ‘Two out, two new faces in. One of them’s Steinunn Strand, and I know you have someone on the inside there, so have you heard anything?’
‘Shit,’ Skúli said. ‘No, not a word. Like I said before, I feel lousy and haven’t been paying attention. I think my contact there is burned out, but I’ll see if I can track him down.’
She wondered whether to check the smartphone for the red dot’s location, but decided against it. She knew where to go and had memorized the route. The walk would do her good, and for the first time since she had been in Iceland, there was some real warmth in the sunshine.
It wasn’t as far as she had thought as she strolled through a part of the city she hadn’t paid much attention to before, with streets that meandered rather than strode straight from place to place as they did in the newer districts.
Öldugata was quiet, with more trees between the buildings than she had seen anywhere else, and houses that looked as if they belonged there rather than having been built in a hurry a few weeks earlier.
When she found it, the house was a large one, surfaced in rough grey concrete and with its front wall directly on the pavement. The windows were small compared to the expanse of wall between them, as if it had been built back when glass had been an expensive luxury. There were six apartments, she guessed, or maybe eight if those tiny windows in the gable also had people living behind them.
Ana peered at the line of doorbells and failed to see the one she was looking for. Rather than ring one at random and ask, she walked past the house, and saw there was a flight of steps at the side leading to a basement, with narrow windows that were almost flush with the ground in the bare but well-tended garden at the back.
She went down the steps, saw the name she was looking for and heard a bell chime inside as she pressed the button.
‘Hello, Valgeir,’ she said and smiled broadly as he opened the door.
*
‘We’re looking for a woman?’ Sævaldur said, failing to hide his incredulity, and then guffawing suddenly.
‘What’s so funny?’ Ívar Laxdal asked, hesitating to issue a rebuke.
‘Well, Thór the Boxer being murdered by a woman, considering the number of women he’d abused over the years. He was no knight in shining armour, was he? But I still find it hard to believe a woman could have done this. Thór was a real bruiser, so she must be something special.’
‘She probably is,’ Luc said, his voice icy. ‘I told you, these people are not amateurs. You can be confident these aren’t the first people they’ve murdered. This person could also have killed the American.’ He paused and glanced at a sheet of notes in cramped handwriting in front of him. ‘Kearney,’ he said at last. ‘James Kearney.’
‘We have something on that,’ Ívar Laxdal said, swiping at a tablet. ‘The Gufunes guy had this in a pocket of his jacket.’
He placed the tablet on the table in front of him so the others could see the coiled length of cord.
‘It’s just unde
r a metre long, with a loop at each end that’s easily big enough for a hand,’ he said and swiped again, this time bringing up an image of a livid discoloured line on flesh that it took a moment for them to realize was James Kearney’s neck. ‘It fits perfectly. The marks on the man’s neck have precisely the same dimensions as this rope. Miss Cruz noticed. She’s doing tests to see if the rope has any traces that can link it definitively to the killing.’
‘So you think your dead man is the killer because of this?’ Luc asked. ‘Be careful, is all I will say. It’s easy to lay a false trail, and that’s what this could be.’
‘Right,’ Ívar Laxdal said quickly. ‘Of course, we don’t jump to conclusions.’
‘The two men. The man who was shot and the one who drowned,’ Luc said. ‘Are they connected? And if so, how are you sure?’
‘Helgi?’ Ívar Laxdal prompted. ‘The Danish lady?’
‘We had a sighting of the drowned man on CCTV and we let the press have images,’ Helgi said in his slow, careful English. ‘There were quite a few calls, but the convincing one was a Danish lady who went to the police in Blönduós.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s in the north. She and her husband had been travelling around the country in a camper van. On the way to the ferry in Denmark, two men came to them at a campsite and told them to go for a walk. They showed them pictures of their children, parents and family, and said if they co-operated, nobody would be hurt. So they did. When they got off the ferry in Iceland, the two men met them somewhere in the east, she wasn’t sure quite where, and took whatever it was they had hidden in the camper.’
‘And why did she go to the police?’
‘It seems they’d been arguing about it for days. He wanted to; she didn’t. Then he had a mild heart attack, which he survived and is now in hospital recovering. She saw the drowned man’s photo on the front page of that day’s paper and apparently changed her mind, told the local cops and they got in touch with me. I asked her to go to the mortuary with me to identify the man, as I was fairly sure it was him, and she also saw a photo of the other guy while we were there, and recognized him as well. So we can place the two men together, no question.’
‘Not a word of this leaves the room, by the way,’ Ívar Laxdal said, looking from face to face. ‘With these two men dead, we have no idea if this woman’s family is still under threat, but we have to assume so.’
‘And you place this mysterious woman with the drowned man, the Gufunes guy,’ Luc said, as if Ívar Laxdal hadn’t said anything. ‘Let me tell you. These two men were the muscle, the ones who do the dirty work, the usual ex-military types with all kinds of skills and not a shred of conscience. Whatever they hid in that Danish couple’s camper will almost certainly be some kind of hardware, I’d guess firearms and ammunition. Something of that nature. The woman is different,’ he said, wagging a finger at Ívar Laxdal. ‘Her tracks will be very carefully covered, but she’ll be the brains of this outfit.’
There was a hush as Luc’s words sank in, until he broke the silence himself.
‘It’s an open secret that there’s a price on Osman’s head. You get him out of your country, and all this shit will follow him somewhere else.’
‘And James Kearney?’ Birna asked.
Luc shook his head.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can only guess. We know he was doing some kind of deal with Osman, and not for the first time, right? Well, I’d guess it’s a warning, something to tell these crazy people to keep their money and their noses out of the Middle East. The same with the activist who was murdered in Antwerp, the journalist’s contact.’
Úlfur coughed quietly, opened his mouth to say something and closed it again.
‘Well, this other guy,’ Sævaldur asked in a slow drawl. ‘The drowned man’s partner. Do we get to know what happened to him, and is there a reason it’s all so secret?’
The white walls of the lighthouse glittered in the morning sun and Osman craned his neck, squinting against the brightness to make out its full height.
Waves gnawed at the shoreline, the stiff wind off the bay filling the air with moisture and the tang of the sea. Gunna shivered in her fleece, and envied Osman his thick coat, even with the smears of grease it had acquired on the boat.
‘And where did we come from yesterday?’
‘Over there. You can see Reykjavík in the distance.’
‘And the weather was like this in the night?’
‘Worse,’ Gunna assured him. ‘It’s just as well you couldn’t see it in the dark.’
‘I think I would have refused if I had known,’ he said after considering the crash and roar of the waves hitting the long finger of the breakwater jutting out into the bay.
‘Nobody knows you’re here, I hope. Isn’t that what you wanted?’
‘Of course,’ he said, looking around. ‘Can we find lunch somewhere here?’
‘I guess. We can see if there’s a café open somewhere.’
They walked side by side, crunching through the gravel back towards the town. Gunna zipped her fleece to her throat, hiding the Glock under her arm. She was unsure what to do with it, aware that carrying a firearm in a provincial town like Akranes was a potential minefield. On the other hand, she was conscious that she was on duty and responsible for Osman’s safety, and with any back-up an hour’s drive away in Reykjavík. Her other concern was where to put the weapon. She wasn’t prepared to put it down anywhere within Osman’s reach, or out of her own reach.
All the same, the Glock remained unloaded, with the clip in her pocket, where she rolled it between her fingers as they walked.
‘Gunnhildur, what are these . . . these logs?’
Osman pointed towards the empty frames that stood abandoned near the shore.
‘Those? They’re for drying fish.’
‘Fish?’
‘Yep. I don’t think it’s done any more. In the old days fish were hung on the bars, high up where animals couldn’t reach them, and it was a smelly job hanging it up there.’
‘You have done this work?’
‘Of course. I was brought up in a fishing village back when all the kids worked in the fish every summer. I’ve spent plenty of time up there on the drying racks.’
‘Gunnhildur, you are full of surprises.’
‘Like I said, I don’t think it’s done these days. The fish is all frozen now.’
They skirted the harbour, where Osman stared at the boat tied up at the fuel berth.
‘It’s so small,’ he said in disbelief.
‘It’s not a big boat,’ Gunna agreed.
Osman shook his head.
‘We came through that weather last night,’ he muttered, ‘in that little thing?’
They took a corner table in a café, where Osman wolfed two sandwiches and a bowl of soup, and asked for more. Gunna realized that, apart from the rolls at breakfast, they had both hardly had time to eat since the previous afternoon.
She tapped a message into her phone while Osman finished a second bowl of soup.
What’s new? G – and dispatched it to Ívar Laxdal.
Osman sat back with a smile on his face that looked to her to be forced, and her phone buzzed a reply.
Everything in order in Ak? Frantic here. I’ll call when I get a moment. ÍL.
‘News?’
‘Nothing yet. They’ll be in touch later today.’
‘What happens next, Gunnhildur?’ Osman asked, leaning forward over his empty plate.
‘Well,’ she said, and looked over Osman’s shoulder to catch the eye of the man behind the counter. ‘My inclination is to have a coffee and a piece of the cake.’
‘No, I mean after that?’
‘After that I need to do some shopping. My colleagues brought your bags to the boat last night, but my clothes are still at Einholt, and I really need some clean stuff. But I guess you mean what happens after that, and the answer is, I don’t know,’ she said and looked up as the barista sauntere
d over.
‘Can I get you anything else?’ he asked.
‘An Americano and a slice of walnut cake.’
‘Sure,’ he said and gestured to Osman. ‘The same for your husband?’
Gunna grinned.
‘He’s not my husband, but he’ll have the same.’
‘What brings you here?’ Valgeir asked, unable to mask both his astonishment and his delight.
‘You know. Just being a little adventurous for once.’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he said, feeling foolish. ‘When did you get here?’
‘Yesterday afternoon,’ Ana said, enjoying seeing his boyish happiness and feeling slightly sorry at the prospect of puncturing it. ‘Just scouting things out.’
‘So this is business, not pleasure?’
‘Contrary to the old saying, it’s perfectly possible to mix the two,’ Ana assured him. ‘I couldn’t let you know, for the usual reasons. Well,’ she added, ‘I suppose I could have done, but I liked the idea of surprising you.’
‘Wow!’
Valgeir’s smirk stretched from one side of his face to the other as Ana took off her coat and folded it over the back of the only remaining chair in his apartment.
‘We’re cool to talk here, right? We’re not being listened to by your spooks?’
Valgeir laughed.
‘Spooks? No, the nearest thing we have to spooks are pretty busy at the moment.’
‘So what’s the situation?’
‘Well.’ Valgeir took off his glasses, polished them on his shirt and grinned. ‘I’m pretty much out of the loop now that I’m on leave and leaving for a new posting. But I dug up some gossip. The press officer’s an old friend and she lets me know what’s going on.’
‘She? What kind of friend?’
‘We were at university together.’
‘Not together at university?’ Ana probed.
‘No, not at all,’ Valgeir said, suddenly flustered.
‘All right. I believe you. What did she have to tell you?’
‘Just that Osman has been moved out of the house he was staying at because it wasn’t secure. This is just between you and me, but things are going crazy at the moment and I’m not sorry to be on leave and on my way out of the country for a few years. That’s four deaths so far, which is completely off the scale for this country.’
Cold Breath (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 7) Page 28
