Thin Ice: An Inspector Gunna Mystery (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 5)

by Quentin Bates

  ‘And get picked up in five minutes flat? I don’t think so.’

  ‘What do you mean? I can walk to the main road and hitch a lift from there. What makes you think the law’s looking for me?’

  Össur stalked to the window, his hand deep in his pockets, and Magni could hear the safety catch of the Baikal clicking on and off, muffled by the jacket that Össur never seemed to take off.

  ‘They’ll be looking for someone right now.’ He jerked his chin upwards. ‘You reckon nobody’s missed those two yet? Someone’s wondering where they are and why they haven’t come home. One of them might go off for a bit of fun, but both of them together? No.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so,’ Össur snapped. ‘By tonight those two are going to be missing and the filth will be searching for them and whoever they were last seen with.’

  ‘Which was us.’

  Össur spread his hands.

  ‘Who knows? Did anyone see them and us together? Did some nosy bastard notice the car?’

  ‘It didn’t take two minutes, did it?’

  ‘No. But what do you think the coppers are going to be looking for first?’

  ‘Well, two women, I guess,’ Magni hazarded.

  ‘Shit, you’ve so much to learn.’ Össur shook his head. ‘That thing outside. The car. A white car, and whatever the registration is. That’s what they’ll be looking for first of all.’

  ‘So we get rid of the car? But there’s no petrol in it.’

  ‘Lose it or hide it.’

  ‘Yeah. But where?’

  ‘Good question.’ Össur rummaged in his pockets and tossed the keys in the air. He caught them and lobbed them to Magni. ‘That had better be your task for the afternoon. It needs to be out of sight or gone. I don’t care what you do with it as long as it disappears.’

  Eiríkur knew the reek of smoke on his clothes would stay with him for the rest of the day as he arrived at the police station on Hverfisgata. He poured a himself a coffee and sat in the detectives’ coffee room to look through his notes.

  ‘G’day, Eiríkur.’

  ‘Hæ, Gunna.’ Eiríkur looked up from deciphering his own bad handwriting. ‘How goes it?’

  She sniffed. ‘You had a barbecue for breakfast?’

  ‘Nothing that great. There was a house on fire in Hafnarfjördur and there was an F1 just as I was on the way past, so I put in an appearance.’

  ‘Early in the day for a house fire, isn’t it? Anything suspicious?’

  Eiríkur stood still in silent thought for a moment. ‘One middleaged man dead in his bed, almost certainly smoke inhalation. Hard to say if it’s suspicious or just some stupid fatal mistake. But it doesn’t feel right, if you know what I mean. The fire was by the door, not in the living room or the bedroom. I’ve had a look on the system and both the occupants have records. The woman has convictions for fraud – selling a couple of cars that weren’t hers to sell – and the deceased has a couple of minor drugs convictions, as well as an impressive string of motoring infringements.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Árni Sigurvinsson.’

  Gunna shook her head. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells. Age?’

  ‘Forty-five.’

  ‘Fair enough. It should be a job for uniform, but as you’re on it already, you may as well follow it up.’

  Her phone buzzed and she peered at the number on the screen.

  ‘Gunnhildur,’ she announced as Eiríkur poured himself a coffee, listening to one side of the conversation and watching as the frown on Gunna’s face deepen while she took notes. ‘All right. Let me know, will you? I’ll be with you in twenty minutes. No problem, thanks for letting me know.’

  She put the phone down.

  ‘Doesn’t look pretty,’ she said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A disappearance. Mother and daughter. Uniform have been to the address and now it’s our turn, or rather my turn, as you’re busy with this fire. Treat it as suspicious,’ Gunna decided. ‘Helgi’s not in today so it’s up to you to start tracking down the deceased’s wife and checking his movements. I’ll go and see this man about his missing wife and daughter and I’ll check with you later today. OK?’

  ‘Understood, chief,’ Eiríkur said.

  ‘You’ll need to establish if there’s a crime here or if it’s a stupid accident of some kind, but start with the next of kin. I don’t have to tell you what to do, you know the drill.’

  Magni was enjoying exploring. The hotel was bigger than he had imagined from the front. Admittedly, he had been there before, but it was a few years ago and he had been far from sober, back when Hotel Hraun had been less upmarket and hosted country hops in what had since become the hotel’s restaurant. The place had been smartened up a lot since then, although he could tell that most of it was cosmetic. The weatherboards were still rotting gradually under their fresh coats of paint and the rooms he had taken a look at had been furnished nicely, with the stuff that needed to be fixed hidden behind curtains and more paint.

  The back of the building looked the same from the outside, but the old dance floor had become the restaurant laid out with tables and chairs that nobody would sit at until winter was over. The room had a ghostly quality to it, with its high ceiling and a chandelier that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a venue four times the size. A thin film of dust covered everything and made Magni cough, the dust rising in the cold air as he began shifting tables and chairs, stacking them up to make a space in the middle of the floor.

  Outside he ransacked the workshop at the bottom of the grounds behind the hotel, rooting through tools that had seen better days or which had been left to rust in peace. Eventually he found a jerry can containing a couple of litres of petrol. Magni turned his attention to the couple of old lawn mowers and a hedge trimmer, upending them over a tin tray and decanting the petrol they yielded into the can. With a triumphant grin, he banged shut the shed door behind him and set off for the front of the hotel, keys in one hand and the can of scavenged petrol in the other.

  The florid man in his expensive but crumpled suit looked tired and his patience was stretched.

  ‘I already told the other guy, the one in uniform,’ he said. ‘You really want me to tell the whole story all over again?’

  ‘I do,’ Gunna said. ‘When did it occur to you that your wife and daughter were missing?’

  ‘Stepdaughter,’ Bogi Sveinsson said absently. ‘Erna and I have been together about fifteen years and Tinna Lind came as part of the package.’

  ‘Fine. What happened? When were they expected home?’

  ‘Erna and Tinna Lind went shopping yesterday. I don’t know when they went out or where they were going; that’s all I know. Erna told me when I called her at breakfast time that they were going out, but as Tinna Lind doesn’t like to be up earlier than midday without a good reason, I don’t suppose they left the house before twelve at the earliest.’

  ‘So where might they have gone? Smáralind? Kringlan? Downtown?’

  ‘I have no idea. If there’s one thing Erna’s good at, it’s shopping, so they could be anywhere. Maybe Laugarvegur, or maybe Smáralind. Jewellery, clothes, furniture, it’s all grist to her mill,’ he said, looking up and around the overfurnished room, with its shelves full of figurines and ornaments.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Where have I been?’ he asked with a blank look.

  ‘That’s right. What were your movements over the last forty-eight hours?’

  ‘I drove to Akureyri on Wednesday. I was there all day yesterday and had two meetings. I spoke to Erna at breakfast time yesterday and again some time in the afternoon between meetings. I left at five this morning because I wanted to be home in good time, got back here soon after twelve. I stayed both nights in Akureyri at Hotel Kea.’

  ‘And I suppose there are people who will vouch for that?’

  ‘The staff at the hotel, I’d guess, and the people I was with yesterday will confirm I was there. I
stopped and bought diesel at Blönduós on the way and that’ll show up on my bank statement, if that’s what you’re after,’ he said stiffly, stung that Gunna could even consider he might have something to hide.

  ‘You’ve tried to call their phones?’

  ‘Of course I have. I thought they’d be out shopping somewhere still, but never this late in the evening, and neither of them are answering their phones. That never happens. Erna might lose her phone in the bottom of her bag and not notice it was ringing, but not Tinna Lind. She practically always answers, and if she doesn’t she’ll call back within half an hour.’

  ‘You think they’re together?’

  ‘I—’ Bogi stopped. ‘I don’t know. I just assumed they’d be together.’

  Gunna nodded and made notes.

  ‘How’s your relationship with your wife? Any disagreements? Arguments?’

  ‘No more than any other couple, I suppose.’

  ‘And at the moment? Does she have a reason to be pissed off with you? No recent disagreements?’

  ‘Not at all. We had two weeks in Thailand and if anything things have been smoother and happier than for quite a while.’

  ‘And your stepdaughter,’ Gunna said, looking at her notes. ‘Tinna Lind? What kind of a relationship do you have with her? Do you get on well or do you clash?’

  ‘We used to clash when she was a rebellious teenager, but even then she was more at loggerheads with her mother than with me.’

  ‘And her father?’

  Bogi Sveinsson hesitated. ‘He’s never been in the picture. In any case, he died some years ago.’

  ‘So you’ve been married to her mother for how long?’

  ‘Fifteen years.’ He said it as if it was a prison sentence. ‘And Tinna Lind is twenty-four now.’

  ‘And still living at home?’

  ‘She left and then came back after a year or so.’

  ‘You’re happy about that? No tension there?’

  ‘None at all. Not on my part, anyway. Like I said, she clashes more with her mother than with me.’

  ‘So you have a fairly close relationship?’

  ‘We have a good relationship.’ Bogi bridled. ‘Listen, are you trying to insinuate something? Because if you are, I don’t appreciate it.’

  ‘Where is my car?’

  Erna sounded just as shrill as she had that morning when she’d harangued Össur. Magni could see her lip quiver and the finger she pointed at him trembled.

  Magni grinned. ‘It’s in the restaurant.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Erna’s brow furrowed in confusion.

  ‘Like I said. It’s in the restaurant.’

  Erna shook her head and closed her eyes. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In the restaurant,’ Magni repeated. ‘Go through that door there and the double doors at the end. ‘That’s where it is.’

  Erna marched along the unlit passage and pushed open the doors at the end. She peered into the gloom and moaned quietly to herself as she approached the car. It had been driven into the restaurant through a pair of wide double doors that opened out into what, in summertime, would be a garden area of sorts. But the doors had not been quite wide enough and a line of scratches had been left along the passenger side of the car by its encounter with the door frame.

  She looked round to see Magni standing behind her, clearly proud of his achievement.

  ‘How . . .?’ she muttered, shaking her head, her voice laden with anger. ‘Why . . .?’

  ‘Össi said the car had to be out of sight, so I put it in here so it’s out of the rain and snow as well.’

  ‘But you’ve scratched it!’ Erna screeched. ‘It’s a new car. I’ve only had it two weeks and you’ve fucking scratched it, you clumsy, selfish bastard. Look at it! Look what you’ve done!’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Magni assured her placidly. A bit of polish and that’ll come out easy enough.’

  ‘But it’s a brand-new car!’ Erna yelled, her face turning an unhealthy red as she stalked past him and back into the hotel.

  His eyes glazed, Össur appeared once she had gone, although her sobs of fury could still be heard echoing along the corridor.

  ‘Looks all right to me. At least it’s out of sight. How did you get it in here?’

  ‘There were a few old lawn mowers out the back in the workshop,’ Magni waved a hand in the general direction of the garden behind the hotel. ‘So I drained the fuel out of them and put it in the Explorer’s tank. Easy.’

  ‘Was there much?’ Össur asked, his interest quickening.

  ‘Enough to get us out of here, you mean?’

  ‘How far to the nearest filling station?’

  Magni thought. ‘Forty-odd kilometres? I don’t reckon it’d get us that far.’

  ‘Shit. Anything else we could use?’

  ‘Instead of petrol? No. Össi, are you going to take them with us?’

  ‘Hell, no. They can look after themselves here. But we need to make a move. Someone must keep an eye on this place, and sooner or later they’ll come and have a look. Then what?’

  Magni thought of the ski tracks in the morning snow, but said nothing, merely nodding sagely.

  ‘We need to sneak off. We leave them here and hope that it’s a couple of days before anyone comes snooping around and finds them. By then, I’d hope we’d be long gone.’

  ‘And if nobody comes here until the spring and they starve?’

  Össur shrugged his shoulders. ‘Their problem.’

  ‘And what if they try to get away and raise the alarm somewhere?’

  ‘That’s why we need to be out of here.’ He jerked his head towards the Explorer, the lumps of compacted snow stuck to its underside now dripping onto the dance floor. ‘So the sooner you figure out how to get that thing as far as a filling station, the better.’

  ‘My name’s Grímur Halldórsson from Holt.’ The visitor stood in the lobby and looked around. ‘I saw the car that was here has gone, so I thought there was nobody about, but then there was a light last night. So I thought I’d check that everything’s in order here.’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Össur assured him. ‘We’re just here for a few days.’

  The man had a lined face under grey hair that stood up at angles as he took off his hat. He patted his hair down with one hand as his eyes flickered over the lobby and he replaced the hat.

  ‘Ársæll didn’t say anything to me about visitors,’ he said. The doubt in his voice was plain. ‘But I’m sure it’s all right and he just forgot to let me know.’

  ‘Probably,’ Össur said, wondering who Ársæll might be. ‘You live near here?’

  ‘Just down in the valley at Holt. Normally Ársæll lets me know when someone’s going to be here and asks them to drop by at Holt to pick up the keys.’

  ‘Oh, he gave me the keys himself before we came up here, said he didn’t want to disturb you.’

  Grímur Halldórsson nodded and walked around the lobby. His shoes with their square toes made to fit cross-country skis clicked on the tiles.

  ‘How many of you are there here?’

  ‘Just the two of us,’ Össur said, moving to stand in the doorway leading along the corridor to the kitchen, awkwardly blocking their visitor’s path.

  ‘Really? I was sure I saw at least two other people when I passed by earlier.’

  ‘No.’ Össur laughed unconvincingly. ‘There’s just me and Magni here. The girls went back to town and they’ll be back in a while.’

  ‘Ah, that’s why the car’s gone, I suppose. A nice enough truck to be driving around town, but not a lot of use in a bit of snow. Am I right?’

  Magni nodded and grinned, not knowing what to say and painfully aware that the car was dripping black water all over the restaurant floor on the other side of the building.

  ‘So where’s the place you live, then?’ Össur asked, keen to change the subject.

  ‘Down the road about twenty minutes.’

  ‘You don’t
know if there’s a shop anywhere near here, do you? It was dark when we drove up here and it’d be handy if we could go and get a few essentials.’

  ‘What do you need? I can get you a few things if I run down to Selfoss later.’

  ‘Selfoss?’

  ‘Well, you don’t think I’m going to go all the way to Reykjavík without a damned good reason, do you?’

  Össur looked nonplussed for a moment. ‘Well, no. I don’t suppose so.’

  ‘City types, are you? Never been further than Mosfellsbær before?’

  ‘Not me,’ Magni said. ‘I’m no city boy.’

  ‘Oh, right? Where might you be from?’

  ‘I’m an islander, me. Westmann Islands, that is.’

  ‘Ah.’ The old man nodded sagely. ‘Did a few seasons there myself. Before you were born, I’d guess. I’ll be off, I reckon. There’s work to be done and it won’t do itself. You want me to get anything from Selfoss for you?’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ Magni said before Össur had time to say anything. ‘But how far’s the nearest petrol station?’

  ‘Petrol?’ The old man looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I’m trying to get the lawn mowers running so they’re ready for the summer, but I could do with a can or two of petrol so I can fuel them up. It keeps condensation from forming in the tanks.’

  ‘Wise man. There’s a filling station a way south of here. Go that way,’ he said, jerking his head in roughly the right direction. ‘Take the Selfoss road at the fork and it’s not far after that. They close at four in the winter, although you can buy fuel any time if you have a plastic card to pay with. Otherwise I guess you’ll have to wait for your girlfriends to come back, won’t you?’

  The apartment overlooked the sea and Esja behind it, its fifth-floor location giving it a view above the slow-moving stream of lights of the traffic on Sæbraut far below. Unlike Erna’s house with its clutter of ornaments and trinkets, Gunna felt this place was so minimal as to be virtually uninhabited.

  Erna’s friend Sunna ushered Gunna to a sofa in the echoing living room with its back to the window and sat herself in a deep chair, crossing her legs and looking expectant.