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

by Quentin Bates

  ‘What can I do for you, officer?’

  ‘Erna Björg Brandsen’s husband gave me your name as you were one of the people she might have met for lunch yesterday. Is that right?’

  ‘That I met Erna for lunch?’ Sunna asked with a flicker of a smile. ‘That’s right, I did. There were four of us.’

  ‘Including Erna’s daughter Tinna Lind?’

  ‘Tinna Lind was with us. What is this about?’

  ‘Erna and Tinna Lind have disappeared. Bogi reported them missing. I’m trying to trace their movements and it seems that the 19th Floor restaurant was the last confirmed sighting we have of them. Did Erna say where she was going after that?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything about returning home, or going shopping somewhere?’

  ‘Not that I recall,’ Sunna repeated.

  ‘So what was your last sighting of them? In the restaurant?’

  ‘In the car park. Erna and Tinna Lind got into Erna’s car and I got into mine. Our friend Dúa was with us and she went with me in my car.’

  ‘You didn’t see which direction Erna was going as she left the car park?’

  ‘No. What do you think has happened to her?’

  Gunna paused before answering, trying to work out if there might be any concern behind the woman’s outward display of indifference.

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind at the moment. It’s too early to speculate. You knew Erna well?’

  Sunna extended a hand, palm down, and rocked it from side to side.

  ‘Well, but not intimately.’

  ‘She didn’t share secrets?’

  ‘If Erna had secrets, which I somehow doubt. I don’t get the feeling she lived dangerously these days.’

  ‘Meaning she did at one time?’

  ‘Maybe. A long time ago. I gather she had a wild past, but that was long before I got to know her.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Tinna Lind isn’t Bogi’s daughter. Nobody seems to know who the real father is.’

  ‘And you haven’t asked?’

  For the first time there was a change in Sunna’s expression and she looked shocked.

  ‘Of course not! That would be so inappropriate.’

  ‘Can you give me an impression of Erna’s character? And how long have you known her?’

  ‘Fifteen years or so, I suppose. Actually I knew Bogi first; at the time he and my husband were members of the same golf club, probably still are. Then Bogi met Erna and we’d all meet occasionally. Sometimes all of us together, sometimes I meet Erna for lunch or for a drink. We see each other at parties and receptions.’

  ‘And your take on Erna?’

  Sunna’s face unbent into a stiff smile and Gunna wondered if she’d been botoxed.

  ‘Erna’s harmless. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she doesn’t venture outside her own little circle. If you think she might have gone off on some adventurous fling with a toyboy, think again. Erna knows how well off she is with Bogi and she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that, not in a million years.’

  Gunna nodded as Sunna’s assessment tied in with the picture of Erna that she had begun to piece together.

  ‘And Tinna Lind?’

  Sunna sniggered. ‘Drives her mother wild. Those two are so unalike in so many ways it’s hard to imagine that they’re related, but they both have that same stubborn streak inside. Erna knows she’s well off holding Bogi’s hand and I guess she can’t understand why Tinna Lind hasn’t even tried to find herself a wealthy husband yet when she has boys falling over her.’

  ‘So you know Tinna Lind well?’

  ‘No, not at all. I don’t know the girl all that well and what I know is what Erna tells me, normally through gritted teeth.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Sunna took a deep breath. ‘Erna lives for the future, security is paramount to her. She has to have money, and preferably plenty of it, which is why Bogi suits her so well. He works like a slave, buys her whatever toys she asks for and worships her.’

  ‘You don’t imagine he would do her any harm?’

  Sunna’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Bogi? Good grief, no. He’d be lost without her.’

  ‘And Tinna Lind?’

  ‘Ah, she’s the opposite of Erna. Tinna Lind lives for the moment. She has a good degree and could easily have a well-paid job. Instead she lives at home, does low-paid work and every time she’s saved something up, she disappears abroad. She comes back when she’s broke and goes back to work. Erna and I used to meet in Borgarkaffi sometimes, but since Tinna Lind has been waitressing there, she can’t bear to go in any more.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

  ‘Of course I’m not all right,’ Erna snapped back tearfully. ‘What the hell’s going on? What are these two thugs going to do to us?’

  ‘I don’t expect they’re going to do anything to us. The big guy seems all right, but the little one looks like he might be dangerous. They’re probably as desperate to get rid of us as we are to get away from them.’

  ‘And I haven’t had a shower. I don’t have any clean underwear. My hair’s in a mess and I don’t have a toothbrush. My car’s been wrecked by that oaf, and I don’t know when I’m going to get home.’

  ‘All right,’ Tinna Lind said, backing away and wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Just trying to help, that’s all.’

  ‘Aw,’ Erna crooned, leaning forward to touch Tinna Lind’s cheek. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  Tinna Lind drew away with a frown.

  ‘You didn’t say anything about Bogi. Don’t you think he’s worried. He should be home by now, shouldn’t he?’

  ‘You’re right. It’s Friday.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll go to the police?’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Erna said. ‘Sure of it. And they’ll come and get us.’

  ‘You mean they might if they knew where we were,’ Tinna Lind muttered. ‘How is anyone going to know where we are?’

  ‘Somebody must see us sooner or later, surely?’ Erna’s eyes were red-rimmed with tears of frustration and wide with fear. ‘I’m not sure I can stand this for much longer.’

  Tinna Lind shrugged. ‘So what other options are there? Walk off into the snow when the guys aren’t looking?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, girl. There must be a farm or something near here somewhere.’

  ‘Yeah, but where? Do you want to go looking for the nearest farm on foot? You know, it’s cold out there and you’re not going to get very far in those heels. And what if you don’t find somewhere before it gets dark? We wouldn’t survive a night outside, even if it’s fine.’

  ‘You think so?’ Erna said, her voice laden with doubt. ‘Surely there must be farmers around here?’

  Tinna Lind tapped her toe on the floor in irritation. ‘Mother, when did you last go outside Reykjavík? I mean, other than to go to the airport?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I went to Hvolsvöllur only a few weeks ago with Bogi to see his aunt and uncle.’

  ‘OK, so you must have seen what the rest of Iceland looks like? Lots of rocks with only a long way between everything? Well, we’re right out in the middle of that long way between everything and it’s a long walk to Selfoss from here.’

  ‘Selfoss? Erna looked blank. ‘Why Selfoss?’

  ‘Because that’s the nearest town.’

  Erna shook her head. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because there’s a box of leaflets in the lobby behind the reception desk for Hotel Hraun, which is this place, and according to the map on the leaflet, Selfoss is about thirty kilometres that way.’ She smiled slowly. ‘Besides, I think they had a visitor today, so it might not be long before somebody finds out that there’s something going on up here.’

  Gunna switched off the unmarked Golf’s engine in the car park behind the Hverfisgata police station as her phone rang.

  ‘Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Hæ. Siggi. You wanted some info, didn’t yo
u?’

  ‘I did indeed, and as there’s no warrant needed, then you should have it all at your fingertips.’

  ‘For you, sweet thing, anything,’ Siggi said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘The two numbers you wanted, one ending one-seven-five, the other nine-nine-six.’

  ‘That’s the two missing persons, yes.’

  ‘OK, what we can gather from the phone company is that both are out of range.’

  ‘Not just switched off?’

  ‘No,’ Siggi said. ‘It seems that they both dropped off the network within a few minutes of each other on Thursday evening, around seven-thirty. The last contact was through a mast near Thingvellir.’

  ‘Right,’ Gunna said, thinking through the implications. ‘So what should that tell me? This is taking into account that Iceland has virtually complete GSM coverage these days.’

  ‘That’s right. There aren’t many places where there’s no coverage at all nowadays, but there are nooks and corners here and there where there’s no signal and plenty of areas with poorish coverage, so if it’s an old phone or just a lousy one, then it might not get a connection.’

  ‘Would that explain why they didn’t disappear at precisely the same time?’

  ‘It could,’ Siggi said. ‘You don’t know what types of phones these are?’

  ‘No, but I’m going to find out in a minute.’

  ‘Cool. Let me know and we’ll see if that could be something to do with it.’

  ‘That’s it? No phone traffic up to when they vanished?’

  ‘There’s a list of calls to and from both phones earlier in the day and I’ll email you that. Nothing after four that afternoon on either of them.’

  ‘Thingvellir, you said?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘So they went through Reykjavík, onto Highway One, towards Mosfellsbær, took the Thingvellir road and then dropped off the radar somewhere there?’

  ‘Yep, I think you have it.’

  ‘So they’re in Thingvellir or Grímsnes, somewhere around there?’

  ‘Well, the phones are. That’s all we can say at the moment. But as soon as one or the other pops up, I’ll let you know right away.’

  Magni hummed as he peeled an onion and sliced it. The slices sizzled in the pan and the smell spread quickly. He turned down the heat under the pan to let them fry gently and sharpened a kitchen knife on a steel, using quick, sure movements.

  ‘I thought you were going to cut your fingers off,’ Tinna Lind said as Magni used the now fiendishly sharp knife to dice beef into chunks.

  ‘Nah. Comes with practice.’

  ‘Where did you learn to do that, then?’ she asked, sitting on the worktop opposite and swinging her legs.

  ‘What? Sharpen a knife? I thought everyone could do that.’

  Tinna Lind giggled. ‘Don’t be silly. Mum has some kind of electric thing in the kitchen that sharpens her carving knife.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Magni shrugged. ‘I just use a steel like I always have. You work in the fish when you’re a kid and it just comes as part of the work. Everyone learns that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yeah, in the Westmann Islands, maybe.’

  Magni dropped pieces of beef into a bowl, rolling them in flour a few at a time.

  ‘All right, so where did you learn to cook?’

  ‘On a boat.’

  ‘A fishing boat?’

  ‘What other kind of boat is there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yachts. Merchant ships. Cruise ships. The Coastguard has boats.’

  ‘All right. But there are only fishing boats where I come from.’

  Tinna Lind nodded and watched as he adjusted the heat under the pan.

  ‘Magni?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘How long are we going to be here?’

  He tipped the onions into a deep dish and replaced them in the pan with some of the beef. ‘Hell, I don’t know. Long gone before anyone turns up here in the spring, I hope.’

  ‘You know, I don’t think it’s going to be long before there’s company.’

  ‘What?’ He looked up sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It stands to reason, doesn’t it? Look, I’ve worked in cafés and restaurants. If you’re closing down for a while, you clear everything out, don’t you? How come there are onions and garlic and potatoes in the cupboards? I reckon it won’t be long before whoever runs this place comes back to finish closing up for the winter,’ she said, her head on one side as she watched him. ‘Just a thought.’

  ‘I guess you’re right. I don’t know what my mate has planned, but I don’t reckon we’ll be here more than a day or two,’ Magni said thoughtfully, pushing the pieces of beef around the pan with a spatula as they spat and sizzled.

  ‘What are you making?’

  ‘A beef casserole, like a stew.’

  ‘For tonight?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Don’t you like me, Magni?’ Tinna Lind asked, her voice dropping an octave.

  ‘What?’ Magni asked, taken by surprise. ‘Well, to be honest, I hadn’t thought about it.’

  ‘I thought you liked me, the way you stopped your friend being so aggressive this morning.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t worry about Össur. He can be a bit of a fucking idiot sometimes.’

  ‘Idiot? He has a gun, a real one! He scared my mother half to death.’

  ‘Well, he had me a bit worried as well,’ Magni admitted, scratching his head.

  ‘Have you known him long?’

  Össur? Yeah, a while.’

  ‘You’ve been friends for a long time?’

  ‘Not really. I used to see him with all the deadbeats around the Emperor sometimes, but it was only after I got laid off that I sort of got to know him.’

  ‘Laid off, how?’

  ‘Lost my job a few months ago.’

  ‘Wow. Can’t you get another one?’

  ‘D’you think I’d be running around the countryside in the middle of winter with a nutcase like Össur if I could get a proper job?’ Magni said, and for the first time there was a note of irritation in his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tinna Lind said, backing off and sounding contrite. ‘How did you lose your job? Were you sacked for something?’

  ‘We all lost our jobs. I was working on a factory boat and earning some damned good money, but the old bastard who owned it died and his heirs sold the lot.’

  ‘What, the ship?’

  ‘Yep. They sold the quotas to other companies and the ship to someone in Russia. So we all lost our jobs, forty of us, all at once.’

  ‘What? That’s terrible!’ Tinna Lind sounded shocked. ‘You must have got something out of it, didn’t you?’

  ‘A bit of redundancy money and we finished the trip with a decent load of fillets. But there’s not a lot of that left now.’

  He poured water from a jug into the pan and put the lid on it. ‘That’ll do for an hour or so,’ he decided, turning the heat down to a simmer.

  ‘Magni?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s something I’d really like to do?’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Can you turn on the hot water so I can have a shower?’

  ‘That’s my next job,’ Magni said, scratching his chin so his fingers rasped on the stubble. ‘I’ve put your mum’s car inside, I’ve got the telly to work so Össur can see the motor racing, I’ve cooked the dinner and next I’ll see if I can get the hot water routed to the rooms.’ He sighed, turning on the kitchen tap and waiting for the steam to rise in the sink as the hot water rushed into it. ‘There’s hot water here, so there must be a valve or something to divert it upstairs.’

  ‘I’d be really grateful, Magni, if you would,’ Tinna Lind assured him.

  Össur lay in the bed with half a dozen pillows banked behind him and an ashtray at his side as he looked at his mobile phone for the hundredth time and threw it down on the bedspread in disgust; no signal. On top of that it didn’t he
lp that he was also going to run out of cigarettes in the next day or so.

  The cars whizzing around a track somewhere far away in Europe on the TV were ignored as his thoughts drifted again to how to extricate himself from the hotel, preferably leaving his companions behind, and ideally taking himself away somewhere warm, although he would happily settle for somewhere cold if it were out of the reach of Alli the Cornershop and the Reykjavík police.

  The whining of racing cars brought him back to reality and reminded him how much he would have to rely on Magni. Twenty years had passed since he had last sat behind the wheel of a car, cut free of the three-way smash that had left him with a broken arm, a jail term for reckless driving under the influence and a lifetime ban, as well as shattered nerves that never failed to bring on an anxiety attack when he sat in the front of a car. He could probably get Erna’s Explorer to the edge of the car park, but he knew that by the time he reached the road his legs would be like jelly and he’d be sweating with nervous tension.

  Össur shivered at the thought. Could the police pin a kidnapping charge on him? Was that a crime, as the snooty woman seemed to think, he wondered? It was unlikely that Alli would have gone to the police to complain that someone had relieved him of a few hundred thousand euros of used notes that should have been on their way to Amsterdam to finance a heavy shipment of marching powder. He nodded to himself and decided that the police and Alli would be looking for some very different things if they were to catch up with him and wondered if there might be something like a drink to be found in this godforsaken dump in the middle of nowhere.

  The motor racing came to an end without him noticing and he was surprised to look up and see football on the screen. Had he not been watching, or had the channel changed without him noticing it? He shook his head and decided that it must be him, and it wasn’t like him to miss Formula One when it was on. It must have been the smell of food that had brought him round, as a meaty, fragrant aroma wormed its way through the building. It had been a surprise that Magni was so practical. Was he cooking again? Or maybe it was the girl? Össur had no doubt that the older woman wouldn’t dirty her hands with food. After all, Magni had hidden the car, got the TV to work and even cooked a damned decent meal, in spite of all the green stuff he’d served up with it. It was just a shame he’d have to rely on him to get him out of their present mess.