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

by Quentin Bates

‘Hæ. Gunna Gísla here. Can you check out a number for me?’

  She recited the motorcycle’s registration number and walked a few paces along the street, listening to the muffled rattle of a keyboard down the line.

  ‘It’s registered to Jón Egill Hjörleifsson,’ Siggi said. ‘His address is Kirkjuholt forty-six.’

  ‘Good stuff, thanks,’ Gunna said and rang off.

  Gunna arrived back at the Hverfisgata station in a black mood after spending two hours at Össur Óskarsson’s dingy apartment. She was determined to share her gloom with Ívar Laxdal, but he found her first at her computer in the detectives’ office.

  ‘Busy, Gunnhildur?’

  ‘You always ask the same question and I always give you the same answer.’

  ‘In that case you’re not the only one. We have another missing person to look for now. A middle-aged man called Brandur Geirsson, last seen the day before yesterday. He lives alone so nobody worried about him until he didn’t show up for work this morning. He lives in Akranes, so they’re dealing with it up there for the moment.’

  ‘Good. I’ve enough on my plate as it is.’

  ‘The good news is that the weather’s supposed to break tonight and there might be clear enough conditions for a search flight tomorrow between one weather front and the next.’

  ‘That would be great. If only we knew where to look and what to look for.’ She yawned. ‘I’m going home; it’s been a long and fruitless day.’

  ‘No luck with that apartment in Hafnarfjördur?’

  ‘It might have been interesting if someone hadn’t got there before us and trashed the place. It’s a disaster area. Every single drawer, shelf and cupboard has been tipped onto the floor and most of it’s broken, not that there was much of interest there to start with, except a couple of 9mm rounds that looked as if they’d rolled under the bed.’

  ‘D’you think the man’s armed?’

  ‘I wouldn’t rule it out.’

  ‘Prints?’

  ‘Working on it.’

  ‘Ideas?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It seems that a gentleman riding a motorcycle registered to Jón Egill Hjörleifsson was there looking for Össur yesterday, and it seems that Jón Egill Hjörleifsson has a record for the usual misdemeanours and is an Undertaker.’

  ‘You mean he organizes funerals or he’s a member of that law-abiding and much-loved group of philanthropists in Gardabær who happen to ride souped-up motorbikes?’

  ‘He might do both for all I know. But he’s certainly a biker. He wasn’t at home, so there’s an alert out for him to be brought in if traffic spot him before I track him down. But it seems clear enough that Össur has upset someone badly, and I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a real connection here.’

  Ívar Laxdal sat down and crossed his ankles with his legs stretched out, as if waiting to be told a bedtime a story. ‘Explain, if you’d be so kind,’ he instructed.

  ‘Someone rolled Alli the Cornershop for a pile of either money or drugs, or both, or so it seems. Össur Óskarsson has been involved with Alli for years and so has Árni Sigurvinsson. Árni came to a bad end, beaten up and then killed in a house fire. Össur has had the sense to disappear and now someone’s looking for him. There aren’t a lot of dots to be joined here, are there?’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Except for the Undertakers getting involved. They have fingers in plenty of pies and the rumour is they’re aiming to become legitimate businessmen. But for the moment they’re in much the same business as Alli the Cornershop and they don’t like each other a lot.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Gut feeling?’

  ‘Overwhelming.’

  * * *

  The whisky was almost finished, Magni noticed with sadness. The hotel was quiet as he went up the stairs. There was no blaring television from Össur’s bridal suite at the end of the corridor. He padded to the end and listened at the door, but there was no sound and he guessed that Össur had probably knocked himself out for the night.

  He put an ear to Erna’s door and heard muffled sobs inside.

  Tinna Lind turned down the sound of the television as they pushed open the door of the room he had taken.

  ‘We were on the news again. Me, Mum and a picture of a car like ours,’ she said in a flat voice.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Just a request for anyone who might have seen us.’

  ‘The only person who saw us was that guy who’s under the snow in the yard.’

  ‘And the old guy who came here that first day, don’t forget.’

  ‘And anyone who might have seen the car in Selfoss when I went to stock up on food,’ Magni added, his mind elsewhere. ‘Listen, your mother doesn’t sound great. You want to check on her?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It sounds like she’s crying in there.’

  Tinna Lind shrugged.

  ‘So? She’s a big girl.’

  ‘You don’t sound concerned about her.’

  Tinna Lind stood up and looked out of the window into the blackness outside. ‘She’s a cold-hearted character, my mother. There isn’t a shred of empathy in her.’

  ‘She’s had a tough time these last few days.’

  ‘She and Össur would make a fine pair, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Did you see the weather forecast?’ Magni asked, uncomfortable and anxious to change the subject.

  ‘Yeah. Rain and a gale tonight.’

  ‘Southerly?’

  ‘You mean with all the arrows pointing upwards? Yeah.’

  ‘That’s perfect.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because southerly means warmer, and warm means that some of the white shit will melt and we can get out of here. I hope,’ he added. ‘Now, are you going to check on your mother or shall I?’

  Tinna Lind pushed at the door and tapped at it when it refused to move.

  ‘Mamma?’ she called softly and the door opened a crack.

  Tears has scoured their way down Erna’s face and Magni was shocked to see how much older she looked than the stylish socialite of only a few days ago. Lines had appeared in a network at the corners of her eyes and her fringe looked to have a touch of grey in it.

  She stepped aside and they entered the room. The bed had been made. The floor was clean and the sparse contents of her handbag were lined up around the mirror on the dressing table.

  Erna looked at them enquiringly and sat down in the only chair. Magni stood and Tinna Lind half lay on the bed, an arm angled under her head as she viewed her mother sideways. Magni was surprised to see how rapidly Erna’s self-composure returned as she collected herself.

  ‘How is your friend?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s not my friend.’

  ‘I hope he dies a painful and miserable death,’ Erna snarled. ‘Somewhere I can watch.’

  Gunna switched off the engine and sat for a moment with her eyes closed. She wanted to put it behind her and forget work, but Erna Björg Brandsen and Tinna Lind Bogadóttir kept coming back to the forefront of her mind. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she admitted to herself that the pair could be dead. Disappearances are a rarity, she told herself, especially disappearing women. She tried to think back to the last time a woman’s disappearance hadn’t been resolved, and found herself stumped. Women in Iceland don’t just vanish, she told herself. The two of them must be out there somewhere, and it won’t be long before they appear, hopefully alive and well, with some plausible reason for dropping out of sight.

  The thought had plagued her all day that she could be on the wrong track, that the two women could be already dead somewhere in the countryside and that she should have called out a search immediately. She shivered to herself at the thought that their deaths could have been avoided if she had acted faster, and took a deep breath before getting out of the car, telling herself that she had done the right things and a high-profile search could have driven the women and whoe
ver they were with even further into hiding.

  The lights were on, although Steini’s car was nowhere to be seen, and she wondered where he was as she opened the front door, sat down to pull off her boots and called out to an empty house. The radio was on and there was coffee in the percolator, but the place was deserted. Gunna told herself to stop being a detective. She poured a mug of coffee and sniffed at it to find that it was very fresh. She stretched herself out on the sofa with the mug close to hand and picked up the thriller Steini had left on the table.

  When she woke up, the book was open on her chest and the mug of coffee was hardly more than lukewarm, but faint laughter and voices came from beyond the door, which burst open as Laufey appeared with Kjartan Gíslason in her arms and a grin on her face.

  ‘Look, Granny’s taking it easy,’ she crooned, loping forward, placing the little boy on Gunna’s chest and going to shake off her coat while Kjartan gurgled and took in the room around him.

  ‘Hey, little man,’ Gunna said softly, as he gripped her thumbs in his hands and looked at her with clear eyes. ‘Who’s a handsome little man?’

  ‘The description can only apply to me,’ Steini said, blowing water off his moustache and carrying a couple of carrier bags, which he deposited on the table. Drífa followed him into the room, dropping her own bag full of baby stuff by the door.

  ‘No Gísli?’ Gunna asked rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Gísli’s a bit busy tonight,’ Drífa said, sweeping Kjartan up and pulling off his tiny boots, unzipping his padded snow suit and unpacking him like a Christmas parcel. ‘He needs a change,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Can I use your bed?’

  ‘Yeah, go ahead,’ Gunna said. ‘Laufey, what’s going on?’

  Laufey was rattling plates and throwing cutlery on the table. ‘Æi, a bit of a situation over there at the moment. So Steini and I took an executive decision, in your absence, to collect Drífa and Kjartan, and I talked Steini into getting a takeaway at the same time.’

  ‘I’m sure he needed plenty of persuasion,’ Gunna said, getting to her feet as Laufey opened the cartons and the smell of Chinese food filled the room. ‘You’ve been to Hungry House?’

  Laufey grinned. ‘We couldn’t just drive past, could we? Come on, it’s ready.’

  There was little talking as they ate. Steini used chopsticks with aplomb, Drífa stuck to a fork and Gunna ate with one hand and with Kjartan, now fresh and sweet-smelling, perched on one knee as she fed him noodles.

  ‘So where’s my son tonight?’ Gunna asked finally, chasing the last of her food around her plate. ‘What’s the crisis?’

  Drífa flashed a glance at Laufey.

  ‘It’s his father,’ she said and waited for Gunna’s face to set like stone. ‘Gísli took him to hospital.’

  ‘Ah. Problem?’

  ‘He’s not well,’ Drífa said. Laufey and Steini stood up and started to clear the table, leaving Gunna and Drífa with their heads together.

  ‘What’s the matter with the old rogue?’

  ‘Well, you know Gísli looked him up a while ago and he wasn’t interested?’

  ‘Yeah. Gísli told me that. I could have told him that Thorvaldur probably wouldn’t want to know,’ Gunna grunted, shifting Kjartan to the other knee. She looked up at the picture of Ragnar Sæmundsson on the bookcase and nodded towards it. ‘Raggi was much more of a father to Gísli than that old reprobate ever was.’

  ‘I know.’ Drífa sighed. ‘Gísli was devastated when he found him and the interest didn’t seem to be mutual. But then Thorvaldur called him and wanted to meet, and they’ve being seeing a bit of each other ever since.’

  ‘Anything serious?’

  ‘I think he’s very ill,’ Drífa said. ‘Thorvaldur comes to see him occasionally and they sit there and talk. Gísli doesn’t say much to me, though.’

  ‘But he has other children,’ Gunna said, conscious of the anger within her that she knew she could not properly justify. ‘All right, I know he treated Gísli and me badly, and I can’t feel charitable towards him, especially as things weren’t easy when Gísli was little. But he never wanted anything to do with him as a child, and now all of a sudden he does.’

  ‘From what Gísli has told me, his other children aren’t interested, and some of them live abroad. I gather he didn’t go out of his way to support any of them.’

  Gunna lifted Kjartan up and turned him around to sit him on the table in front of her, each of his hands wrapped around one of her fingers.

  ‘Well, it’s up to Gísli,’ she said. ‘He’s a man now and I wouldn’t dream of telling him what to do. If he’d wanted to make contact with his half-brothers and half-sisters, and I gather there’s quite a brood here and there, then I could have understood. But I don’t understand what he expects to get out of trying to forge some kind of a relationship with Thorvaldur.’

  ‘I think that’s just it,’ Drífa said. ‘Gísli’s such a soft-hearted character underneath. It’s partly because none of the others want to know; it’s as if there’s some kind of guilt there.’

  ‘Thorvaldur’s the one who ought to have a guilty conscience,’ Gunna snapped.

  ‘I think he does, and I suppose because he doesn’t have long to live, that’s why he wants to establish some kind of contact.’

  ‘Doesn’t have long to live? What’s wrong with him? He’s certainly left it a little late in the day, hasn’t he?’

  6

  Tuesday

  With his eyes half closed, Magni swung his legs out of bed and padded to the bathroom to find Tinna Lind sitting naked on the edge of the bath with a pair of scissors in her hand, snipping off the beads, holding the end of each thin plait and sending them tinkling into the bathtub one by one.

  ‘Hæ,’ he said blearily. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Taking my braids out.’

  ‘Shame. I liked them.’

  ‘Yeah. But they’re distinctive. I’ll bet there’s a description out there for a girl with cornrow hair. I don’t want to stand out.’

  ‘You can get it done again,’ he said, twisting the end of a braid in his fingers.

  ‘You’d better give me a hand unbraiding them, otherwise it’ll take all day.’

  It took an hour of painstaking unpicking to unplait all the narrow braids and Tinna Lind finally shook out a flood of thick brown hair over her shoulders.

  ‘That feels so much better,’ she said, sweeping the beads and tufts of hair out of the tub and setting the shower to run. She stood under the hot water and let it course through her hair, feeling it loose for the first time in weeks. Magni watched in admiration.

  ‘Coming to join me?’ she asked, sweeping her hair back over her head and down her back. ‘Or shall we fill the tub and try it in the bath?’

  * * *

  ‘There’s food in the pan. Eat up. It might be a while before we have another chance,’ Magni said. ‘Help yourselves. Tinna Lind, would you be so kind as to give Össur some?’

  Erna picked at the mince and pushed the onions to one side, while for once Össur ate every scrap on his plate.

  Magni pushed his plate to one side. ‘Now we’re all here and, for a change, none of us are wasted,’ he said, looking at Össur. ‘We need to discuss what the next step is.’

  ‘You want to talk about this in front of these two?’ Össur demanded.

  ‘I reckon we owe them that.’

  ‘Why?’

  Erna opened her mouth to speak but Tinna Lind laid a hand on her arm.

  ‘Like it or not, they’re involved, and we have screwed up their lives these last few days.’

  ‘Yeah. All the same,’ Össur grumbled, ‘they’re not part of the job.’

  ‘We need to get away from here and we need to do it soon. Today. Now,’ he said, the determination giving urgency to his voice as his words became clipped. ‘The wind’s in the south. It’s been raining hard all night and the snow’s melting already. If it keeps raining and the forecast’s right, then I’ll bet the
road down the track from here should be clear. It won’t be easy, but we should be able to get out of here.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Össur said, though he sounded uncertain at the prospect of venturing beyond the little circle of hills surrounding the hotel. ‘What about these two? They’ll drop us deep in the shit the first chance they get.’

  ‘Not if Tinna Lind comes with us.’

  Erna’s mouth dropped open and she squawked. ‘What? No way!’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we’ll have to,’ Magni said. ‘Össur here has everything to lose. There’s no way he can afford to be caught. So we part company with you today and Tinna Lind comes with us.’

  ‘That’s . . .’

  ‘There’s no choice here,’ Magni said with decision. ‘We get out safe and sound, she comes to no harm.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘That’s all there is to it.’

  Breakfast was a hurried affair before they made for the car in the darkness outside. The Pajero was buffeted by a gusting wind and the road was slick with water. Driving through Grindavík, Laufey peered out of the window.

  ‘Gísli’s awake,’ she said.

  Gunna wanted to grind her teeth. ‘And is that shitty old Mazda there?’

  ‘No, Mum. Gísli’s dad’s not there.’

  It wasn’t until they reached the street lights of Reykjanesbraut that Laufey cleared her throat and spoke again.

  ‘Mum. Have you spoken to Gísli these last few days?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Maybe you should?’

  ‘Why?’ Gunna asked, surprised how Laufey had inherited Ragnar’s firm intonation, which invited agreement but promised an argument if any opposition were aired.

  ‘Because it’s driving the rest of us nuts. All right, you don’t like Gísli looking up his father after all these years, and we can accept that, but you’ve been sulking for days and Steini and I are fed up with it.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Gunna said, glancing sideways to see a look of determination on Laufey’s face that reminded her instantly of Ragnar when he had a point to prove, normally rightly so, she told herself. Their few years together had been virtually argument-free, but on the occasions they had not agreed, it had generally been on something mundane, not worth an argument. It was still a source of lasting regret, even all these years later, that some of these petty squabbles had taken place. ‘Are you reading the old bag the riot act, young lady?’