Erna took a deep breath and expelled it through her nose as she sat back in her chair.
‘Is that what you wanted to hear? Am I supposed to be happy that my daughter crawled into bed with the gangster who kidnapped us? Of course not. But I can’t stop her doing anything. When she was fourteen she was out all night with all kinds of weird and dangerous men. I tried to keep her in, I tried to stop her. I took her to hospital for Aids tests and . . .’ she gulped. ‘Once for an abortion. But it’s like water off a duck’s back. She takes no notice of me or anyone else.’
‘But she takes notice of this Markús or Magnús?’ Helgi asked.
‘Yes. A criminal.’ Erna took a gulp of air that was released as a sob. ‘She seems to take notice of him.’
Rafn appeared from the afternoon gloom, glanced both ways and crossed the road as if he expected the traffic to stop for him, raising a hand in acknowledgement without looking at the car that slowed for the figure in the long leather coat with a blond ponytail hanging down his back.
‘That’s him,’ Össur said. ‘Quick. You two go and sit at another table so he doesn’t think we’re together.’
Magni and Tinna Lind moved to sit two tables down, heads together in murmured conversation as Rafn opened the door and nodded to Össur before going to the counter.
‘So, Össi. What’s new?’ Rafn asked.
Magni heard with disquiet the Baikal’s safety catch click off-on-off-on deep in Össur’s pocket.
‘I hear you’re famous,’ Rafn said, taking a seat opposite him. ‘On the TV and everything.’
‘Yeah. I’m keeping out of sight for the moment.’
Össur hunched deeper into his seat in the corner of the café, discreet but still with a view of the door and the street outside.
‘Coming here in daylight isn’t exactly keeping out of sight, surely?’
‘Needs must, Rafn.’
‘What are you after?’
‘Three passports.’
‘Going on holiday?’
‘Yeah. Probably a long holiday somewhere far away. Three of us. Two guys, one my age and one around thirty, and one chick, mid-twenties. Preferably legal, but as long as they work, I don’t care.’
Rafn sat back and surveyed Össur coolly, taking in the fatigue lines around his eyes, which had a hopeless look about them.
‘Not asking for a lot, are you?’
‘Can you do it?’
‘Sure. But we don’t give away favours.’
‘How much?’
‘A million.’ Rafn delicately sipped his coffee. ‘Each.’
Sitting two tables away with their heads together, Tinna Lind looked over Magni’s shoulder and saw Össur shudder at Rafn’s words.
‘That’s your best price?’
Rafn laughed. ‘We’re not running a junk stall at Kolaport. We don’t have a best price, Össi. There’s just the price.’
‘Fuck. A million each.’ Össur shook his head. ‘That’s steep. Too steep.’
‘Take it or leave it. Passports aren’t the kind of thing we normally play around with, and they don’t grow on trees.’
‘Come on, Rafn. Old time’s sake and all that.’
‘That’s as cheap as I can do them. Practically cost price, my friend.’
‘What if . . .?’
If there was a look of satisfaction on Rafn’s face, then it didn’t show. ‘Ah. What if, what?’
‘If there was some way of doing each other a favour on this?’
‘That could be a possibility. But I take it you’re not coming back?’
‘Well . . . when the heat dies down, maybe.’
‘Össi, you’re facing a murder charge. Didn’t you know that? There was a man shot dead at Hotel Hraun and the word is that you did the business. The heat’s never going to die down as far as you’re concerned. That’s fourteen to sixteen years, and you’d serve eight or ten. You’d be pushing sixty by the time you get out of Litla Hraun. If you know what’s good for you, you need to disappear, my friend.’ Rafn emptied his coffee cup and placed it precisely on its saucer, the handle at an exact right angle to the line of the table’s edge. ‘That’s assuming Alli doesn’t catch up with you first,’ he added and Össur blanched.
Alli sat quietly on a hard kitchen chair by the door. He seemed calm, but Gunna could see the twitching of a tic below his left eye as two uniformed officers and a detective from the narcotics squad systematically went through every cupboard and drawer, opening, examining and replacing everything.
‘You’re not going to go through the rubbish as well, are you?’ Alli asked in disbelief as Dísa, the narcotics officer, emptied the contents of the bin onto a plastic sheet and picked through the contents with gloved hands.
‘Especially the bin, Alli,’ Gunna told him, watching his expression carefully. ‘You never know what goodies have been thrown away.’
Dísa picked up and bagged the remnants of some joints. ‘The rest of this room’s clear, is it?’
‘Looks like it,’ one of the uniformed officers confirmed. ‘Living room next?’
The front room with its window onto the street outside and its blank-screened television in one corner served as Alli’s living space, dining room, office and the place where he received visitors. Gunna saw with distaste that the carpet was thick with grime and that there were cobwebs in the corners. She brought the kitchen chair and placed it by the door.
‘Sit there,’ she instructed and put down a stool for herself to perch on.
‘I know what you’re after,’ Alli hissed at her.
‘Really? Tell me, then. That way we won’t have to turn your place upside-down.’
‘You’re looking for anything you can that’s going to get me banged up, and if you don’t find it, you’ll plant it. I know how you bastards work.’
The uniformed officers opened and emptied the drawers of a bookcase that took up most of one wall, not that there were many books on the shelves other than an old phone book and a couple of catalogues.
‘And I know just how you work as well, Alli. Threats, blackmail, broken fingers, all the rest of it,’ Gunna said in an undertone.
‘You won’t find anything here.’
There was barely controlled fury in Alli’s voice.
‘You mean you stash your gear somewhere else, do you? Of course you do. You may be an evil bastard, but you’re not stupid.’
Alli subsided into angry silence, his eyes following the three officers as they searched everything, pulling out the stained blue sofa and checking both the floor and the back of the sofa for hiding places. The two thin armchairs got the same treatment, but there was nothing to be found but empty bottles dropped behind them.
‘No joy, Dísa?’
She shook her head. ‘I’d guess there are residues everywhere,’ she said, looking around at the nicotine-stained walls.
‘Bedroom next? Or bathroom?’
Dísa sighed. ‘The bathroom’s going to be fun.’
One of the uniformed officers coughed and grimaced. ‘This is weird,’ he said, holding out one of the empty bottles with a minute amount of fluid at the bottom of it.
Gunna’s gaze shifted quickly to Alli and she saw him swallow hard.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s not booze. Smells more like petrol.’
‘Interesting,’ Gunna said, watching the alarm on Alli’s face. ‘You’d best bag it and we’ll dust it for prints.’
‘You heard all that?’
‘Yep. Do you reckon we’re being watched or followed?’
Össur shook his head. ‘I haven’t a fucking clue. There might be an Undertaker behind us right now.’ He sat with his shoulders hunched protectively around his neck and his chin sunk below the collar of his fleece jacket. ‘Take the scenic route and see if there’s anyone keeping up with us, will you?’
Magni drove at a steady pace through the city centre, his eyes on the mirrors. Twice he changed lanes abruptly, and once indicated for a turn and then car
ried straight on. When a roundabout appeared ahead of them, he checked the mirrors and signalled left. He made a slow circuit of the roundabout, watching for anyone who had been drawn to follow, and then took a second circuit, oblivious to the furious glares of drivers wanting to get on the roundabout, before making an abrupt exit and taking the car at a smart pace through a residential area.
At the far end he congratulated himself on having lost any tail they might have had, but failed to notice a step-through scooter approaching along the road he had waited to turn onto. The scooter’s driver glanced briefly at the Skoda with satisfaction as he passed. He had waited at the roundabout in the shadow of a van while Magni took his double circuit, and he had managed to second-guess him as the Skoda turned through the residential district, knowing that there was only one exit and he could beat them to it.
Magni gunned the Skoda along the main road and each time they slowed or stopped for lights, the scooter approached, pop-popping doggedly up the slopes until Magni turned off and the scooter’s driver hesitated and followed, reasoning that it was dark enough for him to be less noticeable. He followed at a distance and watched as the car turned into a cul-de-sac between two blocks of modern flats. He killed the lights and watched the three occupants get out, leave the car and go up a stairwell, and a minute later lights flickering on told him which flat they had gone to.
The scooter hummed into life again and the driver went back up the long curving slope and on to the main road again. Two sets of lights later he turned off and drove past a couple of half-built houses, a row of steel-framed workshops and finally straight into the open garage door at the side of a black-painted building.
‘Well? How did it go?’ Rafn asked as the driver pulled off his helmet.
‘Couldn’t be easier,’ Jón Egill said. ‘Three of them, two men and a woman. They’re in one of the flats down by the shore, about a mile back towards town.’
The picture of the big man at the filling station who had bought fuel with Erna Brandsen’s card was pinned to the wall and they all stared at it.
‘What’s this?’ Helgi asked. ‘It’s not the clearest picture I’ve seen. What’s it about, Eiríkur?’
‘It’s a one-year-old grey Skoda estate, four-wheel drive,’ he said, reading out the registration number. ‘I had this from traffic this afternoon. There’s a car rental off Dalvegur in Kópavogur called PK Cars, run by a guy called Páll Karlsson, hence the name.’
Gunna nodded, willing Eiríkur to get to the point. ‘Yes, and . . .?’
‘Páll Karlsson doesn’t do a lot of business during the winter and anyway, he was away on holiday in Greece. He got back last night, went to check on business this morning and found he’d been burgled. One car stolen, a grey Skoda. Whoever broke in took the keys and one car.’ He tapped the picture. ‘This guy. No dabs at the scene, but this has to be the mystery man from the hotel. It’s the only reported stolen car anywhere that matches.’
‘Of course,’ Gunna breathed. ‘And Dalvegur is walking distance from the Digranes church where he dumped Erna’s Explorer.’ She glanced up. ‘That’s fantastic, Eiríkur. We have the registration of the car he’s driving and I suppose you have an alert out?’
‘Did that right away.’
‘Good. Let’s hope he hasn’t unscrewed the plates and put some other ones on instead.’ Gunna turned to Helgi. ‘Any progress with Erna Brandsen?’
‘She’s nuts, I reckon.’ Helgi grunted. ‘And there’s something very odd about the relationship she has with her daughter.’
Gunna looked at her watch. ‘I have to go soon, so give me the bones of it, will you?’
‘All right. Erna and Tinna Lind have had a fairly rocky relationship over the past few years; they don’t agree on a lot, and it’s clear that Erna is deeply frustrated by her daughter’s attitude to practically everything, especially stuff like getting a proper job, settling down and all the stuff that young people are expected to do once they turn twenty.’
‘I’m not sure it’s still like it was when we were young, Helgi, but fair enough. I get the picture.’
‘So that’s the shape of it. They get on well on a fairly superficial day-to-day level, but beyond that pretty much everything turns into an argument.’
‘That sounds familiar,’ Gunna said and hoped Helgi hadn’t noticed. ‘Go on. Anything on the other man we don’t have a name for?’
‘Markús or Magnús, something like that. She says she’s not sure.’
‘A week together in the same place and she doesn’t know his name?’
‘I’m damned sure she does. She’s a very strange lady. She’s not giving me bullshit, but there’s a whole lot she’s leaving out.’
‘Such as?’
‘Tinna Lind and Markús, or Magnús, whichever he turns out to be. They’re screwing, apparently – it took a while to get that out of her – and she’s not happy about it.’
‘Which is maybe how Erna came to run for it alone?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Helgi said. ‘Some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing going on here?’
‘Which is why this guy’s identity would be so useful. His prints aren’t on file anywhere, so we can assume he’s either very smart or else he’s not your usual criminal type.’
‘Someone who got caught up in this by accident, maybe?’
‘Either that or someone very desperate.’
The table was spread with foil cartons. Tinna Lind handled chopsticks effortlessly, and by the time they had eaten their fill, Magni’s skill with them had improved enough for him to finish his chow mein. Össur stuck with a spoon.
Magni belched. ‘That was good. Maybe we should head for China?’
Tinna Lind shook her head. ‘No, China’s not a great idea. They’re too organized and we’d stand out too much. Thailand or Vietnam would be better. They’re both pretty chaotic and there are enough white faces that nobody would bother us much. Thai food’s nicer than Vietnamese, though,’ she added.
‘Sounds good to me. How about you, Össi? Where are you headed for?’
‘Not sure yet,’ Össur said, licking the unfamiliar flavours from his lips. ‘Spain, I guess.’
‘You’ve been there before, haven’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I hear North Korea’s lovely,’ Tinna Lind said.
‘Where’s that?’ Össur asked.
‘Next to South Korea.’
‘Duh.’
‘So what’s happening with this Rafn character, then?’ Magni broke in, sensing Össur’s rising irritation and frowning at Tinna Lind. ‘Is he going to fix us up with passports?’
‘I reckon so. He said to call at eight and he’d tell me then how long it takes.’
‘More to the point,’ Tinna Lind said, picking a few stray noodles up with her chopsticks. ‘Can we trust him?’
‘Rafn?’ Össur asked, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s this Rafn’s relationship with the old guy you two robbed? Are they mates? Will he hand you over to the old man – after he’s taken your money, of course?’
‘It’s a good question, Össi,’ Magni said.
‘They hate each other like poison, if you must know.’
‘They’re rivals?’ Tinna Lind asked. ‘How deep does that rivalry go? Rafn might be happy to make a bit of a profit from three passports and do the old man a bad turn at the same time. But how much would Alli have to offer Rafn for him to turn us all over to him? I mean,’ she said, putting down her chopsticks, ‘there must be a price on your head, Össur. But how much is that price?’
Magni looked from Össur to Tinna Lind and back. ‘She’s right, Össi. How much are you worth to Alli?’
‘Fuck knows. But it’s getting on for eight, so I’d better give Rafn a call.’
The sound of the door creaking open and the light by the door clicking on woke her up. A moment’s alarm subsided when Gunna realized that the double thump was Steini’s boot
s being dropped.
‘You all right, old man?’ she asked, craning her neck to look around and see his face, which was more lined than usual under its thatch of windblown hair. ‘Good day?’
‘That depends on your definition of good,’ he said, padding across the kitchen, his feet leaving damp prints on the tiles. ‘Let’s just say it’s been a busy day and leave it at that.’
‘You weren’t diving, were you?’
‘In this weather? Not a hope. I spent the afternoon helping Jens with that old bulldozer of his. It seems to be running now, but it’ll need a gearbox sooner or later.’
‘Hungry?’
‘Starving. I could eat a fairly respectable-sized horse and still ask for seconds.’
Gunna got to her feet and stretched, feeling guilty for having dozed off in front of the television.
‘Go and get yourself cleaned up, then. I’m hungry as well, but I was waiting for you.’
‘You’re going to cook?’ Steini asked, a smile playing at the corners of his eyes. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I haven’t quite forgotten how the grill works. Now get away with you, but be quick about it.’
Four pork chops, a bowl of pasta and a large tomato salad greeted Steini as he returned from the shower.
‘Anyone would think you’re after something,’ he said.
‘It works often enough for you, so I thought I’d give the same strategy a try.’
‘You will let me know if it works, won’t you?’ Steini hid a yawn. ‘Where’s Laufey? Not home alone, are we?’
‘Laufey’s babysitting for Gísli and Drífa for a few hours. Gísli said he’d bring her home around eleven.’
‘How’s the lad? Are you friends again?’
‘I hope so,’ Gunna said with a sigh. ‘We’ve never been at loggerheads over anything for this long before and it’s starting to hurt.’
Steini shrugged. ‘He’s a big lad now, time to make his own decisions. I’m sure your parents didn’t approve of everything you got up to when you were a good bit younger than Gísli.’
‘Ach, you’re right. He’s asked me if I’ll go to the hospital with him and see the old guy.’
Thin Ice: An Inspector Gunna Mystery (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 5) Page 23
