Frozen Out

by Quentin Bates

  ‘I understand that it’s about to be floated on the stock exchange now that it has a contract to supply InterAlu with electricity.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘ESC were granted a special concession as a public-private partnership to build an autonomous hydro-electric plant in the hills above Hvalvík, so they can dam the river there to produce electricity and supply it to InterAlu.’

  ‘Isn’t this just rumour?’ Reynir Óli asked. ‘Is this really a story that we can use?’

  ‘Good grief, man. If that isn’t a story, what is?’ Jonni exploded, pulling off his glasses and pointing them at Reynir Óli. ‘Public money used to set up a dodgy company that then gets floated while all the scumbags in the know get share options. They get a fat contract through some shady back-door deals with other government departments, side-stepping a state monopoly in the process, and the moment the contract with InterAlu becomes public knowledge, their share value will go through the roof.’

  ‘Channel Three’s already sniffing around it,’ Dagga added. ‘I don’t know how far they’ve got, but they’ll run it as soon as they can get a handle on the scam.’

  Panic flashed behind Reynir Óli’s rimless glasses. ‘I need to see something absolutely cast-iron before we can run this,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Look, guys, we don’t want to upset too many people too early. So, look, er, keep this very discreet and, er, I’ll do some consultation. OK?’

  Without pausing to listen to a reply, Reynir Óli was gone.

  ‘Like a scalded cat,’ Jonni observed with satisfaction. ‘Did you make that up about Channel Three being on to all this?’

  Dagga nodded.

  ‘Master stroke. Excellent.’

  Skúli looked from one to the other and back again. ‘Is all this true?’

  ‘Is what true?’ Dagga asked.

  ‘All that about ESC and InterAlu and Hvalvík?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Jonni replied. ‘According to some of my finest unattributable sources of government gossip, our young lady here is right on the money.’

  27

  Thursday, 25 September

  ‘Seen him?’ Gunna demanded as soon as Snorri came in.

  ‘Not a whisper of him anywhere.’

  ‘Bloody man. Where the hell is he?’

  ‘No idea, chief. He’s just vanished.’

  ‘Right. Tell me where you went.’

  Snorri sat down and opened his folder of notes, with everything carefully logged. His finger followed the trail down the page.

  ‘Started at the taxi ranks, Hafnarfjördur, Kópavogur, Grensás, then Lækjartorg, Tryggvagata, the usual places. No sign. Spoke to a few of the taxi drivers and nobody’s seen Fat Matti about. Then his flat, bedsit, whatever you call it. Ugly Tóta – is she really called that?’

  ‘Ugly by name and ugly by nature. She used to be a terrible hell-raiser in her younger days, which weren’t that long ago. I’ve bundled her into the back of a squad car more than once.’

  ‘Ugly Tóta hasn’t seen him. Nothing more than she told you the other day.’

  ‘So he hasn’t been back?’

  ‘Not that she’s aware of, and there’s hardly anything in his room to come back for anyway, you said.’

  ‘OK. Didn’t expect anything else. How about Nonni the Taxi?’

  ‘Nothing there either. Nonni was there himself this time and he’s not happy.’

  ‘He’s not a cheerful character at the best of times.’

  ‘Even less cheerful now. Matti’s actually one of his best drivers and he does quite a bit of his contract work, and for that they like to keep the same faces as much as possible. He says that when Matti’s not well, by which I suppose he means pissed, then he always calls in. Never fails. But now he’s disappeared and so has the car.’

  ‘In that case I can understand. A newish car, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yup. No car and no driver to drive it. Like the man said, there’s payments to be made on the vehicle whether it’s earning money or not.’

  ‘Did you come over heavy?’

  ‘Did my best. Nonni was a bit reticent until I pushed him and made it clear that this is a murder inquiry we’re dealing with, and he came clean.’

  Gunna just raised an eyebrow instead of asking.

  ‘It seems that some of what Matti does by way of contract work is for Mundi Grétars.’

  ‘Scaramanga?’

  ‘That’s the one. Evil place, a real rip-off. They have some, um, exotic dancers there who apparently do more than just dance, all foreign girls.’

  ‘Prostitution?’

  ‘Who knows? The policy is that whatever the girls do outside working hours is up to them. It seems that some do and some don’t. But it’s common knowledge that Mundi doesn’t discourage them from doing business, as it keeps the punters coming in. Matti and a few of the other drivers ferry them about to wherever they’re supposed to be working.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘Parties sometimes, or mostly private houses for special customers. They work at hotels in town as well.’

  ‘Bloody hell, the stupid bastard. If his mother wasn’t still alive and kicking she’d be turning in her grave.’

  ‘Nonni says he’s heard that one of the girls has gone missing as well. That’s all I can tell you. He wouldn’t let on any more and I got the feeling he didn’t feel safe having told me what he had.’

  Gunna rose to her feet. ‘Well done, Snorri. Did you get a name, description?’

  ‘The girl’s called Marika and it seems she and Matti have had something going for a while.’

  ‘Matti? Good grief,’ Gunna muttered.

  ‘The woman’s Romanian, like the rest of that bunch, and Nonni thought there were four or five of them living in one of the terraced houses somewhere in the Smárar district. He didn’t know exactly where, but I’ll bet we can lean on one of his drivers and find out easily enough.’

  ‘Or we could lean on Mundi Grétars, which could be a pleasure in itself. You’d better get your report done as soon as possible so we can keep on top of all this stuff. We’d better liaise with Reykjavík on this one, get Scaramanga looked into properly and see if we can track down this bunch of exotic dancers or whatever they call themselves. I don’t like the sound of all this at all.’

  She shooed Snorri away to a spare computer terminal and went outside the building. Standing by the back door she was surprised to see the afternoon sun lighting up the brightly painted fishing boats on the slipway and realized that it was getting late in the day.

  She felt tired, more tired than for a long time, but exhilarated that the case was making progress at last – faster than she had anticipated, as well as opening up other avenues that clearly also needed to be investigated.

  Gunna fished an almost empty packet of Prince from her pocket and lit up, sucking down smoke as the door clanged open and Bjössi appeared beside her with two mugs of coffee.

  ‘Here y’are, sweetheart,’ he mumbled with an unlit cigarette in his mouth that Gunna lit before taking the mug from him. ‘By the way, Borgarnes are investigating a suspicious death on their patch.’

  Gunna raised an eyebrow. ‘Anything to do with us?’

  ‘The guy was a computer programmer, a real über-nerd. Seems he had a heart attack, but managed to break his arm at the same time.’

  ‘Right, we’ll put someone on to it to find out the details. Bára, maybe?’

  ‘Bára’s busy enough as it is, but it’s up to you, sweetheart. You’re the man in charge.’

  ‘For the moment, anyway.’

  ‘It didn’t look right at all,’ Officer Unnur Matthíasdóttir at the Borgarnes police station said, shaking her ponytailed head and grimacing.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, it seems that the man’s wife had been away for a week on a shopping trip in London. She came home on the Saturday morning, which was the thirteenth and found her husband sat up against the inside of the front door, stone dead. She had to go round the bac
k of the house and get in that way.’

  ‘All right, so what was the cause of death?’

  ‘It’s all on the sheet and the body’s still at the National Hospital if you want to go and have a look for yourself,’ she said wearily. ‘The cause of death was a heart attack, plain and simple.’

  ‘But there’s more to this?’

  ‘Hell, yes. Didn’t find that out straight away, though,’ she sighed. ‘His wife went nuts, called an ambulance and was in a proper state by the time they got there. So she was sedated, as the ambulance crew could see the bloke was past helping. They took her off to hospital and came back for him.’

  Gunna leafed through the case notes she had downloaded from the police network. ‘He’d been dead for a while?’

  ‘That’s right. The post-mortem results put the time of death at thirty-six hours previously, give or take half a day. So, round about Tuesday the ninth, something like that. What’s suspicious is that the man had a broken arm that would definitely have been extremely painful and the pathologist reckoned that it’s not a break that could be achieved easily by falling over. He reckoned the arm had been forced.’

  ‘Deliberate, then?’

  ‘Yup. Somebody broke his arm, and then the poor chap had a heart attack, either in front of the attacker or after he’d gone. Most likely afterwards, considering he was sitting with his back to the closed front door.’

  ‘Arngrímur Örn Arnarson. Fifty-five years old, ran his own company,’ Gunna read from the notes.

  ‘Right enough,’ Unnur confirmed. ‘An odd sort of bloke. Lived in Borgarnes about five years and kept to himself, although his wife was a bit more sociable. He did some sort of computer, internet stuff. Called himself a consultant. Anyway, what’s your interest in this one?’

  Knowing the question would come, Gunna had already wondered during the two-hour drive from Keflavík how much she should say.

  ‘We’re investigating an unpleasant sort of character and we have confirmation that one of his associates was around here on that Tuesday. It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Unnur asked.

  ‘Paid his toll at the tunnel and the number was recorded. Came back later the same day.’

  Gunna placed a picture of Matti’s taxi on the desk. ‘That’s his vehicle. And it may have gone through here quite a few times. We’re actively looking out for this car now, as quietly as possible. But if there’s no response in a day or two, we’ll have to run a TV and radio appeal.’

  Gunna placed pictures of Matti and Hårde on top of the taxi. ‘And if you can find anyone who has seen either of these, then we’d definitely be on to something.’

  Unnur nodded. ‘All right. We’ll see what we can do.’

  Gunna tapped Hårde’s face. ‘This guy is dangerous. Extremely dangerous.’

  Unnur looked taken aback. ‘What are you looking for him in connection with?’

  ‘Well,’ Gunna said grimly, ‘if he’s responsible for Arngrímur Örn Arnarson’s death as well, then we’re looking at three killings.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Unnur whistled.

  25-09-2008, 1044

  Skandalblogger writes:

  Oops! Rule one … even if you don’t tell the truth, do tell your wife …

  Bjarni Jón, we’re feeling all warm and fuzzy today because we enjoyed your performance on Kastljós so much. However, we hear that your performance afterwards wasn’t so hot. Look, a word of advice here. We all know about ministers not bothering to brief their secretaries, aides, advisers, etc, but forgetting to let your good lady know that you were looking at chucking it in was, shall we say, a little lacking in foresight, especially as she trades so heavily on having a husband in government and the ear of the guy at the top.

  We hear that the recording went pretty smoothly, a lot more smoothly than the blazing row you had with the lovely pouting Sigurjóna in the ministerial jeep.

  Click here* for the video clip, and if anyone who can lipread would like to send us their interpretation of what the delightful Sigurjóna had to say, please email the Skandalblogger. We can have a pretty good guess at what was being said, considering that instead of being in hubby’s arms, the succulent Sigurjóna scuttled off afterwards for a girls’ night out with little sister, celebrity strimmer Erna, but we’d like to be sure.

  Anonymity guaranteed!

  Bæjó!

  Gunna already knew that the third item on that evening’s TV news would be all about Matti. Laufey lay with her head on her mother’s shoulder and didn’t wake as Gunna lifted the remote control from her hand to increase the volume.

  ‘… Police are concerned about the whereabouts of Marteinn Georg Kristjánsson and are appealing for information. Marteinn Georg was last seen on Sunday morning, wearing dark blue tracksuit trousers and a blue polo shirt under a dark brown leather jacket. He was last seen in the Smárar area driving a green Mercedes station wagon, number …’

  Gunna muted the TV as the phone rang and at the same moment a picture appeared on the screen of a considerably younger Matti looking like a gangland hoodlum with his swept-down moustache.

  ‘Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Hi. It’s me.’

  ‘Skúli, how goes it?’

  ‘Still at work getting the morning edition together.’

  ‘Good. You’ve got enough to make a decent story about Matti? I’d appreciate it. It’s urgent that we find out what’s happened to him.’

  ‘That’s fixed. The story’s on an inside page, but there’s a box on the front with a ‘‘Have you seen this man?’’ caption. Er …’

  ‘Yes? What is it, Skúli?’

  ‘Well, actually it’s a bit embarrassing.’

  ‘Come on, lad, out with it.’

  Gunna heard him breathe deeply as if summoning all the courage he had. ‘I wanted to ask you about Vilhjálmur Traustason.’

  ‘Fire away. We’ve known each other for a long time, although we’ve never got round to forming a mutual admiration society.’

  ‘All right. I could see there was a bit of tension between you two. But what I was wondering about was a story that the Skandalblogger came up with some time ago, about a police officer who had, quote, formed a happy working relationship with a Baltic beauty who dances nearby. End quote.’

  ‘And? Some sort of connection with Vilhjálmur? Anything that I need to know about?’

  ‘Well, yeah. This is the awkward bit. I was doing a story about prostitution that hasn’t been published yet, and I interviewed one of these girls in a room at Hotel Gullfoss. And as we were leaving the room, I saw your boss going down the corridor with another girl.’

  ‘Skúli, you’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely, no doubt. Walked straight into them. When I saw the guy at the hotel I thought it was a bit creepy, but it wasn’t until I saw him at the press conference I realized it was the same person.’

  Gunna held the receiver in the palm of her hand to muffle it. She didn’t know whether to laugh or shout with rage. She saw that the news item about Matti was over and the screen now showed an airliner on a runway somewhere warm.

  ‘Skúli,’ she said at last, ‘you’re still there?’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  ‘I’d ask you to be very careful with what you’ve just told me. As far as I’m aware, no crime has been committed and all you’ve seen is him accompanied by an unknown woman. Right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘So if this were to get into other hands, you could destroy the man’s career, not to mention his marriage. You’re sure about this?’

  ‘I’m dead sure.’

  Gunna cursed silently and wondered how, if ever, she would be able to broach the subject with Vilhjálmur Traustason. ‘Skúli, can you keep this under wraps?’

  ‘I can. But if I’ve noticed, then other people will as well.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him when I can. All right?’

  ‘OK,’ Skúli said dubiously.

&nbs
p; ‘Thanks, Skúli. I owe you a favour.’

  Gunna put the phone down and Laufey stretched out on the sofa, eyes open.

  ‘Mum, who’s Skúli?’

  ‘Skúli’s a journalist on a newspaper who’s been writing a story about your old mum.’

  ‘So he’s not your boyfriend or anything, then?’

  ‘I hardly think so, young lady.’

  Laufey yawned and kneaded her eyes with the backs of her fists. ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Nothing. Just some of the kids at school said that my mum’s got a boyfriend at last and I said no she hasn’t.’

  Gunna sighed. Dinner with Steini had been a pleasure. They had both enjoyed themselves and Gunna had forgotten for a few hours much of the weight she felt she had been carrying since Raggi’s death. Steini had called again but she hadn’t had time to do more than promise vaguely to meet.

  ‘Laufey, my darling. One day you’ll understand that a young man like Skúli is hardly likely to be interested in an old lady like me.’

  ‘You’re not old,’ Laufey said, swinging her legs down to the floor. ‘And Finnur says his dad said he’d give you a portion. What does that mean, Mum?’

  Gunna spluttered as she choked back laughter. ‘And who is Finnur?’

  ‘A really stupid boy in my class.’

  ‘All right. Who’s Finnur’s dad?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think he works for the council.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll look out for him and see if I can give him a parking ticket.’

  ‘All right. I’m going to bed now.’

  ‘But don’t you tell Finnur that tomorrow, will you?’

  Laufey yawned again, pulled off her socks and dropped them on the floor.

  ‘In the basket, please,’ Gunna pointed out as Laufey scowled in perfect facsimile of her father’s face, giving Gunna a sudden pang. ‘I have to go early tomorrow, so you’ll be all right to get yourself up for school, won’t you?’