The police car drew to a gentle halt beside him and a window hissed down.
‘Got a problem?’ the young officer inside asked, looking over at him.
‘Some bastard’s stolen my truck,’ Ágúst Vilmundsson announced bitterly, as if the day hadn’t been miserable enough already.
Sightings of Hårde trickled in, with each report filled and passed over to Gunna’s team. By late morning they had chased up a dozen leads, liaising with police in Reykjavík to coordinate inquiries in and around the city.
‘No, that’s perfectly all right. Thank you for your help.’ Gunna heard Snorri finishing a call and swearing under his breath the moment the receiver was on the hook.
‘What was that?’ she asked as Snorri scrawled ‘No further action’ across the report sheet in big letters.
‘Ach, you know how it is when there’s an appeal on the TV. That was an elderly lady in Húsavík. It seems there’s a Polish fishworker living in the flat above her who she thinks might be Hårde. The guy’s been living there for the best part of a year, he’s short and fat with a black beard, but as he’s foreign she thought it might be him in disguise.’
‘Sure you don’t want to check it out?’ Bára asked sweetly.
‘Please …’ Snorri said as the phone trilled again.
Bára followed Gunna outside to the smoking spot by the back door and watched as Gunna lit up, frowning.
‘If you were in a strange country and needed to stay out of sight for a while, what would you do?’ Bára asked her.
Gunna inhaled deeply and thought. ‘I’ve no idea off the top of my head. What about you?’
‘I reckon either somewhere very unobtrusive, right off the beaten track, or smack in the centre of things. If I was trying to stay out of sight and didn’t have to worry about cash, I’d book into the smartest hotel I could find. You remember how snobby and unhelpful they were at Hotel Gullfoss?’
Gunna nodded. ‘You’re quite right, although I can’t see our boy checking in there somehow. But it fits. The man does have a certain style,’ she admitted.
Gunna ground her half-smoked Prince beneath a heel and they walked back towards the incident room where Snorri was watching his computer screen while carrying on a conversation through the headset clamped to one ear.
‘Thank you, yes. We’ll follow that up. Goodbye,’ he said, hanging up.
‘Anything useful?’ Gunna demanded.
‘Petrol station attendant on Hringbraut. Reckon he sold Hårde a hot dog and a bottle of mineral water last night. Worth a visit, d’you reckon?’
‘Definitely. You’d best get on with that right now and check on that report from the girl in Hafnarfjördur who saw him this morning while you’re at it. But first, Snorri, tell me something.’
‘Chief?’
‘If you were on the run and wanted to keep a low profile, what would you do? Come on, let’s think about what one of us might do in Hårde’s position.’
‘Me?’ Snorri said slowly. ‘I’d just live in the car for a couple of days, park up here and there, keep moving around. Maybe find a shed or something to lie low in, or maybe a boat somewhere. There’s plenty of decommissioned boats around that aren’t going anywhere. It depends how long,’ he finished.
‘That’s just it. It depends how long for,’ Gunna mused. ‘People get noticed around harbours now that they’re so quiet. I’m inclined to go along with what you said, Bára.’
‘Which was what?’ Snorri asked.
‘Do it in style. Check into the priciest hotel in town. Bára, as it was your idea, you’d better see to this. Go round all the hotels within spitting distance, do all of them.’
Bára nodded and went to her desk to pick up the phone as Snorri pulled his jacket and squared his cap on his head.
‘Bára, you can ask Sævaldur – sorry, tell Sævaldur we want three or four of his people to help out with this and see if you can get round the whole lot before midnight. Organize it for lateish this evening, so it takes in people checking into hotels tonight as well. All right?’
‘Yup,’ Bára said, looking up as Snorri stepped out of the room, holding the door wide for Vilhjálmur Traustason accompanied by the brooding form of Ívar Laxdal.
‘Progress, Gunnhildur?’ Vilhjálmur asked gently, while the National Commissioner’s deputy cast his eyes around the room.
‘Bugger all, actually. Hårde’s been seen in practically every part of Iceland in the last twenty-four hours, and most of them we can discount entirely once we’ve spoken to the person calling in. A couple of sightings in Reykjavík and Hafnarfjördur, one from a petrol station on Hringbraut that sounds convincing, and then there’s a girl who works in a coffee shop in Hafnarfjördur who says she sold him a couple of Danish pastries. That’s convincing as the girl’s from Estonia and said the way the man spoke sounded familiar. Snorri’s on his way to interview her and see if there’s any relevant CCTV footage anywhere. That’s it for now. We’re organizing a sweep of hotels this evening in case he’s booked himself in somewhere.’
‘You think that’s likely?’ Ívar Laxdal asked forbiddingly.
‘I’m not convinced,’ Gunna admitted. ‘But I think we have to check. I feel it fits in with the man’s character. He does things in style.’
‘Up to you. But I’ve read the file from Sweden as well. He’s a military man and used to roughing it. Don’t rule that out.’
‘Point taken,’ Gunna agreed. ‘But I’m following Bára’s idea of the hotels in the first instance. I have the feeling that this might be a way of wrong-footing us as something we wouldn’t expect, so it’s worth a look. If nothing comes of it this evening, we’ll think again.’
Gunna pursed her lips in irritation. ‘The problem is,’ she went on, ‘we don’t know what he’s waiting for. Does he have a deadline? We don’t know if he’s waiting for anything in particular other than a chance to get the hell off this island. We don’t know if he’s on his own or if he has friends helping him out. I’d really like to haul Sigurjóna over the coals one more time on this. If she’s not helping Hårde, she’d have a damn good idea who might be.’
Vilhjálmur Traustason looked worried. ‘She is a minister’s wife,’ he reminded her.
‘A bent minister,’ Gunna retorted.
Ívar Laxdal opened his mouth to speak when Bára interrupted. ‘Gunna! Chief!’ she squawked, hand over the phone.
‘What is it?’
‘The car’s been found.’
‘The rental car?’
‘Yup. It’s in Hafnarfjördur. A traffic warden saw it had been there past the time limit, wrote out a ticket, then she checked the number and it flashed up as missing. No doubt about it.’
‘Right. Snorri’s on his way, right? Tell Reykjavík to get a technical team and a dog on to it right this minute, and I don’t give a stuff if they say they’re busy.’
‘Lárus Jóhann.’
‘It’s me. I need a favour.’
‘Bjarni Jón. I hardly expected a call from you.’
‘Yeah. I have a lot to deal with right now,’ Bjarni Jón Bjarnason murmured into the phone. He tried to keep his voice as low as possible and was hoping that he could make a few necessary calls without alerting Sigurjóna, still sitting blank-eyed in front of the 24/7 News.
‘All right. There’s not much I can do for you, my boy.’
‘Look. This is me doing you a favour as much as the other way around.’
‘One hand scratching the other, you mean?’
‘Yeah. Sort of.’
‘And what do I get out of it, whatever it is?’
‘You get some grateful people who could be in a position to be extremely helpful.’
‘Helpful, how?’
Bjarni Jón took a long breath. ‘You know that things are changing?’
‘Ah, the old man’s not going to let you tough it out?’
Lárus Jóhann chuckled grimly at Bjarni Jón’s silence. ‘Don’t worry, my boy. It’ll all blow over soon enough.
Did you think I was born yesterday? Look, there’ll be another scandal along next week, and by the time elections come round again, it’ll all be forgotten. You need a little patience and a thick skin to stay in politics, my boy. Look at Árni Johnsen.’
Bjarni Jón sighed. ‘If it happens, I hear you’re tipped for the treasury, or am I wrong?’
Lárus Jóhann could hardly keep the flush of pride from his voice. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, young man.’
‘Yes, you do, you old fox.’
‘Nobody’s tipped for anything at the moment. My guess is that when the financial situation is announced after the weekend, the old man will want to show a united front, which means nobody will go anywhere – you included.’
‘But …?’
‘When the dust settles, then there’ll be a round of musical chairs. Until then, I suggest you keep your head down and jump when the old man cracks the whip.’
‘In that case, a word to the wise.’
‘What are we talking about?’ Lárus Jóhann asked sharply, and Bjarni Jón knew he had his full attention.
‘If you don’t know, I’m not going to say anything.’
‘Come on, play the game, will you?’
‘Lárus, this is just a piece of advice that helps you far more than it helps me. Listen, there’s a ship docked at Skarfanes.’
‘What, at that fishmeal factory?’
‘Yes, Lárus, the one your wife owns forty per cent of. That one.’
‘Go on, Bjarni.’
‘This ship needs to leave on Friday without anything untoward happening. No customs, no inspections, nobody looking too closely at the crew. You understand?’
‘Not entirely, but I assume you’ll explain soon enough.’
‘When the ship’s gone, I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Just whisper in the right ears.’
‘I’m intrigued.’
‘Just do it, Lárus.’
‘But you give me your word you’ll tell me what this is all about?’
‘I’ll tell you what I know. You’re in Parliament on Saturday?’
‘I’ll be in my Parliamentary office until twelve. Come and see me before that.’
‘Right. See you then,’ Bjarni Jón said, and the phone went dead.
It was still blowing gusts heavy with the tang of seaweed, but the rain had stopped and sunshine was making valiant attempts to break through broken banks of grey and black cloud scudding across from the west.
The lunchtime rush hour was at its peak and the anonymous grey Toyota sat forlornly in the car park, surrounded by the comings and goings of shoppers looking for places to park. A stream of curious onlookers were delighted to have something to watch as they waited in the burger van’s queue as the furore around the little car grew.
Helga Karen Finnsdóttir was still bewildered by the storm she had unleashed by reporting the little grey Toyota. First the pleasant young policeman who said his name was Snorri had asked her some questions and then asked her not to go further than the coffee shop in the precinct as his sergeant would want to talk to her as well.
Then all hell was let loose. A van full of people in white overalls had arrived, and a mechanic with Toyota emblazoned on his overalls who had opened the car for them. Then a policeman came with a dog on a lead that sniffed the car and then appeared to go around in circles before snuffling back to a spot away over on the far side of the car park, almost as far as you could get from the grey Toyota.
Finally the rude policewoman had appeared, fired off a dozen questions and then joined the dog handler before coming back.
‘Right, what time was it when you booked the car?’ Gunna asked abruptly.
‘I already told your colleague, it was five minutes to twelve.’
‘And how long had the car been here?’
‘I took a note of its number about nine thirty.’
‘So it had been here almost three hours when you gave it a ticket?’
‘Well, yes,’ Helga Karen admitted.
‘What’s the time limit here?’
‘Well, it’s supposed to be two hours, but I don’t like to issue a ticket right on the two hours. I normally give people a few minutes. It’s easy enough to get held up.’
‘That makes you a very generous warden,’ Gunna observed, warming to the woman. ‘How long have you been doing this job?’
‘About a year. Just over.’
‘How often are you supposed to check each car?’
Helga Karen thought for a moment, huddled deep in her bright yellow waterproof uniform coat, a size or two too large for her.
‘It’s supposed to be around every hour or so,’ she said.
‘And in practice?’
‘There’s just too much to get round in an hour,’ she said helplessly. ‘We have targets and they’re quite hard to reach. I suppose normally I can get around everything in an hour and a half. But I’m on my own today as Jóga who works the shift with me is off as her little boy’s ill and she couldn’t get anyone to sit with him.’
Gunna was beginning to get impatient. ‘All right, tell me exactly how long this car could have been parked here.’
‘It was there just before ten when I did my first round, but it wasn’t there when I finished at four yesterday.’
‘So it was parked here between four yesterday afternoon and around ten this morning? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Thank you. That’s what I was after,’ Gunna said, turning and striding away.
34
Thursday, 2 October
Hårde parked the grey Mercedes a street away and walked up the hill with his bag over his shoulder. The car’s owner, who had made the mistake of driving down the rutted track to check on his summer house, was now lying in a heap in his own garden shed and would have no further need of either car or summer house.
From old force of habit, he had cleared up behind him, washed the dishes he had used and even hung the wet dishcloths on a rail behind the kitchen door. The magazines he had read went back to the rack next to the bed and the remote back to the plastic holder on the TV set. His brief sojourn in the shuttered summer house next to its own black-sand beach had been restful and had given him a chance to sleep, stretch and catch up on the news. There had been nothing on local TV about the hunt for him, and he assumed that this either wasn’t news any more, or else the gathering financial storm was overshadowing everything else. A computer and an internet link would have made things even better, but live football on satellite TV almost made up for it.
Letting himself in through the back door of Erna’s darkened house, he wondered just how soon the Mercedes’ owner would be missed. The elderly man who had spluttered with fury when he found Hårde watching his TV wore a wedding ring, so presumably his wife would raise the alarm sooner or later. Presumably finding the white truck parked behind the summer house would put the police on to the trail of the Mercedes, but that couldn’t be helped. The system alarm bleeped its warning and Hårde quickly punched in the number to disarm it. Without turning on any lights, he made his way through the house, taking in the aroma of Erna that he could smell everywhere.
The spacious bathroom sat at the middle of the house, the only room with no outside windows. Hårde clicked on the light and shut the door before turning on the hot water and opening one of the cabinets to survey the rows of jars and bottles jumbled on to the shelves.
Late in the afternoon and everyone was tired. The search was in progress for Ágúst Vilmundsson’s scruffy pickup. The reported sightings of Hårde had slowed to a trickle. Snorri was back at the airport checking flights and working with the airport police on monitoring the hundreds of people passing through the departure lounge.
Bára yawned to herself, aching to sign off and sleep for a few hours.
‘All the prints match up,’ she told Gunna. ‘All the fingerprints from the guesthouse in Mjósundsvegur, the flat in Hverfisgata and the Toyota rental car. All t
he same person.’
‘The cheeky, impudent bastard.’
Vilhjálmur Traustason appeared silently, accompanied again by Ívar Laxdal, hugging a slim briefcase to his chest and sporting a military-style black beret instead of his usual uniform cap.
‘Progress, Gunnhildur?’
‘Ach, our man pops up and then he’s gone by the time we get anywhere near him. The phone he was using is dead, I reckon, so no chance of tracking him through that. He had a rental car that he ditched in Hafnarfjördur and we’re as sure as we can be that he stole a white pickup and drove off in that. The search is on for that, but he may have switched cars twice more since then, for all we know.’
Gunna ran a hand through her hair, leaving it sticking up at angles. ‘I’m telling you, Vilhjálmur, this is one sly bastard. We’ve never had to deal with anyone like this before. He’s a real artist.’
‘What do you think your chances of apprehending this character are?’ Ívar Laxdal asked quietly, and Gunna thought quickly.
‘The longer he’s running about, the better the likelihood of picking him up. Iceland’s not a big place and there are only so many ways out. But this guy has some highly placed friends somewhere.’
‘Do you mean the company he was working for here?’
‘Something like that. Although with the news we’ve seen of their business today, I’d imagine they have other fish to fry right now.’
She drummed her fingers on the desk, wondering whether or not to tell him that deep down she had little hope that Hårde would now be found.
‘I don’t doubt that as long as he’s in Iceland we’ll find him,’ she decided. ‘Assuming he is still in the country, he can’t stay that many steps ahead for long and even a pro like this guy will make a mistake or be unlucky sooner or later. What really worries me more than anything is if he’s confronted by a police officer without backup, how far is he prepared to go?’
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