Frozen Assets gm-1

by Quentin Bates

  ‘We’ve interviewed everyone we could get hold of at the airport,’ Snorri said. ‘We’re fairly sure our man’s still in the country, but no idea where.’

  ‘We need traffic surveillance ramped up as much as possible overnight. If he’s not within a few kilometres of the airport, then Hårde must have got hold of transport somehow. I can’t imagine him not being mobile, judging by the way he’s worked up to now,’ Gunna concluded.

  ‘And Erna Daníelsdóttir?’ Vilhjálmur asked quietly.

  ‘Landed safely in Madrid, and jumped on a transfer to Tangier.’ Bjössi yawned.

  ‘Tangier?’

  ‘That’s it, Morocco. The Madrid airport police questioned her at our request, but nothing useful. We’d like her to come straight back and answer a few questions, but as she hasn’t committed a crime, it’s not as if we can have the woman shipped home. We just have to wait until she comes back. Unless there’s a chance of a trip to the Mediterranean to interview her, in which case, I’d be happy to volunteer. I know it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.’

  Vilhjálmur blanched, until he realized that Bjössi was joking.

  ‘All right, back here tomorrow, please, ladies and gentlemen,’ Gunna announced. ‘Bjössi and me at six. Snorri and Bára, I don’t want to see you here before ten.’

  ‘Do you want a lift home, chief?’ Snorri asked.

  Gunna thought briefly and brightened inwardly at the prospect of seeing Gísli for an hour or two. Then she remembered that Laufey would be at Sigrún’s house and Gísli would hardly be likely to be waiting for his mum to come home when he could be in Reykjavík with the girlfriend he hadn’t seen for weeks.

  ‘No. I’ll just get my head down here tonight, if Vilhjálmur has an empty cell I can use. But thanks anyway.’

  Hårde left his shoes by the door and padded from room to room, trying to decide his next move. One room was clearly a child’s, probably the one he had seen walking down the street, with bunk beds, posters on the walls and a row of neglected fluffy toys looking down from a high shelf. A smaller room looked like a guest bedroom, sparsely furnished but obviously recently used.

  A third small bedroom was the domain of someone older and Hårde could see that the clutter of washed but unironed clothes on the dressing table belonged to the whole family. The double bed that filled much of the room was unmade and smelled both musty and inviting as Hårde remembered just how tired he was after a short night in Erna’s demanding company followed by a long day.

  He shook himself, reminding himself as he did so that he had to find two days of seclusion and that this was not the place for it. He left the fat policewoman’s bedroom and scanned the long living room. He peered at pictures placed between books on the shelves along one wall, first of a smaller version of the girl he had seen walking down the street, then at a black-trimmed formal photograph of a man in some kind of military uniform, looking serious but with the same impish look of mischievous good humour that was evident in the girl’s face. A second set of pictures showed a heavily built young man at varying ages with a tousled head and freckles, who was trying to look at ease and failing.

  Hårde nodded and made his decision. In the L-shaped kitchen he found a carrier bag and loaded it with a bottle of wine, another of water and all the fruit and pastries he could find before slipping back into his shoes and over the road to the car, clicking the door behind him.

  As he started the engine and let the little car roll forward down the slope, a heavy Range Rover roared to a halt and parked outside number 38. Young people stepped down from it, a young woman with ginger hair in a loose bun and a broad-shouldered young man whom Hårde instantly recognized from the pictures on the wall.

  He drove away unobtrusively, taking the westbound road out of Hvalvík. He was relieved that he had not been interrupted in the fat policewoman’s house and pleased that he had not needed to make certain of the young couple’s silence, but annoyed with himself for giving in to curiosity and taking a chance of being seen without good reason.

  33

  Wednesday, 1 October

  Gunna surfaced from sleep unwillingly. Something behind her eyeballs throbbed and told her not to open them. She forced her eyelids apart and the light immediately stabbed deep.

  ‘Morning,’ Bjössi called cheerfully. ‘Wakey, wakey, sweetheart.’

  ‘Belt up, will you?’ Gunna snapped back before the thought occurred to her that maybe Bjössi wasn’t going out of his way to be unpleasant.

  He sat down on the bed in the station’s cellar in a room that was halfway between a cell and a storeroom and patted Gunna’s thigh under the heavy duvet that was wrapped around her.

  ‘Y’know, Gunna, my love? If that’s the way you are in the mornings, I can only say I don’t regret never having got you into the sack.’

  ‘Sorry, Bjössi. Didn’t mean to be short with you. What’s the time?’

  ‘Almost six.’

  He held out a mug of coffee and Gunna took it with both hands as she sat up, Bjössi shielding his eyes in mock horror.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m decent enough,’ she growled. ‘I don’t suppose I’ve got anything you haven’t seen before.’

  ‘Possibly. But not as big,’ Bjössi answered seriously, ducking a swipe from the hand not clasped around the mug.

  ‘What’s been going on?’ Gunna asked with the first mouthful of coffee helping parts of her mind recall what had happened before she had closed her eyes a few short hours before.

  ‘Looks like we’ve pretty much traced our man’s movements up to when he left the airport. He’s in a hire car on our Danish guy’s credit card.’

  ‘I suppose Torbensen isn’t anything to do with Hårde?’

  ‘Nope. Like you said, he’s a red herring. The man’s a salesman for an agricultural equipment manufacturer in some backwater in Jutland. Spoke to his managing director and he’s worked there for twelve years. The local company they supply confirmed who he is and that he’s been with them pretty much all the time he’s been in Iceland, all three days of it.’

  ‘So that’s him ruled out.’

  ‘Plenty of people think they might have seen Hårde at the airport, most of them aren’t sure though. Apart from the girl behind the bar who thinks he might have spoken to a fair-haired woman who was sitting there, but again, isn’t sure. The woman at the car hire desk reckons she’d recognize him if she saw him, but Ib Torbensen’s credit card and driving licence pretty much nail him down there anyway.’

  ‘And his phone?’

  ‘Still switched off.’

  ‘The man knows what he’s doing. I’ll bet you anything you like he’s ditched that phone and he’s using another one by now. Right, Bjössi, my man. Are you going to get out and let a lady dress in peace and quiet?’

  She gestured towards her shirt and uniform trousers folded over the back of the cell’s only chair.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Bjössi sighed. ‘Of course, if I’d known you were scantily clad under that duvet, I’d have crawled in before I woke you up.’

  ‘Get away, you randy old goat,’ Gunna retorted. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d think your Dóra wasn’t giving you any.’

  Ten minutes later they met again in the incident room. Vilhjálmur Traustason put his head around the door and withdrew quickly.

  ‘What do we know?’ Gunna asked, yawning.

  ‘Last sighting of our man prior to the airport yesterday was at the InterAlu compound in Hvalvík. The operations manager there said he left before eleven. Maybe he went there yesterday to deliver the bad news.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  Bjössi put morning newspapers on the table and spread them out in a fan. Each one had a picture of Bjarni Jón Bjarnason on the cover, except for Dagurinn, which carried a picture of a tearful Sigurjóna shielding her face from the camera, with the police station on Hverfisgata in the background.

  ‘Has that bloody woman been let out?’ Gunna demanded.

  ‘I’m afraid
so,’ Bjössi confirmed tentatively. ‘Orders from high up, or so we’re told. It’s handy to have friends in high places.’

  ‘Shit,’ Gunna cursed as the door opened and Vilhjálmur Traustason came in soundlessly. ‘Vilhjálmur, those idiots in Reykjavík have let that bloody woman out.’

  It wasn’t a question and Gunna’s tone made it into an accusation.

  ‘No choice in the matter. She’s not to leave Reykjavík, though.’

  ‘Lárus Jóhann?’

  Vilhjálmur Traustason allowed himself the thinnest of smiles.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I have a feeling that Bjarni Jón Bjarnason’s influence isn’t quite as strong as it was a few days ago. Sigurjóna Huldudóttir’s lawyers made a case for release that we couldn’t give a good reason for opposing. However, I have passed on your information to the narcotics squad and it’s being investigated. That’s all I know right now.’

  ‘I hope they hang the bloody woman out to dry,’ Gunna grated.

  ‘Are you telling me, Gunnhildur, my dear, that you don’t care for the lady?’ Bjössi asked with exaggerated courtesy.

  ‘Quite right. Now, business. Where’s Hårde now?’

  ‘Still in Iceland,’ Bjössi said. ‘We can be sure that unless he managed to disguise himself pretty fantastically, he didn’t leave through the airport yesterday and it’s so heavily monitored now that he daren’t even try.’

  ‘How good is the monitoring over there? I’m wondering how long he’ll have to lie low before things cool off and he can try again? Or try another route? Where do we look next?’

  ‘Do we need to?’ Bjössi asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The man knows what he’s doing, but he has to have some kind of contact with other people. The longer he’s in the country, the more chance he’ll show up or at least be noticed. He’s not a local and as soon as he opens his mouth he certainly can’t pass for one. His face was all over the TV last night and today it’s all over the papers. If he’s not aware of that already, he will be soon and he’ll know someone’s going to recognize him.’

  ‘So, you’re saying that he’ll have to move quickly?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Bjössi said thoughtfully. ‘We may have forced him to act faster than he would have wanted to.’

  He carefully spread out the sheaf of newspapers across the table. Alongside the main news of the day, including Bjarni Jón Bjarnason’s early return from a conference overseas to face the growing financial crisis, Hårde’s face could be seen somewhere on every one, leading to a story inside.

  Only Dagurinn had Sigurjóna on the front cover, with Lára’s by-line under the picture and ‘Skúli Snædal — crime correspondent’ right under the headline. Gunna felt a warm glow and suppressed a smile as she stood up and the others followed suit, taking it as a signal that the meeting was about to close.

  ‘Right. I want everything watched that can be watched. We’ll have every force in the country alerted about Hårde, especially anywhere with an airfield. I’d like to see some additional monitoring at Akureyri and Egilstadir airports as I believe there are a few international flights from there, aren’t there?’

  ‘Yeah, one or two a week, I think,’ Vilhjálmur hazarded.

  ‘And Reykjavík airport as well. There are all kinds of oddballs going in and out through there what with all the private jets and whatnot. I’d hate to think of him getting away in a private jet.’

  ‘That it?’ Bjössi asked, making notes on a pad in front of him.

  ‘I want every port authority warned as well, not that there are all that many to worry about. Keep on top of all the shipping movements, everything that’s going to an overseas port, no need to worry about fishing vessels, just cargo, especially anything going short-haul to Europe.’

  As Bjössi took notes, Gunna spied Vilhjálmur, hands behind his back, looking doubtful. ‘Problem, Vilhjálmur?’

  ‘Costs. This is a level of activity that is normally handled by a larger force and I’m concerned that we cannot sustain it for long without possibly requesting additional funding. The overtime costs are already far too high.’

  ‘Can you talk to the Sheriff?’

  ‘I will do so this morning.’

  ‘Please do. I honestly don’t think this is going to take long. Our man’s in the open now and I’m sure he’ll be noticed soon enough if he’s still in the country. If he’s not here . . .’ Gunna shrugged and didn’t bother to finish her sentence.

  ‘What d’you reckon, Gunna?’ Bjössi asked when Vilhjálmur had left the room.

  ‘Hell, I don’t know. It’s like nothing we’ve ever had to deal with before.’

  ‘I reckon it’ll all be over by the weekend,’ Bjössi announced confidently and Gunna looked sideways at him.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Yup. Unless he’s gone camping in the highlands and wants to live on berries and songbirds until the heat dies down. He has to be noticed by someone sooner or later. It’s a small country, Gunna. You can’t hide in Iceland.’

  ‘Yeah. I suppose you’re right. I hope you’re right.’

  Sigurjóna sat huddled in the armchair with the 24/7 television news on in front of her. She was again swathed in her dressing gown, hair greasy and red cheeks puffing her face.

  Rain hammered on the windows behind the TV set from a pewter sky and the room was half dark. On the screen an elegant newsreader dropped her smile and announced that Minister for Environmental Affairs Bjarni Jón Bjarnason had returned unexpectedly early from a conference in Berlin to face the growing financial crisis.

  The screen cut to a clip of Bjarni Jón alighting from a black official car outside the Ministry to be greeted by a knot of microphones.

  ‘I have no comment to make as things stand. You can expect a statement when I have discussed these issues with the Prime Minister,’ he snapped at the expectant throng, shaking raindrops from his coat as he disappeared into the maw of the building.

  ‘And have you issued a statement yet?’ Sigurjóna asked blankly without looking round as her husband appeared behind her.

  ‘Of course not. Managed to get away from the Ministry without being seen by the scum.’

  He knelt at her side and put an arm awkwardly around her shoulders. Sigurjóna shook him off in irritation as the elegant newsreader returned, set her face to neutral and continued.

  ‘It is reported that aluminium conglomerate InterAlu has withdrawn from its provisional agreement with entrepreneurial company Spearhead and its power generation subsidiary ESC. Twenty-four Seven News was told by InterAlu’s Berlin office earlier today that there was no comment to be made and referred us to ESC, where phones were not being answered yesterday afternoon. Chief executive Sigurjóna Huldudóttir was today unavailable for comment due to other commitments, according to a Spearhead spokesperson a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Jón Oddur or Ósk?’ Bjarni Jón asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Sigurjóna replied in a bleak voice. ‘Is it all over?’

  ‘All over? Who knows?’ Bjarni Jón groaned. ‘It’s not just us that’s in the shit, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘This week the Central Bank will get a visit from Glitnir to tell them formally that they can’t service their own loan payments. We’re discussing what to do. The old man may be prepared to bail them out using foreign currency reserves, but I don’t know. Or he may want to hang on to the cash as it seems there’s worse to come. At the moment it’s anybody’s guess. After that, it’s still anybody’s guess.’

  ‘This is going to be bad, then?’

  ‘Jóna, this is going to hurt everyone. But after Monday, I think we can be fairly sure that nobody will be even slightly interested in Spearpoint or ESC.’

  Sigurjóna’s back straightened and the line of her mouth lifted. ‘And what did the Prime Minister say? Are you stepping down?’

  ‘Good grief, no. He wouldn’t hear of it. We all have to stand together in tough tim
es.’

  ‘Have you told Lárus Jóhann?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Bjarni Jón cackled. ‘I’ll let him think he’s being shifted upstairs for a few more days. Mind you, the treasury at a time like this is a poisoned chalice.’

  Again the newsreader cut away to a clip, this time showing a red-haired young woman nodding to a microphone. Bjarni Jón groaned as she appeared on the screen.

  ‘Good grief, Ingunn Sverrisdóttir. Just what I need now,’ he moaned, reaching for the remote control that Sigurjóna whisked out of his reach.

  ‘I want to hear this,’ she snarled, increasing the volume.

  ‘. . . absolutely,’ the red-haired woman said, caught in mid-sentence. ‘On behalf of the Left-Green Alliance, I want to make it plain that there is every indication of completely unacceptable conduct from the Member of Parliament concerned and we will definitely be inquiring with the Prime Minister’s office as to when a full public hearing into Bjarni Jón Bjarnason’s conduct is due to be held.’

  ‘You’re referring to the collapse of the InterAlu project in his constituency?’

  ‘That and more,’ Ingunn Sverrisdóttir assured the camera in a clear, clipped voice. ‘I’m talking about conflicts between the national interest and the Minister’s own personal business interests. I’m talking about a full Parliamentary inquiry into misappropriation of public resources. I’m talking about a man elected to Parliament to look after the interests of his constituents who has blatantly misused his position to enrich himself.’

  ‘Strong allegations from Left-Green spokesperson Ingunn Sverrisdóttir. Thank you for your input and now back to the studio,’ a young man holding a microphone said as the camera swung back to show him and the red-haired woman standing outside the Parliament building.