Terje’s eyes twinkled with suppressed curiosity. ‘I’m not asking any questions,’ he added. ‘And if anyone asks, you’re the new grease monkey and I know nothing about you. OK?’
Hårde grinned. The shipboard smells of salt, paint and the lingering aroma of burnt lube oil were already bringing his navy days back to him.
‘Absolutely fine by me, Terje. When are we sailing?’
‘As soon as the engineer tells me everything’s warmed up and ready to go. So you’d better be ready to chuck off the ropes in ten minutes. If that’s all right with you?’
The question was asked in a reserved tone, as if Terje were not entirely sure whether to treat Hårde as a passenger or one of the crew.
The door at the back of the bridge opened and banged back against the bulkhead. A dark man in an overall that had once been white appeared.
‘OK?’ Terje asked.
The man just grunted and left the way he had come.
‘That’s Kalle, our chief engineer. Actually, our only engineer. On deck in half an hour. Trude’ll get you some wet weather gear as well. We’ve already eaten, but I expect she’ll find you a bite once we’ve sailed,’ Terje said with finality, indicating that Hårde’s induction into the crew was over as far as he was concerned.
Apart from the buzz of conversation and ringing phones elsewhere in the building that permeated the thin plasterboard walls, the incident room was quiet. Snorri and Bára were at their computer terminals, trying not to disturb Gunna, who growled down every attempt at conversation. The evening before they and officers from the Reykjavík force had been to every hotel in and around Reykjavík and come away with nothing.
‘Come on then. Is there anything?’ she demanded, finally breaking her own silence as the other two almost sighed with relief.
‘Nothing, chief,’ Snorri admitted. ‘No sightings that can’t be accounted for.’
‘It seems the bloody man’s disappeared,’ Gunna grumbled. Her head was aching and she was certain she had the makings of a cold coming on. She wondered idly if Gísli and his girlfriend were still at the house in Hvalvík. This one seems a bit more serious than the others, she thought. Seems a pleasant enough girl, but a redhead? That means temper.
‘Any news?’
‘What?’ She spun her chair around to find Vilhjálmur standing by the door that he had opened silently. ‘Sorry, Vilhjálmur. Didn’t hear you come in.’
‘Just wondering if you have any news?’ he asked softly. ‘The Minister has asked to be kept informed.’
‘No, I’m afraid everything’s gone cold. The truck we’re sure our boy disappeared in has vanished. We haven’t had a sighting anywhere that can’t be explained in two minutes and frankly we have nothing to go on.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’ He cleared his throat softly.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Snorri said, stepping up to where Vilhjálmur was standing in front of the large whiteboard on the wall. He set to work with a marker, reading information off a sheet of paper in his hand and filling in the gaps.
‘What do you have there?’
‘Shipping movements,’ Snorri replied without stopping.
‘Very good.’
‘That’s about all we have to go on,’ Gunna explained. ‘What is there, Snorri?’
‘There’s Starlight, a freighter sailing from Grundartangi at midnight,’ he read out, still writing. ‘There’s Beinta, a Faroese trawler leaving Hafnarfjördur at ten tonight and a couple of Russian trawlers, also in Hafnarfjördur, which haven’t decided when to leave yet,’ Snorri read off the screen. ‘Then there’s a freighter called Juno Provider docked at Skarfanes last night, no information on when they’re leaving, and a yacht that called at Hvalvík this morning and is still there. There’s a reefer called Wilhelmina due in Grindavík at six tomorrow morning, due out at six in the evening, and there are three cruise liners calling at and sailing from Reykjavík in the next forty-eight hours, the last ones of the year, I reckon. Want me to look any further afield?’
‘All foreign shipping?’ Vilhjálmur asked.
‘There isn’t any Icelandic shipping any more,’ Gunna said, yawning. ‘It’s all flagged out these days. Snorri, how about flights?’
‘Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as air traffic control is aware. They’ve been asked to alert us as soon as there’s anything other than routine commercial traffic.’
Vilhjálmur coughed again. ‘Without putting pressure on you and your team, Gunnhildur, we will have to scale back soon if there are no results.’
Normally Gunna would have wanted to argue from the sheer force of habit of wanting to hear the chief inspector’s voice go up an octave, but she thought better of it.
‘Probably right, Vilhjálmur. If he doesn’t show up soon, we can be sure he’s slipped past us. I’d like to keep this running to the middle of the week, if that’s OK with you and the accountant? But in the meantime, I really want a word with Sigurjóna Huldudóttir again. I’m convinced she knows how and where to find Hårde.’
‘We’ll look at costs on Monday,’ he said frostily. ‘Are you certain that Sigurjóna can tell you more?’
Gunna fumed inwardly at the man’s trepidation. ‘I’m bloody positive. She’s the kind of woman you’d know was lying even if she only said good morning. Look, if she’s going to put in a formal complaint about harassment, we may as well make it worth her while. She’s the only real link we have to Hårde, apart from her sister, who’s sunning herself somewhere warm.’
‘If you absolutely have to,’ he snapped back, turning to make for the door. ‘But you don’t have my approval. It’s absolutely your responsibility,’ he added as a parting shot.
‘Snorri, can you check on that yacht in Hvalvík harbour?’ Gunna asked.
‘Yup. Will do.’
‘First get on to Akranes and ask them to get themselves out to Grundartangi and check on . . .’ She consulted the list of shipping movements on the wall. ‘Starlight. OK? And it wouldn’t do any harm if customs could give it an extra going over. The same goes for the reefer docking in Grindavík tomorrow.’
‘What about the other shipping?’ Bára asked.
‘I’m not too worried about fishing vessels, especially the Russian ones, unless our man wants to spend three months on Flemish Cap.’
‘Shall I check out the one at Skarfanes, Gunna?’ Snorri asked. ‘It looks interesting.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just along the coast. There’s only the fishmeal plant there and nothing else. Nobody ever goes there except the staff. It’s pretty busy during the capelin season, but that was over months ago and it’s probably quiet now.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘My dad worked there until he retired.’
‘Bára, I’d like you to come with me to grill Sigurjóna and we’ll look in at Skarfanes on the way.’
‘Sure,’ Bára yawned.
‘Snorri, my boy. Man the barricades, will you? Won’t be long.’
Sigurjóna was late. She normally made a point of keeping people waiting for a minute or two, as it reinforced the image she liked to project of being constantly busy. This time traffic had held her up and she was later than usual stepping from the lift and punching in the code to open the office door.
She could hear the hum of voices from her own office and frowned.
‘Good morning, can I help you?’ asked a girl she didn’t recognize from behind the reception desk.
‘I’d like to know who’s in my office,’ Sigurjóna snarled back.
‘You must be Sigurjóna?’ the girl asked sweetly, not waiting for a reply. ‘Ingólfur Hrafn is here and he’s waiting in your office for you.’
Sigurjóna’s anger deflated. She could hardly bawl out the man who had stepped in to keep her company afloat. ‘All right. Your name is?’
‘Bergdís,’ the girl replied and Sigurjóna filed the name away for future reference before adjusting her winning smile. She swept into her own office to
see Ingólfur Hrafn, Ósk Líndal and a skinny man she knew but couldn’t place sitting there.
‘Golli,’ she trilled as the bear-like man in a fashionable suit over a brilliant white T-shirt rose from her chair to meet her. ‘So sorry I was held up, you know what Friday traffic is like.’
They went through the formality of exaggerated air kisses before the big man stepped back.
‘Delighted you could make it,’ he said in a tone devoid of any delight. ‘I thought we’d better meet straight away to get things on track again, so I’ve asked Ósk and Reynir Óli to join us.’
The thin man with a scrap of beard in the middle of his chin rose to his feet and extended a hand.
‘Great to see you again. We met at the PR awards a few days ago,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m looking forward to working alongside you.’
‘Alongside?’ Sigurjóna mouthed soundlessly.
The big man grinned. ‘You know Reynir Óli? I’ve brought him across from Dagurinn and he’ll be reporting to me on progress at Spearpoint,’ he said.
‘But I thought—’
‘You know what it’s like when you take on a company, Sigurjóna. A new owner always wants to have his own eyes and ears about the place to get the feel of things. Don’t worry about it, business as usual, darling. I’m staying in the background.’
Sigurjóna caught the despair in Ósk’s eyes as she looked about the room.
‘Nice office,’ Reynir Óli said appreciatively, taking in the view. ‘I’m going to like it here and I’m sure we’ll get on just fine.’
Sigurjóna pulled herself together with an effort and her steely smile returned.
‘I’m sure we will,’ she purred.
The figure in black overalls and black helmet walked along the quay in the loose-hipped manner of a man carrying a weapon to where a maelstrom of water was being kicked up by the Juno Provider’s propeller going half ahead with the rudder hard over. The ship’s stern inched away from the quayside and suddenly the roaring of the engine died away. The man in black walked further along the quay towards where the bow was still anchored to the land by a forespring and a bow rope. A tall deckhand in an orange survival suit and helmet stood looking over at the man in black and beyond him at the track leading down to the little factory from the main road.
The squad car bumped down the track and came to a halt yards from the top of the dock, as another black-suited figure in a helmet stepped in front of it with one hand held up.
‘Who are you?’ the figure asked gruffly.
‘I could ask you the same,’ Gunna replied. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Who are you? What’s your authority?’
‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, Hvalvík police. And who might you be?’
The man stepped back and moved quickly in front of the police car, muttering into a microphone built into his helmet. Gunna drummed her fingers on the wheel, gradually losing patience as she could see Juno Provider’s funnel dribbling smoke at the quayside below.
‘I’m sorry. This is a security zone and I have no authority to let you through.’
‘Don’t talk such rubbish. This is a fishmeal factory, not a terrorist cell, now get out of the way, will you?’
Bára’s eyes widened as she saw the man swing one shoulder back and push a small machine pistol forward within reach.
‘Gunna, he’s got a gun. Who are these guys?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t like this. This may well be the fast response team we’re supposed to be able to call on, and if this fuckwit doesn’t get out of the way, I’m going to run the bugger over.’
She put her head out of the window. ‘Hey! Get out of the way, will you?’
The man made no move to step aside and Gunna put the second-best Volvo into gear to let it roll gently forward. The man put a hand on his weapon and reappeared at the car’s window.
‘This is a security area and you have no authority,’ he repeated in the same grim voice.
‘Look, mate, some of us have work to do. Bára, ring Vilhjálmur, will you, and tell him to call these cowboys off.’
‘You don’t have clearance,’ the man repeated, head lowered so close to the car’s open window that Gunna caught a whiff of his bad breath. Suddenly he shot a hand inside and made a grab for the keys in the ignition. As he did so, Gunna took her foot off the clutch and the car shot forward.
***
Hårde stiffened. He was sweating under the plastic helmet in spite of the rain and the chill wind. He saw the squad car come hurtling along the quay. The bow rope had already been taken off and he was furiously hand-over-handing it through the fairlead into a coil on the deck. He glanced over his shoulder to see Terje at the bridge window look down at him impassively. The engine roared again and the spring rope tightened as the angle between the ship and the quay increased. The ship strained against the rope and the squad car rolled to a halt on the quayside. Hårde saw the fat policewoman and a smaller one emerge from the car and stride across the concrete apron of the dock just as the engine noise again died away. The spring rope suddenly fell slack as a second man in black appeared from the shadow of the building that ran the length of the quay.
‘Don’t let that rope go, you hear me?’ Gunna yelled. The man casually raised the machine pistol slung over his shoulder and trained it on the Juno Provider’s bridge windows as two more men appeared. Gunna wondered where they were springing from.
The first man waved to the bridge, pointing to indicate that the ship should be brought back alongside, while the other two trained their weapons on the group standing around the mooring lines on its foredeck.
The ship’s engines rumbled as the spring tightened again and the ship gently came back to its berth. A gangplank was swung ashore and scraped across the concrete before it came to rest.
On the foredeck, Hårde was trying to understand what had happened. The fat policewoman had obviously been closer on his tail than he had thought, although he had carefully not underestimated the woman’s tenacity.
He looked across the narrowing gap at the trio on the quay and looked directly into the fat policewoman’s furious eyes as she lifted one hand and pointed a finger at him like a gun. He saw her turn her attention to the black-clad man.
‘What’s going on here?’ Gunna demanded.
‘I don’t have to say anything. You don’t have authority to be on this site. Leave, now, or I’ll have you escorted off.’
Boiling with fury, Gunna drew herself up to her full height, and wagged a finger at the man. ‘I’ve a bloody good mind to have you charged with hindering a police officer in the course of duty. So don’t you try lecturing me, sonny. D’you hear me? That man is a wanted criminal and it’s my duty to arrest him.’
She pointed at Hade, standing motionless on the Juno Provider’s foredeck with the rest of the crew.
‘Leave the site immediately,’ the man repeated.
‘Special Unit, my arse. Bunch of tin soldiers wasting taxpayers’ money and getting in the bloody way.’
The man ignored her and shouted up to the ship. ‘All of you, come down the gangway one at a time, slowly.’
The group from the foredeck trooped down nervously, with Hårde in the middle of the group and Terje bringing up the rear.
‘Who are you?’ the man demanded of each one. ‘Which of you is Hårde? And who is the captain?’
Terje stepped forward, and Gunna had to restrain herself from lunging at Hårde as he stepped out of the group. Even with a gun trained on him, the man radiated a quiet menace that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. The Special Unit officer motioned for two of his men to escort Hårde while he spoke abruptly to Terje in rapid Norwegian.
As they spoke, a black van appeared from the far end of the fishmeal plant. Hårde took off his plastic helmet and smiled coldly at Gunna and Bára where they stood helplessly glaring at the men with machine pistols cradled nonchalantly in their hands.
Terje hurried back up the gangway to th
e ship, followed by the rest of the crew, not looking at where Hårde stood quietly between his escorts. The black van drew up and one of them opened the rear. The Juno Provider’s gangway was quickly swung aboard and the engines rumbled as the ship again strained at its spring rope.
Gunna watched helplessly while the ugly little ship gracefully swung around. The propeller began to bite as the ship moved forward and around out of the bay.
‘Keep back,’ the Special Unit officer warned Gunna and Bára as they watched Hårde taking a seat in the van, still with two guns covering him. As the doors slammed shut, the officer slapped the side twice and it pulled away along the quay before he turned to face Gunna.
‘Where the hell are you taking that bastard? Have you any idea who that man is or what he’s done?’ she raged.
‘I’m following orders. I can’t comment,’ the man replied in an expressionless voice.
‘What orders?’
‘No comment.’
‘Look here, that man is a known criminal and wanted in connection with three murders. On what authority have you detained him?’ she demanded, wagging a finger under the man’s nose. Bára held her breath, keenly aware that the man still had a gun in his hand.
‘I can’t tell you anything. I don’t have to answer any questions.’
The finger wagging under the man’s nose became an open palm and Gunna suddenly gave the man’s chest a shove that took him by surprise. He stepped back quickly, trying to keep his balance, but his heel caught the bollard on the quayside and he toppled backwards, spread his arms wide for a moment and was gone.
Gunna peered over the edge at the man treading water far below her.
‘Can you swim, mate?’ she called down to the man glaring balefully up at her, but he said nothing.
‘There’s a ladder up there,’ Gunna said, pointing along the quay to where a set of weed-covered iron rungs emerged from the water.
‘Well, Bára, I think it might be best if we were off. Special Unit seems to have everything under control here.’
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