Chilled to the Bone

by Quentin Bates

  ‘And you saw . . . ?

  He shrugged. ‘Just the same as Valeria described. The man was lying on the bed. I didn’t really take much notice other than to do the same as she did and check for a pulse. I couldn’t find one, so I made the 112 call from the front desk and noticed that Sveinn Ófeigsson was in the restaurant. So I asked him to come with me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call 112 from the room itself?’

  ‘I, er,’ Yngvi floundered. ‘I, er, just didn’t think of it. The man was dead, no doubt. I didn’t think a few seconds would make a difference.’

  Alerted by Yngvi’s obvious nervousness, Gunna instinctively pushed him harder. ‘This was at what time?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Around one, I think.’

  ‘The 112 call was made at 13.12,’ Gunna said, consulting her notes. ‘How long was it after finding the body before you called 112? Was it before or after Sveinn Ófeigsson went up to the room with you?’

  ‘Er, before.’

  ‘I take it Jóhannes Karlsson was overdue checking out of his room?’

  ‘He was. I had expected him to leave by twelve, as usual. He’s a regular guest so it wasn’t a problem that he was a little late. We try to be helpful here, you know,’ he said, bridling in defence.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m just trying to build up a picture of what went on here. He was supposed to check out around twelve. He didn’t show up, so what’s the normal procedure?’

  ‘Reception would call the room’s phone and ask if the guest has been delayed. If there’s no reply, they call again ten minutes later – in case the guest is, er, indisposed.’

  ‘Yup, in the shower or taking a dump, you mean? Then what?’

  ‘Then someone will knock and, if there’s no reply, they’ll enter the room. You understand, there have been cases of people sneaking out without paying, so it’s general policy to keep an eye on these things.’

  ‘Understood. But surely Jóhannes Karlsson wouldn’t do that?’ Gunna said, tapping her teeth with her pen. ‘Who would normally enter a guest’s room, in that case?’

  Yngvi shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Normally it would be the duty manager or a supervisor.’

  ‘And in this case it was a chambermaid?’

  ‘I don’t know what went wrong. I asked Ástrós to check the room at around one as Jóhannes Karlsson was due to check out and, as we’re busy at the moment, the room was needed tonight. Maybe she asked Valeria to knock and check. She’s been here for some time and is very competent and trustworthy. I haven’t yet had a chance to check with Ástrós, but I imagine the management will expect an enquiry into this.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re so nervous? Because the right procedures weren’t followed?’ Gunna asked and was rewarded with a tight-lipped frown.

  ‘You can draw your own conclusions,’ he snapped back and immediately apologized. ‘Sorry. It’s been a difficult day. Is there anything more I can help you with?’

  Hekla walked smartly past the trendy end of downtown Reykjavík and through the streets of the old western end of town. She had a spring in her step and cash in her pocket, her holdall slung over one shoulder as she enjoyed the crunch of the snow beneath her trainers.

  Her Toyota was parked discreetly in a residential street in front of a rambling old house that had been converted into a warren of tiny apartments. She had reckoned that with so many people living in the house, residents would assume the car belonged to a visitor in one of the other flats. She put a huge carrier bag from one of Reykjavík’s more expensive shops in the car’s boot and dropped her holdall next to it; a couple of small gift-wrapped packets nestled reassuringly in her jacket pocket.

  The car started with an effort. Giving it a minute for the engine to warm up and the fan to start circulating some warm air, she hunched low in the seat and looked around quickly. The street was deserted and as far as she could tell, nobody was looking out of the windows of the apartments she had parked by. The Toyota bumped along the street as Hekla headed through town, taking care not to drive too fast or too slowly but to look as if she were simply going home from the gym. In the queue of waiting traffic at the lights by Lækjargata, she turned the radio on, drumming the steering wheel with her thumbs in time to the music and trying not to peer towards the town centre.

  It was with relief that she saw the lights change to green and the traffic begin to move. She decided to go with the flow of traffic and let it take her through the city and out the other side, with a stop at one of the big supermarkets at the busiest time of the day to shop for the week’s groceries en route.

  She wondered if the two men had been set free yet, and how long it would be before their cards stopped working. The first one would have been found by now, she thought. The older guy would be furious; there had been no mistaking the virulence of the hatred in his stare, which was only magnified by his naked helplessness. But he would just have to lick his wounds and get over it, she decided, certain that the man could easily afford the relatively modest shopping spree he’d unwillingly funded.

  Fortunately she had already been to several cashpoints and had milked the cards of everything the machines would dispense after she had bought herself some expensive shoes and what she liked to think of as investments against a rainy day. The second guy’s cards had resulted in a good deal of cash and some more of the same expensive, understated gold and silver, which would keep its value in a safe deposit box.

  As the city centre disappeared behind her, Hekla relaxed at the wheel, feeling safer inside the cocoon of late afternoon traffic heading for the suburbs and listening to the wheels judder on the uneven road surface with its coat of gravel, thankful for the thick weather, which she wore like a disguise.

  She shopped in Krónan, filling her trolley with as much as she could, including two heavy pork joints that the family wouldn’t normally be able to afford, one for the weekend and one for the freezer for Pétur’s birthday. She chose the checkout with the youngest cashier, a gawky youth who looked as if he should still be in school, with glasses and a fuzz of soft teenage beard on his cheeks. He looked stressed and tired, and seemed unlikely to look too closely at a credit card, Hekla decided.

  He sneezed as she approached with the laden trolley.

  ‘Bless you,’ she said cheerfully.

  The young man blinked behind his thick glasses. ‘Thanks,’ he said, sniffing and swiping Hekla’s purchases rapidly past the till as she tried to keep up, stowing things into bags.

  ‘That’s seventy-one thousand, six hundred and eighty,’ the young man said as if the number were a single word, sniffing again and kneading the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb as Hekla handed a card across as if it were her own while she continued stowing tins and boxes into bags.

  ‘Sorry, it’s been rejected,’ the young man said. There was an almost audible sigh of irritation from the queue for the till.

  ‘What? It should be fine. I was paid yesterday and there’s plenty in there. Can you try it again?’

  He swiped it again and the queue, muffled in coats and hats against the New Year chill outdoors and steaming gently in the supermarket’s heat, shuffled its feet with palpable impatience until the young man shook his head.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What?’ Hekla said in anguish. ‘Hell, that useless bank must have been messing me about again. I promise there’s more than enough in there to cover it. Could you try again, or charge it manually? Please?’

  The young man shrugged and rubbed the card hard on his sleeve before swiping it through the machine a third time as the queue continued to fidget and sigh audibly.

  ‘Shit,’ the young man muttered with a glance at the impatient line of shoppers behind Hekla and the lengthening queues for every till in the shop, which snaked their way into the spaces between the aisles. He reached beneath the counter, came up with old-fashioned card-swipe machine and quickly made an imprint of the number.

  ‘Sign, please,’ he said as Hekla tre
ated him to the most dazzling smile she could manage and the queue let out a collective sigh of relief. She threaded the trolley quickly through the throng and out into the darkness.

  She was a tired woman with wisps of greying hair that floated around her face. She swept them back, and when she saw him the lines around her mouth became dimples and the fatigue vanished as a grin swept across her face. A second later Baddó’s face was crushed into her shoulder and she hugged him with an unexpected ferocity.

  ‘It’s still a surprise to see you here,’ she sighed, hugging him close a second time. ‘It’s so good to have you back after such a long time.’

  ‘I’m not sure yet if it’s good to be back,’ he said uncertainly, his nose sending him warning signals as he sneezed violently. He could feel his eyes start to sting and water.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ María asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Baddó said, shaking his head and sneezing a second time. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Of course. Hell, I’m really sorry, it slipped my mind,’ she said as Baddó splashed his face with cold water from the kitchen tap. ‘I stopped to see old Nina on the way home and her cat was all over me. I’d forgotten they make you sneeze.’

  ‘It’s all right, María,’ Baddó said, the sneezing fit over as she hung up her coat. ‘I’m wondering, how long do you think you can put up with me?’

  ‘You know you can stay here as long as you need,’ she said, straightening up from stacking packets in the fridge. ‘As long as . . . you know,’ she finished, lips pursed in disapproval.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said morosely. ‘Just wondering what I’m going to do here. It’s not as if there’s a demand for my skills.’

  María dealt cutlery and crockery onto the table like a croupier. ‘There’s work for those that want it.’

  ‘I’m not fussy, but my CV doesn’t look great.’

  ‘You’ll find something,’ María said, but Baddó caught the uncertain waver in her voice. ‘Sit down. I’m sure you’re hungry, aren’t you?’

  He munched a sandwich made with the heavy bread and solid, bland cheese that he remembered from his youth, while María spooned fragrant herring fillets onto a plate and sliced black rye bread, as thick and soft as any rich cake.

  ‘I expect you’ve missed this.’

  ‘María, I’ve been in prison for eight years,’ he said. ‘I’ve missed everything.’

  ‘Dad’s not well,’ she added, clearly wanting to change the subject. ‘I go and see him a couple of times a week now. There’s only so much he can do for himself these days.’

  Baddó nodded. Family matters were something he would have preferred to avoid discussing.

  ‘He wrote to me once. Sent it through the Foreign Affairs Ministry, or some such government department.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Aye. Just half a page to say that whatever situation I was in, it was nothing to do with him and that as far as he was concerned, I wasn’t his son any more. Just what you need when you’re looking at eight years of four concrete walls.’

  María said nothing, but Baddó could see that she was taken aback and the shadow of a tear slipped down her cheek.

  ‘So that’s that. How did they find you, then?’

  ‘It was someone from the prisons department. He said that you were being released and deported home. They’ve been keeping tabs on you, mostly because several of us have badgered the government to make sure you weren’t forgotten over there.’

  Baddó laid chunks of herring fillet on a slice of black bread and bit deep into it, lingering over the texture of the bread and revelling in the aroma of the pickled herring. He wondered if this was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted and thought that it might well be.

  ‘How’s Freyr?’ he asked. ‘You hear from him?’

  A spasm passed over María’s face. ‘Sometimes. He said he doesn’t want to see you right away and that he needs to square things in his mind that you’re back first.’

  Baddó nodded. ‘That’s more than I expected, I suppose. It’s not as if I’ve seen much of him.’

  ‘He changed his name. He’s Freyr Jónínuson now.’

  ‘Ach. Can’t say I’m surprised. Jónína always was a prissy bitch and I suppose she didn’t want him being Hróbjartsson after everything that happened back then. She found a new man, I suppose? Poor bastard, whoever he is.’

  ‘A word?’ Már said to Jóel Ingi as he passed his office, smiling at Hugrún, the human rights and gender equality officer, as she bustled along the corridor with a smile for everyone.

  ‘Hæ, Már, could you let me have yesterday’s reports when they’re ready, please?’ she asked, her smile fading. ‘Absolutely terrible what’s happened in Libya, don’t you think? It could be such a wonderful place if it were run properly. It could be Norway in Africa with all that wealth,’ she said sadly, continuing past him and hurrying past Ægir Lárusson’s lair.

  With Hugrún having faded into the distance, Már hissed. ‘You have a handle on this, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do. Look, I’ve asked someone to help out, discreetly.’

  ‘You’re not serious, surely? Who?’

  ‘A friend,’ Jóel Ingi said uncertainly. ‘It’s not as if we can expect the police to deal with this, can we? Or maybe we can? Just a friend. Someone who can be trusted.’

  ‘Jesus. I hope so. It had better be someone we can all trust. Otherwise . . .’ he jerked his head in the direction of the minister’s and his political adviser’s end of the office. ‘Otherwise you can have your balls ripped off and pickled instead of me.’

  Helgi yawned in front of the screen. The hotel manager’s office contained a computer that held all of the hotel’s CCTV footage and a plump middle-aged man was sitting alongside Helgi as he ploughed repeatedly through the same scenes.

  People scuttled across the screen at double their usual speed while Helgi’s companion, one of the reception staff, kept up a relentless commentary.

  ‘My dear, it’s quite amazing some of the things a person gets to see in a place like this. Especially at night. The graveyard shift can be most entertaining,’ he said with satisfaction.

  ‘You work nights as well, do you?’ Helgi asked, just to say something.

  ‘Oh, yes. I prefer the night porter’s shift. I’m the lord of all I survey at night when all the stuffed shirts are asleep,’ he said with a wink that Helgi missed as his eyes were on the screen. He froze the picture.

  He pointed at a figure standing at the reception desk. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘That gentleman is a Russian businessman. He’s something to do with herring, I believe. A regular winter visitor to these shores.’

  Helgi set the sequence to run again and watched the crowd around the reception desk, only looking up briefly as Gunna came into the room quietly and pulled up a chair behind them.

  ‘Any joy, Helgi?’

  ‘Nobody so far that . . . I’m sorry. Your name’s slipped my mind . . .’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Gústav Freysteinn Bóasson, at your service. Known to his friends as Gústav and the staff and clientele of this place as Gussi,’ he replied grandly, waving a hand to indicate his surroundings. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Me? I’m Gunna.’

  ‘Known as detective sergeant Gunnhildur to us food soldiers,’ Helgi added wryly. ‘Who’s that character?’

  Gussi hooked a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles onto one ear at a time and peered at the screen. ‘Ach,’ he said dismissively, ‘that’s nobody.’

  ‘And what do you mean by “nobody”?’ Gunna asked sharply and saw Gussi flinch at her tone.

  ‘He works in the bar. He’s a rather silly young man by the name of Kolbeinn, I believe.’

  ‘Here,’ Helgi interrupted. ‘That’s Jóhannes Karlsson, isn’t it?’ The black-and-white figure moved jerkily through the lobby, looked from side to side and disappeared from view. ‘Gussi, where does that door lead?’

  ‘That leads to the b
ar. It’s quiet at that time of the morning.’

  ‘You were on duty this morning. Didn’t you notice him?’ Helgi asked, pausing the replay.

  ‘I may have,’ Gústav shrugged. ‘I was at the reception desk and we were quite busy. I can’t keep tabs on every person who walks through the lobby,’ he said without hiding his impatience.

  ‘Is there CCTV in the bar?’

  ‘There most certainly is. In this city, Big Brother is everywhere.’

  ‘All right,’ Helgi said with immense patience. ‘How do I switch this machine here to the recording from the camera in the bar?’

  ‘Choose number six from the menu at the top.’

  Glasses on the end of his nose as he switched camera, Helgi grunted with satisfaction as almost instantly Jóhannes Karlsson appeared in view. He was a tall, broad man with a deliberate way of walking. The camera caught him stalking across the empty restaurant and taking a seat at a low table where he opened a newspaper. A minute later a waiter appeared and spoke to him briefly.

  ‘No sound on this, I don’t suppose?’ Gunna asked.

  ‘It’s just supposed to be good enough to recognize faces,’ Helgi said, eyes on the screen. ‘This is exciting, isn’t it, watching someone reading the paper. Gussi, what’s the waiter’s name? The guy he spoke to just then?’

  ‘As I told you only a minute ago, that young man is Kolbeinn, one of the lowly staff like myself who keep this ship on an even keel.’

  ‘Kolbeinn,’ Helgi wrote down. ‘Whose -son?’

  ‘Ah, there I fear I fail you. Yngvi will be able to tell you his name, patronymic, his mother’s name and his ancestry going back eight generations.’

  Helgi directed a sideways glance at Gunna and lifted his eyebrows with a despairing shake of the head.

  ‘Ah, company,’ Gunna said, looking past Helgi to the screen. ‘Gussi, did you notice this?’

  All three of them watched as Jóhannes Karlsson folded and put down his newspaper, standing up as a woman approached him. They shook hands and both sat down, Jóhannes Karlsson at ease in his chair, looking towards the camera, while the back of the woman’s head faced the lens. All Gunna could see was a black coat with a high collar and fair hair that spilled over it. The two sat and talked for a few minutes before Jóhannes Karlsson beckoned the same waiter as before and sat back. As far as could be seen on the grainy footage, he was smiling.