Summerchill

by Quentin Bates

  A banging on the door took him by surprise. Logi didn’t make a point of encouraging visitors. He wondered whether or not to just ignore it when the hammering was repeated, louder this time and determined. He slid open the drawer and dropped the loaded revolver into it before he stood up.

  The door burst in on him the moment he had sprung the lock, and he found himself pushed back into the hall by the sheer bulk of the unfeasibly broad-shouldered man bearing down on him.

  ‘Logi?’ The man asked. ‘Logi Gunnarsson?’

  ‘Depends who’s asking, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Make your fucking mind up,’ the man said, shaking him like a puppy and grinning at the same time. ‘It’s time to pay a few debts, Logi.’

  ‘No money,’ Logi choked, the front of his shirt bunched in the big man’s fists as he felt himself slammed against a wall.

  The man’s rush into the narrow hallway had taken him completely by surprise, and while his temper would normally have flared up instantly, Logi found himself too preoccupied with the essential business of breathing to fight back. The big man’s grip began to slacken slightly and, with his feet swinging clear of the ground, Logi hauled down a lungful of air, his hands clamped on the big man’s fists, which were around his neck. Strong though he was, he wasn’t able to move the man’s vast hands an inch.

  ‘What the fuck are you after?’ he finally gasped.

  ‘Time to pay your debts, little man,’ the monster growled. ‘You know as well as I do who you owe, so you’d better have it ready tomorrow. Same time.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Logi spat and kicked out. If he hadn’t taken off his heavy work boots, he could have done some real damage, but his toe collided with the inside of the big man’s thigh, and Logi saw his black eyes widen in surprise and anger. He felt himself lifted a little higher, pulled clear of the wall and then slammed hard back into it, knocking the breath out of him. As he gasped and struggled to breathe, he was slammed back a second time before being dropped in a heap on the floor.

  The big man stood over him, breathing hard. It was a long time since anyone had even thought to stand up to him and he was affronted that this idiot should try. He extended a foot and gave Logi a dig in the ribs.

  ‘Had enough, have you?’

  ‘Who sent you?’ Logi spluttered, gulping down lungfuls of air and gasping.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  He coughed as the big man stood back to admire his handiwork and check out the contents of the ugly little house. Logi rolled to one side and found himself wedged against his toolboxes, the two drill cases and the old-fashioned open toolbox. Still gasping for breath, he glared at the big man, who was peering into the kitchen, and reached a hand into the toolbox.

  ‘Tell me who sent you?’ he repeated and coughed, rolling back. ‘If you want a load of notes off me, then at least tell me where it’s going.’

  Logi was hunched in a ball on the ground when the big man came back and leaned over him.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you, shit-for-brains,’ he said carefully, as if he were weighing his words. His voice dropped to a purr. ‘But she’s a pretty little thing, a proper pretty little thing.’

  Logi fought to control his fury as it welled up inside him, but the thought of Sandra sending an enforcer to get money out of him was too much. He rolled over, lashing out with the claw hammer he had lifted from the box. The big man’s scream of pain was surprisingly high-pitched for such a macho character, Logi thought afterwards. The shock of the delicate bones across the top of his foot being shattered was a sharper pain than the big man could have imagined, and coloured lights flashed in front of his eyes as Logi jerked the hammer from the neat hole its head had punched through the expensive training shoe and deep into the foot just behind the toes.

  He was on his feet by the time the big man had gathered his wits, alternately whimpering and growling, stepping gingerly on his ruined foot as his hands curled into fists.

  ‘You’ll fucking pay for that,’ he swore, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘You’ll be paying for that for the rest of your life,’ he added, hobbling towards Logi, with one hand against the wall to steady himself and the other reaching forward to pin him against the front door. The loathing on the big man’s face was rapidly replaced by astonishment a moment before he keeled over backwards, landing with a crash that made the floorboards shiver, with Logi’s claw hammer buried in the middle of his forehead.

  Logi sat back on the floor and surveyed the wreck of the enforcer filling the narrow hallway. The man lay flat on his back, arms spread wide, and Logi wondered what to do next. Calling the police didn’t even enter his head as he ran through the list of people who might help him out once he’d decided that moving the muscle-bound body alone was going to be too much for him.

  Tadeusz answered on the first ring. ‘Hey, Logi. All right?’

  ‘No, not all right. I really need some help. Can you get to my place right away?’

  There was silence for a moment before Tadeusz replied cautiously. ‘Sure. Problem?’

  ‘Yeah. Bring Marek as well. Wear gloves.’

  Logi finished the call abruptly. He got to his feet, stepped over the big man to get to the kitchen and turned on the cold tap, letting water gush into a glass. He drank it down quickly and splashed more water on his face.

  He found a pair of work gloves in his toolbox, knelt by the body and went through its pockets. A bunch of keys in the trouser pocket included a fat car key, and Logi realized there must be a vehicle outside. He went to the cracked living-room window and peered through it, reminding himself that he needed to fix it before winter as he clicked the button on the fob and saw the lights of a silver Outlander flash in response.

  Cool, he thought. Easier to dispose of a car with a body in it than a body on its own, he decided.

  The search through the body’s jacket pockets yielded a set of polished brass knuckles, a wad of notes rolled into a tube, a small bag of white powder and a wallet.

  Logi examined the man’s driving licence and flipped through a few other shiny cards: visa and bank cards, several gym memberships and photos of a pneumatic blonde wearing what appeared to be not much more than a few lengths of white string.

  His name’s Axel Rútur Karlsson, he thought, and wondered if anyone other than the pneumatic young woman would be likely to miss the man before morning.

  A knock at the door startled him.

  ‘Logi?’

  He sighed with relief at the sound of Tadeusz’s voice and opened the door to usher him and Marek inside.

  Tadeusz’s eyes widened and his mouth opened as he saw the leather-jacketed bear of a man on the floor.

  ‘Hey, Logi? You did this, man?’

  ‘Yep. The bastard tried to rob me. We had a fight and my hammer won.’

  ‘A good carpenter always has a hammer close by,’ the normally silent Marek said, laughing silently at his own joke.

  ‘So what are we here for, Logi?’ Tadeusz asked. ‘Why don’t you call the police? This is self-defence, surely?’

  ‘No. No police. This guy’s an enforcer who collects debts. He has to vanish, like he was never here.’

  Tadeusz and Marek exchanged glances, and Marek nodded.

  ‘Where his car?’ Marek demanded.

  ‘In the street. The silver one in front of my pickup.’

  Marek held his hand out and Logi dropped the key into it.

  ‘We take this,’ he said darkly, and disappeared out of the door. Logi heard the Outlander start and a moment later its engine was growling in his driveway, as close to the house as it could get without leaving tyre marks on the scrubby grass.

  Tadeusz and Marek lifted the body between them and bundled it roughly into the boot of the car, slamming the door shut, then Marek locked it with the key.

  ‘Where are you taking him?’ Logi asked.

  ‘Don’t ask. Anyone ask, you don’t know,’ Marek replied shortly. ‘His pockets. You take anything?’

  �
�I put it all back,’ Logi said, suddenly feeling helpless with the problem taken so swiftly out of his hands. ‘Except this,’ he added, pulling the wad of notes from his trouser pocket and handing it to Marek. ‘You’d best have this.’ Tadeusz grinned.

  ‘Get some sleep, Logi. We fix this,’ he said. ‘See you at eight.’

  ‘Let’s make it nine tomorrow, shall we?’

  Marek shook his head. ‘Usual time. Everything usual. No changes,’ he decreed, getting into the Outlander and starting the engine. Logi watched Marek swing the big car off his driveway and into the distance, with Tadeusz following in his Volkswagen, and then he set about clearing up the hallway that Axel Rútur Karlsson had wrecked during his brief visit.

  Friday

  He ached the next morning, and when he got to work Marek and Tadeusz were waiting for him. Marek tapped his wrist and shook his head.

  ‘Morning, guys. Thanks for last night.’

  ‘No problem,’ Tadeusz said with a grin.

  ‘Where did you leave him?’

  Marek scowled. ‘We do not talk of this,’ he said quietly. ‘Forget it. Forget it all. Like nothing happened.’

  ‘Suits me,’ Logi admitted. The beating he had received the day before was not something he wanted to dwell on and he didn’t feel a shred of guilt at the death of the man who he felt clearly had no scruples when it came to extracting money. Nevertheless, he wondered how long it would be before there would be some comeback in the form of awkward questions being asked.

  The two Polish boys set to work, while Logi called Danni, whose phone rang until a disembodied voice asked him to try again later. He wanted to know what was going on and if there needed to be an office in the corner, as the nameless headset guy had suggested.

  He quickly sent Danni a text message ordering him to call him, and joined the other two as they formed a chain placing the new ceiling panels in place.

  When Danni finally arrived, he looked tired and worried.

  ‘There was a guy here last night, ponytail, leather jacket, drives a van?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep. Started poking around and wouldn’t say who he was,’ Logi replied, his sense of humour at a low ebb and less inclined than usual to take much notice of Danni’s worries. ‘So I told him to piss off and talk to the contracts guy, which is you, isn’t it?’

  Danni wrung his hands. ‘That was Rafn. He gave me a right rocket just now.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Logi said, handing up another panel and calling to Tadeusz. ‘That’s it. We’ll leave the rest of them clear for the moment so Marek can fix the lights. Sorry, Danni. Working men and all that. So tell me who this Rafn character is, will you?’

  ‘He’s only the guy who’s paying for all this,’ Danni almost screamed.

  ‘Well, he should have said so. Then I wouldn’t have assumed he was snooper from the tax office or some such scum. Anyway, what’s his problem? He said something about knocking up some kind of a cubbyhole over there on the far side, or was that just bullshit? To be honest, I didn’t take a lot of notice of him.’

  ‘That’s right. They want an office over there. It doesn’t have to be big, just room for one desk and a few filing cabinets.’

  Logi got down from the stepladder. ‘Take a break, boys,’ he told Tadeusz and Marek, who didn’t need to be told twice.

  ‘Danni, listen. One, we have no extra materials to build an office. Two, we’re on a tight schedule already. If they want an office, fine, but it means buying the materials for it right now, today, and it’ll mean an extra half a million as we’ll have to put in a lot of extra hours to meet their deadline and I’ll have to give the boys another two hundred thousand each,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they’ll just walk off the job, and whoever your client is will be completely fucked.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Logi. Don’t you know who Rafn is?’

  Helgi took the call with his feet on the desk, blithely ignoring Gunna’s glare. It was a hot day and he had a fan playing over his workspace, which he switched off as he planted his feet back on the floor.

  ‘What’s that? Last night?’ She heard him ask and cocked an ear towards him.

  Helgi scribbled on a notepad as he listened, taking notes, his eyes glazed by the summer heat rapidly returning to their normal intelligent sparkle.

  ‘All right. Yes, I hear what you’re saying. Last night? Normally someone isn’t a missing person until they haven’t been seen for twenty-four hours, so that’ll be eight tonight? That’s when you saw him last?’

  Gunna sat back and the report she was typing was forgotten as Helgi jotted down details.

  ‘So this is out of character?’ He paused and listened, scratched his head with the blunt end of a pencil, then frowned. ‘All right. I’ll be along to see you in an hour or so. The car’s registration? And your address? OK, no problem. Give me a call if he shows up, otherwise I’ll see you in an hour. Thanks, bye,’ he said and put the phone down.

  Gunna eyed him as he clicked at his computer.

  ‘Gunna, where the hell is Straumsbær?’ he asked, peering at his computer screen.

  ‘Helgi, how many years have you lived in Reykjavík?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Almost twenty, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ach, well. All these new streets look the same. Up in Árbær? Near the museum, d’you think?’

  ‘That’s the place. Why, what was that about?’

  ‘Got it. Looks like a cul-de-sac with a block of flats on each side,’ Helgi said. ‘A young woman’s worried about where her boyfriend has got to. She hasn’t seen him since he went out around eight last night, saying he’d be back in an hour.’

  ‘Name?’

  Helgi looked at his notes. ‘Axel Rútur Karlsson. Aged twenty-eight. Drives a silver Outlander, which is also missing.’

  Gunna yawned, looked at her watch and clicked save. ‘In that case, I’ll leave Axel Rútur Karlsson to you,’ she said as her computer powered down. ‘I need to get to Hagkaup and then home. You’d best run this guy through the system and put out an alert for his car.’

  ‘Doing it now,’ Helgi said. ‘And bingo . . . !’

  Gunna stretched, pulled on her jacket and walked over to stand behind Helgi as the missing man’s driving licence photo appeared on the screen.

  ‘A proper ugly bastard,’ Helgi said, tapping at the keyboard and looking at the black hair and thin beard on a beefy face. ‘And he has a record. How nice. One threatening behaviour and one assault.’ He scowled. ‘Sounds like a delightful customer.’

  ‘Come on, Helgi. Look at the dates. He’s been clean for seven years. Chances are those were some drunken exploits and he’s a squeaky-clean systems analyst today.’

  ‘We shall see, Gunna. We shall see.’

  ‘Good luck, anyway. Fill me in on it in the morning. I have an urgent appointment with poached salmon and home-made mayonnaise á la Steini, so the last thing I want is a crisis right now. If you can look after it, then some of us will be very happy.’

  ‘Caught it himself, I suppose?’ Helgi asked and Gunna waited for him to lick his lips before she waved and left.

  He was furious, telling himself yet again that anything that involved Danni was always bound to involve a cash-flow problem, plenty of excuses and delays and an unhappy customer somewhere. They had made good time with the job so far. The ceiling was up and Marek had the lights all working behind the frosted panels. The windows had been fixed and he had stopped the leaks in the vast showroom window that filled the front of the building. The doors had been rubbed down and painted, and all the locks had been changed.

  Logi counted out the keys onto rings, each one marked for the door it fitted, six keys to a ring. He patted his pocket where he had put the spare key for the side door. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had done it, but for some reason one of the locks had come with seven keys instead of the six that had been ordered, so he pocketed the extra one.

  The job looked like it was almost finished; the two Polish boys had worked hard. No
w they were sweeping up, as they always did, after which there was a pause as the three of them waited for Danni to show up as promised.

  Tadeusz propped the broom against the wall and sat down on an upturned crate. ‘What’s the score, Logi? Do you know about these extra walls yet?’

  ‘Nope. No idea. Danni should be here by now. Is it a problem for you?’

  Tadeusz shrugged. ‘I don’t mind. Extra work is extra money.’

  ‘And Marek?’ Logi asked, dropping his voice slightly.

  ‘He’s flying home for a holiday the day after tomorrow. So I guess if there’s work tomorrow, fine. After that it’ll be just you and me.’

  When Danni did arrive, he wasn’t alone and he didn’t look happy. This time the headset guy took off his shades, smiled and shook Logi’s hand.

  ‘Hæ, I’m Rafn.’

  ‘Logi. Sorry about the other day,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘No problem. Danni explained, and you were quite right. You didn’t know who I was.’

  He draped an arm around Logi’s shoulders and walked him away from the group, leaving Danni standing awkwardly with Tadeusz.

  ‘Listen, Danni hasn’t handled this quite as well as we were hoping. He’s a good guy, but, y’know?’

  ‘Yeah. I know Danni of old.’

  ‘This was part of the package from the start and he should have told you before you started the job, all right? The plan was for the showroom and the office to be fitted out. Danni said he knew someone he could trust to do a good job, not cut any corners, and who wasn’t too keen to give anything extra to the taxman. Am I right?’

  ‘Right enough,’ Logi agreed.

  ‘So, we still need the office in the corner,’ Rafn said. ‘I’m asking you, Logi. Can you do it? Can you finish the job?’

  ‘I reckon so. But we’d have to start right away. I’m working up country on Monday. So’s Tadeusz, and Marek’s leaving the country on Sunday.’

  ‘So if you start right away, can you get it finished?’

  ‘I reckon so. If the price is right,’ he said, feeling Rafn stiffen.