‘Far too much of a coincidence. So now we need to find this Logi Gunnarsson, preferably before Stefán does. And the best bit?’
‘Go on. Don’t keep a chap in suspense.’
‘Sawdust. The man’s a carpenter.’
‘Bingo.’
‘So where do we find him?’
‘You tell me, Helgi. You’re the detective. He’s not at home. He owns a pickup that we ought to put out an alert for. I’ve emailed you his driving licence photo.’
‘Wife? Parents? Where does he work?’
‘Good luck finding them. Oh, and his phone’s switched off. So if you have any ideas where Stefán could be, then be my guest. He’s the priority, considering he’s our prime suspect for the murder of Axel Rútur.’
Helgi screwed up his face. ‘I still don’t like it. Let’s suppose that maybe Logi Gunnarsson had something to do with the murder, which is why Stefán’s pursuing him?’
‘That could well be. But if we find Stefán, we can hold him indefinitely for the assault on Brynja. If we find Logi, we can only ask him awkward questions unless there’s something solid to link him to Axel Rútur.’
‘On the other hand, if we find Logi, then Stefán probably won’t be far away.’
The old man was wrapped up in spite of the heat, and he ignored Gunna while eyeing Helgi with undisguised suspicion. He coughed wetly into a handkerchief and folded it back into the pocket of his cardigan. The coffee table in front of him was arrayed with a variety of cold cures in glass bottles.
‘What are you looking for then, young man?’ he asked in a voice that was close to a whine. ‘Don’t you know I’m retired?’
‘Yeah, right,’ Helgi said. ‘When you retire’s the day the deepest level of hell will reopen a skating rink.’
Gunna stood in the doorway and cast her eye over the cramped, overheated room with its knick-knacks on the shelves. Helgi sat down in the other armchair without being invited.
‘You’re still in business, Alli, and there’s no point trying to fob me off with the usual bullshit.’
‘I’m an old man now—’
‘Crap. You’re not much older than I am.’
Alli’s eyes twinkled and she could see that he hadn’t changed a great deal since she’d first encountered him more that fifteen years ago, with his various ventures that generally included selling either dope, moonshine or porn videos too exotic for even the highest top shelves, or anything else that might make a dishonest living.
‘Ah, but I’ve had a hard life, Helgi,’ he said.
‘A hard life? Don’t talk shit,’ Helgi repeated. ‘You’ve sat in comfort and let other people do the hard work. Don’t we even get a cup of coffee when we come to visit old friends?’
‘If you like. I’d ask my nephew to make some, but I don’t think he’d be able to keep from dipping his dick in it if he thought it was for a copper.’ He looked up at Gunna and gave her a theatrical wink. ‘Apologies, darling. But if you work with Helgi, I’m sure you’re used to hearing that kind of language.’
‘I’m pretty used to it by now.’
‘Alli, let’s get to business, shall we?’
‘Fine, Helgi my boy.’ Alli winked at Gunna again. ‘How much do you need?’
‘Where’s Stefán?’
‘Let me think for a moment. No, I don’t know anyone called Stefán, except Stebbi Jóakims, and he’s in Litla Hraun at the moment.’
‘Stefán Ingason. Twenty-nine years old. One metre ninety-eight,’ Helgi said, slapping Stefán’s picture on the coffee table, where it made the medicine bottles rattle. ‘That’s the one we’re looking for. Where is he? I know for a fact he’s doing some debt collecting for you.’
‘Stefán?’ Alli said in a querulous voice. ‘I’m sure I don’t know any Stefán.’
‘How about Axel Rútur?’
He shook his head, but not before Gunna had seen his eyes widen first in discomfort.
‘That’s not a name I recognize. It’s an unusual name and I’d remember that one. Are you finished, Helgi? I have to take my medicine now.’ He coughed just as theatrically as he had winked, patting his chest with the heel of his hand, and looked up at Gunna. ‘Take him away, would you, darling? I don’t have anything to say.’
‘Sure?’ Gunna replied. ‘We have a witness who will stand up in court and tell the judge that you lent her a million krónur, and when she couldn’t pay back three million in interest, you sent the hard boys round. That’s harsh, isn’t it? Beating up a single mother in front of her kid?’
Alli’s face hardened, but he quickly recovered, and the pretence of being a frail old man vanished.
‘And I have a lawyer who will rip your witness up for arse paper in three minutes flat.’
‘It’s just a question of whether you want your dirty linen aired in public, isn’t it, Alli? It’ll have to go to court and the papers would have a wonderful time with you. That would be a terrible shame, because we know how you value your privacy.’
Alli scowled. ‘I don’t imagine your legal team would let a case like that go forward unless it’s watertight, and as it’s all a pack of lies, it can hardly be watertight, can it?’
‘Who knows? It’s remarkable what floats to the surface when you start to poke around a little, especially if the financial division and the taxman were to take into account your new car outside.’
‘I have a top accountant.’
‘That’s good,’ Gunna said, leaning down to look into Alli’s watery eyes. ‘Because you’ll need him, and even if the case doesn’t get as far as court, you’re going to have him on a retainer for weeks and weeks,’ she added, and looked at Helgi. ‘How much does a good accountant cost these days, Helgi?’
Helgi sucked his teeth dubiously. ‘I don’t know, Gunna. A good accountant can more or less write his own cheque. You’d be looking at a quarter of a million a day, I reckon,’ he said, and Alli’s pale face went paler. ‘You’d be talking about weeks of work to straighten out this kind of tangle. Nice car, by the way. That new Golf outside is yours, isn’t it? Not bad for a man who’s been on disability benefit for the last ten years.’
Alli shifted in his chair. ‘If I were to ask a few questions and find out where this character might be keeping himself – Stefán Ingason, was that what you said his name was? – then one hand would naturally scratch the other, wouldn’t it?’
Logi laid the boards one by one, packing insulation beneath them as he went and using a nail gun to fix them down quickly. The pressure was on to finish the job and there was no time to waste screwing them down carefully as he would usually have done. Halfway through the afternoon he stopped for a break and went outside to sit with the boys, leaving Hassan alone in the house to face Mecca for the second time that day.
He sipped water from a bottle and poured some over his head before he tore at the sandwich Tadeusz had given him and realized just how hungry he was.
‘Any news?’ he asked quietly.
Tadeusz nodded slowly and lit a cigarette as he lay back on the grass.
‘I have to call again tonight. But I think it will be OK. My aunt has a farm in the south of Poland near the Czech border. She needs some help around the place and you should be fine to stay there for a few months, after that, no problem for a good carpenter to get some work in Germany.’
‘That sounds good to me. This place is getting a little bit unhealthy right now.’
‘I understand.’ Tadeusz grinned. ‘I let you know tomorrow.’
Stefán didn’t need telling twice. As soon as he had finished the call, he was out of the door and heading for the Megane. It had collected a few scratches since yesterday and he was painfully aware that classes at the gym would have to be cancelled while he took care of business. He texted his students as he sat in the car at the lights, keeping his head low as he assumed the police would now be looking for him.
He hurtled through town faster than he knew was sensible, but unable to keep his foot off the accelerator. Nob
ody had ever made a fool of Stefán Ingason to quite such an extent and the pain in his arm was a reminder of that fact. Alli had found an off-duty nurse who’d disinfected and dressed the wound, no questions asked in return for a bag of money, but it still hurt, and he recalled the sour middle-aged woman’s lips, pursed in disapproval at the sight, tutting as she dressed the ragged injury.
‘You really ought to see a doctor, young man,’ she muttered, but a pile of cash equivalent to a month’s rent was enough to buy her silence.
An additional dent was added to the Megane’s bodywork as Stefán braked hard, stopping the car with a jerk, but not soon enough to save it from scraping the wall of the block of flats as he parked across both the street’s single disabled spot and pavement.
‘Do you mind?’ An elderly man with a dog on a lead said, pointing at the disabled sign. Stefán sneered, pointing at the heavy bandage on his left arm, which stuck out below the arm of his T-shirt.
‘I am disabled,’ he snapped.
‘I don’t see much wrong with your legs.’
‘Take a hike, grandad,’ Stefán said, leaving no doubt as to his frame of mind. ‘Or I can break both your legs and then you can have a disabled spot to yourself,’ he yelled over his shoulder as he delivered a kick to the street door, which was hard enough to shiver the lock and send the door swinging inwards.
Sandra Sigfúsdóttir had not expected to find two grim-faced detectives on her doorstep and she was thoroughly flustered. She quickly put on a video for the children and came back to the kitchen, wringing her hands. Helgi thought she was close to tears and wanted to put an arm around her.
‘You’re married to Logi Gunnarsson, right?’ Gunna said, and watched Sandra’s face cloud over at the mention of his name.
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘The man we’re looking for.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘That’s confidential for the moment, and it may well be that he hasn’t done anything. But we need to get in touch with him as soon as possible.’
Sandra shuddered and Gunna wondered how affection could turn so comprehensively to hatred.
‘I haven’t seen him for three months at least, and I haven’t been able to contact him for a month or so. He never answers the phone when I call.’
‘He doesn’t answer the phone at all, as far as we’re aware. He hasn’t changed numbers?’
Sandra shrugged. ‘He might have done, but I doubt it. All his work comes through that phone number and without it he’d be lost.’
‘I take it you’re separated?’
‘We’d be divorced by now if the bastard would show up to sign the papers.’
‘How long have you been married?’
‘Twelve years, and we were together for two years before that. Everyone warned me about Logi, and I wish I’d listened to them.’
Gunna drummed her fingers on the table. ‘You don’t know where he is now? It’s important.’
‘Important for you or for him?’
‘That’s beside the point.’
‘Well, when you find him, you can tell him that he owes me a pile of money for the business we owned. He sold our business at the perfect time – before the crash – and he still owes me my half of it, and the same goes for the cars we used to have. He sold them both and pocketed the cash.’
‘That’s outside my remit at the moment, but I’ll pass the message on if you can tell me where to find him.’
‘Do you really think I wouldn’t be banging on his door if I knew where he was living?’ Sandra demanded, her voice rising in volume and pitch.
‘You must have some way of contacting him, surely? Suppose something happened to one of the children?’
‘Then I could leave a message with his brother, but they’re not close and they don’t speak to each other very often. Logi’s not close to anyone. He had a difficult childhood, so I suppose it’s not all his fault, but I’m living hand to mouth here with the children and they’re his kids as well.’
Helgi looked at Gunna and pursed his lips, shaking his head as if this was yet another blind alley.
‘How about friends, acquaintances, work mates?’
Sandra sighed. ‘You can try my brother if you like. I’ll bet you he knows where Logi is; not that he’d tell me. I’m only his sister,’ she added with an air of martyrdom in her shrill voice. ‘That’s assuming he doesn’t run for it as soon as he sees the police anywhere near.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Daníel Sigfússon.’
‘Ah,’ Helgi said with a smile, ‘an old friend of ours.’
Gunna and Helgi found the outer door of the flats hung at a tipsy angle. The lock had been smashed and one of the hinges had come adrift, leaving the door far from square and unlikely to close again without serious surgery.
‘Looks unpleasant,’ Helgi said suspiciously. ‘You want to call for some backup?’
‘I reckon our friend has been and gone,’ Gunna said, squatting by the barrier where a fresh slash of blue had been added to the rough grey concrete of the wall. ‘Give traffic a buzz will you, and let them know that the blue Megane we’re after was on Bergthórugata probably less than half an hour ago, not that it’ll help much as he could be anywhere in the city by now, but it’ll be a reminder at least.’
She took a can of pepper spray from her jacket pocket and kept it in her hand as they climbed the stairs, finding the door to the flat on the second floor had been opened much as the street door had been.
Daníel Sigfússon was a sorry sight. He sat on the floor in the bathroom, a soaked towel held to his face as it absorbed more blood than the water it already held. He sobbed quietly as Gunna eased the towel away from his face and examined the damage.
‘Looks familiar. Stefán?’ she asked and Danni nodded as Gunna fetched a clean towel from the cupboard, dampened it with cold water and handed it to him. ‘An ambulance, if you’d be so kind, Helgi,’ she murmured. ‘Another piece of Stefán’s handiwork for the National Hospital to rebuild. This guy’s so good at nose jobs he could have had a glittering career in plastic surgery.’
She squatted beside Danni and patted his shoulder. ‘There, it’ll be all right,’ she assured him and found that he was shaking. ‘This was Stefán Ingason, right?’
‘Yebb.’
‘How long ago? Half an hour? Less?’
‘Less.’
‘And what was he looking for? Logi?’
‘Yebb.’
‘And you told him where to find him?’
Danni shook his head. ‘I don’t know where Logi is. Just that he’s working somewhere in Borgarfjördur. That’s all I know.’
‘So where has Stefán gone?’
‘Fuck knows.’
‘You told him he’s working in Borgarfjördur?’
‘Yebb.’
‘Who’s he working for?’
‘Pétur Halfdáns.’
‘Phone number? And Logi’s number as well.’
‘I don’t know Pétur’s number. He’s in the phone book.’
Danni shifted, pulled a phone from his pocket and started to scroll through the numbers until Gunna took the phone off him and did it herself as Danni’s eyes widened in fear.
‘Helgi, a real rogues’ gallery here,’ she said. ‘Here we are, Logi and Logi2, better write them both down, and once the ambulance gets here and takes this reprobate away, we can be on our way.’
Helgi looked unusually tired as he put the phone down.
‘No reply from Pétur Halfdáns.’
‘You know anything about him?’
‘I’ve heard the name before. He’s a fairly respected contractor who’s never tried to compete with the big boys, nothing dodgy about him as far as I’m aware. I’ve left a message on his phone and hopefully he’ll get back to me when he’s in range.’
‘And he is out of range,’ Gunna said. ‘I spoke to Unnur at the station in Borgarnes and she says the site he’s working on is in Kaldidalur.’
‘Doing up a farmhouse that was abandoned in 1945. Unnur said it was used by the American army during the occupation, and once the war was over nobody ever went back there. Anyway, it was bought by Saga Valfells and it’s being turned into a recording studio, apparently.’
‘OK, so that’s the story behind it. Fair enough. What next, chief?’
Gunna sat back. ‘I’ve had enough for today. We have an alert out for Stefán and Magnhildur Helgadóttir’s blue Megane, so we’ll see if either of them appear. Aníta Sól is due to be here with her lawyer at ten tomorrow and I have no idea how long that’s going to take considering she’s had a couple of days to cook up a story.’
‘And me?’
‘I want you to go back to Sandra and see what else you can get out of her. I’m sure there’s more there than meets the eye.’
‘You don’t want to go up to this place in the back of beyond?’ Helgi asked, squinting at his screen. ‘It’s closer to Hverávellir than it is to Reykjavík.’ He smiled. ‘I could almost nip home to see my sister from there.’
‘Give my regards to Anna Björg if you do,’ Gunna said, and Helgi’s head jerked up to see Gunna’s head down over the paperwork on her desk, leaving him wondering how much she had heard about his last trip alone to his home town in the north. Gunna looked up and he tried unsuccessfully to read her expression, promising himself never to play poker with her.
‘Anyway, Unnur said she’d send a squad car up to Kaldidalur tonight to have a look around. She said as far as she knows there’s a gang from Reykjavík working up there and they travel back and forth every day.’
‘Including Logi Gunnarsson?’
‘I would imagine so.’ She yawned. ‘It’s been a long day, we’ve lost sight of Stefán, and I’m off home. I suggest you do the same and we’ll pick this up in the morning, bright and early.’
Logi followed the van, not trying to keep pace with Tadeusz who wanted to get back to the city as quickly as he could. When he was close enough for the phone coverage to kick in, Logi stopped and sat by the side of the road. He switched on his phone and waited for the connection to establish itself.
Summerchill Page 11
