Summerchill

by Quentin Bates

  He punched in a number and listened to it ring four times before it was answered.

  ‘Logi? I was wondering if I’d hear from you today.’

  ‘Been out of range these last few days.’

  ‘Are you finished this week?’

  ‘I guess so. You said something about a job that needed doing?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Rafn said suavely. ‘End of this week?’

  ‘Should be about right.’

  ‘Good. Call me when you’re back in town. Short notice is no problem.’

  ‘What’s the job worth?’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Let’s say a million for your cut.’

  ‘Half up front?’

  He heard Rafn suck a long breath. ‘We don’t work like that. But let’s say a quarter of a million up front as a goodwill gesture.’

  ‘Cool,’ Logi said. ‘That will do nicely.’

  He finished the call, switched the phone off again and drove back along the rutted road to Kaldidalur.

  Stefán waited until it was nearly dark. The streets were almost deserted as he parked the Megane between two vans in a cul-de-sac that nobody was likely to visit at this time of night. He cut along a footpath leading from the end of the street to the next one, trying not to look furtive as he let himself into the block of flats and tiptoed up the stairs.

  He tapped at the door and put his face close to the peephole until a blue eye appeared on the other side.

  Aníta Sól opened the door and he stepped inside, sweeping her into his arms as he did so.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, pushing him away. ‘The police think you killed Axel Rútur.’

  Stefán’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Did you?’ Aníta Sól asked.

  ‘Of course I didn’t. Of course I fucking didn’t,’ he spluttered.

  ‘They think you and I did it together to get rid of him.’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Stefán gulped as the realization swept over him that things had become far more serious than he’d imagined. ‘So they think I’m a murderer? But I didn’t do it, ‘Níta, I swear it, honestly. I was at the gym that evening, you know that, don’t you?’

  Aníta Sól shook her head in bewilderment. ‘I don’t know, really I don’t.’

  ‘If I’d killed Axel Rútur, I’d hardly be here now, would I?’

  She thought it over for a moment and her face softened. ‘Well, I suppose not,’ she decided.

  He felt in his bones that things would come to a head soon. When the Polish boys had gone back to town, Logi finished the floor he was working on, and with nothing else to occupy his time, he started work on the next one, insulating and covering half of the floor before he decided it was too dark to continue.

  He had set up the tent outside, but instead of crawling into it, he brought his bedding roll in and stretched out on the brand-new floor under the window with its smart new frame, though it still didn’t have any glass in it. He dozed off in the silence of the night-time countryside, expecting to wake with the dawn chorus, but instead he was woken by the sound of tyres on the track outside.

  Logi was awake instantly. Instead of peering over the window ledge, he stood up and away from the window to look out as the crunch of tyres on the unmade road outside became louder. The car finally came into view and, to his surprise, it wasn’t a thug looking to beat him to a pulp, but a young police officer in a 4x4 squad car who had made the journey to the valley along the narrow road.

  He watched as the officer got out of the car and walked around the site in the clear pre-dawn half-light. He examined the stack of boards and insulation under its tarpaulin, and the outsized satellite dish that would be fitted to the end wall to provide internet and TV to the remote house once the interior had been fitted out. He opened the flap of Logi’s tent and peered inside before walking around the site and admiring the view as the dawn came up. Logi watched as he stood and urinated against the pile of scrap wood for burning and then fetched a torch from the squad car. The officer walked around the ground floor and Logi could see the beam of his flashlight flicker against the walls. But with the staircase still outside under a tarpaulin, Logi having hauled the ladder up behind him, the officer didn’t trouble to take a look upstairs, where Logi sat motionless, waiting for him to leave.

  Tuesday

  The session with Aníta Sól had been exhausting as she continued to tie herself in knots and contradict herself, but Gunna had come to the conclusion that for the most part she was telling the truth.

  In the canteen she compared notes with Helgi over her fish and salad while Helgi wrinkled his nose at meatballs that were too spicy for his taste.

  ‘Any luck with Sandra?’

  ‘Nothing special. The back story is that she and Logi had a business of their own that was doing pretty well and they sold out not long before the crash and got a pile of money out of it, which they lost in some less than sensible investments. So instead of sitting back and taking it easy, they found themselves pretty skint.’

  ‘Like so many people,’ Gunna said.

  ‘Absolutely. Wonderful being a public servant, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can live with it,’ Gunna said, still thanking her lucky stars that she had stayed in the force instead of going to work in the private sector, which suddenly had little call for expensive security consultants once the economy had taken a nose dive. ‘And Logi?’

  ‘Went back to scratching around for work, but the relationship fizzled out. Sandra had expected to be on easy street and all of a sudden they weren’t. She blames him and she’s convinced he has a stack of money squirrelled away somewhere.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Helgi ate the last of his meatballs with resignation as Gunna fetched two mugs and put one in front of him.

  ‘Seen Danni?’

  ‘In hospital with his nose squashed flat across his face. Stefán must have hit him hard.’

  ‘He’s a powerful lad. Quiet today, isn’t it?’ Gunna said, looking around the canteen

  ‘Half of the social insurance staff must be on holiday.’

  ‘And about three-quarters of the police force.’

  ‘So it’s just us standing guard over law and order?’

  ‘Yep, until next week when the schools go back and the holidays are over.’ Gunna sipped her coffee and wished she had put a little more milk in it. ‘I spoke to Unnur in Borgarnes this morning. She had one of her guys go up there last night and check the place out. All quiet and nobody about. She’s sending him up there again today to have a quiet snoop around.’

  ‘So we can assume that Logi is with a group of builders? That’ll keep him fairly safe. How about Stefán?’

  ‘In Reykjavík. We got a warrant first thing this morning to track his phone and he’s somewhere in Grafarvogur.’

  ‘At Aníta Sól’s place, d’you think?’

  ‘She finally admitted she’s seen him since Sunday, but she swears blind she doesn’t know where he is now. My guess is the gym. So we turn up with some uniform backup for a look around this afternoon, and if we can we pick Stefán up, then if we’re lucky Unnur and her gentlemen can visit the team working in Kaldidalur and bring Logi to see us. At least, that’s Plan A.’

  Logi was at work upstairs with Tadeusz fitting the triple-glazed panels into the windows. Tadeusz wiped down and polished each window while Logi went round each frame with a tube of caulk, spitting on his finger and running down the bead until it blended seamlessly with the fresh plaster on the wall.

  ‘They’ll be painting before the weekend,’ Tadeusz said. ‘Plaster’s almost dry.’

  ‘Shit,’ Logi breathed, looking out of the window.

  The same young police officer got out of the 4x4 squad car and walked over to Pétur where Logi could see them in conversation. The officer nodded, smiled and laughed. He walked off and sauntered around the site while Logi’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Police?’ Tadeusz asked in a low voice.


  ‘Yep. They were here last night as well.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘Me, I’d guess.’

  ‘Will Pétur say anything?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s not that fond of the coppers since he lost his licence a few years ago. I reckon he’d answer a straight question, but he won’t fall over himself to tell them anything they don’t ask about.’

  Tadeusz polished another window. ‘I spoke to my cousin last night.’

  ‘Aha. And?’

  ‘No problem. You can stay there for a few months.’ He took a piece of paper from his pocket and passed it to Logi. ‘That’s the number. Ask for Veronika. She’s the one who speaks English.’

  Logi tucked the piece of paper away in his pocket.

  ‘Where is this place?’

  Tadeusz grinned. ‘I tell you how to get there. You fly to Amsterdam. Go to the Centraal Station and there’s a train you can sleep on that leaves at seven every night for Warsaw. In the morning you get out at Poznan. Then you call Veronika and she tells you what to do. Easy.’

  There was no need to break the door down after all. A tiny woman in a tight T-shirt and a sarong stood up from the lotus position in front of a class and closed the training-room door behind her.

  ‘Good afternoon, Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, CID,’ Gunna said, trying not to sound intimidating. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises.’

  The woman’s eyes widened in surprise as Helgi and two uniformed officers appeared behind Gunna.

  ‘We are almost finished,’ the woman said. ‘Can I finish my class?’

  ‘No problem,’ Gunna said. ‘Let me know when you’re done.’

  The class continued behind the swing doors, with one of the uniformed officers watching through a porthole window as a dozen middle-aged women and a few men stretched and relaxed into postures that the tiny woman in the sarong demonstrated with elegant grace.

  Gunna went through the kitchen while Helgi started searching the storeroom at the back. There was little to be found in the cupboards other than tubs of bodybuilding compounds that promised muscle mass within weeks with regular use. There wasn’t even any coffee, Gunna thought, although she reflected that in a health-conscious place like this, a lack of coffee could only be expected.

  She searched everywhere, systematically taking everything out of the cupboards, opening every unsealed container to check its contents and putting everything back. She tapped the backs of the cupboards, peered underneath and on top of them, and found nothing. A hatch in the ceiling led her to a storage area in the roof of the building where there were boxes of ‘Smokeless Iceland 2010’ T-shirts in sealed bags and little else.

  ‘Gunna!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In here!’

  She could hear the triumph in Helgi’s voice, and found him sitting on the closed lid of the toilet with a plastic package in his gloved hands.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘Yep, taped to the bar of the ball cock inside the cistern. Not very original, is it? There’s a box of bullets to go with it, which was stashed behind one of the ceiling panels.’

  ‘I wonder if this was Stefán’s or Axel Rútur’s?’

  ‘Neither of them are here so it’s not as if we can ask them, but we’d better get this thing checked for prints as soon as we can,’ Helgi said, carefully peeling back the layers wrapped around the object until he got to a zippered freezer bag. ‘A 9mm Baikal. I had wondered when we might turn up one of these,’ he said with satisfaction.

  ‘Something else to hit Stefán with when he shows up. I reckon that’s all there is to be found here. So, what next?’ Gunna said, half to herself as her phone buzzed.

  ‘Gunnhildur.’

  Helgi watched her face twist into a scowl as she listened, walking out into the corridor to continue the conversation, watching as the yoga class filed out quietly, casting curious glances at the two uniformed police officers.

  ‘No Logi,’ Gunna announced.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘That was Unnur from Borgarnes. They pulled the van going from Kaldidalur over for a routine check and there was no Logi in it, just the contractor, Pétur Halfdánarson, and a bunch of Polish labourers. So where the hell is Logi?’

  ‘Good question, chief.’

  ‘Hell and damnation,’ Gunna swore furiously to herself, aiming a kick at one of the cupboard doors. ‘I should have known better and gone up there myself.’

  Logi lay under the open window as dusk fell. The stairs had been put in place that afternoon, a job that required every one of them as the steel construction had to be carefully manoeuvred into position and bolted to the floor and then the walls. He knew painting around it would be a nightmare job for the decorators, but that was their problem and by then he would be long gone.

  He expected to be woken by the sound of a footfall on the steel steps, but it was the mutter of tyres on gravel that woke him. When he looked out, he expected to see the police 4x4 again as he heard a car door close quietly.

  Not quietly enough, Logi breathed to himself as he saw the blue Megane parked a hundred metres along the track. In the stillness of the countryside, its driver had underestimated how far even an innocuous sound can travel. He watched as Stefán’s hulking form approached, keeping to the grass to muffle his footsteps, and he was surprised at how gracefully and quickly the big man could move. He breathed deeply, waiting for him to come up the stairs once he’d looked in the tent and found it empty.

  Logi checked that everything was where he wanted it and prayed that it would all work out, knowing that his chances were slim at best against someone of Stefán’s strength and skills.

  Stefán’s footsteps on the staircase were quiet but clear, and Logi counted them as he lay under the sleeping bag. He listened to Stefán tiptoe through the other rooms and heard his triumphant intake of breath as he stood in the doorway and saw Logi. He counted the steps in his head, forcing himself not to react too soon, but he was still too early. He rolled over to see Stefán with his hand outstretched to reach for the revolver where he had left it in plain sight on a stack of timber offcuts.

  ‘Now I’ll fucking have you,’ he heard Stefán grunt, and Logi pushed the safety plate of the nail gun against the floor, relieved to hear it hiss into life.

  ‘That one’s not loaded, but this one is,’ he whispered, twisting forward and sideways at the same time as he rammed the nail gun against Stefán’s hand and yanked the trigger.

  The scream could be heard far down the valley, but nobody was there to hear it.

  Wednesday

  Logi wasn’t hurrying. He took his time before leaving the site as the dawn came up promising another sweltering day. He left Stefán sitting in shock on the steps outside while he finished what needed to be done upstairs. He decided to finish the floor before he moved on, laying and nailing down the last of the boards in the upstairs back room, and carefully replacing the revolver and its box of bullets in roughly the same place he had found them. It seemed the right thing to do.

  ‘Phone?’ Logi said as he came down the steps from the front door.

  Stefán looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘What?’

  ‘Give me your phone. That is, if you want me to drive you to hospital. It’s up to you. You can walk if you like.’ Logi pointed. ‘It’s that way, about thirty kilometres to the nearest doctor.’

  Stefán surrendered his phone without argument and Logi opened the passenger door for him, first putting on a pair of rubber washing-up gloves. He opened the back door of the car and placed the nail gun and the strips of nails that went with it on the seat, then he opened the boot, where he looked to make sure that the hammer was still under the carpet.

  Logi drove the Megane in silence while his passenger winced every time they hit a bump. Logi had sawn off the length of two-inch timber that Stefán had suddenly found his hand nailed to, cutting it down to a little less than a metre. Stefán did his best to hold the tears back, but t
hey still forced their way down his cheeks – the pain in his hand was worse than anything he could have imagined as he nursed the length of timber, trying to protect it as the car bumped along the uneven track.

  A few kilometres from the site, he pulled over and winked at Stefán. ‘Won’t be a moment. Don’t go away.’

  He took the nail gun and nail strips from the back seat and walked a little way from the car, pushing them deep into the scrub bushes a few metres from the roadside and kicking earth over them before he went back to the car, then they drove for twenty minutes in silence, broken only by Stefán’s whimpers of pain. At the main road, Logi pulled off into a lay-by surrounded by stunted trees and got out of the car, taking his phone with him as well as Stefán’s as he strolled away from the car in the morning sunshine.

  ‘Tadeusz? Hæ, Logi. Can you do me a favour?’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘On the way, are you?’

  ‘Yah. We’re passing the aluminium place now.’

  ‘OK. In that case you’ll see me by the road in about ten minutes. I just need a lift back to the site.’

  ‘Yeah, no problem,’ Tadeusz replied and Logi could hear the curiosity in his voice.

  He walked back to the car and sat in the driver’s seat. Stefán stared back at him with eyes full of fear.

  ‘I don’t appreciate violence, Stefán. It turns my guts. You understand?’ Stefán nodded and Logi continued. ‘Actually you don’t understand because you’re the kind of evil bastard who threatens anyone smaller than you and enjoys watching them suffer. I’d like to think this might be some kind of a lesson to you, but I don’t for a moment imagine it is.’

  Stefán stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘You’re leaving me here?’

  ‘Yep. You’re a few kilometres from Borgarnes.’

  ‘How can I drive like this?’

  Logi smiled. ‘That’s your problem.’ He checked his watch and pointed to a picnic bench among the trees. ‘See that table over there?’