Cold Steal

by Quentin Bates

‘Yulia. The Russian girl.’

  ‘Yes, so it seems.’

  ‘And was she hurt?’

  ‘Physically, no.’

  ‘That’s a shame as well.’

  ‘I take it you didn’t get on?’

  ‘Me and Villi or me and the Russian girl?’

  ‘I meant you and your husband.’

  ‘We had our moments. But not for a few years. He led his life and I lead mine.’

  She sat almost immobile, her face a mask that Gunna guessed had to be artificial to achieve quite such an unnatural lack of mobility. Saga’s knees were pressed together as she sat on the edge of the sofa, her back straight. Her skirt and jacket looked to Gunna’s eyes as if they had been tailored from the same supple leather as the sofa’s covering. A starched blouse was buttoned to the throat and ink black hair shrouded a narrow face that might have been attractive if it were to see a little animation.

  ‘How long had you been living separately?’

  ‘We live together, just in separate rooms. Villi chased his businesses from country to country and I’d given up asking him when we were likely to see him next.’

  ‘How about his business affairs? Did you have any involvement in his work?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Occasionally he’d give me something to sign as I was a name on some of his companies, but I just signed without looking too closely.’

  ‘Isn’t that rash? Signing something without reading the small print?’

  ‘Villi was a shit husband, but he knew how to make money. Cashwise, I could trust him. But not dickwise.’

  ‘We’ll need to take a look at his business affairs.’

  ‘Good luck. Most of Villi’s business was in his head, and what wasn’t there is in his laptop, if you can get into it.’

  ‘Property?’

  ‘The house in Copenhagen is mine. I made sure of that when the first personal assistant showed up five or six years ago.’

  ‘There’s more than one?’

  ‘Three to my knowledge. Maybe more. They’re always bright and beautiful. Gold diggers. That’s why the houses are in my name only. I hold the real estate; Villi got to play. It was – what do you call it? – a mutual understanding.’

  ‘Holiday? What’s that?’

  Emilija looked up, the toilet brush held in front of her like a sword.

  ‘I just asked,’ Natalia said, propping herself against the basin and feeling in her pockets for a cigarette before reminding herself that smoking on the job was a sackable offence. ‘When did you last have a trip home? When did you last see your parents?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Three, four years ago,’ Emilija said, applying herself to the toilet, even though it was virtually in its original pristine state. ‘It was before Anton was born, and before the divorce. So four years, I think. And you?’

  Natalia scowled. ‘Ten years.’

  ‘What? As long as that?’

  ‘At least,’ Natalia growled, spraying and polishing the mirror over the basin. She stopped, tensed, placed her hands on the edge of the granite slab the two basins were set in and jumped. She stood on the slab to polish the top half of the mirror. ‘Hjörtur will never agree to let Nonni out of the country. He thinks I wouldn’t bring him back.’

  ‘And he’d be right, wouldn’t he?’

  Natalia looked at herself in the mirror and pulled a face. ‘Yeah. Probably. But it’s a long time to not see your home, parents, friends, all that stuff.’

  ‘Finished, ladies?’ Valmira asked, appearing in the doorway.

  ‘Almost,’ Natalia replied. ‘I’m just finishing polishing the mirror and Emilija’s busy with some old bastard’s shitstained toilet. Apart from that, we’re almost done.’

  Emilija used her shoulder to push from her eyes a strand of hair that had come adrift.

  ‘Hey, Vala. When did you last get to go home?’

  Valmira looked at her sideways with disquiet.

  ‘What do you mean? Home?’

  ‘You know,’ Natalia said, jumping neatly down from the granite slab and wiping off the marks her trainers had left. ‘Home. Yugoslavia. The place you lived in before.’

  ‘This is home,’ Valmira said shortly. ‘I’ve never been back and I don’t intend to,’ she added sharply before leaving the room.

  ‘Not a good question,’ Emilija said quietly.

  Natalia scowled. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘It’s sensitive. Valmira had a bad time, what with the war there and everything. She was in hospital a long time when she was a kid. Didn’t you know?’

  Natalia flushed the toilet and gave it a final squirt of bleach. ‘Hell, no. I didn’t know that. I don’t know her as well as you do.’

  ‘I don’t know much either. I don’t ask and I don’t think she wants to tell. But she lost some of her family in the war; I don’t know what happened to Valmira, but she was hurt, anyway. So now you know.’

  ‘She won’t be upset, will she?’

  Emilija shrugged. ‘A few minutes, then she’ll be OK again. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Is that why she’s alone? No boyfriend, no husband?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Emilija said with a shake of her head. ‘There’s an uncle and some cousins. That’s it. I’m not even sure she’s ever . . . You know.’

  ‘Played hide the sausage?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s it. Not that she wouldn’t want to, I reckon. But Valmira has a few big problems in that department. Best not to ask too many questions. Come on. Let’s get this finished and we can pack it in for the day.’

  ‘Would anyone have wanted to do Vilhelm harm? Anyone you can think of?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Saga had hardly moved and her voice was toneless. ‘There must be plenty of people who would have happily broken his nose, but I don’t imagine they would have gone as far as killing him. But someone did, I suppose, and I don’t really know what sort of thing he was getting up to in Russia and Lithuania.’

  ‘Any business partners?’

  ‘Not really. Not any more. Villi was solo more or less, as far as I know. Not that he told me too much.’

  ‘All right, is there anyone in his business circles who might know more?’

  ‘Try the assistant. She might know who he was in bed with.’ Saga leaned forward and extracted a cigarette case and a lighter from a handbag at her side, camouflaged in the same leather as everything else around her. ‘Apart from her, that is. Although maybe not. The assistants tend to be decorative rather than useful.’ A lighter clicked like a pistol and she sent a plume of smoke up into the sterile air. ‘But if anyone knows, it’ll be his friends. The few he had left, that is.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Elvar Pálsson, Sunna María Voss. Those are the ones he seemed to take care not to piss off too much. I suppose a man needs to hold on to a few friends.’

  A pale face appeared in the doorway and a girl in her early teens appeared. Gunna saw the same sharp cheekbones and thin lips as Saga’s, but framed in a younger face.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Not now, darling. I have to talk to this lady.’

  ‘About Dad?’

  ‘Yes, dear. About your father.’ The last word dropped from Saga’s lips like a curse.

  ‘Are you going to find the person?’ The girl asked, looking at Gunna.

  ‘I hope so. We’re doing our best.’

  The girl nodded and withdrew, apparently satisfied with Gunna’s answer.

  Gunna wrote down the two names. ‘Elvar Pálsson?’

  Saga nodded slowly.

  ‘And Sunna María Voss?’

  ‘That’s her. They were at university together, all three of them. Elvar has been Villi’s partner in a lot of shady ventures. Sunna María married a dentist. We went to their wedding in Antigua. It was lovely,’ she reminisced and her face softened for the first time.

  ‘They are both here in Iceland?’

  ‘Sunna María and her dentist live here. Kópavogur somewhere. Elvar? Yeah. He’s around somewhere. He seems to pop
up. Villi always knew where he was.’

  * * *

  Winter was best, dark all the time and no problem getting about without being noticed. When it was cold and dark, people also hurried more and didn’t hang around watching to see who that was across the street bundled up in a padded coat and hat. Summer could be good as well, but different. That was when people were away and left their stuff there for the taking, Orri thought, wishing it could be summer again and knowing that it wasn’t far away.

  The street he was interested in was a new one, a row of low-slung houses with flat roofs, the street deserted and silent as only a cold morning could make it. He could see that each one had its lower storey dug deep into the ground as a basement while the long tinted windows above showed that these were houses for people with money, or access to it. The concrete of the walls was still a shiny grey, with a sheen that a year or two of weathering would dull if it were not painted, and the gardens were wide open. The straggling twigs at the edges would one day be hedges and trees, but for the moment they were little more than sticks scratching for a foothold and waiting for winter to end.

  Deliveries in this exclusive half-built suburb had sparked his interest in the area. This part of Kópavogur on the older western side of the main road was fertile hunting ground for a man of his talents, he felt. As the area was hardly a fashionable one, it was populated by mostly prosperous middle-aged people, his preferred type of homeowner.

  The waterside houses of this new street had all been finished, but on the landward side was a row of plots in various states of completion; one that was clearly weathertight and ready for work inside, while another was still a concrete foundation and another was not even that far advanced, still a series of trenches with the steel mesh in place, ready for the foundations to be poured.

  He rubbed warmth into his hands, the rubber of the thin latex inside sticking to the wool of the gloves he wore over them. He had been discreetly walking around this quiet end of Kópavogur for a few days, paying particular attention to the street of new houses and making a habit of going purposefully the same way, so the neighbours would assume he lived there, or at least somewhere close by. Orri reckoned that being part of the scenery helped as he checked out the houses on the city side of the street. These were the smartest houses, the ones with nothing but rocks and water behind them.

  Less chance of being noticed, he mused. Once behind one of the houses, there would be nobody to see him taking his time finding a way in around the back. The downside was that a rapid retreat by taking a short-cut over someone’s garden was out of the question. The slope down to the sea, not a problem in summer, was slick with melting ice and would take him only to the sea-smoothed rocks of the shoreline.

  On a day like today, with a hint of spring in the air and the days finally getting longer he reflected that it was between two seasons. Maybe it would be better to cash in a few of his investments or raid his own bank account and spend a week or two in the sun, even though he had been determined not to take a holiday quite yet, telling himself that a few more jobs were needed to lift his finances first. He worried about the amount of gear he had managed to collect recently, all of which needed to be turned into cash. That was where he felt his business plan had failed him.

  Looking quickly along the street behind him, and with nothing to be seen either way, Orri ducked along a footpath at the side of a square house and kept close to the wall as he went rapidly around the back. Like the rest of this brandnew street, it was a big house, built with its big corner window overlooking the sound separating the old end of Kópavogur from the newer suburb in Gardabær, where smart blocks of flats had replaced the shipyard and slipway where he remembered his father working a long time ago, coming home with his face blackened from welding and the persistent cough that had finally finished him. He peered in through the basement windows and wondered whether or not he should call the house’s landline number. He had found out who roughly half the inhabitants of the street were and had their phone numbers stored away. He knew where some of them worked, what cars they drove and in some cases how many children they had. This house he knew belonged to a couple with a dental practice in the Kringlan shopping centre. There were no children as far as he had been able to work out, and although he knew the couple’s names, he wasn’t sure of their age group. There could be children who had left home, or there could be house guests, or even elderly parents visiting from some godforsaken dump in the country. That was information that couldn’t be gleaned from phone books and the internet.

  As he scanned the doors and windows, his mind drifted back to business and the gap in his way of working. Finding cash in any serious amount was almost unheard of these days now that everyone used plastic, and credit cards were of limited value, even though they could be picked up anywhere. A good, modern phone, a camera or an iPad would be worth grabbing. Sometimes there were old books or ornaments in glass cases that a dealer might take. While jewellery was always worth having, it was getting harder to fence and Orri didn’t like dealing too often with the Polish and Lithuanian boys who melted down gold. It was only a matter of time before one of them was collared and spilled his guts to the police, and Orri regretted there was no honour among honest thieves. The hard boys from the Baltic had their ways of spiriting merchandise away to Europe, but if it came to the crunch, any one of them would drop him in the shit before one of their own. Not that he blamed them, he thought, hand on the handle of the back door as he eased it open. If one of the Baltic boys were to be shipped home after squealing to the law, his kneecaps wouldn’t last more than a week at the outside.

  Orri stiffened as he listened at the door. The sound of a radio could be heard faintly and the house had a warm feeling to it, telling him there was someone inside. He made his way through the dim basement and up a spiral staircase, taking care to place his feet gently on the metal steps. At the top he listened at the door but could hear no sound of movement. Orri eased open the door and cursed as it squeaked, hearing at the same moment the rush of water from a running shower and seeing steam billowing from the open door of the bathroom opposite him.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart, you’re early,’ a woman’s voice sang out playfully. ‘Shut the door, will you? There’s a draught. Come and join me, if you want.’

  Orri stood transfixed. Through the open bathroom door he could see that the entire wall opposite him was a mirror. It was half misted over, but at the centre of it he could see the reflection of a tall woman with a wet helmet of hair swept back over her head, eyes closed and energetically soaping breasts and a taut belly beneath pounding jets of hot water. He wondered for a second what to do, unable to tear his eyes from the steam-shrouded vision in the mirror.

  ‘Hello?’ The woman called out. ‘Is that you?’

  There was a note of uncertainty in her voice that decided him. Dealing with people was not his style. He gently shut the door and made his way back the way he had come, taking advantage of the house’s windowless end wall to hop unnoticed over the low fence into the unkempt garden next door.

  He pulled some sheets of glossy paper from his pocket and held them ready in one hand. It wasn’t a great cover, but delivering flyers for a pizza delivery place was at least a reason to be standing next to someone’s front door if he were challenged.

  Orri walked round to the front of the house, stuffed a flyer through the door, listened to the clack of the letterbox echo in the hallway behind it and scratched his head as he tried to remember who lived in this house. He went with confidence down the path and back to the dentist’s house, taking his time stuffing a flyer through the letterbox as he listened for signs of life inside.

  It wasn’t fair, he decided on the way back to the street. People used to leave their cars outside as a decent indication of whether or not they were home. Putting the car in a garage that any normal person would use to store junk was downright unnatural and could confuse an honest housebreaker.

  He continued along the street, posted a fe
w flyers into more letterboxes and made his way back to where he had left his car, disturbed by the sight of the blonde woman in the shower and his mind unable to settle on anything else. He made himself walk at an unhurried pace. He had left the house fifty metres behind him, walking stiffly with his hands deep in his pockets, when a slate grey car swished through the puddles past him, drew up and parked opposite the house. A tall man with a look of furtive excitement jumped out, hurried across the road and looked both ways along the street before disappearing behind the building, along the same path Orri had taken.

  Gunna never felt entirely comfortable during her infrequent visits to the financial crimes division. Her own confusion when faced with figures longer than a telephone number and a vague guilt at never having mastered long division left her in awe of people who could look at a company’s annual report and pick holes in it.

  Björgvin looked older than when she had spoken to him last, which was more than year ago. There were hints of grey at his temples and a now permanent furrow in his high forehead, but he still had the same engaging smile.

  ‘Hæ Gunna. Good to see you,’ he greeted her, mug in hand as he made for his desk. ‘You want one?’

  Gunna shook her head. ‘No, thanks, First smoking, then caffeine. I tell you, it’s no fun being middle aged.’

  ‘Get away with you. Middle aged? I can look up your date of birth easily enough.’

  ‘I’ll save you the trouble. Forty-one and a grandmother. Twice.’

  ‘In that case, congratulations. So what can we do for you? Or is there anything you can do for us, maybe?’

  Gunna sat down, pulled a single sheet of paper from her pocket and unfolded it on Björgvin’s desk.

  ‘I’m hoping we might be able to help each other out here,’ she said, running a finger down the names. ‘Vilhelm Thorleifsson, dead. His business partner is a character called Elvar Pálsson, who’s sometimes in Iceland and sometimes not.’

  One of Björgvin’s eyebrows lifted and he cradled his chin in one hand as she spoke.

  ‘Then we have the dentist and his wife, Jóhann Hjálmarsson and Sunna María Voss.’