Cold Steal

by Quentin Bates

  Orri gulped. ‘Then I guess I’d best say yes.’

  ‘A healthy choice. Continue to go to work as usual. It’s important that you remain unobtrusive. Don’t stand out. Don’t try to follow or trace us as you did before. That shows initiative, but once is enough. You’ll be well paid so don’t screw up. You have a phone number. Don’t call it. If you have a problem or need to be in touch, send an SMS and somebody will contact you. You will get instructions. Money will appear a few days after each operation. Cash, probably. What’s your preferred currency? Euros? Dollars?’

  ‘Er . . . I don’t know. Krónur.’

  The man snarled disparagingly. ‘Icelandic money. Please. Have a little imagination, Orri, and let’s make it Euros. Your krónur are worth nothing,’ he said and pulled the door handle to step out.

  ‘Hey . . . before you disappear.’

  ‘What?’ The man asked, his head still inside the door and the cold wind snatching at his coat.

  ‘This is a stupid question, right, but why are you paying me to do this stuff?’

  ‘That’s the first sensible question you’ve asked,’ the man said with a sinister smile pulling one corner of his mouth sideways and down. ‘Let’s say you’re a skilled operator and your skills are valued. We don’t particularly want you to be caught and I expect you not to compromise what you’re doing for me by supplementing your income with a little thieving. When you’re doing a job for me, you’re working only for me. Let’s say it’s to keep temptation at bay.’

  He made to pull the door shut as Orri stopped him with another question. ‘What do I call you?’

  ‘Why?’ He asked, and Orri saw him nonplussed for the first time.

  ‘You know everything about me. I know nothing about you, not even a name.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Hey. One more thing.’

  ‘What now?’ There was a trace of irritation in the scratched voice.

  ‘I need to know, what if I get caught?’

  ‘Caught? Who by?’

  ‘Anyone. The police, maybe.’

  The man shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘And if I tell them everything?’

  He saw a smile tug at the corner of the man’s mouth. ‘Orri, you can tell them whatever you like, because once it’s checked out, they won’t believe a thing, believe me,’ he said and shut the van’s door. ‘Oh, and before I forget, here.’

  He handed him a plain envelope and winked, leaving Orri sweating in spite of the chill air as he watched the little blue car drive away and decided that trying to follow it might be a seriously bad idea.

  They had parted coolly. Svala had been silent all morning while they looked around Ikea and there had been none of her usual chatter while Eiríkur had pushed the buggy and she had carried the baby in a sling over her chest. It had been a relief to leave her and the children with Svala’s parents, who had immediately sensed the tension between them.

  He wondered as he drove into the car park if they were even now being regaled with a litany of his shortcomings, but dismissed the thought as uncharitable. In spite of her routine of visiting them every weekend, Svala and her parents were not particularly close, and he guessed that few confidences were exchanged. Maybe that was what had brought them together, he mused as he inspected the cars parked outside the block of flats. His own parents were elderly, old enough to have been his grandparents, he’d often thought as a youngster. Both he and Svala had awkward relationships with their parents. His parents found it inconceivable that their son should be a police officer while her teacher parents instinctively distrusted authority. Eiríkur often found them difficult to understand, a couple who were happy to demand their rights but ready to denigrate the authority he felt was there to protect those rights.

  There was no grey Ka to be seen anywhere in the windswept car park. Eiríkur wanted to grind his teeth at being too late, and wondered where it could have gone on a Sunday. If Elísabet Höskuldsdóttir really was a chef, then she could be at work, he decided, and told himself that he could check back later, just as his phone rang and Gunna’s number appeared on the screen.

  ‘Hæ. I’m on the way.’

  ‘Meet me at the station, would you? There’s someone we need to pick up and it’s a job that needs two of us.’

  ‘No problem. I’ll be right with you,’ Eiríkur said, putting the car into gear and heading for the main road as a white van bumped down into the car park and stopped outside the block’s door. In the mirror he caught a brief glimpse of dark green fleece jumping out of the van and into the building, and stamped on the brakes. He quickly reversed, wondering whether to follow the figure in the fleece or head for the hospital as he had been told to do.

  He decided it would be as well to do as he had been told, and quickly jotted down the van’s number before plugging his communicator in and driving away.

  ‘Control, zero-four-fifty-one.’

  ‘Zero-four-fifty-one, control. What can I do for you, Eiríkur?’

  ‘Check a number for me, can you?’ he said, taking his eyes off the road for a moment as he read out the number jotted on the back of his left hand.

  ‘White Trafic, registered to Green Bay Dispatch. All legal. Anything else?’

  ‘Is there an address?’

  ‘It’s in Bæjarhella, out at the end of Hafnarfjördur.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Eiríkur said, a fist clenched and pounding the wheel in triumph.

  It was Valmira’s first day back at work and Emilija sounded the van’s horn outside her house, concerned that her friend would not be ready to come back to work so soon, but her fears disappeared as Valmira opened the door and smiled warmly as she settled into the passenger seat.

  ‘You don’t want to drive like you normally do?’

  ‘No, you drive. It makes a nice change to be a passenger.’ She looked closely at Emilija. ‘Are you all right? You look tired.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. A bad night, that’s all,’ she said, pulling away into the stream of traffic. ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m fine now,’ Valmira said, her face hardening. ‘A difficult couple of days, but that’s over now. Are the children keeping you up?’

  ‘I had a visitor last night.’

  ‘A welcome visitor, or the other kind?’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Alex? The guy who ate everything and then disappeared?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Valmira’s mouth set in a hard line. ‘He’s a bastard, Emilija. You know that. Did you . . . ?’

  Emilija sighed and nodded.

  ‘Get rid of him, Emilija. You know he’s going to let you down.’

  ‘I know,’ Emilija said, eyes on the road, fumbling for the wiper switch to clear spots of cold rain from the windscreen. ‘Alex is a shit. But he’s such a charming shit when he wants to be.’

  ‘Did you do this place yesterday?’

  ‘I did it with Natalia. It only took an hour.’

  ‘So why are we doing it again today?’

  Emilija grinned. ‘Because Viggó made a mistake. He wrote three hours every day on the work sheet. So we do three hours every day.’

  ‘But the place was cleaned yesterday. There should be nothing to do.’

  ‘Exactly. There’s a nice bakery across the road where we have a coffee and some breakfast, and get paid three hours overtime for it.’

  An eye appeared at the window and again as the door opened a crack.

  ‘G’day. Is Oggi home?’

  The woman with the washed-out face kept the door open only as far as the security chain would allow. She looked Gunna up and down and then her eyes quickly scanned the windows of the terrace of houses across the street, checking for her neighbours peering out from behind their curtains.

  ‘He’s not here. He hasn’t been here for weeks.’

  ‘So you don’t know where your little lad is, do you? Not hiding upstairs?’

  ‘Go away. He’s not here and if he was I wouldn’t tell the law.’
<
br />   The howl of a motorcycle being revved mercilessly ripped through the air. Gunna glared at the woman and hurried around the side of the house, throwing herself flat against a wall as a trail bike screeched past, its rider yelling from behind a black full face helmet that contrasted incongruously with the battered bike.

  Gunna ran after the bike as its back wheel spun in a muddy puddle in what had once been a garden, losing traction and almost stalling as Eiríkur and Gunna hurried towards it. The rider revved the engine furiously.

  ‘You bitch! You fucking bitch! Don’t let me down now!’ The rider yelled, muffled under his helmet as the engine refused to give him full power, revving and dropping away. With Eiríkur only a couple of steps from grabbing the rider and pushing the bike off balance, its engine burst back into life and the bike gave a full-throated roar as it spun its way out of the mud and gripped the road surface.

  Gunna stopped, panting with exertion, and clicked for her communicator. ‘Control, ninety-five-fifty.’

  ‘Wankers! Fuck you!’ Gunna heard the motorcycle’s rider scream at them, turning and cruising past them out of reach.

  ‘Ninety-five-fifty, control.’

  ‘A red trail bike. Rider wearing a full-face black helmet, grey sweatshirt, black jeans, can’t see the number. Heading towards Réttarholtsvegur. Any chance of some support?’

  The bike revved again through its cracked exhaust as it picked up speed and the rider twisted round in his seat to give the hopelessly pursuing Eiríkur a single finger held upright as a token of his opinion.

  ‘Ninety-five-fifty, control,’ the calm voice responded in her ear. ‘On the way. Is he heading north or south?’

  Eiríkur stopped to catch his breath after sprinting in the bike’s wake.

  ‘Losers!’ the rider shouted, but his yell became a howl of frustration as the bike’s front wheel hit a broken skateboard that had been left lying by the kerb. The bike slewed to one side as the rider’s single hand on the handlebars was not enough to keep them steady. Eiríkur jogged triumphantly towards the tangled heap that had been bike and rider a second before. The rider rolled from the mess, his helmet bouncing across the road. This time he howled in pain, clutching at his ankle with both hands, and Gunna saw his mother approaching as well, her front door gaping wide open as she splashed through the puddles towards him.

  ‘Oggi!’

  ‘Control, ninety-five-fifty,’ Gunna said into her communicator. ‘Cancel the intercept, will you? But we could do with a patrol and an ambulance. Our idiot’s just fallen off his moped.’

  * * *

  Ingi Antonsson sat in the back office of the 10-11 shop he managed and his hands shook. Gunna stood by the door with her arms folded, as if to ensure that this innocuous man didn’t try to make a run for it between the aisles of soft drinks and sweets.

  ‘You’ve been keeping tabs on your ex-wife for a long time, have you?’

  ‘Since we split up. Three years.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘It’s the children. I thought she’d leave the country and take them back to Latvia, and then they’d never see me again.’

  Gunna watched Ingi tremble.

  ‘You’ve never been in trouble with the law before, have you?’ she asked and Ingi shook his head.

  ‘It was a guy who comes in here who said he’d scare Alex off for me. I knew Emilija had been seeing this gangster for a while and I hated my children being near that bastard. It was driving me crazy. I was losing weight, couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘This guy’s name?’

  ‘I don’t know his real name, but he’s called Oggi.’

  ‘A little chap with a sharp nose?’ Gunna asked and Ingi nodded. ‘Óli Grétar, otherwise known as Oggi. We know him well. He offered to frighten Alex off for you? How much did you pay him?’

  ‘A hundred thousand.’

  Gunna sighed. ‘You idiot,’ she snarled. ‘I’d like to throw the book at you. Your pair of thugs found the right place but got to the wrong guy. So there’s a man in hospital with a hand that your friends smashed with a lump hammer who has never even seen your ex-wife. So you’ve screwed up his health for life and Alex gets away scot-free. Well done. That’s a fine job.’

  The blood drained from Ingi’s face and he gulped air, reminding Gunna of a fish on dry land.

  ‘What? I had no idea . . .’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘I thought they’d just push him around a little, maybe a black eye. I never thought . . . Shit, what have I done?’

  Tears cascaded down Ingi’s hollow cheeks.

  ‘Come on. Back to the station and we can get this dealt with there,’ Gunna said, reaching for her phone as it rang in her pocket. ‘Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Laxdal. Where are you? We have a problem.’

  The white van was still parked outside, rain pattering on its roof as Eiríkur shrugged himself deeper into his coat.

  ‘I’ve been here before somehow,’ he complained.

  ‘How so?’ Geiri asked, hunched forward over the wheel to look through the drops of rain on the windscreen at the block of flats.

  ‘Knocking on doors to find out which apartment some deadbeat lives in,’ he said glumly and passed a print of the CCTV image of the man in the green fleece to Geiri in the front seat. ‘That’s what he looks like. We don’t have a name, but we know where his van’s registered and presumably that’s where he lives.’

  ‘Pick him up at his work?’ Tinna suggested.

  ‘As the van’s here and it’s a Sunday afternoon, I think we can be sure he’s not at work,’ Geiri said, trying not to sound acid. ‘Come on. Let’s make a start, shall we? There are eight flats in the block, so we start at the ground floor and work upwards.’

  Eiríkur checked the lobby first, noting down the names on the mailboxes and hoping to see Elísabet Sólborg Höskuldsdóttir’s name there, though he wasn’t surprised when it didn’t appear anywhere, before walking around the building outside to check for the fire escape that a building of this age didn’t have.

  Eiríkur was already in conversation with a sharp-faced elderly woman on the block’s first floor as Geiri and Tinna came up the couple of steps leading to the landing.

  ‘Keeps himself to himself, that’s all I know,’ the sharpfaced woman said. ‘I like to mind my own business and not interfere with other people, but he’s an odd one, that Orri.’

  ‘That’s his name? Orri?’

  ‘Orri Björnsson. That’s his name, all right. Up there on the third floor on the right.’

  ‘Do you know if he’s at home?’ Eiríkur asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen him go out.’

  ‘And I’m sure you’ve been keeping an eye out. Come on, let’s see if your friend’s at home.’

  There was no answer as Geiri rapped on the door.

  ‘Police!’ Eiríkur yelled. ‘Open the door, please. I know you’re there.’

  ‘Nobody home,’ Geiri muttered in disappointment and turned to go, but Eiríkur stayed put, hammering on the door.

  ‘What now?’ Geiri asked.

  ‘Either he opens the door, or we stay here until he or his girlfriend shows up,’ he said, banging the door yet again. ‘Orri Björnsson! Open the door, please. Police!’

  He stared intently at the door and was rewarded with the briefest flash of movement behind the spyhole.

  ‘I know you’re there, Orri. Open the door,’ he called. The lock rattled and the door squeaked as it opened.

  ‘Orri Björnsson?’ Eiríkur asked needlessly and the man nodded as he looked back, his face composed.

  ‘Yeah, that’s me. Sorry, I was asleep and didn’t hear you knocking. What can I do for you?’

  Bára opened the door to the suite at the Harbourside Hotel.

  ‘Where’s her ladyship?’

  Bára looked at her watch. ‘She’s been in the bathroom for just over forty minutes now.’

  ‘And no sign of Jóhann?’

  ‘Nothing so far. No re
plies to calls.’

  ‘And what does Sunna María make of it? Is she worried?’

  ‘It’s hard to tell. I’ve only seen a little of Jóhann, but they make an extremely odd pair. He’s fifteen years older than she is and they’ve both had a string of affairs over the years.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘After her fourth Baileys on the rocks yesterday afternoon,’ Bára said with a grimace. ‘In detail. She told me how she was the other woman who wrecked his first marriage and since then she’s been determined not to let anyone wreck hers. So they have a tacit agreement and they both play discreetly.’

  ‘But they stay together for the sake of the money?’ Gunna asked. ‘How sweet. So Jóhann was last seen on Friday and only now she decides she wants to make a song and dance of it? What the hell’s going on?’

  Bára cocked an ear. ‘She’s out of the bathroom, so she can tell you herself.’

  ‘I’m wondering how concerned she is about Jóhann. It doesn’t seem right to me. She should be frantic by now. I would be.’

  ‘She’s a cold fish, I think. Either that or she can bottle it all up or compartmentalize things very effectively. Their accountant was here yesterday and she was as bright as a button. You wouldn’t have imagined for a second that her husband had just walked out and that she should have been worried witless.’

  ‘Good morning, good morning,’ Sunna María said, breezing into the room with a smile that looked as if she had carefully put it on. ‘Any news?’ she asked, giving Gunna a steely gaze and pouring herself coffee.

  ‘I was going to ask you that.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Are you concerned? Why are you in such a rush to report your husband missing now?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that? Of course I’m concerned.’

  ‘You didn’t seem concerned on Friday. Has this kind of thing happened before?’

  ‘That’s an intrusive question.’

  ‘Your husband walked out of here unexpectedly two days ago and you haven’t seen or heard from him, which doesn’t sound like normal behaviour to me. So you can see why I’m trying to make sense of this, can you? Has this happened before?’