Cold Steal

by Quentin Bates

  ‘The squad car’s a few minutes behind you.’

  Geiri again slowed down as the van took an unexpected turn at the roundabout at the edge of the trading estate. ‘They’re going along the Krýsuvík road.’

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘That means we can’t easily tail them without being seen.’

  ‘Hang back as far as you can, then,’ Gunna said, and speaking into her mouthpiece. ‘Eiríkur? Is there another squad car available? Or anything?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘Can you re-route the traffic guys? It looks like we’re tailing them along the Krýsuvík road, and I’m trying to second-guess where the hell they might be going. Can you get the traffic guys to go down the Kaldársels road from Hafnarfjördur?’ she said, thinking fast and trying to remember the lie of the land on these little-used country roads. ‘That way we should be able to head them off if things start to get sticky.’

  ‘Yep. Will do.’

  ‘It’s not the same driver,’ Geiri said, shaking his head.

  ‘Sure? How so?’

  ‘This guy’s not as cautious as our boy. He’s throwing that van around as if nobody’s going to have to drive it ever again.’

  The ink-black rocks with patches of lichen hanging on to them for dear life sped past as Geiri drove faster to keep the two vehicles in sight. Tangles of dormant trees, leaves long fallen and their buds waiting for some spring warmth before breaking into new life, were scattered by the roadsides at intervals, with the occasional forlorn evergreen conifer here and there. Now they were in open country where any kind of traffic was a rarity and the road was rough after a winter of heavy weather. It spat stones and water back at them while the Golf’s wheels struggled to get a grip on the wet road surface. In summer, this was a popular enough place with walkers and cyclists, but on a cold spring day with winter still very much in evidence, the area was deserted.

  Unfamiliar with the district, Gunna tried to think where they might be going at such speed.

  ‘They’re throwing up that much water that they won’t be able to see anyone following,’ Geiri said. ‘Now they’re slowing, and turning again. That’s the road towards Hvaleyrarvatn.’

  ‘Eiríkur. You can see us on the tracker?’

  ‘Got you.’

  ‘They’re turning along the Hvaleyri road. Warn the traffic guys, will you?’

  ‘We have company,’ Geiri said. ‘Look in the mirror.’

  Gunna leaned forward to see that a four-by-four in police colours could be seen in the distance, its headlights dipping and bouncing as it negotiated the pitted road, while Geiri again slowed as the brake lights on Sunna María’s Mercedes glowed bright beneath the layer of grime they’d already picked up along the way.

  ‘If we can see them,’ Gunna said, pointing back at the police four-by-four and forward to Sunna María’s car. ‘Then they can see us.’

  ‘If they’re looking, and I don’t imagine they are,’ Geiri said. ‘Another turn. If you want to head them off, now might be the time.’

  ‘Where are they heading now?’

  ‘That’s the road that passes south of the lake. There are only a couple of turnoffs to summer chalets and the like.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure enough.’

  ‘Eiríkur, they’re taking the road south of the Hvaleyri lake. Get the traffic guys onto it from the other end, will you? This has gone far enough, I want them stopped.’

  ‘Will do, chief,’ Eiríkur said and Gunna could hear him relaying instructions on the open channel. ‘Warn them to be careful. This guy may be nasty.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but take care.’

  The gravel road began to disintegrate as a burst of rain came down hard. Geiri switched the wipers on and they scraped pathways in the corrosive mix of water and black volcanic dust that coated the windscreen as he leaned forward to peer through the murk. The road could hardly be seen in the sudden downpour that pebbledashed the road ahead and battered the roof of the car.

  ‘Where the hell . . . ?’ Geiri cursed, and Gunna wound down her window, pushing her face half out to see what was happening.

  ‘Geiri! Back up!’ she yelled.

  ‘What?’

  Gunna almost bounced up and down in the seat in frustration. ‘Over there, they pulled off the road.’ She pointed towards a narrow track half hidden by a clump of fir trees, meandering away from the main road and down a dip.

  The Golf shuddered to a standstill, reversed at top speed, and the four-by-four behind stopped in a flurry of stones and flying water. Geiri put his foot down, spinning the wheels through the lakes forming in the road as he rounded a bend, meeting Sunna María’s jeep coming the other way. Gunna caught a glimpse of Sunna María’s face behind the wheel, white and tense, her mouth open in astonishment. Geiri spun the wheel and hauled at the handbrake, dragging the long-suffering Golf into a screeching turn that left it flat across the road as the four-by-four came to a halt.

  As Gunna jumped out of the car, the acrid smell of burning was unmistakeable, and she looked around quickly to see a pall of greasy smoke from behind a low hill. She could hear the agonized rattle of the four-by-four’s gears failing to engage as she ran to Sunna María’s car, where she pulled open the driver’s door, caught a handful of coat and hair and hauled her bodily from the car, dumping her in a puddle. Only then did she look up to see the man with the hook nose and moustache glaring back at her. She sensed rather than saw the blow coming as she reached for the keys. The flat of his hand caught her on the side of the head instead of in the face, making her stagger back and trip over Sunna María lying where she had been dropped.

  The man leaped into the driving seat, slammed the door and gunned the Mercedes along the track, the engine whining in complaint as it raced and the wheels spinning in wet gravel before it jumped and was gone in time to meet the police four-by-four coming the other way.

  For a moment, Gunna thought the squad car was going to veer and politely let the Mercedes past, but it stopped across the road, lights flickering in the wet gloom, and the two officers in it jumped out, one with his baton already in his hand. A siren could be heard in the distance as the hooknosed man slowly got out of the Mercedes, his hands in front of him but still with a smile on his face, as he realized that the odds were against him.

  ‘Geiri!’ Gunna called, still dazed from the blow, panting with exertion as she ran towards the pall of black smoke. The Golf coughed and spluttered as it sped past her and around the bend to where the white van was in flames, pulling up with a crunch of tyres. Geiri hauled open the Golf’s boot and pulled out a fire extinguisher.

  ‘The back of the van! Geiri, open the back,’ Gunna yelled, searching her coat pockets for the gloves she knew should be there and pulling them on as she ran through the puddles. Smoke was pouring from the white van’s cab. Geiri lifted the extinguisher as if it were a toy, smashed the driver’s side window with the base of it and let fly with the contents into the van. Gunna wrenched at the rear doors, pulled one open and coughed as a gout of black smoke erupted from inside. After a few seconds it cleared a little and she jumped inside with her eyes watering and one hand over her mouth.

  There was little she could see, but among the boxes that Orri had stacked in the van that morning, a foot could be seen in the gloom. Knowing she had no more than a couple of seconds at most, Gunna grabbed the foot, pulled with all her strength and found herself falling backwards out of the van into Geiri’s bear-like embrace with an unconscious Orri in her grasp.

  ‘Get him clear, will you?’ she gasped, coughed and doubled over, retching onto the black lava gravel as Geiri swung Orri over his shoulder and laid him on the ground next to the Golf. He came back for Gunna, helping her to her feet and half-carrying her to the car as the flames burned even more fiercely in the van, illuminating the little group in an unearthly light as the gouts of black smoke blotted out weak sunlight that fought manfully
to break through the clouds after the downpour.

  Gunna still felt dirty and the smell of burning clung to her in spite of a shower and clean clothes. Ívar Laxdal looked at her with respect as she dropped herself gingerly into the visitor’s chair in his office.

  ‘How’s Orri?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry, Gunnhildur.’

  ‘Shit. You mean I was too late?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’

  Gunna scowled and smacked a fist into the palm of her other hand. ‘I knew I should have acted sooner. I should have grabbed the lot of them before they got out of town, before they had a chance to set that van on fire.’

  ‘Gunnhildur, you couldn’t have known.’

  ‘I should have known that they weren’t taking Orri somewhere for a sauna and a massage.’

  She sighed, suddenly exhausted, and slumped in the chair, while Ívar Laxdal looked brighter and more cheerful than she had seen him for weeks. Gunna realized that the pressure on him had been relieved once Sunna María and the man with the hook nose were in custody. Ívar Laxdal could expect his superiors to be quietly satisfied that a difficult matter had been dealt with, and it occurred to her that she still had no idea of the man’s name.

  ‘So who is he?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘Ívar Laxdal looked uncomfortable. ‘Our mystery man? He says his name’s Bruno Kovalchuk, and what’s interesting is that he claims diplomatic immunity.’

  ‘What? He’s embassy staff?’

  ‘It’s a bizarre claim, considering his country has no diplomatic presence in Iceland. He claims to be from Belarus, which doesn’t have an embassy here. But we have no choice but to jump through the hoops, so I’ve happily passed the whole headache over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which can deal with the Belarusian Embassy in London or Helsinki, or work through our consul in Minsk; not that I’m expecting anything to happen fast, and in the meantime he’s already been charged with assaulting a police officer.’

  ‘Me, once again.’

  ‘As you say, you. That’s enough to keep him locked away until this mess is sorted out.’

  Gunna pursed her lips. ‘You’re not going to let him disappear, like . . .’

  ‘Absolutely not, and as soon as wherever he comes from gets the idea that he was running a drugs operation, I don’t expect they’ll want to remember who he is. I’m half expecting them to just say his passport’s a forgery so they can forget about him.’

  ‘It was a speed ring, then? That’s what it was all about?’

  Ívar Laxdal sat back, his face relaxed for the first time since Vilhelm Thorleifsson had been gunned down in his summer house.

  ‘That’s what it seems. According to the dentist’s delightful wife, Bruno was getting rid of members of the group who had doubts about expanding the business or who might have wanted a share of the profits.’

  ‘You mean they were getting rid of their business partners one at a time? Has she said anything about Elvar Pálsson?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Eiríkur. He’s been in there with her since they were brought in. You want to sit in, or have you had enough?’

  Gunna yawned. ‘I’ve had about four hours sleep in two days, so while I’m tempted to lean on Sunna María or Bruno, I’d probably be best off going home and seeing if any of my family actually recognize me. But, Alex? That was this Bruno guy, was it?’

  ‘So Sunna María says. She believes Bruno and Alex between them murdered Vilhelm Thorleifsson, and she thinks Bruno murdered Alex because he was unreliable. It sounds plausible to me. The question is how much she actually knows and how much she’s guessing.’

  ‘We know Bruno abducted Jóhann. What about the Latvian business partner, Boris Vadluga?’

  Ívar Laxdal smiled humourlessly.

  ‘As clean as a whistle, ostensibly. Unless Bruno decides to say something and implicate him, then we have only his financial involvement with these people as a business partner and the main investor in the Vison fur farm. So it appears that Bruno Kovalchuk, Sunna María and others were using Boris Vadluga’s businesses as a front for their drug operation. I’ll have to leave it to the financial crime division and the police in Latvia to decide whether or not he was part of all this.’

  Gunna stretched. The day’s tension and the tumble from the black four-by-four had left her stiff and aching, although she was delighted that Sunna María had broken her fall. ‘So what’s your plan of action?’

  ‘We have to establish that Bruno Kovalchuk, whoever he is, really did murder Vilhelm Thorleifsson and Alex Snetzler, what happened to Juris, and if Elvar Pálsson is still alive or if he has been disposed of as well. We have evidence that he abducted Jóhann, so there’s no question of bail.’

  ‘And how much of all this was Sunna María party to?’

  ‘Precisely. What are your thoughts on that?’

  Gunna pondered. ‘My guess is that she knew nothing about Alex. When we dug up the body in the foundations of her house, it was obvious that she was frightened and surprised. So was I,’ Gunna admitted. ‘I expected to find her husband under there. But I reckon she knew damned well that Jóhann had been abducted, although that’s something else we have to get to the bottom of. Dumping a city dweller like him in a place like Vatnsendi is tantamount to murder in my book. The man’s extraordinarily fortunate that he survived, and that’s another whole line of questioning I’m going to have to deal with.’

  ‘Where is Jóhann? Gone home?’

  ‘I gather he’s left hospital and is staying with his son. I don’t suppose he’s in a hurry to go home to Kópavogsbakki.’

  ‘He’s aware that his wife may have tried to murder him? I wonder why they didn’t just dump him in the foundations like they did with Alex?’

  Gunna shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe they wanted to maintain an illusion that Jóhann had walked off and vanished into the countryside in a fit of mid-life crisis? Your guess is as good as mine, but between them, I’m convinced we have the two of them responsible in one way or another for all those killings and probably a few more that we don’t know about yet.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing your full report.’

  ‘Probably as much as I’m not looking forward to writing it. But are . . .’ Gunna raised her eyes briefly towards the ceiling. ‘Happy with you now?’

  ‘They’re happy with us, shall we say, Gunnhildur? They’re happy with us.’

  Jóhann looked frail and Gunna thought he had a chastened air about him as he sat surrounded by plants in the conservatory of his son’s house, wrapped in a thick sweater in spite of the place being uncomfortably hot. He cradled a glass of juice in his hands and looked at Gunna blankly.

  ‘My son tells me that you were searching for me all last week. Is that right?’

  ‘You haven’t spoken to your wife, have you?’ Gunna asked, ignoring his question.

  ‘No, of course not. You were very insistent that I shouldn’t and I still don’t understand why.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll tell you,’ Gunna said, sitting down without being invited as the dentist’s son and his wife fussed in the background. ‘Your wife is right now in an interview room at Hverfisgata where she’s tying herself in all kinds of knots. Any idea who Bruno Kovalchuk is?’

  ‘Never heard the name. Should I have?’

  ‘Bruno Kovalchuk, assuming that’s his real name, is the man who presumably drugged you at the Sólfell offices and dumped you miles up country, where I imagine you were expected to die of hunger or exposure. You’ll also be interested to know that we arrested him and your wife earlier today, and we weren’t quick enough to save the life of the young man they had apparently drugged and abducted. Both of them are going to be in custody for a long time while we try and get to the bottom of all this. So if you can tell me anything that would make it easier to unravel this mess, I’d appreciate it.’

  Jóhann’s son and daughter-in-law discreetly left the conservatory, the door closing silently behind them.


  ‘I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,’ he said, staring into the distance behind Gunna’s head.

  ‘Did you have any idea of what was going on at Vison?’

  ‘It’s a fur farm. Vilhelm put us in touch with Boris Vadluga as he wanted to invest in fur in Iceland. Boris runs a car-rental empire, which is where his money comes from, but he has other businesses, including logistics and fur. He has owned a large share in a mink farm in Denmark for many years.’

  ‘Did you have any inkling of what was going on in the background?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jóhann looked first confused, and then irritated. ‘I’m not interested in playing games.’

  ‘All right. That suits me. It appears that Bruno Kovalchuk may have been working for Boris Vadluga, although I’m not sure in what capacity. They were running a small amphetamine factory in the basement of the house they rented from you. As business was doing well, they wanted to expand. So the Vison fur farm was the camouflage for a speed factory, with a transport link through another company owned by Vadluga to shift the goods to Europe. You’re with me so far?’

  This time Jóhann nodded wide-eyed. His mouth opened, and then quickly shut as he floundered for something to say.

  ‘It’s plain to me that your wife and Bruno Kovalchuk were the ones behind the scheme. So what I’m fishing for is how much you and Boris Vadluga knew about all this? Were you and Vadluga also partners in this, or were you unwitting dupes? And why was Vilhelm got rid of?’

  Jóhann sat open-mouthed for a long moment. ‘I . . . I’m at a loss. I had no idea,’ he gasped at last. ‘I should have known that anything that came through that soulless little bastard Vilhelm couldn’t be honest.’

  ‘They’re pretty ruthless people,’ Gunna said. ‘Vilhelm was shot, and my guess was that he wanted a slice of the pie, although we’ll probably never know exactly what went on there. They also disposed of two other people.’

  Jóhann seemed to be having trouble breathing. Gunna poured water from a jug into a glass and handed it to him. He took it gratefully, holding the glass in both hands as he gulped the water down.