Daybreak

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  Birkir looked at Gunnar.

  “Do you want to go?”

  “I’ve got to go talk to Emil Edilon about finding an answer to the new riddle. I called him already. His helpers are passing it around.”

  “Okay,” Birkir said. “I’ll go. You can finish up this report.”

  Gunnar nodded.

  Birkir said to Ragnar, “You will tell my colleague this story again in full detail. Together you will write a statement, which you will then sign to confirm it is correct. Gunnar, my partner, will not get angry again, so you don’t need to worry. Is that all right?”

  Trying to be reassuring, Gunnar gave a big gap-toothed grin. Ragnar looked at him a little warily, but nodded.

  18:30

  Birkir, Elías, and Dóra went to bring in the gun. Two was the usual number for such an errand, but Dóra went along to undertake the task of talking with Ragnar’s wife, Bára. Using the blue key, Birkir let them in the front door, and they climbed the stairs to the second floor. At first nobody answered when they rang the doorbell, but at the second attempt they heard a voice from within the apartment say, “Come in.”

  Birkir opened the door and indicated for Dóra to go in.

  “You know what to say,” he said. “You’ll have to play the rest by ear.”

  Dóra nodded. She was used to tasks like this one. They might end up having to call a doctor.

  Birkir and Elías went back down to the basement. Birkir opened the storeroom marked 2/1 with the yellow key, and Elías entered. The shotgun was in a bag hanging on the wall, and there were some boxes of ammunition on one of the shelves.

  Birkir looked at the lock on the storeroom door. It was not a substantial fastening; a good kick would be sufficient to break in here. This was unsuitable storage for a firearm, but that was not their problem just now. Elías took a few photographs and then left with the gun and the ammunition.

  Birkir remained behind to check the storeroom. One of the shelves contained gardening tools and a bag of fertilizer; on another were a number of books on plants and gardening, which looked well-used, some of them dog-eared and dirty. Apart from that the room seemed to be more or less full of the usual sort of junk that piles up in such places when families live in the same building for a long time: old clothes, shoes, folders of paperwork, old vinyl records, cans of paint and worn-out brushes, two boxes of Christmas decorations, a sleeping bag, a tent, and an old pair of cross-country skis.

  He sifted through it all to make sure there were no more firearms or ammunition. Finally he got down on his hands and knees to look under the bottom shelf. There was nothing there save a single shotgun shell that must have rolled off one of the shelves above. Birkir gazed at the little cylinder awhile, reflecting that a shell just like this one, maybe even from the same pack, had killed a man and would change the lives of two other individuals very much for the worse. He stretched under the shelf to retrieve the shell and, standing up again, put it into his jacket pocket. Then he went upstairs to the apartment.

  Dóra had indeed been forced to call a doctor for Bára; the doctor had assessed the situation and called for an ambulance. The woman was unable to get up from her chair without assistance and her blood pressure was way too high. They could not leave her helpless in the apartment.

  Dóra was not sure how much Bára had understood of what she had told her about her father’s death and her husband’s part in it. The woman seemed like she was in shock and did not respond to questions when asked—she just moaned and breathed erratically. The doctor feared her heart would fail if she was subjected to much more stress. It took four ambulance attendants to carry her out to the emergency vehicle.

  20:30

  Jóhann finally called when Birkir got back to headquarters. It was a poor connection.

  Birkir asked him if Hjördís had been in contact with him.

  “No. Why?” Jóhann seemed surprised.

  “We spoke to her and I asked her about the incident in Spain you told me about.”

  “What incident?”

  “The rape.”

  “You asked about the rape? Are you crazy? I told you that in confidence.”

  “No, it wasn’t in confidence. I told you that everything you told me was on the table. But Hjördís flatly denied that it had happened.”

  “That’s good. Then it didn’t happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She says it didn’t happen, then it didn’t happen.”

  “She was very upset,” said Birkir.

  “That I can believe.”

  “You’re sure she hasn’t called you?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” Birkir was about to hang up.

  “Listen,” Jóhann said.

  “Yes?”

  There was a short silence before Jóhann continued. “I’m at the Bláfjöll skiing area, visiting a friend of mine from Akureyri. He’s an attendant in one of the lodges here. He knows Hjördís, too. They went to school together in Akureyri. He told me she came here on Monday and asked if she could park her skis in the storeroom.”

  “And?”

  “My friend is kinda nosy and he had a look in her ski bag.”

  “Yes?”

  “There were no skis in the bag. Just a couple of shotguns.”

  “Shotguns?”

  “Yeah. It seemed weird to me. It’s probably of no consequence.”

  “Did she tell him there were skis in the bag?”

  “Hang on, I’ll ask.”

  Birkir heard voices but was unable to make out the words. He turned on the phone recorder.

  Jóhann said, “No. She didn’t mention what was in it. She just asked if she could put a ski bag in the storeroom.”

  Birkir said, “I wouldn’t mind having a look at these guns. Will your friend agree to letting the police take a look at the contents of the bag? He can give consent since he’s in charge of the storage room.”

  “Hang on a minute.”

  Again Birkir heard indistinct voices, and then Jóhann returned to the phone. “He says that’s okay.”

  Birkir looked at the clock. He had some things to deal with first. “How long are you going to be there?”

  “Until well after midnight. We’re painting a couple of rooms.”

  Gunnar was still working on the statement with Ragnar when Birkir stopped by the interview room. Birkir beckoned him out into the corridor and told him about the shotguns.

  “I’ll go check it out in a little while,” Birkir said.

  Gunnar nodded. “I’m about to call it a day with Ragnar. Then it’s just getting the answer to ‘Buffalo Bill’ and a jug of beer.”

  “Have we got the answer?”

  Gunnar nodded. “We think so. Dóra kept on googling. She noticed how some of the later riddles have seemed to involve serial killers, so she searched for ‘Buffalo Bill’ and ‘serial killer’ together. She got Silence of the Lambs. You know, the book and the film—remember?”

  Birkir nodded. “Hannibal Lecter.”

  “Yeah, but Buffalo Bill was the serial killer the lady cop wanted to get Hannibal to help her to find. The one who was stitching a ‘woman suit’ out of his victims’ skin.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “Símon is on computer duty tonight. He is to send the answer at five to ten. He’ll then tell us if there’s a new question.”

  Birkir shook his head. “Hasn’t the time come to stop this game? At some point we won’t be able to find the answer and what happens then?”

  “That remains to be seen. But if the Gander behaves himself while we play with him then it’s worth it. We’ll just have to see how things pan out.”

  22:15

  Símon stared at the computer screen and moaned. “Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.”

  He’d had Gunnar’s reply ready on a piece of paper and was waiting at the computer for the right moment. He was going to send the answer at exactly five to ten, but then he got sidetracked looking at a cool porno page that som
eone had bookmarked. When he remembered where he was, it was only one minute before ten, but then he couldn’t find the note with the details for the Hotmail account. After ten minutes of frantic rummaging he finally discovered the note stuck to the bottom of the coffee cup he’d been shoving to and fro around the desk. With trembling fingers he punched in the address and password. The page opened to reveal a new e-mail with the subject line: Too late. Tonight I am going to catch a cop.

  A shiver crept down Símon’s spine.

  “Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck,” he said over and over.

  He opened the e-mail but it contained no text. Just the subject line. On the spur of the moment and without giving it any further thought, Símon tagged the post and pressed Delete. The message disappeared from the screen. Then he sent an e-mail with Gunnar’s answer. He sat there in a cold sweat, thinking about his next move. If luck was with him nobody would notice that the answer had been posted too late. But which cop was the Gander planning to catch? What should he do?

  He got up and wandered out into the corridor. In the interview room he found Gunnar and Ragnar eating a pizza—actually, it was Gunnar who was eating while Ragnar watched him in amazement. The small man didn’t seem to have any appetite.

  Gunnar saw Símon and glanced at his watch. “Do we have a new riddle?”

  “No.” Símon shook his head.

  “Keep an eye on it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. And then can you take our friend here into custody?” Gunnar pointed at Ragnar.

  “Yeah,” Símon said. “Do you think it’s possible that we in the force are in danger?” he added.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do you think that the Gander will try to get at us?”

  “Us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. No more than anyone else. You want some pizza?”

  Símon shook his head. He didn’t feel like pizza but he felt a bit better; he somehow felt that Gunnar had cut the noose around his neck. Hopefully the Gander was just joking.

  22:20

  When Dóra had completed all her day’s tasks, she went to work out. She was glad she’d found a gym that stayed open until after midnight; she hardly ever went before ten o’clock at night. She didn’t mind exercising late. When her mind was exhausted, it was great to get going on the weights and finish her body off, too. She slept better after a workout.

  She had written up her conversation with Bára Vilhjálmsdóttir—actually, it had not been a conversation at all, because the poor woman had not uttered one intelligible word. The fate of the family was quite tragic. Dóra couldn’t see how Bára gained anything from having her father’s murder solved. It would probably have been better for her to continue having her husband at home to look after her. Maybe that would have been punishment enough for him. Now, she would probably be institutionalized.

  Dóra did special exercises to strengthen her thigh muscles. She had not fully recovered from the fracture yet, and the circumference of her right thigh was noticeably smaller than that of the left. She still had appointments with a physical therapist every three weeks to work on it. She was hoping to recover fully enough to go skiing in February. She had booked a trip to Italy with a girlfriend—an old schoolmate from Ísafjördur—and she was looking forward to it. Her friend was a champion skier who had competed at the highest level all over Europe. After she’d given up competing, she’d started inviting Dóra along on her annual winter ski trip, and they always ignored the regular trails, teaming up with other winter sports fanatics and taking a helicopter up to virgin slopes. She would need all her muscles to be working at full strength for that.

  There were not many others in the gym at this time of night. All the equipment was available, and it didn’t take her long to work through her program. Her iPod pumped rhythmic music into her headphones, and she was fully absorbed in her efforts. After she was done, when she was doing her stretches, she noticed a man in a black leather jacket standing by the front desk, looking at her. Being somewhat nearsighted, Dóra had to squint to recognize him. It was Tómas, the lawyer. When he saw that she had spotted him he turned and left.

  She went into the dressing room, which was empty apart from a fit young woman standing in her underwear in front of a mirror blow-drying her hair. Dóra nodded to her but saw no sign the woman had noticed her. She seemed to be in her own world. This was another advantage of being here so late in the day. During busy hours the room was full of women and everything was a mess; Dóra found that hard to tolerate. She wanted to have the peace to do her final stretching exercises in a good, long, hot shower.

  23:20

  Birkir was quite happy to go for a drive. It gave him space to think. He took off from the police station and headed out of the city. What were these guns that Hjördís had wanted to put away in storage—or rather, it seemed, hide in storage? She couldn’t have been involved in Ólafur’s or Fridrik’s murders herself; her story about the trip to Akureyri had been confirmed. So why did she need to hide guns? Was there an accomplice? All this occupied his mind during the twenty minutes it took to reach the turnoff to Bláfjöll.

  As he approached the ski slopes, he slowed down and observed the area. The sky was clear and the moon poured a cold light onto the bare trails. Although one could see occasional white snowdrifts in the gullies, everywhere else was black; it would be some time before skiing would be possible here. The tall towers of the ski lifts stood like mechanical trolls forming straight lines from the foot of the mountain to its summit. The cables and the chairs were barely visible, except where silhouetted against the dark-blue sky.

  There was no sign of life at the first ski lodge, and no cars parked outside. Birkir drove on to where there were more buildings dotted around. Outside one of the lodges he saw Jóhann’s car, and next to it an old motorcycle. There was a light on in one of the lodge windows.

  He parked his car and stepped out. It felt about five to ten degrees below freezing, but the evening was calm and not uncomfortably cold. He was perfectly warm in the down-filled parka he’d pulled on over his suit, and he took a few moments to inhale the fresh air, gaze at the sky, and listen to the silence.

  23:30

  Gunnar finally finished writing up the events surrounding Vilhjálmur’s death. All things considered, it was not actually a long story, but it had still taken some time to detail the full account, which covered all of the evidence Ragnar had given from the beginning, including all the things he had deliberately lied about. Having waited patiently, Ragnar read through the statement—correcting several spelling mistakes—and then neatly signed his name.

  “Do you know if it’s possible to get some gardening work at the Litla Hraun prison in the summer?” he asked. Gunnar didn’t reply, but the question struck him as the last straw, and gave him good reason to visit the bar. Símon was to take the prisoner into custody. His workday was over.

  There was nobody in the bar on Smidjustígur that Gunnar knew or cared to know, so he just stood at the counter with his bitters and beer. This time he decided to drink half the beer before tasting the bitters. He sometimes did this when he was thirsty, and concluding the case of Ragnar and Vilhjálmur had made him very thirsty indeed.

  “Hello, fat cop,” a voice behind him said. “Are you buying?”

  Gunnar signaled to the bartender by pointing to his beer glass and raising one finger, and then turned. “Hello Kolbrún. Good to see you.”

  “Do you need to get to the library at all tonight?”

  “No, not especially. Have you got your bike?”

  “Not tonight. I lent it to someone. I felt like having a drink. I don’t have to be at work at the fish store until around noon tomorrow so I’m hanging loose. You do remember what you promised me, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk with the executor. I just need to find out who it is. Then I’ll try to work out a good price for the farm.”

  “I don’t have much money. I’ll need to get a loan.”


  “I’ll look into that with you, too. Then we should start a rumor that the farm is haunted. Maybe that’ll make other buyers less interested. Know any good ghost stories?”

  “Yeah, I like the sound of that,” Kolbrún said.

  The beer arrived, and they chatted about farming at Litla-Fell and what scary ghost stories might work. When they’d had another beer, Kolbrún looked at her watch.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s too expensive to drink here. I’ve got a six-pack of beer at home. You can come, too, if you want.”

  23:50

  On her way out of the gym, Dóra said good night to the young man at the front desk, who was engrossed in a motocross program on some foreign TV channel. He wore a black shirt open to the waist, showing off his bare, darkly tanned chest and muscular stomach in a way that was not exactly modest.

  “Good night and thank you for coming,” he replied in a high-pitched voice, not looking at Dóra. She was probably several years too old to spark his interest. He, on the other hand, had aroused hers, and as she made her way out to the parking lot she tried to pinpoint what was unusual about him; it wasn’t until she had climbed into her old Escort that she realized what it was. He’d shaved off all his upper-body hair. Perhaps the rest, too—the parts she couldn’t see.

  When she arrived home, she poured a glass of orange juice and turned on her computer. She was just going to check her inbox and then go to bed. There were three unread e-mails. She thought the one from jestertoyou@hotmail.com must be junk mail, because she didn’t recognize the sender’s address. She was about to delete it when she spotted the subject line: Ford Escort at 23:52. She immediately realized this was the time she had headed home in her Escort. Had somebody been following her?

  Four JPEG files were attached. So there were pictures. The text read: I see you decided to take a bath, as I suggested. I’ll give you a chance to apologize suitably for your conduct. Otherwise I’ll send these pictures to every single police e-mail address tonight. I’ll be waiting at home. You know what I want to do.

  Dóra downloaded all of the pictures onto her computer and opened the first one. It had been taken in the shower room at the gym and showed her naked, washing her hair. The other three images were similar. All were well lit and sharply focused—evidently the work of a professional.