Chilled to the Bone (2 page)

Now it was different. Baddó had to admit even to himself that he was tired. He had been ready to explode with fury at any moment during the flight over the Baltic with a mustachioed policeman on either side of him, and while they sat and wolfed down pizzas and beer at Kåstrup, their eyes never strayed far from him. The two hulking giants didn’t take their eyes off him until the stewardess had closed and locked the pressure-tight door of the aircraft that would take him back to Iceland for the first time in almost a decade.

He unfolded the newspaper he had put under his arm without thinking in the shop at the corner, and was surprised to see that it was in English. He threw it in the bin, lay down on the wine-red sofa, tucking a cushion under his head, and tried to sleep. Ten minutes later he gave up and stood to gaze out at the grey roofs opposite the little flat’s bathroom window, watching flakes of snow spiral down and settle. It was going to be a cold day, he thought, wondering when María would be home.

“H
IS NAME
’
S
J
ÓHANNES
Karlsson,” Helgi said. “Shipowner from Húsavík, retired. Lives in Copenhagen part of the year. Rolling in dosh, if I recall correctly. Used to be in politics years ago, MP for a term or two in the seventies, until he decided business was more important, or lucrative, than politics. Does that tell you what you want to know?”

Gunna and Helgi had retired to a corner of the hotel’s bar
to confer while the forensic team and the police pathologist examined the room where they had left the late Jóhannes Karlsson still strapped to the bed he had died on.

“Independence or Progressive?”

“Independence Party, I think. I wouldn’t want to think that he was one of us,” Helgi said in a severe tone.

“One of you, you mean. I’d prefer it if you didn’t take me for a Progressive Party supporter, thank you very much.”

“Sorry. I never saw you as anything but a bleeding heart liberal, Gunna.”

“Cause of death?” she asked.

“You’re asking me?”

“Sorry, Helgi. No, just thinking out loud. I’m wondering if this was murder or accidental? What do you reckon?”

Helgi snorted. “Doesn’t look in the least bit intentional to me. I reckon there was some fun and games going on, our boy got his first stiffy in years and keeled over under the strain. The girlfriend—or boyfriend, or paid companion, or whatever—ran for it. That’s what tells me that whoever was with him probably decided he or she wasn’t being paid enough to deal with this kind of stuff.”

“You know, Helgi, with brains like yours you’re wasted on the police. I reckon you’ve pretty much summed it up. But, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I get to go home.”

“And do some knitting?” Helgi asked innocently.

“Don’t push it,” Gunna growled, signalling to Yngvi, hovering by the bar with a cup-to-the-lips gesture. “How long has he been staying here? This place must cost a fortune,” she said as a waiter approached with a tray of cups and a flask of coffee.

“He’s been here for two weeks. His wife was here for the first week, apparently, and went home while Jóhannes was dealing with some business in Reykjavík. He was due to check out at twelve today. When he hadn’t shown up at two, the chambermaid knocked, as they always do, to see if he’d already gone,
and found him spark out on the bed. She screamed, called the housekeeping manager, and she called us and the doctor who was at the bar.”

“Fair enough,” Gunna said. “Where’s Eiríkur?”

“On his way. Won’t be long.”

“Good,” Gunna said, sipping daintily at the coffee a tall, dark-haired young man placed wordlessly on the table. “When he gets here, start him off checking the passenger lists to see when our boy was due to travel and then get him to see if he can track down the man’s wife. If she’s still in Húsavík, he’d best get the police there to speak to her and break the bad news that she’s a widow.”

“Right, will do. And me?”

“Talk to the staff, and see what you can find by way of CCTV. We need to speak to whoever tied Jóhannes Karlsson to the bed, even though it looks like he’d probably paid whoever it was handsomely to do just that.”

“Yup. And you, chief?”

“Oh, you know. I’ll just take a walk around the shops while you and Eiríkur do the hard work.”

“Nothing unusual there, then?”

“Get away with you. I’ll start with the chambermaid who found our boy and then the duty manager, and hopefully the forensic team will have done their business by then. But first I’m going to have another cup of this rather fine coffee.”

“Are we paying for this?” Helgi asked dubiously.

“Good grief, no. It’s an integral part of the investigation.”

H
ARALDUR SAT ON
the bed in his underwear, breathing heavily. Hekla stood in front of him and unzipped her black dress with one hand behind her. His hands reached forward and his face was flushed.

He groaned. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

“God, you’re gorgeous …?”

“Sorry. Mistress.”

“That’s better,” Hekla warned, lifting his hands from her hips and pushing them firmly back. “You’re a bad man and now you’ll have to wait. If you’ll just get yourself in the mood, I’ll be right back.”

She let the dress fall, turned and stepped toward the bathroom, her heels clicking on the warm tiled floor, knowing that Haraldur’s eyes were glued to her buttocks, which he could just see below the hem of her shift.

She washed her face in cold water and dried it with a towel that felt as soft as fur. She could hear Haraldur’s breathing in the bedroom and the sound of him moving about on the bed. She pulled on the tight PVC one-piece suit that she had ready in the bathroom and took a deep breath, picking up a handful of scarves and a small leather strap on the way.

Hekla dimmed the lights as far as they would go and sent a slow smile toward Haraldur where he lay on the bed. She added a low chuckle and stepped toward him, standing over the naked man, hands on her hips.

“So, Haraldur, you’ve been really bad and I’m going to have to teach you a little lesson, aren’t I?” She pitched her voice deep and reached forward to tie one of his wrists to the headboard with practiced ease. He moaned as she leaned over him, her breasts encased in electric blue plastic and skimming his face as she tied the other wrist back in the same way.

The fingertips of one hand brushed his chest and down to his belly. A reasonably attractive man and in good condition for his age, she thought. Hekla walked along the side of the bed, trailing the leather strap down the length of his body and along one leg to his ankle, where she stooped and planted a kiss on his instep.

“Have you been bad, Haraldur?”

“Yes, mistress,” he responded dutifully.

“Then a little more correction might be needed.”

Another scarf was swiftly tied around the ankle and secured to the bed frame.

“Bad, bad man,” she growled in the deepest voice she could manage and the other ankle was quickly tied, leaving Haraldur spread-eagled across the king-sized bed.

Hekla sashayed back to the top of the bed and showed him the ball gag. “Since you’ve been such a bad, bad man, I’m going to show you what a bad, bad girl I can be,” she said quietly.

“Please, mistress,” Haraldur panted.

“You really want me to hurt you?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Then watch this, Haraldur.”

Hekla pushed the ball into Haraldur’s mouth and put her hands quickly behind his neck to clip the strap shut. As she stepped back, he immediately began to breathe heavily through his nose, struggling to draw breath and splaying his cheeks to get some air around the ball.

“Now you’re going to be patient and wait right there and think about how bad you’ve been,” she said, disappearing back into the bathroom.

After what seemed an age, she reappeared. The plastic suit had gone, replaced with a hooded sweater, jeans and trainers. The makeup had been scrubbed off and the golden hair was gone, replaced with dark curls that reached her shoulders. Hekla dropped a large holdall on the floor next to the door and, as his heart sank, she went over to where his clothes had been hastily discarded, systematically going through the pockets. She switched off his phone and put it on the dresser, before opening his wallet and removing the notes, stuffing them into the pocket of her pullover without counting them. Next she extracted all of the cards and brought them over to the bed.

Hekla looked down at Haraldur, lying mute and helpless in front of her. She sat down by his head and looked into his
bewildered eyes, unclipping a ballpoint pen from the neckline of her sweater.

“Are you listening carefully, Haraldur?” The only response was a limited straining of his arms and legs against the scarves holding him down and a desperate growl from behind the rubber ball.

“You know that’s not going to help, don’t you?” she told him as he went limp. “Now, listen. I’m going to go shopping for an hour or so while you ponder the error of your ways and remember how much you love your wife. All right?”

Haraldur’s eyes bulged.

“Your credit card. Tell me your pin number. Clench your right fist for the numbers. Once for one, twice for two, and so on. Four numbers. Go.”

Haraldur’s fists remained obstinately clenched and Hekla sighed. “Look. There’s an easy way and a hard way. If you give me the number and it works, after I’ve been shopping I’ll call the hotel’s reception and tell them there’s a man in room four-oh-six who is in trouble and needs some help urgently. If the number doesn’t work, then I won’t and nobody will come in here until the chambermaid comes to clean your room tomorrow morning.”

She looked at her watch.

“It’s half past four now, so that’s in about sixteen hours’ time. You might be a bit cold and thirsty by then. It’s up to you.”

Haraldur’s fist clenched and unclenched in a series of numbers.

“Two-five-two-seven. Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. And your debit card? Same number, maybe?”

Haraldur nodded furiously as she wrote the number on the back of her hand.

She held up a second debit card. “And this one?”

Another series of nods.

“Good. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Haraldur. Don’t worry about your cards. The bank will give you new
ones easily enough. I’ll destroy them after I’ve been shopping, and I won’t sell them on to anyone else.”

She dipped into her pocket and drew out a small digital camera, pointed it at the helpless, naked Haraldur in front of her and pressed the shutter. Haraldur strained against the scarves that were holding him down and his face went a deep red as she took several pictures. She looked him up and down, screwed up her face in sympathy and spat in her palm.

“The least I can do for you under the circumstances, I suppose,” she said as she set to work. It didn’t take long. A minute later Haraldur stiffened, arched his back as far as his bonds would allow him and relaxed, while Hekla looked at him indulgently. She went to the bathroom, washed her hands and came back with a fluffy towel, which she used to wipe the man’s belly clean.

“Be careful in future, and no hard feelings, eh? Business is business,” Hekla said with a cheerful smile, looking down at the forlorn man in front of her as she swung the holdall onto her shoulder. “Goodbye, Haraldur. Someone will be up to untie you in an hour.”

A
LIGHT LUNCH
of salad, soup and bread full of so many seeds that they stuck between his teeth gave Jóel Ingi the energy to wake up, and half an hour later he was stripped down to shorts and a grey T-shirt as he pedaled his habitual ten kilometers at the gym, surrounded by like-minded professionals with the same aim in mind. There was a sharp aura of dedication in the air as Jóel Ingi passed the eight kilometer mark in the time he usually took to do ten. He wondered if that might be enough, but forced himself to continue.

“Hi, how goes it?”

The question took him by surprise as he was emerging from the shower. He looked around and saw only the back of
someone he didn’t recognize until the face appeared from beneath the towel that was rubbing a mop of dark hair dry.

“Hi, not so bad. And you? How’s things on your side? Not that you’re allowed to tell me anything about what you guys do,” he joked.

“I can tell you exactly what we do,” Már Einarsson replied, opening the packaging around a new shirt and taking it out of its cellophane wrapper. He grinned. “But I’d have to send someone to kill you afterward.”

“And then you’d have to kill him after that, I suppose?”

“Yeah, probably,” he said it dismissively. The humor had gone from his voice. “We have a minor problem. Can we have a quiet word later today?”

“Sure,” Jóel Ingi agreed. He knotted his tie and looked at himself in the mirror. “Urgent?”

“Hmmm. Could be. Let’s say it is, shall we?” Már continued. “Wait for me at the door, would you? We can talk there and it’ll only take a minute.”

The shower had been too hot and had left his pores wide open. In the warmth of the gym’s lobby, Jóel Ingi found himself sweating uncomfortably. He considered taking off his coat, but that would only mean putting it back on as soon as Már appeared, so he decided to be too hot for a few minutes before plunging into the welcome chill of the cold afternoon.

By the time Már appeared silently at his side, Jóel Ingi was almost asleep, his eyelids drooping.

“Ready?”

He shook himself awake. “Sorry. I’ve not been sleeping well recently,” he explained.

“You need more exercise. Or are you pushing yourself too hard?”

“Ach. I don’t know. A bit of both, probably.”

Már made for the door. “Walk with me. There are too many ears around here,” he murmured.

The sun shone outside for the first time in days, a pallid sunlight with no warmth, but welcome all the same in the dead of winter.

“Problem,” Már announced once they were clear of the gym and anyone who might overhear. “A whisper from the Brits, of all people. Three men and a woman who disappeared from Germany two years ago turned up in Libya. Dead, and not from old age.”

“And what does this have to do with us?”

“Nothing at all, I hope. You tell me.”