Chilled to the Bone (26 page)

“I think Símon’s really worried about something. Normally he’s quite cheerful, but these last few days he’s been mega-grumpy.”

“There’s a scam been going on here and at a few other hotels across Reykjavík. You have an idea of this, right?”

“A what?” Eva asked and Gunna inwardly cursed the girl’s slow-wittedness.

“People being tied up in rooms. That’s happened a few times, hasn’t it?”

Eva chewed her lip and looked nervously over toward Eggert, standing like a sentry behind the reception desk. “We’re not supposed to say anything.”

“Says who?”

“Símon. And Magnús. They said that if anything about this got out and it affected business, we could find ourselves out of work, and it’s not easy to find work at the moment.”

“When did they tell you this? Recently?”

“It was before my birthday. I remember because it was the day before my party.”

“And when was that?”

“August the ninth’s my birthday.”

Gunna was surprised that Sonja’s scam went back so far; Eva twisted her fingers nervously.

“Am I going to get the sack if they find out I told you this?” she asked abruptly.

“I’ve no idea. I wouldn’t think so. But if
you
don’t tell them, I won’t. This was Símon, right? And Magnús told you the same thing?”

“They told all of us. But not all together. Just in ones and twos.”

“How did Magnús seem to you? Was he nervous or upset in any way?”

“Not that I noticed. His girlfriend threw him over because her parents didn’t like him, or so he said. He tried to make out he didn’t really care, but he was well pissed off,” Eva said. “I mean, it’s not as if Magnús was the kind of dreamboat who was going to find another girlfriend just like that.”

T
HE HOSTILITY IN
the air was unmistakeable. Jóel Ingi Bragason and Már Einarsson sat on one side of the polished table, practically identical young men in suits that Gunna felt made them look like youngsters ready for confirmation, while Ívar Laxdal sat at one end of the table and glowered.

“So this is a MacBook that has been mislaid and you want it back, or so Ívar tells me,” Gunna opened.

“Who are you?” the slimmer and younger-looking of the pair demanded with outright distrust in his tone.

Gunna sighed and put her identification on the table for them both to see.

“As I’m sure smart gentlemen like you are already aware, I’m Gunnhildur Gísladóttir and I’m a sergeant with the serious crimes unit. I don’t doubt that my colleague”—she nodded toward Ívar Laxdal—“has already told you exactly who I am, so let’s stop wasting everyone’s time, shall we?”

The younger man with the narrow face and the darting eyes—Jóel Ingi, according to the hurried briefing Ívar Laxdal had given her—sat back and pouted sulkily while his colleague Már smiled winningly and clasped his hands together in front of him.

“Jóel Ingi, would you like to explain exactly what happened?” Mar invited.

“Yes, well …” he floundered for a moment before regaining his footing. “It was a few days before Christmas, I think.”

“You think? You don’t know for certain?”

“Of course I do. I’ll just have to check my diary,” Jóel Ingi snapped back. “I was walking home and had my laptop in a bag on my shoulder, as usual. There were two boys in the street, and one of them had a bicycle. They were having an argument,” he recited.

“So what happened?” Gunna prompted.

“One of them pushed the other quite hard in the chest, and he fell backward against me. I stumbled and fell. The boy who had pushed the other grabbed my laptop case and made off on his bicycle.”

“And the other boy?”

“I … er, I don’t know. I ran after the one on the bicycle, but couldn’t catch him. When I looked around, the other boy had gone as well.”

“And where did all this happen?”

“Skipholt,” Jóel Ingi replied. “The corner of Skipholt and Bolholt.”

“Which way did the lad on the bike go?”

“Back along Skipholt.”

“What time of day was this?”

“Around five, five-thirty.”

“So it was dark. What was the weather like?”

Jóel Ingi stared back. “What?”

“Weather? Cold? Wet? Raining?”

“I don’t remember.”

Jóel Ingi’s eyes widened in suspicion as Gunna glanced at Ívar Laxdal.

“I’ll need descriptions of the two lads, anything that might distinguish them. What ages?”

“Around sixteen, I’d say.”

“Tall? What sort of height? Fair hair, dark hair? Long? Short?”

“They were both wearing hooded sweaters and I didn’t see their faces properly. It all happened so fast.”

Gunna sat back and looked disapproving.

“Officer, do you expect that these two boys can be found?” Már Einarsson asked in a tone that was an attempt to defuse the tension.

“I’m sure they can, if we had the time and manpower to do it. But you’re not giving me a great deal to work on.”

“Jóel Ingi, is there anything more you can recall?” Már asked.

“No. It was dark. It was all over in a few seconds.”

Gunna sat back and cracked her knuckles. “I can’t help feeling that we’re wasting our time here.”

“You think so?” Már asked, a worried expression on his pleasant face.

“Two boys steal a laptop and run off. You’ve given me practically nothing to work on other than the serial numbers of the laptop. We have to look for two lads who may or may not be around sixteen, without knowing what they look like except that they wear hoodies, like every other teenager, and one of them rides a bike.”

“I see what you mean,” Már agreed.

“I’d say your best option would be to go through the small ads in the papers. If this laptop is going to surface, that’s where it’s most likely to turn up. On the other hand, it may well be under some teenager’s bed by now, or it may have been reformatted, so anything on it will have been erased.”

“That’s what we need to know,” Jóel Ingi broke in.

“So just what is it that’s so sensitive? It would certainly give me something to work on if I had an idea of just why this four-year-old laptop is so important,” Gunna said, and the two young men looked at her in silence.

Ívar Laxdal sighed audibly. “Let’s not even go there, Gunnhildur,” he rumbled, the irritation plain in his voice. “They won’t tell me, let alone you.”

T
HE TWO POLICE
officers left the building together and Jóel Ingi breathed a sigh of relief, winding his scarf around his neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me they were going to be here today?” he asked as Már waited for him.

“I didn’t know. That ugly bastard, Ívar, called me about four minutes before they came through the door. I didn’t have a chance to put him off.”

“And who was that terrible woman who asked all those stupid questions?”

“It seems she’s a detective, and a very good one, or so Ívar said. He reckons that if anyone’s going to find your laptop, then she’s the most likely candidate.”

They stood in silence in the lift as it descended, checked out at the security gate and emerged into the street.

“Your friend,” Már said, “the one you said your brother had lined up. Any progress?”

“I’m going to see him right now.”

Már nodded as they set off along the street toward the corner where their paths would diverge.

“You know …” Már began, hesitating, “what you told the police about those two boys?”

“What about it?”

“Was that the truth? Was that what really happened?”

Jóel Ingi stopped at the corner and squared up to face Már, his face flushed in anger and frustration. “Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that,” Már mumbled, stepping back to allow a young woman with a pushchair to pass between them. The blonde girl stood on the corner, waiting for the lights to change, but still looking to her left for a break in the traffic that would let her hurry across before the lights changed.

Már spoke as quietly as he could. “You just weren’t convincing. I’m not saying I disbelieve you. But I don’t suppose that fat policewoman believed you.”

The lights bleeped and the young woman strode over the crossing, the pushchair swishing through the puddles that had collected in the melting snow.

“I don’t care what the fuck they believe,” Jóel Ingi said furiously.

Már watched as the young woman with the pushchair disappeared into a shop on the other side of the road and was shocked when he looked back at Jóel Ingi and saw a twitch under his left eye.

“Listen. Calm down, will you? If that laptop was stolen by some kids, as you say, it’s probably been wiped and used as a games machine by now. Don’t worry so much,” he said.

“It’s dynamite,” Jóel Ingi retorted. “It doesn’t matter if it turns up next week or in ten years. What’s on there is going to destroy my career, and it’s going to screw the minister. In fact, it’s going to screw both of them.”

“Both of them? What do you mean?”

“Shit, where have you been? You know what was in that information that came from the Brits. Those guys arrived here right after the election, or don’t you remember? One minister in and one out, both of them were in the hot seat.”

“But neither of them had anything to do with this, did they?”

“Of course not. But the buck stops somewhere. If this comes out and they try and blame me, then I’ll blow the whistle on both of them.”

Már looked shocked. “The minister wouldn’t try to make you a scapegoat, surely?”

“Maybe not. But Ægir would, and he’d do it in a heartbeat.” Jóel Ingi said, turning to walk uphill. Már frowned to himself and opened his mouth to call after him, but thought better of it and remained silent, watching Jóel Ingi trudge up the slope with his shoulders hunched against the cold wind as if the weight of the world were on them, while the young woman
emerged from the shop opposite with a carrier bag slung over one of the handles of the pushchair in front of her.

Í
VAR
L
AXDAL DROVE
back to the station at Hverfisgata and Gunna let herself sit back and be enveloped in the softness of the leather seats of his car, which purred effortlessly between sets of traffic lights.

“So what did you make of that?”

“Jóel Ingi Bragason? Bullshit from start to finish.”

“You think so?”

Gunna looked over at Ívar Laxdal in surprise. “Didn’t you? You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. That stuff about the two kids was something he made up beforehand and just spieled off. The rest of it was made up on the fly.”

Ívar Laxdal nodded. “I’m glad you thought so as well,” he confirmed.

“It was like watching a schoolboy caught with a bag of goodies. I’m really wondering what this lad’s done wrong.”

A
T THE NEXT
corner, Jóel Ingi took an unexpected turn, went through an alley between two old houses and made his way almost back the way he had come, this time heading downhill, walking fast toward the center of town.

The woman with the pram stopped, thought quickly, folded the pushchair into a compact flat arrangement and placed it behind some dustbins at the side of a shop. She quickly unrolled a thick quilted anorak from where the pushchair would normally have accommodated a child, shrugged it on and set off behind Jóel Ingi. She pulled a ski hat low over her eyes, keeping him in sight, but only just. She allowed him to go out of view as he rounded a street corner before increasing her speed to catch up and keep him in sight.

She was lucky to see him vanish, with a quick look over his shoulder and a smart sidestep, into a bar in a side street off
Laugarvegur, a dark place that looked quiet on a weekday afternoon as people were making their way home from work. The Emperor was a bar she knew by reputation but had never been inside; she wondered if she should risk going in alone, and eventually deciding to wait for Jóel Ingi to emerge.

In a music shop directly opposite, she flipped listlessly through the racks of CDs, wincing at the price of some of them, but always keeping an eye open through the floor-to-ceiling window for Jóel Ingi to leave the Emperor and hurry back along Laugarvegur toward home.

She had looked slowly through every rack of CDs, declined an offer of assistance from a startlingly pink-haired woman who proceeded to stare into space from behind the counter of the otherwise deserted shop, and finally gave up waiting.

The Emperor was gloomy inside and some muted heavy metal grumbled in the background. The dim walls and the dark brown wood of the tables conspired to make the place look stuffier and smaller than it really was. A few of the customers glanced up as she walked in, and she went straight to the bar instead of looking around for Jóel Ingi. The shaven-headed barman looked at her enquiringly.

“A beer.”

“Small? Large?”

“A small one.”

She looked around her as the barman poured and then sipped her beer appreciatively. It wasn’t often that a drink on the job was acceptable, and she enjoyed the feeling, unzipping her quilted coat.

“Haven’t seen you in here before, have I?” The barman asked, the light above the beer pump shining on the angled facets of his bristled head, giving him a sinister look.

“Don’t expect so. I’m from out of town.”