Chilled to the Bone (27 page)

“Where from? I’m a country boy myself.”

“Bíldudalur,” she said, praying that the man was from some other part of the country and wouldn’t want to embark on a conversation about small-town affairs that would immediately catch her out.

He shook his head. “I’m from Thórshöfn, me. Mind you, it’s a dump and it’s twenty years since I went there last. So what brings you to the bright lights?” he asked, a glint in his eye as he deliberately ignored a young man standing at the other end of the bar waiting to be served.

“Looking for a friend. Jóel Ingi,” she said, deciding on the spur of the moment to take a wild chance. “Actually he’s a cousin and I’m told he drinks in here sometimes.”

The friendly smile vanished from the barman’s face and he muttered something she didn’t catch as he moved off to serve the man at the other end of the bar. She sipped her beer and wondered if mentioning Jóel Ingi had been a mistake. She waited for the barman to return and toyed with the thought of another beer before deciding against it.

The barman returned and nodded at her glass. “Another?”

“Not this time,” she said, pretending to think about it for a moment. “Where are the toilets?”

The barman took the glass and jerked his head toward the bar’s dark interior without a word.

S
HE ZIPPED HER
jeans and pulled on the anorak again before opening the cubicle door, then immediately froze.

“Curious about something, are we?”

One light was flickering as its fluorescent tube died a slow death and the intermittent glow flashed on the single metal tooth that showed as the thin man smiled.

She pushed the cubicle door back, knowing that it was a hopeless thing to do as the man put his shoulder to it and forced it inwards.

H
ELGI WAS BACK
at his desk at Hverfisgata as Gunna arrived, the phone to his ear and a bemused frown on his face as he shook his head at her.

“No, that’s fine. Not a problem. I’ll drop by in the next few days and take a statement. Thanks,” he said and left the phone propped under his chin as he used the butt end of a pencil to press the button on his desk phone to end the call.

“And?”

“He’s not a happy man, Óskar Hjálmarsson.”

“How come? Locked him up, did you?”

“He’s in an interview room, and man has he been sweating. But he checks out. He had nothing to do with Magnús Sigmarsson’s death, as far as I can see.”

“Good. Then we can rule him out, can we?”

“Yup. He left the house at seven-thirty and was at his karate class until after ten. Half a dozen people have confirmed he was there, including Steingrímur from the special unit.”

“And after ten?”

“He bought a takeaway at Ning’s and the lad who was serving remembers him buying chop suey sometime after ten.”

“Fair enough,” Gunna decided. “Let the man go, but give him a stern warning, will you? He’s not completely in the clear until we’ve a confirmed time of death for Magnús. All right?”

Helgi pushed his chair back and stood up, dropping the phone back into its cradle. “Suits me. He’s not someone you’d want to spend a week in Spain with, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t break Magnús’s neck.” He yawned and stretched. “Oh, and there was some guy who tried to call you a couple of times. Your mobile’s switched on, isn’t it?”

Gunna cursed and remembered that her mobile had been set to silent for the meeting at the ministry and she had forgotten to reset it. She hastily looked at the screen and saw three missed calls, all from withheld numbers.

“Well, if it’s important, they’ll call back, I suppose,” she
grumbled to herself as Helgi left the room to set an angry Óskar Hjálmarsson free, before calling him back. “Helgi! That car? Anything new?”

“Not from forensics. Eiríkur’s down at Grandi now asking questions,” Helgi replied, his head around the door. “It’s cold out, so he’ll be back soon, I expect.”

I
N HIS HASTE
, Jóel Ingi almost missed his footing on the stairs. At the top he paused outside his front door and took a couple of deep breaths before opening it and giving the door a kick for good measure.

“Agnes!”

There was no need to shout. The air was thick with the overpowering smell of grass, which told him she was home.

“
Hæ
,” she said absently without looking around from the easel in front of her and the blocks of color she was applying to the canvas with a flat brush. Jóel Ingi could see the joint smoldering in the ashtray and there was a faint tremor at the back of her alabaster neck below the wisps of fine hair as golden as summer straw that escaped a bun coming adrift at the back of her head.

He stood and fumed, waiting for her to turn around, still captivated by the porcelain beauty of one shoulder half exposed from her loose T-shirt. He took a deep breath and lunged closer.

“What the fuck have you been playing at?” he hissed into her ear, stepping forward, digging his fingers deep into the bun of cream hair and hauling Agnes’s head sharply back so that her blue eyes stared into his.

“Let go of me,” she ordered in a steady voice.

“No. You tell me what the fucking game is. Why have you been having me followed? What the hell’s going on?”

“Get your fucking hands off me or you’ll regret it, you animal,” Agnes spat and tried to twist out of his grip.

Jóel Ingi’s fury boiled over. The slap echoed against the bare walls. Agnes’s eyes widened and she glared as Jóel Ingi released her hair and stepped back. He watched as she sat up, a red patch widening across one cheek.

“You bastard,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “You’ll pay for that.”

“You tell me what the fuck’s been going on. Why am I being tailed day and night?”

“You’re insane. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah. That’s not what your detective said.”

Agnes picked up the joint and re-lit it from a candle without taking her eyes off him. She took a long pull at it and moved across the room, keeping the white sofa between them.

“What detective? Jóel Ingi, I really don’t know what the hell’s got into you,” she said in an ice-cold tone. “But I think I’m the one who’s owed an explanation.”

She lifted a hand to her red cheek. Jóel Ingi’s stomach lurched and he felt sick seeing the outline of his hand etched in red on her cheek.

S
HE STILL HAD
her phone. They hadn’t taken anything off her, not that there was a great deal to take as she’d been careful to leave anything important in the car. She adjusted the mirror and looked at the damage to her face. She would have a black eye in the morning, she thought, though she was more worried about the tooth that she sucked at and rolled her tongue around, wondering if it was likely to come out.

The nondescript Renault that had once been dark blue rolled out into the road. It was time to go home. Checking the mirrors carefully for anyone who might be following her, and taking a couple of false turns that would take even a vigilant pursuer by surprise, she drove through the city, wondering if she really ought to tell Jóel Ingi’s wife where he had been, and consoling herself with the thought of the domestic strife she had probably caused.

The weeks of tailing Jóel Ingi Bragason had finally been worth it. The confirmation of seeing him white with anger in the background while that oaf Hinrik and the bald barman went through their tough guy act with a woman who didn’t even come up to their shoulders was something that would be worth passing on.

G
UNNA
’
S PHONE BUZZED
; it was back to the usual ringtone after she had managed to persuade Laufey to remove the sound of bubbling water.

“Gunnhildur.”

“
Hæ
. Siggi. Busy?”

Gunna laughed. “Next question, please.”

“That phone you wanted tracked, with the number ending zero-one-seven. You remember?”

“Yes. The unregistered number. Any sign of it?”

“Half an hour ago it was switched on for a couple of minutes and there was a ninety-second phone call. Then it was switched off again.”

“Right. Where? And do you have the number called?”

She could hear the clicking of a keyboard on the other end of the phone as Siggi in the communications division went through his records.

“Sure it’s him?”

“Yup. No doubt about it.”

“Okay, and the number called? Another unregistered mobile, I expect?”

Siggi laughed. “Just to make your day, it’s a land line and it’s in the phone book, and there’s a mobile number registered to the same user. Ready with a pencil are you?”

Gunna wrote down the number quickly. “Thanks, Siggi. Can you keep an eye on this one for me? Call my mobile as soon as you have anything.”

“Yep. Will do,” Siggi agreed and rang off.

Eiríkur found her a few minutes later with a pencil between her lips and a frown on her face as she hunched over her computer.

“Chief?”

“Yeah?”

Eiríkur said nothing, knowing that the expression on Gunna’s face meant she wasn’t listening; he waited patiently.

“Where’s Helgi?” She asked after a few minutes. “Been sitting there long, have you?”

“An old pisshead called Egill Skafta down at Grandi, lives in the hostel there and is supposed to be drying out, reckons he saw a man walking quickly a few seconds before that car burst into flames.”

“Okay, any more details?”

“I asked him if he was sure it wasn’t just kids larking about, and he looked at me like I had two heads, told me that kids these days stay indoors and shoot each other on computer games but don’t get up to stunts like that any more. He’s something of a character and he’s no fool—when he’s sober, anyway. He reckons that car went up like a Roman candle, so it was more than just someone setting light to a bundle of rags.”

Gunna nodded. “Promising. Go on.”

“I bought him a coffee and a sandwich, and he opened up a bit more. Valdi reckons he saw a thickset man with a beard walking away quickly. He couldn’t swear this guy had anything to do with the car, but it’s a coincidence.”

“Good. Excellent. I have a candidate in mind.”

“You do?” Eiríkur asked, startled.

“I do. I have a few things to do for ten minutes, so I’d like you to check with forensics and see if there’s anything on that car. If it’s Magnús Sigmarsson’s car, I want to know, and preferably yesterday. Think you can manage that?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Gunna rummaged through a tray of papers on her desk and handed Eiríkur a file.

“Once you’ve done that, get yourself back down to Grandi, find Egill Skafta, and show him that picture.”

Eiríkur looked at the photo of Hróbjartur Bjarnthórsson, looking into the lens as if the man behind the camera were beneath contempt. “You reckon this is him?”

“As usual, Eiríkur. I have no idea. But if it’s not him, then we need to start looking for someone else.”

“An old friend of the police?”

“You can read it later. But he’s more than an old friend of ours. He’s one of us, sort of.”

“How come?” Eiríkur asked, perplexed.

“He was almost a police officer once, back in the nineties. What went wrong, I don’t know, but he completed police college and then decided he didn’t want to join the force after all.”

“T
HE PHONE
’
S REGISTERED
to Pétur Steinar Albertsson,” Gunna told Ívar Laxdal without any explanation.

“Something to do with Magnús Sigmarsson, is it?” he asked in a grumpier than usual tone. “I have a press conference in half an hour and by rights you should be there as well, Gunnhildur. I’ve already had calls from two newspapers and TV today asking if there’s any progress, and I’m going to have to give them something.”

“I’m concerned about this character who’s been shadowing everything we do.”

“You have a stalker?”

“Someone who has an interest in Jóhannes Karlsson’s death pumped some of the Gullfoss Hotel staff for information.”

Ívar Laxdal’s single thick eyebrow that stretched across his face thickened as he frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure, but it’s becoming clearer.”

“Jóhannes Karlsson and Magnús Sigmarsson’s deaths are linked, you reckon?”

“There are too many links for comfort,” Gunna said thoughtfully. “I didn’t think so at first, and I was sure that his girlfriend’s father had a hand in it. But now I’m confident we can rule him out. He didn’t like the lad, but not enough to want to kill him.”

“So what the hell’s going on?”

“My guess is that someone else has an interest in Jóhannes Karlsson’s death, and in finding the woman who was with him, which is is exactly what we’ve been trying to do. I have a suspicion who this person might be, and it’s the first link to someone else who might be involved.”

“What do you want to do?” Ívar Laxdal asked, looking at his watch.

“Ten minutes ago I was tempted to go charging in and haul this Pétur Steinar Albertsson into the station. But now I’m more inclined to sit back and watch.”

Ívar Laxdal nodded. “Do that. Find out every last bit of information you can about the man first. But don’t hang around. There’s pressure from all sides to get this wrapped up.”