Chilled to the Bone (32 page)

She had no choice but to stay in the van until the Audi had gone. She had parked her own car out of sight and couldn’t risk letting Jóel Ingi see her, even fleetingly in the mirror. She stayed still in the van, the door cracked open to let in some air and dispel the thick smell inside. Ready to step out, she quickly pulled the door closed again as a mud-colored car rattled to a halt, watching the driver get out with a mobile phone to his ear and talk as he walked slowly toward Hinrik’s door. She wondered what had happened to the man’s face to require all those stitches.

B
REAKFAST WAS OVER
, the twins had been deposited at playgroup and Hekla felt that at last she could relax for a few minutes. She listened to the washing machine whirr and mutter as it finished its cycle and wondered whether or not to open it straight away. The sound of Pétur’s lathe could be heard faintly through the wall.

She thought back to the fat man with the mournful eyes in the swimming pool, the one she was sure she had shaken off before he could follow her. The nagging feeling returned to her that this was something to do with the angry old man at Hotel Gullfoss, the one whose obituary she’d been startled to see in the paper, or maybe one of the others?

Hekla got up from the stool she’d been sitting on while brooding and banged on Sif’s door.

“Are you awake?” she called and was rewarded with noise that wasn’t quite human speech but indicated that the room was occupied.

The door opened and Sif appeared wrapped in a dressing gown and with her long brown hair in disarray over her face. She shambled to the bathroom and Hekla heard the lock snap to. She carefully pushed open the door of Sif’s room and peered into the gloom inside. The curtains were drawn tight and had probably been that way since they’d moved in a year ago. Hekla wrinkled her nose at the musty smell and clicked on the light. The bed was strewn with books and papers, and she could see where Sif had lain in bed surrounded by the collection. On the desk the light on a large flatscreen monitor gleamed, while two laptops were also open on the desk on either side of it.

A flush sounded and a tap could be heard running. Hekla switched off the light and retreated, noticing as she did so the vaguely familiar laptop bag open on the floor behind the door. She closed the door and went back to the kitchen.

“Y’all right?” Sif yawned, her hair not brushed, but gathered
untidily behind her head. Her eyes were red behind her round glasses and she yawned again, wider this time, revealing multicolored braces on her teeth.

“Fine, thanks. Sleep well?” Hekla asked, trying not to sound sarcastic and remembering what it was like to be a teenager. “Can you sort your washing out, please? The machine’s finished and I need to do a wash myself.”

Sif rustled through a cupboard and came up with a jar. She carefully spread butter on a slice of bread, followed by jam from the jar, and folded the bread into a makeshift sandwich.

“Yeah,” she said, through a mouthful of bread and jam. “I’ll get dressed first.”

“Make it quick, would you?”

Sif shambled back to her room and Hekla wondered how someone with such outstanding grades at college could be so disorganized. She sighed to herself and hauled the pile of damp clothes from the washing machine before reloading it. She pointedly left the basket of damp clothes where Sif would have to step over it, certain that it would still be in the same place by evening, but hoping to be proved wrong.

It was half an hour before Sif emerged from her room again, dressed in the baggy clothes she preferred, but with her hair still awry. As if performing a vital service to mankind she loaded her damp clothes piece by piece into the dryer.

“Sif,” Hekla called as the dryer started to hum.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have that laptop I was given before Christmas? The one that was in your dad’s workshop?”

“Er, yeah. Why?”

“I’d like it back.”

“But you don’t use it.”

“I know, but I’d still like it back.”

“Why?”

Hekla fought to control her temper and smothered the urge
to snap back. “Because it was given to me and I might need it. Is it in your room?”

“Yeah. It’s a piece of crap anyway. Really old and slow.”

“You managed to start it up?” Hekla asked in surprise. “I tried and it was locked. I was going to get the password for it.”

Sif looked at her suspiciously. “Where did you get it from, then?”

“Someone I used to work with. Why?”

Sif laughed. “Unless it was a guy called Jóel Ingi Bragason who gave it to you, then that’s a stolen computer,” she announced, turning to disappear back into her room.

“So how did you get into it?” Hekla asked.

Sif turned back. “Easy. I cracked the password.”

“Okay, fine. Well, I want it back now, thanks.”

“You’re not using it and I don’t know where I put it.”

“It’s on your desk. And the case is on the floor.”

“The case, yeah. But the laptop’s at Hilmar’s house. It’s been there for weeks.”

Hekla called on new reserves of patience. “But it’s in there on your desk.”

“That’s an old one that belongs to college. What’s the problem? It’s not as if you were using it,” Sif retorted. “Or even if you had a password for it.”

B
ADDÓ PARKED THE
Hyundai out of sight behind a van that had been on blocks for long enough to let a summer’s worth of grime accumulate on it while snow surrounded it in shallow drifts. He preferred to deal with people in comfortable blocks of flats, not in these old houses with cubbyhole apartments and creaky doors that could take a man by surprise.

He switched on his phone and keyed in a number, leaning against the abandoned van, eyes on the house as he listened to the ringing tone.

“Baddó,” Hinrik wheezed, and he could hear the click of his lighter. “Got something for me?”

“Could be,” he said. Hinrik was no early bird and he hadn’t expected him to be awake. “Let’s say we need to do a little negotiation.”

“How come? Negotiate over what? I gave you a job and a good rate. Either you’ve come up with the goods or you haven’t.”

Baddó walked quickly toward the house, looking it over as he spoke. “I had a rough time last night. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“What the fuck? Are you playing games, or what?”

Baddó nodded to himself. Thirty-six hours with practically no sleep meant that he was wide awake on energy alone, but he knew that at some point exhaustion would set in, and quickly. He eased open the back door of the old house and stepped inside, letting the hood of the parka drop back.

“Where the hell are you, Baddó?” Hinrik demanded. “And why are you talking in that stupid voice?”

“Never you mind. It’s not as if I’m fit to be seen at the moment.”

“What’s this crap you’re talking?”

Baddó heard Hinrik yawn as he spoke and stood still, listening to the creak of old floorboards above his head. He smiled as much as the numbness down one side of his face would allow. He put a cautious foot on the bottom step of the narrow stairs and gingerly made his way up, keeping close to the wall to avoid making the steps creak as loudly as the floorboards above his head.

“All right, you mad bastard. What’s this negotiation bullshit you’re talking about?”

Another step, around the corner and the door to Hinrik’s flat was in sight. “Somebody tried to tell me to keep my nose clean last night, and I don’t take kindly to a lesson in manners from deadbeats like those two fuckwits.”

“I’m telling you, man. I don’t now what you’re talking about. I want you to do the job I gave you.”

Baddó heard shuffling feet. Standing at Hinrik’s door, he peered through the single remaining frosted glass panel next to a broken one that had been badly repaired with tape and cardboard.

“I’m not happy, Hinrik,” he growled, his jaw aching now that the painkillers were starting to wear off.

“What the fuck happened to you, man?” Hinrik asked and Baddó could hear him yawn just as he could see an indistinct figure shuffle across the hallway and disappear into another room. Hinrik’s breathing suddenly magnified in his ear, together with the sound of running water. Baddó pushed though the cardboard taped over the broken window pane, thankful that he wasn’t going to have to kick the door down, and eased a hand through it to unclick the catch. He padded down the hall, his phone now in his pocket, and turned to stand behind Hinrik as he urinated carelessly in fits and starts in the flat’s tiny toilet.

“You still there, Baddó?” he heard Hinrik say into the phone jammed under his chin.

“Right here,” Baddó snarled, placing a foot in the small of Hinrik’s back and pushing, sending him staggering forward, the yellow stream spattering his feet as he fell and one hand desperately reaching out to stop his face hitting the cistern, while his phone fell with a clatter and a splash into the toilet bowl.

“What …?” He roared. “Get off me, you mad bastard!”

“I’m mad, right enough,” Baddó hissed, one hand in Hinrik’s lank hair and the other wrenching his arm up high behind his back. “Who were those two dipshits who tried to turn me over last night?”

Hinrik twisted, forcing his head around. As he saw the livid cut and stitches on Baddó’s face, his eyes bulged. “Shit, man. Who did that to you?”

“You tell me. Or you’re going down there until you think of something.”

Hinrik thrashed as his face was pushed into the toilet bowl. Baddó hauled his face back out after a few seconds and Hinrik gasped for air, retching between each deep lungful, which was cut short as his head was thrust into the bowl again. Hinrik’s free hand stretched out, desperately scrabbling for a hold on anything, while his legs kicked feebly.

Baddó wrenched Hinrik’s head clear of the foul water and gave him a few seconds to haul some air deep into his heaving chest. His sparse locks of dark hair lay over his face and he made to push them away as he spluttered and fought for breath.

“Shit …” he moaned, retching yet again. “Baddó, man. I swear. It was nothing to do with me. Hell,” he moaned, his breathing starting to slow.

“Talk, Hinrik,” Baddó ordered, nodding toward the foul-smelling toilet. “Spill the fucking beans, or you’re going back down there and you’re not coming out.”

Hinrik lay collapsed against the wall, one arm behind him and the other across his chest. He stared into Baddó’s hard, dark eyes and didn’t like what he saw.

“They made a real mess of you, Baddó man,” he said. “Who were they? What did they look like?”

“You tell me.”

“Why would I have you rolled? You’re working for me, remember? Why would I have you turned over before the job’s done? Are you going to let me get up? I reckon you’ve made your point.”

Baddó allowed Hinrik to get shakily to his feet, one hand on the wall as he supported himself. He closed the lid of the toilet and sat down heavily on it, groaning. He took a better look at Baddó’s face and grimaced. “They did a job on you, didn’t they?”

“Who did?”

“Hell, Baddó. I don’t know,” Hinrik snarled. “It’s none of my doing and it’s not as if you’re short of enemies who owe you a bad turn.”

“I need some cash. Right now.”

“You have a fucking weird way of asking to be paid for a job,” Hinrik said, the shadow of a smile appearing at one corner of his thin mouth.

“But it’s more than just money, Hinrik,” Baddó snarled, pointing at his face. “This changes everything. There’s some information I’m after as well.”

W
ONDERING IF SHE
was wasting her time, Gunna signed an unmarked car out of the pool and took it through town, pleased for a change to see clear skies after a dark night and more than a week of incessant snow, punctuated by spells of rain every time the temperature hauled itself above zero. Twice Gunna braked and swore as cars pulled across lanes without warning. The mid-morning traffic was fast and too close for comfort, with the road covered by a film of water quickening in the thin sunshine.

Past the half-empty car park at the Korputorg shopping center the traffic thinned to trucks and a few cars heading out of town and by Mosfellsbær the city receded into the distance. Esja’s white slopes gleamed in the sun and the road became a black scar lying across a landscape the color of a grubby bandage at ground level, rising to pristine white pierced with jagged black rock outcrops on the higher slopes.

The warmth of the sunshine was a welcome change, but Gunna wondered what the night would bring. The forecast was for clear weather and a northerly breeze, conditions bound to bring a chill with them, and she remembered how that morning’s sparkling air had nipped at unprotected ears and noses, as if to provide a reminder that winter was still here.

She found herself enjoying the drive through less familiar
scenery. The daily commute from Hvalvík into the city had become a routine chore on most days, especially the nighttime drive both ways during the winter months. But driving this way out of town, in the opposite direction to the one that would take her to Hvalvík, was also fraught with memories of travel from her childhood home to Reykjavík in the days when roads were gravel and it was a long day’s travel to the Westfjords. She wondered idly how long it would take for people to miss her if she were to continue to the Hvalfjördur tunnel and keep driving north and then west, when her question was answered by her phone buzzing.