Cold Comfort (39 page)

“And who else knew about it?”

Gulli Ólafs looked down at his laptop as it pinged quietly and he rattled the keyboard in a flurry of fingers. “Only Arnar. He was quite interested, but a couple of days later he told me to back off.”

“What conclusions did you draw from that?”

There was no hint of laughter in his grim smile. “The obvious ones. That Arnar had asked a few questions and found out that one of his cronies had a stake in it, so he wanted it glossed over.”

“And what research had you done? Did you approach anyone about it?”

“Oh, yes. The mayor’s office. No reply, as far as I remember. I tried the committee that was responsible for what was then called spatial resources as well, but didn’t get far.”

“Do you remember who you spoke to?”

Gulli Ólafs laughed and gestured at a copy of that morning’s paper on his desk.

“Him.”

Gunna looked down at a black-and-white portrait of Hallur Hallbjörnsson smiling from a lower corner of the front page.

“That’s the guy. It says here he had an ‘accident at his home,’ but the word is he tried to do himself in yesterday.”

“What was his reaction when you approached him?”

“Very positive, actually. He seemed keen to meet so he could refute any wrongdoing. But then …”

“Then what?”

“Arnar quietly warned me off,” he said, squinting as he peered down at the newspaper. “Then I had that rope round my neck in the car and figured I’d best leave well alone. Putting your job on the line’s one thing, but your life’s something else.”

“You didn’t think to go to the police at the time?”

“God, no.”

“You’d recognize the voice if you heard it again?”

“Absolutely,” Gulli Ólafs said firmly. “It was a long time ago, but I assure you it’s burned into my memory. A death threat’s not something that happens every day.”

“W
HAT D’YOU RECKON,
chief?” Helgi asked. “Hallur’s place next?”

“Yup,” Gunna instructed, stabbing at her phone. “Somebody let Sindri or Jónas Valur know that Gulli Ólafs was sniffing around, and presumably they put two and two together to figure out where the leak had come from. Gulli gets a warning, and Steindór gets a punishment that went too far. That’s my take on it.”

“Sounds about right to me,” Helgi said morosely, changing lanes too fast and earning an angry blast on the horn from the car behind. Slowing right down, he negotiated the quiet street, where Hallur’s Mercedes now occupied a place in the road instead of the drive.

“Hæ, Eiríkur,” Gunna bellowed into her phone. “Where are you?” Oh, right. No, listen. A little task for you, and it needs to be done today. But first I’d like you to tell Technical that I’m at Hallur Hallbjörnsson’s place and we need them to cast beady eyes over something, OK? As quick as you like.”

As Helgi waited patiently, he looked up the drive towards Hallur’s house, where a small face peered from the corner of the kitchen window at them. He smiled back and the face disappeared.

“Clutching at straws here, Helgi, but it’s worth a go,” Gunna said grimly, appearing at his side and marching towards the house. She noticed that the carved wooden sign proclaiming that Hallur, Helena Rós, Margrét Anna and Krist’n Dröfn live here was now protruding from the dustbin by the gate.

Helgi reflected that it seemed to be a day for angry women. Helena Rós sat with ill-controlled fury in her pristine front room, while two small girls sat quietly in the next room, engrossed in the television.

“How long has this been going on?” she demanded.

“Has what in particular been going on?” Gunna asked.

“How long had my husband,” she snarled the word, “been seeing that woman?”

“Ah, you mean the affair with the late Svana Geirs,” Gunna said. “Some considerable time, several years. Unfortunately, we’re not in a position to ask the lady herself.”

Helena Rós picked irritably at a plait that snaked lazily over one shoulder of her sweater, a traditional knitted one but with a modern cut that did without arms and which Gunna thought looked ridiculous.

“Several years? Jesus,” she muttered to herself. “Years?”

“How is your husband now?” Gunna asked, trying to speak gently.

“You mean how is my soon-to-be ex-husband?” Helena Rós snapped back. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Last night he was awake but sedated. I haven’t been to the hospital today, and I don’t think I’ll bother. I guess his parents and his brothers are there to soothe the poor boy.”

“Obviously we will need to ask him rather a lot of questions once he’s fit to answer them. Have you spoken to the doctors today? Do you know how he is or what the prospects are?”

“No idea. He may well be brain-damaged,” she said in a voice that fizzed with emotion. “Why the hell did you have to come and drag him out of the car? Why couldn’t you just have left him there for a few more minutes?”

“I’m afraid …” Gunna began, taken aback by the virulence of the woman’s fury. “I don’t need to tell you that would amount to murder. I have to ask you about your husband’s movements, in particular what he was doing on the eleventh. Are you aware of where he might have been that day, or what he might have been doing?”

“No idea. He leaves the house. I have no idea what he does or where he is until he comes back.”

“You didn’t suspect that he was having a liaison outside his marriage?” Helena Rós stood up and paced back and forth in front of the window with short, sharp steps.

“Of course I suspected. He’s that kind of man. I thought I had that side of him under control, though, at least since the girls were born. But what the hell do I know? The bastard, how could he do this …?” she said, as much to herself as to Gunna and Helgi.

“We need access to some of your husband’s bank details. There are transactions that need to be traced and his business interests need to be accounted for.”

“Feel free. You know where his office is,” Helena Rós snarled. “You were down there with him long enough the other day.”

“When were you aware that your husband was being blackmailed?” Gunna asked, letting the jibe sail past without acknowledgement.

“He was what?” Helena Rós screeched, knotting her elegantly manicured hands into fists. “How dare you?” she demanded, her face turning a deep red.

“It’s possible that your husband’s mistress was blackmailing him, probably for a considerable amount of money.”

“Good God.” Helena Rós suddenly gulped, letting herself fall back into a chair. “I don’t believe this. The bloody man, the bloody, bastard, bloody man. I knew there was something, just knew it.”

“Do you have a joint or separate bank accounts?” Gunna asked.

“Both. We have one for the family finances and we each have our own accounts for anything else. God knows how many accounts Hallur had. I think he’d lost count himself,” she said, and Gunna noticed that she was already referring to her husband in the past tense. “Why on earth couldn’t you have come five minutes later or five minutes earlier? That way he’d have been either dead, or at least alive and healthy enough to be made to suffer,” Helena Rós wailed. “Do I need a brain-damaged husband? Me?”

At last a flood of tears broke and she ran for the bathroom, hand to her face to stifle the nosebleed that Gunna saw with satisfaction had left a trail of bright drops on the rich cream of the carpet.

“Not easy to feel sorry for her, is it?” Helgi observed.

“Not really,” Gunna agreed. “She feels so sorry for her bloody self that any pity from us would be overkill.”

“Next, chief? Think we’ll get anything out of her?”

“Nope, but I’m going to leave you here, if you don’t mind, Helgi.”

“What? With that witch?”

“Yup. I want you to go down to Hallur’s office in the basement. She’ll show you where it is. Start going through it and see what you can find.” Gunna stood. “I need to get back to Hverfisgata and see if Eiríkur has finished the little job I asked him to do.”

A
NNA FJÓLA SIGURBJÖRNSDÓTTIR’S
lips pursed into a thin, bloodless line as Gunna appeared in the doorway.

“Good afternoon, Anna Fjóla,” Gunna offered, willing herself to be civil. “Is the lord and master in?”

“I think so,” the secretary said quietly. “I’ll see.”

She gingerly opened the door behind her and said a few muttered words before swinging the door open and unwillingly ushering Gunna in.

Jónas Valur sat behind his antique desk, and Gunna could sense immediately that her appearance was less than welcome. “What now, officer?”

The light from his desk lamp cast sharp shadows over the hands that held a sheaf of papers, neatly clipped together.

“Why did you state that you’d been here all day without a break on the eleventh?” Gunna demanded without waiting.

“What do you mean?”

“I have witnesses and evidence that put you outside this office around midday on that day. You were out and about for at least an hour.”

“Jesus, are you never going to let this go?” Jónas Valur groaned. “All right. I may have gone round the corner for a bite to eat. I don’t remember.”

“Anna Fjóla would, and pressuring her to commit perjury on your behalf is hardly a reward for all those years of loyal service, is it?”

Jónas Valur glowered back and said nothing.

“How much was Svana Geirs after?”

“What do you mean?”

“Svana had called time on the syndicate, and she wanted a goodbye present. How much?”

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

“Then what was the emergency meeting of the syndicate the night before she died all about?”

“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about, officer,” Jónas Valur said coldly.

“Bullshit,” Gunna said brusquely. “Jónas Valur, where is your son?”

“How dare you speak to me like that? Watch your step, Sergeant, I have plenty of influential friends.”

“I’m supposed to take that as a threat, am I?”

“As far as I am aware, my son is travelling on business. As I expect you know, he no longer lives in this country.”

“If anyone knows where he is, I’m sure you do.”

“I have no comment to make,” Jónas Valur said, his face visibly pale even in the warm cast of the desk lamp.

“You’d best give your friendly lawyer a call, in that case, because I’ll be back,” Gunna said, sweeping from the room without waiting for a reply and closing the door behind her.

“I assume you heard most of that?” she said to secretary, who was sitting behind a pile of binders and pretending to be busy. “Just so you’re aware, perjury is something the courts take a dim view of, and the women’s prison isn’t a particularly cozy place.”

I
T WAS GETTING
dark, and a brisk spring wind was sweeping in off the sea to batter the windows with raindrops as Gulli Ólafs sat in the interview room.

“Thanks for coming in,” Gunna said, yawning. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“What am I here for? To make a statement or something?”

“I think you might want to,” Gunna told him, opening the door. “My colleague will be right with us and there’s something I want to show you. That’s all.”

Eiríkur bustled in with an open laptop in his hands and put it on the table.

“That was quick, young man. How did you get it all done so fast?”

Eiríkur fingers flickered over the keyboard. “Simple, chief. I got one of the warders to do it for me and then email me the sound file. Your mate Bjössi over at Keflavík did the other one. Said you owe him a huge favour now.”

Gunna glowered. “I’ll bet the foul-mouthed old goat said something a bit more graphic than that. Am I right?”

“Um. You’re not wrong,” Eiríkur admitted, plugging a pair of small speakers into the laptop. “Ready?” he asked, looking up at Gulli Olafs.

“Ready for what? What do you want to show me?”

“I’d like you to turn your chair around and face away from the desk for a moment, if you don’t mind,” Gunna said, moving towards the door. A perplexed Gulli Olafs did as he was asked.

Gunna nodded, and Eiríkur clicked the laptop’s mouse as she dimmed the lights.

“Back off. Leave it. You know what,” a harsh voice rasped.

“Familiar?” Gunna asked. “Want to hear it again?”

“Shit … you could have warned me,” said Gulli Olafs plaintively.

“Sorry. But does it ring any bells?”

“No. That’s not the same voice.”

Gunna nodded again at Eiríkur, and this time Gulli Olafs jumped to his feet, his teeth chattering, as a deeper voice, thicker and slower, intoned the same threat.

“F-f-fucking hell … that’s him. That’s the voice,” he gibbered. “The bastard. You know who it is? You must do, surely?”

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“Completely. Two hundred per cent certain.”

“All the same, I’d like you to listen to them both again, just to be sure.”

Gulli Olafs sank back into the chair and listened in stunned silence as both voices read out the same threat several times.

“No doubt. The second one. Absolutely no doubt,” he said.

“Thank you,” Gunna told him, flicking on the lights and opening the door. “In that case, you’re free to go and my colleague will show you out. If this goes further, I’ll call on you for a statement in the next couple of days.”

G
UNNA WAS FRETTING
over what she might have overlooked when she was hauling a half-dead Hallur Hallbjörnsson from behind the wheel of his antique Mercedes, wondering what she had not seen that she should have. It could take less than ten minutes to die of carbon monoxide poisoning in a closed car. Whatever had happened at Hallur’s house had taken place only moments before she and Helgi had turned up. Now Helgi was back at the house, this time with a technical team to sift through whatever evidence could be gleaned after the trail had gone cold.

Pacing furiously, she opened her mobile and called Helgi’s number, listening to it ring as she strode twenty paces one way and twenty back. “Helgi? Yeah. What news?”

Helgi’s voice crackled through a poor connection and she could hear both traffic in the background and the puttering of a generator.

“Blood spots on the headrest, chief. They’re taking samples, but I’d bet any money you like that Hallur was in that car with a sore head when the engine was started.”