Cold Steal (29 page)

‘It’s up to you, Gunnhildur. I’d have charged the bastard and made it formal, myself.’

‘That’s not a problem. We can pick Orri up and charge him whenever we feel like it. Eiríkur, I hope you don’t feel you’ve had a wasted day?’

‘What? I’ve watched that evil bastard Oggi fall off a motorbike and break his ankle. That’s a great day as far as I’m concerned.’

Gísli looked more uncomfortable than Gunna thought she had ever seen him before, his broad shoulders hunched as he sat on a stool in the corner. She felt a sudden pang at the sight of him, the uncertain, lonely teenager suddenly brought back to life as if he had never been away, but instead of the skinny boy there was a brawny man with a goatee in the corner.

Soffía and Drífa sat together on the sofa, chatting animatedly.

‘Wow! How many stitches?’ she heard Drífa ask Soffía as she pushed open the door to see plates and cups all over the table, Laufey spooning yoghurt into Kjartan Gíslason and Steini lying on the rug tickling the soles of a laughing Ari Gíslason’s bare feet. The only one who didn’t seem to be having a great time was Gísli in the corner.

She stood silently in the doorway for a moment and took in the scene of her two grandsons together in the same room for the first time. Gísli was the first to look up and notice her. He stood up and went across to wrap his arms around her.

‘Hæ,
Mum. I tried to call you yesterday,’ he said as his embrace slackened and Gunna regained the breath he had squeezed out of her.

‘I know, sweetheart. I’m really sorry, but everything’s gone arse-shaped at work these last few days and I didn’t have a chance to call you back.’

She perched on one of the stools by the little breakfast bar and poured herself a cup of coffee. Gísli sat next to her and did the same as they watched Laufey and Steini play with the children, while the two girls seemed to be sunk in conversation.

‘Are you all right, Gísli?’ Gunna asked, the hangdog look on his face stabbing her through the heart as she appreciated the turmoil he must be going through as a result of the same sight that brought her so much pleasure.

‘Yeah, I’m OK, I suppose,’ he said with a wry smile that showed just the opposite. ‘Been working a bit too hard recently.’

‘You’re still on the freezer, are you? They kept your berth open, didn’t they?’

‘Sailing next weekend.’

‘A shame you couldn’t finish college.’

‘I know. But there are mouths to feed now and I can go back next winter and finish.’

‘Make sure you do,’ Gunna said, patting his hand. There were hundreds of questions she wanted to ask, but this was neither the time nor the place for it. Gunna desperately wanted to know which of the two girls he planned on staying with, assuming that either of them still wanted him. She imagined that the sharp and independent Soffía would have some serious reservations on that score.

‘Thanks for looking after Drífa and Kjartan, Mum. I know she’s been as lonely as hell away from her own family.’

‘I gather she still hasn’t spoken to her mother yet,’ Gunna said in a murmur as their heads came close together over the coffee cups.

‘No. I had a call from her, though.’

‘From Ranna?’

‘Yep. She was very drunk and absolutely steaming with rage. Called me all the names under the sun.’

Gunna took a deep breath. ‘That’s no big surprise. Ranna’s never been what you might call even-tempered.’

‘I really screwed up, didn’t I?’

‘You could say that.’

‘You’re not angry?’

‘Gísli, of course I’m upset. But there’s nothing I can do about it now except make the best of it. I can’t turn the clock back and I can’t make things any different. Look, you have two handsome boys. The circumstances might have been easier, but just be satisfied that they’re both healthy and being looked after properly.’

Gísli sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right, Mum.’

‘It’s up to you to make sure that you stay part of their lives and don’t just fade into the background.’

‘Like my dad did, you mean?’

It was as if an electric current had jolted through her.

‘Yes,’ Gunna said with gritted teeth. ‘I’m afraid your father wasn’t much of a role model, was he?’ She paused. ‘Why? Have you seen him?’

‘Not for a while,’ Gísli admitted. ‘I know you didn’t want me to, but I did go and find him a couple of years ago.’

‘And?’ she asked with trepidation.

Gísli shrugged. ‘To be honest, I wish I hadn’t taken the trouble. He wasn’t particularly interested. I went to visit him a couple of times and felt I was more of an embarrassment than anything else. His wife wasn’t impressed.’

‘She didn’t appreciate a long-forgotten child from her husband’s past showing up all of a sudden? I can’t say I’m surprised. And I’m even less surprised that he wasn’t interested in seeing you. He didn’t want to know all the years you were growing up. Oh, and if you do see him, you can maybe tell him that he still owes me about fifteen years’ worth of maintenance.’

‘Really, Mum?’ Gísli’s brows thickened in dislike as his eyebrows merged into one dark line across his forehead. ‘If I’d have known that, I wouldn’t have bothered at all.’

‘It’s probably best you did,’ Gunna said, patting his hand again. ‘Just don’t follow his example, all right?’

He awoke with a clearer head. The headaches of the previous days had gone and Jóhann decided that the withdrawal symptoms from his life-long caffeine habit had dissipated remarkably quickly. There was no buzz in his ears. The low sun was peeping over the distant hills and today’s stronger wind from the west brought a tang of the sea.

This time lighting a fire was a quicker job and he was determined to do it before the sun rose into the clouds and out of sight. He hurried to collect grass and the lumps of offcut wood that the men who had built the huge drying racks had dropped.

Jóhann cursed the lack of any tools. He needed something more substantial than his fingernails to split the wood and fell back on pounding them with some of the round grey rocks that were everywhere until pieces came away. The dry grass smoked into life and he lay flat to blow the fire into flames, which he nurtured with handfuls of heather until it was burning robustly enough to be given pieces of wood.

He threw everything on the fire, deciding against keeping any wood for later. Today was the day to leave, he decided, gnawing at one of the dried cod he had snatched from the racks the day before. The only worry was would it rain? It was something he had never had to think about before. Rain could be an inconvenience between the car and the door, or something that could mean bringing the party indoors. It had never occurred to him before that a good shower of rain could kill him rather than being just an occasional annoyance on the golf course.

Leaving the ruined farm would mean abandoning shelter, such as it was. Wearing only the office clothes he had been in when he left the Harbourside Hotel and the filthy overcoat he had woken up in, he was painfully aware that these would give him little protection against the weather. A decent downpour could result in hypothermia and a quick death out here in the wilderness.

Maybe that was the intention? He had tried to avoid thinking about what had happened to him, preferring to concentrate on survival, but now, with the fire burning merrily in the lee of the wrecked house and a half-eaten fish in his hands, those thoughts came flooding back to him.

He had gone to the lawyer’s offices as he had agreed to. He had taken a taxi that turned up as if it had been called for him, but that was not unusual outside a busy hotel. He would probably have just walked, he reflected, if the taxi hadn’t turned up, and wondered if that might have made a difference in some way.

Someone he knew had been there, he was sure of that. Had anyone else been present? It was hard to be sure. He wasn’t even sure who, but somehow the man’s ridiculous moustache had remained fixed in his mind. Jóhann suddenly felt tired and sat back against the rough wall of the farmhouse as thoughts of Sunna María flooded into his mind. Would she be missing him? Would she be distraught? More likely, would she simply be angry, he wondered, clawing at his memory for fragments that might tell him what had happened. And what about Nina? She would worry at his unaccustomed silence and that knowledge gave him a pang of deep regret.

Through all this, the question that burned was why? Why had they dumped him up here in the wilds to die? If the intention had been to do away with him, why had they not done it quickly? Why transport a man to the back of beyond to starve?

Gunna arrived to find an impromptu conference in progress. Sævaldur’s face was redder with frustration than she had ever seen it, and Eiríkur quailed in the face of his fury while Ívar Laxdal mediated.

‘I don’t call it poaching from under your nose, Sævaldur,’ he said quietly, fingers entwined into a bridge below his square face. ‘I’d be more inclined to call it an excellent piece of police work that gets you closer to the villain you’ve spent weeks looking for.’

‘Months I’ve been chasing this housebreaker, and this lad whose balls have only just dropped turns up on a Monday morning and gives me his name and phone number?’ He gurgled and coughed, sitting down and pounding his chest with a fist to get his breath back. ‘It’s a bloody cheek,’ he said finally.

Ívar Laxdal took off the glasses he wore for reading and pointed with them, emphasizing his point. He looked up to see Gunna.

‘Gunnhildur, we have a minor disagreement.’

‘Problem, boys?’ she asked, taking off her coat as Sævaldur spluttered.

‘Your boy has only gone and found the bastard I’ve been after for months,’ he said. ‘And then let him go.’

Gunna sat down and opened her notes on the table in front of her.

‘We could have charged him yesterday, in which case he would have been released anyway within a few hours. We have all the evidence, witness statements and the rest of it. We know where he works and where he lives. So what’s your problem? A golden opportunity for you to gather evidence and build a convincing case, I’d have thought. Or did you just want to gloat over him for an hour or two before you’d have to let him out anyway?’

‘Don’t talk shit, Gunna. I’d have made the little fucker sweat and confess everything he’d ever done from primary school onwards.’

‘And then watched him walk out of here,’ Gunna said, trying not to sound sarcastic. ‘Now. Alex Snetzler. I’ve just had a visit to the hospital on the way here and apparently the guy who lives in the flat is called Alex. He’s from Latvia, the same as Maris.’ She looked up. ‘Eiríkur, have you filled Sævaldur in on our broken-fingered Latvian?’

‘I haven’t had a chance,’ he said in a hurt tone.

‘In that case, Sæsi, for your information, a Latvian called Maris had all the fingers of one hand smashed by Big Oggi and his brother the other night. The interesting thing is that we found a pile of stolen goods in the flat, mostly electrical. The flat is rented by Alex. Maris was only staying there temporarily while he was looking for a place of his own, or so he says, and it seems certain that we’re looking at mistaken identity here.’

‘Alex?’ Sævaldur demanded with a growl. ‘There’s a lowlife called Alex who works for a freight company down at the other end of Hafnarfjördur who’s definitely been fencing stolen gear. That’s someone else I’ve been trying to get my hands on for a while.’

‘A link between a thief and a fence?’ Eiríkur mused. ‘What could be more convenient? Guess where our Orri works?’

Green Bay Dispatch was quiet on the outside, while once inside the big sliding doors Gunna could feel the tension. An elderly man with a scarf around his neck yelled from the seat of the forklift at two men stacking boxes onto a pallet and a thickset girl in a high-viz vest over a bulky fleece marched past Gunna into the building and offered a curt greeting on her way.

‘G’day,’ she said and made for the forklift.

‘Hey,’ Gunna called after her. ‘You work here?’ she asked as the woman turned.

‘Just for today. Why?’

‘I’m looking for the manager. Any idea where he is?’

‘That’s who I’m looking for as well. You’re agency?’

‘Not quite,’ she said as the elderly man jumped down from the forklift and hurried over to them.

‘I’m Dóri. Looking for me, are you?’

‘It seems we’re both looking for you,’ Gunna said.

Dóri dug in his pocket and handed the muscular girl a set of keys. ‘Ragga, isn’t it? You’ve been here before, so you can take the flatbed. It’s loaded and fuelled, and the key is in the cab. We’ll sort out the paperwork afterwards,’ he said in a rush.

He turned his gaze on Gunna and wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead. ‘And what’s your name, sweetheart?’

‘I’m Gunnhildur.’

‘All right. We’re a van down today so I’ll have to give you the lunchbox instead.’

‘Lunchbox?’

He jerked a thumb at a small, square van outside. ‘We’ll have to use that one. Just be careful not to overload it. We can do without any attention from the police.’

‘In that case, I’d better let you know that I’m not here as a relief driver. I’m from the police.’

Dóri looked her up and down, noticing the uniform trousers and deflating as his shoulders sagged.

‘Hell. Just what I need. What can I do for you, in that case?’ he asked with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Two of my guys haven’t showed up this morning and it’s bloody bedlam, in case you haven’t noticed.’

‘Hence the agency driver, I presume? Well, this may take a while, but it’s because of your missing guys that I’m here.’

‘Mind your backs!’ a voice yelled and Dóri stepped smartly to one side. A forklift whizzed past, missing Gunna by inches.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘And I suggest that you tell that clown to slow down; I’ll have his licence off him if he comes that close again,’ Gunna snapped. ‘Now, where can we go that’s quiet?’

She followed Dóri past the closed office door and into the canteen, where paperwork was spread over one table and cups and plates were strewn over the other.

‘What does this company do?’

Dóri sat at the table that served as a desk and glared at her with suspicion. ‘We move stuff.’