Thin Ice: An Inspector Gunna Mystery (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 5) (23 page)

With the junction to join the Hvalfjördur road practically in sight, the Skoda finally crunched to a halt in a drift that was a little too deep and wide for the car’s speed to carry it across.

‘Now we’re going to have to dig,’ he said. He handed a pair of gloves to Tinna Lind. ‘Ready?’

The chill of the wind was a shock after the warmth inside the car, cutting through their coats and biting at their cheeks. Magni set to with a will, first pacing through the drift to see how far they needed to go and then scooping away snow from around the front of the car. Tinna Lind shovelled snow from underneath, trying to clear the depth of snow the car had grounded on, while Magni cleared a path in front until he reckoned they should make it.

‘Everyone out,’ he ordered. Össur scowled and Erna’s face displayed how perplexed she was.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because the lighter we can make the car, the easier it’ll be to get through this lot,’ Magni said, clapping his hands together to restore the circulation. ‘And I’ll need you all to push.’

‘Push?’

‘Or you can just stay in the car until the fuel runs out and then we can all freeze to death together. Up to you,’ he said, getting into the driver’s seat and holding the door open as he put it into gear. ‘All of you, line up at the back, and when I shout, lift and push. Now!’

The car inched forward, the front wheels gripping intermittently and hauling the car forward while Erna, Tinna Lind and Össur bumped the car up and down.

‘Harder!’ Magni yelled from the driver’s seat. ‘Almost there! Go on, push!’

For a long moment the car seemed to sit still in the pit it had dug for itself as Magni dropped the engine revolutions as low as he could until all four wheels finally found a purchase. He sighed with relief as it gradually picked up speed out of the drift, leaving the three of them sprawling in the snow. Tinna Lind helped Erna to her feet and took her arm to help her totter through the tracks the Skoda had left, and Össur struggled to his feet, panting with exertion.

‘Good stuff,’ Magni said when they reached where he had stopped in a clear patch of road. ‘With luck we won’t have to do that more than a couple of times.’

The Special Unit went in first and it wasn’t long before six black-clad figures emerged.

‘The place is empty,’ Steingrímur said with clear disappointment in his voice. ‘And it’s a hell of a pigsty.’

‘Eiríkur, go round the back and check the rest of the building, take pictures of everything, including those tyre tracks,’ Gunna instructed. ‘As soon as the forensic team show up we need to get the place swept for prints so we can find out just who has been here.’

The hotel’s yard was full. Two squad cars had come from Selfoss and Lárus Erlendsson had brought every available officer with him. The Special Unit had been delighted to be mobilized after a quiet few months, and as well as Gunna, Eiríkur and Helgi, six more officers in two squad cars had been dispatched on the hour’s drive to where Hotel Hraun occupied its quiet niche in the hills beyond Thingvellir.

Even Ívar Laxdal had arrived in his sinister black Volvo, the forensic unit following behind him. He emerged from his car and walked over to the door where Gunna and Helgi waited.

‘Situation, Gunnhildur?’

‘The place is deserted. The Special Unit has swept it and we’ll go in and have a quick look behind the forensic team,’ she said, unable to hide her chagrin. ‘They’re not long gone.’

‘How do you know?’

Gunna looked at the sky. ‘There was a bit of snowfall last night, I think; there’s been some rain this morning and the snow’s melting, but those tyre tracks are very fresh. Too crisp to be more than a few hours old, I’d say.’

‘New tyres as well,’ Ívar Laxdal said.

‘And a mobile phone black spot, too, I see,’ Gunna said, looking at her phone. ‘If it’s them, it’s no surprise their phones dropped off the networks out here. It looks like four people, judging by the footprints in the snow, and you can see where the car was parked when they all got into it.’

‘Hell and damnation. We could have had the lot of them if we’d been a couple of hours earlier.’

They watched as the two forensic technicians in their white overalls trooped in through the hotel’s front door.

‘Four sets of footprints tell me that Erna Björg and Tinna Lind are alive and that they’re all together.’

‘Which is certainly something to be thankful for. D’you want to do a press conference?’

Gunna groaned. ‘Do we have to?’

‘I think so,’ Ívar Laxdal decided. ‘If this man is armed, we ought to warn people not to approach him.’

‘Fair enough. Will you do it or do you want to get someone higher up the food chain to talk to the press?’

‘I think I’m far enough up the pecking order to be able to take that kind of decision.’ Ívar Laxdal’s smile was as wintry as the terrain around them. ‘Although I’m wondering if the officer in charge of the investigation shouldn’t be the one who meets the press?’

Gunna blanched. ‘Really? You look so much better than I do in front of the cameras.’

‘We’ll do it together. I’ll see if I can get RÚV and Channel Two to send camera crews up here right away. If this man is dangerous, as you say, then we ought to get the warning out on tonight’s evening news.’ He looked around at the hotel in its sheltered position with hills on three sides. ‘A lovely spot in the summer, but damned desolate at this time of the year,’ he commented.

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘A few times, dinners and the like. It used to be quite an exclusive place, but it’s years since I was here last. What’s that heap over there by the forensic van?’

Darkness was approaching by the time the deserted whaling station hove into view, its pier a shadow against the water, glittering in intermittent moonlight beneath ragged clouds. The Skoda’s headlights swept the road ahead and Magni found himself relying on the reflective marker posts along the sides of the road. The road was mercifully clear of snow and he told himself that he had underestimated the power of the Gulf Stream that flowed around Iceland and the warm south wind to keep the coastal regions clear of snow. There had been no more need to get out and shovel the car clear of drifts, but he fretted about being late. He had wanted to be clear of the winding road around Hvalfjördur and to have completed this leg of the trip in daylight, but the long Kjós road had been a slow drive, even with just that one nervous patch they had been forced to struggle their way through.

He was already regretting not choosing the easier route that would have taken them through the tunnel. By now they would have been close to Borgarnes, and he reminded himself that soon they would have to get fuel and eat, and sooner or later they would need a place to sleep. He wondered where they could safely leave Erna without her being able to raise the alarm immediately.

The Skoda growled through the evening darkness at a steady speed, its radio burbling beside him. Every time there was a news report, Tinna Lind turned the volume up, but so far there had been nothing they needed to worry about. On the north side of the long fjord, Magni found a lay-by off the road; he pulled up and switched off the engine as he pushed open the driver’s door.

‘Break, everyone,’ he said.

He walked a few steps from the car and found that his feet were numb and his shoulders ached. The hours of concentration had taken their toll and his bladder was set to burst as, with relief, he found a tree to pee behind, wondering as he did so why he’d bothered finding privacy. Tinna Lind squatted in the bushes not far away while Erna had gone, with nervous distaste, deeper into the dark undergrowth. Össur was still in the car, lounging in the seat with the door open, his eyes half closed and a cigarette hanging from his lips.

‘We have to ditch the bitch,’ Össur said. ‘Leave her here.’

‘You must be out of your fucking mind.’

‘She can walk.’

‘She’ll die of exposure.’

‘It’s not that far, is it?’

‘When did you last go anywhere further north than Grafarholt? It’s a good hour’s drive from here to Borgarnes. Leave her here and she’ll be dead in a few hours. D’you want another death on your conscience?’ Magni asked, and then reflected that Össur probably didn’t have a conscience to trouble him.

Össur laughed a dry cackle that descended into a hacking cough. ‘You think I care?’

‘She stays in the car,’ Magni said and walked away to end the argument. He rolled his shoulders and winced at the tension in them.

Tinna Lind appeared from the silent blackness of the clump of trees surrounding the lay-by and put an arm around him.

‘Tired?’

‘A bit.’

‘How far to go?’

‘To where?’ Magni asked. ‘Borgarnes is another hour at least. Akureyri five or six hours, depending on the state of the roads.’

‘Where do we stop tonight?’

‘I’ve no idea. But we ought to get going.’

‘Listen,’ Tinna Lind said. ‘What do you plan to do with my mother?’

‘Össur wanted to dump her here.’

‘We couldn’t do that, surely?’

‘That’s what I said. She has to go all the way, or at least as far as Borgarnes with us. Look, we’re going to have to stop and fuel up and eat somewhere. That’s what worries me about your mum. Is she going to start shouting and yelling as soon as we get to somewhere there are people about?’

‘There aren’t any more lying about anywhere are there?’ asked the bemused forensic technician, called from the hotel itself to examine the body under the snow. As the man’s wallet was in his pocket, it was a mere minute’s work to decide that the corpse under the snow pile was the missing Brandur Geirsson.

‘This is just carnage,’ Gunna said, shaking her head. She put her phone back in her pocket, having walked to the far end of the yard to get a signal and demand that more equipment and the force’s forensic pathologist be dispatched from Reykjavík. The few available lights were rigged up over the scene in the yard and a makeshift shelter had been erected by two officers from the Selfoss force over Brandur Geirsson’s body.

‘We need a search,’ Ívar Laxdal decided. ‘Checkpoints, roadblocks.’

‘Agreed,’ Gunna said. ‘Össur Óskarsson, Erna Björg Brandsen and Tinna Lind Bogadóttir, plus one mystery man in a grey Skoda. But where? Which way did they go? My guess is they’re headed back to town.’

‘You’re probably right, and wherever they’ve gone they have at least two, three hours’ start, I’d reckon, maybe more.’

‘If they’ve headed for Reykjavík, then they’ll be there by now, although I notice I haven’t had a notification from communications to let me know that either of the phone numbers we’re tracking has popped up, which should have happened very quickly after leaving here. So were their phones left behind, or dumped somewhere? Or just switched off?’

‘Do they have any cash?’ Ívar Laxdal mused.

‘Probably not. Both times the man who definitely isn’t Össur Óskarsson bought fuel, Erna Björg Brandsen’s debit card was used. We asked Bogi Sveinsson and the bank not to cancel her cards to that we could at least see what they are buying and where.’

Ívar Laxdal shaded his eyes from the glare of the lights that had been switched on by the shelter over Brandur Geirsson’s body.

‘They’re here,’ he said, looking down the track leading to the road. ‘Come on, we’d better welcome them.’

‘But . . .’ Gunna said, eyes on the hotel.

‘Come on, Gunnhildur. Sometimes the public relations stuff has to take precedence, and the building is off-limits until forensics have finished anyway. Now we need to head the gentlemen of the press off before they get too close to the dead guy in the yard. Ready?’

Magni could feel the exhaustion in his bones. He knew that he would have to take a break some time soon if they were to avoid having an accident. He was taking care to drive at a sensible speed, knowing there were traffic cameras along the road approaching Borgarnes.

‘Listen,’ he eventually called to the others in the dark. ‘We’ll be in Borgarnes in a little while. We’ll fuel up and we all need to eat, right?’

Erna sat silent in the back, and in the mirror Magni could see the glint of the dashboard lights reflected in her eyes.

Össur yawned. ‘Suits me.’

The reflective road markers flashed past them, the headlights hitting three or four at a time on the straight sections of road, and before long the lights of Borgarnes could be seen in the distance. Magni pondered simply going straight to the motel that sat by itself on the southern side of the fjord opposite the town, but decided against it. It had to be food and fuel.

He stopped the Skoda by the furthest pump at the least busy filling station and took Erna’s card from his pocket. He turned around in the seat and looked behind with the card between his fingers.

‘This is going to work, right?’

Erna stared back at him. ‘How should I know? For all I know my husband has had the card cancelled by now.’

‘Try it,’ Össur said.

‘You’re sure? The police might be able to track the card when it gets used. That was all right in Reykjavík, but this is going to point a finger right at us in Borgarnes, isn’t it? Does anyone have any cash? Erna?’

‘I don’t carry cash.’

Magni grinned. ‘Like the Queen of England, I guess. OK, card it’ll have to be, I suppose. If it doesn’t work, then we’re fucked.’ He pulled his hat down low over his eyes and turned his collar up. ‘Faces away from the windows, please, people. There are bound to be cameras everywhere.’

He thought fast. His own card, or Erna’s? Should he place himself at Borgarnes or leave a trail for the police to follow? He slotted his own card into the self-service machine and punched in numbers. Lights flashed and Magni pumped fuel, carefully replaced the nozzle and twisted the filler cap shut, thankful that there had been enough credit on his card to fill the tank.

‘Easy. Now, where do we eat?’

‘Up to you.’

He eased the car off the filling station’s forecourt and a short distance back the way they had come to pull up between a handful of other cars outside a cafeteria-style eaterie.

‘We go in like one big happy family, right?’ he said, twisting round to look at the pair in the back. ‘That goes for you as well, Össi. Best behaviour. No arguments, nothing offensive, nothing that’s going to attract any attention. Understood?’ Össur grunted his unwilling agreement. ‘Erna? I’m not saying this as a threat, but you know what Össur has in his pocket and he’s a desperate man. As long as nobody moves or shouts out of turn, then we’ll all be out of here safe and sound with a meal inside us.’