Thin Ice: An Inspector Gunna Mystery (Gunnhildur Mystery Book 5) (36 page)

‘Who knows?’ Magni said. ‘Good thinking. If we had a flight to Switzerland or Italy or somewhere, there’s more time in the air for them to try and identify us.’

‘Then we can get a train to Glasgow and fly wherever we want to from there.’

‘Which puts anyone looking for us off the scent? Sounds good to me.’ He looked up. ‘Is that our bus?’

Tinna Lind glanced at her watch. ‘Let’s get the next one. We don’t want to be too early. Let’s get something to eat while we’re here, shall we?’

The little boy’s eyes were wide with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. He swung his legs under the chair that was too high for him while his mother fussed making coffee.

‘Tell the lady what you saw, Nonni,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. You’re not in trouble.’

‘Are you really a policeman?’ he asked and corrected himself. ‘A police lady, I mean?’

‘I am,’ Gunna assured him. ‘I’m a real-life detective.’

‘Who solves crimes and catches bad people?’

‘Sort of. That’s only part of what I have to do, and most of it isn’t all that exciting.’

‘Do you have a gun?’ Nonni asked, eyes wide.

‘No, we don’t carry guns,’ Gunna said, and his disappointment was immediately visible.

‘So what do you do if you meet someone bad who has a gun?’

‘I don’t know. It hasn’t happened yet. So I don’t know what I’d do,’ Gunna said and picked up the mug of coffee that had appeared in front of her, while Nonni got a glass of squash and a slice of cake, which he bit into.

‘What would you have done if you had seen the man I saw today?’ he asked in a serious voice. ‘He had a gun and I saw him shoot it. Would you have been frightened?’

‘I expect so,’ Gunna said. ‘Guns are very dangerous things. Were you frightened, Nonni?’

He thought as he chewed his cake and washed it down with squash.

‘I wasn’t at the time, but I was afterwards,’ he decided. ‘But he didn’t see us, so we were all right.’

‘Where were you when you saw this?’

‘We were in Thröstur’s garden.’

‘That’s next door,’ Nonni’s mother broke in. ‘They play together all the time.’

‘So can you tell me what you saw? Take your time and think carefully.’

‘There was a car that came up the street and it stopped and a man got out and a lady and another man, a big man. Bigger than my dad.’

‘Good, and what did they do?’

‘The man gave the lady a bag and she opened it and got a bottle out.’

‘Good,’ Gunna said. ‘This was the big man or the smaller one?’

‘The little man.’

‘And what happened then?’

‘He set fire to the bottle and threw it and there was a huge explosion,’ he said, spreading his arms in an arc to demonstrate just how huge it had been.

‘Wow! So what did you do?’

‘Thröstur went inside because he was frightened but I watched through the fence.’

‘You saw the black car catch fire? What happened after that?’

They started shouting at each other and the little man was really angry. He fired his gun and broke a window and the man who lives there came out, and another man.’

‘We know who lives there,’ Nonni’s mother said darkly. ‘We’d never have bought this place if we’d known at the time.’

‘Now, Nonni. The two men who came out, have you seen them before?’

‘Only the ugly old man who lives there.’

‘What about the other one?’

‘He’s weird,’ Nonni said with conviction. ‘He had hair like a girl, like mummy’s.’ He looked at his mother with her blonde ponytail hanging down her back.

‘As long as your mummy’s hair?’

‘Longer.’

‘Did you notice what he was wearing?’

‘No, just . . . clothes,’ he said finally.

‘You’re doing really well, Nonni. Just a few more questions and then we’re done. The two men who came out, what did they do?’

‘They went to hide indoors because they were frightened of the man with the gun.’

‘All right, then what did the other men and the lady do?’

‘They were shouting at each other, like Thröstur’s mummy and daddy do sometimes, but louder,’ Nonni said, and his mother looked awkward. ‘And then the lady had a bottle and she threw it at the man.’

‘The big man or the small man?’

‘She threw the bottle at the little man and it broke on the ground and then he caught fire and he was rolling around and screaming like a girl and they pulled his coat off because it was burning and then they drove away really fast in a car,’ he said in a single rushed breath and then looked at his mother who patted his back. ‘And then the police came and I ran home in case I got into trouble.’

Magni’s nerves were raw as he fidgeted on the bus. Tinna Lind had wanted to suggest that they should sit apart on the way as well as check in separately for their flight, but he was so jumpy that she relented and they sat hand in hand in the half-empty coach as it swept through the black countryside towards Keflavík and the airport beyond it.

There was nothing untoward to see as it passed Hafnarfjördur and she assumed that the fuss had long since died down. As the bus left the town and the street lights along Reykjanesbraut behind, Tinna Lind peered into the twilight towards the chalet where she and Magni had been engrossed in each other only a few hours before while their shared awareness of the risks they were about to take added a spice to their eagerness. She squeezed his hand in the gathering darkness and rested her head on his shoulder.

‘You’ll be all right, won’t you?’

‘Yeah. I’m just not as used to travelling as you are.’

‘What’s your name, big boy?’

He grinned. ‘I’m Jóhann Einarsson.’

‘And why are you going to Scotland?’

‘Just for a weekend break to drink a few beers and watch some football.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘I know. It’s the waiting that’s the hard part. Once I’m off the bus I’ll be fine.’

She patted his hand again and he squeezed hers back, hard enough to make her wince, although his strength also made her tingle with a moment’s excitement.

‘Hey, before we get off, you’d better give me some cash so I can get a beer while I’m waiting for the flight.’

Tinna Lind rummaged in her shoulder bag and pulled out a wad of notes that Magni stuffed into his pocket. ‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ she whispered.

‘I won’t,’ he assured her as the coach pulled up at the terminal.

‘You go first and check yourself in. I’ll go to the bathroom and then follow you through,’ she whispered. ‘It’s best if we’re not seen together now, but I’ll be watching out for you,’ she said, pulling him to her for a lingering kiss and getting a hug that practically squeezed the breath out of her in return.

It had to be something important for Ívar Laxdal to make a personal appearance, Gunna thought as she saw the bulky figure in his thick pea coat – non-uniform of the kind that only he could get away with – and the black beret he had brought with him from the Coast Guard all those years ago and refused to part with. He watched as two of the forensic personnel in their white suits and four of the Special Unit crew, who had been disappointed to find the excitement all over by the time they arrived, combed the street inch by inch, while Eiríkur lifted the blue tape for him to duck under.

‘Sitrep, please, Gunnhildur?’

‘Two molotov cocktails. Two gunshots. One 9mm Baikal pistol. One casualty, Össur Óskarsson, being treated at the National Hospital, and Helgi’s there waiting for him to be fit for questioning,’ she rattled off. ‘Also, one very pissed off and frightened dope dealer, plus a couple of mysterious disappearances from the scene, either four people, or three, or just two, depending on witnesses. Whatever happened here took place very quickly. We were at the station just up the road at Flatarhraun when the F1 went up, so we were here within three minutes, and by then it was all over.’

‘Your version of events?’

‘From what I’ve seen, Össur turned up here expecting to settle a score. He set fire to the van there, which belongs to Rafn Sigmarsson.’

‘Who we’ve been keeping a careful eye on, assuming it’s the same Rafn Sigmarsson?’

‘It is. The Undertaker. It seems that Össur also shot out Alli’s window, and there was a second gunshot as well, although that may have been accidental.’

‘Motive?’

‘Who knows? We’ll maybe find out when he’s capable of answering questions. But I’d guess simple revenge for the death of Árni Sigurvinsson,’ Gunna said and paused.

‘But?’

‘How did he get here? There’s no car, and I don’t imagine for a moment he walked here with two molotov cocktails in a shopping bag.’

‘You’re thinking the other two who were at Hotel Hraun?’

‘Exactly. What was their part in all this, and where are they now?’

Tinna Lind joined the back of the check-in queue. She had changed in the toilet into smart clean jeans and brushed her hair, anchoring it in a glossy ponytail high on the back of her head, and put on a pair of virtually zero magnification glasses. She could see Magni in the queue ahead of her, a head taller than anyone else in the line for the desks.

She saw him present his passport and glance towards her with a grin as he thanked the girl at the desk and set off towards the stairs leading to departures. A few minutes later Tinna Lind approached the desk and proffered her stolen passport.

‘Baggage to check in?’

‘No, just hand luggage.’

‘Can I see?’

Tinna Lind lifted the little case easily in one hand and the girl nodded, took a brief glance at the passport again and handed over a boarding pass.

‘Boarding at seven-fifty, watch the screens for the departure gate. Have a good flight.’

Upstairs she looked around discreetly for Magni’s copper-gold head, but couldn’t see him anywhere. Her passport and boarding pass were given the briefest glance and she held her breath as the little black case disappeared into the X-ray machine, closely followed by her boots. A search at this point, revealing the wads of illegal euros placed between paperbacks and magazines lifted from the Seamen’s Union summerhouse, would be a disaster and would undoubtedly lead to a further search and the discovery in her coat pockets of yet more of Alli the Cornershop’s working capital, finding its tax-free way out of the country.

She smiled at the customs officer, who nodded at her to put her boots back on, and she made an effort not to hurry zipping them up before placing the case back on its wheels and making for the duty-free area.

The flight was on time, according to the screens, and she went to the café for an espresso and a sandwich, spying Magni’s head in the cafeteria restaurant in the distance as she buried her head in a magazine and tried to keep her mind clear.

Össur looked like a man defeated by life. Much of his thin hair had been burned off, giving him a blackened, lopsided look, but his eyes blazed with hatred as he looked from Gunna to Helgi and back.

‘You have a tale to tell, don’t you, Össi?’ Helgi said.

Össur jerked his chin towards Gunna. ‘Who’s the chick?’

‘This lady, Össur, is my boss, detective sergeant Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, and you’d be well advised not to upset her.’

‘Get fucked,’ Össur spat and Gunna laughed, making his eyes burn with an even more intense loathing.

‘Össur Óskarsson, you’re under arrest for the murder of Brandur Geirsson. You don’t have to say anything, but you have an obligation to tell the truth. You have the right to a lawyer at every stage of proceedings,’ she said, reeling off the words as Össur’s eyes bulged. ‘There are a few other things we can throw in there as well, aggravated theft, abduction, possession of an illegal firearm, but that’ll do for the moment.’

‘It wasn’t me . . .’ he said. ‘It was . . .’

‘Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere, are we?’ Gunna said, swinging a chair under her and sitting close to Össur’s bedside, pushing the stand with the drip attached to his arm out of the way. ‘So if it wasn’t you, who was it?’

Össur sat in obstinate silence for a moment.

‘I want a lawyer. I’m not saying anything until I have a lawyer.’

‘Helgi, would you organize a lawyer for the gentleman?’

When Helgi had left the room to make the call, Gunna moved closer to Össur and looked at the scalp visible through the singed remains of his hair.

‘Listen, Össi. I’m not going to fuck about here,’ she said and saw him look at her sharply, knowing that the word had grabbed his attention. ‘This is your one and only chance to tell me anything off the record. After my officer comes back, everything you say is taped and can be used in court. Understand?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. You and Magni bumped Alli the Cornershop. How much did you get out of it?’

Össur sighed. ‘A quarter of a million.’

‘Pounds? Dollars?’

‘Euros. More or less.’

‘And where’s the cash now?’

Gunna thought she could see a tear forming in Össur’s eye, until his face hardened into an expressionless mask.

‘I don’t know.’

‘So who has it? Magni or Tinna Lind?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You and Magni Sighvatsson rolled Alli the Cornershop, which is why he and his friends have been on the hunt for you, and why you’ve been keeping out of sight.’

Össur looked at the door, as if expecting Helgi to reappear with a lawyer in tow.

‘Nothing to say.’

‘Come on, Össi. Where have Magni and Tinna Lind gone? Akureyri? Somewhere up-country? Still in Reykjavík somewhere? Don’t worry, they’ll show up soon enough,’ Gunna said, and was rewarded with a momentary sideways glance at her. ‘Believe me, I don’t care a jot about Cornershop Alli’s money. If dope dealers want to rob and kill each other, then that’s absolutely fine by me, so long as there aren’t any civilians in the way.’

Össur stared at the wall in front of him. Gunna could see the inner turmoil taking place and feel the misery within him.

‘Last chance, Össi. Once Helgi comes through that door, everything’s on the record. We have a cast-iron case against you. We have the weapon that killed Brandur Geirsson up at Hotel Hraun a week ago and your dabs are all over it. We have a witness. Open and shut.’