"That"s me."
"My name"s Gunnhildur Gisladottir and I"m with the Reykjavik city police," Gunna said. Svava wondered what had happened when Haraldur twitched with nervousness.
"I . . . er . . . what can I do for you?" he asked and Gunna immediately sensed the dread in his voice. It went deeper than that of the law-abiding citizen caught up in something beyond his understanding and told her instantly that Haraldur"s conscience was troubled.
"It"s to do with an investigation; your name has come up in connection with an incident at the Harbourside Hotel. You were staying there a few days ago, weren"t you?"
"I was," Haraldur replied, his voice almost a squeak as Svava stood up and silently left the room.
"I would prefer it if we could meet to discuss this. First thing tomorrow, maybe?" Gunna said in a tone of voice that made the "maybe" redundant.
"Yes. I"ll be at the office in the morning until twelve. You can find me there. Fiskitangi 42."
"Fiskitangi? Where"s that?" Gunna asked with the sinking feeling that told her the man was out of town.
"It"s in Akureyri."
"Ah, right. In that case I"ll get a flight in the morning and I"ll let you know when I"m on the way."
"I could meet you at the airport if you like," Haraldur offered.
"I"ll come and find you if you don"t mind. Since I have to go to Akureyri, there are a few other errands I can run at the same time," Gunna said. "But thanks for the offer. I"ll see you in the morning."
Haraldur sat still on the kitchen chair for a few moments after the conversation had ended. Svava deliberately shut the door behind her and turned to face him, hands on hips.
"Halli. Will you please tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on?"
"I"m not sure. First there was a policeman on the phone asking all kinds of questions about when I stayed at the Harbourside when I went to Reykjavik to meet the Daewoo guys from Denmark the other day. Now there"s this policewoman who wants to come up here tomorrow and talk to me."
"What"s all this about, Halli? You"ve been as nervous as a cat for two days and don"t you dare tell me there"s nothing to worry about."
"It might be about my wallet being stolen," he said vaguely, picking up his plate and carefully placing it in the dishwasher. Svava"s pursed lips indicated that she found his explanation wanting.
"And how did whoever stole your wallet manage to get into our account?" she demanded, her voice increasingly shrill. "I"m telling you, Haraldur Samuelsson. We"ve been here before and we don"t want to go there again, do we?" She stalked out of the kitchen and slammed the door so hard that the cups and gla.s.ses in the kitchen cupboards rattled in sympathy.
Agnes just looked at him as he collapsed into one of the pair of leather armchairs.
"Hard day, darling?" she asked in a slightly sardonic tone that set Joel Ingi wondering what was behind it before he noticed that her face was carefully made up and her long frame was sheathed in a startling red dress that matched her scarlet lips.
"Going out?"
"Yup."
"Will you be back late?"
"It"s Sat.u.r.day night. Of course I will."
"All right. Have fun," he said bleakly as she stood up. He admired her without saying anything, from the supple black leather boots that encased her calves to the dress that showed nothing but hinted at everything.
"See you later, sugar," she said, blowing him a kiss from the door. "Don"t wait up. Bye."
Hermann Finnsson was not happy to get a visit from the police. A heavily built, balding man with jowls that trembled as he shook his head, he radiated nerves and continually looked through the window of the living room of the overdecorated, overheated upstairs flat he occupied.
"I understand that you stayed at the Arctic Hotel last week. You live in Mosfellsbaer, so why stay in a hotel so close to home?" Gunna asked, hoping to put the man at his ease and watching his fingers tremble with nerves.
"I . . . er, I decided to stay in town that night. I"d been out with some people and didn"t want to drive."
"Really? A taxi home would have been cheaper, wouldn"t it?"
"Maybe."
"So, why stay at such an expensive hotel?"
Hermann Finnsson shrugged, lost for words. "I don"t know. Does there have to be a reason?"
It was Gunna"s turn to shrug. "Of course not. You"re married, Hermann?"
"Not any more. I was, a long time ago."
"So who did you go out with that night?"
"Some people."
Hermann thrust his hands into the pockets of his cardigan, Gunna guessed to stop them trembling.
"Look, Hermann. I"m not investigating you or anything you"ve done. But I have a very good idea of what happened and I need to find the person who took you for a ride. No names, no ha.s.sle afterwards. I just want some information."
"Nothing happened," he said in a thin voice and leaned against the wall, a bead of perspiration running from his thick hair down one temple. "Honestly."
"No. Nothing didn"t happen. I have it on good authority that you checked into the hotel that morning and left that afternoon. You didn"t spend the night there, even though you had paid for it. Why was that?"
"Am I a suspect or something?" he blurted out as the bead of perspiration became a rivulet.
"No. Not at all. But you could be an important witness."
Hermann"s eyes flickered to the window and back. "No. I can"t. I don"t have anything to say."
Gunna could sense his terror, so sharp as to be an almost palpable presence in the room, and the intensity of it set her wondering what he was so frightened of. Facing a blank refusal to cooperate, though, there was little she could do.
"All right. If that"s the way you want it, I can"t force you to say anything," Gunna said with a grim undertone, taking a card from her wallet. "But if you change your mind, please give me a call. I repeat, I"m not looking for any wrongdoing on your part just information," she said, putting the card into his hand and noticing that the palm was damp with sweat.
Leaving the flat, Gunna felt its windows glaring at her back, certain that Hermann would be dropping her card into the bin and trying to forget that he had ever seen her.
Baddo found the internet confusing. Since the two mustachioed gorillas had delivered him to Kstrup and a flight to Iceland, he had seen many differences. The world had changed. Reykjavik had gone from a wayward child with too much cash in its pockets to a surly, suspicious teenager wary of receiving another hiding like the last one, but slowly becoming bold again.
He had noticed how construction had stopped, although that shiny square box of an opera house where the fish market had once been took him by surprise. Unlike the boisterous city of the boom years when the place was awash with money and the nightlife continued past dawn and into the next day, Reykjavik had a brooding presence now, as if it were waiting patiently for the good times to roll again. Not that Baddo had much time for the suited yuppies who"d taken the cash and run; what amazed him was that so many of them were able to go about their lives without being a.s.saulted.
Nothing had surprised him for long, although it was still a shock to see how little his money would buy these days and it hurt to see his sister struggling to put food on the table for the two of them, refusing to take his money while he wasn"t earning anything. The internet had changed the most. After the years that he hadn"t had access to it, it now seemed that half the world could be found online and much of the world seemed to have disappeared inside a computer screen.
He typed in the letters Haraldur had given him a stupid-sounding name, he thought, but what the h.e.l.l? Personal.is opened gradually on Maria"s old computer, although as far as Baddo was concerned, it was impressively fast.
It was a simple enough format, like a dating website, he thought, while wondering how it paid for itself. Users were either pink or blue, for men and women, Baddo guessed, and he clicked on one at random. As the profile appeared, and with it a picture, he instinctively looked over his shoulder to check Maria wasn"t watching, even though he knew she was at work. He read that Kitten70 had a pa.s.sion for horses and the outdoors, and while she was looking for the "right one" to fill her tummy with b.u.t.terflies, she wasn"t there for the taking. The profile picture showed a three-quarter view of a well-built woman from chin to midriff in a flowery, low-cut dress that left little of her physique to the imagination. CityGirl"s and RannaH"s profiles told him that men old enough to be their granddads weren"t tempting, while Baddo nodded appreciatively at HotXHot"s profile, which told him she appreciated the charms of a financially secure older man or even a professional couple.
Getting somewhere now, Baddo decided.
Noticing a search box in one corner, he typed in "Sonja" and waited until four profiles appeared. Looking at the pictures accompanying the SonjaSoy and 92Sonja, he discounted them immediately as teenagers. TinySonja gave her age as 30 and, as there was no picture, he read through the profile that described a quiet lady who combined a love of literature and music with an adventurous side; he wondered just what she meant by adventurous. Sonja2 made him shiver as there was an out-of-focus picture showing a foot tied with a scarf and the bold statement that Sonja2 preferred to be in charge. He read through the additional information, which told him she would message on MSN and his picture would get hers. Then there was a string of lettering that Baddo finally figured out was a cleverly coded email address.
At the top of her profile, he also noticed that Sonja2 hadn"t been online for several days. He wrote a quick message in the box that personal.is provided as he clicked on the "contact" b.u.t.ton and filled in the brand-new email address that Maria had set up for him, creating a user profile of his own at the same time. Baddo sat back once the message had gone and scrolled down to the rest of Sonja2"s profile, where at the bottom of the page he found a row of thumbnail pictures under a "similar to" banner.
Ten minutes of browsing showed him that Bella specialized in discipline, Portia also liked to be in charge, while Lolla made no bones about her preference for submissive men who "enjoy a little pain". Baddo winced at the idea. He thought of himself as an old-fashioned sort of character, and while he wasn"t of the opinion that a woman"s place was confined to the home, he drew the line at women having too much control and the thought of a woman delivering pain went against the grain. On the other hand, the p.o.r.n that some of the better-connected prisoners at Kaunas had access to showed the strangest aberrations, and the fact that some of his fellow prisoners clearly relished aspects of the discipline was something that was alien to him. Like Portia, Bella, Sonja and Lolla, Baddo preferred to be in charge.
He closed personal.is without any curiosity about what else might be found there and checked his new email address, was not surprised to see no messages waiting for him, and he shut the computer down as he heard Maria"s key sc.r.a.pe in the lock.
"Hae," she greeted him, kicking off her shoes and sinking into the flat"s only armchair. "Had a good day?"
"Not bad. You"ve been busy, though."
Maria groaned and released the bun that held her grey-shot hair in place at the back of her neck, allowing it to escape over her shoulders.
"That"s so much better," she sighed, lifting one foot and then the other into her lap to ma.s.sage her toes. "So what have you been up to? No joy on the job front, I don"t suppose?"
"Well. A little job has come up."
"Legal?"
"Let"s say it"s not illegal, depending on how I go about it," Baddo said, casually pushing what had happened to Magnus Sigmarsson to the back of his mind.
"And you"re doing it legally?" Maria asked, wide awake now, her tone sharp. "I don"t want to be visiting you in prison again."
"Don"t worry. I"ve just been asked to follow someone and keep an eye on their movements. It"s OK, and it"s cash, so I can contribute to the bills."
"That would be very welcome." She yawned as her defences dropped. "I"m starving and I can"t be bothered to cook anything."
"That"s all right. I had some cash up front, so I can treat you for once. Thai or Chinese?"
"It"s the second shower she"s had today," Laufey said quietly.
Something sizzled in the frying pan as Steini prepared dinner and a sudden aroma of spice filled the house as an extra ingredient was added to the pan.
"Really?" Gunna said, disappointed that the shower was already in use when that was just what she felt in need of. "How is she, do you think?"
Laufey changed the channel on the TV for the 19.19 news bulletin that Steini would want to see and turned the sound down.
"I can"t tell. She seems happy enough, and then five minutes later she"s in tears again. What"s that all about?"
"Ach, I expect you"ll find out one day, young lady. It"s not easy with your body doing weird things and your hormones running wild."
"It can"t be that hard, can it?" Laufey said, brows knitted.
"Like I said, you"ll find out one day and I expect you"ll come to me and tell me how tough it all is."
"Yeah. But not for a while," she said as the bathroom door opened and Drifa emerged, swathed in towels. "I mean, she"s like, only twenty."
"So? I was sixteen when Gisli was born."
"Well, I knew that. But you"re . . ."
Gunna laughed. "Well, I"m what?"
"You"re tough. One of those people who just fights their way through, aren"t you?"
Gunna thought back to the hard years following Laufey"s father"s fatal accident, when she"d found herself a single parent for the second time.
"Ladies!" Steini called from the stove. "Is she out of the shower yet?"
"Only just," Laufey called back.
"Five minutes. Lay the table, someone, please."
"Do I have time for a shower?" Gunna called.
"Only if you get in it right now and you"re out in double quick time."
"In that case I"ll eat first," she called to Steini and dropped her voice to continue the conversation with Laufey. "Try not to be harsh on her. It"s not easy and she"s got herself into a real mess."
"You mean Gisli"s got her into a mess, don"t you?"
"Careful, sweetheart. It takes two to tango," she said, levering herself off the sofa. "If you call Drifa, I"ll lay the table."
Sunday After a half-hour delay, during which she tried to pretend a cheese roll and rough coffee were a worthy subst.i.tute for breakfast, the first flight of the day to Iceland"s northern town of Akureyri swooped low over the long fjord leading to the town. Gunna wondered how it could be gloomy and wet in Reykjavik while the sky was clear and studded with stars north of the mountains.
A giant of a man in uniform met her at the airport"s arrival gate with a grin on his face.
"Hae. Remember me?"
"Andres? I wondered if it was you when we spoke on the phone yesterday," Gunna said, looking up into the open face of a man who would never be able to keep a secret. For once, she had to lengthen her stride to keep up with him as he loped out of the terminal to the squad car outside.
"How have you been keeping, then? Been here in Akureyri since you graduated?"
"Yup," he said as the car juddered over the rutted track between piles of cleared snow a metre deep on each side. "Graduated the year after you, wasn"t it? Came up here and been here ever since."
"It snows up here a bit, then?"
"Just a bit. But you"re used to that, aren"t you?"
"Was. It"s been a while since I last saw any proper snow. We don"t get much of it in Reykjavik."
"But the place still grinds to a halt when there"s an inch of snow on the ground." Andres laughed.