"I"m a rep at AquaIce."
"Which does what?"
"We supply water-cooler refills to offices, mostly. But it"s pretty quiet at the moment, so I"m only working four days a week."
Gunna scanned her notes and listened to the silence from the kitchen, wondering if Sara realized that their conversation was probably being listened to.
"The last time you saw Magnus, what happened exactly?"
Sara took a deep breath and Gunna could see her collecting her thoughts. "Well," she began, "he called me and asked if he could come round and I said yes, because Mum and Dad were out. We were in here when they came home and Dad hit the roof, said he didn"t want to see Magnus here again, and then Dad went out."
"And how long did Magnus stay?"
"Not long. We talked on the steps outside for a while and I said I"d go and stay with him over the weekend. Then he got in his car and drove away."
"You saw him drive away, did you? Which direction did he go in?"
Sara hesitated. "I don"t know. I don"t think I saw him get in the car."
"You didn"t look out of the window?"
"The last thing I said to him was that he ought to leave before Dad came back," she said, dropping her head and howling.
Eirikur smoothed out the credit card statement on the counter in the exclusive goldsmith"s shop. There were five transactions on Johannes Karlsson"s credit card, one a cash withdrawal for the maximum amount the ATM would dispense, followed by one at a clothes shop, one at a decidedly upmarket shoe shop and two at jewellery shops.
The elderly woman behind the counter eyed Eirikur suspiciously and her disapproval could be seen behind a thick mask of makeup. She lifted a pair of gla.s.ses that hung on a chain around her neck and held them up in front of her eyes to examine the entry on the credit card statement.
"Well, that"s here," she said dubiously. "But I don"t see what this has to do with the police."
"We"re investigating a stolen credit card, and this may be one of the transactions on that card."
"That"s ridiculous," the woman snapped. "We would never serve anyone using a stolen card."
"Even if you didn"t know the card had been stolen?" Eirikur asked gently. "This transaction was only a few days ago. Do you know who served this person?"
"Of course not. This is a busy shop, you know."
Eirikur looked out of the window past the display of rings and necklaces, the gold gleaming against black velvet, at the practically deserted street outside as a truck with a snow plough on the front went past, sc.r.a.ping a layer off the road and piling it into a neat strip at one side.
"It doesn"t seem busy at the moment."
The woman sniffed. "It"s early."
"Look, were you serving on that day?" he asked, his patience starting to wear thin. "If not, who was?"
"This kind of thing never happened before these d.a.m.ned credit cards were invented. It was cash or cheque, and we only dealt with respectable people."
"This may be awkward for you, but these things happen. Is there anyone else here? Can I speak to the manager?"
"I am the proprietor," the woman said in a voice as icy as the wind blowing along the street outside.
"In that case, you must have issued a receipt with this transaction, and it seems unlikely that you don"t remember it, considering there"s no small amount of money involved several hundred thousand kronur."
The door at the back of the shop creaked open and a younger face peered around the door.
"Is everything all right?"
"Actually, no." Eirikur said, thankful to see a cheerful face that might be more cooperative, as his patience with the woman behind the counter finally evaporated. The younger face belonged to a middle-aged man in a pullover that looked as if it had been inherited. "This transaction," Eirikur explained as the man lifted a pair of gla.s.ses to his eyes. "Anything you can tell me about it?"
"And you are?"
"He says he"s from the police," the elderly woman said in a tone that dripped scorn.
"Eirikur Thor Jonsson. I"m with the city force," Eirikur said, placing his identification on the counter next to Johannes Karlsson"s credit card statement.
"aki Sandvik," the man in the pullover said, folding his gla.s.ses. "Let"s go to the back room, shall we? It wouldn"t do to have the police here if a customer were to come in, would it, mother?"
Joel Ingi felt slightly sick, but hoped the nausea would pa.s.s as the morning progressed. He"d work through lunch and go home early, maybe. For the first time since before Christmas, he felt calm and more in control, as if a switch had been flipped inside his head. The buzzing in his ears had receded to an almost unnoticeable hum and the stinging pain deep in his belly that he treated with handfuls of painkillers and which tended to sneak up on him unawares had so far failed to make an appearance.
He read through a draft report prepared for the department by an outside consultant, adding his own observations in the generous margins, answered dozens of emails, and felt he had earned his salary by clearing his in tray.
His heart lurched as Mar appeared, frowning, in the doorway.
"It"s all right, nothing to worry about," Mar a.s.sured him as Joel Ingi felt an immediate tell-tale tightening across his belly.
"Is there anything going on?"
"Our boy"s in a foul temper. He"s chewed out half a dozen people already this morning over that Korean millionaire applying to buy land in the east. He"s dead set against it, but it"s as clear as day the man has some friends somewhere."
"On a purely legal basis, he"s quite right," Joel Ingi said slowly. "There"s no precedent for it and the minister has an obligation to be cautious."
Mar winked. "There"s cautious and there"s deciding who to p.i.s.s off the most, the voting public or the people who run the show."
"Who knows where he"ll go next?" Joel Ingi said with a thin smile. "Do you understand why politicians do the things they do?"
Mar spread his arms in a wordless reply. "And until then, we selfless public servants are doomed to be the messengers who get shot for bringing bad news. Speaking of which, AEgir was talking about you earlier."
"What? Really?"
"Yes. And not in a bad way. So when you get a roasting next time, just batten down the hatches and let it blow over, will you?"
Joel Ingi sighed. "I"ll try. You"ll be there tonight, won"t you?"
"Tonight?"
"Galleri 12. Agnes is expecting you."
"How could I forget?" Mar slapped his own forehead in slow motion. "Duh. I"ll be there."
He went through a batch of receipts held together with a clip that had hung on a peg over the desk.
"Here it is," he said. "This time of year"s pretty quiet and there were only a couple of sales that day. An eighteen-carat white gold chain, sixty-five centimetres, three hundred and twenty thousand kronur. A good day for January."
Eirikur nodded and agreed that the figure tallied with the credit card statement. "Who served this person, do you know?"
aki gestured at the receipt. "My sister Stella, judging by the handwriting. She runs the shop a couple of mornings a week." He looked up as the door opened. "And right on time," he said.
A younger, better-made-up version of the elderly woman from the shop looked enquiringly down at Eirikur.
"This gentleman"s from the police, Stella," aki explained. "Wants to know about the white gold necklace you sold the other day."
Stella settled herself on a stool and Eirikur sensed that she was wondering what to say.
"Do you remember the person who bought it?" Eirikur prompted, unfolding Johannes Karlsson"s credit card statement again. "It cost three hundred and twenty thousand, according to this."
"It was a woman, not someone I"ve seen before. Why? Is there a problem?"
"There should be a problem considering there aren"t many women around called Johannes Karlsson."
"Oh," Stella said, crestfallen. "I, er, I see. I can"t have checked the name. We don"t normally look at it."
"Any particular reason?"
"Well. These are exclusive items," she floundered. "You don"t expect dishonest people to come in here."
Eirikur sighed. "All right. Tell me what happened. What time was it? Morning?"
"Around eleven, I think."
aki hunted through a sheaf of receipts held together by another clip. "Eleven forty-one," he said, holding up a receipt that the credit card had generated.
"That"s right," Stella agreed. "She came in, looked for a few minutes and I supposed she must have decided what she wanted before she came in here as she just asked for the chain and bought it. She was only here for a few minutes."
"No small talk? She didn"t say anything?"
"She said something about being in a hurry. She had a big bag and had to hunt in it for her purse to find the card, so it didn"t occur to me that it wasn"t genuine."
"Or that it would be worth looking at the name?" Eirikur suggested; Stella looked down at the floor in dismay at the reminder. "All right, let"s have a description of this person. Age? Height?"
"Mid-thirties, I"d guess. I"m one-seventy, and I think she was quite a bit taller than me, maybe one-eighty or eighty-five?"
"Not wearing heels?"
"I"m not sure, but I don"t think so."
"You don"t have CCTV in here, do you?"
"It"s switched off at the moment," aki put in, a morose look on his face. "It broke down before Christmas and they still haven"t been along to fix it."
"So no pictures. What was she wearing?"
"A black coat. She didn"t unb.u.t.ton it, so I don"t know what she was wearing underneath."
"Trousers?"
"I"m not sure, but I don"t think so. The shop isn"t big and when you stand behind the counter you don"t tend to see anything below the waist."
"Hair?"
"Fair, nicely cut."
"Covering the ears? Above them?"
Stella paused. "You could see her ears, because I was admiring the pearl earrings she was wearing."
"Pierced ears, then?"
"Yes. Small earlobes as well, I think. You notice these things when it"s your business. Small ears make the earrings look bigger."
Eirikur scribbled notes as quickly as he could. "And the face? Anything special?"
"No. I don"t think so. Just an ordinary face, but with quite a big nose. Well, not big, but not small either, if you get my meaning."
"I think so. Eyes?"
"Er. Green, I think."
"Sure?"
"No, not really."
Eirikur stowed Johannes Karlsson"s credit card statement away and took one of the CCTV screenshots of the mystery woman from his folder. "Look familiar?" he asked.
Stella stared at the two pictures.
"That"s nothing like her," she declared finally.
"You"re certain?" Eirikur asked and carefully placed a piece of paper over the photograph, showing the woman with black hair, but covering the face from the eyebrows upwards.
"It could be," Stella said grudgingly.
Eirikur placed a finger over it to mask the hair. "We"ve established that the hair is fake. And now?"
"Those are the same earrings," Stella said immediately. "No question."
"And the face?"
"Yes, I think so. That beaky nose looks about right."