"It"s just a name you"re looking for?"
"A name will do fine."
"I don"t know," Gussi wavered. "Four hundred thousand doesn"t go far these days. Can we stretch to half a million?"
"You drive a hard bargain."
Gussi sighed, reminding himself that he had been determined to ask for double that. "I have plenty of debts," he said finally. "If you could stretch a little further than that . . . ?"
There was that enigmatic smile again, and Gussi felt unnerved as it vanished suddenly.
"I don"t like to do things the hard way, but sometimes there"s no alternative," Baddo said in a soft tone and delved into the inside pocket of his jacket to take out a fat envelope. He placed it on the chair"s armrest. "Four hundred thousand. Take it or leave it." He looked at Gussi with an unwavering gaze that made it plain there was no more on offer. "I"d advise you to take it."
"I, er . . . I don"t know."
Gussi stretched to pick up the envelope and, as he did so, Baddo shot out a hand that caught Gussi at the wrist in a solid grip that left him leaning forward with the stool about to collapse underneath him.
"The name."
"What the h.e.l.l . . . ?"
"The name. Before you pick up the cash. A name."
"Hekla," Gussi gasped.
"And the rest?"
"Hauksdottir. Hekla Elin Hauksdottir."
The grip relaxed. "You know where she lives?"
Gussi shook his head, his breath coming in gasps. The man"s hand released his wrist so that the stool sat back on its three legs again with Gussi, red-faced, slumped on it with his back against the wall.
"How come you know this girl?"
"We were in Oth.e.l.lo at the National Theatre. I played Iago," Gussi said with a pride in his voice that he couldn"t conceal. "It was ten years ago, or more. She had a part in it as well. I remembered her, that"s all."
"And is she going to remember who you are, Gussi?"
"I don"t know. I doubt it." He could feel his chest heaving and took off his gla.s.ses to wipe the sweat from his forehead onto the sleeve of his shirt. "It was a long time ago."
"And you"ve come down in the world, haven"t you? So this woman was an actress," Baddo mused. "That"s interesting."
Gussi stuffed the envelope full of cash into his trouser pocket. "No harm will come to her, will it? You gave me your word."
"How long has she been pulling this stunt with rich old men? It"s a smart idea."
"I"ve really no idea. I haven"t been taking notes."
"No, but you"ve been able to put two and two together, haven"t you?"
The gaze remained unflickering, and Gussi felt that the man sitting calmly in the chair was stripping him bare, fully aware of any lie he might try to tell. He shivered in spite of the warmth in the little apartment. "I"ve seen her once or twice," he admitted.
"And at a few other hotels as well? Word gets around, surely, and you people compare notes."
Gussi nodded glumly. "It happens. But it"s not often."
"When did you last see Hekla Elin Hauksdottir?" he asked, rolling the names slowly across his tongue, as if testing them for flavour.
"Last week."
Baddo thought rapidly without dropping his gaze from Gussi"s eyes. Last week meant that the woman was still working, still pulling her stunts. "What day was that?"
"I don"t know," Gussi said, fl.u.s.tered and hot, levering himself to his feet. "Four or five days ago."
"The same day that old guy was found dead at the hotel, was it? Anything to do with your friend?"
"I don"t know anything about that," Gussi said quickly.
"Ah, but I think you do, my friend, and I think you may have told me more than you were going to," he said, standing up from the chair with a grace that Gussi found beguiling in a man of his bulk. "You said anything to the police?"
"No. Not a word."
"Good. And you"re not going to, are you? I a.s.sure you, it wouldn"t be worth your while," Baddo said with soft menace. "Not if you want to keep your health."
Joel Ingi threw two pills down his throat and washed them down with a cup of chilled water from the cooler. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms until the lights behind his eyelids flickered red.
"All right, Joel Ingi?"
He looked up to see the grinning face of Katrin, the plump press officer from the next floor.
"I don"t know. Flu coming on, I think."
"Well, I"d prefer it if you don"t give it to me. I"m on holiday in a couple of weeks, going to Dublin for a few days rest and a couple of nights on the town. Now that I"m single again, I"m allowed to start enjoying myself," she said. "That"s what you need, to let your hair down for a few days."
"I"m OK," he a.s.sured her, refilling his plastic cup and draining it. "It"s this place, I"m sure of it. Air conditioning all year round isn"t healthy. What happened between you and Axel? I thought you were rock solid?"
Katrin lifted her shoulders in an unspoken question, hindered by the files she had hugged to her ample chest. "I don"t know," she said with a sigh. "I guess I must have realized that deep down he was never going to grow up mentally to be more than fourteen. That"s fine when you"re young, but after a certain point enough is enough."
"I"m really sorry to hear it."
"I"m not," Katrin told him with an arch lift of her eyebrows. "I"m working out again as well now, so maybe I"ll see you at the gym?" she suggested, looking over her shoulder as she left him at the water cooler in bemus.e.m.e.nt.
"All right, are you?" Mar asked, finding him standing there with a dull look on his face.
Joel Ingi shook his head. "I don"t know. That fat Katrin just came on to me two minutes ago right here."
"In broad daylight?" Mar laughed, his smile brought to a sudden death by the morose look on Joel Ingi"s face.
"That"s about it."
"I"m shocked. I"ll have a word with her line manager and see that she"s given a written warning for flirting with the fourth floor," Mar said, breaking into a laugh as he saw the serious look on Joel Ingi"s face. "Seriously, though. Be flattered. I mean, I always thought you were queer."
"Get away, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Joel Ingi retorted, a smile finally appearing on his face.
"Listen, though. A quiet word."
Mar"s suddenly serious tone switched off the laughter.
"What"s the matter?"
"It"s that laptop you had stolen before Christmas. AEgir"s as nervous as h.e.l.l. A human rights group in Holland has figured out that those four Arabs left Germany and travelled to Amsterdam. That"s where they lose track of them. They got hold of the same information as we did about those four being found shot in the back of the head in Tripoli, plus I don"t know what else . . ."
"They were tortured?"
"I don"t know. But they weren"t being sent to a summer camp with four meals a day and team-building exercises. I"d be amazed if they hadn"t been."
Joel Ingi"s pale face went a shade paler. He poured cold water from the cooler and drank it down fast, wiping away the sweat that had suddenly appeared on his forehead. "Good G.o.d, what have we done?"
"It doesn"t matter. It"s done. There"s nothing we can do about it, except keep quiet. Listen, the do-gooders lose track of them in Amsterdam. They may know they came through Keflavik, but they don"t have anything to prove it. Let"s keep it that way, shall we?"
"AEgir knows all this?"
"h.e.l.l no. Not all of it. But he"s a shrewd b.a.s.t.a.r.d and he can read you like a book. That"s enough to tell him that something"s up. He"s been on to the police about it."
"I"m looking after it, all right? Isn"t that good enough?"
"Hey, calm down, man. I know AEgir"s an a.r.s.ehole, but he has every right to be worried."
"It"s in hand, I keep telling you."
"You"re sure, Joel Ingi? With one of your brother"s mates looking after this?"
Joel Ingi looked about quickly. "What the f.u.c.k else can I do?" he hissed furiously. "Tell AEgir that some b.i.t.c.h stole my laptop?"
"b.i.t.c.h? You said it was a couple of lads."
"Ach, to h.e.l.l with it. Forget it. Forget I said anything. I"ll get it fixed and that"ll be all."
"If you say so," Mar said with doubt in his voice. "When? How long"s this going to take?"
"Soon."
"Yeah, but how soon? I"m fending AEgir off here, but I can"t do it for much longer. He wants you spilling your guts to some flat-footed detective who has no idea what"s on your hard drive."
"A couple of days."
"Make it soon. Otherwise there are going to be some cops here asking you awkward questions."
It hadn"t taken long to find the address. Ten minutes with the national registry confirmed for Baddo that Hekla Elin Hauksdottir existed, gave him her national registration number and date of birth, as well as her address, not to mention the interesting information that Petur Steinar Albertsson lived at the same address, along with Sif Petursdottir, Albert Haukur Petursson and Alda Bjork Petursdottir.
Baddo calculated and worked out that Albert and Alda must be Petur and Hekla"s children, but Sif was possibly too old at seventeen. Two small children with the same date of birth and a teenager? A stepdaughter, maybe, from Petur"s previous relationship. He smiled in satisfaction at how easy it was to find someone in Iceland once you had the name as a starting point, and how straightforward it could be to work out who is who.
Cross-referencing Petur Steinar Albertsson"s name with the online phone book even gave Baddo the home phone number and a mobile number; he wondered whether a phone call posing as a salesman of some kind would be a good way of spying out the land.
He switched on his mobile, called the landline number and let it ring a couple of times before he gave up and keyed in the mobile number instead.
"Hi. This is Hekla. I can"t take your call right now. Leave a message and I"ll get back to you," the voicemail intoned and he ended the call without saying anything. The voice was warm and soft, and listening to it almost put him at ease. In fact it was even vaguely familiar and he wondered where he might have heard it before. For a moment he toyed with the idea of calling again, just to hear the voice, but decided against it, telling himself not to be so soft.
Disappointingly, he had to drive all the way out to Kjalarnes, a little suburb beyond the fringes of the city that he"d forgotten even existed. That required wheels, which would mean either finding some or else borrowing Maria"s car, but that would have to wait until the morning, he decided. He"d already worked hard enough today for Hinrik the Herb"s money. He felt like an afternoon off and wondered if Ebba could be persuaded to take a few hours off as well.
"And what do we have, dear boy?" Gunna asked, seeing Eirikur grinning, while Helgi looked morose and deep in his own thoughts.
"Three jewellers, three positives. Our mystery lady spent something like a million kronur on other people"s credit cards in one morning, buying gold and silver necklaces, a few bangles, that sort of thing."
"Stuff that doesn"t lose value," Gunna said. "Unlike cash."
"Someone"s putting something aside for a rainy day, aren"t they?" Helgi observed, shaking his head as if shaking off his private thoughts.
"You think so?"
"I do. This is stuff that can be sold, but not right away. It"s all identifiable and can be traced, but the longer it stays in a biscuit tin under her bed, the less likely it is to be noticed."
"Or a safe deposit box," Gunna mused. "Someone with a long-term plan, you reckon?"
"But that"s not all," Eirikur broke in, unable to curb his excitement. "I went to half a dozen other jewellers around the city and several of them recognized her, said that she"d been in before. One chap said he"d sold her some jewellery about a year ago and thought he"d recognized the face then, but wasn"t certain. That"s why the picture rang a bell after such a long time."
"Really? In that case you"d best go back there and see if you can jog his memory."
"Now?"
"Absolutely. Right now."
"What about . . . ?"
"No, if this jeweller can come up with a name or whatever, then go and browbeat him until he remembers."
Eirikur shrugged his jacket back on and left, shaking his head at Gunna"s obstinacy, while she turned to Helgi and sat down.
"What"s the matter?" she asked as Eirikur closed the door behind him.
"Ach, nothing important. Nothing to do with work."
"Helgi Svavarsson, it may be nothing to do with your work, but it"s affecting your work. What"s bugging you?"
Helgi sighed deeply. "It"s Halla," he said finally. "Problems at home."
"The kids are all right, aren"t they?"