"Around sixteen, I"d say."
"Tall? What sort of height? Fair hair, dark hair? Long? Short?"
"They were both wearing hooded sweaters and I didn"t see their faces properly. It all happened so fast."
Gunna sat back and looked disapproving.
"Officer, do you expect that these two boys can be found?" Mar Einarsson asked in a tone that was an attempt to defuse the tension.
"I"m sure they can, if we had the time and manpower to do it. But you"re not giving me a great deal to work on."
"Joel Ingi, is there anything more you can recall?" Mar asked.
"No. It was dark. It was all over in a few seconds."
Gunna sat back and cracked her knuckles. "I can"t help feeling that we"re wasting our time here."
"You think so?" Mar asked, a worried expression on his pleasant face.
"Two boys steal a laptop and run off. You"ve given me practically nothing to work on other than the serial numbers of the laptop. We have to look for two lads who may or may not be around sixteen, without knowing what they look like except that they wear hoodies, like every other teenager, and one of them rides a bike."
"I see what you mean," Mar agreed.
"I"d say your best option would be to go through the small ads in the papers. If this laptop is going to surface, that"s where it"s most likely to turn up. On the other hand, it may well be under some teenager"s bed by now, or it may have been reformatted, so anything on it will have been erased."
"That"s what we need to know," Joel Ingi broke in.
"So just what is it that"s so sensitive? It would certainly give me something to work on if I had an idea of just why this four-year-old laptop is so important," Gunna said, and the two young men looked at her in silence.
ivar Laxdal sighed audibly. "Let"s not even go there, Gunnhildur," he rumbled, the irritation plain in his voice. "They won"t tell me, let alone you."
The two police officers left the building together and Joel Ingi breathed a sigh of relief, winding his scarf around his neck.
"Why didn"t you tell me they were going to be here today?" he asked as Mar waited for him.
"I didn"t know. That ugly b.a.s.t.a.r.d, ivar, called me about four minutes before they came through the door. I didn"t have a chance to put him off."
"And who was that terrible woman who asked all those stupid questions?"
"It seems she"s a detective, and a very good one, or so ivar said. He reckons that if anyone"s going to find your laptop, then she"s the most likely candidate."
They stood in silence in the lift as it descended, checked out at the security gate and emerged into the street.
"Your friend," Mar said, "the one you said your brother had lined up. Any progress?"
"I"m going to see him right now."
Mar nodded as they set off along the street towards the corner where their paths would diverge.
"You know . . ." Mar began, hesitating, "what you told the police about those two boys?"
"What about it?"
"Was that the truth? Was that what really happened?"
Joel Ingi stopped at the corner and squared up to face Mar, his face flushed in anger and frustration. "Are you saying you don"t believe me?"
"It"s not that," Mar mumbled, stepping back to allow a young woman with a pushchair to pa.s.s between them. The blonde girl stood on the corner, waiting for the lights to change, but still looking to her left for a break in the traffic that would let her hurry across before they did so.
Mar spoke as quietly as he could. "You just weren"t convincing. I"m not saying I disbelieve you. But I don"t suppose that fat policewoman believed you."
The lights bleeped and the young woman strode over the crossing, the pushchair swishing through the puddles that had collected in the melting snow.
"I don"t care what the f.u.c.k they believe," Joel Ingi said furiously.
Mar watched as the young woman with the pushchair disappeared into a shop on the other side of the road and was shocked when he looked back at Joel Ingi and saw a twitch under his left eye.
"Listen. Calm down, will you? If that laptop was stolen by some kids, as you say, it"s probably been wiped and used as a games machine by now. Don"t worry so much," he said.
"It"s dynamite," Joel Ingi retorted. "It doesn"t matter if it turns up next week or in ten years. What"s on there is going to destroy my career, and it"s going to screw the minister. In fact, it"s going to screw both of them."
"Both of them? What do you mean?"
"s.h.i.t, where have you been? You know what was in that information that came from the Brits. Those guys arrived here right after the election, or don"t you remember? One minister in and one out, both of them were in the hot seat."
"But neither of them had anything to do with this, did they?"
"Of course not. But the buck stops somewhere. If this comes out and they try and blame me, then I"ll blow the whistle on both of them."
Mar looked shocked. "The minister wouldn"t try to make you a scapegoat, surely?"
"Maybe not. But AEgir would, and he"d do it in a heartbeat." Joel Ingi said, turning to walk uphill. Mar frowned to himself and opened his mouth to call after him, but thought better of it and remained silent, watching Joel Ingi trudge up the slope with his shoulders hunched against the cold wind as if the weight of the world were on them, while the young woman emerged from the shop opposite with a carrier bag slung over one of the handles of the pushchair in front of her.
ivar Laxdal drove back to the station at Hverfisgata and Gunna let herself sit back and be enveloped in the softness of the leather seats of his car, which purred effortlessly between sets of traffic lights.
"So what did you make of that?"
"Joel Ingi Bragason? Bulls.h.i.t from start to finish."
"You think so?"
Gunna looked over at ivar Laxdal in surprise. "Didn"t you? You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. That stuff about the two kids was something he made up beforehand and just spieled off. The rest of it was made up on the fly."
ivar Laxdal nodded. "I"m glad you thought so as well," he confirmed.
"It was like watching a schoolboy caught with a bag of goodies. I"m really wondering what this lad"s done wrong."
At the next corner, Joel Ingi took an unexpected turn, went through an alley between two old houses and made his way almost back the way he had come, this time heading downhill, walking fast towards the centre of town.
The woman with the pram stopped, thought quickly, folded the pushchair into a compact flat arrangement and placed it behind some dustbins at the side of a shop. She quickly unrolled a thick quilted anorak from where the pushchair would normally have accommodated a child, shrugged it on and set off behind Joel Ingi. She pulled a ski hat low over her eyes, keeping him in sight, but only just. She allowed him to go out of view as he rounded a street corner before increasing her speed to catch up and keep him in sight.
She was lucky to see him vanish, with a quick look over his shoulder and a smart sidestep, into a bar in a side street off Laugarvegur, a dark place that looked quiet on a weekday afternoon as people were making their way home from work. The Emperor was a bar she knew by reputation but had never been inside; she wondered if she should risk going in alone, and eventually decided to wait for Joel Ingi to emerge.
In a music shop directly opposite, she flipped listlessly through the racks of CDs, wincing at the price of some of them, but always keeping an eye open through the floor-to-ceiling window for Joel Ingi to leave the Emperor and hurry back along Laugarvegur towards home.
She had looked slowly through every rack of CDs, declined an offer of a.s.sistance from a startlingly pink-haired woman who proceeded to stare into s.p.a.ce from behind the counter of the otherwise deserted shop, and finally gave up waiting.
The Emperor was gloomy inside and some muted heavy metal grumbled in the background. The dim walls and the dark brown wood of the tables conspired to make the place look stuffier and smaller than it really was. A few of the customers glanced up as she walked in, and she went straight to the bar instead of looking around for Joel Ingi. The shaven-headed barman looked at her enquiringly.
"A beer."
"Small? Large?"
"A small one."
She looked around her as the barman poured and then sipped her beer appreciatively. It wasn"t often that a drink on the job was acceptable, and she enjoyed the feeling, unzipping her quilted coat.
"Haven"t seen you in here before, have I?" the barman asked, the light above the beer pump shining on the angled facets of his bristled head, giving him a sinister look.
"Don"t expect so. I"m from out of town."
"Where from? I"m a country boy myself."
"Bildudalur," she said, praying that the man was from some other part of the country and wouldn"t want to embark on a conversation about small-town affairs that would immediately catch her out.
He shook his head. "I"m from Thorshofn, me. Mind you, it"s a dump and it"s twenty years since I went there last. So what brings you to the bright lights?" he asked, a glint in his eye as he deliberately ignored a young man standing at the other end of the bar waiting to be served.
"Looking for a friend. Joel Ingi," she said, deciding on the spur of the moment to take a wild chance. "Actually he"s a cousin and I"m told he drinks in here sometimes."
The friendly smile vanished from the barman"s face and he muttered something she didn"t catch as he moved off to serve the man at the other end of the bar. She sipped her beer and wondered if mentioning Joel Ingi had been a mistake. She waited for the barman to return and toyed with the thought of another beer before deciding against it.
The barman returned and nodded at her gla.s.s. "Another?"
"Not this time," she said, pretending to think about it for a moment. "Where are the toilets?"
The barman took the gla.s.s and jerked his head towards the bar"s dark interior without a word.
She zipped her jeans and pulled on the anorak again before opening the cubicle door, then immediately froze.
"Curious about something, are we?"
One light was flickering as its fluorescent tube died a slow death and the intermittent glow flashed on the single metal tooth that showed as the thin man smiled.
She pushed the cubicle door back, knowing that it was a hopeless thing to do as the man put his shoulder to it and forced it inwards.
Helgi was back at his desk at Hverfisgata as Gunna arrived, the phone to his ear and a bemused frown on his face as he shook his head at her.
"No, that"s fine. Not a problem. I"ll drop by in the next few days and take a statement. Thanks," he said and left the phone propped under his chin as he used the b.u.t.t end of a pencil to press the b.u.t.ton on his desk phone to end the call.
"And?"
"He"s not a happy man, oskar Hjalmarsson."
"How come? Locked him up, did you?"
"He"s in an interview room, and man has he been sweating. But he checks out. He had nothing to do with Magnus Sigmarsson"s death, as far as I can see."
"Good. Then we can rule him out, can we?"
"Yup. He left the house at seven-thirty and was at his karate cla.s.s until after ten. Half a dozen people have confirmed he was there, including Steingrimur from the special unit."
"And after ten?"
"He bought a takeaway at Ning"s and the lad who was serving remembers him buying chop suey sometime after ten."
"Fair enough," Gunna decided. "Let the man go, but give him a stern warning, will you? He"s not completely in the clear until we"ve a confirmed time of death for Magnus. All right?"
Helgi pushed his chair back and stood up, dropping the phone back into its cradle. "Suits me. He"s not someone you"d want to spend a week in Spain with, but I"m pretty sure he didn"t break Magnus"s neck." He yawned and stretched. "Oh, and there was some guy who tried to call you a couple of times. Your mobile"s switched on, isn"t it?"
Gunna cursed and remembered that her mobile had been set to silent for the meeting at the ministry and she had forgotten to reset it. She hastily looked at the screen and saw three missed calls, all from withheld numbers.
"Well, if it"s important, they"ll call back, I suppose," she grumbled to herself as Helgi left the room to set an angry oskar Hjalmarsson free, before calling him back. "Helgi! That car? Anything new?"
"Not from forensics. Eirikur"s down at Grandi now asking questions," Helgi replied, his head around the door. "It"s cold out, so he"ll be back soon, I expect."
In his haste, Joel Ingi almost missed his footing on the stairs. At the top he paused outside his front door and took a couple of deep breaths before opening it and giving the door a kick for good measure.
"Agnes!"
There was no need to shout. The air was thick with the overpowering smell of gra.s.s, which told him she was home.
"Hae," she said absently without looking round from the easel in front of her and the blocks of colour she was applying to the canvas with a flat brush. Joel Ingi could see the joint smouldering in the ashtray and there was a faint tremor at the back of her alabaster neck below the wisps of fine hair as golden as summer straw that escaped a bun coming adrift at the back of her head.
He stood and fumed, waiting for her to turn round, still captivated by the porcelain beauty of one shoulder half exposed from her loose T-shirt. He took a deep breath and lunged closer.
"What the f.u.c.k have you been playing at?" he hissed into her ear, stepping forward, digging his fingers deep into the bun of cream hair and hauling Agnes"s head sharply back so that her blue eyes stared into his.
"Let go of me," she ordered in a steady voice.
"No. You tell me what the f.u.c.king game is. Why have you been having me followed? What the h.e.l.l"s going on?"
"Get your f.u.c.king hands off me or you"ll regret it, you animal," Agnes spat and tried to twist out of his grip.
Joel Ingi"s fury boiled over. The slap echoed against the bare walls. Agnes"s eyes widened and she glared as Joel Ingi released her hair and stepped back. He watched as she sat up, a red patch widening across one cheek.
"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said, her tone matter-of-fact. "You"ll pay for that."
"You tell me what the f.u.c.k"s been going on. Why am I being tailed day and night?"