"Why don"t you go back to bed, Ragga?" Hinrik suggested.
She belched and sat down on a stool as she rummaged through a drawer. "Pills," she said. "My head feels like it"s been under a truck."
Hinrik put his hand up to a shelf and picked up a packet of painkillers, which he tossed to her, his mind ticking over at the possibilities that Joel Ingi had unwittingly revealed. He had a.s.sumed the man had wanted to find someone so he could administer a beating, but it seemed there was more to it, maybe something that could turn out to be profitable. Ragga caught the packet and snapped four pills from it, throwing them down her throat and gulping the gla.s.s of water to wash them down.
"s.h.i.t," she moaned, holding her head in her hands. "Must have been a good time last night. I don"t remember a thing."
"You had a good time, I a.s.sure you," Hinrik said. "Ragga, we"re talking business here."
"Yeah, yeah."
"Leave us to it for a while, will you?"
"I know, I know. I"m going to take myself back to bed like a good girl."
She hauled herself to her feet and padded out of the room. Joel Ingi felt a flickering of excitement in spite of himself at the sight of heavy legs and muscular shoulders as Ragga scratched and yawned on her way out. She stopped in the doorway, blew a kiss and belched before vanishing. Joel Ingi could hear the sofa in the next room creak and a mutter of sound as the TV clicked on.
Ragga"s arrival had broken Joel Ingi"s concentration. He could feel anger dissipating and being replaced by a wave of fatigue. He dug his fingernails into the palm of his hands and thought of everything he had worked towards; it was all about to be lost because of a stupid indiscretion.
"I want that woman"s address," he snarled, feeling the anger return. "Otherwise I"ll have some really unpleasant people coming after me, and I"ll make d.a.m.n sure they come after you as well."
The bakery was full. Baddo stood in the queue with his hood down and a scarf swathed around as much of his lower face as he could manage. The bakery wasn"t big, but the quality of its Danish pastries and the easy parking outside meant the place did a roaring trade in the mornings.
Not in any hurry, he watched from one of the tall tables at one side, sipping coffee and idly flipping through yesterday"s DV newspaper. He watched people lining up to get to the counter, tracking them as they left their cars outside and made their way in through the doors to buy their lunchtime sandwiches or a mid-morning snack.
It"s just as well Iceland"s such a safe place, Baddo thought. In mainland Europe, or practically anywhere else, people would be careful about the wallets and phones hanging out of their pockets.
He moved into the queue at the counter, one eye on the array of pastries on display but another on a young man in a knitted jacket with gaping pockets. He stood there deciding what to buy, a bunch of keys clearly visible in his cavernous pocket.
An orange-faced girl standing next to him looked blankly at the same display, a handbag slung over her shoulder, popping gum as she waited in the queue. He could sense her impatience growing behind the incongruous midwinter tan as her gum popped rapidly three times.
"In a hurry, are you?" Baddo asked and was rewarded with a blank stare and a nod. The rattle of something cheerful breezed out of the iPod earpieces in sharp contrast to the bored look on her round face as she shuffled past him. Baddo took a short half-step to one side, letting her brush against his coat as he smartly dipped into the handbag and came out with a set of keys that vanished into his parka"s sleeve.
He slipped out of the bakery and clicked the fob. Looking around for flashes, he saw the hazard lights of an anonymous mud-brown Hyundai wink as he pressed the b.u.t.ton a second time to make sure. As he drove away, Baddo caught a glimpse of the girl emerging from the bakery with a bag of Danish pastries in one hand, rummaging in her capacious handbag for keys that were no longer there.
The old lady had sat stiffly on one of the plastic chairs in reception for half an hour before a uniformed officer showed her into the interview room.
"Have I done something wrong?" she asked as Gunna sat down opposite her. "I don"t want to waste anyone"s time?"
"Not at all. Quite the opposite," Gunna a.s.sured her and turned in her chair to call back the uniformed young man who was just about to close the door behind him.
"Hey, before you go," she called after him, "since we kept this lady waiting for so long, how about you bring her a cup of coffee?"
"We don"t normally . . ." he began before Gunna cut him off firmly.
"It"s not every day that someone takes the trouble to come down here and give us information. So two coffees, please," she instructed. "Milk?" she asked the elderly lady who sat with her handbag clutched in her grasp.
"Yes, please," she said and finally let slip a glimmer of a nervous smile.
The door shut, although the young officer"s disgruntlement could be felt through it.
"My name"s Gunnhildur Gisladottir and I"m a CID officer. My colleague has given me the gist of what you came in here to tell us, so now I need you to tell me the story again," Gunna said. "But first, could you tell me your name?"
"I"m Sigurlin Egilsdottir but everyone calls me Lina. I live at Haaleitisbraut 80. It"s a block of flats and I"m on the ground floor on the right."
"Thank you, Lina. My colleague who should be bringing us a cup of coffee told me you saw an incident last night. Could you tell me what happened?"
"Well. I came in and there were some men fighting in the entrance. Three of them. Two of them were hurt, I think."
"And when was this?"
"It was just before seven yesterday evening. I"d been shopping and took a taxi home as it"s too far to walk in this weather."
"And what happened?" Gunna coaxed.
"I opened the door to go in the entrance, as usual, and I was surprised that it wasn"t locked. But as soon as I opened the inside door I could see what was happening. There was one man on the floor and two others trying to beat him up. He had a cut on his face and there was blood."
"Did you recognize these men?" Gunna asked, opening a folder and putting a picture of a rather fresher-faced asmundur asuson in front of her. She stared at it.
"He looks like the young man who ran away," she said slowly.
"And this one?"
A fatter Holmgeir Sigurjonsson than the one waiting in a cell glared out of his mugshot.
Lina nodded. "Yes, I saw that man as well. Those are the two who ran out of the door past me."
The door opened and the uniformed officer appeared with two mugs of coffee and a small carton of milk.
"Thanks," Gunna said, giving him an approving smile as he sidled out. "Now, Lina. These two, they were attacking a third man?"
"I think so but I"m not really sure," the old lady said, and Gunna could see her marshalling her thoughts. "The man who was on the floor, the one who"s face had been hurt, was Maria"s brother. But this young man was injured as well," she said, pointing at asmundur"s deadpan portrait. "There was a puddle of blood all along the floor. I could see him bleeding as they ran past me. He was limping and making a lot of noise."
"Who is Maria?"
"She"s the girl on the top floor. When I say girl, she must be your age, but she looks young to me. She said her brother had been overseas for a long time and had come back to Iceland after many years; he"s staying with her while he looks for work."
"Top floor on the right? Do you know the brother"s name?"
The old lady shook her head. "No. He did tell me, but I"ve forgotten. He was hurt, too. He had his hand over his face. He said he was all right, but I could see it was bleeding."
The door creaked open again and Gunna looked round to see Eirikur"s face peering round.
"Chief. Can I have a word?"
"Excuse me a moment." Gunna pushed her chair back and went outside. "What is it?"
"The number you wanted tracked," Eirikur said quietly. "Siggi said it popped up ten minutes ago, made one call that wasn"t answered and another that was, then switched off."
"To unregistered numbers, I expect?"
"Got it in one."
"Any location? Haaleitisbraut, maybe?"
Eirikur looked at Gunna with a new admiration. "How did you know?"
"Looked in my crystal ball before I came to work this morning. I want you to get in a squad car and take three beefy uniformed people with you. Haaleitisbraut 80, top floor on the right. But first find out who lives there. It should be a lady called Maria, but we"re after whoever"s there with her," Gunna rattled off.
"OK, chief," Eirikur said, keen to get out of the building.
"Eirikur."
"Yeah?"
"Be careful. By rights we should get the special unit out for this, but I want it done quietly and without any more fuss than is necessary. Don"t go being a hero. This guy might be nasty. Understood?"
"Gotcha."
"Good. Let me know."
Back in the interview room Lina sipped her coffee. She looked at the picture on the desk and then at Gunna. "Have you found him?"
"Who?"
"The young man," she said, pointing to asmundur asuson gazing blankly from the ten-year-old police mugshot. "And is he all right?"
"We"ll find him and I"m sure he"ll be fine," Gunna a.s.sured her, not wanting to tell Lina that asmundur asuson"s remains were cooling in the National Hospital"s mortuary.
She sucked the loose tooth and gingerly placed a finger against it. It shifted slightly under pressure. Although it felt awkward, like a foreign body, the tooth felt firmer than when the dentist had pushed it back into position, tutting his disapproval.
The van was cold and there was something living in the back amongst all the boxes of junk with a familiar smell that she had no intention of looking into, but it seemed a better place to sit than in the Renault. She had cleared a tiny patch of snow from the windscreen to get a better view of the house, an old one clad with sheets of steel that had faded from a cheerful blue to match the colour of the winter sky that was starting to appear.
Opening the pa.s.senger window, she listened for noise and watched for movement. She pulled off her woollen ski hat and ran fingers through her thick fair hair, stopping gingerly to finger the bruise on the side of her head. The black eye hadn"t turned out to be as bad as she"d expected, just a shadow under one eye instead of the discoloured patch she had expected to see and which would have taken weeks to fade.
She admitted to herself that yesterday had been a mistake. Following Joel Ingi into that bar had been the right thing to do, but asking after him had been a wrong move. As for asking for the toilet and using that as a pretext to scout around the Emperor"s dark inner recesses, well, that had been a real lapse of judgement.
A smile appeared on her face as she watched a light click on in one window of the flat where she knew Hinrik lived. Maybe it hadn"t been a mistake after all? It had been a painful and unpleasant experience, but at least it had prompted the man into making a mistake. It had showed her without a doubt that Hinrik Srensen and Joel Ingi Bragason had something in common, and she wondered which of them owed a debt to the other.
It was a while before Joel Ingi left the apartment, pacing across the car park to the smart Audi that stood out like a sore thumb amongst all the parked wrecks. She shrank back in the van"s pa.s.senger seat, hoping he wouldn"t see into the shadows beyond the windscreen"s coat of grime and snow. As he walked along the side of the van and hammered at it with one fist, setting off a dull echo inside, she managed to get a clear look at him in the van"s wing mirror, which had been angled carefully for just that reason. She wasn"t surprised to see a look of furious tension across his otherwise handsome face.
She had no choice but to stay in the van until the Audi had gone. She had parked her own car out of sight and couldn"t risk letting Joel Ingi see her, even fleetingly in the mirror. She stayed still in the van, the door cracked open to let in some air and dispel the thick smell inside. Ready to step out, she quickly pulled the door closed again as a mud-coloured car rattled to a halt, watching the driver get out with a mobile phone to his ear and talk as he walked slowly towards Hinrik"s door. She wondered what had happened to the man"s face to require all those st.i.tches.
Breakfast was over, the twins had been deposited at playgroup and Hekla felt that at last she could relax for a few minutes. She listened to the washing machine whirr and mutter as it finished its cycle and wondered whether or not to open it straight away. The sound of Petur"s lathe could be heard faintly through the wall.
She thought back to the fat man with the mournful eyes in the swimming pool, the one she was sure she had shaken off before he could follow her. The nagging feeling returned to her that this was something to do with the angry old man at Hotel Gullfoss, the one whose obituary she"d been startled to see in the paper, or maybe one of the others?
Hekla got up from the stool she"d been sitting on while brooding and banged on Sif"s door.
"Are you awake?" she called and was rewarded with noise that wasn"t quite human speech but indicated that the room was occupied.
The door opened and Sif appeared wrapped in a dressing gown and with her long brown hair in disarray over her face. She shambled to the bathroom and Hekla heard the lock snap to. She carefully pushed open the door of Sif"s room and peered into the gloom inside. The curtains were drawn tight and had probably been that way since they"d moved in a year ago. Hekla wrinkled her nose at the musty smell and clicked on the light. The bed was strewn with books and papers, and she could see where Sif had lain in bed surrounded by the collection. On the desk the light on a large flatscreen monitor gleamed, while two laptops were also open on the desk on either side of it.
A flush sounded and a tap could be heard running. Hekla switched off the light and retreated, noticing as she did so the vaguely familiar laptop bag open on the floor behind the door. She closed the door and went back to the kitchen.
"Y"all right?" Sif yawned, her hair not brushed, but gathered untidily behind her head. Her eyes were red behind her round gla.s.ses and she yawned again, wider this time, revealing multi-coloured braces on her teeth.
"Fine, thanks. Sleep well?" Hekla asked, trying not to sound sarcastic and remembering what it was like to be a teenager. "Can you sort your washing out, please? The machine"s finished and I need to do a wash myself."
Sif rustled through a cupboard and came up with a jar. She carefully spread b.u.t.ter on a slice of bread, followed by jam from the jar, and folded the bread into a makeshift sandwich.
"Yeah," she said, through a mouthful of bread and jam. "I"ll get dressed first."
"Make it quick, would you?"
Sif shambled back to her room and Hekla wondered how someone with such outstanding grades at college could be so disorganized. She sighed to herself and hauled the pile of damp clothes from the washing machine before reloading it. She pointedly left the basket of damp clothes where Sif would have to step over it, certain that it would still be in the same place by evening, but hoping to be proved wrong.
It was half an hour before Sif emerged from her room again, dressed in the baggy clothes she preferred, but with her hair still awry. As if performing a vital service to mankind she loaded her damp clothes piece by piece into the dryer.
"Sif," Hekla called as the dryer started to hum.
"Yeah?"
"Do you have that laptop I was given before Christmas? The one that was in your dad"s workshop?"
"Er, yeah. Why?"
"I"d like it back."
"But you don"t use it."
"I know, but I"d still like it back."
"Why?"
Hekla fought to control her temper and smothered the urge to snap back. "Because it was given to me and I might need it. Is it in your room?"
"Yeah. It"s a piece of c.r.a.p anyway. Really old and slow."
"You managed to start it up?" Hekla asked in surprise. "I tried and it was locked. I was going to get the pa.s.sword for it."
Sif looked at her suspiciously. "Where did you get it from, then?"
"Someone I used to work with. Why?"
Sif laughed. "Unless it was a guy called Joel Ingi Bragason who gave it to you, then that"s a stolen computer," she announced, turning to disappear back into her room.
"So how did you get into it?" Hekla asked.