‘Hi, there. This is Magnus Jonson. I’m with the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police.’
Magnus realized he had introduced himself using his American name. He had two identities. In Iceland he had been christened Magnus, pronounced ‘Magnoos’. His father was Ragnar, and his grandfather Jon, so his father was Ragnar Jonsson and he was Magnus Ragnarsson. So far so simple. Except that when he arrived in the States at the age of twelve the bureaucracy couldn’t cope with the fact that he had a different surname to both his father and his mother, whose name was Margret Hallgrimsdottir, and like so many immigrants before him he had changed his name to something easier on the American ear. He became Magnus Jonson. On returning to Iceland he had reverted to Ragnarsson, but that sounded strange when he was speaking English.
‘I’m glad you called,’ said Piper.
‘Do you mind if I put you on the speaker?’ said Magnus. ‘I’m here with two detectives, Arni and Vigdis.’
‘No, that’s fine.’
Magnus clicked the button on his phone and put down the receiver. ‘Inspector Baldur gave us some background on the homicide, but maybe you can tell us some more?’
‘You speak very good English,’ said Piper. ‘Better than your inspector. I wasn’t sure how much he understood.’
Magnus looked over his shoulder at Baldur’s closed office door. ‘Thank you,’ he said, resisting the smart-ass comment. ‘And so do you.’ Piper’s British accent was a local London one, as far as he could tell.
‘Right,’ Piper began. ‘Gunnarsson was killed at twelve forty-five on Wednesday morning. Shot in the chest in the hallway of his house with three rounds from a SIG Sauer P226. He died before the ambulance got there.’
‘Any witnesses?’ Magnus asked.
‘His girlfriend was in bed. She said the bell rang, Gunnarsson answered the door, she heard him talking to someone. The front door shut. A few seconds later there were the three shots and the front door banged again. Then she heard a motorbike start up and roar off.’
‘The neighbours hear it?’
‘Yes. Three of them. They heard the shots. They heard the girl-friend’s screams. And they heard the motorbike, although one of them said it could have been a scooter. Small engine. We’ve got CCTV pictures of several motorbikes at about that time on the Old Brompton Road and the Fulham Road which are the two main streets at either side of Onslow Gardens. We’re trying to trace them all now.’
‘Any Icelandic connection?’
‘Nothing firm. The girlfriend said that she heard Gunnarsson talking with the visitor in a foreign language. It could have been Icelandic. Or Russian. Or anything else that wasn’t English or Spanish for that matter. The girlfriend is Venezuelan, by the way.’
‘Russian? Why do you say Russian?’
‘We found a little yellow Post-It note with Gunnarsson’s address written in Russian letters. What do you call it? Cyrillic. It was screwed up in a ball by the gate to the front garden.’
‘That’s a rookie mistake for a hit man to make,’ Magnus said.
‘Yes,’ Piper agreed. ‘But it might not have been the killer who dropped it. The killer may well have been someone Gunnarsson knew. He did let him in, after all.’
‘In which case the killer could have been an Icelander,’ said Magnus. ‘Is there much of a Russian connection? Oskar had a Russian girlfriend, right, before the Venezuelan?’ Magnus checked his notes. ‘Tanya Prokhorova.’
‘We’ve interviewed her. She claims she dumped him two months ago. She’s a model, skinny, legs up to her armpits, but she’s switched on, all right. Degree in accounting – she claims she realized that Gunnarsson was actually skint which is more or less why she got rid of him.’
‘Does she have Russian friends?’
‘She does. She’s right in with the billionaires’ circle in London. And some of those are pretty dodgy. What about you? Have you turned up a Russian connection in Reykjavik?’
‘Not yet,’ said Magnus. ‘But we will ask around. Oskar was under investigation here for securities fraud and market manipulation.’
‘There are rumours in the City that some of the Icelandic banks got their money from the Russian mafia,’ Piper said.
Magnus raised his eyebrows and looked at his colleagues. Arni looked baffled. Vigdis shook her head. ‘We’ll check that out too,’ Magnus said, aware of his own ignorance. ‘We’ll call you at the end of the day with an update.’
‘Great. Cheers, Magnus.’
Magnus turned to his colleagues. ‘Did you get all that?’ he asked in Icelandic.
He knew Arni would. Arni had studied Criminology at a small college in Indiana, and his English was very good. But Vigdis claimed she didn’t speak it, a claim Magnus didn’t believe. All Icelanders under the age of thirty-five spoke some English, and he didn’t see why she shouldn’t just because of her colour.
For Vigdis had the distinction of being the only black police officer in the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police. She was fed up with Icelanders and foreigners treating her as if she wasn’t an Icelander herself. As she had explained to Magnus, even though her father had been an American serviceman at the US air base in Keflavik, she had never met him, had no desire to meet him, and thought herself as Icelandic as Bjork.
Magnus liked her. She was a conscientious police officer, and there was something comforting and familiar for an American cop working with a black face among so many pale ones.
Arni nodded, but Vigdis didn’t respond.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ said Magnus. ‘OK. Let’s figure out who is going to do what.’
The Odinsbanki headquarters was on Borgartun, a boulevard that ran along the bay, lined with expensively designed glass- and marble-clad buildings. It was not the dense thicket of skyscrapers that you would find in a US city’s financial district, it was more sedate than that and more soulless.
Arni and Magnus pulled up into a car park behind one of the most lavish offices. They walked through revolving doors under the words ‘New Odinsbanki’. The lobby echoed with the sound of rushing water from the various waterfalls, fountains and streams that flowed around the glass atrium.
They were met by the Chief Executive’s assistant, who took them up in the elevator to the top floor. She led them through a dealing room big enough to seat forty. It was eerily quiet, the screens blank, the chairs empty, apart from a group of a dozen or so men and women lined along the far wall. Behind these survivors was a wonderful view across the bay to Mount Esja, at that moment squatting under a grey cloud.
‘It’s quiet today,’ the assistant said. And then, with a wry smile: ‘It’s quiet every day.’
Eventually, after a couple of twists and turns, they came to the Chief Executive’s office and met the man himself. He was tall, about sixty, with a strong square face, thick grey hair and an ingrained frown. His name was Gudmundur Rasmussen and he had been turfed out of retirement to take over the running of the bank a year ago. His office was ostentatiously plain: simple desk, functional chairs and conference table. A couple of packing cases were stacked in the corner. It reminded Magnus a little of the police headquarters he had just left.
‘Terrible news about Oskar, terrible,’ Gudmundur said. ‘I didn’t really know him well. He was from a younger generation, we did things very differently in my day.’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘Very differently. Of course, I have spent most of the last year trying to clear up the mess that Oskar and his cronies left.’
‘Was he popular within the bank?’ Magnus asked.
‘Yes,’ Gudmundur said. ‘Yes he was. Even after all the mistakes he made came to light. He had charisma, people liked working for him.’ The frown deepened. ‘It has made my job difficult competing with that. The staff all seem to hark back to the good old days when Oskar was in charge. They don’t seem to realize that they weren’t good, they were disastrous. Things have to change. Now the bank is owned by the government we must behave cautiously. Not do anything rash.’
There was a knock at the door, and a man in his late twenties entered. He was self-assured with slicked-back hair and an expensive suit. A hint of cologne entered the office with him. He proffered his boss a single sheet of paper. ‘Can you sign off on this, Gudmundur?’
Gudmundur grabbed the paper and scanned it. ‘But these people are brokers, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. We do a lot of business with them.’
