Gunna could see the anxiety and waited to see tears well up in those wide eyes.
‘Do you know who killed him?’ Disa whispered.
‘Why do you say that? There’s no indication of foul play.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘He drowned, in the harbour at Hvalvik.’
‘What was he doing there? He’d been taken off the smelter project,’ Disa said angrily.
‘That’s just what I think I need to find out,’ Gunna replied grimly. ‘Have you finished for today?’
Disa nodded, eyes awash with tears.
‘In that case, do you need a lift home?’
28-08-2008, 2041
Skandalblogger writes:
It’s our birthday! Two years down the line and we’re still here. It’s been two whole anonymous years of providing the nation with completely reliable, totally unsubstantiated and extremely libellous gossip about the great and the good of Icelandic entertainment, business and politics. So happy birthday to us! We’d like to ask all our readers — and there are plenty of them! — to raise a glass to the Skandalblogger tonight and wish us plenty more years of risking our necks bringing you malicious libel for your delectation. We know you love us and you’d hate to see us go . . .
Just to keep in the spirit of things, we’d like to know who says gentlemen prefer the real thing?
Here are Skandalblogger’s top five falsies. Here we are, for your delectation, in reverse order, the top five society ladies who have gone under the knife in the noble cause of chest enhancement.
5. A certain notorious fitness expert who went from 32A to 34C overnight. She must have been getting a discount for bulk, so to speak, as she had her schnoz done at the same time.
4. The lady who looks after the extramarital needs of a particularly needy businessman who owns a newspaper, a record store, a chain of grocery shops and a transport company. Judging by his girlfriend’s impressively upholstered new frontage, he can’t be quite so needy any more.
3. A well-known PR guru had hers done in the States. There’s nothing like mixing business with pleasure, is there, Sugarplum?
2. Pop stars have to look a million dollars, but our guess is that, this warbling national treasure’s boob job was a cut-price deal, as it looks like her arse has simply been sliced off and stuck to her chest. We like it, though.
And number 1 . . . is, tan-tan-tara. Sorry, but it has to be our favourite newsreader. They looked better before, darling. And we decided to put you at number one for outright daring. Who do you think you’re fooling?
See you soon!
B?jo!
Disa’s flat was in the basement of a large house in Vogar, twenty minutes’ drive out of the city on the road to Keflavik, among the black lava crags of the peninsula that ends with the airport and was until recently the NATO air base.
Much of the main room was filled by an ornately framed double bed stacked with neatly folded clean laundry and piles of magazines. In the corner a light winked on a computer with a darkened screen.
‘Let’s sit in the kitchen,’ Disa said, dropping her bag on the kitchen table and draping her jacket over the back of a chair.
Gunna sat down and scanned the room. There were film posters on the walls, but she had the impression that the kitchen didn’t get used often.
‘No problems at work?’
Disa shook her head. She pulled on and huddled inside a thick checked shirt several sizes too large that Gunna guessed had once belonged to Einar Eyjolfur.
‘No. Not at all. Sigurjona’s fine.’
‘How about the others? It’s quite a small company and you must have all worked closely together.’
‘Sigurjona’s not happy. Everyone knew that Einar Eyjolfur wasn’t about. Fjola the accountant is really shocked as well. She’s quite old, almost forty, and Einar said she was a bit like his mum except younger.’
Gunna wondered if Disa even had any coffee in the flat.
‘Well, forty’s not that old, you know,’ she said softly.
Disa sniffed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, but everyone at Spearpoint is young except for Fjola.’
‘That’s OK. No offence taken.’
‘How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Me? Thirty-six.’
Disa nodded dumbly and Gunna took a deep breath. ‘We identified Einar Eyjolfur from the national register. The E-three tattoo we figured out stood for EEE, and there aren’t that many people with those initials. You’d recognize that tattoo?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got one the same,’ she said, shrugging a shoulder out of the thick shirt to reveal the book and letters just below the nape of her neck.
‘And V-two?’
‘That’s me. VV. Disa is short for Vigdis. Vigdis Veigarsdottir.’
‘That explains it.’
Disa huddled back inside the shirt.
‘So. What can you tell me?’ Gunna asked.
‘I don’t really know.’
‘How about starting at the beginning? What’s your background?’
‘I was brought up here.’
‘In Vogar?’
‘In this street. This is my uncle’s house. Dad and my uncle built their houses at the same time. This flat is here because they expected my grandmother to come and live here one day when she was too old to live on her own. But then she died and the place stayed empty. When I started going out with Einar Eyjolfur and we decided to live together, my uncle said we could live down here.’
‘And your parents live close to here as well?’
‘Just Mum. Dad left ages ago. He’s got another wife and small children now. They live in Reykjavik.’
‘How long had you known Einar when you moved in together?’
‘Not long. Five or six weeks.’
‘And how long did you live together?’
‘Almost a year.’
‘Did you meet at work?’
‘Yes,’ Disa said hollowly. ‘Jon Oddur bet him he wouldn’t ask me out, and he did. So he told me about the bet and it was like a private joke between us that we’d have a couple of dates and then split the winnings.’
‘And what then?’
‘Well, we just liked each other, I suppose.’
‘Can you tell me anything about him, what sort of a character he was?’
Disa puffed her cheeks out and thought for a moment. ‘He was one of those people who is lovable and infuriating at the same time. You know what I mean?’
‘Precisely.’
‘He would do the stupidest things. Like, completely idiotic. He’d put potatoes and ice cream in the same dish, things like that. But at the same time he was really clever and could do all kinds of things. He could speak English and Danish and bits of other languages as well, and he could do anything with the computer and electronic stuff.’
‘Was he a bit of a nerd, if you don’t mind me using that word?’
‘He was a nerd and he was proud of it. Sometimes he could be totally thoughtless and at other times he could be so considerate as well.’
‘And what happened? Why did you split up?’
‘Mum didn’t like him much, and he didn’t like her either, so that didn’t help. He really missed his friends being
