‘Haddi, my dear friend. That’s entirely due to the fact that you had the sense to stay at sea until your lads had grown up a bit.’
‘Well, there is that,’ he agreed and bustled to the spitting percolator. ‘Not putting you off, are we, Snorri?’
Haddi put three steaming mugs on the table and sat back down again. ‘So, what’s on the agenda for Hvalvik’s guardians of law and order, chief?’
Gunna came back to the front office from her own room holding a batch of papers which she slapped on the table.
‘Simple. Haddi, I need you to mind the shop. Snorri, you can take the smart Volvo and go up to the InterAlu compound. Introduce yourself to the manager there. He’s called Sveinn, nice enough bloke, but don’t make any promises. Most of what we have to deal with here at the moment is traffic to and from the InterAlu site, which is the smelter they’re building on the far side of the harbour. There are dozens of trucks every day and every now and again there are low-loaders with the heavy equipment.’
‘They go right through the town?’
‘Not now. The back road was built up in the spring, so most of it can bypass the town itself, and sometime in the autumn they’re due to start dredging the harbour to deepen it, after which they’ll start bringing in the very heavy stuff by sea. All right?’
‘Yup. I’ll go and see Sveinn. What’s happening with the other construction — the hydroelectric one?’
Gunna sighed. ‘That’s going to be a nightmare when it really gets into gear. There’s going to be a huge volume of traffic going both ways when they start clearing the site. Haven’t you been up there?’
‘Not since the project started,’ Snorri said.
‘It’s a bloody awful road up there past Stjani at L?k’s place. But it’s their problem, so they can sort it out when the time comes. All right? You’d better be back from the InterAlu place before eleven so Haddi can do his usual tour of the docks.’
Haddi smiled to himself.
‘Don’t get the car dirty, or Haddi’ll be furious.’
‘And what might you be up to today, Gunna?’ Haddi asked.
‘I have a meeting with Vilhjalmur Traustason to brief him on our dead guy’s case in half an hour. And considering it’s a good forty minutes’ drive to Keflavik from here, I reckon I’m going to find the old fool in a bad mood when I get there.’
She planted her cap squarely on her head and made for the door.
‘So I’ll see you boys later. Look after the place for me.’
Gunna didn’t break any speed limits getting to Keflavik, although by the time the Hvalvik station’s second- best Volvo pulled up outside the Keflavik police station she was running almost an hour late.
‘What brings you over here, darling?’
Bjossi’s question was her first greeting inside the door, where Bjossi was standing with a mug in one hand and a pack of filterless Camels in the other on his way to the back door for a quiet smoke in the bright morning sunshine.
‘Can’t keep away. Nothing like a visit to the big city to remind a girl of what she’s missing out in the country.’
‘That’s what I keep telling you,’ Bjossi agreed, pushing backwards through the doors with his hands full. ‘See you in a minute . . .’
‘Ah, Gunnhildur, I’m terribly sorry to have to keep you waiting,’ a breathless Vilhjalmur Traustason apologized, bustling past in the opposite direction. ‘A meeting with the Sheriff took a little longer than anticipated,’ he explained as if to a wayward child, while Gunna strode along in his wake.
In his small office Vilhjalmur waved Gunna to a chair and carefully placed his cap on the top of his filing cabinet on his way to his own chair. He leaned on his desk and placed his palms together in a steeple in front of his face.
‘Now,’ he said, as if preparing himself for action. ‘The drowned man, Einar Eyjolfur Einarsson.’
‘You have my interim report already, so you know everything I do for the moment.’
‘I want to know what you think.’
‘I think he was murdered.’
‘Really?’ There was a brief note of fright in his voice. ‘Why? The man had a very high blood alcohol content and Sigmar at pathology says drowning was the cause of death.’
‘That’s right. But we don’t understand how a man on a night out in Reykjavik managed to drown in an obscure backwater a hundred kilometres away.’
‘You think it’s suspicious, not just an unfortunate accident?’
‘Of course I do! His blood alcohol content was so high that the man could probably hardly walk, let alone get from a bar on Laugarvegur to Hvalvik without some help. I understand that Einar Eyjolfur wasn’t a habitual drinker at all — quite the opposite.’
‘Of course this matter warrants further investigation, but it isn’t a murder inquiry until there’s evidence of foul play. There’ll be an inquest, but unless there’s evidence to the contrary, the verdict will certainly be death by misadventure.’
‘It stinks. There’s just so much that needs to be explained.’
‘Well, I suppose you’d better do your best. But I’m concerned that this could be a waste of your time. Find out what you can in the next week or so, and then we’ll see. Hm?’
Gunna knew that Vilhjalmur was a man who played everything by the book and would sooner cut off a hand than break a rule. She desperately wanted to ask why he was so unconcerned about Einar Eyjolfur’s death, but restrained herself.
‘I could do with some help on this one. CID are too busy with narcotics as it is. Can I have an officer for a week to help me out with the leg work?’
Vilhjalmur lifted his steepled hands to bring the fingertips in line with his prominent nose.
‘We are overstretched as it is and I don’t have a single spare officer at my disposal, at least not now that Snorri Hilmarsson has been transferred to the Hvalvik station,’ he said pointedly. ‘However, I had in fact anticipated your request and have already discussed this. The city force will be working with you on this case and S?valdur Bogason will be assisting you.’
Gunna groaned inwardly. ‘Bloody hell. The man’s like a bull in a china shop.’
‘S?valdur is an experienced and effective officer who gets results,’ Vilhjalmur said coldly.
‘Fair enough,’ Gunna sighed. ‘I’ll get over there and talk to him.’
‘That would be advisable,’ Vilhjalmur said, picking up the old-fashioned fountain pen from his desk, his attention already on the top report in a pile, indicating that the meeting was at an end.
‘Do you mind if I ask some background questions?’ Skuli asked timidly.
‘Fire away, young man. If there’s anything I don’t want to tell you, you’ll find out.’
Skuli sipped his Coke. They were sitting at one of the few small tables at a truckstop at the top of the heath halfway between Hvalvik and the handful of small communities to the east. Rain from a sudden shower pelted down outside from clouds as black as inky fingerprints on the western sky and formed rivers that flowed down the truckstop’s windows.
‘How does the station at Hvalvik run?’
‘It’s not a main police station, so it’s staffed during the day. Normally there’re three of us: me, Haddi the old guy and Snorri the new boy. We belong to Keflavik, so out of hours any police services have to come from there — in theory. In reality the three of us are in and around Hvalvik most of the time. Then we have the rural areas we have to visit on occasions, like today.’
‘So you do a nine-to-five day?’
‘It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. We run watches outside station hours so one of us is always on call all the time, so you can be at work even if you’re asleep at home. I like to keep work and personal life separate as far as is possible in a little place like this, but a lot of the time it’s just impossible.’
‘How do you mean?’ Skuli asked.
