the table.
She scanned the first page of the printout, frowning as she saw that the investigating officer was Helgi Skaftason. They had been recruits together at training college where Helgi had been a latecomer to the force and the oldest man in that year’s intake. He was now a painstaking but unimaginative officer.
Egill Grimsson had been run down and killed, crossing the road outside his own house, by an unknown vehicle, possibly blue according to some neighbours who had racked their brains to remember seeing any unfamiliar cars in an otherwise quiet neighbourhood of Grafarvogur.
There had been no witnesses and death was judged to have been instantaneous, although Egill Grimsson could have been lying in the road for as long as an hour before he had been found by the neighbour who called for an ambulance.
Routine questioning of people living in the street revealed nothing beyond the fact that the man had been a clean-living, rather private person, a middle-aged schoolteacher at a comprehensive college. An odd person for a character in his twenties such as Einar Eyjolfur to be associating with, Gunna thought, until a burst of sound from Laufey’s room had her jumping to her feet.
‘Turn it down, will you?’ she demanded, banging on the door before opening it. Inside, the music stopped abruptly as Laufey turned the stereo down to a whisper.
‘Sorry, Mum.’
Back in the kitchen, Gunna returned to Egill Grimsson. The man had been out all day on Sunday, 9 March and it appeared he had just parked his own car on the other side of the road when the accident had occurred at between seven thirty and eight that evening. There had been no other traffic along the dead-end street and the man’s glasses, some notebooks, maps and a camera had been found scattered near his body. All of these had been identified by the distraught widow as being the dead man’s property.
According to Helgi Skaftason’s report, there had been no progress in finding out who had been responsible for what was regarded as a tragic accident. Nobody had seen anything and the assumption was that this was a hit- and-run accident in which the perpetrator had panicked and fled. The only unusual aspect of the case was that the driver of the car had not been found. The description of a possibly blue car, according to a bored petrol station clerk on the main road a kilometre away, was far too broad for any kind of search. Although the case was still open, it was clear from the text that little was being done to take it any further as there was no indication of any kind of foul play.
Gunna sighed out loud. She decided against calling Helgi Skaftason, knowing that he would resent what she was sure he would see as interference. She stood up, leaving the report on the kitchen table, and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, noticing as she did so that Laufey had gradually increased the volume of the music in her room so that it could again be heard throughout the house.
Toothbrush in hand, she tapped on Laufey’s door.
‘Come on, sweetheart. Turn it off. Time to go to sleep.’
11
Sunday, 7 September
The car park’s manager would dearly have liked to go home, but with Gunna and Snorri in his office he had little choice but to stay while they went through the surveillance tapes. Snorri sat in the manager’s chair and watched the computer screen, fingers idly tapping the mouse, while Gunna peered over his shoulder and the manager tried not to look at his watch.
‘So, how far back do the tapes go, and how long do you keep them?’ Gunna asked.
‘It’s not tape any more. It’s all digital files and now we keep it all for ever.’
‘So how far back do these go?’
‘Since the system was installed last year.’
‘Good. Should be long enough, then.’
‘See, that’s the jeep there,’ Snorri said, pointing at the grainy monochrome as the jeep entered the car park. ‘That was the eighth of March at 13.25, so that ties in with Rognvaldur Jonsson’s statement.’
‘Yes,’ said Gunna. ‘Now we’re just going to have to sit here and watch until it’s driven out again, which hopefully won’t be too long.’
A pained look crossed the manager’s face as Gunna turned to him.
‘Do you know exactly where this vehicle was parked while it was here?’
‘Er, no.’
‘But you must have more than one set of cameras covering the car park, don’t you? I thought they were everywhere?’
‘They are. But one or two of them are dummies.’
‘That’s just brilliant. Right, you’d better tell me which ones are which.’
She slapped the statement Bjossi had sent that morning on to the man’s desk, turned it over to the blank side and handed him a pen.
‘There you are. Draw me a plan.’
Leaning over the wrong side of his own desk, the man sketched an outline of the car park, marking crosses where cameras covered the lanes of dormant cars. He was squinting with concentration when Snorri yelped.
‘There it is!’
‘Where?’
Snorri clicked the mouse and scrolled back, stopping the blurry picture with the jeep parked in a bay off centre and squashed by the camera’s perspective. Gunna fumbled with her glasses and jammed them on her nose. ‘Well?’
‘Well, like you said, now we just have to sit and wait until it moves.’
Gunna turned to the manager. ‘What other information do you have? There must have been a payment of some kind?’ She reeled off the jeep’s registration number.
‘I’ll see when I can get to my computer,’ he replied morosely.
Gunna turned back to peer over Snorri’s shoulder as he fast-forwarded through the footage. A few cars moved in stop-go motion and occasional people could be seen walking at high speed across the car park, even those weighed down by heavy suitcases.
‘Five o’clock and nothing yet,’ Snorri pointed out, a finger on the time indicator at the bottom of the screen.
‘Keep going.’
When the clock reached 17.03, Snorri slowed the replay as a tall man with no luggage approached the jeep. ‘Chief. Look.’
‘OK. Play it slowly. Can you get the picture any better than that?’
‘This is as clear as it’s going to get, I reckon.’
The man went straight to the jeep’s driver’s door and within a few seconds it was open. A moment later it surged forward, out of the bay and out of shot. Snorri paused the replay and summoned the manager.
‘I need to switch viewpoint to here,’ he explained, finger on the makeshift diagram.
The manager clicked and a new window opened on screen. ‘Do you have a time?’
‘Yeah. 17.03.’
‘Right.’ The manager tapped at the keyboard and a view of the gates appeared with 17.03 on the clock.
‘Scroll there,’ he said, needlessly as Snorri was already fast-forwarding until the jeep appeared at the bottom of the screen and bumped towards the gates. At the barrier, the jeep stopped, and the window rolled down. An arm emerged, put a ticket in the machine, and was gone. The barrier swung jerkily upwards and the jeep rolled forward and again out of shot.
‘Is there another camera on the gate?’ Snorri demanded.
The manager pointed and Snorri clicked. An image of the driver’s window appeared and moved jerkily until the man’s short hair, square face and dark coat could be seen, with clear eyes looking impassively at the camera.
