parties, not a grunt like us.’
Reynir Oli sensed the switch in mood and brusquely changed the subject.
‘This week? What do we have? Jonni, you’re working on the finance bill issue, aren’t you? I need that today and I’d like you to do the editorial comments this week as well.’
Jonni’s eyes rolled up to the heavens, but he kept quiet and Reynir Oli continued.
‘Dagga, fashion pages, for the Saturday supplement. Commission freelancers to do some if there are gaps left to fill. The same with the travel pages. Gossip?’
‘Get it from Hot Chat and rehash it if that’s OK? The usual agency stuff from London? The Beckhams? Paris Hilton? Madonna?’
‘Whatever. Fine by me. The others use it, so we’ll have to do the same. Skuli, crime reports for the Tuesday and Thursday editions, and something a bit meatier for Saturday? How are you getting on with your redneck cop profile?’
‘Fine. It’ll be a good series. I’d like it to run over a couple of weeks if that’s OK with you?’
‘If it fills up the inches, it can’t be bad,’ Jonni grinned.
‘That’ll be fine, Skuli,’ Reynir Oli said primly. ‘I’d like you to keep tabs on this blogger and dig up what you can. Get on to the Ministry of Justice, someone like that. Can you do that? Get an angle on how they’re managing to keep him on the run all the time.’
All three of them pretended to take notes for the week ahead. Jonni was drawing a series of boxes across the page of his notebook, while Dagga typed straight into her laptop.
‘Er, Reynir? A question?’
‘Yes, Skuli.’
‘I just wondered — if we track down the blogger, then what do we do?’
‘Why do you need to ask?’ Reynir Oli asked in astonishment. ‘We’d splash it across the weekend edition.’
‘Well, it’s just that without the Skandalblogger there, we’d struggle a bit for stories. I mean, he’s such a great source of material.’
Gunna dispatched a relieved Snorri to the InterAlu compound to discuss a wide load that the construction contractor wanted to bring in. Snorri was only too pleased to escape the confines of the station and Gunna reflected that maybe she was asking him to do too much.
She shrugged and decided that as long as Snorri wasn’t complaining, she wasn’t going to feel sorry for him, knowing that he was relishing the responsibility. With the office to herself, she spread the two rental agreements out on the desk and read carefully through all of the details for both of the men.
Gunna frowned, pulled the phone across and dialled Stefan Jonsson’s number from memory, peering at the photocopied passport photos as she listened to it ring.
‘Hi, Siggi? It’s Gunna the Cop. Is your grandad home?’
‘He’s asleep on the sofa,’ the thirteen-year-old replied guardedly.
‘Now, young man, I need you to do something for me. All right?’
‘Yeah . . . ?’
‘I want you to go on the internet and find pictures of BMW X3s. Got that? It’s a big jeep.’
‘Duh. I know what an X3 looks like,’ the boy replied with disdain.
‘So much the better. I’d like you to find a couple of pictures and show them to your grandad. Then tell him that Gunna wants to know if this is the model of car he saw that night. OK?’
‘Yeah. What’s it for?’
‘Can’t tell you. But it’s important. Don’t tell anybody else, but I really need you to call me back as soon as you can and tell me what your grandad says. OK?’
‘Is it, like, a criminal car?’ There was a new note of excitement in the boy’s voice.
‘I’m not sure. It could be. Can you do that for me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, Siggi. Ask your grandad as well if he remembers what colour it was. All right?’
Gunna smiled as the line went dead, imagining Siggi racing up the stairs to his computer. She sat back and waited for the phone to ring while she looked at the rough photocopy of Gunnar Strom’s passport picture and the blocky image taken from the airport parking lot’s surveillance camera of the blue jeep’s driver. The two looked similar, but the images were not clear enough for her to be certain.
Siggi worked faster than Gunna had expected. The phone buzzed after only ten minutes.
‘Gunnhildur.’
‘Hi. It’s me. Grandad says yes. He’s certain it’s the same kind of jeep.’
‘Absolutely certain, or just fairly sure?’
‘Grandad says ninety per cent certain and he isn’t sure what colour it was, but it was dark — dark blue or grey, or maybe black.’
‘That’s excellent, Siggi. There might be a future for you with the police one day,’ she said. ‘Give your grandad my regards and tell him I’ll pop in and see him in the week.’
She sat back and looked at the rental forms again, even though there was no need to check the colours of Swiftcar’s jeeps. She knew that they were all black.
13
Tuesday, 9 September
Fat Matti stuck a thumb under the waistband of his trousers and snapped the elastic. Switching from jeans to tracksuit bottoms had made his life so much easier that he couldn’t understand why he had put it off for so long.
He reached forward to turn on the engine. The taxi had been still for so long that it was starting to cool and he needed to burn a little diesel to warm up. This wasn’t just for his own sake. Customers like a warm cab as well.
He peered over his shades into the mirror, hoping to see a customer hurrying towards him. At this time on a Tuesday morning a few revellers were still making their way home. Weekday mornings were good with business people hurrying to meetings, but evenings were best when the nightclubs, parties in people’s houses and revellers with a deep need to score could keep a man busy well into the small hours.
Matti peered into the mirror and examined his eyebrows. He took out a comb and swept back his thick black hair before giving each eyebrow a tweak and then clenching his buttocks to lift himself in the seat and bring his moustache into view. This too needed a minor readjustment. In fact, the long-out-of-fashion Zapata tache was Matti’s only remaining gesture towards elegance. A porn star moustache, one very refreshed customer had called it, before being dropped miles from his destination and outrageously overcharged.
For a man who habitually wore jogging bottoms and hadn’t seen his feet for years, Matti was a keen follower of fashion. He thoroughly approved of the new fashions for young women to wear ever tighter clothes and delighted particularly in the warm spring weather that brought the short tops and miniskirts out as sure as the geese started flying north. Not that this applied on the night shift, when all year round skimpy skirts could give him a flash of knicker — or better — as the young things jumped into the big Mercedes to be ferried between bars, nightclubs and parties.
Matti was deep in reverie when a phone rang. He patted his pockets until he found which one was buzzing.
‘Yeah?’
He listened briefly, grinned and ended the call. Matti put the big taxi into gear and pulled out of the taxi rank, switching off the For Hire sign as he did so. Private jobs, paid for in notes, were always worth having.
Gunna spread the newspaper out on her desk and waited for Skuli to turn up. He had spent anything from a day to an hour or two shadowing her doing routine work. She admitted to herself that it was quite enjoyable having
