death as suspicious and appealing for witnesses.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit,’ he swore to himself.
He was due to collect Hardy at four thirty from a meeting in Kopavogur. Matti wondered whether or not he would have heard about the man’s death.
Sitting outside the airport he watched a couple of Fokker Friendships land and the passengers start to trickle out of the terminal, suitcases and small children at their feet. Country people, he thought, not used to a big city like Reykjavik and looking forward to seeing the place for a few days before going back to Akureyri or Husavik.
He looked at his watch as a hard-faced woman with two shell-suited children and a clutch of suitcases in tow tapped on the window.
‘Can you take us to Kopavogur?’ she rasped.
‘Yeah, I’ll open the boot,’ Matti agreed unwillingly. It was too short a fare, leaving him too much time to wait for Hardy to come out of his meeting and not enough time for another fare in between. But he lifted the woman’s cases into the boot and ushered the children to the back seats and ordered them to put the seat belts on.
‘Don’t I know you?’ she demanded suddenly as Matti swung the car out on to Hringbraut.
‘Don’t think so,’ Matti grunted.
‘I do. You’re Matti Kristjans, used to live in the flat over the bakery. You must remember me, surely? Kaja Joakims?’
Matti’s heart sank. He put his foot to the floor and breezed through a set of lights a fraction of a second after they switched to red.
‘Nah. Not me,’ he said unconvincingly as the woman looked sideways at him through narrowed eyes.
They finished the trip in record time and an uncomfortable silence as Matti resolved never to wait outside the airport when flights from Vestureyri were landing. There was too much chance of running into someone from home, an unwelcome face from the old days. Admittedly he did now recognize the red-faced woman as the modern personification of the pudgy girl with pigtails and a shrill voice from over the road, but the last thing he wanted to do was to start comparing notes on who was living where these days.
Outside the large detached house that was Kaja Joakims’s destination, he mumbled as he fiddled with the meter.
‘Four thousand,’ he said.
‘Discount for old times’ sake?’ Kaja Joakims asked shyly.
‘Already included,’ Matti muttered.
With notes in his hand, he lumbered from the car and opened the boot to retrieve their cases, while a young woman emerged from the house and embraced his passengers in turn. He was quickly back at the wheel and ready to go when he noticed that the young woman and Kaja Joakims bore an uncanny resemblance.
‘See you later, Matti,’ she cooed and waved as he drove away, swearing out loud now that he had an empty cab and more than half an hour to kill.
‘Kaja Joakims a grandmother,’ he grumbled to himself. ‘Who’d have thought it?’
He cruised slowly into Kopavogur with the For Hire sign off and parked in the centre to get a coffee and a roll from a bakery. He ate it outside, resting his rear end on the car’s bonnet and enjoying the warmth of it. He reflected that half an hour to kill was actually just long enough for a snack between fares. It was a shame that the weather was wet and there was a shortage of young women in thin summer clothes about to improve the view.
Hell, you can’t have everything, he decided and his mood darkened as he remembered that Hardy needed to be collected and probably didn’t know that his victim was now a dead man.
Outside modest offices sandwiched between the tiny Kopavogur harbour and a yard where bulldozers roared constantly as they filled trucks with sand and gravel, Matti pulled up a minute before he was expected, just in time to see Hardy shaking hands with a beefy man who looked as if he was still wearing the suit he had been confirmed in. He watched them exchange a few final words, smile at each other and part.
‘Good afternoon, big man. Right on time, I see,’ Hardy said with a shadow of a smile as he settled himself in the taxi’s passenger seat.
‘Part of the job, being on time,’ Matti grunted. ‘Where to?’
‘Hverfisgata, by the bus station will do.’
‘The one by the police station?’
‘That’s the one.’
They drove through the city in silence, Hardy with his hands folded as he admired the view. Matti hunched over the wheel, wondering whether or not to tell him what he had heard on the news. By the time they reached the city bus station, he had decided to keep quiet for the moment.
‘What’s the matter, big man? Seen a ghost?’ Hardy asked cheerfully.
‘Could be,’ Matti replied. ‘D’you need me tomorrow?’
‘Not sure yet. Might need you at short notice.’
‘Yeah, that’s OK. I’ll be on the rank tomorrow. Won’t be going far, so just give me a call if you need me.’
Hardy nodded and slipped silently from the car. Instead of driving away, Matti picked up a stack of receipts from the pocket in the door and pretended to look at them, watching Hardy in the mirror as he receded from view. As soon as he was far enough away, Matti dropped his paperwork and craned his neck around in time to see Hardy step quickly sideways into an alley.
Matti gunned the taxi’s engine, swung it round in an illegal U-turn and bumped it down an entrance into the parking lot belonging to a block of offices. In the corner he killed the engine, jumped out and vaulted over a low fence into a yard, then along an alleyway into Lindargata. He was just in time to see Hardy disappear round another corner, doubling back on himself.
Matti retraced his steps and found himself puffing with more than exertion going uphill. He couldn’t understand why Hardy had walked in a circle until he was back in the parking lot next to the taxi and caught a glimpse of his pale leather jacket as he punched a code into the lock on the back door and let himself in.
‘Shit. Should have bloody known better,’ he cursed.
Matti wasn’t sure if Hardy had seen him on his heels, but he was sure that he would have seen the taxi parked there. As he took his place behind the wheel, he wondered what Hardy was doing in a block of offices that housed a Christian radio station, several lawyers, a photographer’s studio and a hypnotic healer.
But what really concerned him now was how Hardy would react if he suspected he was being tailed, however inexpertly — and whether or not Hardy had actually seen him.
20
Thursday, 18 September
‘Gunnhildur,’ Gunna replied, picking up the phone on its fourth ring.
‘Hi, it’s Skuli. Just wanted a quick word if that’s OK?’
Gunna leaned back in her chair and stopped herself yawning. ‘I’m off out in a minute, so it will have to be a quick word.’
‘Fine,’ Skuli gabbled. ‘I’m just after an update on the Einar Eyjolfur Einarsson case. Is there anything new?’
‘Why are you asking?’
‘Y’know, just keeping on top of things.’
‘As a conscientious newshound should.’
‘That’s right. Is there anything?’
Gunna wondered where Skuli’s sudden interest had come from.
‘Progress is being made, young man, but that’s all I can tell you,’ she replied guardedly.
‘And off the record, is the guy you’ve charged the right one?’
‘You’re not recording this, are you?’
‘No, of course not, off the record.’
‘Skuli, over the phone, everything has to be on the record. If you want an informal chat, you’ll have to come out here,’ she replied.
