‘Matti, this isn’t a family matter, unfortunately. What have you been up to this time?’
‘Look, I’ve been keeping out of trouble and I’d prefer it if the police could leave me in peace, like the Reykjavik crowd do at the moment. What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were out to pasture in Hvalvik now?’
It was a bright day and sunshine sparkled between banks of cumulo-nimbus that idly threatened to rain on the opera house construction site opposite and the squat black mass of the Central Bank building. Matti had turned into the half-empty parking lot to take a quick nap before going back to the taxi rank across the road. He liked to be close to the harbour, even though it accommodated more cruise ships than trawlers these days.
‘Just checking up on you. Had an inkling that you might be involved in something slightly shady on my patch, so we decided to have a look round and see if you had time for a quiet chat.’
Matti scowled. ‘I’m busy. I’m working.’
‘You were snoring.’
‘Just resting my eyes. But now I have to get back to the rank. This is a working taxi and I have bills to pay. Nonni isn’t running a charity, y’know.’
‘Come on, Matti. Let’s keep this friendly, shall we? If needs be, we can go to the station.’
Gunna could almost sense the cogs ticking over in Matti’s mind as he stared through the windscreen at the queue of lunchtime traffic idling impatiently at the lights.
‘All right, then. I’ve got ten minutes, then I need to be back on the rank.’
‘Tell me about March, will you? Were you working?’
‘That was bloody months ago!’ Matti exploded.
‘The ninth of March. Where were you then?’
‘How the hell should I remember that far back? Of course I was working, busy time of the year, that was, before everything started to go quiet.’
Matti’s fingers fidgeted in his lap, thumbs circling each other nervously. He fumbled in the pocket of the car door and shook a cigarette from its packet.
‘Open the windows if you’re going to light up, will you?’ Gunna asked sharply.
‘Yeah. Nothing like an ex-smoker, is there?’ Matti retorted even more sharply, lighting up and blowing smoke out of the now wide open window.
‘March, Matti. What were you up to?’
‘Hell, I don’t know. Ferrying drunks around in this thing, probably.’
‘All right,’ Gunna said in her calmest voice. ‘I’ll jog your memory. What was this taxi doing in Sandeyri on the ninth of March?’
If Gunna hadn’t been looking directly at him, she would have missed seeing Matti’s eyes bulge slightly for a moment.
‘Er. Might have had a fare. I can’t remember. I go all over, I’m often out there round the airport.’
‘All right,’ Gunna said calmly. ‘Let’s jog your memory a bit further, shall we?’ From her jacket pocket she extracted fresh printouts of the webcam pictures that Snorri had obtained, unfolded them carefully and passed them across to Matti, who held them up, shaking his head as he did so.
‘Nope, sorry. Can’t see the number. Not my taxi.’
‘It’s your taxi. It’s the only Mercedes taxi of this model in the entire country. And if you look carefully at that second picture, you’ll see the dent in the wing that you got from a scrape with a yuppie’s caravan on Snorrabraut last summer, which you still haven’t bothered to get fixed.’
‘Yeah, well. It’s Nonni’s car, so it’s his problem. He can get it fixed.’
Matti’s phone squawked. He picked it up and squinted to read the incoming number before stabbing at the phone to reject the call.
‘So. That night in March. Tell me about it.’
‘Look, Gunna, I remember now I had a day off and Nonni let one of the other lads take this car out that night. It was my birthday. I had a night off and a couple of drinks.’
‘Cousin Matti, don’t try to bamboozle me. I know perfectly well your birthday’s in September and with you there’s no such thing as a couple of drinks. It’s a week or nothing.’
‘Hell, Gunna,’ Matti groaned. ‘Get off my back, will you? I’ve got to get back to work.’
‘When you tell me what this is all about.’
‘Look. It’s nothing illegal, all right? A bit dodgy, maybe, but nothing bad. OK?’
‘Tell me more.’
‘OK, OK. Look, sometimes I take ladies for a drive. They want a ride and I don’t ask what they do when they get there. This one wanted to go to Sandeyri. I dropped her off outside the shop and picked her up there a bit later. Don’t know where she went and what she did there is her business.’
‘And I assume it was business?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t ask and I don’t get told lies. All right?’
Gunna flipped open a notebook and wrote down a few lines, more to add to Matti’s discomfort than to aid her own memory. ‘And this, er, lady’s name?’
‘No idea. Like I said, I don’t ask.’
‘Was she a local?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Don’t bugger about. Icelandic or foreign?’
‘Foreign.’
‘From?’
‘Dunno. East. Russia or somewhere like that.’
‘If I were you, cousin Matti, I’d make an effort to remember this girl’s name and see if you can find her.’
‘Like you think I can find her again?’
Gunna yanked the door handle and swung a leg out. ‘You might need the alibi. See you soon, Matti.’
He grunted and started the engine, then leaned his head back on the rest and ran a hand over his eyes. In the mirror he could see Gunna standing by the squad car talking to the young officer sitting inside. After a moment’s thought, he put his head out of the window and twisted his neck around.
‘Hey, Gunna.’
She looked up, said a word to the officer in the car and walked slowly over to him. ‘Yes, Matti?’
‘Well,’ he muttered, embarrassed, ‘I was, y’know, sorry to hear about your bloke. Bit of a rough old time for you, I reckon.’
‘Thanks. You know. You get over it.’
‘Yeah. Look after yourself,’ he grunted, sliding the big car into drive.
‘And you. Behave yourself, Matti.’
Gunna got into the squad car’s passenger seat, shaking her head.
‘How’d it go?’ Snorri asked, pulling out into the traffic and stopping at the first of many sets of lights before the open road over the heath to Hvalvik.
‘Well, my cousin has always had a problem telling the truth, and this time is no exception.’
Birna heard the screech as soon as the Minister put the phone to his ear. She felt briefly sorry for him but the feeling soon passed. Politicians are like pets, a senior official had told her in an expansive moment when she joined the civil service’s fast-track scheme as an outstandingly bright but nonetheless raw graduate.
‘Think of them as cute little puppies, it makes it so much easier to deal with their tantrums,’ the short of breath and soon-to-retire senior head of division had explained. ‘They come here keen and bright-eyed and wagging their little tails, anxious to please. Then they disappear to higher things or they just disappear. So there’s no point getting fond of them.’
Since then, she had classed incoming and outgoing ministers as those destined to disappear upstairs or those destined to disappear back to their rural constituencies for good. Privately she felt that Bjarni Jon Bjarnason deserved to disappear into obscurity, but had a nagging feeling all the same that the future would bring him bigger, but not necessarily better, things.
Bjarni Jon waved hurriedly at Birna to leave the room, but she was already on her discreet way out before he had even raised his hand.
