‘Ugly Tota hasn’t seen him. Nothing more than she told you the other day.’
‘So he hasn’t been back?’
‘Not that she’s aware of, and there’s hardly anything in his room to come back for anyway, you said.’
‘OK. Didn’t expect anything else. How about Nonni the Taxi?’
‘Nothing there either. Nonni was there himself this time and he’s not happy.’
‘He’s not a cheerful character at the best of times.’
‘Even less cheerful now. Matti’s actually one of his best drivers and he does quite a bit of his contract work, and for that they like to keep the same faces as much as possible. He says that when Matti’s not well, by which I suppose he means pissed, then he always calls in. Never fails. But now he’s disappeared and so has the car.’
‘In that case I can understand. A newish car, isn’t it?’
‘Yup. No car and no driver to drive it. Like the man said, there’s payments to be made on the vehicle whether it’s earning money or not.’
‘Did you come over heavy?’
‘Did my best. Nonni was a bit reticent until I pushed him and made it clear that this is a murder inquiry we’re dealing with, and he came clean.’
Gunna just raised an eyebrow instead of asking.
‘It seems that some of what Matti does by way of contract work is for Mundi Gretars.’
‘Scaramanga?’
‘That’s the one. Evil place, a real rip-off. They have some, um, exotic dancers there who apparently do more than just dance, all foreign girls.’
‘Prostitution?’
‘Who knows? The policy is that whatever the girls do outside working hours is up to them. It seems that some do and some don’t. But it’s common knowledge that Mundi doesn’t discourage them from doing business, as it keeps the punters coming in. Matti and a few of the other drivers ferry them about to wherever they’re supposed to be working.’
‘Which is where?’
‘Parties sometimes, or mostly private houses for special customers. They work at hotels in town as well.’
‘Bloody hell, the stupid bastard. If his mother wasn’t still alive and kicking she’d be turning in her grave.’
‘Nonni says he’s heard that one of the girls has gone missing as well. That’s all I can tell you. He wouldn’t let on any more and I got the feeling he didn’t feel safe having told me what he had.’
Gunna rose to her feet. ‘Well done, Snorri. Did you get a name, description?’
‘The girl’s called Marika and it seems she and Matti have had something going for a while.’
‘Matti? Good grief,’ Gunna muttered.
‘The woman’s Romanian, like the rest of that bunch, and Nonni thought there were four or five of them living in one of the terraced houses somewhere in the Smarar district. He didn’t know exactly where, but I’ll bet we can lean on one of his drivers and find out easily enough.’
‘Or we could lean on Mundi Gretars, which could be a pleasure in itself. You’d better get your report done as soon as possible so we can keep on top of all this stuff. We’d better liaise with Reykjavik on this one, get Scaramanga looked into properly and see if we can track down this bunch of exotic dancers or whatever they call themselves. I don’t like the sound of all this at all.’
She shooed Snorri away to a spare computer terminal and went outside the building. Standing by the back door she was surprised to see the afternoon sun lighting up the brightly painted fishing boats on the slipway and realized that it was getting late in the day.
She felt tired, more tired than for a long time, but exhilarated that the case was making progress at last — faster than she had anticipated, as well as opening up other avenues that clearly also needed to be investigated.
Gunna fished an almost empty packet of Prince from her pocket and lit up, sucking down smoke as the door clanged open and Bjossi appeared beside her with two mugs of coffee.
‘Here y’are, sweetheart,’ he mumbled with an unlit cigarette in his mouth that Gunna lit before taking the mug from him. ‘By the way, Borgarnes are investigating a suspicious death on their patch.’
Gunna raised an eyebrow. ‘Anything to do with us?’
‘The guy was a computer programmer, a real uber-nerd. Seems he had a heart attack, but managed to break his arm at the same time.’
‘Right, we’ll put someone on to it to find out the details. Bara, maybe?’
‘Bara’s busy enough as it is, but it’s up to you, sweetheart. You’re the man in charge.’
‘For the moment, anyway.’
‘It didn’t look right at all,’ Officer Unnur Matthiasdottir at the Borgarnes police station said, shaking her ponytailed head and grimacing.
‘What happened?’
‘Well, it seems that the man’s wife had been away for a week on a shopping trip in London. She came home on the Saturday morning, which was the thirteenth and found her husband sat up against the inside of the front door, stone dead. She had to go round the back of the house and get in that way.’
‘All right, so what was the cause of death?’
‘It’s all on the sheet and the body’s still at the National Hospital if you want to go and have a look for yourself,’ she said wearily. ‘The cause of death was a heart attack, plain and simple.’
‘But there’s more to this?’
‘Hell, yes. Didn’t find that out straight away, though,’ she sighed. ‘His wife went nuts, called an ambulance and was in a proper state by the time they got there. So she was sedated, as the ambulance crew could see the bloke was past helping. They took her off to hospital and came back for him.’
Gunna leafed through the case notes she had downloaded from the police network. ‘He’d been dead for a while?’
‘That’s right. The post-mortem results put the time of death at thirty-six hours previously, give or take half a day. So, round about Tuesday the ninth, something like that. What’s suspicious is that the man had a broken arm that would definitely have been extremely painful and the pathologist reckoned that it’s not a break that could be achieved easily by falling over. He reckoned the arm had been forced.’
‘Deliberate, then?’
‘Yup. Somebody broke his arm, and then the poor chap had a heart attack, either in front of the attacker or after he’d gone. Most likely afterwards, considering he was sitting with his back to the closed front door.’
‘Arngrimur Orn Arnarson. Fifty-five years old, ran his own company,’ Gunna read from the notes.
‘Right enough,’ Unnur confirmed. ‘An odd sort of bloke. Lived in Borgarnes about five years and kept to himself, although his wife was a bit more sociable. He did some sort of computer, internet stuff. Called himself a consultant. Anyway, what’s your interest in this one?’
Knowing the question would come, Gunna had already wondered during the two-hour drive from Keflavik how much she should say.
‘We’re investigating an unpleasant sort of character and we have confirmation that one of his associates was around here on that Tuesday. It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore.’
‘How do you know?’ Unnur asked.
‘Paid his toll at the tunnel and the number was recorded. Came back later the same day.’
Gunna placed a picture of Matti’s taxi on the desk. ‘That’s his vehicle. And it may have gone through here quite a few times. We’re actively looking out for this car now, as quietly as possible. But if there’s no response in a day or two, we’ll have to run a TV and radio appeal.’
Gunna placed pictures of Matti and Harde on top of the taxi. ‘And if you can find anyone who has seen either of these, then we’d definitely be on to something.’
Unnur nodded. ‘All right. We’ll see what we can do.’
Gunna tapped Harde’s face. ‘This guy is dangerous. Extremely dangerous.’
Unnur looked taken aback. ‘What are you looking for him in connection with?’
‘Well,’ Gunna said grimly, ‘if he’s responsible for Arngrimur Orn Arnarson’s death as well, then we’re looking
