‘Hell. I’d forgotten all about that.’
‘The Egilstadir force has requested you, Gunnhildur. Informally, of course,’ he added hurriedly.
‘I’ll think about it and you’ll have my decision next week.’
‘Excellent. Now, there’s another matter we need to discuss.’
Vilhjalmur Traustason stood and looked out of the window at the queue of morning traffic collecting at the roundabout outside. ‘I’ve had a communication from Larus Johann Magnusson.’
‘What? The Minister?’
He nodded gravely. ‘The Ministry of Justice is concerned about the level of attention being focused on Bjarni Jon Bjarnason and his family and has requested a clarification.’
‘You mean Sigurjona Huldudottir has yelled at her husband, who has bleated to Larus Johann?’
‘The Ministry has taken notice, shall we say?’
‘Look, Vilhjalmur. This woman is as crooked as they come. One of her staff was undoubtedly murdered and she is doing nothing to help the investigation — quite the reverse, in fact. I have a bloody good mind to haul her in for questioning on the basis of what she carefully didn’t tell us.’
A look of fury, quickly suppressed, passed across his face. ‘Please, Gunnhildur, consult me first if you do. I have to say, to an extent, your promotion could ride on this case.’
‘Oh, so if I screw this up and embarrass someone with big friends, then I’m not going to be flavour of the month? Come on. There’s something extremely unpleasant going on here and I could really do with your backing. Just how serious is the Minister’s interest?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bjarni Jon Bjarnason is a lad and belongs to the Independence party. Larus Johann is Progressive and he’s an old fart. They’re not in the same party. They don’t even like each other. So what’s going on? How serious is this pressure you feel you’re getting from the top?’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t tell you. There was simply a concern over possible undue harassment of Sigurjona Huldudottir.’
‘What I’m wondering is this: is Larus Johann just passing on Bjarni Jon Bjarnason’s whining for the sake of form? Or is there really something here they might be concerned about?’ Is it my promotion that’s at stake, or does yours depend on this as well, Villi?’ Gunna asked gently.
This time the look of distaste on Vilhjalmur’s face was replaced by a brief flash of anger, rapidly erased.
‘We all depend on a certain success rate to see ourselves receiving the promotion we deserve, Gunnhildur,’ he said smoothly.
‘But are you going to back me up? This bloody woman is in it up to her neck and it’s going to look a lot worse for all of us in the long run when it all comes out and it turns out that we didn’t look hard enough.’
Vilhjalmur stood stiffly and his face went entirely blank as he gazed over the long stream of cars snaking along the main street outside.
‘The wife of a minister . . .’ he muttered to himself.
‘Villi . . . ?’
‘All right. Do what you need to do.’
‘And support from my superior officer?’
‘Of course. As long as you have evidence to substantiate everything.’
‘Ah, that means you’ll back me up if I can prove everything and you’ll drop me in the crap if I put a foot wrong?’
‘That’s it, in a nutshell,’ Vilhjalmur snapped.
Erna walked on air and life seemed to be trying to be really good to her for the first time in months. Leaving the house that morning to run a few errands, she had given Hardy a long kiss that fizzed with passion and threatened to drag the pair of them back inside for another half an hour, until he pulled back, tapped the end of her nose with one finger and told her sadly that he couldn’t avoid going to the site.
At the salon, the girls had noticed something about her, giggling and whispering among themselves. It was only Marta, the salon’s manager, she spoke to, but she assumed that by now all the girls would be in on the secret that Erna was taking a week off and taking a new man with her.
Sitting at the traffic lights waiting to turn off into Bustadavegur and into town, Erna squeezed her thighs together and tingled in anticipation of a week in the sun, running her mind over everything already packed and ready.
‘Had a good time in the country, Matti?’ Gunna asked cheerfully.
‘Yeah. S’always good to get away from the tarmac for a while.’
As he wasn’t under arrest, merely helping the police with inquiries, Matti wasn’t being held in a cell. They sat in an interview room at the central police station on Hverfisgata.
‘How’s Loa?’
‘Ach. She’s fine, the same as usual.’
‘Still got the goats?’
‘Yeah. Same goats.’
‘Why did you walk into the police station in Holmavik?’
Sitting on his hands and with the hangdog expression Gunna remembered from the teenager who had always been in trouble, Matti looked wretched.
‘Loa told me I should. She said old Hallgrimur’s missus had noticed me so it was only a matter of a few days till you found me, so I might as well go over to Holmavik and have done with it.’
Gunna nodded sagely. ‘Loa is nobody’s fool.’
Matti nodded back, head still hanging.
‘What happened to your girlfriend?’
‘Marika? Still at Alfasteinn, for all I know.’
‘This bloke you’ve been going about with, tell me about him.’
‘Hardy?’
‘If that’s what he calls himself.’
‘What about him?’
‘Everything, and be quick about it.’
‘He’s a right hard bastard.’
Gunna waited until Matti looked up, and she stared him straight in the eye. It’s a shame he grew up to be such a slob, she thought to herself. It’s a shame he went through life constantly on the back foot, considering what a pleasant boy he had been when someone gave him a little attention.
‘Look, I need to find this bloke before he kills someone else and I don’t have a lot of time to do it, so tell me what you know and please get on with it.’
‘So he really has killed people?’
‘Two that we’re sure of, possibly one more.’
Matti went pale. ‘I knew he was a hard fucker, but I didn’t think he was that nasty.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. Where is he, Matti?’
Matti shook his head. ‘No idea.’
‘Come on. You must have some idea. Where did you usually meet him?’
‘He always called and told me where to pick him up. Normally by the side of the road somewhere, or else on the rank somewhere. Grensas or L?kjartorg normally. Down at Grandi sometimes. He liked to eat in Kaffivagninn, said it was a homely sort of place.’
‘Do you think he was living somewhere downtown?’
‘Yeah, probably.’
‘Come on, Matti. Think, will you? He’s bumped off two people already.’
‘All right. It’s in Hverfisgata, the other side of the crossroads. There’s a block of offices with a dodgy photographer on the ground floor. At the top of the place there’s a couple of little one-room flats. He lives in one of them. I followed him one day and saw him go up there,’ Matti announced proudly.
‘You mean he’s been just over the road from here?’
