officers. ‘There might well be someone on that plane masquerading as this gentleman. Snorri, you go with them and have a look. Be careful. This guy’s nasty.’

Snorri and the security men loped away, muttering into microphones on their lapels.

‘What worries me is if he isn’t on that flight,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Otherwise the bloody man could be anywhere by now.’

In the airport’s operations room, Gunna growled every time unwelcome news came in. Nobody had used Ib Torbensen’s seat on the flight to Billund. In fact, there were two empty seats, Ib Torbensen’s and another in the name of Gunnvald Strom.

The flight to Madrid had already departed on time, with Erna Danielsdottir on board. But nobody by the name of Hadre, Harde, Hardy or Strom had boarded and the Hadre Erna appeared to have booked a seat for failed to check in for his flight.

Gunna was even more gloomy when she realized that in the furore around Ib Torbensen, she had overlooked searching Erna out and preferably questioning her for long enough for her to miss her flight.

Ib Torbensen was taken off to hospital in Keflavik for questioning and to be met by hastily summoned staff from the Danish Embassy in Reykjavik, while Snorri accompanied the groaning man, his neck in a brace, to get a statement. Gradually the crowd thinned.

‘Where did the bastard get to?’ Gunna fumed. ‘The bastard,’ she emphasized. ‘The bastard outflanked us. Never, never, never underestimate these people.’ She glared balefully at Bara.

‘He checked in as Strom,’ Bara announced.

‘What?’

‘He checked in,’ Bara repeated. ‘We’ve worked it all out. It’s all on CCTV. Come on, I’ll show you.’

At a computer terminal in the operations room, she showed Gunna what they had been able to piece together from the CCTV data.

‘He checks in here, hand baggage only. OK?’

‘Yeah, got that.’

‘So, next we see him, he’s here. That’s Harde, isn’t it?’

Gunna peered at the screen and nodded. ‘That’s him.’

‘Right. Next we see him, he’s here, near the bar in the departure lounge, and it seems he sits there for a while. Now, this is the interesting part,’ Bara said, fingers flickering over the keyboard as she scrolled forward and called up material from other cameras. ‘He’s here in the walkway that leads to passport control, but he never gets there.’

‘How does that work?’

‘Who knows? You can’t get to the departure gates and the flights without going through passport control, and he doesn’t. The security chief spoke to all the duty officers and our man didn’t go through.’

‘So if he’s not on a flight, he’s either hiding somewhere in the airport, or else he’s sneaked out and is still in Iceland,’ Gunna said, thumping the table with her fist. ‘The sly bastard. Knocking that poor Danish guy out cold and letting him be found was just a diversion to take the attention off him while he did a runner.’

Harde felt numb. He had not been happy about using the international airport, the only route off this weird island, he reflected. Creating a diversion may have been what was needed to get him away from the airport, but it would undoubtedly have spurred the amateurish Icelandic police into even more efforts to locate him. Harde took a deep breath and reminded himself that no adversary should ever be underestimated — that way lay complacency and errors of judgement.

At a petrol station in Reykjavik he bought sandwiches and calmly ate one over a plastic beaker of gritty coffee while he looked through the phone book. Matti had shown him how to find virtually anyone in the country — and there she was: ‘Gunnhildur Gisladottir, police officer, Hafnargata 38, Hvalvik.’ Sigurjona had described her as the fat policewoman. Even though he knew the woman’s name and had seen at the airport as she disappeared inside the building that Sigurjona’s description had been less than kind, he still thought of her as the fat policewoman.

The anonymous Toyota sprang eagerly into life and he sat in thought with his hands on the wheel. Horst had done his best, but even a man with influence can hardly work miracles, so this gave him a couple of days to lie low before he could make an exit. He wondered if it would be better to hide away, if somewhere suitable could be found, or if it would be worthwhile trying to derail the search for him.

Without having consciously made a decision, he swung the little car on to the main road and followed it for a short distance before slowing to take the exit road that would take him through the lava fields towards the coast.

Outside the station, Gunna puffed a hurried Prince cadged from Bjossi with her phone at her ear.

‘Sigrun? Hi, Gunna.’

She waved Bjossi away as he appeared through the fire door, mugs in one hand, a cigarette packet in the other.

‘Sure. Yup. Thank you, Sigrun, that’s very kind of you. Yup, something of a panic right now and I can’t begin to tell you anything about it. Top secret.’

Bjossi held out a mug and Gunna took it in her free hand.

‘OK. Thanks. No problem, I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll speak to Laufey and let her know. Great, bye.’ She thumbed the red button and finished the call with relief.

‘All right, sweetheart?’ Bjossi asked with concern.

‘Yeah. Nothing that can’t be sorted out. Just fixing up childcare.’

‘Laufey? How old is she now?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘Teenager yet?’

‘Getting there, but I’m sure there’s worse to come.’

‘You could send her to us if you need to. Dora wouldn’t mind at all.’

‘Thanks, Bjossi. I might well take you up on that.’

She took a gulp of coffee. ‘But Gisli came home yesterday and he’s got ten days off, so Laufey thinks that big brother is all the supervision she needs and the two of them will rub along just fine without Mum.’

‘And can’t they?’

‘Bjossi, my old and dear friend. Gisli is nineteen and he’s been at sea for weeks. I’m sure you can imagine that babysitting his little sister is not his top priority right now.’

‘Sorry. Should have known. The boy probably has beer and girls on his mind.’

‘Exactly. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ll call Laufey and try to explain that to her and why she’s staying with Sigrun down the street until Mum’s little panic at work is sorted out.’

Darkness was starting to fall as Harde parked the Toyota outside the deserted school and waited without being sure what he was waiting for. There was no car parked outside the terraced house, although there were tyre tracks in the mud. No lights could be seen at Hafnargata 38 and Harde decided to leave it until it was fully dark before making a move.

He huddled low in the seat and was sure he was unlikely to be observed as a woman in a heavy coat and rubber boots splashed up the street and went direct to number 38, opening the door and stepping inside without having to unlock it. Harde waited and wondered if this were the right house, or if the new arrival were a friend or a relative, or even the fat policewoman’s girlfriend? It wouldn’t surprise him, he thought with a dark smile.

The door swung open again and this time the woman walked back down the street, accompanied by a gangly teenage girl with a schoolbag under one arm. This time Harde stepped from the car and followed at a discreet distance, observing as the pair walked downhill, clearly enjoying a lively conversation, before disappearing into a low-slung house set back from the road behind an untidy garden of stunted trees.

Harde smiled to himself and walked back in the growing gloom of the evening. Warm lights appeared at most of the windows in the street and he could make out television screens behind most of them. This was reassuring, as people who are busy watching a soap opera don’t tend to look out of their own windows.

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