‘She’s here. A moment,’ she replied in a dazed voice. As Gunna stowed her cap under her arm, she wondered if the receptionist had been on the receiving end of that magnificent rant.
The girl stood up and went to a door behind her, knocked and opened it gingerly, before putting her head inside and muttering a few words of which ‘police’ was the only one Gunna could make out as she stood with her back to the desk and admired the building site next door. A tower crane stood almost level with the office window and Gunna could see the figure of the operator in his tiny cage at the top, concentrating as he deftly lifted and swung steel bars into place in the framework of a new building.
More bloody offices. As if there aren’t enough already, Gunna thought.
‘. . . the hell do these bastards get away with this . . . ?’ a strident voice barked suddenly, cut off in mid- sentence as the office door hissed shut.
The receptionist smiled wanly as Gunna looked around inquiringly.
‘She’ll see you in a few minutes. Could you wait a moment for her to finish her meeting?’ the receptionist asked sweetly. ‘Take a seat if you like.’
Gunna sat on a hard leather couch and flipped through a gossip magazine, wondering why she didn’t recognize the faces of all the country’s top people plastered across the pages.
‘Out of touch,’ she muttered to herself.
‘Excuse me?’ the receptionist asked, and Gunna realized that she had spoken out loud. ‘Nothing. Just thinking out loud,’ she apologized.
‘She’ll see you now,’ the girl said, as the door behind her opened and a beefy young man in a suit, his face burning, made his way out, giving every impression of being on the point of breaking into a run and leaping through a window.
Gunna stopped for a second in the doorway and took in a large corner office, thickly carpeted and with a desk topped in smoked glass dominating the far end, facing away from a window that filled one entire wall. Although the view was better from here, Gunna was pleased to note that the jib of the tower crane still protruded across it.
‘Good morning. Come in, please.’
The voice was warm, and apart from a slight heave of prominently displayed bosom there was no trace of the fury of a few minutes before from the statuesque woman with an unmistakable air of decision about her sharp features. Gunna took in a smartly tailored suit and dark blonde hair cut simply.
She extended a hand which was quickly taken and firmly shaken.
‘Gunnhildur Gisladottir, Hvalvik police.’
‘Hvalvik? OK. Well, I’m Sigurjona. My PA told me that you had called. Is this something to do with the site?’
‘Which site do you mean?’
‘The Hvalvik smelter project, of course.’
‘Are you involved with that?’
‘Our subsidiary company is playing a prominent part in the project development,’ Sigurjona said smoothly.
‘No, nothing to do with the site. Actually this is an inquiry about one of your former employees and I spoke to one of your people yesterday afternoon. Osk Lindal?’
‘Osk handles human resources and stands in for me when I’m away.’
Gunna looked down and flipped through the sheaf of papers, going past the picture of the dead man taken at the morgue by a police photographer and moving on to the driving licence photo from the national archive.
‘Do you recognize this man?’ she asked, handing the picture across.
Sigurjona took it and looked carefully. Gunna watched for a reaction, but there was none to be seen.
‘Einar,’ Sigurjona said finally. ‘Einar Eyjolfur Einarsson. He works here, although we haven’t seen him since last week and he hasn’t called in, so I can’t say I’m delighted with him right now.’
‘No explanation?’
‘No, not a word.’
‘Did you make any inquiries?’
‘Of course. He’s a highly valued member of the team here and we can certainly use his skills. He’s one of our best account managers — it’s very difficult to explain to his clients that he just isn’t here. I’ll be very pleased when he comes back, not that I’d tell him so.’
Gunna nodded and scribbled on the notes, more to give herself a second to think than to write anything down ‘And who have you contacted to find Einar?’
‘Well, it’s not easy because I don’t believe he has much in the way of family and he’s from somewhere in the east originally. I’m not sure that his parents are still alive, even. I recall that he mentioned once that he had been an afterthought, the child of elderly parents.’
‘No brothers or sisters? No friends? Girlfriend?’
‘Well, Disa, the girl on reception, moved in with him for a while, but I believe that didn’t last for long and you’d have to ask her about it. But, no. I assume he has a circle of friends, but not people that I’m aware of.’ Sigurjona was starting to sound irritated. ‘Look, inspector, just where is this going? What’s he done, if you can tell me?’
‘It’s sergeant, actually. I have reason to believe he’s dead.’
‘Oh my God!’ Sigurjona gasped, hands flying to her mouth in a gesture that Gunna found a touch too theatrical to be fully convincing. ‘Hvalvik? You mean he’s the dead man they found there? On the news the other night?’ Her voice shook slightly, and one finger tapped furiously on the polished surface of the desk.
Gunna nodded, and looked down at the papers in her lap. She wondered what the reaction would be to the morgue photograph, but decided against showing it.
‘The identification is only preliminary at the moment, as we’ll need someone to identify him formally. But as he had his initials tattooed on his arm, identification wasn’t difficult. I need to know a little more about him and what his work was, what he was working on. Can you tell me when he came in to work last?’
Sigurjona opened a slim laptop on the desk in front of her and tapped with swift fingers.
‘He was here last week,’ she said slowly, circling a finger on the mouse pad. ‘Here. Last Friday. I know he had a meeting on Monday this week but I’d have to ask Osk about that. He was due to meet the same client in Copenhagen on Wednesday, and never showed up. The client called us and we had to reschedule. Luckily it wasn’t anything delicate, only a preliminary meeting with a new prospect, so no harm done.’
‘So, if you can tell me which airline he was travelling with, we can find out easily enough if he really did travel or not.’
‘Disa can tell you that. She books flights for our people, but it was probably the Express airline.’
‘Cheaper?’
Sigurjona nodded. ‘And more flexible.’
‘How had he been getting on here until last week?’
‘Fine. Like I said, he was a very competent and successful account manager.’
‘No tensions? Arguments?’
Sigurjona flushed noticeably. ‘No. Not at all.’
‘Did Einar have any disagreements with you or his manager?’
‘Spearpoint is growing very fast,’ Sigurjona said proudly. ‘But this is a small company and everyone reports to me. No, we did not have any disagreements. We got on very well. He was entertaining some Danish clients for a few days and was due to meet them again in Copenhagen on Wednesday, but didn’t show up. My assumption was that he had gone over there, found himself a nice little Danish lady and decided to stay. It’s hard to say. He could be impulsive.’
Gunna scribbled in the file. Noticing that this was making Sigurjona uneasy, she also took the time to note down on the side of the page that she needed to buy butter, milk, bread and some fruit and vegetables in Hagkaup before driving back to Hvalvik.
‘Do you know if Einar had any enemies? Anyone who might wish to harm him? Anyone with a grudge?’
‘No idea. In personal terms, the others here had a closer relationship with him than I did. You might want to speak to them. Disa probably knew him best and he often worked with Jon Oddur, so he might know something about his movements.’
‘I will need to, but at present I’m mostly trying to build up a picture of his movements so that we can
