Terje stepped forward, and Gunna had to restrain herself from lunging at Harde as he stepped out of the group. Even with a gun trained on him, the man radiated a quiet menace that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. The Special Unit officer motioned for two of his men to escort Harde while he spoke abruptly to Terje in rapid Norwegian.
As they spoke, a black van appeared from the far end of the fishmeal plant. Harde took off his plastic helmet and smiled coldly at Gunna and Bara where they stood helplessly glaring at the men with machine pistols cradled nonchalantly in their hands.
Terje hurried back up the gangway to the ship, followed by the rest of the crew, not looking at where Harde stood quietly between his escorts. The black van drew up and one of them opened the rear. The
Gunna watched helplessly while the ugly little ship gracefully swung around. The propeller began to bite as the ship moved forward and around out of the bay.
‘Keep back,’ the Special Unit officer warned Gunna and Bara as they watched Harde taking a seat in the van, still with two guns covering him. As the doors slammed shut, the officer slapped the side twice and it pulled away along the quay before he turned to face Gunna.
‘Where the hell are you taking that bastard? Have you any idea who that man is or what he’s done?’ she raged.
‘I’m following orders. I can’t comment,’ the man replied in an expressionless voice.
‘What orders?’
‘No comment.’
‘Look here, that man is a known criminal and wanted in connection with three murders. On what authority have you detained him?’ she demanded, wagging a finger under the man’s nose. Bara held her breath, keenly aware that the man still had a gun in his hand.
‘I can’t tell you anything. I don’t have to answer any questions.’
The finger wagging under the man’s nose became an open palm and Gunna suddenly gave the man’s chest a shove that took him by surprise. He stepped back quickly, trying to keep his balance, but his heel caught the bollard on the quayside and he toppled backwards, spread his arms wide for a moment and was gone.
Gunna peered over the edge at the man treading water far below her.
‘Can you swim, mate?’ she called down to the man glaring balefully up at her, but he said nothing.
‘There’s a ladder up there,’ Gunna said, pointing along the quay to where a set of weed-covered iron rungs emerged from the water.
‘Well, Bara, I think it might be best if we were off. Special Unit seems to have everything under control here.’
The second-best Volvo juddered along the dock to the end where the first black-clad man was sitting on a pile of pallets, nursing the elbow of the arm that had been inside the car when Gunna put her foot down.
‘All right, chum?’ Gunna called, leaning out of the window and slowing down as she approached him. The man glowered back at her, but said nothing.
‘You might want to go and give your pal a hand,’ she said, jerking a thumb behind her in the direction of the empty quayside. ‘He went for a swim.’
36
Sunday, 5 October
05-10-2008, 1252
Skandalblogger writes:
Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls and those of you who haven’t made up your minds yet . . .
So, what has been happening behind the scenes at Glitnir? For just how long has the Icelandic financial sector been doing the big business equivalent of using its Mastercard to pay its Visa bills?
Children, Skandalblogger has been harping on about the shortcomings of our great leaders for long enough for us to be able to say . . . told you so! But we won’t. Let’s just say that now things start to look genuinely serious, Geir and his pals in Parliament had better do something right for a change.
Some people just don’t get any luckier, do they? Just as Bjarni Jon Environment was about to be hung out to dry for getting caught in the act, Glitnir goes tits-up, the economy’s suddenly on its knees and the PM decides government needs to show strength. So BJB’s still in a job, his sins swept under the carpet until such time as the present brouhaha blows over, by which time it’ll all be loooong forgotten. Still, at least the fragrant Sigurjona’s back in business, even though staff at Spearpoint are taking bets on how long she’ll tough it out now she’s not the boss any longer and her trademark tantrums are off the menu.
As it happens, word has reached your faithful Skandalblogger that BJB has already been putting it about, passing an old adversary a titbit of advice to oil the wheels of justice. There’s nothing like making a real problem into someone else’s problem to cheer up a chap who’s just been handed a shit sandwich for lunch.
So keep up the good work!
37
Monday, 6 October
Gunna wondered how she could complete her report honestly and contemplated telling the unvarnished truth of how the men in the black van had spirited Harde away.
She could still see the man’s clear blue eyes gazing directly into hers a second before the doors of the van slammed shut. Gunna frowned and put the computer in front of her to sleep.
‘Snorri!’
‘Yes, chief?’
‘I’m going out. Might be a while. Look after the place, will you?’
‘Will do.’
Outside the breeze off the sea brought the fresh tang of seaweed with it. It was going to be a windy night, maybe the first proper storm of winter, she decided, settling into the second-best Volvo.
She went home first and scoured Gisli’s and Laufey’s bedrooms for unwashed clothes before bundling the results into the washing machine. She scouted around the living room, picked up glasses and cups and washed them up, leaving them to drain, thinking hard all the while, wondering how long Gisli and Laufey would want to stay at home.
She took the second-best Volvo for a tour round the village, noticing a few badly parked cars here and there, a broken window at the back of the old fish plant and the station’s other car where Haddi had parked outside Palli Jakobsson’s workshop.
The InterAlu compound on the far side of the harbour area was closed up. She was astonished at how quickly everything had been wound up. On Saturday all the heavy machinery had been trucked away and on Sunday the shipping containers that housed the site offices and bunkrooms had been collected by the same fleet of trucks. It was already as if the site had been derelict for months. Gunna walked along the chain link fence facing the road and back at the gate she rattled the heavy lock. Although a sign warned that the site was patrolled by fierce dogs, she knew it was deserted, construction halted before it had got beyond concreting the huge foundations.
She contemplated driving out of the village through Slettudalur to the deserted Lagoon site, but decided against it, and took the other direction instead.
By the ‘Thank you for driving carefully’ sign, Gunna put her foot down as the heavy car enjoyed the upward slope out of the village towards the heath. Rolling into Keflavik, she went straight to the police station.
‘Hi, Bjossi.’
