could provide names, it would help. As I said, we are making every effort to track down a killer, but it doesn’t help when much of the victim’s life was either right in the public gaze or else hidden completely.”
Hallur’s head bobbed in agreement and his trademark boyish smile began to reappear. “I know that Svana had several friendships. But I don’t have any names and I never asked.”
“In that case, I’ll leave you alone. For the moment, at least,” Gunna said, rising from the chair. Hallur was on his feet instantly and stepped around the desk with his hand held out. “I’d like to thank you for being discreet,” he breathed with a flash of the television smile.
“Anyway, thank you for your time. I’ll be in touch if we need to speak to you again.”
“Of course, please call if you need anything.”
He stood holding Gunna’s hand in his for longer than a usual handshake would warrant. “You know, officer. Would you be free for lunch sometime? I’d like to know more about the way the police work, from the inside, so to speak. Law and order is an issue that I have a deep interest in.”
Gunna extricated her fingers from Hallur’s soft but insistent grip. “Thank you. But that would hardly be appropriate as long as you’re a potential material witness, I’m afraid.”
“Maybe when the case is closed, then?”
“Possibly. Thanks for your time.”
Gunna clattered down the narrow wooden staircase from Hallur’s office. Outside, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“The cheeky randy bastard,” she muttered to herself, striding past Hotel Borg and toying with the thought of going inside to use the bathroom and wash the hand that Hallur had shaken.
THE AIR TASTED slightly stale and the flat no longer felt as if anyone lived there. The kitchen floor where Svana Geirs had twitched as she died in a widening pool of her own blood was scrubbed clean, as if the flat’s occupant had simply moved out. Gunna went from the kitchen to the living room, frowning as she wondered what she was actually looking for. The place was tidy and Svana Geirs’ belongings were all still where they belonged. Eirikur and the technical team had taken only a few items that they felt needed to be fingerprinted or checked at the laboratory.
In the blue and pink bedroom the huge down quilt had been carefully folded into a square and placed on a corner of the mattress, while the sheets and duvet cover had been taken away to be checked. She slid back the door of the wardrobe that filled an entire wall and ran a hand over the expensive fabrics of the dresses and coats on hangers, wondering how many of these had ever actually been worn.
She went through the hangers one by one, checking the pockets of all the jackets and coats for anything that might have been left, but finding nothing. At the far end, behind a couple of colourful summer dresses that she doubted would see much use in a short Icelandic summer, and some revealing nightdresses, she found herself looking at two hangers that had been carefully pushed out of sight.
“Good grief,” she muttered, lifting up a hanger that held a skimpy French maid’s outfit consisting of more lace than material. Behind it was a bizarre version of a nurse’s outfit that she realized with distaste was made of some kind of plastic.
She debated with herself whether these ought to be taken for testing as well, but decided that if anything were to be found, the bedclothes or the contents of the washing basket would probably be likelier sources.
She hung the items back in their places respectfully, painfully aware that their owner had only been dead a few days. She wondered who had been the beneficiary of Svana Geirs’ magnificent figure in these bizarre, titillating outfits. She looked at the vast array of shoes at the wardrobe’s floor level, shook her head and shut the double doors.
The place was unnervingly silent. Any traffic noise was shut out entirely by the triple-glazed windows, excluding any sense of the outside world. The flat resembled a cocoon cut off from reality. She sat at the head of the bed and felt herself sink in the dense mattress, resisting the temptation to bounce on it. The two drawers of the bedside table on one side were empty, but the side nearer the window revealed the TV remote, sprays and jars of creams and a party box of condoms in a variety of colours and, as far as Gunna could make out, flavours—she decided that banana probably didn’t refer to size. The lower drawer contained handcuffs, a small vibrator that emitted a rattlesnake buzz at the flick of a switch, and packets of pills from paracetamol to heavyduty prescription painkillers. But no phone or little black book were to be seen. In fact, Gunna reflected, as she paced to the window to look out at the quiet street four floors below, nowhere was there a scrap of paper, a magazine or a book.
Suddenly all her senses sharpened in a single flash of alarm as a groan, muffled but unmistakable, came from the corridor. She turned slowly and listened for it to be repeated, stepping as gently as she could towards the bedroom door. She was wondering if she had definitely closed the flat’s door when the groan came again, longer this time and ending on a higher note that was almost a squeal.
In the passage she stood and listened. She could hear someone’s breath coming in short bursts, and this time she swept towards the kitchen, certain that the sound was coming from there. In the kitchen doorway, she scanned the room. The breaths panted and morphed into a low moan that rose and suddenly stopped, cut off as if by the flick of a switch. The flat was silent again.
Gunna stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and turned in a slow circle, looking in every direction. She smiled to herself, reached into her jacket pocket, took out her phone and thumbed the green button twice.
“Helgi? In the office, are you? You have Svana’s phone number? I’d like you to call it right now from your desk phone, OK? And stay on the line.”
The silence in the kitchen was broken only by the faintest hum from the fridge. Gunna was uncomfortably conscious of her own breathing, and even of the rustle of her still unfamiliar non-uniform trousers. When it began, she thought at first that the innocuous buzz was from the fridge itself, a low but insistent pulse. As she squatted down on her haunches, aware that the sound was coming from near the floor, the groan echoed through the kitchen a second time, tinny against the room’s hard surfaces. She listened, eyes half closed, and the second groan began, rising to a squeal of what Gunna could now make out was supposed to be ecstasy.
She cast about as the voice began to pant. She lay flat on the floor and peered under the fridge and then under the dishwasher, where a mobile phone sat in the only patch of dust she had seen in the whole flat, flashing and vibrating to itself as the voice rose from a moan to burst into a climax.
“Ah. There you are,” Gunna said as a grin spread across her face, reaching with a wooden spoon under the machine to retrieve the phone. It was still vibrating and howling in pleasure as she sat up with it in her hand in triumph. Suddenly it stopped flashing and the screen went dark as the phone switched itself off.
“Damn, battery must be flat,” she muttered, fumbling for her own phone. “Helgi? What happened there?” she asked, Svana’s lifeless mobile in her hand.
“I let it ring and ring and then it went dead,” Helgi said. “What was all that shouting?”
“That was Svana’s ringtone, and she was faking it. I’ll be back in a minute.”
• • •
RAGNA GUSTA HAD been named after two old ladies. Linda had wanted to christen the little girl with her mother’s name, and Jon realized that his own mother would consider it a lifelong slight if the child didn’t carry her name as well. Now he thought it vaguely amusing that his daughter would go through life carrying in close company the names of Ragnhildur and Agusta, two elderly ladies who couldn’t stand each other.
Jon could see the serious expression she had inherited from her maternal grandmother on his daughter’s face as Ragna Gusta painstakingly nibbled the nuggets of chocolate from her ice cream before devouring it.
“Daddy?”
He wondered if the bloody man had the faintest idea what turmoil had been wreaked on the lives of ordinary hardworking people. He had fought for months to keep everything together, but finally he’d had to admit to himself that he couldn’t keep the pretence up any longer. The jeep had been the first thing to go. Linda hadn’t minded, as she hadn’t liked it anyway. What had been painful was having to pay more than a million in cash on top just for the privilege of being rid of the loans secured on it.
“Daddy? What’s that?”
If only he’d had the sense to take out a loan in kronur instead of letting himself be persuaded to borrow in yen and Swiss francs, then he wouldn’t have been hit by the spiralling exchange rate that had doubled his repayments. The boy who bought the Land Cruiser was only a youngster, but a youngster with a berth on a trawler and a pocketful of cash. Jon reckoned he’d actually got the lad to agree to a good deal, once he’d seen the young man’s eyes lingering over the massive tyres.
