needed shoes and I’m a bit short.”
Bloody hell, another one. Poor cow, Jon thought, staring at her timid smile and deliberately looking into her face and not at the nipples on display. Hardly even a handful, not like Linda’s.
She glanced down at his hands clasped around the mug.
“Maybe there’s some other way we can settle this?” she said in a silky voice, looking him in the eyes and giving her shoulders a discreet shake that set off tiny tremors across her bosom.
Jon sighed. “Sorry, love. I’d rather have the cash. I’m a bit short as well right now.”
“But I don’t have fifteen thousand.”
“I really don’t want to take those taps off again.”
“God! No! Don’t do that! Five, and I’ll blow you off?” she suggested with a weak smile.
“What’s your name again?”
“Elin Harpa.”
“Are you on your own?”
“Yeah. Guys don’t hang around me for long,” she said with resignation.
“Bloody hell. You shouldn’t have to offer plumbers blow jobs, darling. Tell you what,” Jon said firmly. “Make it five and I’ll pop back next week for the other ten.”
DROPS OF WATER glittered on the man’s beard and spiky iron-grey crewcut hair. He concentrated as he tied a spoon to the end of his line, gave it a quick tug to check the knot and looked at Helgi with one eye closed in a quizzical half-wink.
“What brings you out here, then, Helgi? How’s business at the old firm?” The retired chief inspector cast his line and listened to it spin off the reel with a satisfying hum. It hit the surface of the lake with scarcely a sound, but sent out a widening ring of ripples that died before they came close to the strip of black rock and sand that separated water and deep turf.
“Biting, are they?”
“There’s a big feller in there. I’ve seen him before, but he’s too smart to take a hook. You know I don’t come up here to fish. I’m here to get out from under the old woman’s feet for an hour or two. If she wants fish for dinner, I’ll buy a couple of haddock fillets on the way home.”
“You might get lucky one day.” Helgi shivered. He wasn’t prepared for the damp that the mist deposited on him, and wasn’t dressed for outdoors.
“You remember Omar Magnusson? Long Ommi?”
“How could anyone forget an evil bastard like that one? Why? Is he bothering you?”
“Don’t watch the news, do you, Thorfinnur? He escaped from Kviabryggja. We’ve got him back now, but there’s something shady to all this that we haven’t figured out.”
Thorfinnur nodded sagely, his eyes on the line as he gently reeled it in.
“There’s plenty going on,” Helgi continued. “He’s implicated with another murder, a couple of beatings and a bank job. Now the chief has the idea that Ommi was sitting out his stretch for someone else.”
“He’s been a busy boy. Go on.”
“You were on the case. One of your last, wasn’t it? I’m wondering if you recall anything that might cast light on all this?”
Thorfinnur Markusson watched his hook emerge, reeled it in and cast again before he replied, his eyes fixed on the point where the spoon had sliced into the water.
“It was all pretty straightforward, as I remember it, like most murders. Two drunks had an argument, took it outside and it went too far. All the witnesses corroborated each other’s statements, more or less, so it was just a case of finding the bastard, which was something we had you to thank for, wasn’t it, Helgi?”
“Yup, stumbled across him pretty much by accident.”
“Makes no difference,” Thorfinnur Markusson rumbled. “You got the bastard and brought him in. So why are you here? What is it you want to know?”
“One of the witnesses, Sindri Valsson. D’you remember him?”
“Vaguely. A young chap, wasn’t he?”
“Same age as the deceased, more or less. Very well connected, and with a rich dad. But he had a record.”
“For what?”
“Mostly assault, but nothing recent. There are a good few arrests on his sheet for fisticuffs of one kind or another. It seems the man has something of a short fuse.”
“And you think we got it wrong and he might be the real killer?”
“I don’t know,” Helgi admitted. “The chief thinks so, although she hasn’t said so outright.”
“What’s this chick like, then? Good grief, serving under a woman would have been unthinkable in my day.”
“She’s tough and she gets results,” Helgi said. “There was a scandal a good few years ago when she arrested a city councillor for drunk driving. The bloke got a bit shirty so she cuffed him, had a look in his car and found a couple of wraps of coke.”
“Oh, her!” Thorfinnur Markusson whooped. “I remember that! No end of a fuss. Normally that sort of thing could have been sorted out quietly, but she wouldn’t have it. I can’t remember the man’s name, but that was the end of politics for him.”
“That must have been a good fifteen years ago. Before I joined the force.”
“It was impressive,” Thorfinnur Markusson said. “She was as stubborn as a mule on that one, said that the man had been abusive and she wouldn’t back down. Rumour has it he called her an ugly fat bitch and said he’d have her up in front of a tribunal if she didn’t back off. So what’s she like to work for? Is she an ugly fat bitch?”
“She’s fine,” Helgi said. “Very straight, no hide-and-seek office politics. Just likes to get things done.”
The hook again appeared from the water, and this time Thorfinnur laid the rod down on the bank and lit a cigarette. The mist seemed to Helgi to be thickening, and the scrubby trees at the top of the slope on the far side of the lake had dissolved into the grey shroud that surrounded them and muffled their voices.
“How about … ?” Thorfinnur asked, miming an hourglass figure with his hands and grinning.
“She’s a big girl. Plenty up front. I’d bet she’s a bundle of fun in the sack.”
“A word to the wise, Helgi. Keep work and play separate. Even if she has a shirtful of goodies that could keep you happy every night of the week, it’s not worth it.”
Helgi felt distinctly uncomfortable and shuffled his feet, while Thorfinnur Markusson grinned broadly, sensing his embarrassment. “Lay off it, will you? I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Anyone’d think you had a crush on her, Helgi,” he teased.
“Yeah, right. I’m on marriage number two as it is, so I definitely need shenanigans in that department like a hole in the head,” he snorted. “About this Sindri Valsson. Anything you recall?”
The retired chief inspector blew out smoke from his nose and thought for a moment before shaking his head.
“Nothing that springs to mind. I remember him vaguely: young chap, and arrogant with it. Now that you come to mention it, everything tied up very neatly, open and shut. Long Ommi confessed as nice as pie after you brought him in. But this Sindri, well, I suppose we must have interviewed and taken statements from several dozen people altogether, and I can’t say that he stood out particularly.”
“How about the singer?”
“You mean the one who was in the band there that night? Who’d forget that! Tits like ripe peaches and legs up to here, gorgeous. It’s just a shame the poor girl was so dim,” Thorfinnur said, tapping one temple with a gloved finger. “Like they say, nice bodywork, shame about the electrics. But, here! Isn’t she the one who was done in?”
Helgi nodded. “That’s her all right.”
“Any connection there?” Thorfinnur Markusson asked sharply.
“No idea. It’s starting to look that way, but nothing you could pin down. Gunna’ll get to the root of it. Look, I’d better be on my way. Good to see you again, Chief. I’ll pop by again in a day or two and see if you’ve remembered anything more.”
“You do that, Helgi. Good to see a face from the past now and again,” the older man said gruffly, picking up his rod and casting once more. He reeled the hook in slowly this time, his mind elsewhere as he heard Helgi’s car
