“Ommi gave him a beating to start with. Why?”
“?i, something about some job years ago. I don’t know what.”
“What sort of job?” Gunna asked with a new note of iron in her voice.
“?i,” Selma repeated and pouted. “It’s Ommi’s business. I don’t know.”
“You bloody well do. Ommi’s already told us all sorts of interesting stuff that doesn’t do you too many favours. Now you’d better start talking some sense for once if you don’t want to wind up doing a stretch yourself for being an accessory,” Gunna grated, eyebrows knitted into a single dark bar of determination across her forehead.
“Diddi used to deliver stuff for Ommi. That time you lot banged him up, Diddi’d been taking some stuff somewhere and hadn’t come back with the cash. So Ommi wanted his money,” Selma gabbled. “Diddi didn’t have it ’cos he’d spent it ages ago, so Ommi told him to get it or else.”
“So that’s why Diddi tried to raid a bank?”
Selma nodded morosely.
“What ‘stuff’ are we talking about here?”
“Es and some coke,” Selma replied. “A bit of everything.”
“And where was this stuff coming from?”
“Dunno. That club, maybe?”
“Which club’s that?”
“The one Ommi used to work at.”
“Blacklights?”
“Yeah.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Gunna said. “D’you want anything, Selma? Coffee perhaps?”
Selma shook her head.
“The fight outside Blacklights. You were there that night. What do you remember?”
“That was years ago!” Selma protested.
“I know. But what did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Ah, but you did. You gave a statement at the time,” Gunna said, lifting typewritten sheets from under her notebook. “According to your statement, the deceased, Steindor Hjalmarsson, threatened Omar Magnusson during an argument at the bar. Then there was an altercation later during which Steindor received serious injuries. He died in hospital two days later.”
Selma fidgeted in her seat and glared at Gunna with her face puckered in irritation. “I’m not saying anything.”
“Half a dozen people gave statements, you included,” Gunna continued as if Selma had not spoken. “Omar confessed to having been in a fight with Steindor and to having hit him several times, both while he was on his feet and when he was on the ground.”
“Yeah. And?”
“It all fits far too comfortably. Look, Selma, I’ve been a copper for a long time and I’ve split up any number of fights. If there are five witnesses, you get five different versions. Here we have half a dozen witness statements and they all dovetail just right. Steindor threatened Ommi. Later they meet up outside and there’s a bit of fisticuffs that goes too far. Everyone agrees, Ommi is bang to rights and confesses as sweet as you like. I’d like to know what really happened. Who killed Steindor Hjalmarsson and why? Because I’m damn sure it wasn’t Ommi.”
“I can’t tell you,” Selma said finally in a small voice.
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know who did it.”
“But it wasn’t Ommi?”
“No. He was with me.”
“All right. Why?”
“He got paid for it.”
“What, for doing the time for someone else?”
Selma nodded.
“Are you going to tell me who it was?”
“Don’t know. I never asked. Ommi never told me. He just said we’d be all right after he came out.”
“So what happened then? Why didn’t he just finish his sentence quietly?”
“We were going to leave. Take the cash and go to Spain or somewhere. That was the plan, just disappear somewhere hot and not come back.”
Tears had begun to roll down Selma’s cheeks, taking with them smears of make-up that Gunna guessed had been there for days. She began to cry quietly, her words coming out in fits and starts between sobs.
“Ommi was really angry. He could be just totally crazy when he was angry. Said I should come up there and get him when he next had a day pass ’cos he had business to do in town. He said that he’d been double-crossed and the man he was doing time for didn’t have the money to pay him for being there any more so he was going to sort things out himself,” Selma said quickly, the words tumbling out. She took a deep breath that ended on a sob. “I was frightened. Really frightened. Ommi can be so scary when he’s in a rage.”
“I see,” Gunna said as Selma’s sobs receded and developed into hiccoughs. “And you don’t know who this person is?”
“It’s somebody rich. That’s all I know.”
“No ideas, no suspicions?”
Selma shook her head. “No. If I knew, I’d tell you. I never wanted to ask who Shorty was.”
“Shorty?”
“Ommi always called him Shorty. He said Shorty would see us all right. And now Shorty won’t.”
“YES? CAN I help you?” asked a young woman who appeared around the side of the house with a disarming smile. “I was in the garden, didn’t hear the bell the first time,” she explained as a small boy hid behind her legs.
“You must be Hulda Bjork?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“My name’s Gunnhildur Gisladottir, I’m from the police, the Serious Crime Unit. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Steindor Hjalmarsson,” she said, and the smile disappeared from the woman’s face as if it had been turned off with a switch.
In the long garden Hulda Bjork collected herself and they sat in the lee of the house’s back wall in a patch of sunshine that had fought its way through a break in the thick cloud.
“That’s a name I didn’t expect to hear,” she told Gunna.
“I’m sorry if I’ve reopened old wounds, but it’s a serious case and I’m afraid I might have some uncomfortable questions.”
Hulda Bjork breathed deep and set her face firmly. “I’m OK now. Just ask.”
“As you can imagine, it’s Steindor’s death that I’m interested in, and particularly the events leading up to it, but especially his, your, circumstances. How were you living at the time? Were you both working?”
“We rented a flat out in Mosfellsb?r. We were both from Dalvik and felt more comfortable up there out of town than down in the city. I was finishing my teaching degree and Steindor was an accountant with a job at an import-export company. It was fun, we were enjoying living in Reykjavik, but we both agreed that when we had children, we’d want to move back up north somewhere. Not Dalvik, but maybe Akureyri. Now I can’t even visit Dalvik any more without it all coming back. Every house and every street remind me of him.”
“But you’re settled here now?”
“Yes. I met someone. Never expected to. He’s been great and now we have Gunnar as well,” she said, her proud gaze following the small boy as he rode unsteadily around the garden on a bicycle with stabilizers. “I never thought I’d get over it when Steindor … died so suddenly.”
“I’m interested especially in the days and weeks leading up to his death. How was he? Was there anything odd you noticed about his behaviour?”
Hulda Bjork spread her hands, palms upwards. “It’s hard to say. We were both so busy then and not seeing as much of each other as we would have liked. Steindor was a workaholic. He’d work hours of overtime and he’d
