though. This could be bigger than I thought. But not a word out of place. All right?”
“You know, Gunna? Anyone else saying that and I wouldn’t believe them for a second.”
“But you know you can trust your Auntie Gunnhildur, don’t you?”
“If you say so,” he said dubiously.
“OH YES. ARE we just the finest detectives around or what?” Eirikur asked, rubbing his hands with pleasure.
“We are, Gunna and me. Don’t know about you, young feller,” Helgi grunted in reply.
“Don’t mind him, Eirikur. He’s had a bad night,” Gunna said. “Teething again, Helgi?”
“Yup.” Helgi yawned.
“Put ’em to sleep, boys. Calpol works wonders. I’d have cheerfully strangled both of mine without it,” Gunna said. “What have you found that’s making you so happy, then?”
Eirikur put a stack of printouts on his desk and patted them. “Witness statements from the Omar Magnusson case. Dug them out from the archives, and guess what? There are a couple of very interesting witnesses who say they saw Omar having an argument with Steindor Hjalmarsson the night he was murdered.”
He paused for effect.
“Go on, get it over with,” Helgi grumbled.
“There’s a statement from the lead singer of the band, Svanhildur Mjoll Sigurgeirsdottir, and also from one of the doormen, Oskar Oskarsson, currently in hospital in Keflavik.”
“Weren’t you on that case, Helgi?” Gunna asked.
“Not really. I was with the team that arrested Ommi, but it wasn’t actually him we were looking for. If I recall correctly, we were searching Evil Eyglo’s summer house for stolen goods when Ommi came wandering out of the bedroom rubbing his eyes. I don’t know which of us was more surprised.”
“So Skari and Svana both gave witness statements saying that Ommi and Steindor had a ruck?” Gunna asked.
“Yup. That’s it. There are plenty more and I thought I’d check through the rest of them, just to see if there might be a name that pops up anywhere, and there’s one that made me think. Sindri Valsson, the man’s name is. He was also interviewed at the time and claimed not to have been aware of anything. So I did a bit of a check and it seems he lives overseas now, Portugal.”
“Any relation to …?”
“Spot on. Jonas Valur Hjaltason’s son. It threw me to start with because he calls himself Valsson and not Jonasson. But he’s still a director of a few of his dad’s companies, including the one that owns property in Portugal and Spain, and he’s also a director of one of Bjartmar Arnarson’s companies, Rigel Investment.”
“So how did you stumble on all this?”
“Well, I’d already been checking out the ownership of Rigel Investment and saw the name there as a director. It wasn’t until I saw the witness statement in his name that it jogged my memory and I put two and two together. But guess what? He was here last week, left on Friday on a flight to London.”
“How did you find that out so fast?”
“I had a look through the passenger list archive and it seems he’s a regular traveller, four or five times a year normally.”
“Yes?”
“Gunnlaugur Olafsson?”
He looked at her suspiciously.
“Gulli’s in a meeting. Is it important?” he demanded sharply. “What’s it about?”
Gunna felt her hackles rise. She dug in her pocket and flashed her police ID card at him.
“Yes, it is important, and no, I’m not going to discuss it with you. Where is he?”
The young man deflated and retreated, opening a glass door and holding a conversation in whispers, punctuated with quick looks over one shoulder.
“Gulli’ll be right with you,” he said, returning and sitting back at his desk, where he proceeded to ignore Gunna and concentrate on the computer in front of him. In the glass door behind him, Gunna noticed a reflection of the young man’s screen and saw he was devoting his attention to his Facebook page. Finally the glass door opened and a tall man with a harassed manner came out, sweeping a lock of untidy hair away from his face and frowning.
“You’re looking for me?” he asked doubtfully.
“Yup, Gunnhildur Gisladottir. Serious Crime Unit. A quiet word would be useful.”
“I recognize you,” Gulli Olafs said, eyes narrowed. “There was a feature about you in a newspaper last year, wasn’t there?”
“There was,” Gunna said gravely. “I can see that my notoriety goes before me.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Can we go somewhere quiet?”
Gulli Olafs held his hands up and looked around the cramped office with its desks and a few booths. “There’s nowhere right now. The meeting room’s in use and I don’t know how long they’ll be. Is it something particular you want to ask me about?”
“Yes. Steindor Hjalmarsson.”
Startled, Gulli Olafs took a step back and then looked around him. “I think we’d better go outside,” he said heavily, nodding his head almost imperceptibly at the young man at the front desk.
They walked the few hundred metres to Grandakaffi, one of the workmen’s cafes. It looked to be thirty years behind the times in the increasingly smart dock area, but still saw a thriving trade for its traditionally down-to-earth food.
“Been here before?” Gulli Olafs asked as they went into the quiet cafe with the lunchtime rush over.
“Many times,” Gunna assured him, taking coffee and a roll, and fumbling for coins.
“No, on me,” Gulli Olafs said, handing over a note and asking for a receipt, which he folded carefully away.
They sat in the far corner of the glass-fronted extension and Gunna noticed that deep stress lines ran across Gulli Olafs forehead, making him look older than he was.
“Steindor Hjalmarsson. You knew him well, or so Hulda Bjork tells me?”
“Yes. I was one of his closest friends, one of his few close friends. You’ve spoken to Hulda?”
“I have. Steindor’s death is linked indirectly to an investigation that we have in progress at the moment, not something I can say too much about. But I’m trying to get a picture of what happened, and why.”
“Omar Magnusson, I suppose?” Gulli Olafs asked with a sideways look.
“Well, yes. It’s not hard to put two and two together.”
“Not when you’re dealing with gossip all day long it isn’t. I knew he had escaped from prison and wondered why. His sentence must be almost up by now.”
“Well, no. There’s about a third of it left to go, but he would have been up for parole at the end of this year and would probably have been out if he’d kept quiet and behaved himself. He’s not someone you ever had any dealings with?”
“God, no,” he said with a shudder. “I saw him at the trial and I have to say that he was one of the most evil people I have ever set eyes on. He just radiated arrogance and … How should I put it? There was a ruthlessness about him that was quite unnerving. Absolutely no shred of remorse to be seen.”
“That about sums up Long Ommi,” Gunna agreed. “I’m particularly interested in Steindor in the weeks before his death. Was there anything about him that was odd, different, maybe?”
Gulli Olafs stared out of the window across the wasteland between the cafe and the empty dock and to the shell of the unfinished opera house on the far side of the harbour.
“Steindor had graduated the year before and had fallen into a fairly decent job at that import-export company. He wasn’t happy there. He was being given more work than he was able to do comfortably and he was also doing work for other companies within the group, which had a very wide portfolio of business. There was fish, there were cars, scrap metal, electrical goods, all sorts,” he said finally, speaking slowly as if trying to recall every
