the brim of his cap and Ragna Gusta quickly let go of his hand and darted behind her grandmother to vanish into the house.
“You’d better come in, I suppose. Not for long, though. Didda Geirmunds is coming round later and we’re going out,” Agusta pronounced without troubling to hide her annoyance at having her routine disturbed.
Jon sat himself down in the kitchen after force of habit had made him open the fridge to check the contents. Agusta set a cup in front of him and nodded at the elegant steel flask on the table. Everything about his mother and the way she lived was elegant, Jon reflected. The house was spick and span, expensively furnished without a single piece of self-assembly flatpack furniture to be seen.
“So what brings you out here today?” Agusta asked sharply. “I’m sure I’d told you. Ragna Gusta’s with me today and I thought you’d like to see her. Linda’s taking her somewhere next weekend, so it’s not as if you’ll see her again for a while.”
“It’s such a shame,” Agusta said with pursed lips. “Divorce is so common, but I thought it was something that didn’t happen in our family.”
It bloody well has now, Jon wanted to yell at his mother. Instead he shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s happened and it’s not something I’m going to discuss,” he said. It’s all right for you, he thought. Buried two husbands and they both left you a packet.
“I just want to have a look in the cellar for some bits and pieces,” he added, leaving his half-full cup on the table and pushing back his chair.
“All right. But don’t be long. Didda will be here for me in half an hour.”
Jon felt happier in the cellar. It was cool and quiet, apart from the discreet humming of a deep freeze in the corner. The cellar had the same dimensions as the outside walls of the house, with a large main room that housed the heating system and racks of shelves full of biscuit tins and jars that Jon knew were empty. Agusta had not made jam or baked a cake for years.
At the far side a door opened on to a smaller room, fitted out with a wooden bench and with tools hung on the walls, everything covered with a fine layer of dust. Jon looked under the bench for what he knew was there, and the sight of the familiar case gave him a warm feeling deep inside, recalling autumn days spent sitting wrapped in a thick coat watching the skies.
He admired the clean lines and dull shine of the shotguns. One was old, but as a practical man he could appreciate the beauty of a piece of precision craftsmanship made by hand and with love before the days of lathes and drills controlled by computers. He caressed the wooden stock, looking deep into the whorls and grain, wondering what kind of timber had produced such a pattern. The feel of the gun in his hands brought back uncomfortable memories, and he tried to shake them off as he picked up the other shotgun, with its dull metal and plain stock, that had been his own.
This was a newer weapon, less of a work of art and more of a tool with a workmanlike feel to it. Rummaging further beneath the bench, he came up with an old sports bag. Carefully wrapping his shotgun in sheets of clean cloth, he gently stowed it in the bag with a box of cartridges nestling against it, and then swung the closed bag on to one shoulder as he snapped off the light to plunge the cellar back into darkness.
“CHILLY OUTSIDE,” BJOSSI announced, slamming the door and settling into the passenger seat. “Going to see Skari Bubba, are we?”
The hired Polo rattled and Bjossi winced.
“What’s the matter with you?” Gunna asked.
“You might want to get this thing serviced, you know. It sounds a bit rocky,” Bjossi advised.
“Not my car, though, is it?”
Pulling up outside the hospital, Gunna felt her phone vibrate and fished it from her pocket to peer at the screen.
staying @sigruns tonite. OK?
Resolutely sticking to spelling and grammar, Gunna texted back to Laufey.
All right with me. I’ll pop in on the way home. See you then. x, she wrote, before texting a shorter message to Steini: ?xG
As they walked into the building, with Bjossi leading the way, her phone chirped again.
9-ish?xS
She chuckled and thumbed back, OK xG “Steini still sending you erotic texts?” Bjossi asked.
“Yup.”
“Thought you were more cheerful than usual.”
“Well that’s what happens when you get it regularly,” Gunna assured him.
“Couldn’t tell you, that was so long ago,” Bjossi said morosely.
“Get away with you, you randy old goat. You’ve always been like a rat up a drainpipe,” Gunna shot back, stopping to look for the room where Oskar Oskarsson was not expecting them.
She pushed open the door and saw that there were visitors ahead of her. Oskar’s mother sat there with pursed lips, and a florid woman with a mass of ginger hair spilled across the other chair.
“Morning,” Gunna greeted them. “I could do with ten minutes of your time, if you don’t mind,” she added firmly to Skari, making it plain that she expected none of them to object.
“Of course. We’ll leave you to talk to my Oskar,” old Fanney said in her clear voice.
The other woman opened her mouth to protest, but Fanney stood up, buttoning her coat as she did so.
“We’ll go and look round the shops for half an hour, Oskar,” she said with decision. “Just while this lady wants to speak to you. Come on, Erla. We can start in Kronan.”
Gunna recognized the younger woman as Skari’s wife. She had seen her many times around Hvalvik, but never otherwise than surrounded by a brood of similarly red-haired children and behind a pushchair.
The two of them left the room, leaving Gunna and Bjossi to take their chairs.
“I’ve nothing to tell you,” Oskar rasped.
“Your voice has improved, Skari,” Gunna said, trying to be friendly.
“Yeah. Full of drugs, so it doesn’t hurt so much.”
“Skari, I’d like you to cast your mind back, if you’d be so good.”
The patient glowered and looked uncomfortable. “What?”
“Ten years ago,” Bjossi said. “What were you doing then?”
“I was in Reykjavik. Why?”
“That much we know. I’d like you to tell me about Blacklights. You remember the place?”
“Yeah,” Oskar admitted warily. “Why?”
“Steindor Hjalmarsson. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Should it?”
Gunna extracted a sheaf of documents from her briefcase, paperclipped together.
“This is a witness statement made by Oskar Oskarsson to the effect that you saw Omar Magnusson and Steindor Hjalmarsson arguing heatedly in Blacklights at around two thirty in the morning. You and two of the other bouncers, whose statements I also have here, separated them.”
“Might be,” Oskar repeated with a shrug. “It was a rowdy place. There was rucks going on all the time.”
“Ah, but this was a bit special,” Gunna said. “Further along in your statement, you said that you escorted Steindor Hjalmarsson from the building and that Omar Magnusson followed him out. So don’t try and tell me you don’t remember this, Skari. This is part of the testimony that put your mate Ommi away for fifteen years, isn’t it?”
Oskar gulped and his eyes swivelled.
“So all this lot, all these black eyes, broken ribs and the rest of it, was this Long Ommi settling a score, or what?”
“Nah. Like I said, Polish bloke. A right big bastard he was.”
“No, Skari,” Bjossi broke in gently. “Long Ommi did this. You screwed him over, and when he got out, he decided to pay you back for the favour.”
“No, no, no,” Oskar said emphatically. “Leave me alone, will you? I’m straight now, clean record these days. So lay off.”
“Let’s look at it another way, shall we, Skari?” Gunna suggested quietly as the panic in Oskar’s face began to magnify and his eyes started to bulge. “I get the feeling that you’ve been spinning us a good few tales. Let’s
