Ommi? It’s ancient history now, water under the bridge. It doesn’t look good for us to be reopening a case after almost ten years, admitting that we got it wrong.”
“So what the hell are you here for?” Ommi demanded, angrily enough for the warden standing by the door to stiffen and frown.
“It’s all right,” Gunna assured him and turned back to Ommi. “What I’m really here about is Svana Geirs. I can place you at the scene. Your dabs are right there in her kitchen, where she was killed.”
“That’s stupid,” Ommi protested. “I’d never have hurt Svana.”
“Come on, be serious. Skari testified against you and was beaten to within an inch of his life. Svana testified against you and gets killed. I can place you at both locations.”
“But I didn’t hurt Svana. I’d never hurt her.”
“So why did you go and see her?”
Ommi glared back sullenly.
“A quick shag for old times’ sake?” Gunna suggested.
“Fuck you, you old bitch,” Ommi retorted furiously.
“I can hang this one on you, Ommi. Between ourselves, this’ll mean another ten years inside, and with your past form, it won’t be in some soft open nick like Kviabryggja. Think about it,” Gunna said quietly and turned to the warder. “Omar would like to go back to his cell now,” she told him.
GUNNA JUST MADE it in time for S?valdur’s briefing. Out of breath after trotting from the car park, she took a seat at the back.
In her precise, heavily accented English that Gunna knew practically every male officer found deeply exciting, the severe Miss Cruz drily described Bjartmar Arnarson’s injuries. As Albert had predicted, there was little relevant information that hadn’t been known at first glance.
“Caucasian male, good general health, one hundred and ninety-one centimetres in height, one hundred and fifteen kilos in weight. No illnesses, no evidence of drug use. The injuries were caused by a shotgun with small- gauge lead pellets that resulted in multiple lacerations of the feet, which were bare at the time the injury occurred,” she intoned, using one finger to push her glasses back up the bridge of her nose.
“I would estimate that the perpetrator was standing no more than one metre from the victim and he would certainly have been splashed with blood from the victim’s injuries.”
She paused to draw a deep breath and push her glasses up a second time.
“The fatal injury was undoubtedly administered at very close range, within thirty centimetres of the victim’s chest, with a second round delivered from the same weapon. Mortality was instantaneous,” she said flatly, and sat down.
“Er, how long between the two shots, do you think?” Eirikur ventured.
“Not more than a few seconds. Very soon after. With the first shot, the victim fell to the floor. He collapsed first on to his knees, which show evidence of the impact marks on the floor, and then on to one side. The floor was also badly damaged by the shot and there are slivers of glass from the surface of the ceramic tiles everywhere. It’s possible that these may have hit the perpetrator as well, but there are slivers of glass in the victim’s right buttock and side, indicating that he fell on to that side. He was lying flat on his back when the second shot was delivered, so he may have rolled that way by himself or he may have been moved by the perpetrator into a suitable position. The victim’s chest was completely destroyed by the second shot, with extensive damage,” she said.
Extensive damage—an interesting understatement, Gunna reflected, thinking quickly to cope with Miss Cruz’s English.
“Do the footprints tell us anything?” Eirikur asked, more confidently this time.
“Just that the perpetrator stepped towards the victim to fire the second round,” Miss Cruz said. “There are three footprints. I believe he stepped forward, right foot first, then left, fired, then stepped left foot back and right foot out of the door. There’s nothing remarkable about the prints, nothing special. Training shoes that are quite well worn, size forty-eight, I estimate, so we could be looking at a perpetrator around two metres tall.”
Helgi and Gunna looked at each other, thinking back to the witness’ recollection of seeing a tall man in dark clothes walking fast. “Thank you, Miss Cruz,” S?valdur said.
“What’s the situation with the criminal profiler?” Gunna asked, knowing that this would elicit a sour response from S?valdur.
“Coming from Denmark and should be arriving tomorrow,” he said shortly. “Now, ideas? What are we looking for? To my mind this was a professional job.”
Gunna shook her head and scowled to herself, which S?valdur immediately picked up on.
“You don’t agree, Gunnhildur? Reasons?” he asked.
“The weapon, mainly,” she said firmly. “A shotgun’s messy. Someone setting out to kill and wanting to keep it quick and simple would use a handgun, probably with a silencer, not a shotgun.”
“Handguns are illegal. Have been for years,” S?valdur objected.
“Yeah. Anyone who wants to can get hold of one for the right price,” Gunna said. “If this guy was a professional, it would have been a handgun. This wasn’t a professional job.”
The rawboned figure of Steingrimur from the Special Unit nodded in agreement.
“I agree with Gunna,” he said. “A shotgun’s awkward. From the way the pellets spread out, even at such short range, I’d guess we’re dealing with a sawn-off weapon here. It looks premeditated, but sawn-off says home-made to me.”
“And there are shotguns everywhere,” Gunna added. “Anyone who wants a shotgun can find one somewhere. Is there anyone here who doesn’t know someone who shoots? See?” she said, as not a single hand went up. “This may well have been a perfectly legal, licensed weapon for all we know.”
“All right, so what the hell are we looking for?” S?valdur demanded. “I’ve no idea,” Gunna replied. “I think what’s certain here is that this isn’t the usual Icelandic murder. This wasn’t carried out by some doped-up bum who didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Whoever did it knew exactly what he was doing, and we need to find out if it can be linked to the fire at the same house. What I have been able to ascertain is that all the locals who would normally be mad enough to do something like this are already behind bars, or have solid alibis.”
“Either this was premeditated and carefully planned, or else whoever did it was very lucky,” Steingrimur said absently, as if he were thinking out loud. “I mean, we were there within minutes. You don’t get all that far in a couple of minutes on foot, unless he—assuming it’s a he—lives nearby and just went home.”
“Or unless he had a car parked nearby and was able to drive off without attracting attention?” Helgi suggested. “There’s the white van that was parked a couple of streets away that might have disappeared about the time of the killing, except that nobody remembers seeing it coming or going.”
“What do you want to do? Check every one of the hundreds of white vans in the south-west corner?” S?valdur sneered.
“That’s just what we’ve been doing,” Helgi said.
Behind him, Ivar Laxdal nodded in tacit agreement.
THE ELDEST OF the three children was the last one to fall asleep. The little boy looked angelic as his head lolled to one side and Jon lifted him gently into the top bunk.
“I always struggle with that,” Elin Harpa said.
They had spent the day together in the little flat, with the children engrossed first in the television and later in a game they made up for themselves in their room.
“I thought kids didn’t do that any more,” Jon said, pleasantly surprised.
“Do what?”
“Play by themselves. I thought it was all TV and video games these days.”
“It is most of the time,” Elin Harpa said. They drank cans of beer from the fridge and talked about themselves with difficulty in staccato sentences.
“How about you?” Elin Harpa asked finally. “What went wrong?”
Jon shrugged. “Same as so many people, I suppose. Debts, lost the house. Not enough work. Wife pissed off back to her mother’s.”
“So where have you been living?”
“At my brother’s. It’s only a one-bedroom flat and we don’t get on. He’s a spoiled little poof. And you?”
“Boyfriend walked out three months ago, said he’d had enough and wanted some fun again.”
“That’s shit,” Jon said bluntly.
