“Can you alert the Laxdal and Steingrimur and warn them that we may be looking at an encounter with our man in Kopavogur, either in or close to the bank on the corner of Hamraborg?”
She pulled the phone back across, punched in the number for Hrannar Antonsson and listened to it ring.
“Hello, Hrannar’s phone,” a cheerful female voice greeted her.
“Good morning, this is Gunnhildur Gisladottir at the CID Serious Crime Unit,” Gunna said for the tenth time that morning. “I’m trying to get in touch with Hrannar Antonsson and it’s urgent.”
HIS STOMACH RUMBLED as he sat with his coat wrapped around him and his hands deep in the pockets, pushed through the lining to give him a grip on the shotgun. He looked around repeatedly, watching the time tick past ten o’clock, wondering where the bloody boy had got to.
The tension that had been building up in him all morning had disappeared as if it had evaporated suddenly the moment he had pushed the door of the bank aside. He felt slightly lightheaded, but fully in control, as if he were watching the scene from above. He imagined looking straight down on himself, sprawled in what passed for an easy chair while the bank’s activity went on around him in a blur of people moving between offices and desks. He felt his feet begin to numb and wondered just how long the bloody man was going to take.
At last the familiar pink shirt appeared and came across to him, a hand extended.
“Good morning. I’m so sorry I’m late. There was an accident on Vesterlandsvegur and the traffic backed right up. Shall we?” Hrannar asked with a smile, gesturing towards an interview room.
Jon grasped the proffered hand, gripping it for slightly longer than was comfortable or necessary, and noticing a flash of discomfort in the boy’s smile. He kept the coat closed around him as he followed Hrannar to the glass- sided interview room and took a seat opposite him.
“I can see you’ve had a really rough time of it these last few weeks,” Hrannar said, tapping at the computer on the desk. “I’m just calling up all your details so we can review your status.”
Jon grunted in response. There was nothing to say. He didn’t need a youngster with a ridiculous haircut to tell him that he was broke and bankrupt. He looked at Hrannar, thinking to himself how stupid it would be to have that patch of hair in the middle of your head slicked up like that.
He looks like Tintin, he thought.
The numbness in his feet had spread to his fingers and he could barely feel them. He flexed his toes and fingers as much as he could, but still felt ill at ease, not uncomfortable, but not quite right. Suddenly he realized that he had not listened to a word of what Hrannar had been saying and the boy was staring at him with a concerned expression.
“Jon, are you all right?” he asked. “Would you like a glass of water?”
“Yeah,” Jon grunted, tightening his grip on the shotgun and slipping off the safety catch. As Hrannar made to stand up, a young woman with a name badge on a chain around her neck knocked on the glass door and put her head around it.
“Hrannar, there’s a personal call for you,” she whispered, her voice rising on the final syllables. “Urgent, she says.”
Hrannar sat back down and dragged the desk phone towards him with a frown.
“Thanks, Sigga,” he said as the girl made to shut the door behind her. “Could you bring this gentleman a glass of water, please? He’s not feeling well.”
She nodded and departed, while Hrannar peered at Jon, who was sitting wrapped in his coat in spite of the office’s stuffy warmth.
“I hope you don’t mind, I have to take a call quickly,” he said, and saw Jon nod imperceptibly. “Hello, Hrannar Antonsson speaking,” he said smartly into the phone.
Jon’s eyes began to move, boring into Hrannar as he sat flustered behind the desk. The world began to move in slow motion. The cashiers at their desks smiled and tapped at their keyboards as if their world had been turned down a notch.
“Of course,” he heard Hrannar say. “It’s very difficult for me to speak right now. It’s really not a good moment.”
Jon’s eyes lifted to meet Hrannar’s, which filled with fear and he almost dropped the phone.
“Yes, he’s with me right now. W-w-would you like to speak to him?” he said into the mouthpiece, eyes wide as Jon let his coat fall open and he found himself staring into the two gaping barrels that looked as deep and wide as tunnels. He stared at the two circles, scarred and raw where the hacksaw had cut through the metal, ringing the black openings with silver hoops.
The girl with the name tag pushed open the door with one hand and stood frozen for a moment as she took in the shotgun trained on Hrannar’s chest. The glass of water dropped from her hand and shattered on the floor as she screeched and took to her heels. A second later the clatter of hurrying feet could be heard, but Jon sat still with Hrannar petrified in front of him.
“You took everything away from me,” he said steadily. “I had a home, a business and a family. Everything I worked for all those years, taken away. It’s all gone,” he repeated.
“I-I-I’m so sorry,” Hrannar stammered. “I couldn’t do anything. There are rules—”
“Rules?” Jon roared. “What sort of rules say you have to snatch everything away from someone? Everything, not just the cash. There’s the dignity, self-respect, all that stuff. There’s nothing left, just more fucking debts. You’re nothing but lying, thieving bloodsuckers, the lot of you.”
Outside, a siren began to wail.
“The police will be here soon,” Hrannar ventured.
“That’s fine. I’ve all the time in the world now,” Jon said with the merest hint of a smile, the first one for weeks.
GUNNA, EIRIKUR AND Steingrimur’s Special Unit looked over the bank’s interior. A technician dusted for fingerprints in the glass-walled interview room, wrinkling his nose at the smell.
“And? What’s happening?” S?valdur Bogason demanded, bursting in through the front door.
“All over, mate,” Steingrimur told him. “Nobody’s hurt and our boy’s cuffed and on his way to Hverfisgata right now in the back of a van.”
“I came as soon as I heard,” S?valdur said lamely, clearly furious that their man had been located and arrested quickly and with a minimum of fuss. “So what the hell happened?”
Gunna picked up a chair that had been sent flying when the bank staff had evacuated the building, stood it back on its legs and sat herself down on it.
“He was right there, pointing a shotgun at the poor bastard who had sold him a bunch of foreign currency loans. It seems that the lad was the focus of all that anger when he lost his house and his business,” Steingrimur explained. “But I’m sure that’ll all come out at the station. I have to say, I feel sorry for the poor bugger.”
“Sorry for him or not, what’s that fucking awful smell?” S?valdur demanded.
‘Ah, it seems the lad he was threatening crapped himself with fright, right there in his office chair. He was gibbering when they drove him off to hospital. I reckon he might be off work for a while now,” Steingrimur said with satisfaction.
“And how did you find him so fast?”
“Gunna found him. You just have to look in the right places, I guess,” Steingrimur said with a smile that was guaranteed to provoke S?valdur to further impotent rage.
“Well done, people,” he said through a forced smile. “Is he definitely the one we’ve been searching for over Bjartmar Arnarson?”
“I’d say so,” Gunna said. “Looks like he was going to give the personal financial adviser the same treatment as he gave Bjartmar, but thought better of it at the last moment.”
“Lucky bastard,” S?valdur frowned. “Who was the arresting officer?”
Helgi grinned. “Tinna Sigvalds.”
“Her?”
“Yup. Tinna and Big Geiri were the first on the scene when the F1 went up. She walked in, asked him nicely to put the weapon down and come with her, and he did, easy as you like.”
“Hell and damnation. A little girl like that,” S?valdur fumed, and Gunna felt her own anger boil up inside her.
“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?” she barked.
“Tinna did a fucking magnificent job that takes a bloody sight more guts than most of us have, and all you
