“And Oskar?”
“I reckon he was out the back with Sindri. Why? What did Skari say?”
“So what happened next?” Gunna asked, ignoring the question.
“Shit, all hell let loose. Bjartmar wound the sound up to the max and turned down the lights so the place was jumping. People everywhere, loads of noise. Bjartmar and Sindri came and found me, told Svana to get herself on stage and crank it up. Then, fuck me, but old Jonas turns up, Sindri’s dad, face like doom, and the three of them put the screws on.”
“Made you an offer you couldn’t refuse?”
“Sort of. Jonas said he had a very important assignment for me and it was urgent, had to be done right away.”
“Which was?”
“That was it, he didn’t say. But he put me in the back of his Merc and off we went.”
“Into the night?”
“Yeah. It was starting to get light by then and we went right out of town. I don’t like going past Mosfellsb?r, me. But we ended up at this summer house and he left me there with Selma to look after me, said he’d be back in the morning and that there was a good wedge of cash in it for me.”
“This was Eyglo Grimsdottir’s place in Skorradalur, right?”
“Yeah. Nice place. I think old Jonas had a thing going with Eyglo at the time.”
“You already knew Eyglo by then?”
“Well, sort of. Selma and me, we’d been sort of, y’know, off and on, so I knew Eyglo.”
They turned at the corner of the field and came back at a leisurely pace, this time into the wind, which stung Gunna’s cheeks. Ommi huddled deeper into his fleece.
“So, what happened?”
“Well, I was left there with little Selma to keep me company, and the next afternoon Jonas turned up again with Sindri in tow, and Eyglo coming up behind in her BMW with Baddo.”
“Bjartmar?”
“Yeah. Well Selma was kicked upstairs and the three of them put their cards on the table.”
“Three of them?”
“Yeah. Eyglo went off with Selma, I suppose.”
“All right. Go on.”
Ommi frowned.
“Jonas said they had a problem. A crime had been committed that they couldn’t sweep under the carpet. He said they needed someone to take the rap for it and there would be a wage in it, plus a bonus at the ind of the stretch. Would I be interested? Well I thought they probably wanted someone to do a year or a few months or something. So I said yeah, I could do some time for the right price.”
“But it was more than a few months?”
“Hell, yeah,” Ommi said. “I could see it was Sindri. He was as nervous as hell, fiddling with his keys, biting his nails, all sorts. Your lot would’ve chewed him up for breakfast,” he said with a slim smile. “Anyway, it took me by surprise when they said it would be a murder charge, and I said hey, that’s a bit heavier than what I’d had in mind.”
Ommi kicked a stone and sent it skittering towards the fence. “But that Jonas, he’s a sly bastard. He said I’d already said yes, so now we just needed to agree a price.”
“And I take it you did?”
“Yup. Shit, yeah. Those three … Life wouldn’t have been worth living if I’d turned them down.”
“How much?”
“A couple of mill a year, plus a five mill bonus when I got out, and he swore blind it wouldn’t be more than ten years, out in six or seven, tops.”
“And you agreed to that?”
“Pushed him up to two and a half a year, plus eight, and we shook on it.”
“A done deal? What then?”
“They went back to the city; said I should stay put and wait there quietly. They left a case of vodka and a couple of beers, told me to enjoy the TV until I got a visit. So me and Selma, we made ourselves comfy. A week later you lot came calling and I just put my hands up and that was that.”
Gunna nodded to herself. Very little that Ommi had said had taken her by surprise, except that he had been so open after such a long silence. They turned again at the top of the yard and she saw that he was starting to feel the chill.
“Want to go back inside?”
“Not yet.”
“So you got a decent nest egg put away somewhere for you as long as you kept quiet and did the time. What went wrong?”
Ommi grimaced. “I’ll tell you what. I was starting to feel all right in there. Stopped smoking, worked out every day. Put an inch on my biceps. Feeling good. Then I began to hear whispers. Sindri moved abroad. OK, fair enough. Then I hear Bjartmar’s in trouble. He’d got right out of the speed and clubbing business, and went respectable, stopped being there when I called. That’s what went wrong. I couldn’t have the cash going into an account with my name on it, so I wanted it in Selma’s name. But Bjartmar said he’d invest it for me, get a good return and I’d have a big old whack waiting when I got out.”
“And did he?”
“Yeah. Put it all into the stock exchange here and there, a load into shares in banks, and lost the fucking lot when the banks went tits up.”
“That’s when you decided to walk out?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t get through to Bjartmar or Jonas. Couldn’t find Skari’s number, like he’d dropped off the surface of the earth. Selma asked a few questions for me, but her mum and Jonas had fallen out by then. I wasn’t getting any answers, so I reckoned I’d go and ask questions myself. Thought if it came to it, I’d just talk to you lot and tell you everything.”
Ommi looked directly at Gunna for the first time since they had started walking. “I thought they’d stitched me up.”
“Looks like they had.”
“Maybe. I couldn’t get to Jonas or Bjartmar. Calls stopped at their secretaries, and their offices are like this place,” he said bitterly, waving a hand at the high wire all around them as Gunna recalled the security cameras outside both Bjartmar and Jonas’s offices.
“The fire at Bjartmar’s home, was that you?”
“Addi did that. A bit of a warning.”
“And Svana? Why did you go to her?”
“To get to Bjartmar. I’d heard she was still shagging him sometimes. So I turned up at the gym one morning and waited until she came out. When she got in the car, I jumped in the passenger side and we went back to her place for a bit of a private talk.”
“When was this? Which day?”
“Morning. Don’t know what day.”
“But she couldn’t help you?”
“She said that she knew Bjartmar was away and she’d talk to him when he came back.”
“That was true enough,” Gunna said. “Bjartmar really was abroad.”
“Was it? I couldn’t be sure. Svana was sweet, but she was never that bright.”
“And Daft Diddi? That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Look, I’m not proud of that, understand? I was getting desperate, out of cash. Eyglo helped out with a few shekels and found us that place to crash in, but she’s short of cash herself after she put hers into property that won’t sell.”
At the bottom of the yard, Gunna felt her phone begin to vibrate in her pocket but ignored it. As they turned, she could see Eirikur and the warder following them, huddled miserably deep into their coats.
“So Svana was fine when you left her?”
