“I saw her last week. Seemed all right.”
“Was there anything unusual about her?”
“No,” he said eventually, looking Gunna in the face. She guessed him to be in his mid-twenties, which would have made him a child of around ten when his big sister had left home.
“Was she her normal self? Did she appear concerned about anything?”
“She was all right.”
“Do you know how long she had lived in the flat?”
Hogni shrugged in exactly the same way as his father. “A while.”
“A month? A year?”
“Since before Christmas sometime, I guess.”
Gunna decided that this line was going nowhere. “We’re doing what we can to track Svana’s movements, but with no diary, mobile phone or anything like that, we don’t have a lot to go on. It would be a great help if you could point out any particular friends she had.”
Sigurgeir and Margret looked blank.
“Svanhildur Mjoll never bothered to contact any of her childhood friends after she moved south,” Margret explained. “She cut home off completely. If we didn’t live there, she’d have never set foot in the place again. She came home occasionally for Christmas or family funerals. That’s it.”
Margret’s face was composed, in contrast to those of her husband and son, both of which radiated anger and loss. Gunna guessed that the woman had long ago done her grieving for her lost child.
“Do you have any knowledge of her finances? We know she owned a stake in a fitness club, but are there any other businesses she was involved in?”
“She seemed to be doing well for herself,” Sigurgeir said. “Bought a nice flat and everything.”
Gunna wondered whether to mention that the flat and car were owned by a company, but decided against it. “Friends, acquaintances, business partners?”
“Don’t know,” Hogni said, dropping his gaze.
“Svana had been married, hadn’t she?”
“Twice,” Margret said through pursed lips. “The first one was a nice enough boy, but that only lasted five minutes. We never met the second one. That didn’t last long either.”
“We may need to interview both of them. Do you have their names?”
“The first was Sigmundur Bjornsson. The second we only heard of as Bjarni; he’s a sportsman, or so we were told.”
“Bjarni Orn Arnason, the weightlifter,” Hogni broke in.
Behind her, Gunna could hear Eirikur writing the names down. “When will you release the, er … When can we have her back, I mean?” Sigurgeir asked uncertainly. “Where is she now?”
“At the National Hospital. I can’t say yet how long it will take to release Svanhildur to you,” Gunna said apologetically. “I’ll find out later today what the situation is and let you know. Where are you staying?”
“With my aunt in Kopavogur,” Margret said quietly. “Alfholsvegur 202.”
“Thank you for your co-operation,” Gunna said, rising from her seat as the three on the other side of the table did the same. “We appreciate you coming to us so promptly. If you could give my colleague a contact number, he’ll show you out. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can with any information we can share, and I expect there will be a few more questions as well.”
Sigurgeir nodded his head, shoulders rounded as if with a great weight, while Margret held herself proudly upright and Hogni carried himself like a clone of his father. Gunna left Eirikur to lead them out to the car park behind the building and made her way back to her office, reflecting on how little the parents knew of their daughter’s life once she had cut herself off from her own roots. But the young man was a different matter. The way he had dropped his eyes told her that Hogni knew or suspected more than he was prepared to let on, at least in front of his parents.
IT WAS LATE in the day when Gunna dropped herself into what had once been her office chair and put her folder of notes on the empty desk. “Haddi!”
She was answered with silence and cursed quietly to herself until the sound of a distant flush confirmed that she was not alone in Hvalvik’s police station. Haddi appeared with that morning’s Dagurinn folded under one arm.
“You called, ma’am? Decided to come back, have you?”
“Indeed. Park yourself down and tell me everything you know. But not until we have lubrication,” she instructed.
Haddi shuffled out, returned with two mugs, and made himself comfortable in the office’s other chair. Gunna opened the window and longed for an illicit Prince from the dwindling pack in what had been her desk, while Haddi fussed with a pipe in defiance of both law and regulations.
“Now. What do you want to know?”
“Oskar Petur Oskarsson. Tell me about him.”
“Who?”
“The guy who had his jaw smashed up.”
“Oh, Skari Bubba. Not much to tell, really. He was a bit of a bad lad as a youngster. Seems to have settled down since he took up with whatshername.”
“Born in Keflavik fifteenth of April 1977,” Gunna read from the notes in front of her. “Parents are Oskar Kjartansson and Fanney Agustsdottir, couple of older siblings. He has convictions for breaking and entering, vehicle theft, assault, drugs, drunk and disorderly, the list goes on. Nothing after 2001. Why’s he called Skari Bubba?”
Haddi’s pipe gurgled. “Well, the story goes that his dad, old Skari, isn’t actually his dad at all. You know Bubbi, the feller who runs the pumps at Hafnarkaffi? Rumour has it that old Fanney had a bit of a fling one summer while the old man was away on the prawn fishing and next spring along came little Skari. Not that old Skari ever put two and two together. He’s a decent chap, but not the sharpest chisel in the box.”
“Fair enough, that’s the man’s ancestry sorted out. What else?”
“Skari left Hvalvik around the time you came here, I suppose. He went to Reykjavik for a bit and was in all kinds of trouble for a couple of years. Then I reckon he met this woman he’s been living with and she must have straightened him out. Anyway, they’ve got some kids and about a year ago they turned up here. He’s been working over in Keflavik in some warehouse and she waddles round the village with a pushchair full of children. You must have seen her; a tubby lass with lots of frizzy hair.”
“They live in that little house near Jon Kidda’s place?”
“That’s the one. It was his granny’s house. She must have left it to him when she popped off, and I suppose that’s why they came to live here.”
“All right. Now, what about Skari when he was a youngster, before his girlfriend straightened him out?”
Haddi sucked his teeth. “He was a right bloody tearaway. He and that damned Ommi caused all kinds of mayhem.”
“Long Ommi?”
“Yup. Gulla the Post’s eldest lad.”
“Ah. The one who’s escaped from Kviabryggja nick?”
“And hasn’t been seen since,” Haddi said. “He was put away for murder ten years ago, beat up a chap outside a nightclub. Or so they say.”
Gunna raised an eyebrow. “And what else do they say?”
Haddi coughed and cleared his throat noisily. “Well, according to the gossip, it wasn’t Ommi at all, but he took the rap for it.”
“We got the wrong man?”
“In a manner of speaking. Ommi confessed and everything, and from what I’m told, strictly on the quiet, you understand, he was made a generous offer to do the time in return for a decent payday and a good drink at the end of it all. It’s not as if he wasn’t used to being in and out of the nick as it was. Litla-Hraun must have been pretty much a second home for him, and being shifted up to Kviabryggja’s more like being at a holiday camp.”
“Did Ommi and Skari fall out at some time?”
“Couldn’t tell you, they both left here all those years ago, and when Skari came back he settled down like a good lad, or at least as good as he could manage.”
