“The Bjartmar Arnarson killing, of course. The man’s in custody and S?valdur’s team are interviewing him now. I’m going upstairs. Talk to me on the way,” he suggested in a tone that made it an order. “How did you get on at Litla-Hraun? Helgi told me you were following up on the Omar Magnusson business. Progress?”
“Absolutely,” Gunna puffed, stretching to keep up with him on the stairs and wondering how he managed to shift himself so quickly without appearing to move any faster than anyone else.
“And?” he demanded, marching along the corridor and swinging into one of the lawyers’ offices.
“Confirmed a lot of what I’d suspected, plus some new leads. Omar didn’t touch Steindor Hjalmarsson. He was being paid pretty handsomely to do the time for someone else.”
“How much, as a matter of interest?”
“Thirty million.”
“Not a lot, I’d have said.”
“Ah, but ten years ago, thirty million was twice as much as it’s worth now.”
“I’ll grant you that. But it’s still ten years in a concrete box.” Ivar Laxdal put the binders down on a desk in the corner and made for the door. “Coffee?” he asked, striding down the corridor towards the canteen with Gunna again hurrying behind him.
Hell. I’m thirty-seven years old. Why does this blasted man make me feel like I’m ten? she wondered uncomfortably as Ivar Laxdal poured black liquid into two mugs in the deserted canteen.
“A good place at this time of day, Gunnhildur, because there’s nobody about,” he said, sitting at a table in the corner and motioning for her to join him. “Tomorrow, I want to see you at nine for a disciplinary reprimand.”
His black eyes bored into hers from under his heavy brows.
“Is this because I was stupid enough to give S?valdur a piece of my mind this morning?”
Ivar Laxdal nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Gunna said heavily. “The bloody man winds me up so much, and after what he said about Tinna when she’d taken the gun off the nutcase in the bank, I’m afraid I just saw red for thirty seconds.”
“I know. S?valdur has some difficulties adjusting to the twenty-first century. I know he makes an effort, but that’s not always enough. But I’d appreciate it if you would cut him a little slack. Completely between ourselves, he’s an excellent officer who should never have left uniform.”
“In that case, completely between ourselves, is he likely to be taking over Orlygur Sveinsson’s duties?”
“In confidence, Gunnhildur, the likelihood is minimal. But what’s your next step on the Svana Geirs case? Where are you now? I take it you’ve seen the papers?”
Gunna pursed her lips and frowned. “I have. I’m no closer to Svana’s killer than I was a week ago. If anything, I’m further away, as Omar Magnusson was a prime suspect and now he isn’t.”
“How so?”
“I know more or less precisely when Svana was murdered, but Ommi doesn’t. I know, but he doesn’t, that he has an alibi. Though that might not be much of an alibi unless the chap he was administering a pretty brutal beating to at just that time agrees to identify him as his assailant.”
Ivar Laxdal supported his chin in one hand and Gunna could hear his stubby fingers rasping the bristles.
“So who’s your suspect for the murder of Steindor Hjalmarsson?” he asked suddenly.
“Sindri Valsson, Jonas Valur Hjaltason’s boy. He lives in Portugal now, as far as I’m aware. He and his father have some business interests there. What’s the procedure on this? Can we ask the Portuguese police to sling him on to a flight to Iceland for us?”
“Ah, you’ll be interested to hear that there are already enquiries being made in that direction. The financial and computer crime division have been watching the gentleman for a while now, so you’d better liaise with them and see if you can pool some resources. Who knows, you might get a trip to Portugal out of it,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “But, Svana Geirs. We need some progress there. The papers are on to this and we can do without the bad publicity, or that’s the word from above that’s filtering downwards.”
“And you’re filtering it down to me? Point taken. Give me a day or two and hopefully we’ll see things start to move. But I’m practically at square one again on this.”
Ivar Laxdal nodded slowly. “A few days, Gunnhildur. Report back to me when you have a lead, will you?” He stood up, collecting both empty mugs from the table. “I’ll see you at nine, and give my regards to Unnsteinn, would you?” he added, and marched from the room.
SIGRUN DISSOLVED INTO tears a second time over the remains of the pork steaks that Steini had cooked slowly to tenderness with tomatoes, onions and a few herbs that he flatly refused to identify.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffed.
Gunna and Steini glanced at each other helplessly while Laufey fed a laughing Jens with a portion of mashed-up food. Sigrun looked at Jens, gurgling and smiling to himself in the high chair that he was almost too big for, and dabbed her eyes.
“He looks so much like his father,” she said miserably. “The bastard.”
“Have you heard anything from Jorundur?” Gunna asked as a grim look passed over Steini’s face and he stood up to start collecting plates. Gunna motioned to Laufey to lend a hand, but she pretended not to notice.
“No. He’s at this place near Trondheim. His sister told me today when she called to ask about clothes that he’s working on a tunnel, and the slag he took with him’s had no trouble walking into a job. Would you believe it, I don’t even know the cow’s name?”
“I thought she was going to collect his stuff?”
“So did I, and if she doesn’t, she can pick it all up from the dump.” Sigrun poured herself another glass of wine. “Jorundur wants the house sold,” she blurted out. “But he can bloody well think again.”
“Is it worth anything these days?” Gunna asked. “I haven’t even had the heart to have a look at the property pages and see what this place might be worth now, but I guess it’s not much. Yours is quite a big place, though, so it should be worth a bit, shouldn’t it?”
“Yeah. But we’re in Hvalvik, not Reykjavik. Jorundur always was crap with figures and he can’t understand that anything we might get for the house is going to be less than what we owe on it. If we sell, neither of us gets anything and Jens and I would have nowhere to live. But he doesn’t want to see that side of it.”
It was painful to see the change that had taken place in Sigrun and the growing bitterness in her since Jorundur had left so suddenly. Gunna and Sigrun had known each other since Gunna had arrived in Hvalvik, with Laufey as a toddler and a school-age Gisli, to take over the village’s policing from the retiring officer in charge. She had found that her personal history was already well known and the subject of intense debate.
She looked up and saw the reassuring image of Ragnar S?mundsson, complete with his uniform cap at a slightly more than officially jaunty angle and a mischievous smile on his face, laughing down at her from the top shelf in the living room.
She shook herself from brooding and felt deeply sorry for Sigrun, having watched the burgeoning romance with Jorundur from its beginnings and Sigrun’s longing for children of her own that had culminated in the difficult and overdue arrival of Jens Jorundsson almost three years ago. Gunna had known deep inside her that Jorundur would only last a few years before straying elsewhere. The hand that had unexpectedly cupped a buttock and been swiftly swept away one evening in Sigrun’s darkened hallway had confirmed that for her, and she had watched helplessly as Sigrun lavished all her love and attention on Jens, while Jorundur increasingly occupied himself elsewhere.
“Y’know, Runa, I don’t know how I’d have managed without you that first year we lived in Hvalvik,” Gunna said as Sigrun upended her wine glass. “You remember all the trouble with the school? A real nightmare that was. If you hadn’t been there to look after Laufey, I’d never have got through it all.”
“God, yes,” Sigrun recalled. “It’s never easy in a small place like this. When I came here it was the same non-stop speculation about who I was, where I came from, who I was related to, what my bra size was, why I’d decided to live here and not in Reykjavik any more, why I was single, if I’d always been single. It was endless, and nobody asks you anything straight out. Crazy.”
“Isn’t it just? It was the same in Vestureyri, but I didn’t notice quite how nosy people can be until I came to live here. And it’s all just gossip and whispers, nothing said out loud.”
“You remember that rumour that we were, y’know, lady friends who were more than just good friends?” Sigrun crowed.
“Good grief. The blabbermouths have a lot to answer for sometimes,” Gunna said.
“You’re lucky with Steini,” Sigrun said with the minutest trace of envy. “He even cooks. What a gem.”
