the mask.
“Is he going to be all right?” she asked.
“Couldn’t say. D’you know how long he’d been in the car, or if he’s taken anything?”
“No idea. We just turned up and watched him I suppose for a minute or two before I went and had a look to see what was up.”
“Hard to say, then. We’ll get him off to Casualty. Might be a bit touch and go, though.”
“You reckon?” Gunna said.
“Yeah,” he said without looking up from Hallur’s face. “If it was a new Volkswagen with a catalytic converter, he’d probably be as right as rain in ten minutes, apart from a bastard of a headache. But an old heap like that Merc’s bound to be bloody deadly. Gunnhildur, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought so. If you ring up in an hour or so, they’ll tell you if he’s still with us. Who is he, by the way?”
“H?, MUM. BAD day?” Laufey asked brightly.
Gunna hung her coat on the back of a chair and then dropped into it.
“Why? Does it show?”
“Duh. Yeah.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. Since you asked, it has been a pretty crappy day. Where’s Steini?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him. Isn’t he at work or something?” Laufey asked with a trace of irritation in her voice.
Gunna realized as she pulled off her shoes just how tired she was and how draining trying to breathe life into Hallur Hallbjornsson had been.
“What were you doing, Mum? You look shattered.”
Gunna yawned and started to undo her blouse.
“I shouldn’t tell you things like this, but I’ve had to inform a lady that her husband tried to commit suicide this afternoon and that it’s still too early to tell whether or not he’ll be permanently brain-damaged afterwards,” Gunna said grimly.
Laufey sat wide-eyed. “Wow. Heavy.”
“And when she heard that it was me and Helgi who stopped the idiot from killing himself, she told us we should have let the bastard finish the job and then burst into tears. So right now she’s sedated in the same hospital as he is.”
“Definitely a bad day.”
“That’s what it’s like when you get to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Anyway, it’s been a bloody long day and I need a shower, badly,” Gunna announced, her blouse balled in one hand and wrinkling her nose. “Is that my smelly feet or yours?”
“Yours, Mum, definitely.” Laufey laughed. “What’s for dinner?”
“Dinner? You mean you haven’t cooked something ready for your old mum?”
“I thought Steini would be making dinner tonight.”
“Apparently not,” Gunna said through a second jawbreaking yawn. “A takeaway, then. Decide what you want and we’ll go and get it when I’m out of the shower.”
“Woo-hoo! Junk food!”
Gunna stopped in the bathroom doorway.
“Not pizza, though,” she decided. “Well, you can have pizza if you want. Some of that deep-fried fish would be good if they have it. See you in a minute,” she said as Laufey pounced on the local shop’s takeaway menu. “And ice cream,” she added through the closed door as the hot water started to run.
“Ice cream? Aren’t you on a diet?”
“To hell with the diet. I want ice cream,” Gunna yelled back. “Because I’m worth it.”
“WHAT DO YOU have for me, Gunnhildur?” Ivar Laxdal said with no preamble, overtaking at a smart trot as she made her way up the stairs deep in thought.
“What? Oh, sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?”
“Come with me. A quiet word before we both get busy.”
Ivar Laxdal took Eirikur’s chair, while Gunna sat scanning her own desk and the junk piled on it.
“Three primary suspects. Jonas Valur Hjaltason, Bjarki Steinsson, Hallur Hallbjornsson,” she said. “I think one of these three either murdered Svana Geirs or possibly made sure that she was murdered. All three of them had left fingerprints in her flat in the week before she died.”
A questioning black eyebrow crept up Ivar Laxdal’s forehead.
“It could be any one of them. Jonas Valur is a vindictive old bastard and he’s supposed to be here at nine to give a statement. You’re not a Mason, are you?” Gunna asked suddenly.
“Why?”
“Just because. Jonas Valur is, and it seems he’s a mate of Orlygur Sveinsson’s.”
Ivar Laxdal grinned and shook his head.
“Bjarki Steinsson is a bag of nerves and completely distraught,” Gunna continued. “Most likely because Svana had called time on the syndicate, so there’s the theory that he was so upset, he lost it and clobbered her. As for Hallur, who knows
what his motives could be? Certainly he stood to lose his political career if the story came out.”
“Sure? Plenty of people have stayed on in politics after being caught with their trousers round their ankles.”
“Yeah, admittedly. But this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill fuck on the side. He’d been paying her upkeep for the best part of two years. Somehow I don’t think his career could have survived that.”
“And the brother?”
“Possible, but I don’t believe so.”
“S?valdur thinks Omar Magnusson is the killer. He’s killed before.”
“Or not. We certainly have enough to look very hard at Sindri Valsson as the man genuinely responsible for that killing.”
“And he’s gone to ground somewhere, which a cynical man would see as an admission of a guilty conscience.”
“Someone cynical like me,” Gunna agreed.
“What next?”
“Clear some of the paper.” Gunna looked with distaste at the contents of her desk. “Listen to what Jonas Valur comes up with, pay a visit to Hallur’s poisonous wife and then start putting pressure on Bjarki Steinsson. There’s something about this syndicate that none of them have been telling us, and I reckon he’s the most likely one to crack.”
“I’ll leave you to it. Let me know how you get on,” he commanded, and made for the door. “Don’t screw up on this, Gunnhildur. We have to get this one right. If we don’t …” He merely shook his head sadly.
GUNNA WAS DEEP in paperwork when her desk phone rang. She snapped out of updating her case notes and heard Sigvaldi on the front desk announce gloomily that she had a visitor.
“Eirikur,” she called out, rapidly signing forms without bothering to read them a second time. “There’s a good friend of the police downstairs. How would you like to go down to reception and bring him up here to an interview room?”
“All right,” Eirikur replied, rising from his seat. “Who’s that?”
“Jonas Valur Hjaltason. Delightful man, a philanthropist and a gentleman,” she said drily. “Tell him I won’t keep him waiting.”
But Gunna did keep Jonas Valur waiting, delayed by an encounter with S?valdur on the way, and their disagreement over charging Omar Magnusson left her devoid of the good humor she had acquired by having signed off long-overdue paperwork.
“Apologies,” she said irritably, bustling into the interview room where Jonas Valur lounged in one of the
