and it needs to be done today. But first I’d like you to tell Technical that I’m at Hallur Hallbjornsson’s place and we need them to cast beady eyes over something, OK? As quick as you like.”
As Helgi waited patiently, he looked up the drive towards Hallur’s house, where a small face peered from the corner of the kitchen window at them. He smiled back and the face disappeared.
“Clutching at straws here, Helgi, but it’s worth a go,” Gunna said grimly, appearing at his side and marching towards the house. She noticed that the carved wooden sign proclaiming that Hallur, Helena Ros, Margret Anna and Krist’n Drofn live here was now protruding from the dustbin by the gate.
Helgi reflected that it seemed to be a day for angry women. Helena Ros sat with ill-controlled fury in her pristine front room, while two small girls sat quietly in the next room, engrossed in the television.
“How long has this been going on?” she demanded.
“Has what in particular been going on?” Gunna asked.
“How long had my husband,” she snarled the word, “been seeing that woman?”
“Ah, you mean the affair with the late Svana Geirs,” Gunna said. “Some considerable time, several years. Unfortunately, we’re not in a position to ask the lady herself.”
Helena Ros picked irritably at a plait that snaked lazily over one shoulder of her sweater, a traditional knitted one but with a modern cut that did without arms and which Gunna thought looked ridiculous.
“Several years? Jesus,” she muttered to herself. “Years?”
“How is your husband now?” Gunna asked, trying to speak gently.
“You mean how is my soon-to-be ex-husband?” Helena Ros snapped back. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Last night he was awake but sedated. I haven’t been to the hospital today, and I don’t think I’ll bother. I guess his parents and his brothers are there to soothe the poor boy.”
“Obviously we will need to ask him rather a lot of questions once he’s fit to answer them. Have you spoken to the doctors today? Do you know how he is or what the prospects are?”
“No idea. He may well be brain-damaged,” she said in a voice that fizzed with emotion. “Why the hell did you have to come and drag him out of the car? Why couldn’t you just have left him there for a few more minutes?”
“I’m afraid …” Gunna began, taken aback by the virulence of the woman’s fury. “I don’t need to tell you that would amount to murder. I have to ask you about your husband’s movements, in particular what he was doing on the eleventh. Are you aware of where he might have been that day, or what he might have been doing?”
“No idea. He leaves the house. I have no idea what he does or where he is until he comes back.”
“You didn’t suspect that he was having a liaison outside his marriage?” Helena Ros stood up and paced back and forth in front of the window with short, sharp steps.
“Of course I suspected. He’s that kind of man. I thought I had that side of him under control, though, at least since the girls were born. But what the hell do I know? The bastard, how could he do this …?” she said, as much to herself as to Gunna and Helgi.
“We need access to some of your husband’s bank details. There are transactions that need to be traced and his business interests need to be accounted for.”
“Feel free. You know where his office is,” Helena Ros snarled. “You were down there with him long enough the other day.”
“When were you aware that your husband was being blackmailed?” Gunna asked, letting the jibe sail past without acknowledgement.
“He was what?” Helena Ros screeched, knotting her elegantly manicured hands into fists. “How dare you?” she demanded, her face turning a deep red.
“It’s possible that your husband’s mistress was blackmailing him, probably for a considerable amount of money.”
“Good God.” Helena Ros suddenly gulped, letting herself fall back into a chair. “I don’t believe this. The bloody man, the bloody, bastard, bloody man. I knew there was something, just knew it.”
“Do you have a joint or separate bank accounts?” Gunna asked.
“Both. We have one for the family finances and we each have our own accounts for anything else. God knows how many accounts Hallur had. I think he’d lost count himself,” she said, and Gunna noticed that she was already referring to her husband in the past tense. “Why on earth couldn’t you have come five minutes later or five minutes earlier? That way he’d have been either dead, or at least alive and healthy enough to be made to suffer,” Helena Ros wailed. “Do I need a brain-damaged husband? Me?”
At last a flood of tears broke and she ran for the bathroom, hand to her face to stifle the nosebleed that Gunna saw with satisfaction had left a trail of bright drops on the rich cream of the carpet.
“Not easy to feel sorry for her, is it?” Helgi observed.
“Not really,” Gunna agreed. “She feels so sorry for her bloody self that any pity from us would be overkill.”
“Next, chief? Think we’ll get anything out of her?”
“Nope, but I’m going to leave you here, if you don’t mind, Helgi.”
“What? With that witch?”
“Yup. I want you to go down to Hallur’s office in the basement. She’ll show you where it is. Start going through it and see what you can find.” Gunna stood. “I need to get back to Hverfisgata and see if Eirikur has finished the little job I asked him to do.”
ANNA FJOLA SIGURBJORNSDOTTIR’S lips pursed into a thin, bloodless line as Gunna appeared in the doorway.
“Good afternoon, Anna Fjola,” Gunna offered, willing herself to be civil. “Is the lord and master in?”
“I think so,” the secretary said quietly. “I’ll see.”
She gingerly opened the door behind her and said a few muttered words before swinging the door open and unwillingly ushering Gunna in.
Jonas Valur sat behind his antique desk, and Gunna could sense immediately that her appearance was less than welcome. “What now, officer?”
The light from his desk lamp cast sharp shadows over the hands that held a sheaf of papers, neatly clipped together.
“Why did you state that you’d been here all day without a break on the eleventh?” Gunna demanded without waiting.
“What do you mean?”
“I have witnesses and evidence that put you outside this office around midday on that day. You were out and about for at least an hour.”
“Jesus, are you never going to let this go?” Jonas Valur groaned. “All right. I may have gone round the corner for a bite to eat. I don’t remember.”
“Anna Fjola would, and pressuring her to commit perjury on your behalf is hardly a reward for all those years of loyal service, is it?”
Jonas Valur glowered back and said nothing.
“How much was Svana Geirs after?”
“What do you mean?”
“Svana had called time on the syndicate, and she wanted a goodbye present. How much?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then what was the emergency meeting of the syndicate the night before she died all about?”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about, officer,” Jonas Valur said coldly.
“Bullshit,” Gunna said brusquely. “Jonas Valur, where is your son?”
“How dare you speak to me like that? Watch your step, Sergeant, I have plenty of influential friends.”
“I’m supposed to take that as a threat, am I?”
“As far as I am aware, my son is travelling on business. As I expect you know, he no longer lives in this country.”
“If anyone knows where he is, I’m sure you do.”
“I have no comment to make,” Jonas Valur said, his face visibly pale even in the warm cast of the desk lamp.
“You’d best give your friendly lawyer a call, in that case, because I’ll be back,” Gunna said, sweeping from the room without waiting for a reply and closing the door behind her.
