“You’ve three minutes to come up with the whole story. Otherwise there’ll be a formal charge and not much chance of bail.”
Cornered, Skari’s eyes flitted from Bjossi to Helgi and back to Gunna. “Mum said you were a hard bitch.”
“Your mum wouldn’t say anything of the kind. Who wanted you to frighten this guy?”
“Come on. This was years ago.”
“Who?”
“Sindri.”
“Sindri Valsson?”
Skari nodded and hung his head.
“What, precisely, did Sindri want you to do?”
“I don’t remember. It was a long time ago, for Christ’s sake.”
“Then start remembering,” Gunna said with quiet menace. “You have another minute.”
“Sindri said there was this bloke who worked in an office on Skipholt. Didn’t tell me his name or anything, just gave me the number of his car. He said the bloke’d come out around seven, and I should scare the shit out of him and tell him to keep his nose out of what’s not his business. So I did.”
“This was just Sindri?”
“Sindri and his old man, both of them.”
“Where did this conversation take place?”
“At the club.”
“Blacklights?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
Skari shook his head as if he were talking to an idiot. “It was years ago. How the fuck should I know?”
“How soon was this after you beat Steindor Hjalmarsson to death?”
In a second, Skari was on his feet. “I didn’t! That was
Sindri! It wasn’t me and you can’t prove anything!” he yelled, eyes bulging.
“Sit down, Skari. I know it was Sindri.”
“So why d’you say that?”
“Because I wanted to be sure,” Gunna said sharply. “Now I can be. What do you know about it? Did you see it happen?”
“Might have.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
Skari heaved a deep breath. “Bjartmar was there. He pointed this bloke out to me and told me to kick him out, said he was a troublemaker.”
“Bjartmar did, not Sindri?”
“Yeah. I collared the bloke and walked him out, easy as you like, and slung him out the back door into the car park.” He paused. “Sindri just laid into the guy. I don’t know why, I’d never seen him before. Sindri fucking hammered him, knocked him flying and kicked him a few times, then went back inside like nothing had happened.”
“And he said nothing to you?”
Skari shook his head. “Bjartmar just said, ‘You saw nothing, right?’ And that was all.”
“You know who Gunnlaugur Olafsson is?”
“Who?” Skari asked, mystified.
“Bjarki Steinsson?”
“Look, I don’t know who you’re on about,” Skari replied angrily. “Who the hell are these people?”
“Hogni Sigurgeirsson?”
“I said, I don’t know who these bloody people are. All right?”
“Who was it who beat you up and put you in hospital?”
“Told you,” he said, dropping his eyes to the floor. “Polish bloke.”
“No, Skari,” Gunna corrected him. “I’m sick of listening to this particular broken record. Most of the Poles have already gone home and there isn’t a single Pole, Latvian, Lithuanian or even Mongolian who answers your description. So how about you come clean and admit it was Ommi?”
“What?” he asked, eyes wide. “Because …”
“Because what? I know you and Ommi go way back, but that’s not going to make a bit of difference.”
Skari hung his head and at last his fists unclenched.
“It was Ommi,” he muttered angrily. “Ommi and some little pipsqueak mate of his. I’d have had Ommi on his own, but his mate batted me round the head with a plank and I couldn’t think straight after that.”
Gunna turned to Bjossi in the doorway. “Got that?”
Bjossi nodded back at her and she looked down at Skari, sitting on the bed clenching and unclenching his big fists.
“And you’re going to give my colleague a statement to that effect, aren’t you?”
“Can I go home after that?” he asked hopefully.
“Make a statement and you can go home to Erla and the kids.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” Gunna said firmly. “All right, Bjossi, we’ll leave this chap to your tender care. Can you sort him out a lift home when he’s made a suitable statement?”
“Statement, yes. Don’t know about a lift, though. We’re a bit short-handed today and a car down as well.”
“Then put him in a taxi and tell the driver to take him to Hvalvik without going past the booze shop,” Gunna instructed. “And Skari?”
“Yeah?”
“Give your mum my regards when you get home, would you?”
HELGI DROVE, KEEPING steadily to the speed limit as cars and trucks whistled past them in the outside lane of Reykjanesbraut. As they passed the spot where she and Laufey had come across the accident a few days before, Gunna could see nothing to indicate that anything had ever happened there. “H?, Eirikur. Can you hear me?” She called into her mobile. Suddenly the car emerged from the black spot and she could hear him perfectly.
“Anything on that note?”
“Nothing much. No dabs. It’s printed on an ordinary laser printer of some kind, but there are thousands of those in use, so that’s no help. Nothing special about the paper, either. There are a few prints on the envelope, but nothing that we’ve been able to identify so far. We’re working on it, but I reckon they’re more than likely Hallur’s own.”
“But we fingerprinted him to eliminate him from Svana’s flat, didn’t we? So we’ll have those prints on file. Check the dabs, would you, and let me know as soon as you have anything?”
She ended the call and sat brooding in the front seat, hands in her coat pockets, watching the lampposts flash past.
“Was Svana being blackmailed, or was she doing the blackmailing? If so, is that why someone broke her head open, possibly with her own baseball bat?”
“Where to, chief?” Helgi asked as they approached the Hafnarfjordur outskirts.
“Skari had nothing to do with anything recent. All this stuff going on around Svana Geirs and her syndicate, it’s nothing to do with him. The same goes for Ommi. So who stands to gain on all this? Who’s doing the blackmailing? Is it someone who knows which of these bastards killed Svana, or is the person who killed Svana trying to cash in on the others? Someone within the syndicate? Hogni, maybe?”
“You know, I don’t bloody know. It gets more complex by the minute,” Helgi grumbled. “A few straightforward break-ins would be nice for a change.”
“If that’s the case,” Gunna went on, as if Helgi had said
nothing, “why so little? Twenty-five thousand euros is a stack of money for you or me, but for any of these high-flyers like Jonas Valur or Hallur, it’s small change.”
“Unless it’s not about the money.”
“It’s always about the money.”
