“Prints from the flat?”
“A good few, they’re still being worked on. Technical are a bit pushed at the moment.”
Gunna drummed the table with her fingernails.
“You might have to push them a bit harder if they don’t get on with it,” she said, and Eirikur looked dubious.
“I don’t like to. I know they’re doing what they can, and they’re short-staffed.”
“Aren’t we all? Any news of the real chief?”
Orlygur Sveinsson, their superior officer and the man nominally in charge of the unit, while well known to them by reputation, had yet to make an appearance after having been signed off on long-term sick leave.
“Lying on the sofa being waited on hand and foot while watching Police Academy 12,” Helgi cackled. They were all aware that enforced TV would be little short of torture for a man denied access to the golf course.
“Fair enough, it’s all down to us, as usual. I have the guy who fitted the burglar alarm in Svana Geirs’ flat coming over this morning to unlock a few things for me, and we need to start interviewing friends and acquaintances. Do we have a list to start with?”
Helgi laid a sheet of paper on the table, closely packed with names, addresses, phone numbers and indications of what each person’s relationship to the deceased had been.
“We’ll divvy that up between ourselves,” Gunna decided. “Now, Long Ommi. Any sightings of our errant convict, Helgi?”
“Excuse me, chief, do you still need me?” Eirikur asked.
“Not on this, but you might as well listen in, just in case Helgi decides to go on holiday and you have to take over. Go on, Helgi.”
“Not a bloody thing,” Helgi said morosely. “But a prizewinning idiot called Kristbjorn Hrafnsson, otherwise known as Daft Diddi, was admitted to casualty at the National Hospital on Thursday morning with a fat lip, various bruises, cuts and scrapes. What with Oskar Oskarsson in hospital in Keflavik, that pretty much gives us two definite sightings. The bastard might as well have just written ‘Ommi was here’ on the pavement and have done with it.”
“All right. I’ve been fortunate enough never to have encountered this particular ray of sunshine, although I’ve met his mother. Now I’ve also spoken to both Skari and Skari’s mum. The old lady loathes Ommi with a passion and Skari says nothing. So where does that leave us?”
Helgi lifted his hands up, palms in the air. “If he wants to keep his mouth shut, that’s his prerogative. But with that sort of injury, there has to be a damned good reason …”
“Which is what we need to winkle out of someone,” Gunna finished for him. “Right, guys. I have an appointment at Svana Geirs’ flat in ten minutes, so I’ll see you two in the canteen at lunchtime.”
THE WOMAN HE had lived with for fifteen years looked blank-eyed at him from the doorway of her parents’ house. Jon wanted desperately to sweep her into his arms and take her with him, not that he had anywhere much to go. Their own house had become a shell of the home they had both worked hard to make it. Practically everything that could be sold had gone. Even the living-room carpet had been exchanged for a couple of tanks of diesel.
“Have her back by eight, can you?” Linda said in the most neutral voice she could manage, although to Jon it sounded edged with barbed wire. He just nodded as his daughter skipped down the steps and put her hand in his. Didn’t the bloody woman understand that every hard word was like a smack in the face?
Linda watched with folded arms as Jon carefully strapped Ragna Gusta into the front seat and the little girl waved happily to her mother, who found suddenly that while she could wave back, finding a smile was more of a problem.
“Where are we going, Daddy? To our house?”
“I don’t know yet, darling. I thought maybe we’d go to Grandma’s place for a change. How does that sound?”
“Good,” she replied after thinking carefully for a moment. Jon spun the wheel to take the van out on to the main road, and the tools in the back rattled.
“I like this.”
“What’s that, love?”
“I like being in your work van. It’s funner than your big car.”
“Not funner. More fun…”
“You know what I mean. This car’s bigger and it smells different.” The only car now, Jon thought but didn’t say out loud. He didn’t know how to explain to her that the jeep had gone more than a month ago.
THE EXISTENCE OF a canteen was something Gunna was becoming accustomed to. In her years on the city force before leaving Reykjavik for the quiet of a post at the fishing village Hvalvik, the canteen had been a fixture where practically every officer met every other one.
She loaded two lamb cutlets on to her plate, added a single potato, some salad, decided to forgo gravy and carried lunch to where Eirikur was sipping coffee over his empty plate.
“That’s what comes of being late,” she said, cutting into the cold potato and discarding it.
“There’s no phone in Svana Geirs’ flat, is there, chief?” Eirikur asked. “No, don’t think so.”
“That’s what’s missing. No phone. Somebody like Svana Geirs must have had an iPhone or a BlackBerry. There’s no way round it—everyone has a mobile these days. Even my dad has one and he’s the world’s most old- fashioned man.”
Eirikur rarely mentioned his parents, but Gunna knew that his father was a clergyman and that Eirikur had several considerably older siblings. She sometimes wondered how easily Eirikur’s parents accepted his not being married to the girlfriend with whom he had a small child.
“It’s a thought,” she said, more to encourage him to continue than to say anything.
“She must have relied on a mobile. Even if people have a landline these days, it’s normally just for the internet connection. You just can’t function now without a mobile. So where’s Svana’s phone?”
“Do you have a number?”
“No. But I’m starting on some of her friends this afternoon and I’ll see what I can get out of them. It stands to reason. If we could get hold of it, it would give us a load of information on her movements that day.”
“Go for it. Let me know what you come up with.”
“GOD! AND RIGHT next door!”
Svana Geirs’ neighbour was alone at home and seemed pleased to have company when Gunna and Eirikur called on her. She was a tiny, doll-like woman, casually and fashionably dressed.
“I mean … Svana. It’s …” She floundered for the right words and eventually gave up, letting a despairing fluttering of hands speak for her.
“It must have been a shock for you,” Gunna said.
“God! Of course! I know this is Reykjavik 101 and you should expect it to be … er, like …”
“Rowdy sometimes?” Gunna finished for her.
“Yeah. Rowdy, lively. That’s it. But, God,” she said with emphasis, dropping on to a plush sofa while Gunna and Eirikur stood. Gunna thought better of the sofa and lowered herself on to one of the chairs arranged around a long dining-room table. The room was spotless. Gunna gazed around her with a practised eye and saw nothing cheap, from the minimalist pictures on the walls to the weighty crystal ornaments and the huge screen that filled one wall. She placed her notes in front of her and opened the folder.
“All right. You’re Arna Arnarsdottir?”
“That’s me,” she simpered.
“My colleague Eirikur Thor …” Gunna looked over at him, enveloped in the sofa’s grip. “My colleague spoke to you yesterday, and according to your statement you recognized some of the people seen leaving and entering Svana’s flat. Is that right?”
“Yeah, God. I saw one of them on TV last night as well,” she said in excitement.
“Who was that?”
“On the news!”
“RUV or Channel 2?”
Arna’s excited smile stopped in its tracks. “Er, I don’t know. They’re the same, aren’t they?”
“Not quite,” Gunna said. “Were you aware of the same people coming and going regularly? Or were there
