Chilled To The Bone Part 29

'Hobbies? Activities? Clubs? Politics? Friends?'

AEgir sat back and his eyebrows twitched. Mar looked blank. 'He works out a lot. Fitness is important to him. When I go to the gym, he's normally either there already or on the way. Politics? I don't think he takes an interest. At least, not an active one. He doesn't have many friends, as far as I know, not after he left the bank.'

'What? Explain, will you?'

'He used to be a legal adviser at one of the main banks before the crash. He left the bank about six months before everything went wrong, so I don't know if he'd seen it coming or what, but he got out and applied for a post here instead. I gather most of his friends were in the banking sector and pretty much cut him off after the crash.'

Gunna looked squarely at him without saying anything until Mar's hands fluttered. 'I really don't know why. I suppose they resented the fact that he'd managed to get out with clean hands and a few million stashed away. There were never any questions about his role at the bank. He wasn't called in by the winding-up committee. As far as I'm aware, he came away from it with his hands clean.'

'And his personal life?'

Mar shrugged. 'I really don't know. He doesn't have close friends. I suppose I'm the closest thing he has to one,' he said haltingly. 'Although . . .' he tailed off and paused.

'Although what?' Gunna prompted.

'I'm not sure his marriage is all that stable. He's devoted to Agnes, but it's quite a stormy relationship. They can both be pretty volatile and I've seen them practically fighting one minute and in each others' arms the next.'

'Understood,' Gunna said, making notes before turning to AEgir Larusson. 'This laptop you're so keen to retrieve. What's on it that's so important?'

'You're not security cleared. All I can say is that it contains sensitive data.'

'Just who is going to be inconvenienced if this sensitive stuff leaks out? Joel Ingi? You? Someone higher up?'

AEgir scowled and his face flushed. 'I'm not at liberty to say. All I can say is that we consider it important that this information doesn't fall into the wrong hands.'

'And whose hands would those be? The press? Another ministry? The opposition?'

AEgir shoved his chair back. 'That's all I have to say,' he said abruptly.

As he put the phone down and the panic started to rise again, Joel Ingi saw his phone flash a second time. While he hoped that it was Agnes calling to heal the rift between them, he knew deep inside that an apology would have to come from him first.

'h.e.l.lo,' he said, answering the call even though his instinct had been to ignore it.

'Hae, my name's Skuli Snaedal and I'm a journalist at the Reykjavik Voice,' he heard and froze. 'h.e.l.lo?' the voice continued. 'h.e.l.lo, is that Joel Ingi Bragason? Are you there?'

'I'm here,' he said after a long pause. Fatigue seemed to have eaten its way deep into his bones as he closed the car door. 'I'm sorry. This isn't a good moment. Can it wait until tomorrow?'

'I have an allegation from a foreign human rights group that four asylum seekers arrived in Iceland in 2009, but that they weren't processed in the usual way and were instead immediately put on a flight leaving the country. Can you confirm that this was the case?'

Joel Ingi heard a buzzing in his ears that almost drowned out the sound of the man's voice. He felt a sense of removal, as if he were looking down on himself from above.

'It's not something I can comment on,' he said.

'That's a shame, as we have been given copies of emails that appear to have been sent from your ministry email address, implicating several officials and confirming that a transfer could take place at Keflavik airport, where these four people were placed on a military flight leaving that same evening. Are you telling me this didn't happen?'

He sighed. 'I'm sorry. I really can't comment.'

'Was the minister aware of this?'

'I told you, I can't comment. Listen, I'm not well. I'm on sick leave right now. You need to contact the ministry about this, not me.'

'I'll have to say that you declined to comment, and that you're implicated personally.'

'You need to speak to AEgir Larusson. Do you want his personal numbers?'

She almost missed the Hyundai move off and had to accelerate hard to keep it in sight as it rounded the corner. She bullied her way into the road, ahead of a pickup truck whose driver flashed his lights angrily at her, and put her foot down in spite of the icy road, praying that the nails in the tyres would keep her from sliding. As darkness fell, the frost accompanied it. The air was so cold that her first breaths almost hurt and the road under the Renault's wheels crackled as the water on it became gla.s.sy ice.

Her eyes were glued to the Hyundai's lights as she watched it drive along the Hafnarfjordur seafront before taking the road back towards Reykjavik. With two cars between them, she waited at the lights, pulling away fast and taking note as the mud-coloured car swung sharply right and drove through yet another industrial area, this one a series of workshops and offices. As the car stopped on the forecourt of an empty workshop, she cruised past to the end of the road, did a quick U-turn and came slowly back, stopping outside a pizza place in the middle of an untidy knot of badly parked cars.

She reached down and picked up a small pair of binoculars from the pocket in the door, confident that she couldn't be made out by the Hyundai's driver as she focused them on the brown car and its occupant, his elbow resting on the wide-open driver's window as he scanned the road. Her heart beat faster as a second car pulled up alongside it, and she recognized the black Audi, and Joel Ingi getting out of it to walk towards the Hyundai.

She desperately wanted to know what words pa.s.sed between them, as well as what was in the package that went from Joel Ingi's hand and disappeared inside the brown car. A moment later Joel Ingi was gone. The Audi was speeding away, too fast for her to follow, but his trail could be picked up later.

She wondered what was going on as the Hyundai headed out of town in the steady stream of rush-hour traffic, northwards past Mosfellsbaer, and she decided that anything north of the tunnel under Hvalfjordur would be far enough.

Staying just far enough behind to keep the mud-brown car in sight and trying to keep at least one car between the two of them, she saw it overtaken by a grey van as it slowed and pulled off the road into a lay-by occupied only by a dormant roads-department bulldozer. She slowed down as well, dropping her speed low enough to see the driver hunched over the wheel, his phone to his ear.

She kept her speed as low as she could, watching the mirror for the brown car's reappearance, but she saw nothing. She decided to give up, and at the Kjalarnes turnoff she slowed down and pulled into the middle lane, disappointed that she'd wasted the best part of an hour on a futile trip out of town and determined to get back to the job of tailing Joel Ingi, which had now been made more difficult by the fact that she would have to remain out of sight.

She stopped at the Kjalarnes petrol station, pulling up by the pump and taking the opportunity to fill the car's tank. Inside the shop she bought a newspaper, a sandwich and a bottle of water as a belated lunch, deciding to take a break, but was surprised to see the mud-brown Hyundai appear on the forecourt. Instead of coming into the shop, the car nosed up to the drive-by service window, where the driver, his face partly hidden by a hood, ordered a hot dog and a bottle of fizz, which were handed to him by the bored boy behind the counter.

As the car pulled away, she dropped her sandwich onto the seat beside her and followed, trying to keep the same discreet distance as before. This time the man with the scarred face took a detour around Kjalarnes, stopping for a few minutes at the far end of the village with the engine running as the driver stared at an old house a little way outside the settlement. After a few minutes, he turned back the way he had come to the main road and, worryingly, again headed north. With the tunnel entrance approaching, she decided the chase had to be cut short, and slowed down in order to use the turnoff for the old Hvalfjordur road the tunnel had replaced for a U-turn. The Hyundai did the same. Keeping it as far ahead as she could without losing sight, she watched it slow down and turn off.

She wondered why he was going along a road that was only occasionally cleared of snow and which would lead to nowhere but a few isolated farms and summer cottages. Deciding that the Hvalfjordur road would be too much for the Renault, she watched the Hyundai's lights disappear into the distance, before turning back to town, and the job in hand, wondering about the significance of the old house at Kjalarnes.

Gunna rubbed her eyes with the heel of each hand. She shook herself and went through a list of numbers. Frustrated, she called a number and was rewarded with a 'this number is not available' message, with no invitation to leave a message of her own. She drummed the desktop with her fingertips and instead dialled Petur Steinar Albertsson's home number, listening to it ring a dozen times. She was about to put the phone down when there was a click.

'Er . . . h.e.l.lo?'

'h.e.l.lo, my name's Gunnhildur and I'm with the city police force. I'd like to speak to either Petur or Hekla, if either of them are home.'

'There's n.o.body here. Just me.'

'That's a shame. Are they going to be long, do you know?'

'I dunno.'

'Is that Sif I'm speaking to?'

'Yeah, that's me,' was the surprised response. 'Who are you?'

'I'm Gunnhildur. I really need to speak to your dad or to Hekla. It's important.'

'I don't know where they are. Why don't you call the mobile?'

'I would if I had the number.'

'Wait . . .'

Gunna drummed the desk with growing impatience as a m.u.f.fled conversation could be heard in the distance before Sif returned.

'You there?'

'I'm here.'

Sif reeled off seven digits and Gunna wrote them down and repeated them.

'Is that your dad's phone or Hekla's number?'

'It's hers. Dad never goes anywhere, so he says he doesn't need one.'

'Who's there with you, Sif? You said you were alone.'

'My friend,' she retorted. 'What's it to do with you, anyway?'

'No reason. Just wondering. Thanks, bye.'

She quickly dialled the number Sif had given her, comparing it to the communications division's list as it rang, nodding as she recognized it as one of the numbers Baddo had called that afternoon.

'Hae. This is Hekla. I can't take your call right now, so leave a message. Thanks.'

Gunna put the phone down in disgust.

'Helgi, why the h.e.l.l do people never answer their mobile phones?' she demanded.

'Beats me. My kids tried that for a while, not answering when I called.'

'Do they still do it?'

'Nope. I told them that as I was paying for their phones, if they didn't answer when I called they could pay for their own airtime. Why? Laufey being awkward?'

'Not at all. It's Hekla Elin that I'm trying to get hold of. No reply, blast her. Are you off?'

'I am, and so should you be, chief. It's getting late.'

'I've a good mind to drive out to Kjalarnes and sit by her front door until she turns up.'

'You should be going home.' Helgi said firmly, snapping his gla.s.ses into their case. 'It's late and we've been here since we were called to the hospital at some unG.o.dly hour of the morning. Remember?'

'Was that really today? It feels like it was weeks ago.'

'It feels like I've spent a week on that idiot Holmgeir Sigurjonsson's paperwork, and I have to say I feel I've done the community a service having locked that waste of skin up.'

'Yeah. Until a magistrate pats him on the back and tells him not to do it again.'

'Well, there is that, I grant you. But if you're going out to Kjalarnes, then I'll go with you.'

Gunna shook her head. 'Go home, Helgi. Let's pack it in for the day. I've asked for a uniformed patrol to run out to Kjalarnes a couple of times tonight to check there's nothing untoward going on there.'

'Why's that?'

'I don't know. I've been trying to track the b.l.o.o.d.y woman down all day and haven't been able to get hold of her, and I can't help feeling there's some part of all this that we haven't figured out yet.'

Helgi pulled on his coat. 'Come on then,' he prompted.

'Come on, what?'

'I'm not going home until you're out of the building, so will you get a move on, please?'

Gunna stood up and stretched, knotting her fingers and cracking her knuckles. 'All right. You sound like my dad,' she said. 'In at seven?'

'Yeah. That'll do me.'

'You can be early and go with Eirikur if you want.'

'Why?'

'He's tagging along with the drug squad tomorrow for an early start. Rather him than me.'

Joel Ingi parked the Audi behind Katrin's Saab and looked across the snow-filled garden at the bas.e.m.e.nt flat's windows. A dim light was shining from one window and he could see the flickering of a television behind the curtains. Still nervous about being followed, he locked the car and looked about him before making his way past the garden gate, which was permanently open in a drift of snow, and knocking at the door.

He had left his coat in the car and it was cold. He shivered, rubbing his hands to warm them, and was about to go back to the car when the door opened a crack. An indistinct face and some dark hair that didn't belong to Katrin could be seen in the narrow opening.

'h.e.l.lo?'

'Hae. I'm looking for Katrin. This is her place, isn't it?'

'Yeah, but she's not here at the moment. I'm not sure when she'll be back.'

'Her car's there.'

'She can't have gone far if she's not driving. D'you want to give her a call?'

'I don't have a number. I work with her, I was just wondering if she was going to be long?'

The door opened a little wider. 'You're Joel Ingi, aren't you?'

'I am.'

This time the door opened fully and a pet.i.te girl with a sharp nose and inquisitive eyes looked him up and down.

'You must be Ursula. I saw you at the sushi place we went to the other day.'

'You'd best come in. It's freezing out. You want a coffee? Or a beer? You know Katrin talks about you all the time?'

He sat down in the flat's tiny living room and stretched out his legs while Ursula clattered in the kitchen.

'Lived here long?' he asked.