Chilled To The Bone Part 4

'So the next thing we see on the tape is this,' he said, eyes still glued to the screen as Johannes Karlsson emerged from the lift with a swagger, and looked both ways along the plush corridor just as the young woman had done, before disappearing from view.

'That's it, is it? We don't get a view of the door to the room itself?'

'Nope, according to that weird night porter, the cameras record the lift and the door to the stairs, so that they only record who goes to each floor, not who goes to which rooms. It's a human rights violation, apparently, if they record who strays into someone else's room.'

'And this is the kind of place lawyers can afford to stay in, so I suppose they have to be careful. Helgi, what's your take on all this?'

Helgi sat back; the recording was paused with Johannes Karlsson's back freeze-framed in the swing doors leading to the fourth-floor suites. 'Simple. He orders a hooker, meets her in the bar downstairs. They go up to the room separately, although I'd bet the staff here knew exactly what was happening. She takes off her bra, his blood pressure goes through the roof when he gets an eyeful of her t.i.ts, he has a heart attack and she gets out as quick as she can.'

Gunna held her chin in her hands as she looked at Johannes Karlsson's broad back on the screen, frozen in mid-stride. He had been a big man, and a muscular man in his youth, who walked with all the a.s.surance that money or power can give.

'I reckon you're probably quite right. I'm sure this isn't a murder case, but we're going to have to talk to this woman and get her side of what happened. I doubt we'll even be able to pin an immoral earnings rap on her as it's her word against ours that they were anything other than just good friends,' Gunna said thoughtfully. 'Not that I expect Johannes Karlsson's wife will be too impressed.'

'Right enough,' Helgi agreed.

Gunna stood up. 'But as this guy was a wealthy man, and I'd guess he has a few friends in high places, we'd best cover our backs and do it all by the book, otherwise it'll come back to haunt us later. I'm going to have a chat with some of the staff again. Go through the rest of the recordings, will you, and see if you can get a glimpse of her leaving the building so we can see when she left?'

Maria wasn't home and the flat echoed. Baddo's head buzzed after three beers and he reflected that a few years ago three beers would have been nothing more than the precursor to something better. Years of enforced abstinence had merely ensured that three beers made him want to spend the rest of the afternoon sleeping on his sister's sofa.

He made coffee, and made it strong enough to bring him back to reality with a jerk. A sandwich of cheese and cold peas mashed into the thick bread helped settle his stomach and, with a second mug of extra-strong coffee at his elbow, he looked at the envelope on the table in front of him.

Baddo reflected that he could return it to Hinrik the next day, unopened, and tell him that he couldn't do the job. But he knew that wouldn't be acceptable to the man in the leather jacket who made barmen jump with a wave of his little finger. He shook his head, disappointed in himself that his curiosity had got the better of him, instead of turning down Hinrik's job without asking any questions.

There were two photographs in the envelope. Printed on heavy gloss paper, but grainy and not as distinct as he would have liked. Looking at them carefully, Baddo decided that one at least was lifted from CCTV footage and showed a dark-haired woman in a tracksuit top zipped up under her chin and with the straps of a bag over her shoulder. The expression on her face was tight and determined, as if there were an insecurity or a tension about her. The ringlets of black hair fell past her eyebrows and around her head to her shoulders, as if she were hiding behind them.

The second photograph showed another woman. Taken in better light, this one was clearer, showing a woman in a pale dress, caught looking over her shoulder to give a three-quarter view of her face. Baddo admired the long legs that ended in surprisingly low-heeled court shoes.

Tall, he thought. She must be one-eighty, one-ninety if she can get away without heels.

He placed the two pictures side by side and tried to compare the dark-haired woman looking past the camera to the tall blonde smiling at someone or something to one side. He stood up and rooted in a kitchen drawer, eventually returning to the table with a cracked magnifying gla.s.s that had lost its handle. Any thought of sleep had gone and it wasn't because of the extra-strong coffee cooling in a mug at the corner of the kitchen table.

He pored over both pictures, starting with the backgrounds. The blonde was standing in a big room, and Baddo could make out tables and chairs in the distance. A restaurant, he guessed. Or maybe it could be a club of some kind. The dark-haired woman appeared to be in a corridor, with a blank wall over her shoulder and an indistinct sign tacked to the wall behind her, half cut off by the edge of the picture. He stared at it through the gla.s.s and finally made out 'ncy Exit' picked out in large square letters.

'Emergency Exit', he decided with satisfaction. That means a restaurant, a club, a hotel, a school, an office even. Or some kind of government building, maybe, he mused.

Last, he turned to the two faces, as if to confirm his suspicion. The tall blonde in the slimline dress bore remarkably little comparison to the dumpy-looking girl in the tracksuit, but the blonde's bobbed hair accentuated her cheekbones, while the black curls made the other's face look broader and rounder. Placing one as close to the other as he could, Baddo went from one to the other and, within a minute or two, he was sure. The set of the jaw and the shape of the nose told him that the two were either sisters, or else the same person.

He sat back thoughtfully.

'So who are you, darling?' he asked himself, looking at the clock and slipping his jacket on. 'And who have you upset so badly that they've paid that evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d Hinrik hard cash to find out who you are?'

Gunna left Helgi and Eirikur to deal with the staff at Hotel Gullfoss while she went back to her desk at the Hverfisgata police station, where paperwork galore awaited her. A note on her desk asked her to look in on ivar Laxdal, the senior officer in charge of what was nominally the serious crime unit, except that a general lack of serious crime in Reykjavik had ensured it remained part of the team of detectives working from the cramped office. The unit's chief inspector, orlygur Sveinsson, had briefly returned to work to take up the post he'd been given, only to see a revival of the long-standing back problem that had already kept him off work for a long time. His three-week stint in charge had been blessed by nothing that could be cla.s.sed as the sort of serious crimes the unit had been created to deal with, leaving Gunna and the others to handle the usual break-ins, 'borrowed' cars and stolen mobile phones during a wonderfully peaceful hiatus. Word had already spread that orlygur's departure for the couch at home seemed to have coincided with a spate of a.s.saults, an attempted murder and a rape case that Gunna privately doubted would ever come to court.

She looked at the screenful of emails that needed to be dealt with, deleted half of them unread and immediately felt better, before looking at ivar Laxdal's note, noticing that it had been written by the man himself, rather than a phone message relayed through someone else. She wondered if he was still at work, looked at the clock and decided to see if he could be found in person instead of calling his office.

'Ah, Gunnhildur,' ivar Laxdal's voice boomed behind her as she neared the canteen. 'Coffee?'

His uncanny capacity to appear when needed, or when his presence was likely to be most awkward, never failed to unnerve his officers, although Gunna was starting to get used to it.

They had missed lunch by several hours and the canteen tables were being wiped down. ivar Laxdal brought two cups of strong coffee and Gunna noticed her stomach complain. She felt the need for something solid and ruthlessly banished the thought.

'What happened at Hotel Gullfoss? Anything we need to worry about?'

'I don't think so. Looks like one of those jobs that's straightforward but takes some time. Helgi's on top of it at the moment. Why? Something you have in mind?'

'Just the usual,' ivar Laxdal said, a thumb rasping against the bristles under his chin as he scratched it while flipping through a list that Gunna could see had been written with an old-fashioned fountain pen on plain paper, rather than a computer printout. 'We have a spate of break-ins in the western end of town. It looks like someone is targeting houses while the occupants are at work; every one has been carried out between two and four in the afternoon as far as the statements can tell us. There have been a dozen so far and it's getting serious.'

'Is that one for me?'

'I think so. Read through the reports and let me know where you want to take it. Then we have a child abuse case, a boy of twelve who appears to have been not so much abused as ignored. He's been throwing out all kinds of stories after he was caught shoplifting for the twentieth time and social services want it investigated,' he said with the bland air of a man reading a shopping list. 'Then there are the usual stolen cars, one alleged rape and a mugging outside a nightclub on Friday night.' He looked up suddenly with the innocent smile that Gunna knew to be wary of.

'Go on.'

'I had a call from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,' he said. 'Believe it or not, we have an African desk at the ministry and it seems that a departmental secretary has lost a computer they would rather like back. It's a MacBook, apparently, quite an old one.'

Gunna tapped the side of her head in disbelief. 'You are joking, aren't you? They want us to find a lost laptop?'

ivar Laxdal looked impa.s.sive and broke into a smile as he handed the list over to her. 'Gunnhildur, between ourselves, I don't care one way or the other. The ministry won't tell me much except that they lost a laptop and they want it back.'

'If they want it back that badly, their best bet would be to go through the small ads until they find whoever's selling it.'

'I know. All I want to be able to do is tell them that I've a.s.signed it to someone. Go through the motions, would you? Talk to someone there and pretend that there's a hope in h.e.l.l of finding their laptop. I'm a lot more interested in this fatality at Hotel Gullfoss. Tell me more, would you?'

'It looks like an old chap had booked himself a kinky escort and his blood pressure couldn't cope with the excitement. Name of Johannes Karlsson, in his mid-sixties and no featherweight.'

'The shipowner?' ivar Laxdal asked, an eyebrow turning into a questioning inverted V.

'No idea. Helgi's looking into his background and trying to get hold of the man's wife.'

ivar Laxdal nodded sagely. 'Tread carefully. If it's him, then expect a few ructions. It's a prominent family, well connected. Just make sure all the boxes are ticked.'

'You mean they donate heaps of money to one or other of the political parties?'

'Probably. They're the kind of people who will have influential friends, so be prepared. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about,' he said, depositing a file on the table. 'This gentleman was released from prison in Lithuania and shipped home via Denmark. He arrived just before Christmas and the airport police had a chat with him. Hrobjartur Bjarnthorsson. Remember him?'

Gunna shook her head, trawling her memory for the tongue-twisting name.

'Better known as Bigfoot, maybe?' ivar Laxdal prompted.

'Ah, yes. How could I forget him? Used to do a bit of debt collecting, didn't he? Haven't heard him mentioned for years.'

'He upset someone in Lithuania eight or nine years ago and ended up serving his sentence without a single day's remission for good behaviour, or so I'm told. Anyway, he's back now and I'd like an eye kept on him.'

Gunna frowned. 'Has he done anything?'

ivar Laxdal spread his arms questioningly. 'Without a doubt. But are we looking out for anything specific? No. I'd be surprised if he didn't do something, though. It's not as if he's the type to get a job emptying the bins for Kopavogur council. More than likely some scores will need settling, so it would be no bad thing if he knows a friendly eye is being kept on him, and that others also know we're watching him.' He stood up. 'I'll leave the file with you and you can have a look through it when you have a chance, Gunnhildur. No pressure.' He smiled. 'But if you look back to 1994, I'd be interested to see what your take on that is. It's also interesting that he didn't want to be shipped home to sit out his sentence in the four-star hotels we have for prisons here. In fact, he fought not to be shipped home. Why, I wonder?'

He poured the last of his bitter coffee down his throat and was gone, leaving Gunna with a file that she knew, with a sinking feeling, was either going to eat up any chance of a lunch break, or at least half the evening.

'Hae, Mum.'

'Didn't expect to see you here, sweetheart,' Gunna said in surprise. 'Soffia's not with you?'

There was something about Gisli's bearing that instantly set Gunna's alarm bells ringing. He looked nervous, twisting the keys to his Pajero in his fingers and repeatedly checking his mobile phone.

'Going to sea tomorrow, are you?'

'Postponed. There's a problem with one of the fuel pumps, so we're not sailing until the weekend now.'

Gunna reached for the coffee jar.

'Already made some, Mum. It's in the thermos,' Gisli said quickly.

'What?'

'I made some coffee. I thought you'd be home about now and I wanted a word.'

Gunna sat down at the little breakfast bar that Steini and Gisli between them had built, and poured herself a mug. 'What's the matter, Gisli?'

'Ach . . . Nothing . . . Laufey's not home is she?'

'No, your sister's at Sigrun's and she's babysitting until about eight. Steini's doing a job in Akranes today and won't be back until tonight, so we have the place all to ourselves. Now, what's the matter? Soffia's all right, isn't she?'

She poured coffee into another mug and pushed it towards Gisli.

'Well, yeah. Sort of,' he dithered, and Gunna looked at him with the silent tell-me-more expression she used on suspects but had to remind herself not to use on family.

'It's like this . . .' Gisli said, fumbling for words. 'Soffia . . . she's great and I love her to bits . . .'

'She's a lovely girl,' Gunna agreed. Her prospective daughter-in-law had been Gisli's girlfriend for more than a year, and while Gunna had been concerned they were too young to settle down, she was certain that Soffia, with her quick intelligence, sharp humour and red curls, would calm her son down into a responsible young man. The news of Soffia's pregnancy had been disturbing to start with, but it seemed that the young couple had everything organized. Gisli would take the winter off from the trawler he had been working on and use the time to study for his mate's certificates, while Soffia was confident that her teacher training could continue uninterrupted.

Gisli gulped. 'It's like this . . .' he said while Gunna waited with growing concern.

'Soffia's chucked you out?'

'No. Nothing like that. Well, not yet, at any rate. f.u.c.k . . . sorry, mum.'

'Gisli! Calm down, will you? Take a deep breath and start from the beginning.'

Gisli stood up and walked around the kitchen, car keys and phone rattling in his fingers. 'It's like this. You know when we told you that you were going to be a . . .'

'A grandmother. Yes, I remember. That sort of thing doesn't happen every day.'

'Look. You weren't very pleased, were you? Said we could have waited a year or two.'

'I know. I still think you should both have finished college first. But these things happen, and considering I was sixteen when you came along, I'm in no position to preach.'

'The thing is, Mum,' Gisli continued, pausing again and sitting back down on a stool opposite her. 'The thing is that you're going to be a granny twice over.'

There was a long silence and the clock over the stove ticked to fill it. Even the radio burbling in next door's garage could be heard.

'Twins?' Gunna asked eventually. 'Tell me Soffia's having twins.'

Gisli shook his head in misery. 'You know when we went to Vestureyri for Granny arnina's funeral last year and you had to stay behind while I went south and Drifa got a lift with me to Reykjavik?'

'Your cousin Drifa?'

'Well, she's not really my cousin. She's uncle Svanur's stepdaughter.'

Gunna thought back to the tall girl with the midnight hair and black clothes, who seemed to have gone from a gawky high-school adolescent to a stunning young university student in the s.p.a.ce of a single summer.

'Soffia's having a baby in April and Drifa's having one in . . . ?'

'May.'

Gunna stood up and wondered what she could say that she wouldn't regret later. She stared out of the window at the grey slush on the road outside and the shadow of the distant mountains with moonlight glinting on their white slopes.

'Gisli . . .'

He sat with his head in his hands. 'I'm really sorry, Mum.'

Gunna reached for the kitchen cupboard and pulled out the bottle of cognac that was kept behind the packets of breakfast cereal.

'I think we both might need one of these,' she decided, putting the bottle in front of Gisli and reaching for two shot gla.s.ses from the cupboard under the bar.

'You could have woken me up this morning,' Agnes complained. Joel Ingi checked his phone again and set the alarm for six. 'What's the matter with you anyway? You've been like a cat on hot bricks the last few days.'

She sat on her side of the bed and hauled her dress over her head, rolling it into a ball, which she threw clumsily towards the washing basket by the bedroom door, where it hit the wall and landed on the floor instead.

'I'm all right. Just tired.'

He sat on the bed and lay back, trailing fingertips down the vertebrae studding Agnes's back as she unclipped her bra and sent it flying to land next to the dress. More curves than when they'd met all those years ago, but that's no bad thing, he thought.

'Shall we . . . ?' Joel Ingi asked invitingly. 'It's not that late yet.'

'A second ago you were tired.' Agnes dropped her nightdress over her head without turning round. 'Just get some sleep, will you?'

Friday It was dark, and the damp chill promised a miserable day, although the drizzle that had replaced the last few weeks of sporadic snowfall had started the long process of melting the hardened ice in the street outside Joel Ingi's apartment. He swept the car out of the underground garage and into the street, where the tyres juddered on the ridges and troughs left in the packed snow. He swore quietly. Agnes had wanted to buy a 4 4, but he'd told her not to be ridiculous. Apart from the rare visit to the tourist attractions of Gullfoss or Thingvellir with visiting foreign friends requiring a fine summer's day, they never went further than the airport at Keflavik or the new shopping mall at Korputorg, and the grey Audi was more than good enough for that.

'It never snows in Reykjavik, or hadn't you noticed?' he had asked with a derisory laugh that Agnes hadn't failed to remind him of once the unseasonal snow began to fall.

He pushed the car cautiously along the city's main road. He could have walked easily enough, but today he felt like using the car and there was the chance that he might need it later. The roads were quiet, while the car park at the gym was already half full with 4 4s and a handful of cars.

Joel Ingi ran for a few kilometres, cycled for six and did some bench presses for the sake of his abdominals, which he felt were starting to get a little too soft for comfort. A shower and an hour later, he plunged from the gym back into the morning darkness, the door swishing shut behind him. As the Audi hummed onto the road and into the wake of a slow-moving truck spreading grit, a tired Renault appeared in the mirror and he wondered if it had followed him from the gym.

He noticed the short-lived rain had turned to occasional flakes of snow spinning in his headlights and that the Renault stayed with him all the way along Saebraut. He tried to see the driver in the darkness, stepping on the brake at intersections to throw a little light onto the face that had to be there. Eventually he simply told himself to stop being so stupid and that the car probably belonged to some deadbeat in a dead-end job who couldn't afford anything better. The Renault rolled past him, its nailed tyres rattling on the newly sc.r.a.ped road surface, and on along Snorrabraut as he turned off for the ministry. He still hadn't managed to catch sight of the driver, other than a glimpse of a bulky green coat and a baseball cap.

The moment Gunna woke, the previous day's news came flooding back to her and she arrived at the Gullfoss Hotel brooding over the frustration she had suppressed on the morning drive to Reykjavik. Usually driving for almost an hour to Reykjavik provided valuable thinking time but today it had been agonizing, with work driven from her mind. Deciding to start at the hotel rather than going to the station at Hverfisgata, where piles of paperwork and emails awaited her, she found Kolbeinn in the hotel's bar. He looked up from polishing a gla.s.s, put it on the rack on his side of the bar and let loose a winning smile.