Magnús nodded, prepared to agree to anything that involved not being drowned in the bathtub of a cheap rented flat.
“You’ll also go into the phone records and get me the number of the phone that called to tell you this guy needed some help upstairs. Understood?”
“I’m not sure I can-”
“Do it,” the man said in a cold, hard voice. “I’m not going to play games. I know where you work. I know where you live. I know where your girlfriend lives. You get my drift? And if anyone else asks you about this shit, you don’t know anything.”
He stood up and picked up his toolbox. Magnús strained against the tape holding his wrists as the man made for the door. “Can you …?” he pleaded.
“Use your teeth, can’t you?” the man replied with a smile that was even more unnerving than his scowl. “It’s only sticky tape. It’ll give you something to do while you think through what we’ve been talking about.”
It took Gunna an hour to tease just part of the story out of Valeria in a session that came to a halt halfway through when she ordered Hákon out of the room. Without her overbearing husband present, Valeria had spoken more freely, but Gunna could see that much of what she said was hearsay and gossip. A hard worker, she had only worked at the Gullfoss for a few months after its new owners, who owned several hotels in and around Reykjavík, had acquired it and set about modernizing its systems and standards. One of the city’s older and more respected hotels, the new owners wanted to smarten it up discreetly and make it more efficient, but without losing the patina of age and respectability that their more trendy hotels lacked. Staff from the other hotels had been brought in to start making those changes. Ástrós had been promoted to a supervisor’s job when she was transferred from the Harbourside Hotel and chose Valeria as the hardest worker to go with her.
Gunna wanted to track down Ástrós and push her harder than she had the previous day now that it had virtually been confirmed that Jóhannes Karlsson’s experience had not been a one-off-apart from its abrupt ending.
She stalked back into the lobby of Hotel Gullfoss at three, hoping that Ástrós would still be there. There she found her and two men struggling to remove the bed from the room that Jóhannes Karl had died in the previous morning.
“It has to go,” she panted as she hauled the mattress out of the door. “Policy. Someone kicks the bucket in the hotel, everything in that room has to go. Just as well it doesn’t happen too often. I’ll be right back.”
“It’s just as well the forensic team had finished in there,” Gunna said, half to herself, as Ástrós shuffled along the corridor with the mattress behind the two men carrying the bed’s frame. There were a dozen black bin bags that Gunna presumed contained the curtains, bedding and anything else from the room, which now looked stripped. A shadow of clean red carpet marked out where the bed had been, and showed just how old the carpet was.
Gunna peered at her phone, found Albert’s phone number and listened to it ring. To her surprise, it was answered after only a few buzzes.
“Albert.”
“Hæ. Gunna. Any news? Sorry. I know it was only yesterday. I thought you’d seen the directive,” Albert said caustically.
Suspicious, Gunna was immediately on her guard. “Directive? Who from?”
“Upstairs. Due to budgetary restrictions forensics are now only able to attempt to perform miracles on even dates between one and five, weather permitting.”
“Sorry, Albert. Of course I saw that, but I didn’t think it applied to you. Look, I’m in this room that you went over yesterday. It’s been stripped so I hope you got everything you needed.”
“Yup, and I can tell you the name of the person who left that hair in the wash basin.”
Gunna was silent for a moment. “Already? I thought getting DNA analysis results took weeks? Go on, then. Make my day.”
“Barbie.”
“Barbie?”
“That’s right,” Albert laughed. “Barbie. It’s not real hair. It’s fake, from a wig. Plastic hair.”
“I see.”
“So we reckon it’s either Barbie or Elton John. Take your pick,” he said and paused. “Are you a bit slow today, Gunna? A blonde moment or a senior moment?”
“Ach. Sorry, Albert. No, just a bit preoccupied. There’s a lot going on at the moment.”
“I know. Knitting booties …”
“Get away with you,” Gunna retorted, and found that the reminder was not a welcome one. She stifled the urge to yell at Albert. “Do you reckon you can get any more information from that hair, whatever it is?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have a stab at figuring out what the material is and you might be able to track down the supplier, that’s assuming it was bought in Iceland and not abroad.”
“Yeah, or through eBay or something. It could have come from anywhere.”
“I suppose so,” Albert said and she could hear the sound of voices behind him as his attention was no longer on what she was saying. “There can’t be that many wig suppliers in Iceland, surely? But that’s your department, something for the detectives to detect.”
“That’s as maybe. But we only perform miracles on special occasions these days, unlike you guys, who have to come up with them every other day.”
Ástrós was nervous, frightened and reluctant to speak. Gunna pondered her words as she drove through the city center, past the slipways and old whaling ships to where the square block of the Harbourside Hotel occupied what had once been a hardware shop with shipping companies on the floors above. The shipping companies had long ceased to exist, although a few of their crests were still displayed prominently high on the walls, and the hardware store had moved to shiny new premises in an industrial park on newly reclaimed land across the road.
Inside the building nothing remained of what had once been there, as if everything had been stripped from the shell of the building and replaced. Gunna guessed that this was roughly what had been done. A smooth tiled floor stretched into the distance to a reception desk where, not that many years earlier, there had been shelves of nails, shackles and cans of paint.
“I’m looking for the manager. Is he on duty today?” she asked, taking advantage of the empty lobby and bored receptionist.
“Uh. I think so.”
Gunna waited. “Where can I find him, then?”
The receptionist shook herself from her reverie and tapped at the computer.
“He should be here.”
“Right here?”
“Yeah. He’s in charge of reception today.”
“But he’s not here?”
“No. Can I ask who wants him?”
The girl looked sharper having seen Gunna’s ID and took a decision. “You need to see the operations manager,” she said.
After some whispered phone calls, Gunna found herself in a plush office, an aromatic coffee at her elbow.
“Símon Arnarson,” the short man with a grey-streaked goatee and a twinkle in his eye introduced himself, extending a hand to be shaken. “What can I do for you?”
“My name’s Gunnhildur Gísladóttir and I’m with the city CID. We have an investigation in progress and I’m looking for someone who may or may not be involved with the death of a guest at the Gullfoss. I take it you’ve heard about that?”
Símon nodded enthusiastically. “Nothing official, but I heard from my colleagues. Word gets around fast. You know both hotels are owned by the same company? Part of the same group, not that we like to use that word too much these days.”
Gunna put the pictures on the desk, next to the rapidly cooling coffee. “This is the person I’m looking for, and I have reason to believe there was a similar incident here as well yesterday?”