Outside on the street he looked around him, watching out for the parka and baseball cap. Neither could be seen so he set off uphill, slowly, stretching his legs with each step after his day in the cramped office. With the car left behind he hoped to have thrown off his pursuer, but it also mean that he would have to forgo his visit to the gym in the morning. Maybe a workout at lunchtime would be in order? His head was roaring and he felt slightly faint, but he carried on all the same, glancing to the left and right, occasionally stopping to look in the window of a shop so he had an opportunity to look behind him.
A blonde woman with a small backpack and a purposeful look about her strode smartly past him, stepping with one booted foot into the slush of the gutter as she passed. Once she had gone, Jóel Ingi seemed to have the street to himself. Relieved, he pushed open the door of the smart block of flats, where his apartment occupied the top floor, and waited for the lift to arrive, just as the woman with the backpack peered around the corner, nodded to herself and quickly thumbed a text message into her phone.
Eiríkur wrote down instructions as Gunna barked them out, head down over his pad.
“Any questions?” she asked once Helgi and Eiríkur had been given their orders.
“Straight away?” Eiríkur asked.
“Straight away. You’re on shift until tonight, so you can start with the hotels this afternoon. This isn’t serious enough to warrant any overtime, so just do what you can. All right?”
“Do you think it could get that way?” Helgi asked.
Gunna ran her fingers through her hair and sat back. “You know, I’m really not sure. I’m trying to decide whether this is a bizarre one-off of the kind that we won’t see again for twenty years, or if there’s something bigger going on that we haven’t had a sniff of until now. That’s why I want a few questions asked, quietly. I really don’t want to ring any alarm bells.”
“You mean you don’t want to get hauled over the coals again for upsetting people with important friends?”
“It’s not so much that. I don’t want to get a roasting for something you two reprobates have done. Right. Tomorrow. Helgi and I are on an early shift, Eiríkur. If you’re starting at twelve, I suggest we meet at the bus station for lunch, compare notes and move on from there. Show of hands?”
Helgi and Gunna put their hands up. Eiríkur sat on his. “Why do you two always want to meet up at places full of old people?”
“Because they serve sheep heads and mashed swede at the bus station,” Helgi said, almost salivating at the thought. “Proper old-fashioned food. The kind I don’t get at home any more.”
“Plus you can park at the bus station. It’s not far from here and it’s not full of yuppies and terrible music. So, motion carried two to one. The bus station it is.”
Baddó leafed through the phone book. There were a few Haraldur Samúelssons there, but only one outside Reykjavík. Using a mobile phone with a pay-as-you-go SIM card bought that morning at a petrol station, he dialed the mobile number next to Haraldur Samúelsson’s phone book listing and waited. There was no answer and the number switched to voicemail and a pleasant avuncular voice. Baddó closed the connection.
Next he tried the landline and was rewarded with yet another voicemail, this time a pleasant female voice informing him that there was nobody home right now, and inviting him to leave a message for Halli or Svava.
So he’s married, Baddó thought with delight, hoping that the repeated ducking had concentrated Magnús’s mind enough to remember the name right. It was just as well, because when he called the hotel at four, an irritable woman had simply told him that Magnús had called in sick. He thought of using his usual trick of hinting at something official without saying outright that he was a police officer, but instead he thanked her politely and left it at that.
Wheels. I need to get some wheels, he thought. He had borrowed María’s car that morning to pay Magnús’s flat a visit, but he wouldn’t be able to do that often as it could be traced back to him. Besides, María needed the car to get to her lousy minimum-wage job that just about paid the rent.
He took the bus, an unlikely passenger among the few elderly and very young people making their way home on a cold evening. It was just as well that Magnús’s girlfriend only lived in Kópavogur. His guess was right. Outside her parents’ house a shabby Golf had been badly parked between a Volvo and a bright yellow Toyota.
Baddó wondered how long he might have to wait. Waiting wasn’t a problem after what must have added up to several years of solitary confinement; he generally preferred his own company. What could be a problem was to be observed waiting, especially if the weather turned even colder. As it happened, there was no need to wait for long. Baddó stood motionless in a bus shelter across the road for almost an hour watching the house. A corpulent man in a sheepskin coat emerged and kicked the tire of the badly parked Golf before reversing the Volvo out into the street and driving away. Another half an hour and a light in one room clicked off. Then another, over the front door, clicked on before the door opened a crack.
Baddó left the shelter and was across the road in a few steps, squatting on the Golf’s passenger side out of sight as he listened intently to two people arguing on the steps.
“Come on, Sara. We’re adults now, aren’t we?”
“You heard what my dad said. I’m sorry, Maggi.”
Baddó wondered if Magnús had told his girlfriend about his uncomfortable experience that morning and waited.
“I’ve had a fucking shit day. Now you’re chucking me out and I don’t want to go home.”
Baddó frowned in the shadows. Maybe he had told her.
“Oh, don’t be so stupid, Maggi. I’ll come and stay at your place over the weekend, but I’m not staying if you haven’t cleared up all that stuff in the hall.”
“Æi. It’s not that simple. Look, I have to leave and find somewhere else. The landlord wants me out already.”
Baddó heard Sara sniff dismissively. “Don’t be so silly. He can’t throw you out if you have a rental contract. He must know that.”
“Yeah. It’s not that easy …” Magnús said plaintively.
“Call me tomorrow, will you? At work, not at home. I don’t want to upset them any more. Come on. You’d best be gone before my dad comes back,” Baddó heard her say and imagined her standing behind a half-closed door, ready to shut it.
“Oh, all right,” Magnús finally said in a sulky tone that made Baddó want to laugh. The door closed with a click and he could hear footsteps descending the flight of steps down from the front door. He counted six steps across the frozen gravel of the drive. The Golf’s central locking opened all the doors simultaneously, and as Magnús got into his car, he found himself staring incredulously at Baddó grinning at him from the passenger seat.
“Hæ, Magnús. Didn’t expect to see me so soon?” Baddó greeted him and shot out a hand that grabbed Magnús by the throat as he turned to open the door. “Less of the hurry, young man. Let’s go for a little drive, shall we? Nothing hasty, Magnús, or I might have to do something unpleasant.”
As soon as Gunna left the city behind her and passed the aluminium plant at Hafnarfjördur, all the worries and concerns that had plagued her came flooding back. What was Gísli going to do, and how was she going to tell Svanur that her son had made his stepdaughter pregnant-assuming he didn’t know already.
Reykjanesbraut was dark, and as Gunna saw the streetlights on either side of the road waving dolefully in the wind she realized she needed to concentrate as a gust of wind hit the car and threatened to send it spinning into the central barrier.