With barely sixteen years between them, she and Gísli had almost grown up together. They had always been close, to Gunna’s mind closer than her contemporaries were to their children, especially as Gísli’s father had played no part in his son’s life. The narrow age gap had forged a bond that others found difficult to understand, though it had been threatened several times. When Gunna had met and married Ragnar Sæmundsson, it was as if Gísli, then only eight, had drifted into his own little world, from where Raggi’s attention and perseverance had eventually drawn him out. When Laufey was born, though, there was nothing to indicate that he resented the arrival of a little sister.
When they had been hit by Raggi’s death only a few years later, Laufey remembered almost nothing of him, while Gísli had been left with fond and enduring memories of the stepfather who had only been with them a few years, but who had made a lasting impression on him. The shock had battered them all, but Gísli proved to be the pillar Gunna leaned on in order to get herself through those tough early months as well as, she reminded herself, the black moments that still returned occasionally.
Picking over the past and asking herself what had gone wrong, Gunna almost missed the turning to Grindavík that would take her across the lava fields to Hvalvík, the run-down coastal village where she had been the village copper until just recently.
She wondered if Gísli would appear that evening and hoped that he would. She worried that her reaction to his news the day before could have been taken the wrong way. The news a few months earlier that Gísli’s long-term girlfriend Soffía was pregnant had been a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. It only took Gunna a week or two to get used to the idea of becoming a grandmother before her fortieth birthday. Soffía had been radiant, planning and looking forward to motherhood.
Skirting Grindavík, she saw that there was spray coming over the harbor walls and hoped there would be some time for the weather to abate before Gísli’s next trip to sea, then she scolded herself for worrying unnecessarily about him. The ship he sailed on as a deckhand was big and modern enough to cope with the worst weather the North Atlantic could throw at it.
There were more far more dangers for a young man on shore, she reflected bitterly, coasting down the road into Hvalvík and through the village, stopping outside the terraced houses in a row right on the edge of the lava fields. She sat in the car for ten minutes outside the darkened house. No lights indicated that Laufey was either at some club or else with Sigrún, the friend who once used to babysit the precociously clever girl when police business called for Gunna to work awkward hours.
She wondered how Drífa must be feeling. She struggled to recall much about the stepdaughter her elder brother Svanur had taken on all those years ago when he’d moved in with a woman with three small children. Drífa was the eldest, a quiet, studious girl who had blossomed in her first year away from home at university in Reykjavík. A year later she had become unrecognizable as the same person. Still vivacious and outgoing, Drífa had started dressing in black, coloring her hair and wearing heavy silver jewelery, while her university course in accountancy had been abandoned as she switched to sociology and immersed herself in politics.
Gunna held her head in her hands. She wondered what Drífa saw in Gísli, a stolid young man with no radical views and who seemed to have a career path mapped out ahead of him. She wondered how Soffía had reacted when Gísli told her his news, imagining the anger and disappointment at what she would surely see as a betrayal of the worst kind. She couldn’t help sympathizing with Soffía’s situation, having parted company with Gísli’s father long before the boy was born all those years ago. She was also certain that Soffía was her preferred choice of daughter-in-law, a fiery but level-headed girl with a mind of her own. Drífa was an unknown quantity, as she’d only encountered the girl on a few occasions and had to trawl her memory to dig up any details about her.
A tap at the window shook her from her reverie and she looked around to see Laufey’s toothy smile beaming at her from underneath the hood of the parka that encircled her face.
“All right, Mum? Thought you were asleep there. Forgot your keys?”
“No. Sorry, sweetheart. Just miles away.”
“Okay. Sigrún says hi. What’s for dinner?”
Gunna was hit by the realization that she hadn’t even thought that far.
“I have no idea. Open the door and I’ll be right with you, darling. There’s something I need to tell you about,” she said with a feeling of dread.
Magnús drove carefully through Kópavogur, wondering what the brooding man in the passenger seat had in mind. Baddó merely pointed in which direction he wanted to go as he thought what to do next. The wind buffeted the car as they drove through Gardabær and down the hill into Hafnarfjördur, keeping off the main roads and among the traffic.
As they cruised through Hafnarfjördur and joined the evening traffic leaving town, Baddó sighed.
“The tart at your hotel,” he said suddenly. “Seen her before?”
Magnús was silent for a moment. “Where are we going?” he stammered finally.
“Never you mind. That woman at your hotel. You’ve seen her more than once, haven’t you? Who does she work with?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“It must be a racket. Who’s she working for? Or is she solo?”
Magnús shook his head wildly. “I’m telling you. I saw her a couple of times. I don’t know what she was doing there. We’re not supposed to ask.”
Baddó grinned in satisfaction. “Ah. We’re getting somewhere at last. So you have seen her?”
“Er. Occasionally. There was yesterday, and the time before that was months ago, last summer.”
“This businessman, Haraldur. He was in a bad way, wasn’t he?”
“He was very upset.”
“Not too fast. Keep to eighty. Tell me what happened. Every detail,” Baddó instructed as the lights of Reykjanesbraut flashed by, illuminating the beads of sweat running down Magnús’s face.
“He booked the room, paid in advance. She came to the hotel and asked for him. They sat in the bar for a while. I didn’t see them leave. I thought she’d left the building. About an hour and a half later there was a call to the front desk; said a man was in trouble in four-oh-six and would we help him?”
“Was it a woman calling?”
“I don’t know. Someone else took the call.”
“And you went and untied him?” Baddó said delightedly.
“Yeah. I don’t know what went on in there but I got housekeeping to clean the room and get it ready right away. The man, Haraldur, came down and checked out on the spot, even though he was due to stay for a few more days.”
“So he left? What do you know about this guy?”
“Nothing. He’s in some sort of business. I don’t know what.” They were past the lighted part of Reykjanesbraut and Magnús became increasingly nervous in the darkness as cars and trucks sped past them, throwing gritty slush in their wake. “Where are we going?”
“Not far. This woman, then, has she done this stunt before?”
“Stunt?”
“Fuck me, boy. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Promises these old farts a spanking, ties them up and then clears out with their wallets. It’s not that hard to work out, is it?”
“Oh … I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, has she?”
“What?”
“Done this before?”
“Er … I don’t know. Maybe. There was some talk a while ago, but we were all told not to say anything about it. Look, how far are we going? There’s not much petrol left in the tank.”
“In that case, you can come off at the next roundabout.”
Magnús slowed and eased the car down a slip road to a small roundabout at the bottom, where he stopped the car. He tensed and Baddó extended a bear-like hand.