“Hello?”
“Jóel Ingi? This is Jón and we need to speak. I have something you want but it’s going to cost you.”
There was a moment’s silence as the passing traffic roared in his ears and rocked the car.
“What for? Why are you calling me?”
“I know Sonja and I can retrieve what you’re looking for-at a price.”
“How do I know you’re not stringing me along? How do I know this isn’t bullshit?”
Baddó sighed. “I know about Sonja, and I know about personal.is. Hinrik contracted me to do some investigation on your behalf, but you can forget Hinrik. I’m the professional; you deal with me now.”
“But I’d already paid Hinrik,” Jóel Ingi protested, a plaintive tone in his voice.
Baddó wanted to laugh. “That’s between you and Hinrik, but I have a feeling Hinrik will be busy elsewhere for a while.”
“What do you want?”
“I want five million, right now.”
“Cash? I can’t get that much money in cash.”
“You can get it in euros, so do it. Five million is thirty-two thousand euros. Let’s call it thirty thousand for cash, shall we?”
“Twenty thousand is the best I can do. But you have the …?” Jóel Ingi asked and Baddó wanted to punch the air with glee.
“Make it twenty-five thousand and I’ll make sure that what you don’t want seen doesn’t see the light of day. Understood?”
There was another long silence as the roar of the wind died down.
“You have the computer, then? I want that laptop handed back to me.”
Baddó thought fast and wondered what was so special about the computer. “It stays with me. You pay for it to stay safe-and for me to stay safe as well. You shit on me and I’ll do the same to you. It works both ways.”
“I’ll need to get the money together. I can’t do it straight away. And I need to see the laptop.”
“Of course,” Baddó said coldly. “You wouldn’t want anyone to rip you off, would you? Give me an hour. Call me on this number then,” Baddó ordered, and stabbed the red button.
Ívar Laxdal seemed to fill the whole of the detectives’ coffee room. Gunna, Eiríkur and Helgi sat around the table as Ívar waited expectantly.
“Gísladóttir, Eiríkur and Helgi. Well, Gunnhildur?” he invited.
“The woman who was pulling the stunts at the Gullfoss and a few other hotels is Hekla Elín Hauksdóttir. She calls herself Sonja as her business name and advertises on personal.is and a few other places, as far as I’ve been able to find out, such as classified ads in the press. She’s thirty-three years old and lives out at Kjalarnes with her husband and three children. One’s his, the younger two are theirs. She’s an actress, it seems, or was. Until a year or so ago they were living in Akranes; they lost their house when the bank foreclosed and managed to swing this old place instead. The husband is a decent enough character, a good bit older, disabled in an accident a few years ago when he lost his job.”
Ívar Laxdal nodded. “And she’s in an interview room right now, is she?”
“No, we haven’t tracked her down yet, but as we have her address, phone numbers and the number of her car, I don’t expect it’ll be long. According to her husband, she was out today recording an advert at a studio somewhere. That’s what seems to be left of her theatrical career: dubbing voices onto cartoons and reading ads for the radio.”
“Fine. What else? You didn’t bring me down here just for that, did you?”
“Far from it. What did you get from Siggi at comms, Eiríkur?”
“Mister zero-one-seven, who we are certain is Hróbjartur Bjarnthórsson, has been in touch with these numbers so far and we’re keeping a watch on his phone,” he said, passing across a sheet of paper. “He’s been pretty quiet most of the time. It seems he switches on his phone, makes a call, and then switches it off again, mostly from around the same area. But today the phone has been switched on all morning and these are the numbers called.”
Eiríkur tapped the sheet of paper and circled a group of numbers in red.
“This is an unknown mobile that Dísa over there at the drug squad believes is one of several used by a dealer called Hinrik Sørensen,” Gunna said. “These two here are the mobile and home phone number of Jóel Ingi Bragason,” she said, her finger on the paper. “Both calls were made less than an hour ago.”
Ívar Laxdal’s mighty eyebrows knitted. “Jóel Ingi? That snot-nosed young pup who lost his laptop and expected us to find it for him?”
“That’s the one. Either Baddó has been shadowing our investigation of what happened at Hotel Gullfoss when Jóhannes Karlsson kicked the bucket, or else he’d already been digging into it. Wherever we look, someone has been there first or right after us, normally calling himself Jón and telling people he’s in security.”
“He has been in security,” Helgi laughed and the smile disappeared from his face. “He spent seven years in prison in Kaunas, so he should know a thing or two about security.”
“You’re sure about this?” Ívar Laxdal growled.
“When I visit Sonja’s victim in Akureyri, who’s already been in touch? The mysterious Jón, who we have identified from CCTV at the Gullfoss as being Hróbjartur Bjarnthórsson, aka, Bigfoot Baddó,” Gunna continued. “We grill Magnús Sigmarsson, then he vanishes. That points to the mysterious Jón, who it seems had already pumped other hotel staff members for information. We start to get close to Jóel Ingi and, hey presto, Jón/Baddó again. He is now, without doubt, our prime suspect for Magnús Sigmarsson’s murder, as well as the manslaughter of Ásmundur Ásuson.”
“And now we have Jóel Ingi implicated in the mix as well,” Ívar Laxdal mused, elbows on the table and his chin resting on his hands as one stubby forefinger tapped out a slow rhythm against the other hand. “What do you want to do, Gunnhildur?” he asked suddenly.
“Probably what you won’t let me do.”
“Which is?”
“Haul Jóel Ingi Bragason down here and make him sweat. There’s something very suspicious about that young man.”
Ívar Laxdal smiled in a way that made his features light up under those heavy black brows. “You can do what you feel necessary, Gunnhildur, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a serious case and we can’t pussyfoot around with half measures. But there’s one piece of advice I’d like to give you before you approach the ministry.”
“And that is?”
“There’ll be an election soon. This year, or next at the latest. As they’ll be back out in the cold soon enough anyway, you can piss off the politicians as much you like. But don’t upset too many officials without good reason, as they’ll still be running things when we have new people in charge.”
A phone call to a friend in the car trade told her the mud-colored Hyundai was more than likely a stolen vehicle. The man with the scarred face was certainly not the Elma Líf Sævarsdóttir the car was registered to, and she guessed that there was something shady that linked Jóel Ingi, Hinrik the Herb and the desperate-looking man with his face covered in stitches.
With Jóel Ingi’s trail gone cold, she told herself that she could pick it up later, either from his home or the ministry, and the instinct developed during years spent in uniform told her the Hyundai would be worth tailing in the meantime. This time she was ready. The brown car toiled up the slope and the venerable Renault, sharp and well looked after in spite of its age, was quick enough to keep up at a respectable distance.
She followed it through the thickening afternoon traffic as it seemed to go aimlessly through the city and out the far side toward Kópavogur before joining the main road to Hafnarfjördur. She watched the Hyundai make a slow circuit of the harbor area, encountering locked dock gates several times before it occurred to her that the driver was lost.