“Ah,” she said to herself, clicking through them. “So that’s what you look like now.”
The tapping on the window of a bare branch of one of the stunted trees outside roused Baddó from a deep sleep. He was awake instantly and a hand went to his face as he awoke, fingering the drying scabs that had formed overnight. His jaw still ached and he washed painkillers down with a gulp of water so cold it was practically ice.
He had slept soundly, a relief after two days of running on adrenaline and keeping himself out of sight. Peering in the tiny mirror over the kitchen sink, he could see that his face looked no worse. The cut had lost some of its livid color and wasn’t quite so obvious, not that anyone looking him in the face was going to miss it. He wondered if his beard would grow back where the cut had sliced his cheek into ribbons.
Baddó stretched and looked out of the window at the snow-covered valley beyond. Although barely more than a few kilometers from the new main road, the summer house hadn’t been easy to reach. The Hyundai had been left by the side of the road on a bare stretch of ground where the driven snow would be carried off by the wind, although he was certain that a drift would now have collected in its lee. The hard part had been struggling through the snow, which had been untouched since the last person had been there in the autumn. He had been on the point of giving up and returning to the car when he finally found the place with the key hanging on a string inside the outer of the two doors, exactly where it had been kept the last time he’d been there more than twenty years earlier.
He had been exhausted and realized that hypothermia had been setting in as he fought through the snow. It had been bitterly cold, clear weather, while a stately dance was played out by the green and white bands of the northern lights shining on the crust of snow, undisturbed but for the tracks of a fox that had sniffed at the deserted cottage and gone elsewhere to hunt for food.
The microwave pinged and Baddó again privately thanked a God he had no belief in that the electricity supply hadn’t been cut off. The instant meal from the freezer was a welcome first hot meal in a couple of frantic days, and he flipped through a six-month-old newspaper as he forked up what the packet claimed were Cantonese-style noodles with chicken. Looking out of the window, he wondered whether to stay for another day to recuperate, admitting to himself that he was deeply tired. The attack and everything after it had taken their toll and his whole body ached, from his head to his feet.
He wondered about the men who had attacked him and if the one he had bottled had been badly hurt. He sincerely hoped so and his thoughts turned to whoever had sent those slack-jawed low-lifes to teach him a lesson. Turning things over in his mind, he decided there were a few candidates: people he had upset in the past who had long memories and harbored grudges. He smiled to himself, feeling the stiffness in his face. He could be patient and nurture a grudge as well as anyone.
With a start he remembered the fat envelope that Jóel Ingi had unwillingly handed over, and with his mouth still full of Cantonese-style noodles, he hunted through the zipped-up inside pocket of his coat and placed the package on the table in front of him, smiling to himself. He swallowed, pushed the remainder of the instant meal aside and tugged at the flap, pulling out a wad of notes. He thumbed the end of the first fat wad and froze.
He snapped off the rubber bands and lifted the 100-euro note on the top. Beneath it was a blank piece of paper, and beneath that was another. Apart from one note on top and another at the bottom, the whole of both wads of notes, the agreed 20,000 euros, was worthless, neatly guillotined paper.
Baddó sat back. One eyelid twitched violently. His instinct was to hammer the table with his fist and turn it into matchwood, but instead he took one deep breath after another. Jóel Ingi was a fool if he thought he could cheat Baddó. Bigfoot had a reputation and he would live up to it. Revenge would be administered and it would be harsh, but it would have to wait. He forced himself to think straight. The laptop that both Jóel Ingi and Hinrik had been anxious to find had to be valuable. It was time to pay Sonja a visit.
The man who hammered on the broken door looked like he would hardly fit through it, and Eiríkur was happy for him to go in front.
“Hinni! Open the door, man! It’s the law come for a chat,” he yelled through the letterbox, then went back to rapping on the door’s complaining timbers with a heavy set of knuckles. Behind him two more officers waited for the door to open, while Eiríkur brought up the rear.
A shadow appeared behind the single remaining glass panel and Hinrik’s bony form opened the door an inch, letting it stop on the safety chain.
“What?”
“Hinrik Sørensen? City police, as you well know, you being an old friend of ours.”
“What do the police want with us law-abiding citizens at this ungodly hour of the day?”
“Don’t talk shit, Hinrik. Open the door,” the first officer repeated, as Hinrik obediently closed the door, rattled the chain inside and opened the door wide.
The three drug squad officers, two bulky men and a woman with a healthy outdoors look to her red cheeks, swept past and the first one in secured Hinrik against the wall and kept him there.
“Any company, Hinrik?”
He smiled as the sound of the toilet flushing loudly reverberated through the apartment. The bathroom door opened and Ragga appeared in the doorway, eyes bleary but with a look of quiet satisfaction on her face.
“Good grief, cover it all up will you?” the first officer told her as the checked shirt loosely wrapped around her flapped open. He looked back at his colleague and shook his head, knowing that anything incriminating they might have found in the flat had just been consigned to the sewer, while Ragga grinned in delight.
“Sorry, boys,” she crowed, looking over her shoulder as she strode toward the bedroom. “I was caught short. Couldn’t wait a second longer. You know how it is.”
Two of the drug squad officers set about searching the living room, while one of them sat with Ragga and Hinrik, who feigned nonchalance as he stared from under his heavy eyelids at Eiríkur, who watched the professionals make a thorough job of it, even though they already knew there was nothing to be found.
“Clean as you like,” one of them grudgingly admitted once the search was complete. “Right, then, Ragga, my darling,” the senior man decided. “You can come with us while we take a look around the bedroom and my colleague can search your knicker drawer. You’d best stay here, Hinrik, so my friend here can have a quiet word with you.”
Hinrik looked taken aback, confused at the change of direction.
“What’s going on …?” he asked, surprised at the departure from the usual routine as the drug squad officers left the room and closed the door behind them.
“Where’s Baddó, Hinrik?” Eiríkur asked without any preamble.
“Hey, mate. I don’t know anyone called Baddó,” he protested.
Eiríkur took out his phone and punched in a number. “It’s ringing,” he said, leaving the phone on the table with the loudspeaker on.
“Where’s your phone, Hinrik?” Eiríkur asked.
“I don’t know. It’s somewhere.”
“It’s somewhere here, but where?”
Hinrik shrugged and spread his arms wide, as if to demonstrate his innocence, until the door creaked open and one of the searchers came in with a grin on his face. A cheap mobile phone buzzed and flashed in his gloved hand. “Is that one of you sneaky bastards calling our boy’s phone?”
“Could be,” Eiríkur said, taking the vibrating phone and dropping it in an evidence bag before placing it on the table, where it continued to demand attention until he ended the call on his own phone. A “missed call” message and a sad-faced smiley icon appeared on the phone in the bag.