“Attempted murder, not suicide, then?”
“You’re the detective,” the doctor replied. “But it looks that way to me.”
GULLI ÓLAFS WA S alone in the Verslun office, picking at a laptop with one hand and holding a sandwich in the other. “Busy?” Gunna enquired.
“Hell! You took me by surprise,” he said, his headjerking back as the sandwich dropped from his hand.
“Sorry. The door was open. Where’s the rest of the staff?”
“There’s some kind of team-building exercise going on for an hour or two. Rubbish, really, but I said I’d look after things to get out of going.”
“Sensible man,” Gunna said. “I won’t keep you. Which newspaper were you working on when Steindór came to you with the story you told me about the other day?”
“Dagurinn,” Gulli Ólafs answered. “My first proper job. It was very new then, back when it was a real newspaper and not a freebie propaganda sheet.”
“So who did you tell about the story?”
“The editor was Arnar Tómasson. He died a couple of years ago. He was getting on a bit and smoked like a chimney, so it wasn’t a surprise. I think he’d had three or four heart attacks already by then.”
“And who else knew about it?”
Gulli Ólafs looked down at his laptop as it pinged quietly and he rattled the keyboard in a flurry of fingers. “Only Arnar. He was quite interested, but a couple of days later he told me to back off.”
“What conclusions did you draw from that?”
There was no hint of laughter in his grim smile. “The obvious ones. That Arnar had asked a few questions and found out that one of his cronies had a stake in it, so he wanted it glossed over.”
“And what research had you done? Did you approach anyone about it?”
“Oh, yes. The mayor’s office. No reply, as far as I remember. I tried the committee that was responsible for what was then called spatial resources as well, but didn’t get far.”
“Do you remember who you spoke to?”
Gulli Ólafs laughed and gestured at a copy of that morning’s paper on his desk.
“Him.”
Gunna looked down at a black-and-white portrait of Hallur Hallbjörnsson smiling from a lower corner of the front page.
“That’s the guy. It says here he had an ‘accident at his home,’ but the word is he tried to do himself in yesterday.”
“What was his reaction when you approached him?”
“Very positive, actually. He seemed keen to meet so he could refute any wrongdoing. But then …”
“Then what?”
“Arnar quietly warned me off,” he said, squinting as he peered down at the newspaper. “Then I had that rope round my neck in the car and figured I’d best leave well alone. Putting your job on the line’s one thing, but your life’s something else.”
“You didn’t think to go to the police at the time?”
“God, no.”
“You’d recognize the voice if you heard it again?”
“Absolutely,” Gulli Ólafs said firmly. “It was a long time ago, but I assure you it’s burned into my memory. A death threat’s not something that happens every day.”
“WHAT D’YOU RECKON, chief?” Helgi asked. “Hallur’s place next?”
“Yup,” Gunna instructed, stabbing at her phone. “Somebody let Sindri or Jónas Valur know that Gulli Ólafs was sniffing around, and presumably they put two and two together to figure out where the leak had come from. Gulli gets a warning, and Steindór gets a punishment that went too far. That’s my take on it.”
“Sounds about right to me,” Helgi said morosely, changing lanes too fast and earning an angry blast on the horn from the car behind. Slowing right down, he negotiated the quiet street, where Hallur’s Mercedes now occupied a place in the road instead of the drive.
“Hæ, Eiríkur,” Gunna bellowed into her phone. “Where are you?” Oh, right. No, listen. A little task for you, and it needs to be done today. But first I’d like you to tell Technical that I’m at Hallur Hallbjörnsson’s place and we need them to cast beady eyes over something, OK? As quick as you like.”
As Helgi waited patiently, he looked up the drive towards Hallur’s house, where a small face peered from the corner of the kitchen window at them. He smiled back and the face disappeared.
“Clutching at straws here, Helgi, but it’s worth a go,” Gunna said grimly, appearing at his side and marching towards the house. She noticed that the carved wooden sign proclaiming that Hallur, Helena Rós, Margrét Anna and Krist’n Dröfn live here was now protruding from the dustbin by the gate.
Helgi reflected that it seemed to be a day for angry women. Helena Rós sat with ill-controlled fury in her pristine front room, while two small girls sat quietly in the next room, engrossed in the television.
“How long has this been going on?” she demanded.
“Has what in particular been going on?” Gunna asked.
“How long had my husband,” she snarled the word, “been seeing that woman?”
“Ah, you mean the affair with the late Svana Geirs,” Gunna said. “Some considerable time, several years. Unfortunately, we’re not in a position to ask the lady herself.”
Helena Rós picked irritably at a plait that snaked lazily over one shoulder of her sweater, a traditional knitted one but with a modern cut that did without arms and which Gunna thought looked ridiculous.
“Several years? Jesus,” she muttered to herself. “Years?”
“How is your husband now?” Gunna asked, trying to speak gently.
“You mean how is my soon-to-be ex-husband?” Helena Rós snapped back. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Last night he was awake but sedated. I haven’t been to the hospital today, and I don’t think I’ll bother. I guess his parents and his brothers are there to soothe the poor boy.”
“Obviously we will need to ask him rather a lot of questions once he’s fit to answer them. Have you spoken to the doctors today? Do you know how he is or what the prospects are?”
“No idea. He may well be brain-damaged,” she said in a voice that fizzed with emotion. “Why the hell did you have to come and drag him out of the car? Why couldn’t you just have left him there for a few more minutes?”
“I’m afraid …” Gunna began, taken aback by the virulence of the woman’s fury. “I don’t need to tell you that would amount to murder. I have to ask you about your husband’s movements, in particular what he was doing on the eleventh. Are you aware of where he might have been that day, or what he might have been doing?”
“No idea. He leaves the house. I have no idea what he does or where he is until he comes back.”
“You didn’t suspect that he was having a liaison outside his marriage?” Helena Rós stood up and paced back and forth in front of the window with short, sharp steps.
“Of course I suspected. He’s that kind of man. I thought I had that side of him under control, though, at least since the girls were born. But what the hell do I know? The bastard, how could he do this …?” she said, as much to herself as to Gunna and Helgi.
“We need access to some of your husband’s bank details. There are transactions that need to be traced and his business interests need to be accounted for.”
“Feel free. You know where his office is,” Helena Rós snarled. “You were down there with him long enough the other day.”
“When were you aware that your husband was being blackmailed?” Gunna asked, letting the jibe sail past without acknowledgement.
“He was what?” Helena Rós screeched, knotting her elegantly manicured hands into fists. “How dare you?” she demanded, her face turning a deep red.