“Sit down, will you?” Gunna growled, speaking for the first time.
“Idiots,” Helena Rós hissed, ripping the two letters into shreds and dropping the pieces with a flourish on the desk as she dropped back into the chair.
ÍVAR LAXDAL RUBBED his chin irritably, the first indication Gunna had seen that he might be tired.
“What’s the situation with Hallur now?” he asked.
“He’s not doing well. It seems he has a level of brain damage due to oxygen starvation. It could be weeks or even months before we can understand quite how much damage has been done, and all the indications are that he may never be fit to stand trial. One doctor says he’s going to be a twelve-year old for the rest of his life. Another says he should make at least a partial recovery, so we’ll have to wait and see.”
“But there is some good news for you,” Ívar Laxdal said. “Högni Sigurgeirsson is being flown back to Reykjavík right now from Tórshavn.”
“What? Out there in the east? What was he doing there?”
“No, Tórshavn in the Faroes. It seems he arrived there the day before yesterday. Showed up on a flight from Reykjavík with a bag full of money, still with Jónas Valur Hjaltason’s name tags on it, and brandishing Jónas Valur’s passport.”
“Sounds weird, doesn’t it?” Eiríkur asked. “Why the Faroes?”
“He had a ticket for the next morning to Copenhagen, but Faroese customs only picked him up as he was waiting for his flight from there to Kåstrup, not when he landed from Reykjavík,” Ívar Laxdal explained patiently.
“If you want to fly to Denmark, there are direct flights all the time. Why go through the Faroes? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you want to avoid the airport at Keflavík, where he would have been picked up like a shot,” Helgi pointed out. “But the only flights leaving the country from Reykjavík airport go to the Faroes, and I suppose he was travelling on Jónas Valur’s ticket. How much money did he have on him?”
A phone rang shrilly on a desk and Eiríkur swept it up, speaking in an undertone as Ívar Laxdal continued.
“A hundred and ten thousand euros in cash and he’s saying nothing. Faroese customs took one look at him and decided he wasn’t Jónas Valur, then had a look in his baggage and found the cash. He refused to tell them who he really is and we got the identification from pictures of him that the Faroese police sent as soon as he couldn’t pretend to be anything other than Icelandic. Once we was realized who it was, we asked them to send him right back.”
“So he knocked you on the head, banged Jónas Valur a bit harder, grabbed the man’s car keys, suitcase, tickets and passport, and ran for it. Is that what you reckon, Gunna?” Helgi asked.
Gunna cradled her chin in her fingers. “It sounds plausible, doesn’t it? It also sounds like I was just in time to see what Jónas Valur was up to, if he had flight tickets and some pocket money on him. I don’t think he was coming back, y’know. Maybe I held him up long enough for Högni to intercept him on his way out of the country for good. I assume they were oneway tickets that he had?”
“Sounds about right to me,” Eiríkur interrupted, with the phone to his chest and the palm of one hand over the mouthpiece. “But you want some more news? Bjarki Steinsson has disappeared. His wife’s reported him missing, hasn’t seen him since last night. His car’s missing as well. Do we put out an alert for him?”
THE FAINT AROMA of something spicy hit her nostrils even before Gunna had left the car. It was late, and she felt exhausted by the tension of the long day. At the door she kicked off her shoes and left wet prints across the kitchen floor.
“Hæ, people,” she offered as Steini looked up from the book in front of him and Laufey acknowledged with the briefest of nods that her mother was home before turning her attention back to a TV sitcom.
“Good day?” Steini asked. “We thought you were only going to be an hour or two.”
“A bloody long one, and I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve pissed off.”
“A successful day, then?” Steini grinned. “We kept some food for you. Chicken and stuff with it.”
“Spicy?”
“Oh yes.”
“Will I need a litre of milk to wash it down?”
“Not that hot.”
“That’s all right, then.”
Gunna heard the ten o’clock news start on the TV through the bathroom door just as the hot water had started to wash away the day’s aches. She emerged swathed in towels to find a steaming plate waiting for her and Laufey sitting at the kitchen table. Steini’s eyes were closed and the book had slipped down to his lap. Work seemed blessedly far away from Hvalvík, where only an occasional car could be heard in the distance to break the soft quiet.
“How was school?” Gunna asked.
“Not bad, same as usual. Mum, I had lunch at Sigrún’s today and she’s still so angry at Jörundur.”
“Well that’s understandable. It’s something that really knocks you sideways when that kind of trust is betrayed.”
Laufey nodded slowly. “Has that happened to you, Mum?” she asked quietly. “With Gísli’s dad?”
A shiver went down Gunna’s spine at the question she had expected for years, and she instinctively looked around to see if Steini were awake.
“Sort of. Gísli’s dad is a strange man and I haven’t seen him for years. Not since Gísli was about ten, I suppose. We never lived together, just were together for a little while, and didn’t get on all that well. So there was no real betrayal like Sigrún’s going through. It was a million times worse when we lost your father, sweetheart.”
“I think Gísli’s seen his dad recently.”
“You’re sure?” Gunna asked in sudden alarm, but warned herself to think rationally. “There’s no reason why he shouldn’t, and I suppose it’s something he ought to do. He’s a big lad now and doesn’t need to ask me for permission to do anything.”
Laufey yawned.
“You should be asleep soon, young lady,” Gunna observed. “Homework done, is it?”
“Yeah. Steini helped me with the maths. It’s easy when you know how, all those cosines and things,” she said, getting up and trying to stop herself yawning again.
“Put that in the dishwasher, would you?” Gunna said, handing her the plate and fork. “I need my bed as well.”
Laufey disappeared to her room and Gunna turned off the kitchen lights. In the living room, she looked down at Steini and leaned forward to place one fingertip gently on the end of his nose. His eyes opened and he looked up.
“I’m shattered, so I reckon it’s bedtime.”
“I don’t need telling twice,” he said, and smiled back.
In the darkness, Gunna stretched out, feeling her toes tingle as the fatigue drained out of them and Steini settled beside her with a sigh. Exploring fingers gently stroked her thigh and she stretched a hand to cover and encourage them when the phone on the floor beside the bed began to buzz and chirp.
“Hell!” she swore, fumbling for it in the darkness. “What?” she barked into it.
“Tucked up with Steini already, are you, you randy old cow?”
“Bjössi, always a pleasure to hear from you. Yes, I’m in bed and I’ve been on my feet since six.”
“Well you’d better get out of bed, darling. We’ve got someone out at the airport you might want a word with.”
“SO WHAT MADE you want to leave so suddenly right now, with so much money?” Gunna asked.
“Just trouble,” Bjarki Steinsson replied in a voice laden with despair that echoed in the bare interview room at Keflavík international airport. “Always more trouble. The phone calls and the texts.”
“What calls and texts?”
“Demanding money, more and more money. Threatening to tell Kristrún.”