He stared moodily through the scratched clear plastic of the snack bar’s windows, leaning on the chest-level bar that ran around the unheated inside of it and watching a few people walk past, heads bowed into the fresh wind. Lamp posts along the street shivered in the uneven gusts.
The door banged behind him and he thrust his hands into his pockets, one fist clasped around the little back box as he walked back towards the hulking black car.
This time he approached it from the rear, the end he was supposed to get to. Orri looked around smartly, made sure there was nobody about and dropped to one knee. He reached up high under the wheel arch and put the box in place, feeling the magnets snap it firmly to the American steel of the bodywork. In only a few seconds, he was back on his feet and walking fast.
He took a side street, then another to zig-zag back to the harbour where the work van was parked in a corner of a public lot. He hardly dared breathe until he was hunched in the stream of traffic heading back to the depot, his hands gripping the wheel tight to stop them trembling.
Gunna spied the blonde mop by the check-in desk first, before Bára turned round and saw her.
‘Thanks for the gig.’ She grinned. ‘I might even get a couple of weeks on a beach somewhere hot out of this.’
‘You’re welcome. Charging a decent rate, are you?’
‘Fairly respectable,’ Bára said. ‘A hundred thousand a day.’
‘Cash, or are you going to be honest?’
‘Probably a combination of the two.’ Bára winked. ‘A week for me and a week for the government.’
‘Very wise. But I guess you’re working for it?’
‘Twelve hours a day, seven days a week until further notice. Which would be fine if they weren’t such a pain in the neck.’
‘How so?’
‘Sooner or later I’m going to have to have a little discussion with Sunna María about just what I’m supposed to be doing, as she seems to think that a security consultant is some kind of gopher. It makes a change from collaring shoplifters by the clothes racks, though.’
‘And Jóhann?’
Bára thought. ‘I’m not sure. Haven’t seen a lot of him so far as he’s mostly stuck behind his laptop, but he seems to be humouring her.’
Gunna cracked her knuckles. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and make their acquaintance. You won’t forget to drop me a line if anything suspicious crops up?’
‘Me?’ Bára said in mock shock. ‘Haven’t you heard of client confidentiality?’
‘I have indeed. But I’ve also heard of doing discreet favours for pals who recommend your services.’
‘Touché. There’ll be a text if anything turns up that doesn’t smell right. But can you tell me what happened to shake them up so much?’
Gunna looked around before replying. ‘A man was shot in his summer house with a.22 handgun, very professional, according to what we’re being told. So far there are no leads, and it’s as if the killers have just vanished. The man was in business with your clients, so watch your back.’
A serious look stole over Bára’s face. ‘You’re sure you think you’re doing me a favour with this?’
‘Ach. You’ll be fine. It’s them these villains want to knock off, not you.’
‘Somehow I don’t think a hundred thousand a day is enough to take a bullet for.’
‘Far from it. And before I forget, both of them are screwing other people on some kind of semi-regular basis, just to make the security issue even more complex.’
‘Oh, that’s just wonderful.’
‘But Jóhann’s likely to be less of a headache on that score as it seems he keeps his in Germany, according to his wife.’
‘Is it a serious case?’ Geir Einarsson asked eagerly. The overheated front room was stuffed with books from floor to ceiling. Eiríkur looked at them as the old man shuffled towards a chair by the window, and saw that they were predominantly crime novels, mostly in English and a few translated into Icelandic with lurid covers.
He fussed with a pipe and moved a book that had been placed open, face down on a footstool.
‘What happened over there? This is such a quiet neighbourhood normally.’
‘I’m sure you understand that we can’t say too much, other than that it appears a crime has taken place.’
‘Say no more.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Of course. Walls have ears.’
‘My colleague tells me you’ve observed some suspicious activity around here?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, young man. But I sit here by the window most of the day and see everyone who goes by.’
‘You’re retired, I take it?’ Eiríkur said.
‘Long ago, my boy. I’m past eighty. You think that people of my age can walk into a job just like that? Not that I would, even if there were jobs to be had.’
‘So you sit and read all day long? That sounds like the kind of thing I dream of.’
‘It was wonderful for the first few months, but these days I’d rather be outside, and I hope I will be when the weather’s warmer. For now, though, I’ll stick to indoors.’
‘Right, can you tell me what you’ve seen?’
‘Better than that. I can show you my log.’ There was pride in the old man’s voice as he strained to lean down for a folder that had fallen to the floor. ‘I’ve been reading crime stories for years, so I know how important it is to be precise. Look.’
He pointed to a list, made out day-by-day, of people passing by the house. It wasn’t a long list, as Eiríkur guessed that relatively few people other than residents walked along the exclusive cul-de-sac, but Geir Einarsson had carefully listed them.
‘I’m particularly interested in a man wearing a green fleece with yellow lettering on it.’
‘Ah. Stripes.’
‘Stripes?’
‘That’s what I call him. I’ve noticed him passing now and again. I don’t think he lives around here, but I could be wrong.’
‘What makes you think that?’
Geir Einarsson tapped the side of his nose a second time. ‘Ah, intuition.’ He smiled gleefully. ‘Is that what you sleuths depend on most of the time? Flashes of inspiration and intuition?’
Eiríkur wanted to retort that results were normally obtained by endless mundane questions and cross-checking, but decided not to shatter any illusions.
‘What’s your villain done, I’d like to know? No, I know you can’t possibly tell me, so I’ll not ask. Merely a rhetorical question.’
‘He could have been a witness to an incident and we’d like to be able to rule him out, that’s all,’ Eiríkur assured him. ‘Nothing sinister.’
‘What a shame.’ The old man chuckled. ‘I was hoping for a criminal mastermind being brought to book, but we can’t have everything, I suppose. What do you want to know about Stripes?’
‘When have you seen him? What time of day? And how many times?’
‘I keep a close eye on the neighbourhood, and not just because I don’t have anything else to do. I was brought up in this street, and until a few years ago this house was all on its own. The rest of these homes are all new. I thought at first that Stripes was a workman on one of those new houses they’re building at the end of the street, but there hasn’t been any work going on there for weeks. Too cold for concreting, I suppose. But even with no work in progress, Stripes still takes a walk around the district.’
‘When did you last see him?’ Eiríkur asked, hoping that sooner or later a question would hit its target. ‘And I’m interested to know why you think he might not be local.’
‘Because people round here don’t walk; they drive. Even to the shop on the corner. They might go for a run, swaddled in latex. .’
‘Latex?’
‘You know, those stretchy clothes that young people wear.’
‘You mean Lycra.’
‘Latex, Lycra. Whatever. That’s what I mean. They’ll run around dressed in clothes that leave nothing whatsoever to the imagination, but they don’t walk anywhere. Stripes walks. People who live in this district wouldn’t dream of doing anything as ordinary as just walking.’