Orri looked askance. ‘People aren’t that stupid.’
‘No?’ Dóri asked gently. ‘Maybe not everyone, but enough to ensure that nothing changes.’ He sighed. ‘But now we had better get some work done before the others notice that we’re taking it easy. Alex isn’t here. He called in this morning and said he’d be late.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Orri asked with a sideways look.
‘Something to do with an abnormal fluid intake, I gather.’ Dóri grinned. ‘It’s not what I’d call an illness, but just for this once he can have the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Anyone else would have been given the sack by now if they were as late as Alex is half the time,’ Orri grumbled.
Dóri leaned forward, elbows on the table, and beckoned theatrically.
‘What?’
‘Orri, tell me. You know who owns this company?’
‘Óli Hansen, isn’t it? Not that we see a lot of him.’
Dóri shook his head and leaned further forward, his voice was so low as to be inaudible. Orri strained to hear what he said.
‘Óli Hansen started the company and he still owns some of it.’
‘But, what?’
‘Óli is just a glorified manager these days. We have owners who have their offices in a city a long way east of here,’ Dóri said. ‘Don’t even think about why Alex is here, but he’s here for a reason and that means he can turn up late five days a week and still not get even a verbal warning.’
Orri looked baffled. ‘So, why?’ he asked as Dóri put a finger to his lips.
‘Don’t ask. Don’t look too closely at what comes in and goes out. Don’t be too friendly with Alex. That way when someone asks, you can say truthfully that you had no idea.’
‘No idea of what?’
‘Hell, Orri, you’re dense today for a smart lad like you,’ Dóri said with a knowing look that made Orri shiver. ‘I don’t ask and I don’t want to know. I have a disabled wife and a bone-headed single-parent daughter to support, and I need this job for as long as it lasts. Now, the reason I asked you to come in is because we have a fish delivery to make today.’
‘Alex always does those, doesn’t he?’
‘Normally he does, yes. But Alex hasn’t turned up.’
‘So you want me to do it?’
‘Got it in one. It’s easy enough. Hafnarfisk have seventy boxes of fresh fish to go to the airport for the London flight this afternoon. You know where the cargo terminal is at Keflavík, don’t you? Just follow the signs and someone will show you where to go.’
It was one of those impersonal blocks of flats almost as far from the city centre as you can get without being in the countryside. Eiríkur pushed at the outside door and was not surprised that the lock was broken as it swung inwards.
He’d been able to get Elísabet Sólborg Höskuldsdóttir’s address from the national registry, an easy enough exercise as there was only one person to be found with that combination of names. But he knew from bitter experience that the listed legal residence was, for many people, where their parents lived, where they had an address for work reasons, or often simply a place they had lived at one time and had long since moved on from without bothering to register the move.
Although the registry specified the address, Eiríkur’s suspicions came true when he saw it was a block, with no way of knowing which of the eight apartments would be her one — and there was no name on the list of doorbells that looked likely.
He knocked at the first door he found and got no response. The next door had pounding music coming from inside, which presumably drowned out his puny efforts at knocking, so he went a floor higher and tried again.
The door was ripped open while his hand was still in the air.
‘Who the hell are you?’
The face looking out at him from the darkness of the doorway snarled and Eiríkur backed away half a step. ‘I’m looking for Elísabet. She doesn’t live here?’
‘There’s no Elísabet here,’ the man said and made to slam the door.
‘How about the other flats here? Upstairs, somewhere?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ the man snarled and this time the door did close in his face, hard enough for the door frame to shake.
Eiríkur shrugged his shoulders and carried on upstairs, knocking at two more doors before he got a reply. This time a middle-aged woman opened the door and looked at him curiously.
‘Good afternoon. I’m looking for someone called Elísabet who lives in this block. I’m sorry but I don’t know which flat, so I’m having to knock on doors.’
‘I don’t know any Elísabet, young man.’
‘Who is it, Margrét?’ A quavering voice called from inside.
‘It’s all right, Dad,’ she replied and looked back at Eiríkur. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know any Elísabet.’
‘I’m a police officer,’ Eiríkur said, opening his wallet to show his identification card. ‘I understand there’s a woman called Elísabet Höskuldsdóttir who lives in this block, but I don’t know which flat,’ he explained a second time.
‘I don’t know,’ the woman said, frowning doubtfully, and looking around to see an old man with white hair slowly approaching along the dim hallway, supporting his gradual progress with a stick in each hand.
‘He means the girl upstairs, Margrét. I’m sure of it,’ the old man said.
‘You’re sure? The one above, or on the other side?’
The old man pointed one stick at the ceiling, while Eiríkur expected him to fall over, holding his breath until the old man was again supported by two sticks. ‘Upstairs. Lovely girl,’ he said as Margrét scowled.
‘If you think so, Dad.’ she sniffed. ‘How do you know?’
‘She talks to me on the stairs sometimes, which is more than any of my other miserable neighbours do, and especially that idiot downstairs who plays deafening music all the time.’
‘Yeah. I can hear it,’ Eiríkur said. ‘It’s disturbing you, I take it?’
The music itself was hardly audible, but a persistent bass pulse could be felt rather than heard.
‘It is a little irritating,’ the old man admitted. ‘But it’s not as if I can go down there and punch him like I could have done forty years ago.’
‘I’ll ask a patrol to stop by and have a word with him,’ Eiríkur promised. ‘But you’re sure it’s Elísabet who lives upstairs.’
‘I’m sure,’ the old man said. ‘Margrét here doesn’t like her, but she always says hello to me, and she told me her name’s Lísa, so I assume that’s short for Elísabet.’
A few minutes later and after a quick phone call, Eiríkur was knocking on the door upstairs. He could hear his knocks echoing inside and knew that nobody was going to answer. He clattered down the stairs again to find the old man’s door still open and both the man and his daughter waiting for him.
‘I could have told you she wasn’t home,’ Margrét said.
‘I haven’t seen her for a while,’ the old man added.
‘She hasn’t moved out?’
The old man shook his head. ‘No. I’d have noticed. There’s been no coming and going for a while.’
‘You don’t know where she works, do you?’
‘I’m afraid not. All I can tell you is that she works odd hours, coming and going early in the morning or late in the evening. Something to do with food, I imagine, as she often wears those white clothes that chefs wear on the TV.’
‘And you don’t have a phone number for her, or know what car she drives, or anything like that?’