‘I’ve had those for years. Somebody gave them to me and they’ve been in that drawer ever since.’
‘Who’s this?’ Eiríkur said, pointing at a picture of a woman with facial features so similar to Orri’s that they had to be relatives. Apart from a Bruce Springsteen poster that Eiríkur had seen tacked to the back of the bathroom door, the woman with her two children in their Sunday best was the only picture in the place that showed any people.
‘My sister and her kids,’ Orri said.
‘You have a sister? I’m wondering why something like a gold clasp for a set of national dress would go to you rather than to your sister?
‘I don’t know. The old woman didn’t give us anything much.’
‘When did your mother pass away?’ Eiríkur asked as Geiri went down on hands and knees to check under the sofa
‘She didn’t pass away. She rolled a car on Hringbraut and broke her neck when I was seventeen,’ Orri said savagely. ‘She never had a lot of time for us and I don’t miss her, and neither does my sister as far as I know.’
‘You work at Green Bay Transport, right?’
‘Green Bay Dispatch.’
‘What do you do there?’
‘Drive the van, drive the truck, drive the forklift, stack boxes on pallets, listen to the old guys whine about how great the old days were. That kind of thing.’
‘Done,’ Geiri announced, standing up. ‘Let’s take a quick look at the basement, shall we, before we go to the station?’
He shivered and gnawed at the fish. Once he had eaten most of it, he knew that he would have to use the strength it gave him to get more from the rack. This time climbing the rough triangular frame at the end was easier and he came down with four fish, which he put on the table in the old kitchen.
It was the glittering of the intermittent sunshine on the stream as he bent to drink that gave him the idea. He gathered handfuls of dry grass and in the most sheltered spot he could find he made a small pile on top of the dried skin of the cod he had just eaten. Desperately trying to recall what he had learned as a scout fifty years ago, he held his glasses between the sun and the dry grass, experimenting to focus a spot of light and finally watching a wisp of smoke rise from it.
The grass smoked and died. Jóhann cast about for more grass, added it to the pile and tried again, cursing as the sun vanished behind a cloud. He waited impatiently for it to return, collecting handfuls of heather and some crumbling sticks of rotten timber from under the racks of fish.
As the sun appeared again, he set to, kneeling over the kindling and concentrating on keeping the bright spot focused in one place until it smoked and smouldered. Remembering long-forgotten skills, he lay full length with his face inches from the ember and blew the gentlest of breaths on it until tiny flames appeared, which he fed with more clumps of grass. Finally tongues of flame ate hungrily at the handfuls of dry heather he added to the little fire.
The slivers of wood were quickly devoured and Jóhann realized that the fire would burn itself out if there were no more fuel. In spite of being light-headed from hunger, he hurried back to the racks and gathered as many splinters and offcuts of wood as he could, using his shirt held out in front of him as a basket.
The flames demanded constant attention. More grass and more heather were needed constantly until the fire gained strength enough for bigger pieces of wood to be added and these sent up acrid smoke. Inside the old house he hunted for anything that would burn and a smashed window frame in one room became more fuel as he huddled as close to the glowing warmth for as long as he could, eventually retreating inside as darkness fell and wrapping himself in the overcoat once again.
Gunna found the number of the taxi she had written down and it was the work of a few phone calls to track down Snorri Helgason. She found him at the bus station with a mug of coffee and a doughnut that he had sliced carefully into cubes.
He shrugged as Gunna showed him Jóhann Hjálmarsson’s picture.
‘Maybe. It’s been busy these last few days. You sure it was me?’ He asked with a supreme lack of interest, popping a morsel of decimated doughnut into his mouth.
‘Friday morning, outside the Harbourside Hotel. A few minutes after eleven.’
‘Could be, darling. What’s he done?’
‘I’m not your darling and if you don’t start remembering, we might have to take this down to the station.’
‘Whoa, no offence, darling.’ Snorri Helgason’s eyes widened and he rapidly backed off. ‘I’m due back on the rank in ten minutes when the bus from the north gets in.’
‘Then start remembering quickly.’
‘Picked him up outside the hotel, like you said.’
‘A call or were you waiting?’
‘I was just in the queue. I stopped and he got right in.’
‘Did he say anything? Where did he want to go?’
‘That’s all he said. “Ármúli, thanks.” Then he sat there with his nose in his phone and didn’t look up until I asked where on Ármúli he wanted to be dropped off.’
‘And?’ Gunna said, not bothering to mask her impatience.
‘He didn’t want Ármúli at all,’ he said with satisfaction, chewing another chunk of doughnut. ‘He wanted to go round the corner and I dropped him off outside that big block on the end instead, the one next to the hotel there.’
‘Did you see him go inside?’
Snorri Helgason shook his head. ‘He paid in cash and walked off, still looking at his phone. He went that way, but I didn’t see him go inside.’
Gunna’s heart sank. The block was at least nine storeys high and she guessed that it housed dozens of offices, any one of which could be where Jóhann Hjálmarsson had been heading.
‘And he didn’t say anything?’
‘Only “keep the change”. That’s all.’ He smiled, showing off a gap between his teeth. ‘So what’s he done?’
‘Listen to the lunchtime news and you’ll find out,’ Gunna said, handing him a card. ‘If you remember anything else, call me.’
The first security guard was an overweight young man with dead eyes. His reservations were overcome by Gunna’s warrant card, throwing his hands in the air in despair and calling his supervisor when asked for security tapes. Ten minutes later a flustered but slightly less corpulent young man appeared, shaking off a jacket that was a size too big for him. He checked Gunna’s identification before closing the door to pointedly shut out his junior colleague.
‘What can I do for you?’ He smiled ingratiatingly.
Gunna produced the picture of Jóhann Hjálmarsson. ‘I have reason to believe this gentlemen walked in here a few minutes after eleven o’clock on Friday morning last week. So, to start with I want to get that confirmed as I see you have a CCTV camera covering the entrance, and then I’d like to know where he went and what he did.’
‘Oh, right.’ The young man’s fingers flickered over a computer keyboard and he called up footage of the lobby. People walked back and forth with speeded-up steps, oddly foreshortened by the camera looking down on them. It took a few minutes to identify Jóhann Hjálmarsson walking in with a jaunty step and a smile on his face. Gunna was surprised that a man with a price on his head should look so cheerful as he walked through a set of revolving doors and out of the frame.
‘Now what? Where’s the next camera?’
‘By the lifts,’ the young man answered and the image switched to a bank of doors as people entered and left. He speeded up the replay and caught Jóhann Hjálmarsson entering a lift on his own. ‘There you are. He went upstairs at. .’ He peered at the screen. ‘Eleven fifty-one.’
‘And you have cameras on the other floors as well?’
‘No, we don’t. Individual companies can do that for themselves. We just watch who goes in and out. What happens up there is their business.’