‘Can do. I don’t have long.’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ Finnbogi said, hands busy behind the counter. He handed her a closed carton with a plastic fork tucked into a loop in the paper handle. ‘Here. Something for the wait.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Beef with noodles and pad thai sauce.’
‘How much is that?’
Finnbogi shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I shouldn’t.’
‘It’ll go in the bin otherwise.’
The aroma from the carton that sat hot in her hands was overwhelming. ‘All right, but sell me a bottle of water to go with it, will you?’ She said, digging for change in her coat pocket.
‘So how were the noodles?’ Finnbogi asked when he found her ten minutes later. He sat next to her in the car, the same grubby apron folded in on itself and stowed between his knees. He spied the empty carton in the footwell.
‘Excellent,’ Gunna said. ‘I don’t normally do quite that hot and spicy, but that was great,’ she said, swigging from the bottle of water and feeling the heat still on her lips. ‘I hope you’ve had a few minutes to chat with the other smokers along here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘Not a lot. We’ve seen the same people as always come and go. But there’s a guy who works at the chicken and chips shop along the street. He said he saw a van on Friday afternoon that he hasn’t seen before and it was being loaded with a lot of stuff, as if some company was moving out.’
‘What time?’
‘Mid-afternoon, he said.’
‘I don’t suppose he got the registration?’
‘No idea. I’m not a copper. You’ll have to ask him yourself. He should be at work now.’
For the first time, Jóhann wondered if it was hopeless. He sat on a rock at the side of track that stretched away into the distance behind him and debated with himself whether or not to turn back to the crossroads. He longed to do it, and somewhere inside a nagging feeling told him he had gone wrong.
The day was drawing on and there was no sign of any shelter anywhere in this bleak landscape. He looked up from the fish and saw with surprise that a pair of black eyes were staring curiously back at him before their owner looked quickly to one side and ran.
Other than an eagle that had circled high in the sky earlier in the day and the malevolent ravens that he felt were dogging his steps, the sheep was the first living thing he had seen. He wanted to despair but made himself stay rational, forcing himself back to his feet to continue.
Now he was looking for shelter. There were spots of rain falling, pattering on the overcoat wrapped around his shoulders. The landscape stayed blank. The road itself was better, almost wide enough for two vehicles, but not quite, and he listened for the rumble of tyres to tell him that someone was on the move.
The road that had dipped began to climb upwards again, and with it the temperature fell until he reached the top of a small pass and saw a sight that gave him extra strength. The land dropped away slowly and in the distance he was sure he could see the sea, while the wind blowing off it convinced him.
Now he was walking faster, his broken shoe flapping loose once again as the track showed signs of recent traffic and the new marks of heavy tyres cut deep into the soft sides of the road. As the road rounded a rocky escarpment, a sight greeted him so welcome that he gasped with relief. A steel hut had been erected on a patch of ground cleared from the rock, its door firmly padlocked, and next to it was a digger and a bulldozer.
Everything looked as if it had been untouched for days or even weeks, but it was at least a sign of activity and that there had to be a road, a real road, not that far away. Now it was starting to get dim and there was a threat of real cold rain as the drops began to fall with a heavy smack.
The digger and the bulldozer were both locked. Heavy padlocks swung from hasps on the cabs. He turned his attention to the steel shed, which had a similar lock hanging from a steel loop that held a metal plate flush with the door. He rattled the lock hopelessly and cast around for a tool of some kind, any tool that could help him break in. But the road menders had cleared up well and there was nothing to be found. It was as if they had swept, hoovered and polished everything before leaving, he thought bitterly.
It had to be a rock. Over by the road he found several that looked suitable, heavy enough to do some damage but light enough to be handled. Repeated blows on the lock began to twist it and the first rock he had brought eventually fell apart in his hand. The second fared better and the padlock began to look decidedly unhealthy by the time the rain started hammering down. Jóhann shivered, pulled the overcoat over his head like a hood and attacked the lock with a frenzy he did not know he had in him, battering it until he had to give up through exhaustion, dropping the rock at his feet.
As he was ready to give up and crawl under the bulldozer for shelter, the door swung open and he saw that the padlock had survived the onslaught but the hasp itself had been battered clear from the door. Inside the rain beat furiously on the roof as Jóhann curled up in a corner of the dim interior and gnawed on the last rock-hard piece of fish.
The man was tiny and Gunna felt that she towered over him with the glass door between them. His jet-black hair was shorn in a ragged crew cut under the white hat and his black eyes were impassive.
‘We closed,’ he said shortly, hand on the door.
‘I’m not looking for lunch. Are you Truc?’
She saw his eyes flicker left and right. ‘You police, right?’
‘I’m from the police, yes,’ Gunna said.
He opened the door and Gunna had the feeling he wanted to hurry her inside and out of sight.
‘Finnbogi along the street said that you saw something unusual on Friday. Is that right?’
‘We go out back,’ he said, picking at a pocket inside his white tunic and extracting a cigarette. Outside the back door he patted the pockets of his checked trousers until he found a lighter and clicked it repeatedly. Eventually he exhaled a long stream of blue smoke into the damp air. He pointed at the loading bay.
‘There,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to be trouble for me?’
‘No trouble,’ Gunna assured him.
‘Big car. Van. A man fill it with stuff.’
‘When was this?’
‘Friday. They were here some time. Two, three hours. Boxes, bags. All kinds of stuff.’
‘Can you describe the man?’
‘Tall. But everyone is tall in Iceland,’ he said with the first hint of a smile.
‘Young? Old?’
‘Middle-old. Forty-fifty. Grey, with big nose.’
Gunna took out the photo of Jóhann Hjálmarsson and Truc peered at it. ‘Is that him?’ she asked, knowing already that the description would not fit.
‘No. That’s the drunk man.’
‘Drunk?’
‘Yeah, There was a drunk guy hanging around. He sat on the wall and talk to the guy with the van.’
‘Did you see where he went?’
‘No. I come out, smoke, see him. Next time I come out here, he was gone. Didn’t see him again.’
‘But this is definitely him?’
‘Yeah. That’s him. He was really drunk that day. He could hardly stand up,’ Truc said with disgust. ‘In the middle of the day, and he didn’t look like a loser.’
‘I don’t suppose you remember the van’s registration?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Anything special about it? What make?’
‘It was a hired van.’
‘How do you know?’
Truc looked at her as if the question was a particularly stupid one. ‘On the side, Borg Vehicle Leasing. Big letters.’
It was far from warm in the steel hut, but Jóhann reminded himself that it was much warmer and more comfortable that it would have been outside with the rain beating down at intervals. The wind moaned as darkness fell, rattling the roof and occasionally showers lashed the hut with a deafening onslaught, magnified by the bare steel roof. It wasn’t night yet, but the thick black rain clouds had blotted out any sunlight and it felt much later than it probably was. He huddled deeper into the stinking coat that he felt had probably saved his life, and now that he was at least under cover and somewhere within striking distance of civilization, his mind wandered to how he had found himself in this situation.