‘I have no idea. I told you that before and I’m getting tired of telling you this.’
‘You’re absolutely sure you’ve never seen this man?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Sunna María repeated. ‘I don’t know him.’
‘Now that’s odd,’ Gunna said softly. ‘This is the man I suspect may have abducted and possibly murdered your husband, and I have a witness who has seen him in your company. On one of those occasions under circumstances that would indicate you’re quite intimately acquainted with him.’
Sunna María opened her mouth and closed it again.
‘In that case, there has to be some mistake,’ she said finally. ‘It happens, I’m sure.’
‘He and another man were living at Kópavogsbakki fifty until recently.’
‘We have nothing to do with the letting. Óttar Sveinsson handles everything.’
‘Óttar told me you knew this man. How do you explain that? And how come the basement of Kópavogsbakki fifty had been painted? Surely that’s the letting agent’s job, but Óttar said he had no idea that the place had been painted.’
Sunna María’s face twisted into something that was a long way from a smile but was clearly supposed to be one.
‘You’ll have to ask the tenant that, won’t you?’
The squad car emerged into the daylight and Unnur Matthíasdóttir brought it to a halt in the lay-by outside the Hvalfjördur Tunnel’s southern exit. Reykjavík could be seen dimly in the distance across the bay beneath scudding spring clouds. She got out of the car and went round to open the door for Jóhann, helping him out as Eiríkur hurried across from his own car.
‘Jóhann? Eiríkur Thór Jónsson from CID,’ he said. ‘You have no idea how pleased I am to see you in one piece.’
‘Thank you,’ Jóhann said with tears in his eyes, bewildered by the attention he was getting. ‘I’d just like a lift home, if you don’t mind.’
Eiríkur helped him into the Polo and shut the door. He saw Jóhann huddle into his borrowed coat and reach forward to turn up the heater.
‘What’s the story?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know. The lady who brought him in has her sheep and horses miles up in the highlands at a place called Geirsmörk,’ Unnur said. ‘She and her father had been up there for a few days and they stumbled across this guy in the road the night before last; they took him back to the chalet they have up there and warmed him up. She said he was too weak to be moved yesterday. It seems he was at a place called Vatnsendi, which has been abandoned for at least fifty years. How he got up there, who knows?’
‘How is he?’
‘He’s very weak. I wanted to take him to hospital, but he wouldn’t hear of it and wanted to go straight home. We had already had an alert about this man, so I called and here you are.’
‘Thanks. We’d more or less written him off.’
‘Did he walk out, or what?’
‘It seems he was abducted. Hopefully he can tell us how he managed to get to somewhere that far up country. Have you asked him any questions?’
‘Only to make sure he was feeling all right and wasn’t going to have a seizure on the way. So now he’s all yours,’ Unnur said with a bright smile.
‘Thank you,’ Eiríkur said. ‘I’d best get him to Reykjavík and we’ll see if we can work out what happened to him.’
‘Are you telling me my wife may have had something to do with this?’
Jóhann’s eyes were wide. Anger and surprise made his voice lift in pitch. Gunna could see that both of his hands trembled. A drip had been put into one arm below where the borrowed shirt that was several sizes too big for him had been rolled up high above a skinny forearm.
‘We don’t know, but for the moment I really don’t want anyone to know that you’re alive and well.’
‘I see,’ he said, subsiding thoughtfully. ‘What’s today? Thursday? Is it almost a week?’
‘What happened last Friday morning? Tell me every detail you can remember.’
His brows knitted. ‘It’s hazy,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been trying for days to remember everything.’
‘It’s important,’ Gunna reminded him.
‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he shot back in irritation. ‘I had a message asking for a meeting at the old Sólfell offices at twelve.’
‘How? Email or text?’
‘Email, I think. I’d have to check my computer. But it was no problem, so I got a taxi up there.’
‘That fits. I traced you that far. Who were you going to meet?’
‘So I went up to the office on the eighth floor. I can’t remember. It might have been Óttar or one of the property managers.’
‘Óttar Sveinsson?’
‘Yes. His company leases our property and Sólfell also rented its offices through him. But I can’t be sure. It might have been one of his staff. So when I got there the place was open and there was someone there I didn’t recognize, but he said his name was Boris.’
‘Boris Vadluga? The man you were in partnership with?’
‘That’s him. Well, I was surprised.’
‘You had never met Boris Vadluga?’
‘No, we’d spoken on the phone a few times, but Sunna María saw to all that business with Vilhelm and Elvar. All I did was sign the accounts once a year.’
Gunna took a photo from her folder of notes. ‘This man?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘This is Boris Vadluga.’
‘Definitely not him. This fellow was older, I thought.’
‘This man?’
The driving licence photograph was indistinct, but Jóhann almost jumped from his chair when he saw it. ‘That’s the man! I’d recognize him anywhere,’ he squeaked and calmed down quickly, his breathing laboured. ‘If that’s not Boris, who is it?’
‘That’s just what we’d like to know as well. So what happened?’
‘We chatted, had a coffee. He was clearing stuff out of the office since the company had folded.’
‘Didn’t you find that strange?’ Gunna asked. ‘Wasn’t it odd that he should be doing something like that himself. Wasn’t it odd that he should be in Iceland at all?’
‘I did find it very unusual, but he said something about being here on other business. Then I started to feel very strange, unsteady on my feet. It was as if I knew there was something very wrong but couldn’t do anything about it.’
‘You were doped,’ Gunna said. ‘As soon as you’d drunk that coffee, your friend didn’t need to worry any longer about being convincing. A witness saw a man answering your description leaving the building with this man on Friday afternoon. He thought you were drunk. So you wake up in the wilderness and then what?’
‘I think I’m lucky to be here. I don’t believe I was intended to survive.’
‘Maybe he got the dose wrong,’ Eiríkur suggested.
‘We’ll probably never find out what it was he gave you. Most of these drugs are out of your system after a day or two and this was a week ago. Rohypnol, ketamine, there’s plenty to choose from.’
Jóhann shuddered as he thought back to the moment he woke up in the distant ruined farmhouse.
Gísli fidgeted as the waitress took away the empty plates, casting glances around him.
‘Why this place?’ Gunna asked. ‘Not your usual stamping grounds, surely? I thought you would have preferred the place by the dock.’
‘Actually, I would have. But here there’s less chance of seeing anyone I know.’
‘Don’t want any of the guys to see you out with an old lady?’
‘Come on, Mum. It’s not like that. If we’d gone to Kænan then there’d be someone around I’d sailed with or worked with, or someone who knows Steini. We’d just be talking boats and engines.’
‘Instead of what?’
Gísli sighed and looked up as the waitress brought them fresh cutlery. He stayed silent until she had gone, shredding a piece of bread between his long fingers. A craftsman’s fingers, Gunna thought, like his grandfather’s.