He was already starting to regret having sent the man a message the night before to let him know he was temporarily free. It would have been so much simpler if the police had just shipped him off to Litla Hraun and helped him drop out of circulation for a few weeks; hopefully the whole thing could have blown over while he took it easy behind bars.
The ticket for the first pickup was at the top of the pile of four, the address in the newish shopping centre at Bíldshöfdi. No problem. Orri sat back and turned up the radio, trying to shut out all the unanswered questions he dearly wanted answers to.
There was a prickly feeling in her eyelids and she was certain that her eyes were red-rimmed after not enough hours of sleep. She knew that Geiri must also be close to exhaustion, having watched Orri’s flat all night, but he sat in the driver’s seat and looked over his shoulder at her.
‘What now?’
‘What time is it?’
‘Just before nine.’
Gunna got out of the car. The shock of the cold air made her gasp and she quickly got into the front seat next to Geiri.
‘You’re not tired?’
Geiri shook his head. ‘Yeah. But good for a few hours yet.’
Gunna wondered if she had ever seen him out of uniform before and decided she probably hadn’t. It seemed odd, sitting next to this bear of a man with as much stubble on his face as on his cropped head. Without his uniform, he looked like the kind of thug she would normally be wary of.
‘Our boy knows me, so I need to keep out of sight. How about you go inside and see if you can scrounge two cups of coffee from the bank?’
‘There’s a bank in there?’
‘Yep, opened a few months ago. There’s a coffee pot by the door for customers. I’ll buzz you if our boy shows up.’
Geiri walked towards the shopping centre’s entrance and the doors hissed open for him. Gunna’s heart was in her mouth as Orri came out of the same open doors, pushing a trolley in front of him stacked with a dozen boxes on a wooden pallet.
‘Shit,’ she cursed as Geiri went straight past Orri without looking at him, and made for the glass-sided bank in the bottom corner of the block-like shopping centre, where Gunna saw him chatting and flirting with a woman filling the coffee machine. Gunna ducked down as far out of sight as she dared and watched Orri load the van, stacking the boxes one at a time in the back before going back inside with the trolley and its empty pallet.
A few minutes later Geiri emerged from the building, a plastic coffee cup in each hand, with Orri behind him.
‘Here you are. No sugar,’ he said as he got back in the driver’s seat.
‘You took your time. Didn’t they want to give you any coffee unless you opened an account?’
‘Talked her into it.’ Geiri grinned. His coat was half open, making the police emblem on his T-shirt visible. ‘And the cashier gave me her phone number.’
‘She’s probably looking up your financial records this minute to see if you’re trustworthy,’ Gunna said as Geiri allowed Orri’s van a head start.
Orri took the van back the way he had come. Gunna sipped her coffee and felt herself relax slightly as Geiri dropped back as far as he could without losing sight of the van in the distance. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was approaching ten o’clock. The rush-hour traffic had thinned and the roads were quieter now, but with faster-moving cars throwing up screens of water from the road behind them.
Geiri accelerated to close the gap again as the Reykjanesbraut intersection approached. He stared ahead intently at the white van as it dropped into the slip road.
‘Going back the way he came,’ he grunted, holding his hand out for the cup of coffee that Gunna held for him.
‘A long way to go for a few boxes.’
‘Someone’s paying, I suppose.’
‘Let’s see if he’s going back to the yard,’ Gunna said and spoke into her communicator. ‘Zero-four-fifty-one, ninety-five-fifty.’
‘Ninety-five-fifty, zero-four-fifty-one,’ Eiríkur responded smartly.
‘Still awake, then?’
‘Yeah. But Tinna’s taking a nap. I’m at comms. Nothing to report. No communications with the mystery phone and it seems to have been switched off at around six in the morning downtown. Orri’s phone has been tracked up to Höfdabakki and back towards town. Looks like he’s on Reykjanesbraut now.’
‘I know. We’re right behind him. And Sunna María’s phone?’
‘We don’t have a warrant yet to track it, the Laxdal’s working on it but it might take a while. But I can tell you it’s in Kópavogur.’
‘She may have left it behind, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be like her.’
It was another shopping centre. This time Orri parked in Hafnarfjördur and sauntered into the shopping centre, leaving the van in the public car park.
‘What now?’
‘One of us is going to have to keep an eye on him, and it can’t be me,’ Gunna said.
Geiri nodded and pulled on a wool hat that came down to his eyebrows. ‘Let’s just hope I don’t look too much like a copper out of uniform, eh?’
‘Out of uniform, you look nothing like a copper,’ Gunna assured him. ‘Be discreet and let me know what he’s up to.’
She fretted in the car, wondering if Orri had noticed the tail back and forth through Reykjavík, and concerned that Geiri would look suspicious in there. Gunna fidgeted with her phone and checked her text messages, trying to think through what Orri might be doing and why.
Her phone ringing startled her and she answered immediately. ‘Gunnhildur.’
‘Orri’s in the café. With a woman. Tall, blonde,’ she heard Geiri mutter.
‘A woman? It’s not Sunna María, is it?’
‘I don’t know. I can only see the back of her head and I daren’t go any closer.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘In the kiosk opposite, looking through the magazines.’
‘OK, keep an eye on them, but not for too long.’
Orri had expected to see the hook-nosed man. He looked around the café, his phone in his hand, searching for him, but his heart skipped a beat when he saw a blonde woman smile at him. The last time he had seen her was when she had been on the other side of the hall doorway with her legs wrapped around the man he knew as the Voice.
‘It’s Orri, isn’t it?’ she said in a slightly husky voice that was undeniably the same as the one he’d heard that night through the door. ‘Bruno asked me to meet you. I hope you don’t mind? I’m having a latte. What can I get you? The same?’
‘Er. . just a coffee. Where’s. .?’
‘Bruno? He’ll be here shortly. He asked me to meet you as he’s been held up for ten minutes. Would you like something to eat as well?’
Orri sat down, confused. Why was the dentist’s attractive wife here to meet him? ‘Bruno?’ he asked himself as he sat at a table and looked out of the rain-splashed window at the car park where the van was parked, telling himself that he could manage twenty minutes or so before his next collection and then back to the depot. Not seeing the Voice was a surprise and it had shaken him to understand that the dentist’s wife and the Baltic thug were clearly working together rather than straightforward lovers while the dentist was out of the country.
He looked round and saw her at the counter, pouring milk into a mug and dropping a wrapper into the bin next to it. She smiled broadly as she appeared with a tray, placing a mug in front of him and arranging a tall milky concoction for herself and a plate with strips of rich Danish pastry between them.
‘I must say it’s nice to meet you properly,’ Sunna María said, sinking perfect white teeth into a slice of pastry.
‘We haven’t met before, have we?’
‘In a strange kind of way, we have,’ she said and Orri wondered if she knew he had been in her house more than once. The smile became glassy as Orri took a mouthful of coffee and she watched approvingly. ‘Want some?’ she invited, pushing the plate of pastries towards him. ‘I’m terrible. I never have breakfast and then I’m always starving by mid-morning.’