‘Armed?’
‘I don’t think so, but take care.’
The gravel road began to disintegrate as a burst of rain came down hard. Geiri switched the wipers on and they scraped pathways in the corrosive mix of water and black volcanic dust that coated the windscreen as he leaned forward to peer through the murk. The road could hardly be seen in the sudden downpour that pebbledashed the road ahead and battered the roof of the car.
‘Where the hell. .?’ Geiri cursed, and Gunna wound down her window, pushing her face half out to see what was happening.
‘Geiri! Back up!’ she yelled.
‘What?’
Gunna almost bounced up and down in the seat in frustration. ‘Over there, they pulled off the road.’ She pointed towards a narrow track half hidden by a clump of fir trees, meandering away from the main road and down a dip.
The Golf shuddered to a standstill, reversed at top speed, and the four-by-four behind stopped in a flurry of stones and flying water. Geiri put his foot down, spinning the wheels through the lakes forming in the road as he rounded a bend, meeting Sunna María’s jeep coming the other way. Gunna caught a glimpse of Sunna María’s face behind the wheel, white and tense, her mouth open in astonishment. Geiri spun the wheel and hauled at the handbrake, dragging the long-suffering Golf into a screeching turn that left it flat across the road as the four-by-four came to a halt.
As Gunna jumped out of the car, the acrid smell of burning was unmistakeable, and she looked around quickly to see a pall of greasy smoke from behind a low hill. She could hear the agonized rattle of the four-by-four’s gears failing to engage as she ran to Sunna María’s car, where she pulled open the driver’s door, caught a handful of coat and hair and hauled her bodily from the car, dumping her in a puddle. Only then did she look up to see the man with the hook nose and moustache glaring back at her. She sensed rather than saw the blow coming as she reached for the keys. The flat of his hand caught her on the side of the head instead of in the face, making her stagger back and trip over Sunna María lying where she had been dropped.
The man leaped into the driving seat, slammed the door and gunned the Mercedes along the track, the engine whining in complaint as it raced and the wheels spinning in wet gravel before it jumped and was gone in time to meet the police four-by-four coming the other way.
For a moment, Gunna thought the squad car was going to veer and politely let the Mercedes past, but it stopped across the road, lights flickering in the wet gloom, and the two officers in it jumped out, one with his baton already in his hand. A siren could be heard in the distance as the hooknosed man slowly got out of the Mercedes, his hands in front of him but still with a smile on his face, as he realized that the odds were against him.
‘Geiri!’ Gunna called, still dazed from the blow, panting with exertion as she ran towards the pall of black smoke. The Golf coughed and spluttered as it sped past her and around the bend to where the white van was in flames, pulling up with a crunch of tyres. Geiri hauled open the Golf’s boot and pulled out a fire extinguisher.
‘The back of the van! Geiri, open the back,’ Gunna yelled, searching her coat pockets for the gloves she knew should be there and pulling them on as she ran through the puddles. Smoke was pouring from the white van’s cab. Geiri lifted the extinguisher as if it were a toy, smashed the driver’s side window with the base of it and let fly with the contents into the van. Gunna wrenched at the rear doors, pulled one open and coughed as a gout of black smoke erupted from inside. After a few seconds it cleared a little and she jumped inside with her eyes watering and one hand over her mouth.
There was little she could see, but among the boxes that Orri had stacked in the van that morning, a foot could be seen in the gloom. Knowing she had no more than a couple of seconds at most, Gunna grabbed the foot, pulled with all her strength and found herself falling backwards out of the van into Geiri’s bear-like embrace with an unconscious Orri in her grasp.
‘Get him clear, will you?’ she gasped, coughed and doubled over, retching onto the black lava gravel as Geiri swung Orri over his shoulder and laid him on the ground next to the Golf. He came back for Gunna, helping her to her feet and half-carrying her to the car as the flames burned even more fiercely in the van, illuminating the little group in an unearthly light as the gouts of black smoke blotted out weak sunlight that fought manfully to break through the clouds after the downpour.
Gunna still felt dirty and the smell of burning clung to her in spite of a shower and clean clothes. Ívar Laxdal looked at her with respect as she dropped herself gingerly into the visitor’s chair in his office.
‘How’s Orri?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, Gunnhildur.’
‘Shit. You mean I was too late?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’
Gunna scowled and smacked a fist into the palm of her other hand. ‘I knew I should have acted sooner. I should have grabbed the lot of them before they got out of town, before they had a chance to set that van on fire.’
‘Gunnhildur, you couldn’t have known.’
‘I should have known that they weren’t taking Orri somewhere for a sauna and a massage.’
She sighed, suddenly exhausted, and slumped in the chair, while Ívar Laxdal looked brighter and more cheerful than she had seen him for weeks. Gunna realized that the pressure on him had been relieved once Sunna María and the man with the hook nose were in custody. Ívar Laxdal could expect his superiors to be quietly satisfied that a difficult matter had been dealt with, and it occurred to her that she still had no idea of the man’s name.
‘So who is he?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Ívar Laxdal looked uncomfortable. ‘Our mystery man? He says his name’s Bruno Kovalchuk, and what’s interesting is that he claims diplomatic immunity.’
‘What? He’s embassy staff?’
‘It’s a bizarre claim, considering his country has no diplomatic presence in Iceland. He claims to be from Belarus, which doesn’t have an embassy here. But we have no choice but to jump through the hoops, so I’ve happily passed the whole headache over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which can deal with the Belarusian Embassy in London or Helsinki, or work through our consul in Minsk; not that I’m expecting anything to happen fast, and in the meantime he’s already been charged with assaulting a police officer.’
‘Me, once again.’
‘As you say, you. That’s enough to keep him locked away until this mess is sorted out.’
Gunna pursed her lips. ‘You’re not going to let him disappear, like. .’
‘Absolutely not, and as soon as wherever he comes from gets the idea that he was running a drugs operation, I don’t expect they’ll want to remember who he is. I’m half expecting them to just say his passport’s a forgery so they can forget about him.’
‘It was a speed ring, then? That’s what it was all about?’
Ívar Laxdal sat back, his face relaxed for the first time since Vilhelm Thorleifsson had been gunned down in his summer house.
‘That’s what it seems. According to the dentist’s delightful wife, Bruno was getting rid of members of the group who had doubts about expanding the business or who might have wanted a share of the profits.’
‘You mean they were getting rid of their business partners one at a time? Has she said anything about Elvar Pálsson?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Eiríkur. He’s been in there with her since they were brought in. You want to sit in, or have you had enough?’
Gunna yawned. ‘I’ve had about four hours sleep in two days, so while I’m tempted to lean on Sunna María or Bruno, I’d probably be best off going home and seeing if any of my family actually recognize me. But, Alex? That was this Bruno guy, was it?’
‘So Sunna María says. She believes Bruno and Alex between them murdered Vilhelm Thorleifsson, and she thinks Bruno murdered Alex because he was unreliable. It sounds plausible to me. The question is how much she actually knows and how much she’s guessing.’