‘He’ll look as if he’s asleep.’
‘OK. I’ll do it.’
‘Tomorrow?’
Dísa looked doubtful. ‘I will if you’ll come with me,’ she finally said in a small voice.
‘Of course,’ Gunna said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘I’ll pick you up as well if you like.’
‘Please. I’ll take the day off. Sigurjóna won’t mind if she knows why.’
‘Fine. I’ll go over to the hospital with you. You’re going to be all right tonight, aren’t you?’ she asked, the front door open in front of her.
The sun was low in the sky and it was still warm after a hot day, but a stiff breeze was blowing uphill from the sea, whipping dust from the street to fill the air with grit.
‘Dísa, you’re not on your own here, are you?’
‘It’s all right. My uncle’s family is upstairs and Mum is down the street.’
Gunna pulled her cap lower and prepared to trot over the road to her car.
‘The guy’s name, I remember it now.’
‘And?’
‘Egill. Egill Grímsson.’
***
The phone buzzed on the kitchen worktop and Gunna debated with herself whether or not to answer the ‘unknown number’ call. After all, she was off duty. Laufey looked up from the homework she had decided to spread across the kitchen table.
‘Phone, Mum.’
‘I know, sweetheart.’ Gunna picked it up. ‘Gunnhildur.’
Vilhjálmur Traustason’s voice was an octave above its usual pitch, and for once he didn’t even bother to introduce himself.
‘Why on earth were you in Reykjavík?’ he demanded.
‘You keep telling me what a wonderful city it is and how you can’t understand me living in a backwater like Hvalvík.’
‘Don’t play games, Gunnhildur. I’ve had a complaint from a very senior level that you have been harassing a prominent figure in the business community. Very prominent.’
‘And who is that supposed to be?’
Vilhjálmur’s voice rose slightly further and Gunna toyed with the idea that if it were to go up any more, then only dogs and dolphins would be able to hear the chief inspector’s tantrums.
‘You know perfectly well and I’m instructing you to be careful. This is a very influential lady and I can’t see how she could be connected in any way to anything suspicious.’
‘Look, our dead guy worked for her. This was a perfectly ordinary interview, nothing heavy, simply to try and find out what his movements had been before we found him dead a hundred kilometres from Reykjavík. Is that OK?’
She could hear the chief inspector taking deep breaths to calm his nerves. She knew he found it difficult to haul her over the coals, just as she found it hard to take his rapid rise through the ranks seriously.
‘Well, in that case—’
‘And just so that you know, your prominent figure had just finished screaming blue murder at some unlucky dogsbody as I got there, and she reeks of vodka at two in the afternoon.’
‘In that case—’
‘In that case, I should have informed traffic, just in case the bloody woman decided to drive herself home.’
‘Gunnhildur, listen, I don’t want any trouble arising from this, you understand? We don’t need a repeat of, you know, what happened before.’
‘Just following procedure, Vilhjálmur, going by the rule book.’
Well, mind you do. Do you understand? We can’t have that sort of person causing a fuss because a regional officer oversteps the mark.’
He stressed ‘regional’, and Gunna found herself resisting the temptation to snap back. She jammed her phone against one shoulder while opening the fridge and peering inside.
‘What do you mean by overstepping the mark?’ she asked angrily. ‘Since when has trying to find out why someone died in suspicious circumstances been overstepping the mark?’
‘Progress briefing tomorrow. Don’t forget.’ The phone went dead in her hand.
‘You can just go to hell, chief inspector,’ she muttered, tossing the phone back on to the worktop where it spun in circles before coming to rest behind the toaster. Laufey looked at her mother with wide eyes.
‘All right, Mum?’
‘Yes. It’s just something you need to learn as you go through life, my love.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That most of the people in charge are idiots.’
‘You have to find these — these — these bastards!’
Sigurjóna Huldudóttir’s composure had disappeared entirely. Her shoulders shook and her voice trembled in fury.
‘There’s nothing more I can do, Sigurjóna,’ Bjarni Jón Bjarnason said in a voice he hoped sounded soothing, while bracing himself for the storm. ‘The computer crime squad have been investigating this for weeks without getting anywhere and I’ve badgered the Minister of Foreign Affairs to put pressure on countries that host these websites, but it’s not as if Iceland has so much weight that we can bully other governments,’ he added bitterly.
‘But it’s just disgusting,’ she spat. ‘Absolutely revolting. How do they find these things out? Have you seen this?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he lied.
‘Just look at it. Go on, read it. Look what this scumbag is saying.’ She wrenched the laptop around on the table.
‘Who?’
‘Just read the bloody thing!’
Bjarni Jón read. He recognized every one of the blogger’s targets easily enough, and anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with any of the gossip magazines would be able to do the same.
Sigurjóna stood up and paced the living room from end to end, smoking furiously, and spun back so that the parquet floor squealed under her heel.
‘Have you read it? Well, have you?’
‘Yes, I have now.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
She gathered her breath. ‘And what the hell are you going to do about it?’ she shrieked, while Bjarni Jón quailed at the onslaught.
‘Look, Jóna. We’ve had this bloody site closed down already a couple of times, and it just pops up somewhere else. The blog’s hosted in some former Soviet state where all that counts is money and they don’t reply to official communications if they don’t feel like it.’
Sigurjóna threw herself into a chair, looked around briefly for an ashtray and ground out her cigarette clumsily on a saucer that still had a cup in it, spilling cup and cold coffee on to the table. Anger was something she did well and she knew it.
‘How does this bastard know all these things?’ she hissed.
‘Like what things?’ Bjarni Jón asked.
‘Like how Inga Katrín had a nose job at the same time as she had her boobs fixed?’
‘How should I know?’
‘And how does this shitbag know about . . . Sugarplum?’
Bjarni Jón winced. This one was painful.
‘Well, how do they know?’ she yelled, bringing her fury to the whirling climax that Bjarni Jón had known was coming. ‘That’s our name! Nobody else’s! Unless you’ve been whispering something in your secretary’s ear!’
‘Jóna, please. Calm down.’
‘Why the hell should I?’
Bjarni Jón summoned his scattered courage and tried to keep his head high. ‘Look, Jóna, I wouldn’t touch Birna even if it was on offer. She’s as cold as a dead fish.’
‘And how do you know? Tried it on, have you?’
In spite of herself, Sigurjóna was starting to enjoy herself. Occasionally she revelled in letting her temper and tongue have free rein and, however much Bjarni Jón was tempted to yell back, his self-control was never allowed to slip that far.
‘Listen. Birna is completely frigid. I have it on good authority. She’s not been involved with a man since she left university. She gets off on her career, nothing else.’
‘All right, then.’