‘I know.’
‘The boys look after the horses for me. But it’s in the blood. We were sailing at five that morning and I don’t like to go without seeing them off.’
Gunna nodded, lunch forgotten in front of her.
‘Well, it was still dark, of course. Anyway, someone was there on the quay, which is a bit odd, but I thought nothing of it at the time. Who was the dead man, anyway?’
‘A kind of yuppie type who worked for a PR company in Reykjavík.’
Stefán sniffed. ‘Then what the bloody hell’s someone like that doing out here in the middle of the night?’
Gunna thought carefully while Stefán looked expectantly at her. It was unfortunate that the only potential eyewitness to what had happened up there had spent the last week at sea, but if this unidentified vehicle had anything to do with Einar Eyjólfur’s disappearance, then it pinpointed the time and date of the crime.
‘Anything else, Stefán? Make, model, number, anything like that?’
‘Big jeep sort of thing, not a Land Rover. Dark colour, black, blue, maybe? Couldn’t guess what kind, though. I only saw it for a moment as it went past. It looked pretty new to me, but what do I know? But I can tell you there was a JA in the number. That’s all.’
‘JA?’
‘That’s right. JA, Jóhanna Arnarsdóttir. It’s the missus’s initials, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed.’
‘Thank you, Stefán. That’s a big help,’ Gunna said finally. ‘Now, if you’ll come up to the station with me for half an hour, I’d like to ask you to give me a statement. And then I have a report to rewrite, and some questions to ask,’ she added grimly.
7
Tuesday, 2 September
‘Gunnhildur?’
Vilhjálmur Traustason’s hair was not so much carefully brushed as painstakingly sculpted. Youthful dark waves had long since given way to a thick distinguished grey that swept back from a parting as straight as a line ruled on a page. Admittedly the grey made him look older than his years. But all the same, it suited a senior officer, it suited his spare frame that had once been athletic, and he felt it suited the gravitas he wanted to project.
‘Yes, Vilhjálmur, what can I do for you?’
Gunna turned to face the chief inspector. She had hoped to make one of her regular visits to the Keflavík station without running into Vilhjálmur Traustason, but there was no such luck on this occasion.
‘I wanted to speak to you about, er . . .’ he mumbled. ‘I wanted to speak to you. We had better go to my office,’ he decided.
Vilhjálmur shut the door and waved Gunna to a seat, where she watched him as he scanned his desk.
‘Sævaldur has charged this man, Ágúst Ásgeirsson, with the murder of Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson.’
‘What? Gústi the Gob? He’s a nasty piece of work, but he’s not up to murder,’ Gunna said angrily. ‘That bloody Sævaldur, always taking the shortest cut he can.’
Vilhjálmur looked pained. ‘Sævaldur is a very competent officer and he—’
‘Gets results, as you keep telling me,’ Gunna finished for him. ‘And how often do they get released as soon as it comes to court? How many times have Sævaldur’s victims sued the police for wrongful arrest or whatever?’
Vilhjálmur Traustason was certain that he had a winning smile that he could treat his staff to when they needed his support. But in reality the sight of a slab of pearly dentistry without a shred of warmth to go with it was chilling rather than encouraging.
‘Well. Your record of arrests is actually rather impressive,’ he smiled. ‘Very good work with the arson case and with that fisherman landing over his quota.’
‘The arsonists were a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who didn’t need a lot of tracking down and you know perfectly well that Albert Jónasson’s case was all down to the Fisheries Office and not me.’
‘Still, you were the arresting officer and that’s what counts. Results,’ Vilhjálmur said with an imperious lifting of his angular nose. Gunna suddenly realized that he reminded her of nobody more than a Roman emperor. A toga would suit him.
‘It’s a crying shame we have to arrest people like Albert for just catching a few bloody fish. The man’s a perfectly law-abiding character and—’
She stopped short, seeing Vilhjálmur’s eyes glazing over.
‘We’d best leave the politics to the politicians, shall we?’ he said, unable to conceal his lack of interest. ‘What I wanted to discuss with you is the review procedure.’
‘Review procedure?’
‘I’ve already had the files emailed to you, so you can assess your team’s performance against a set of criteria and we can collate statistics on effectiveness, initiative, et cetera, all of which can be cross-referenced against age, experience and a whole range of other factors. You’d be amazed at what a useful tool this can be in assessing which staff are best placed in which spheres of activity. Which areas our training needs to be focused on. That kind of thing. Spreadsheets are marvellous things.’
‘More paperwork?’ Gunna asked, trying unsuccessfully not to sound sarcastic.
‘The thing is, Gunnhildur,’ he continued, as if she had not said a word, ‘we have been working on identifying officers who might be suitable for new roles, and you are one of those we have identified.’
Gunna stared, waiting for the next revelation.
‘You see,’ he went on smoothly, ‘in some divisions we have isolated personnel resource shortfalls that we are looking at rectifying.’
‘Which means you’re short of staff here and there, and you want to shuffle people about to plug the gaps?’
‘Erm. Those weren’t my words, but in essence, well, yes.’
‘And?’
‘As you are aware, there are difficulties with personnel and although recruitment is improving we have a problem with retention. So we have a need to deploy people to meet their optimum potential.’
‘Which means?’
Vilhjálmur grimaced. He was getting a familiar sinking feeling that he was no longer running this meeting. Leaning forward, he looked down his nose at Gunna sitting in front of his desk.
‘Which means,’ he continued in what he hoped was a tone of voice that would spin the conversation around, ‘that as a skilled investigator, if you were to put in an application for a vacancy in detection, there is every possibility that you would be successful.’
Gunna sat in amazed silence for a moment.
‘Does this take you by surprise?’
‘It does,’ she was forced to admit.
‘It would mean stepping up a grade, as the post carries an inspector’s rank.’
‘And what’s the catch?’
Vilhjálmur looked pained. ‘Catch? What do you mean?’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve never believed in free lunches. So, being an experienced investigator, I’m naturally always looking for what’s underneath. Force of habit.’
He cleared his throat, looked upwards and Gunna thought again of how a laurel wreath would suit him, nestling around those grey waves.
‘New grade effective from the first of October, you’d take over your new post on the first of December and you would have two months’ leave after stepping down at Hvalvík to relocate.’
‘Aha. Where to?’
‘There would be a reasonable relocation grant. The post is with the Egilstadir force, based in Seydisfjördur.’
‘So there is a catch,’ Gunna said with satisfaction.
‘It depends how you wish to look at it. Some officers would see it as an opportunity. A small force, fairly quiet, a chance to make an impression with the switch to plain clothes. You aren’t tempted?’
She thought quickly. The east coast, deep fjords and high mountains, virtually as far away from Hvalvík and Vilhjálmur Traustason as could physically be possible without leaving the country. A pay grade up in salary wouldn’t be unwelcome, though.