Toothbrush in hand, she tapped on Laufey’s door.
‘Come on, sweetheart. Turn it off. Time to go to sleep.’
11
Sunday, 7 September
The car park’s manager would dearly have liked to go home, but with Gunna and Snorri in his office he had little choice but to stay while they went through the surveillance tapes. Snorri sat in the manager’s chair and watched the computer screen, fingers idly tapping the mouse, while Gunna peered over his shoulder and the manager tried not to look at his watch.
‘So, how far back do the tapes go, and how long do you keep them?’ Gunna asked.
‘It’s not tape any more. It’s all digital files and now we keep it all for ever.’
‘So how far back do these go?’
‘Since the system was installed last year.’
‘Good. Should be long enough, then.’
‘See, that’s the jeep there,’ Snorri said, pointing at the grainy monochrome as the jeep entered the car park. ‘That was the eighth of March at 13.25, so that ties in with Rögnvaldur Jónsson’s statement.’
‘Yes,’ said Gunna. ‘Now we’re just going to have to sit here and watch until it’s driven out again, which hopefully won’t be too long.’
A pained look crossed the manager’s face as Gunna turned to him.
‘Do you know exactly where this vehicle was parked while it was here?’
‘Er, no.’
‘But you must have more than one set of cameras covering the car park, don’t you? I thought they were everywhere?’
‘They are. But one or two of them are dummies.’
‘That’s just brilliant. Right, you’d better tell me which ones are which.’
She slapped the statement Bjössi had sent that morning on to the man’s desk, turned it over to the blank side and handed him a pen.
‘There you are. Draw me a plan.’
Leaning over the wrong side of his own desk, the man sketched an outline of the car park, marking crosses where cameras covered the lanes of dormant cars. He was squinting with concentration when Snorri yelped.
‘There it is!’
‘Where?’
Snorri clicked the mouse and scrolled back, stopping the blurry picture with the jeep parked in a bay off centre and squashed by the camera’s perspective. Gunna fumbled with her glasses and jammed them on her nose. ‘Well?’
‘Well, like you said, now we just have to sit and wait until it moves.’
Gunna turned to the manager. ‘What other information do you have? There must have been a payment of some kind?’ She reeled off the jeep’s registration number.
‘I’ll see when I can get to my computer,’ he replied morosely.
Gunna turned back to peer over Snorri’s shoulder as he fast-forwarded through the footage. A few cars moved in stop-go motion and occasional people could be seen walking at high speed across the car park, even those weighed down by heavy suitcases.
‘Five o’clock and nothing yet,’ Snorri pointed out, a finger on the time indicator at the bottom of the screen.
‘Keep going.’
When the clock reached 17.03, Snorri slowed the replay as a tall man with no luggage approached the jeep. ‘Chief. Look.’
‘OK. Play it slowly. Can you get the picture any better than that?’
‘This is as clear as it’s going to get, I reckon.’
The man went straight to the jeep’s driver’s door and within a few seconds it was open. A moment later it surged forward, out of the bay and out of shot. Snorri paused the replay and summoned the manager.
‘I need to switch viewpoint to here,’ he explained, finger on the makeshift diagram.
The manager clicked and a new window opened on screen. ‘Do you have a time?’
‘Yeah. 17.03.’
‘Right.’ The manager tapped at the keyboard and a view of the gates appeared with 17.03 on the clock.
‘Scroll there,’ he said, needlessly as Snorri was already fast-forwarding until the jeep appeared at the bottom of the screen and bumped towards the gates. At the barrier, the jeep stopped, and the window rolled down. An arm emerged, put a ticket in the machine, and was gone. The barrier swung jerkily upwards and the jeep rolled forward and again out of shot.
‘Is there another camera on the gate?’ Snorri demanded.
The manager pointed and Snorri clicked. An image of the driver’s window appeared and moved jerkily until the man’s short hair, square face and dark coat could be seen, with clear eyes looking impassively at the camera.
‘At least we have a face and a time now. 17.07 on the eighth of March. The engine must have still been warm. The cheeky bastard.’
Gunna turned to the car park manager ‘Judging from that, is there any way we can find more footage of this?’
The man sighed and mentally wrote off his afternoon’s golf for good. ‘No, that’s it.’
‘All right, any payment details?’
‘Do you mind? Can I get to my desk and I’ll see what I can find for you?’
He tapped at the keyboard, opened new documents and studied them carefully.
‘Like you saw, it came in at 13.25 on the eighth of March, and left at 17.07 the same day. Paid by credit card. I’d have to go to head office for the card details. We don’t have that information here.’
Snorri scrolled back to the point where the man stood by the car door and was preparing to get inside.
‘Now, can we see the man there any more clearly?’
The man’s blocky image filled the screen.
‘That’s about the best I can manage. The system’s only really designed to record number plates,’ the manager apologized.
‘All right. We’ll just have to live with what you’ve got, if that’s all there is. Was there anyone on duty that night?’
‘The whole thing’s automatic. If something goes wrong at night, then it sends a message to one of our phones so we can get down here and sort it out. But that never happens unless the computer crashes, and even then it switches to a backup first.’
Gunna wished the man would stop sounding so apologetic. It was making her want to snap at him.
‘Snorri, do we need to confiscate this computer?’
A look of abject horror appeared on the manager’s face.
‘Or can you copy the files you need?’ Gunna asked, taking pity on the man.
‘I’m doing it already, or the screen grabs anyway,’ he said, reaching under the desk to remove a flash stick from the computer. ‘But I’ll come back in the morning with a laptop and download all the surveillance files for those dates.’
‘In that case, we can leave you to it. Thanks for your help.’
Gunna was already outside and getting into the car as Snorri loped down the steps and joined her.
‘What was that all about, chief?’
‘You mean your suspicious mind hasn’t figured anything out?’
‘I don’t have a suspicious mind.’
Gunna started the engine and the Volvo spat gravel from beneath its wheels as it left the car park.
‘Remember months ago there was an alert about a blue car that might have been involved in a fatal hit and run incident?’
‘Vaguely,’ Snorri admitted.
‘The victim was a man called Egill Grímsson. Helgi Skaftason investigated and came up with absolutely nothing beyond the idea that a blue jeep might have been involved. Hence the alert back in March.’
‘I get it. Now you find a blue car?’
‘That’s it. A blue car that was stolen very professionally the day before the hit and run, and which looks as if it had been carefully hidden. If it hadn’t been for the earthquake, the dock at Sandeyri might not have been checked for years and that car could have stayed there quietly for, well, anybody’s guess how long before it was found.’