Gunna smiled as the line went dead, imagining Siggi racing up the stairs to his computer. She sat back and waited for the phone to ring while she looked at the rough photocopy of Gunnar Ström’s passport picture and the blocky image taken from the airport parking lot’s surveillance camera of the blue jeep’s driver. The two looked similar, but the images were not clear enough for her to be certain.
Siggi worked faster than Gunna had expected. The phone buzzed after only ten minutes.
‘Gunnhildur.’
‘Hi. It’s me. Grandad says yes. He’s certain it’s the same kind of jeep.’
‘Absolutely certain, or just fairly sure?’
‘Grandad says ninety per cent certain and he isn’t sure what colour it was, but it was dark — dark blue or grey, or maybe black.’
‘That’s excellent, Siggi. There might be a future for you with the police one day,’ she said. ‘Give your grandad my regards and tell him I’ll pop in and see him in the week.’
She sat back and looked at the rental forms again, even though there was no need to check the colours of Swiftcar’s jeeps. She knew that they were all black.
13
Tuesday, 9 September
Fat Matti stuck a thumb under the waistband of his trousers and snapped the elastic. Switching from jeans to tracksuit bottoms had made his life so much easier that he couldn’t understand why he had put it off for so long.
He reached forward to turn on the engine. The taxi had been still for so long that it was starting to cool and he needed to burn a little diesel to warm up. This wasn’t just for his own sake. Customers like a warm cab as well.
He peered over his shades into the mirror, hoping to see a customer hurrying towards him. At this time on a Tuesday morning a few revellers were still making their way home. Weekday mornings were good with business people hurrying to meetings, but evenings were best when the nightclubs, parties in people’s houses and revellers with a deep need to score could keep a man busy well into the small hours.
Matti peered into the mirror and examined his eyebrows. He took out a comb and swept back his thick black hair before giving each eyebrow a tweak and then clenching his buttocks to lift himself in the seat and bring his moustache into view. This too needed a minor readjustment. In fact, the long-out-of-fashion Zapata tache was Matti’s only remaining gesture towards elegance. A porn star moustache, one very refreshed customer had called it, before being dropped miles from his destination and outrageously overcharged.
For a man who habitually wore jogging bottoms and hadn’t seen his feet for years, Matti was a keen follower of fashion. He thoroughly approved of the new fashions for young women to wear ever tighter clothes and delighted particularly in the warm spring weather that brought the short tops and miniskirts out as sure as the geese started flying north. Not that this applied on the night shift, when all year round skimpy skirts could give him a flash of knicker — or better — as the young things jumped into the big Mercedes to be ferried between bars, nightclubs and parties.
Matti was deep in reverie when a phone rang. He patted his pockets until he found which one was buzzing.
‘Yeah?’
He listened briefly, grinned and ended the call. Matti put the big taxi into gear and pulled out of the taxi rank, switching off the For Hire sign as he did so. Private jobs, paid for in notes, were always worth having.
Gunna spread the newspaper out on her desk and waited for Skúli to turn up. He had spent anything from a day to an hour or two shadowing her doing routine work. She admitted to herself that it was quite enjoyable having someone so young tagging along behind her asking questions — frequently questions so simple that she wondered how someone with a university education could know so little.
She was about to give up trying to work out the newspaper’s recipe for a beef casserole when she heard Skúli greeting Haddi at the front desk.
‘Madame’s in the executive suite,’ Haddi grunted when Skúli asked where she was.
‘He means I’m in here, Skúli,’ Gunna called and Skúli’s windblown face appeared in the doorway, with a young woman half a head taller at his shoulder.
‘Hi,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Er, this is Lára. She’s come to take some pictures today if that’s OK.’
Lára extended a hand and Gunna crunched it in hers.
‘Fine by me. But preferably nothing embarrassing.’
‘Have you heard about the march?’ Skúli asked excitedly.
‘What march?’
‘So you haven’t. Clean Iceland Campaign are organizing a march to protest against the aluminium industry. You must have heard about it. It was on the news this morning.’
Gunna stared. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, this a TV-free zone. The only news here is yesterday’s Dagurinn. So you should at least be pleased that we’re reading your newspaper. When’s this march supposed to happen?’
‘It’s next weekend, but it starts tomorrow morning.’
‘Skúli, make sense, will you? It’s Wednesday tomorrow, so how can it be happening at the weekend?
‘What he means,’ Lára broke in, ‘is that the march starts outside Parliament tomorrow morning and they plan to be here on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Here?’ Gunna demanded.
‘That’s right,’ Skúli went on breathlessly. ‘They plan to march from Reykjavík to here. It’s a hundred kilometres, so if they cover thirty or so in a day they’ll be here for Saturday and they’re planning a public meeting outside the InterAlu compound on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘They reckon on a thousand people at least taking part,’ Skúli added.
Gunna’s desk phone rang and she picked it up with the frown still on her face. ‘Gunnhildur.’
‘Good morning, Gunnhildur. Vilhjálmur here. I was just wondering if you were aware of the events that are being proposed for next weekend?’
She could feel the distaste in the chief inspector’s voice.
‘Ah, you mean the Clean Iceland Campaign march?’ she asked smoothly, grinning at Skúli. ‘As it happens, yes. But if you want to tell me more, then go ahead.’
Matti only had to drive a few hundred metres and as he pulled up at the lights to wait for the turning on to Sæbraut, the door swung open and his passenger appeared silently in the seat.
‘Where to today, Mr Hardy?’
‘Out of town this time. Borgarnes.’
It was a bright day with unbroken sunshine in an azure sky as Matti gunned the taxi up the main road out of town, leaving trucks and old ladies in Skodas standing. Hardy sat and looked as if he were enjoying the scenery as they passed the sprawling grey concrete suburbs of Grafarvogur and Mosfellsbær until they found themselves bowling through open country at the feet of Esja, the hulking mountain that dominates Reykjavík from across the bay.
Matti effortlessly hauled the taxi past tractors and coaches, carefully keeping not too far over the speed limit. Hardy enjoyed the unaccustomed ride through the dusty green countryside, so much harsher than the wooded landscape he was used to.
‘Aren’t there any trees here, Matti?’ he asked lazily.
‘No. No trees here. The Vikings cut them all down for firewood and they never grew back.’
Matti cut his speed as they approached the tunnel at Hvalfjördur and was careful to keep under the limit until they emerged, blinking in the bright lights after the dim tunnel, past the toll booths at the far side.
He forced himself not to be curious. Matti knew that any discussion of Hardy’s work was strictly off limits unless his opinion was invited, which it seldom was.
The road became a switchback of turns and hillocks through the lush farmland north of the tunnel. Hardy wound down the passenger window to let in the breeze that brought with it the rich aroma of cut grass. With every farm along the route making the most of the dry weather for haymaking, Matti kept a cautious eye out for tractors pulling vast trailers of hay along the highway.