Hardy’s phone didn’t ring. It just buzzed discreetly in his top pocket. Matti pretended to hear nothing as Hardy, sitting casually in the passenger seat, took the call.
‘Of course. I’ll call you right back. I’m not alone right now but I’ll return your call when we can speak confidentially,’ Matti heard him say smoothly into the slimline phone. ‘Of course. Yes, a few minutes,’ Hardy continued before snapping the phone shut. He looked over at Matti, who was trying not to catch his eye.
‘Can we stop somewhere? Somewhere there’s a landline phone?’
‘Yeah. I reckon so. We’ll be in Borgarnes soon and you can make a call from the gas station, I guess,’ Matti hazarded, inclined to ask why a mobile wasn’t good enough, but then thinking better of it.
Matti pumped fuel while Hardy went inside to find a payphone. He filled the tank and ambled inside to pay, deciding on the way that this would be as good a time as any to eat. He paid in cash at the desk and looked around for Hardy but failed to see him.
‘Excuse me, darling. Is there a phone here?’ he asked.
‘Over there,’ the cashier replied, jerking a thumb behind her towards the toilets.
He made his way over and shoved open the door of the Gents. On the way out, relieved, he spotted Hardy leaning against a wall, handset to his ear. Matti went over to him and made an eating gesture, raising hands to his mouth. Hardy frowned and looked away. Matti shrugged his shoulders and went towards the cafeteria where Hardy found him ten minutes later.
‘I thought you might be hungry,’ he said through a mouthful of burger, simultaneously skewering half a dozen chips on his fork and dipping them in a tub of bright pink cocktail sauce.
‘I might be,’ Hardy admitted. ‘But I don’t eat shit like this.’
‘You should have said.’
‘I was busy.’
‘And I was hungry.’
‘Big man, sometimes I think that you are a little too hungry for your own good,’ Hardy said with a hint of acid in his voice that passed Matti by.
‘Yup. Always been hungry, me. We was hard up when I was a kid and there wasn’t never enough to go around. Scars you for life, that does.’
Hardy nodded sagely and stood up. Matti was almost finished when Hardy returned with a bottle of water and a sandwich for himself, and mugs of black coffee for each of them. He carefully used Matti’s discarded knife to scrape more than half of the mayonnaise from his prawn sandwich on to the empty plate before taking a bite.
‘So, who are we going to visit this afternoon?’ Matti asked through yet another mouthful of food. Hardy was disgusted by Matti’s table manners, but enforced confinement had taught him not to comment on other people’s behaviour without good reason.
‘The man I have to speak to is a consultant who advises a lot of companies on various things. It’s not important for you to be present. The man speaks English perfectly and I don’t expect I’ll need you to translate.’
‘Going to be long?’
‘I doubt it. Twenty minutes, maybe. Then I have to be back in Reykjavík in good time after that.’
‘Another job?’
‘You could say that. I have to go to Spearpoint, so you can leave me there.’
‘Suits me. Right, I’m going outside for a puff before we go and find this guy. You got an appointment with him?’
‘In a way.’
‘What do you mean — in a way?’
‘He doesn’t know about it yet.’
Matti pulled up outside what looked like a dilapidated farmhouse. The building needed a coat of whitewash and the windows on the seaward side were caked with grime and salt.
‘This is the place?’ he asked Hardy doubtfully.
‘It should be. Wait here for me, will you?’
Matti switched off the engine and opened the door. There was almost perfect quiet outside. Only a few songbirds and the distant chatter of a brook broke the silence.
Matti levered himself out of the car and perched his backside on the bonnet, listening to the faint tick of cooling metal under the bonnet as he lit a cigarette. He watched Hardy walk purposefully up the path and open a garden gate that needed both oil in its hinges and a coat of paint.
He was halfway to the front door when it opened and a man appeared with spectacles perched among sparse hair that nevertheless curled about his shoulders.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked vaguely. ‘I heard your car pull up outside.’
‘I’m looking for Arngrímur Örn Arnarson,’ Hardy replied, hurrying to reach the man before he came too far from the house’s front door. ‘I’ve been told you can help me out with some information.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ the man said doubtfully.
‘Ah, but I’m sure you can. Einar Eyjólfur said you would be able to give me some answers.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know who that is,’ the man said quickly.
‘But you are Arngrímur Örn Arnarson?’ Hardy asked softly, hoping his voice would not carry as far as where Matti was basking in the sunshine. ‘Can we sit down and talk for ten minutes? I know you’re a busy man and I won’t take much of your time.’
The man cast about as if unsure and gestured towards an iron table flanked by a barbecue and a pair of garden seats near the door of the house. Matti looked lazily across at the two men sitting face to face outside the house and wondered what could be so important that it was worth driving all this way when a phone call could have done the trick. He hauled himself forward and sauntered around the back of the car to get a cloth. He busied himself polishing dead flies from the car’s windows while he caught snatches of the conversation that carried in the still air. In spite of himself, he couldn’t help straining to hear more.
‘You’re telling me you’re unaware of this?’ Hardy asked.
‘It’s not something I’m involved with,’ Matti heard the man say.
‘But how easy would it be to set something similar up? It would have to be secure and in an environment where interference is not easy,’ Hardy asked casually.
‘It can be done easily enough. Full access and any questions are ignored as long as suitable payments are made in the right places.’
Matti willed himself not to be nosy and straightened up from polishing the windscreen. As he did so, the two men at the table also stood up and came forward a few paces. He saw Hardy stretch out a hand and the man uncertainly put forward his own hand to shake it, while Matti hastily dropped the cloth and the cleaning fluid back in the boot to be ready to move off.
As he closed the boot, he heard a howl that set his teeth on edge. Looking up, he could see the two men with their hands locked, but by now Hardy was on his feet over the man who cowered on his knees, his right arm extended and twisted unnaturally into Hardy’s grip.
Hardy whispered something that the man clearly missed as Matti stood transfixed.
‘This is a message to your friend the Skandalblogger that it has to end and it has to end now,’ Hardy repeated. ‘Do you understand?’
The man nodded furiously.
‘This is just to make sure the message is taken seriously,’ Hardy added, leaning forward sharply as he put his weight behind his grip on the man’s arm. Although no stranger to a little persuasion himself, Matti shuddered at the sharp crack of the man’s wrist snapping and the thin screech that followed it.
Hardy stood up and dusted himself down with a smile.
‘I hope that’s all in order,’ he said to the whimpering man on his knees, one shattered arm cradled in the other. ‘I wouldn’t like to come back and do the same to the other one. Ready, Matti?’ he asked with a smile.