‘He was on the march,’ Lára added.
‘Where? When?’
‘About twenty minutes ago. At the check-in desk at the airport.’
‘You’re sure? What was he up to?’
‘He was in the queue to check in for a flight, I suppose.’
‘Bloody hell. What were you doing up there, anyway?’
Skúli grimaced. ‘A shot in the dark. Bjarni Jón Bjarnason was arriving from Berlin. We were supposed to try and get a comment from him if we could, now that the InterAlu withdrawal seems to be happening, but he must have been whisked away through the VIP lounge. Which is what we’d expected anyway. Instead of going straight back, we decided to go for a coffee in the café by the departure desks and Lára almost walked into him.’
‘Did he see either of you?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Would he recognize either of you anyway?’
‘I doubt it. We only spoke for a few minutes.’
‘Good. Right. I have to run, as you can imagine, Skúli. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the information, and if this comes off, I owe you an enormous favour.’
Skúli grinned broadly. ‘No problem.’
‘By the way,’ she murmured in a voice that wouldn’t carry, ‘maybe you ought to know that a certain prominent political figure’s wife is in a cell at Hverfisgata, not that you heard that from me.’
Skúli grinned. ‘Great. Thanks, chief.’
‘Call me tomorrow. OK?’ Gunna shot at him, departing at a trot.
‘Vilhjálmur!’ Gunna bellowed, bursting back into the incident room. ‘Where the hell is the bloody man when you need him?’
‘Here, Gunnhildur. If you’d slow down for a second, you’d find me right behind you,’ he said tartly.
‘Right. No time to fart about,’ she said briskly as the rest of them appeared, having heard Gunna’s bellow echo through the building. ‘Our man’s at Keflavík airport right now.’
‘And you thought he wouldn’t be?’ Snorri mumbled through a mouthful of sandwich.
‘I may be wrong. So fire me. I’m told he was at check-in twenty minutes ago, so he’s probably checked in by now and waiting for his flight. Vilhjálmur, I want the airport force alerted straight away.’
‘They’re already on standby for this person, but it hasn’t helped with the Minister going through and all the press they expected.’
‘I don’t give a stuff about the Minister. He’s long gone by now. Get them back on the ball and tell them that our man is probably in the building. Remind them he’s dangerous. Now, please, Vilhjálmur.’
Vilhjálmur Traustason left the room at the closest to a run anyone had seen since he had been in the police handball team twenty years before.
‘Snorri, Bjössi, you’re with me. Bára, I want you to stay here and hold the fort. Get on to the airport and explain what the hell’s going on.’
‘Isn’t Vilhjálmur doing that?’
‘Vilhjálmur is safely out of the way talking to his opposite number at the airport. I want you to communicate with us and with the guys on the ground. Make sure they know what’s happening before we get there.’
‘OK. Will do,’ Bára said, parking himself at a computer screen and placing a headset over one ear.
‘Come on. Snorri, you’re driving,’ Gunna said, tossing the keys to the second-best Volvo high in the air.
Hårde didn’t believe in disguise. A confident approach, preferably with a discreet smile, was his preferred way of staying inconspicuous, although it wasn’t always easy for a man of above average height.
He was unhappy with the airport while being unable to put his finger on precisely what was wrong, apart from Sigurjóna’s having told him that the fat policewoman was looking for him. The check-in queue moved quickly enough and the concourse area was crowded enough for him to meld into the throng. He looked carefully at the queue ahead of him and singled out a couple of possible targets, men of roughly his own age and build, travelling alone.
He knew he would be ahead of Erna and had to admit to himself that he was looking forward to seeing her again, even though they had only parted that morning. He forced himself to think objectively and not to let the thought of her writhing beneath him cloud his judgement. Women come and women go, he reminded himself.
He watched the girl at the check-in desk for reactions that would betray that his name had been flagged up by the computer system, but she was mercifully bland.
‘Have a nice flight, Mr Ström,’ she smiled, passing him his boarding pass.
He passed security painlessly as a bored guard waved him through to pick up his X-rayed hand baggage. Inside the departure lounge, he drank a coffee at the bar and made his decision.
Ib Torbensen was bored and tired. His business trip to Iceland had been successful enough, but the small company representing his employers’ products had exhausted him. The evening before they had taken him to dinner and a few drinks that had become a crawl through some of the noisier parts of downtown Reykjavík, ending in a raucous bar only a few hours before he needed to be awake at a meeting that he had not been able to stop yawning through.
He drank coffee, but didn’t feel well enough to eat. His coat was making him too hot and he regretted not having packed it in his luggage. After three cups of coffee, he stood up, dropped some notes on the bar and wandered idly among the shops until the need to pee became too strong to fight.
He found a toilet on the far side of the concourse. Standing at the urinal and watching the yellow stream hit the bowl, he vaguely registered the door open and someone else enter the toilets.
When Hårde’s right arm snaked around his neck, Ib Torbensen tried to shout. But Hårde’s left arm quickly connected with his right hand, trapping the arm around Ib Torbensen’s neck in the crook of the elbow, while the flat of Hårde’s free hand forced his victim’s head forward. As Ib Torbensen collapsed into unconsciousness, Hårde caught him and hauled the body to a cubicle, shutting the door behind them both.
Five minutes later, Hårde emerged, leaving an unconscious Ib Torbensen on the cubicle floor, having divested him of all his travel documents, passport, money and every piece of identification.
He walked smartly back across the concourse to the bar and saw Erna perched on a barstool. He hesitated for a moment, and made a second decision.
He dropped a hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Don’t say anything, Erna.’
She turned to him in surprise, but kept quiet.
‘You said you thought I was a dangerous man?’
Erna nodded, eyes wide.
‘I’m not coming with you.’
‘What? Why?’ she couldn’t help demanding, eyes wide.
‘Listen. I have to fix something and you haven’t seen me.’
He squeezed her shoulder gently with the hand that had nearly killed lb Torbensen. ‘You haven’t seen me since yesterday. Go to M’diq as planned. I’ll see you in a few days.’
‘How many days?’
‘A few. That’s all I can say.’
He squeezed her shoulder once more as Erna looked at him with a mixture of sorrow and fury. ‘OK, Mr Dangerous. Make it soon.’
‘Soon,’ Hårde said, his eyes wrinkling at the corners with a suppressed smile, and in seconds he had melted back into the crowd around the bar.
He walked purposefully but not too fast towards the long walkway leading to the departure gates and passport control. Halfway along, he spied a noisy group of people coming towards him from an arriving flight, laughing and joking among themselves. Hårde took a step to one side to make way for them and turned to double back, following until they reached the top of the steps for arriving passengers to go down to the baggage reclaim.
He stood behind an elderly couple on the escalator. At the bottom, he took a deep breath and walked past the carousels to the Nothing to Declare channel, where he was waved straight past and out, back on to Icelandic soil.