‘Laufey? How old is she now?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Teenager yet?’
‘Getting there, but I’m sure there’s worse to come.’
‘You could send her to us if you need to. Dóra wouldn’t mind at all.’
‘Thanks, Bjössi. I might well take you up on that.’
She took a gulp of coffee. ‘But Gísli came home yesterday and he’s got ten days off, so Laufey thinks that big brother is all the supervision she needs and the two of them will rub along just fine without Mum.’
‘And can’t they?’
‘Bjössi, my old and dear friend. Gísli is nineteen and he’s been at sea for weeks. I’m sure you can imagine that babysitting his little sister is not his top priority right now.’
‘Sorry. Should have known. The boy probably has beer and girls on his mind.’
‘Exactly. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ll call Laufey and try to explain that to her and why she’s staying with Sigrún down the street until Mum’s little panic at work is sorted out.’
Darkness was starting to fall as Hårde parked the Toyota outside the deserted school and waited without being sure what he was waiting for. There was no car parked outside the terraced house, although there were tyre tracks in the mud. No lights could be seen at Hafnargata 38 and Hårde decided to leave it until it was fully dark before making a move.
He huddled low in the seat and was sure he was unlikely to be observed as a woman in a heavy coat and rubber boots splashed up the street and went direct to number 38, opening the door and stepping inside without having to unlock it. Hårde waited and wondered if this were the right house, or if the new arrival were a friend or a relative, or even the fat policewoman’s girlfriend? It wouldn’t surprise him, he thought with a dark smile.
The door swung open again and this time the woman walked back down the street, accompanied by a gangly teenage girl with a schoolbag under one arm. This time Hårde stepped from the car and followed at a discreet distance, observing as the pair walked downhill, clearly enjoying a lively conversation, before disappearing into a low-slung house set back from the road behind an untidy garden of stunted trees.
Hårde smiled to himself and walked back in the growing gloom of the evening. Warm lights appeared at most of the windows in the street and he could make out television screens behind most of them. This was reassuring, as people who are busy watching a soap opera don’t tend to look out of their own windows.
He opened the door of Hafnargata 38 with a single swift movement of a strip of flexible plastic and stepped inside, clicking the door to behind him.
***
It was close to midnight when the whole team assembled again in the incident room. Bára, Snorri and Gunna were haggard after the long day.
Bjössi was his usual self. He always looked as if he had just woken up, regardless of whether he had been on his feet all day or had just started his shift.
Gunna was surprised to see Vilhjálmur Traustason still on his feet. His face was paler than usual and Gunna guessed that he hadn’t closed his eyes either.
‘So,’ Gunna began, flexing her fingers in front of her and yawning. ‘He’s given us the slip. He was undoubtedly at Keflavík airport this afternoon and either we didn’t get there in time, or else he saw us coming and slipped away. We’re pretty sure we know how and I’m positive that half-strangling that poor Danish bloke was a red herring. With Vilhjálmur’s agreement —’ she gestured towards Vilhjálmur Traustason standing by the back wall near the door with the brooding presence of Ívar Laxdal at his side — ‘we have informed the media and a report was carried on every TV news report this evening, with a photo of Hårde, and an announcement that members of the public should not approach him. It’ll be in every newspaper in the morning as well,’ she added. ‘Anything else?’
‘We’ve interviewed everyone we could get hold of at the airport,’ Snorri said. ‘We’re fairly sure our man’s still in the country, but no idea where.’
‘We need traffic surveillance ramped up as much as possible overnight. If he’s not within a few kilometres of the airport, then Hårde must have got hold of transport somehow. I can’t imagine him not being mobile, judging by the way he’s worked up to now,’ Gunna concluded.
‘And Erna Daníelsdóttir?’ Vilhjálmur asked quietly.
‘Landed safely in Madrid, and jumped on a transfer to Tangier.’ Bjössi yawned.
‘Tangier?’
‘That’s it, Morocco. The Madrid airport police questioned her at our request, but nothing useful. We’d like her to come straight back and answer a few questions, but as she hasn’t committed a crime, it’s not as if we can have the woman shipped home. We just have to wait until she comes back. Unless there’s a chance of a trip to the Mediterranean to interview her, in which case, I’d be happy to volunteer. I know it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.’
Vilhjálmur blanched, until he realized that Bjössi was joking.
‘All right, back here tomorrow, please, ladies and gentlemen,’ Gunna announced. ‘Bjössi and me at six. Snorri and Bára, I don’t want to see you here before ten.’
‘Do you want a lift home, chief?’ Snorri asked.
Gunna thought briefly and brightened inwardly at the prospect of seeing Gísli for an hour or two. Then she remembered that Laufey would be at Sigrún’s house and Gísli would hardly be likely to be waiting for his mum to come home when he could be in Reykjavík with the girlfriend he hadn’t seen for weeks.
‘No. I’ll just get my head down here tonight, if Vilhjálmur has an empty cell I can use. But thanks anyway.’
Hårde left his shoes by the door and padded from room to room, trying to decide his next move. One room was clearly a child’s, probably the one he had seen walking down the street, with bunk beds, posters on the walls and a row of neglected fluffy toys looking down from a high shelf. A smaller room looked like a guest bedroom, sparsely furnished but obviously recently used.
A third small bedroom was the domain of someone older and Hårde could see that the clutter of washed but unironed clothes on the dressing table belonged to the whole family. The double bed that filled much of the room was unmade and smelled both musty and inviting as Hårde remembered just how tired he was after a short night in Erna’s demanding company followed by a long day.
He shook himself, reminding himself as he did so that he had to find two days of seclusion and that this was not the place for it. He left the fat policewoman’s bedroom and scanned the long living room. He peered at pictures placed between books on the shelves along one wall, first of a smaller version of the girl he had seen walking down the street, then at a black-trimmed formal photograph of a man in some kind of military uniform, looking serious but with the same impish look of mischievous good humour that was evident in the girl’s face. A second set of pictures showed a heavily built young man at varying ages with a tousled head and freckles, who was trying to look at ease and failing.
Hårde nodded and made his decision. In the L-shaped kitchen he found a carrier bag and loaded it with a bottle of wine, another of water and all the fruit and pastries he could find before slipping back into his shoes and over the road to the car, clicking the door behind him.
As he started the engine and let the little car roll forward down the slope, a heavy Range Rover roared to a halt and parked outside number 38. Young people stepped down from it, a young woman with ginger hair in a loose bun and a broad-shouldered young man whom Hårde instantly recognized from the pictures on the wall.
He drove away unobtrusively, taking the westbound road out of Hvalvík. He was relieved that he had not been interrupted in the fat policewoman’s house and pleased that he had not needed to make certain of the young couple’s silence, but annoyed with himself for giving in to curiosity and taking a chance of being seen without good reason.