He stretched out in the narrow bed, extending his feet past the end of the heavy duvet that was made to suit someone twenty centimetres shorter, and wondered what time it was.
Late in the evening he had tucked the little grey Toyota away behind the unobtrusive tarred wooden shed set well back from the road but with a view through the rattling windows of rain-laden skies to the west. The back door had opened with the same piece of plastic he had used on the fat policewoman’s door, only even more easily. Weeks before he had scouted out the area, noting the locations of remote summer cottages in case he might need to disappear. It wasn’t something he expected might happen, being a respectable employee of an international company, albeit with a false passport, but he’d done it anyway out of force of habit.
He had two days to wait for Horst’s ticket off the island, two full days to lie low and stay out of trouble. Normally he would have relished the prospect of two days of solitude to spend watching a little TV, stretching and meditating, but this time Erna sashayed in front of him every time he closed his eyes, grinning as she peeled off her clothes.
The car would have to be dumped, he decided. The fat policewoman would certainly by now be aware of the number and make of the car rented on the Danish guy’s credit card, so sometime during the day he would need to replace it discreetly. He wondered about laying a false trail for the fat policewoman to follow, even a strike of some kind to give them something else that would overload the country’s tiny police force beyond being able to seek out a single person making a quiet departure.
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Laufey said. ‘I don’t mind staying with Sigrún.’
Sprawled in an armchair, she returned her attention to Facebook and Gunna gave up.
Sigrún leaned on the door frame with folded arms and grinned. ‘Don’t worry. She’s fine here.’
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Gunna said fretfully.
‘It’s all right,’ Sigrún said soothingly. ‘Is it that bloke who was on the news yesterday that you’re after?’
‘Yes, it is,’ Gunna admitted.
‘Then don’t worry about it. She’s fine here for a few days.’
‘Thanks, Sigrún. I owe you a huge favour,’ Gunna said, turning up her coat collar as close as it would go to her cap to trot the hundred metres uphill through the rain to her own house.
She threw herself through the front door. Inside, she shook rain off her jacket, took it off and hung it on the door before kicking off her boots. Although the place felt empty without Laufey, it had a feel of habitation about it.
‘Hello!’ she called out loudly, striding to the kitchen to look around. Plates and dishes that she had not used were stacked on the draining board. In the living room, an empty wine bottle stood on the table.
Gunna cast about, called again and went over to look at the sofa, rearranging the scattered cushions with swift movements. Spotting something white peeking from under a cushion in the corner, she pulled at it gently.
‘Hi, Mum.’
A towel tied around his waist, Gísli rubbed his eyes as he emerged from his room to find Gunna sending a wry half smile towards him as she held up a lacy white bra.
‘Well, my lad. It’s definitely not one of mine,’ she said. ‘Far too small.’
‘Sorry, Mum.’
‘Company?’
‘Yeah. She’s still asleep.’
‘All right. I won’t disturb you. I’ve just nipped in for a shower and a change. Got to be back at the station soon again anyway.’
Gísli grunted and went past her to the kitchen, and soon the flat was filled with the aroma of brewing coffee.
For some reason she couldn’t put her finger on, her bedroom felt different, as if there were a fleeting aroma of someone else that she couldn’t quite catch hold of. Gunna threw clothes in a corner of her bedroom, wrapped herself up for Gísli’s benefit and made for the shower. A few minutes later she was towelling off vigorously, and was soon feeling properly awake again in a clean uniform shirt at the kitchen table as Gísli poured fresh coffee into a mug.
‘Mm, hello. The smell woke me up,’ a small voice behind her said.
Gunna turned to see a round freckled face and flood of red hair streaming over the shoulders of one of Gísli’s shirts.
‘Mum, this is Soffía,’ Gísli announced with sheepish pride.
‘Hello, Soffía, pleased to meet you. I’m Gísli’s witch of a mum, but you call me Gunna.’
‘I know who you are. Gísli said you were in the police,’ she said slowly, sitting on Gísli’s knee and moulding herself to him.
‘When are you sailing, Gísli?’ Gunna said, draining her mug.
‘Not until next week. There’s no hurry since they cut the bloody quotas again.’
‘Fine. Are you staying here? It’s up to you. I’ve no idea when I’ll be back.’
‘We’ll stay here for a while, I think,’ Soffía said carefully. ‘If that’s all right with you?’
‘No problem. I’ll be back sometime. Just make sure my lad washes up after himself, won’t you?’ she said, standing up and making for the door, by which time the young couple were already wrapped precariously around each other.
In the lobby, she half closed the door and bent to pull her boots on again, looking out through the narrow window by the door to see that the rain was beating down outside harder than ever.
***
He drove slowly through Hafnarfjördur, down the hill from the town’s southern entrance and stopped at the lower quayside, thought about going into the café on the dock where he had eaten several times with Matti, but decided against it.
With the wipers struggling to clear water from the windscreen, Hårde drove slowly up the slope and along the southern edge of the harbour area, through a small industrial estate crowded with fork-lift trucks, badly parked vans and large plastic tubs of fish waste along the sides of the road. Looking for a suitable opportunity, he carried on past the industrial zone, before taking a U-turn to double back, this time passing the bay towards the town itself.
Confidence, that’s the key, he reminded himself. A man with a smile and a purpose doesn’t normally get asked what he’s doing.
He parked neatly in a bay in the town centre and got out of the car to reconnoitre on foot, the collar of his jacket turned up, hands deep in his pockets. The small precinct of shops where he bought a couple of pastries had a few people walking around, but both the post office and the bank in particular were busy with longish queues. Chewing a sweet roll, he timed a middle-aged lady as she entered the bank — it took her an encouraging eleven minutes to get her business concluded and leave. He went back to the car, where he sat watching the passers-by while he ate a second roll and drank the carton of fruit juice he had bought.
He unfolded the free newspaper he had picked up without looking at it carefully and was jolted awake at the sight of a photo of himself at the bottom of the front page, one that he recognized as the Swedish police’s mug shot of him.
He swore, anger rising inside him until he carefully stifled it. Only the woman serving at the shop counter had seen him clearly, and she had been a foreigner as well, not likely to read an Icelandic newspaper. Nobody else would need to see him anyway, so the photo in the paper needn’t be an issue.
What had caught him off guard was that the fat policewoman was obviously further ahead of him than he had imagined. Maybe that stupid taxi driver had told them something? Or Sigurjóna, a person he would never be able to trust.
He looked back at the paper and saw to his surprise that Sigurjóna was there on the cover too, one scarlet-taloned hand shielding a sour pout from a photographer’s flash, and he chuckled grimly to himself, well able to imagine what would be going on now that InterAlu had dropped its Icelandic partners.