‘Look, mate, some of us have work to do. Bára, ring Vilhjálmur, will you, and tell him to call these cowboys off.’
‘You don’t have clearance,’ the man repeated, head lowered so close to the car’s open window that Gunna caught a whiff of his bad breath. Suddenly he shot a hand inside and made a grab for the keys in the ignition. As he did so, Gunna took her foot off the clutch and the car shot forward.
***
Hårde stiffened. He was sweating under the plastic helmet in spite of the rain and the chill wind. He saw the squad car come hurtling along the quay. The bow rope had already been taken off and he was furiously hand-over-handing it through the fairlead into a coil on the deck. He glanced over his shoulder to see Terje at the bridge window look down at him impassively. The engine roared again and the spring rope tightened as the angle between the ship and the quay increased. The ship strained against the rope and the squad car rolled to a halt on the quayside. Hårde saw the fat policewoman and a smaller one emerge from the car and stride across the concrete apron of the dock just as the engine noise again died away. The spring rope suddenly fell slack as a second man in black appeared from the shadow of the building that ran the length of the quay.
‘Don’t let that rope go, you hear me?’ Gunna yelled. The man casually raised the machine pistol slung over his shoulder and trained it on the Juno Provider’s bridge windows as two more men appeared. Gunna wondered where they were springing from.
The first man waved to the bridge, pointing to indicate that the ship should be brought back alongside, while the other two trained their weapons on the group standing around the mooring lines on its foredeck.
The ship’s engines rumbled as the spring tightened again and the ship gently came back to its berth. A gangplank was swung ashore and scraped across the concrete before it came to rest.
On the foredeck, Hårde was trying to understand what had happened. The fat policewoman had obviously been closer on his tail than he had thought, although he had carefully not underestimated the woman’s tenacity.
He looked across the narrowing gap at the trio on the quay and looked directly into the fat policewoman’s furious eyes as she lifted one hand and pointed a finger at him like a gun. He saw her turn her attention to the black-clad man.
‘What’s going on here?’ Gunna demanded.
‘I don’t have to say anything. You don’t have authority to be on this site. Leave, now, or I’ll have you escorted off.’
Boiling with fury, Gunna drew herself up to her full height, and wagged a finger at the man. ‘I’ve a bloody good mind to have you charged with hindering a police officer in the course of duty. So don’t you try lecturing me, sonny. D’you hear me? That man is a wanted criminal and it’s my duty to arrest him.’
She pointed at Ha
de, standing motionless on the Juno Provider’s foredeck with the rest of the crew.
‘Leave the site immediately,’ the man repeated.
‘Special Unit, my arse. Bunch of tin soldiers wasting taxpayers’ money and getting in the bloody way.’
The man ignored her and shouted up to the ship. ‘All of you, come down the gangway one at a time, slowly.’
The group from the foredeck trooped down nervously, with Hårde in the middle of the group and Terje bringing up the rear.
‘Who are you?’ the man demanded of each one. ‘Which of you is Hårde? And who is the captain?’
Terje stepped forward, and Gunna had to restrain herself from lunging at Hårde as he stepped out of the group. Even with a gun trained on him, the man radiated a quiet menace that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. The Special Unit officer motioned for two of his men to escort Hårde while he spoke abruptly to Terje in rapid Norwegian.
As they spoke, a black van appeared from the far end of the fishmeal plant. Hårde took off his plastic helmet and smiled coldly at Gunna and Bára where they stood helplessly glaring at the men with machine pistols cradled nonchalantly in their hands.
Terje hurried back up the gangway to the ship, followed by the rest of the crew, not looking at where Hårde stood quietly between his escorts. The black van drew up and one of them opened the rear. The Juno Provider’s gangway was quickly swung aboard and the engines rumbled as the ship again strained at its spring rope.
Gunna watched helplessly while the ugly little ship gracefully swung around. The propeller began to bite as the ship moved forward and around out of the bay.
‘Keep back,’ the Special Unit officer warned Gunna and Bára as they watched Hårde taking a seat in the van, still with two guns covering him. As the doors slammed shut, the officer slapped the side twice and it pulled away along the quay before he turned to face Gunna.
‘Where the hell are you taking that bastard? Have you any idea who that man is or what he’s done?’ she raged.
‘I’m following orders. I can’t comment,’ the man replied in an expressionless voice.
‘What orders?’
‘No comment.’
‘Look here, that man is a known criminal and wanted in connection with three murders. On what authority have you detained him?’ she demanded, wagging a finger under the man’s nose. Bára held her breath, keenly aware that the man still had a gun in his hand.
‘I can’t tell you anything. I don’t have to answer any questions.’
The finger wagging under the man’s nose became an open palm and Gunna suddenly gave the man’s chest a shove that took him by surprise. He stepped back quickly, trying to keep his balance, but his heel caught the bollard on the quayside and he toppled backwards, spread his arms wide for a moment and was gone.
Gunna peered over the edge at the man treading water far below her.
‘Can you swim, mate?’ she called down to the man glaring balefully up at her, but he said nothing.
‘There’s a ladder up there,’ Gunna said, pointing along the quay to where a set of weed-covered iron rungs emerged from the water.
‘Well, Bára, I think it might be best if we were off. Special Unit seems to have everything under control here.’
The second-best Volvo juddered along the dock to the end where the first black-clad man was sitting on a pile of pallets, nursing the elbow of the arm that had been inside the car when Gunna put her foot down.
‘All right, chum?’ Gunna called, leaning out of the window and slowing down as she approached him. The man glowered back at her, but said nothing.
‘You might want to go and give your pal a hand,’ she said, jerking a thumb behind her in the direction of the empty quayside. ‘He went for a swim.’
36
Sunday, 5 October
05-10-2008, 1252
Skandalblogger writes:
Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls and those of you who haven’t made up your minds yet . . .
So, what has been happening behind the scenes at Glitnir? For just how long has the Icelandic financial sector been doing the big business equivalent of using its Mastercard to pay its Visa bills?
Children, Skandalblogger has been harping on about the shortcomings of our great leaders for long enough for us to be able to say . . . told you so! But we won’t. Let’s just say that now things start to look genuinely serious, Geir and his pals in Parliament had better do something right for a change.
Some people just don’t get any luckier, do they? Just as Bjarni Jón Environment was about to be hung out to dry for getting caught in the act, Glitnir goes tits-up, the economy’s suddenly on its knees and the PM decides government needs to show strength. So BJB’s still in a job, his sins swept under the carpet until such time as the present brouhaha blows over, by which time it’ll all be loooong forgotten. Still, at least the fragrant Sigurjóna’s back in business, even though staff at Spearpoint are taking bets on how long she’ll tough it out now she’s not the boss any longer and her trademark tantrums are off the menu.