Jósteinn smiled, revealing his yellow teeth. His gaze had shifted to her arm now. ‘I wouldn’t suggest anything different.’
‘How can I get a budget to you? It would be best for you to approve it before we go any further. I can also send you a breakdown of the time that’s already been spent on the investigation. Do you have an e-mail account, or access to a fax machine?’
A dry rattle that was probably meant to be laughter emerged from Jósteinn’s throat, and again his bad breath overwhelmed her. ‘No chance. We don’t have Internet or phone access. You’ll have to ask them out front whether you can send a fax to me via the office. I think they could manage to waste one single sheet of paper on me.’
Thóra didn’t like his sarcastic tone, or anything else about him. Once again he had too much gel in his hair. He really seemed to have gone to town with it. ‘OK, I’ll get them to agree to that.’ Thóra hoped his isolation from the outside world didn’t apply to banking matters. Perhaps he couldn’t pay her after all; maybe he had never even intended to do so.
As if Jósteinn had read her thoughts, he announced, ‘I’ll get my supervisor to sort out all the payments, although that might not be within his official remit.’ He pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Thóra. ‘This is his name and phone number. You can call him when you want to get paid.’ He smiled again, now with his eyes closed. ‘Or to reassure yourself that I have enough money.’
Thóra looked at the handwritten details. Each letter was drawn with great care and it looked as if Jósteinn had used an old-fashioned fountain pen. But she wouldn’t need to keep the piece of paper because she was very familiar with the name, and even the number. Ari Gunnarsson. What a strange coincidence.
CHAPTER 10
Sunday, 10 January 2010
‘I hope Grandma and Grandpa will always be with us.’ Sóley grinned happily and put down her toast, which was sagging beneath the weight of the jam slathered on it. ‘It’s much nicer having them in the garage, instead of a load of old boxes.’
Thóra returned her daughter’s smile as she took the last plate from the dishwasher. The machine had been in constant use, apart from at the dead of night, since her parents had moved in the previous evening. Once the household was at full capacity the washing machine would be going every waking hour as well. ‘Yes, it’s a nice change, isn’t it?’
‘Orri speeterman!’ Three members of the household were awake: Thóra, Sóley and Thóra’s grandson, who was two and a half. Ever since someone had given him a Spiderman T-shirt, he thought he was a superhero. The boy still had some way to go before he could be considered a great orator, but he was starting to speak more.
Sóley opened her mouth to correct her nephew, but stopped and took a bite of toast instead. ‘Oh, yeah. You need to help me find a costume. It’s Kolla’s birthday tomorrow and we’re supposed to wear fancy dress.’ It was doubtful that many people besides her mother would have understood her with her mouth full.
‘When’s the party?’ Thóra knew it had to be today or tomorrow; Sóley had made it her speciality to let her mother know about such things with the smallest possible amount of notice.
‘Later today.’ Sóley swallowed her huge mouthful dramatically.
Although Thóra was sorely tempted to suggest that she go as the Invisible Man, with her costume being that she didn’t turn up, she decided not to. ‘Maybe Grandma and Grandpa can help you.’
Sóley agreed to this, beaming. ‘When is everyone going to wake up, anyway? I think they’ve slept long enough.’
‘Everyone’s tired after last night. We’ll just let them sleep.’ All working together, Thóra and Matthew, her parents, Thóra’s son Gylfi and his girlfriend Sigga had made space in the garage and set up a bed and other essentials for the newest members of the household. While they worked, Sóley had looked after Orri; but the toddler had kept trying to help with the move, which was met with limited enthusiasm by the movers. The garage had been crammed with stuff, and they hadn’t had time to sort through everything that had been shoved in there. Instead, some of it had been put in the basement and the rest out in the shed in the garden. The shed hadn’t been used much up to that point, but now it couldn’t hold another thing. ‘They’ll be up before we know it, demanding coffee and cakes.’
‘Speeterman.’ Orri looked down at his chest, enraptured by the costumed man on his shirt. His breakfast lay untouched on the table in front of him, since he couldn’t take his eyes off the superhero for long enough to eat.
‘Spi-der-man, not speeterman.’ Sóley had finally tired of the endless repetition. ‘He’s called Spi-der-man.’
‘Speeterman.’ Orri neither looked away from the image nor let his language coach distract him.
‘Why can’t he talk better, Mum?’ Sóley’s frustration didn’t surprise Thóra; her daughter had long been comparing Orri to her best friend’s sister, who was the same age, and the little boy was far behind her in terms of language development.
‘He can say quite a few other things, so don’t worry about it. He’ll be chattering away before you know it, and then you’ll miss the time when he hardly said anything.’ Sóley obviously disagreed with this, so Thóra quickly changed the subject. ‘Did you feed Mjása this morning?’ Unexpectedly, the family cat hadn’t shown itself when Thóra came into the kitchen; usually it was the very first one to demand food in the morning, and feeding it was how she started most of her days.
Sóley nodded and swallowed the last bite of toast. ‘She couldn’t wait for you. I think she was dying of hunger.’
‘As always.’ The cat ate several times a day and didn’t appear any the worse for it, since despite its apparently bottomless appetite, it always stayed quite slim. If it was indoors and someone so much as walked past the kitchen it would be there, mewing pitifully in the hope of getting fed. ‘It wouldn’t have wanted to wait for sleepy old me.’ Thóra hadn’t been able to find her mobile phone when they were all finally able to go to bed, and she hadn’t felt like calling it to locate it. As a result, she hadn’t set an alarm and had slept late. Now she caught a glimpse of the phone under a crumpled tea towel on the kitchen sideboard. She reached for it and saw that while she was sleeping she’d missed a phone call, and received a text. That was unusual. No one ever called her at night nowadays; the time when she could expect messages from tipsy girlfriends downtown, telling her about late-night parties was long gone, and although she recalled those days fondly, she didn’t miss them. Perhaps the same wasn’t true of one of her girlfriends, who simply had to tell Thóra about some cute man she’d just met. The screen said Number withheld when Thóra tried to view the details of the call. She could see that it had been around three o’clock, long after she’d vanished into dreamland. The text had come five minutes later. It was sent from ja.is, which meant that there was no way of knowing whether it was from the same person as the missed call, although that seemed likely. If so, the person in question had been at a computer or accessed the Internet through their phone. Several of her friends had smartphones that they bragged about at every conceivable – and inconceivable – opportunity. She opened the text, though she thought she could guess what was in it: Leave your man at home and come to the party or Guess who I went home with? In fact the only thing that she couldn’t predict was how many smiley faces would follow the message.