I turn down the music in my heart before gliding down from wall to windowsill and then move across it, soundless, with my eyes on the open door. Nobody sees me, and then I’m in my room. Speed metal gives way to power ballad. It almost has me singing “With Arms Wide Open.” My favorite Creed song.
I spend the next fifteen minutes thinking where to hide the gun—THE GUN!—but I still haven’t made up my mind when the White Hats knock on my door. There are two of them standing out in the hallway, two round pebble-nosed snowballs in uniform, and suddenly I’m dead convinced that they’re the same guys who had a small chat with Tadeusz, the Polish housepainter, that fateful night last May. Some of Tadeusz’s vodka-weary countrymen are standing behind the two policemen, and one of them explains to them that I’m a local.
“You are Icelandic?” the police asks me in Icelandic.
“Schmau-wayish,” I answer with a lot of nods and a smile.
This means “a tiny bit,” a magical word Gun taught me this summer that turns out to be a real ass-saver here. I then bring out my mountain-blue passport, and my heart plays the drum ‘n’ base version of the Icelandic national anthem while they ponder the impeccable craftsmanship. They read my name aloud, examining my Slavic face, with a stern look.
“Tómas Leifur Ólafsson?” they say.
“Jau. Tommy!” I hit back with an acting-stupid smile and tell my right hand to stay the hell out of my right pocket.
“Where do you work?” they ask me in their cold language.
I switch to English (explaining that my father was half American and all that shit), and tell them about Samver. Their faces instantly light up.
“Do you know Sammy?”
The Good Samaritan’s name works like a hair dryer on the frosty situation, and we talk for a while about the small man with the dancing glasses. The two policemen know him from work. One of the most fun guys to arrest, they assure me. Then they get serious again and ask me whether I’ve any connections with the Kaunas guys. I tell them no.
“Did you notice something spacious in the house today or tonight?”
“Suspicious, you mean?”
I’ve got the upper hand now. I can relax.
“Yes,” they say.
Without thinking or blinking, I decide to be a good sport, forgetting all about the Lithuanian threats. Must be the gun. Or a belated show of gratitude towards the White Hats for giving me the summer of my life.
“Yes. I saw them take the dead man’s body outside, just some twenty minutes ago. I saw it from my window,” I say, inviting them inside my cell. “They had it in a big suitcase. It looked quite heavy. They put it in the back of a white van and drove away.”
“Did you see the number of it?”
“The license number? Yes. It was SV seven-four-one.”
I’m not kidding. I remember the fucking license number. The two officers look at me as if they want to invite me on a Caribbean cruise. First class. Next summer. Just the three of us. They then come to their senses.
“And where was the car?”
“Just… right here below. Outside the entrance.”
We’re by the window and one of them leans over to my side to have a better look outside. In doing so, he accidentally touches the hard little thing in my pocket with his left hip. The policeman automatically turns his face towards me and says in the most polite way:
“Afsaky.”
This is Icelandic for: “Sorry, I didn’t mean to touch your gun.”
The day after, when I come home from work, I see three white police SUVs parked outside our beloved hotel. Some yellow police tape rattles in the freezing summer breeze, and a White Hat guards the entrance. I keep walking past the building, at a good distance, once again taking on the role of the odd stroller on the empty sidewalks of Iceland.
An hour later I ring Gunnhildur’s bell. She opens the door and soon we’re up in her messy kitchen, kissing like a pair of desperate lovers. I completely forget myself and hug her too hard: she feels the hard thing in my pants.
“What’s that?”
“German steel.”
CHAPTER 31
ICE-ROCK
Torture talks, Tomo walks.
The great man takes me back to Hardwork Hotel to pick up my things and has a word with the police, using his powers of persuasion and invaluable TV fame to explain my case. Tommy Olafs is his protégé, a real sensitive guy who only wanted to get to know the country of his origin and can’t bear living with cruel and reckless criminals. I say goodbye to my Polish friends, and to my surprise I lean into Balatov’s cheek for a quick hug. Exile is a hairy sea.
I spend the night in my Old Testament room in Torture and Hanna’s house. At work the day after, I have a crucial talk with Olie, and in the evening he greets me and Torture, at his doorstep, on the third floor of an old concrete building close to Gun’s house. Harpa is out for the night shift at her solarium, and me and Olie act out a little scripted scene for our beloved Torture: pretending that I’m renting a room at his place. Apparently Bible Man knows Meat Man, through Sammy, and they chat about the underestimated role of violence in teaching the Gospel while I examine Olie’s great collection of kitchen knives that he has hanging over his fancy gas stove. Despite being aware of the chef’s violent past, Torture has perfect faith in him as my landlord.
“As long as you pay the rent, he won’t kill you,” he said in the car, with a hearty laugh.
Some minutes after the preacher has left in his holy SUV, I’m over at Gun’s place, asking her where to put my things. She looks stressed, taking the cigarette into her bedroom (something she normally doesn’t do) and points at two empty shelves in her large wardrobe with a shaky finger.
“Something’s wrong?” I ask.
“No. Why?”
“You maybe think we’re not ready to start living together?”
“No, no. It’s just…”
“I thought you wanted this. Is it Truster?”
A heavy sigh, then: “Yes.”
“You’re afraid he’ll tell your parents about us?”
“No, it’s not that. I don’t mind.”
It’s not that. It’s something else. But what it is, she won’t say. I offer to sleep upstairs, in the attic, but she says no, and soon we’re in her bed, trying to cheer ourselves up with some cheerless sex. Afterward, she picks up her cell and has a long and visibly difficult talk with her brother, who doesn’t seem to fancy living with a hitman. Shortly before midnight he shows up, pale and gloomy. Without even saying “hi,” he retreats into his small room out by the entrance and plays loud ice rock until two o’clock in the morning. Gunnhildur is shaken and smokes a whole packet before brushing her teeth for twenty long minutes.
We lie in her bed, cast in marble, locked in a silent embrace, like ancient lovers in a museum. This not my favorite really, to lie together like this, but I put my preferences on hold for the special occasion: my first night living together with a person I’ve had sex with, plus we’re not getting any sleep anyway with the ice-rock blasting through the wall. I’m missing Balatov already. Thirty more minutes of musical torture and his name has acquired the distinction of a famous classical composer. Then the poor guy puts the same song on repeat for the next half an hour. The singer screams as if he were stuck at the bottom of a glacial canyon, with a broken thigh.