Helgi downed his beer and stood up. ‘You know, Anna Björg, I never have been able to figure out when you’re joking and when you’re not. Another one?’
‘Why would I joke about anything like that? Deadly serious, me.’
‘Yeah,’ Helgi said uncertainly. ‘The same again?’
The bar was still empty. Helgi rapped on the counter until the girl who doubled as the receptionist appeared and poured two more beers for them.
‘Quiet here on a weeknight,’ he said as he placed the glasses on the table. ‘Not a lot happening around here?’
‘Not a lot. It’ll be jumping on Friday night, I expect. There’s some band playing, so that might be a long night for us.’ Anna Björg raised her glass. ‘Skál. So, tell me what brings you here. This is to do with the Tunga brothers?’
‘The man who ran over Kjartan’s boy got eight years, out after four,’ Helgi said. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he added, noticing the sour look on Anna Björg’s face. ‘He’d been at a rehabilitation hostel for eight weeks. Then someone beat him up and broke his head wide open, in an industrial unit that he apparently still owned.’
‘And things point this way?’
Helgi cracked his knuckles uncomfortably. ‘Well, no. Not exactly. Kjartan has a rock solid alibi, as he was at sea. But we all know how the Tunga brothers look after each other. So Gunna suggested I come up here and ask a few discreet questions.’
‘Gunna? That’s your inspector?’
‘Sergeant. We’re supposed to be under Örlygur Sveinsson, but he’s been off sick practically since the unit was formed and so Gunna’s been running things.’
‘That’s Gunnhildur Gísla, right? What’s she like?’
‘I like her a lot. What you see is what you get. No office politics, no fishing for promotion — although it’s long overdue in her case. She gets results even though it’s not always the results that upstairs would like.’
‘So Gunna sent you up here to check out the Tunga boys’ alibis?’
‘Pretty much. Any ideas?’
‘What day?’
‘Sunday.’
‘Well, I saw Ingi on the road to the Hook on Sunday morning, so I doubt it could have been him.’
Helgi felt a sudden surge of relief that Anna Björg did not fail to notice in his face.
‘Do you know any of them?’
‘I was at school with Ingi,’ Helgi admitted. ‘Kjartan left the district while I was a kid. I never really knew the other two, although I bundled Reynir into a cell more than once when I was in uniform here. But he’s calmed down a lot since then, hasn’t he?’
Anna Björg nodded. ‘Össur’s the sensible one, I reckon. Kjartan I don’t know and Reynir’s a dark horse. He’s sobered up, but I’d still be wary of him. The man’s an unguided missile at the best of times and there’s no knowing when he’s likely to blow his top. Not that I’ve had reason to have any dealings with them for a long time. Are you going out to Tunga tomorrow, or do you just want to try and ask around discreetly?’
Helgi thought. The idea of going to Tunga wasn’t an appealing one and he had put off thinking about it.
‘I’d best go and talk to them. Kjartan will undoubtedly have passed on the news that he’s being watched. If he didn’t have such a copper-bottomed alibi, he’d be my number one suspect. But it’s not our only line of enquiry. Gunna’s chasing up other people in the city. It seems there’s no shortage of people that Borgar Jónsson pissed off, so we’re spoilt for choice at the moment.’
He picked up the two empty glasses and Anna Björg took them from him. ‘My turn. Want me to go out to Tunga with you in the morning?’
‘I’m sure you have enough to be getting on with, don’t you?’
She shrugged as she stood up. ‘Up to you. Let me know tomorrow. I’ve no objection to a little drive out into the country and a look at Össur’s stable while you have a friendly chat with Reynir,’ she said, turning and departing for the bar where this time the receptionist appeared as if she had been called and had already started pouring two more beers.
‘Staying with Rúna, are you?’ Anna Björg asked as she placed the glasses on the table and sat down.
‘No. Here,’ he said, looking around the otherwise deserted bar. ‘I was going to stay with Rúna. But, you know. . Big sister doesn’t have a lot of space in that little house and as it’s work, the taxpayer is putting me up in the town’s finest hotel.’
Anna Björg’s eyes twinkled. ‘Careful, Helgi. A married man on his own in a busy nightspot like this. That could mean trouble.’
‘It’s an entirely fair division of labour,’ Gunna explained to her pouting daughter, Laufey. ‘Steini cooked. I’ve washed, dried and folded two loads of clothes — mostly yours, I’d like to point out. So we’ve come to a unanimous decision that loading the dishwasher is all yours.’
‘But. .’
‘There’s no room for a “but” anywhere in this discussion.’
‘I wasn’t consulted on this,’ Laufey argued. ‘So I feel that I should have the right to lodge an objection and go and watch TV while this goes to arbitration, surely? Isn’t that the way it works?’
‘Ah. You may be under the illusion that this household in some way resembles a democracy. I’m sorry to disappoint, but that’s not the way it works.’
‘Then I’ll start a grassroots movement and protest against the shameless use of forced labour. Steini, are you with me on this?’ Laufey asked hopefully, and Steini looked up from skimming that morning’s paper.
‘I think it’s probably best not to stray into dangerous territory here,’ he decided.
‘Where does all this revolutionary fervour come from, anyway?’ Gunna asked.
‘We’ve been doing it in history, and Ylfa talked about the pots and pans revolution as well.’
‘That’s hardly history. It was only a couple of years ago.’
‘But it brought down the government. The only time an Icelandic government has been forced out of office by a popular movement.’
Steini stroked his moustache and looked at her quizzically. ‘I must say I rather like the sound of this teacher. But does the council know that a secondary school teacher is preaching revolution to fifteen-year-olds?’
‘She’s the new teacher at the school,’ Gunna told him. ‘A decent enough girl, but she might want to tone the radical stuff down if she wants a full-time job next term. Anyhow, back to the thorny issue of loading the dishwasher.’
‘Yes, Mum?’
‘If you’d just done it instead of arguing, you would have finished by now.’
Laufey thought for a moment. ‘Which would have been a victory for the forces of international capitalism,’ she said.
‘Right, in that case,’ Gunna decided, hearing her phone ringing and hunting for it through the pockets of her coat, which hung on the kitchen door, ‘negotiations on getting a lift to Reykjavík on Saturday will only be entered into once the dishwasher is full. Where the hell is my damned phone?’
Steini lifted the newspaper, put it down and felt among the cushions on the sofa.
‘That’s blackmail, Mum,’ Laufey said darkly, holding out the phone, which had been behind the kettle.
‘Not at all. It’s simply that one should always negotiate from a position of strength,’ Gunna retorted, pressing the green button. ‘Hello?’
‘Gunnhildur? Herbert over in Selfoss. Y’all right?’
‘Fine, thanks. Anything up? Elmar, maybe?’
She heard the fat man sigh and imagined she could hear his chair creaking as he sat back.
‘Elmar, yes — and it’s not good.’
‘Well, go on, then,’ she said impatiently as Herbert made the most of his dramatic moment. ‘What’s he done?’
‘He’s managed to roll his car about six times and he’s on the way to the National Hospital in an ambulance. Out cold and he looks a godawful mess. Car’s a write-off and his mother’s going frantic.’
Gunna cursed silently and at length with her hand over the phone.