Reynir’s face darkened. ‘I don’t know where Hjörtur was, but he wasn’t in his own bed. That’s for sure.’
‘Were you in Reykjavík on Sunday, Reynir?’
‘Don’t be stupid. I was at home during the day and I was cuddled up with Mæja from before dinner time. She’ll tell you.’
‘We’ll see. I spoke to Mæja today and it doesn’t take a genius to work out she was lying. Why, Reynir? Why’s she so frightened of you? Handy with your fists, are you?’
‘I can take care of myself,’ Reynir growled, less convincingly now.
‘I know you don’t mind mixing it up outside Húnaver or Kántrybær now and again. But slapping your girlfriend around? Come on, that stinks. You think nobody’s noticed?’
‘Hell, you keep out of what’s not your business, Helgi from Hraunbær!’ Reynir shouted. ‘Throwing your weight around because you’ve got a badge or something. You should be ashamed of yourself. Some of us remember what a snot-nosed brat you used to be. We’ll see how good you are at standing up for yourself one day.’
‘Am I supposed to take that as a threat, Reynir?’ Helgi asked quietly and the lawyer whispered in Reynir’s ear.
‘Get away from me, you old fool,’ Reynir swore at the old man, who sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Helgi, you can take that any sweet way you want,’ he sneered.
‘Fair enough. In that case I’ll interpret it as a threat against a police officer,’ Helgi said, raising an eyebrow at the old lawyer, who waved a hand in disgust. ‘At 13:45 on Sunday a blue Toyota clipped another car’s wing going round the roundabout on Reykjanesbraut, right by the Læjkargata turnoff in Hafnarfjördur, and if the old fella who had his car scraped hadn’t called 112, then a patrol car wouldn’t have turned up at the scene with its lights on.’
Reynir grimaced in impatience. ‘Where is this shit going?’ he demanded.
‘All in good time. I don’t suppose you know that all police cars are fitted with cameras that record automatically when the blue lights are on?’
‘And? So what?’
‘Your black Land Cruiser drove past the scene at 14:02 and the number’s there as clear as day. So thanks to an idiot in a Toyota, we have positive evidence that you were in Reykjavík on Sunday afternoon.’
‘Not me. It’s a mistake.’
‘It’s your vehicle, Reynir. You were there.’
‘I wasn’t. This has been fabricated by the police.’
‘So where did you go? Straight to Hafnarfjördur? How did you know Borgar was at the NesPlast unit?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re an ugly bastard, Reynir, who pushes his girlfriend around when her husband’s away. But you’re not stupid. What were you doing in Reykjavík on Sunday? Delivering a few gallons of moonshine? And you stopped off at Borgar’s unit on the way to beat the crap out of him? Is that how it happened?’
‘You’re still talking shit. I don’t do moonshine, and I haven’t seen Borgar Jónsson,’ he spat. ‘If I had finished the bastard it’s not something I’d be ashamed of.’
‘You’re talking to Helgi Svavarsson from Hraunbær, not some wet-behind-the-ears lad from Reykjavík who’s never been north of Borgarnes. You and Össur and your dad before you are famous from Laugarbakki to Hofsós for your moonshine, so don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes. How much are you producing these days?’
Reynir looked away and folded his arms. ‘Just a few bottles for Christmas. That’s all.’
‘That’s bullshit. Where did the cash come from for that Land Cruiser? And all the other bits and pieces at Tunga, and two new tractors? Don’t try and tell me you won the lottery.’
‘We saved up over the years.’
‘And I’m sure you have financial records to prove just that?’
‘I believe in cash, not bankbooks.’
‘You’re trying to tell me that you’ve been saving your benefits money for the last twenty years in a biscuit tin under your bed, and all of a sudden you decided to buy yourself a Land Cruiser and your mum a 72-inch TV?’
Reynir sat back, arms folded, his heavy shoulders threatening to burst his shirt. ‘Yeah. That’s just what I’m telling you. It’s up to you to prove me wrong.’
‘Sorry. But that’s not the way it works,’ Helgi said with a sad smile. ‘I think you’ll be finding out before long that it’s exactly the other way around when the taxman gets his teeth into you.’
Reynir sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘I have nothing to say. I want a lawyer.’
‘You have a lawyer,’ Helgi said, pointing to the elderly man in his ill-fitting suit sitting beside him.
Reynir glanced at the old man. ‘No. A real lawyer,’ he said as the old man’s chest swelled in anger and his mouth opened to protest. ‘Not an old boy who sells houses and writes wills. A proper lawyer.’
Anna Björg stretched and pushed her coffee aside. She looked at her watch and shook her head. ‘How did it go?’
‘Not great,’ Helgi admitted.
‘No progress?’
‘I don’t know. He’s rattled, I can see that. But I’m not sure I have enough to hold him. He swears blind he was with Mæja all afternoon on Sunday, and she’s confirmed that.’
‘But Mæja’s husband wasn’t at work on Sunday,’ Anna Björg said. ‘You think she’s lying to protect Reynir?’
‘Could be.’ Helgi yawned. ‘So if Reynir didn’t drive south, beat Borgar Jónsson to death and drive back that evening, who did? Or has this been a complete wild-goose chase and we need to be looking for the murderer somewhere else completely, like one of the clients Jónsson ripped off over the years?’
‘Couldn’t say. I don’t know anything about the background to all this, except that Reynir has a fearsome reputation.’
‘Just a bit,’ Helgi agreed. ‘He killed a man once, or so they say.’
Anna Björg frowned. ‘Really? I’ve heard rumours about him. Is it true?’
‘Kjartan and Reynir went to Grindavík to work in the cod season down south and they went on a binge afterwards with all the money they’d earned. There was an old scrounger in Reykjavík called Bassi who tagged along with them for a while and they ended up being dropped off at Tunga in a taxi.’
‘This was a while ago, then?’ Anna Björg said doubtfully.
‘It was a long time ago, back in the eighties some time, and I was just a kid. I remember Ingi came over to us at Hraunbær while the three of them carried on drinking with old man Aron.’
‘Their father?’
‘Yup. He died a good few years ago now. Anyhow, they had a good old session and the next morning the old man had sobered up and expected his boys to do the same. Bassi didn’t take kindly to sobering up and being put on a bus south, and the tale goes that Reynir caught this guy with his fingers in the old woman’s purse trying to lift himself some money so he could carry on with his own personal drinking spree. So somewhere on the Tunga lands there’s a set of old bones that only Kjartan and Reynir know where to find. There was an investigation at the time that concluded old Bassi had got himself lost somewhere, fallen asleep by the side of the road and died of exposure.’
‘And nobody linked this with Kjartan and Reynir?’
‘No. The only person who could have done that was the taxi driver who took the three of them up there. But he firmly denied having seen Bassi. He’s dead as well now, so that’s where the trail ended, not that it was followed up all that energetically, as it was months after his disappearance that someone finally reported Bassi missing. The man had no family to speak of and nobody made a fuss when the investigation came to the easy conclusion.’
‘But you know all this stuff,’ Anna Björg said. ‘Surely. .?’
‘Just countryside gossip. There’s no body. There are no witnesses, and it was all a very long time ago.’
Anna Björg nodded slowly. ‘I suppose so. What can you do? But you think Reynir killed Borgar?’