Elmar pulled an iPhone from his pocket and tapped at the screen. He reeled off a number.
‘Address?’
‘Brekkusel 88,’ he replied with sulky unwillingness, and Gunna made a mental note that the address was not far from the workshop where Borgar Jónsson had been clubbed to death.
‘How long did you spend there and where were you before and after?’
‘Went straight there. Got to Bjarni’s place about four and stayed a few hours. Came back home.’
‘Who’ll corroborate that?’
‘Bjarni will. His mum was there as well.’
‘Good. Because I’ll be asking them both.’
‘Herbert?’ Gunna asked.
‘That’s me,’ the man said with a smile that ran round his face and did nothing to conceal his curiosity. ‘Hebbi the cop. Coffee?’
Gunna settled in the police station’s canteen and sipped the coffee that was very welcome after her angry interview with Elmar. It had ended with Gunna making it plain that if he did not cooperate, she would have him brought to the central police station in Reykjavík to explain himself, while his mother stood tight-lipped and silent next to him.
‘You know Katla, don’t you? Katla Einarsdóttir?’
‘Oh, yes. And those dratted boys of hers,’ Herbert confirmed. ‘Know them well. I guess you’re here about the guy who ran over Katla’s youngest?’
‘That’s about it. Anything you can tell me?’
Herbert sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. His back cracked as he stretched, and Gunna winced at the sound. ‘Nothing special. Katla’s a tough old bird even though she comes across as a bag of nerves.’
‘You knew her husband, Kjartan?’
Herbert shook his head and folded his hands across the expanse of uniform that covered his belly. ‘No. I knew her first husband well enough, Einar’s father, because we spent quite a few nights together.’
‘In here?’
‘Exactly. Now there’s a man who had a good few nights in the cells. As good as gold sober, but a bastard with a drink inside him, and he was a man who liked a drink. Probably still does. He was on the street in Reykjavík last I heard. It’s a good few years since he left the district and he’s not been back this way.’
‘But Elmar is Kjartan’s boy, though, isn’t he?’
‘He is, unless the bull jumped the gate somewhere,’ he said with a lopsided smile. ‘But I doubt that somehow.’
Gunna wondered how close an eye the corpulent Herbert the cop kept on his area. She reminded herself that only a year or two before, she had been in a similar position at a police station in a small town covering a large rural area of dispersed farms linked by dirt roads where anything other than the pettiest crime was a rarity. A series of coincidences and a brutal killing had hauled her out of sleepy Hvalvík and given her new opportunities at a time when she had even been contemplating leaving the force. It was just as well she had stayed, she thought. The financial crash had all but wiped out any real hope of other employment and although her police salary was modest, at least it was secure.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gunna said, noticing Herbert looking at her quizzically and realizing that her thoughts had been miles away. ‘You were saying?’
‘Those boys. Einar’s all right. He’s not bright and he knows it, so he keeps out of trouble most of the time and he’ll turn out fine if he can keep his nose clean and doesn’t become a professional drunk like his father.’
‘And Elmar?’
‘More of a handful,’ Herbert decided after a moment’s thought. ‘He’s smarter than his brother, but there’s a reckless streak there. He’s totalled three or four cars already. He’s an idiot behind the wheel, especially considering what happened to his little brother. A real tragedy, that was.’ He shook his head sorrowfully and his heavy jowls trembled.
Gunna drank the remaining coffee in her mug and pushed it across the table.
‘More?’ Herbert asked, half filling his own mug.
‘No thanks. I’d better be getting back to Reykjavík.’
‘Things to do and bad guys to catch?’
Gunna returned Herbert’s smile. ‘Something like that.’
‘You were in Hvalvík, weren’t you?’
‘That’s right. Ten years.’
Herbert shivered. ‘Rather you than me,’ he said with feeling.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Working in Reykjavík. I couldn’t handle that. All that traffic all day long. It’d drive me nuts.’
‘You get used to it. But I still live in Hvalvík, so I can escape at the end of the day. I’ll probably be back, I think. So could you let me know if Elmar or Einar get up to anything?’
‘Absolutely. I’ll be keeping a beady eye on those two.’
A vicious shower of icy rain lashed the windscreen, blotting out the road ahead in an instant. Gunna swore and held her breath as the wipers hissed and her view ahead was restored. She toyed with the idea of taking the coast road home instead of going back to Reykjavík and spending the rest of the day with her feet on the sofa and a book in one hand, maybe taking Steini and Laufey by surprise by being home before them for a change. But she immediately dismissed the idea with a heavy heart, knowing that with Helgi on his way north and Eiríkur on paternity leave, there would be pressure to resolve Borgar Jónsson’s murder quickly. Friday, she reckoned, would be the day for a quiet word when it would be hinted that upstairs wanted a quick and efficient arrest, with the killer neatly delivered, preferably in time for the Friday evening TV news.
The rain vanished as she drove up onto the heath. The sun shone briefly, but the car’s temperature gauge showed that outside it was uncomfortably far below zero and she watched for signs of ice on the road, keeping the car at a reasonable speed as others sped past her.
Heading for the city centre and back to Hverfisgata, she took the road past half-built trading estates and newish blocks of flats that already looked old. Black sand and fields of black lava filled the gaps between the new buildings as the city spread into what had been open countryside a few years before. Gunna wondered how far the building boom, interrupted by the financial crash and now gradually gathering momentum again, would last and who would live in all the new blocks and houses far from the city centre.
‘We know he was killed some time on Sunday. But if there’s any way that could be narrowed down, it would certainly help,’ Gunna said hopefully.
The police force’s only forensic pathologist, a Spanish woman with wild midnight hair and serious black glasses known as Miss Cruz, stroked her chin with one finger. Gunna liked working with Miss Cruz and was not looking forward to the day when her year-long position with the Icelandic police force would come to an end.
‘I can’t be sure,’ she said. ‘But I think later in the day is more likely.’
‘Temperature?’
‘Body temperature, yes. The remains were still in rigor mortis when the body was found, and judging by the core temperature of the body on Monday morning, I would suggest between three and six on Sunday afternoon.’
Gunna nodded, satisfied that this was the most precise figure she would be likely to get. ‘And no doubt about the cause of death?’
‘None at all. I can give you details if you like.’
‘No need. As long as it was the beating he received that did it?’
Miss Cruz thought briefly. ‘There’s no question about it. This was a rather savage beating, with all of the blows to the head. There are a few minor bruises to the arms, indicating that he tried to protect himself, to start with at least.’
‘Fists, or a weapon?’
‘I’d say both. It looks like the decisive blow was administered with a weapon. Something round.’
‘A baseball bat?’
‘Maybe. But I think something smaller, narrower.’
Helgi allowed himself to enjoy the drive. He made good time out of the city as it had proved to be no problem to get one of the police force’s small 4x4s from the car pool, on a promise that it would be back before the weekend. He left the tunnel under Hvalfjördur and Borgarnes behind him, and opened the window going up the long incline to the heath separating what he thought of as the south from the north of Iceland to let in some of the fresh, clean air. At the top, he was tempted to stop and admire the dark ribbon of Hrútafjördur slicing into the landscape below.