Cold Steal (13 page)

‘Right, back upstairs, both of you,’ Gunna said decisively. ‘Geiri, will you seal this off and I’ll have forensics look the place over before this goes any further. No point muddying the waters before they get here. Tinna?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll talk to forensics to start with. While Geiri gets his rolls of smart blue tape from the car, will you have a word with the two cleaners upstairs? Leave the casualty with the medics, but get names, addresses, phone numbers, who they work for, and get all the keys to this place that you can lay your hands on. All right?’

‘Yep.’

‘Good. Go on then,’ Gunna said, pulling her phone from her pocket and selecting a number.

Outside Gunna found the ambulance’s back door open. The dark-haired woman with the broad shoulders sat hunched inside with a blanket over her shoulders, shaken by sobs as she stuttered words in short bursts between bouts of hyperventilation, one of the two medics holding her hands as she reassured her.

‘What’s the score?’ Gunna asked the second paramedic, a young man with cheeks reddened by the cold wind.

‘Hysterical. Something’s given her a colossal shock, and my colleague’s in there trying to calm her down a little before we take her to hospital.’

‘Any idea what?’

‘Nope,’ the man shook his head. ‘Couldn’t say. But she shied away as soon as she saw me in that house. She only wanted to see my colleague.’

‘You have a name?’

‘Valmira. That’s all I have so far. We’ll get her name and identity number when she gets to the hospital. I reckon she’ll need to be sedated, but we’d need a doctor here for that.’

‘So she’s not a local?’

The man shook his head. ‘Not sure. Her Icelandic is very good, but she was babbling in some other language to start with. She switched to Icelandic once she calmed down,’ he said, and looked past Gunna to the ambulance’s open door.

‘Ready?’

The female paramedic looked down and nodded. ‘She’s not good. I can’t remember seeing anyone with no physical injuries quite so distressed. I’ll stay in the back with her, but we had better be quick.’ She raised an eyebrow at Gunna. ‘Police?’

‘Yep. You’re going to the National Hospital?’

She looked dubious. ‘You want to interview her?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You’ll have to check with the doctor. I’m not sure she’ll be in any fit state for a while.’

The forensics team did its work behind closed doors while Gunna sat in the scrubbed kitchen and made notes. Emilija and Natalia sat opposite her like naughty schoolgirls, one wide-eyed and fearful, the other wearing a truculent scowl.

‘How long have you worked with Valmira?’ Gunna asked,

‘Four–five year,’ Natalia said.

‘A couple of years.’

‘So you both know her quite well? You socialize outside work, or are you strictly colleagues?’

‘I see her sometimes,’ Emilija said. ‘We started this job around the same time because we both lost our jobs in the crash.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘I was a chef at Bryggjubar. Then it closed down when the banks . . .’

‘I get the picture. And Valmira?’

‘She worked for an export company, worked there a long time. It went bankrupt a few months after the crash. But there’s always shit work to be had and we’ve both been here since,’ Emilija said without any bitterness.

‘How about you, Natalia? You know Valmira well?’

Natalia put out a hand, palm down and shook it from side to side. ‘A little.’

‘You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Where are you from?’

‘From Chile,’ Natalia said with a thick accent as Emilija shook her head and looked away.

Gunna looked into Natalia’s defiant black eyes and put her pen down on the notebook in front of her, waiting for Natalia to look away. Eventually her stare dropped guiltily to the table.

‘Listen,’ Gunna said softly. ‘I can see you understand every word I’ve said to you and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t play the stupid foreigner with me. Understood?’

Natalia’s jaw squared in defiant dislike, but she nodded.

‘Fine,’ Gunna said. ‘Just so you know, this isn’t a formal interview. I’m only making a few notes for background, nobody’s been arrested and I’m not even sure if a crime has taken place, although I will probably have to take formal statements from you at some point. All right? So, Natalia, how long have you lived in Iceland?’

‘Eleven years.’

Gunna was gratified that even in those two words the fake accent had disappeared immediately.

‘And you, Emilija?’

‘About eight years.’

‘Tell me about Valmira. Where is she from? Married? Children? Does she has any family here?’

Emilija shook her head. ‘There are some cousins who live somewhere outside Reykjavík, Ólafsvík somewhere, I think. Her name’s Valmira Vukoja, and she’s from Bosnia originally, although I know she has lived in Iceland for a long time, much longer than Talia or me.’

‘She’s not married, no boyfriend or next of kin?’

‘No. As long as I’ve known Vala she has kept to herself. Not many friends, definitely no guys. She has relatives here but she doesn’t talk about them much.’

‘And you all work for what? Reindeer Cleaners? I’d best have a word with them as well. Where’s the office?’

Emilija and Natalia exchanged a thin smile as Gunna wrote down the address.

‘What’s the manager’s name?’

‘Viggó. Viggó Jakobsson. He runs it, sort of. But his father owns the company, I think.’

Picking on the smile that flashed between them, Gunna’s antenna twitched. ‘This Viggó. How do he and Valmira get on?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ Natalia asked, breaking into the conversation for the first time.

‘I don’t need to know, but it could be useful. I’d like to find out what’s happened to your friend, and anything you can tell me helps build up a picture. You all spend a good few hours every week at work, so someone’s working environment is an important part of it. So do Valmira and Viggó get on well or badly?’

‘Well . . .’ Natalia said, and paused.

‘She gets on well with old Jakob,’ Emilija said. ‘He employed her to start with after the company she worked for collapsed.’

‘But now his son runs it?’

‘Yeah. And he’s stupid,’ Natalia said with emphasis.

‘She’s right. Viggó knows that Valmira could run everything better than he does,’ Emilija added. ‘But he’s the boss’s son, so . . .’

Gunna made quick notes. ‘Understood. There’s some friction there?’

Emilija nodded. ‘But only on Viggó’s side. Valmira doesn’t want his job, but Viggó thinks she does.’

‘You work as a team all the time?’

‘Yes. There are three teams,’ Emilija said.

‘All foreigners,’ Natalia added.

‘All? Nine people?’

‘That’s right. All foreign women, plus Viggó.’

‘I’ll go and have a chat with him,’ Gunna promised. ‘When you got here this morning, was there anything unusual?’

‘Well,’ Natalia began, and looked doubtful. ‘Not really. It’s just that . . .’

‘Just what?’

‘It looked like the place had already been cleaned. It was too clean. There was hardly anything for us to do.’

‘The whole house?’

‘I did the bedrooms and they were spotless,’ Emilija said. ‘Talia did the kitchen; was it the same?’

‘Yes. All I needed to do was polish the surfaces. It was like the place had already been cleaned before we got here.’

‘Is there anywhere you didn’t clean?’

‘The bathroom was all that was left. Otherwise we were almost finished. I heard Valmira vacuuming the front room and then she went down to the basement. I’m not sure if we were supposed to clean down there or not and I haven’t seen the list.’

‘What list?’

‘We get a log sheet from Viggó for each day with the jobs on it and instructions, quick clean, deep clean, which rooms, that sort of thing. Valmira ticks everything off as we go. I don’t know what was on the log sheet for today, but there’s another job this afternoon, somewhere in this street.’

‘Any idea where the log sheet is?’

Natalia shrugged and Emilija looked blank. ‘Probably in the basement,’ she decided. ‘Valmira must have had it with her.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Well . . .’ Gunna paused, wondering whether or not to involve Eiríkur, knowing that he had enough work to do already. Although they worked well together, she hadn’t built up the same close relationship with him as she had with Helgi. Eiríkur was a city boy and of a different generation; it was less easy to bond with him than with someone who shared a similar background. Gunna had come to Reykjavík from a small town in the far west of Iceland and Helgi from a farming district in the north, and while Eiríkur’s parents had come from the countryside, he had grown up in the city and had little feeling for what went on outside its limits. She couldn’t help wishing that it was Eiríkur who was still on leave and not the solidly dependable Helgi, who had chosen precisely this week to be away.

‘It’s something odd,’ she said finally. ‘Some contract cleaners turned up at a house in Kópavogur to spring clean a house that had been rented, so it would be all fresh and clean for the next tenants. But in the basement they found a smashed-up chair, bits of duct tape and a lot of bloodstains on the floor.’

‘That sounds unpleasant. Torture of some kind, do you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think. Forensics have been over it and taken every sample they can think of. It screams dubious to me, but unless there’s a DNA match or something else, I doubt we’ll ever get to the bottom of it.’

‘So you have no victim, no idea what happened or when, and you don’t know where to look? Sounds good to me,’ Eiríkur said brightly. ‘How about . . . ?’ he pointed a finger towards the ceiling. ‘What does the Laxdal say about it?’

‘I’m going to ask a few more questions before I mention it to him. The really odd thing about it is that one of the cleaners, the one who found the stuff in the basement, seems to have had a fit and was taken away in an ambulance. I’m getting the feeling there’s more to this than meets the eye, and that these Reindeer Cleaners aren’t telling me everything.’

‘Reindeer Cleaners? Is that what they’re called?’

‘Yup. Tasteful, isn’t it? It goes without saying that they’re all immigrants.’

Gunna stood up and pulled on her jacket. ‘I’ll leave you to continue with Vilhelm Thorleifsson’s background. Can you see what else you can find out about Elvar Pálsson as well? I’m going to ask the manager at Reindeer Cleaners a few pointed questions.’

‘Another immigrant?’

‘Not this guy. I gather he’s the only one working there who isn’t foreign.’

‘All these foreigners, nothing but trouble,’ Eiríkur sniffed.

‘What do you expect when Icelanders don’t want to do shit work and import people who are prepared to do it?’

‘People would do these jobs if they were paid properly, surely?’

Gunna looked out of the window to check the weather before leaving the building. ‘And there you have the other half of the problem. If you pay shit wages, then you’ll find yourself employing the people who, for whatever reason, can’t find anything better.’

‘A bit like working for the government, you mean?’ Eiríkur asked with a faint smile and Gunna was taken aback for a moment by the first hint of a rebellious comment from him.

‘Getting that way, Eiríkur, I guess,’ she said, hiding her surprise.

The young man with the big ears was far from pleased to get an unannounced visit from the police.

‘Viggó Jakobsson?’ Gunna asked, knowing already that she had the right person. ‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir. I’m with CID and we’re investigating Kópavogsbakki fifty, where a squad of your cleaners found something unpleasant in the basement.’

‘I don’t see what this has to do with me,’ Viggó said, not bothering to conceal his impatience as he spun a set of car keys on his finger. ‘And I do have an important meeting in a few minutes.’

With almost twenty years as a police officer behind her, Gunna had almost managed to suppress the instinct for making instant decisions about people, but it was difficult not to take an on-the-spot dislike to Viggó Jakobsson as he stood up behind his desk.

‘I understand that the company belongs to your father, so I guess if he’s the one who runs things, he’s the one I ought to be talking to,’ she suggested.

Viggó sat down quickly and dropped his keys into his jacket pocket. ‘No, you don’t want to be doing that,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I can tell you anything you need to know.’

‘Can you now? Who owns Kópavogsbakki fifty? You do contract work, don’t you? So you’re working for the owner, I take it?’

‘I . . . er. I’m not sure I can tell you that,’ Viggó stammered and Gunna raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘We have a contract with an estate agent. Actually, we look after about fifty houses and apartments on behalf of that agency, and four of then are on Kópavogsbakki. I’m not sure, but I think fifty belongs to someone who has been out of the country for a few years. Who owns these agency places isn’t our affair.’

‘So how frequently do these houses get cleaned?’

‘Normally at the end of the lease, and again before they’re let if there’s a gap of more than a week or so between people moving out and others moving in. Some tenants also take up the option of having the place cleaned for them once or twice a week, but not this one.’

‘And Kópavogsbakki fifty? Had people moved out or were they about to move in?’

Viggó looked blank. ‘You’ll have to ask the agent. We just get a call asking for a cleaning squad.’

‘I thought you said you could tell me anything I need to know?’ Gunna said and watched Viggó’s face turn pink. She opened her folder. ‘All right, let’s try another tack, shall we? The three cleaners who were there, Valmira Vukoja, Natalia Rodriguez and Emilija Plaudis. All reliable staff, are they? They’ve all been with you for some years?’

‘Small, Medium and Large, I call them.’ Viggó laughed, but the laughter died on his lips as Gunna looked at him impassively. He coughed. ‘Small – Natalia – she’s been here the longest, seven or eight years. She started here when my old man was still running the company.’