Cold Steal (25 page)

Alex kicked the duvet off his feet. It was hot and for a moment he wondered where he was in the darkness until he heard Emilija’s steady breathing next to him. He dozed off again and it felt like no more than a few seconds later that the alarm buzzed.

‘What the fuck . . . ?’ he snarled as he hauled his head from the pillow.

A shaft of light from the street lamp outside found its way through a crack in the blinds and he felt Emilija stir and sit up. She yawned, stretched her arms above her head, her thick brown hair loose for once from its plait and hanging around her shoulders like a curtain.

‘No,’ she said, slapping away a hand intent on pulling her onto him. ‘I have to go to work and so do you.’

A moment later she was in her jeans and pulling on a shirt as she left the room.

‘Sigga! Time to get up, sweetheart!’

Alex lay back and reflected sadly that single mothers really were the business: a night of action and still up for work at the crack of dawn. He was already looking forward to the mournful expression that he would expect to see on Maris’s face as he recounted Emilija’s enthusiasm in the sack when he remembered with a sinking feeling that he wouldn’t be seeing Maris for a while, and wondered how he was. Then he wondered what Maris had said, and searched frantically for his phone when he also remembered that there had been no call after he had left his message the night before.

He heard the rattling of crockery from the kitchen and Emilija chivvying the children into wakefulness. Anton was awake and chattering while Sigga was quiet and watchful as she spooned up her cereal. Eggs boiled in a saucepan and Emilija sliced bread for Sigga’s sandwiches.

He arrived in the kitchen fresh from the shower, poured himself coffee and took a seat at the table next to Sigga.

‘School today?’ he asked, trying to sound friendly.

Sigga shook her head and said nothing, while Anton chattered to himself. Emilija put eggs and slices of bread and cheese on the table. Alex helped himself.

‘It’s Sunday. Sigga goes to basketball practice and Anton’s going to my friend’s while I’m at work,’ Emilija said.

‘When are you finished work?’

‘I’m not sure. It depends how much there is to do, and I might have an evening shift as well.’

‘I’ll drop by later, then.’

‘No, Alex. I’d prefer it if you didn’t.’

His face set in a petulant frown. ‘Why not?’

Emilija sighed. ‘Alex, you’re a sweet boy, but I’m not what you want. We’ve had our fun, so let’s call it a day, shall we?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘An older single mum with a saggy bottom and two kids? Come on, Alex. Find yourself something younger.’

‘Maybe you’re what suits me,’ he said. ‘How would you know?’

‘I can see it in your eyes. Eat your egg before it goes cold.’

Emilija plaited her hair behind her neck with nimble fingers and threw it over her shoulder while Alex and the children ate in silence.

Alex drained his coffee mug and crushed his eggshell onto a plate. ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ he said defiantly, heading for the door with his car keys dangling from one finger.

‘No, Alex. Don’t.’

He curled an arm around Emilija’s back and pulled her towards him, his other hand snaking behind her to cup a buttock as he ground himself against her. ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

Emilija squirmed out of his grasp. ‘Alex, how many times do I have to tell you? It was fun but I really don’t want you coming round here.’

‘That’s not what you said last night when you wanted me to screw you again.’

‘Shhh. The children . . .’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘You really want to know?’

Emilija took his elbow and steered him into the hallway and out of the children’s earshot. Standing by the front door, she looked earnestly into his eyes.

‘Because in five minutes there’ll be some sweet young thing along who has time to paint her toenails and who’ll catch your eye, and Alex’ll be gone. I can do without the heartbreak that goes with all that. That’s reason number one. You want the other one?’

Stunned and truculent, Alex leaned against the wall, his arms folded. ‘Go on. Tell me.’

‘Because you’re up to no good. I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not honest and I can’t afford to get involved in anything illegal. Ingi and I get on well enough most of the time, in spite of everything, but his mother loathes me and she’d do anything to wrench the kids away from me. Sleeping with a gangster is just going to give the dried-up old bitch the ammunition she needs. So thanks, Alex, but no thanks.’

Eiríkur patted the baby’s back and listened to it gurgle happily while Svala spooned yoghurt into the toddler, hardly keeping up with his appetite.

‘Are you working today?’

‘This afternoon.’

‘I thought you didn’t have a shift today?’

There was a note of accusation in Svala’s voice and Eiríkur felt a pang of guilt, knowing that she expected him to visit her parents with her, a Sunday afternoon ritual that was rarely broken.

‘Shall we get them ready and go and see your mum and dad this morning?’

Svala turned the idea over in her head. Both she and Eiríkur were creatures of habit.

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure they’ll be up early today.’

‘Well, I have a shift at two. Shall we go to Ikea for lunch and I’ll drop you off?’

Svala sighed. She had preferred Eiríkur as the student she had met half a dozen years ago, a man who lost himself in textbooks. She was still wondering why he had abandoned his studies to join the police, and the idea of her husband as a detective was something she was struggling to come to terms with.

‘If you like,’ she said. ‘Will you pick us up after your shift?’

‘That won’t be until ten,’ Eiríkur said.

‘Why so late?’

‘That’s a normal shift, two to ten.’

‘If you must.’ She sighed and spooned more yoghurt into the little girl, who had begun to voice her disapproval at the interruption in supply.

Eiríkur’s phone buzzed and he stretched to extract it from his pocket without disturbing the baby on his shoulder.

‘I mean, I can go with you to the old folks and maybe you can get a taxi home later?’

‘Maybe,’ Svala said. ‘Or maybe Dad can drive us back.’

‘Or you could leave me at the station and take the car,’ Eiríkur suggested. ‘I’ll get a lift home with someone.’

‘
Æi
. You know I don’t like driving with the children in the car.’

‘Up to you,’ Eiríkur said, and his eyes lit up as he read the message.

Hæ Eiríkur. The car you’re looking for was parked in the Selar district last night. Gimme a call.

He saw it was from one of the traffic officers and immediately dialled the number while Svala tutted her disapproval.

The night had been bitterly cold. Jóhann huddled in the thick overcoat he had found himself in the day before as dawn again woke him and he wondered if it was seven or nine o’clock. He shivered and his stomach howled its displeasure at the scant meal of nothing but dried fish the day before.

He tried to lie still for a few minutes but thirst drove him up and out of the broken farmhouse to the stream where he lapped water like a dog. It stilled the pangs in his stomach for a while and back inside he tore at the second fish he had pulled from the drying racks.

With his need for food temporarily assuaged, Jóhann began to think, surprised at how the previous day’s concentration on food and water had driven practically every other thought from his mind. He walked slowly around the building that had once been a handsome farmhouse. It must have been abandoned years before, but how many? Thirty? Fifty? There was nothing to give him any clue.

A rutted track disappeared downhill and vanished past the curve of a low hill that sat beneath the shoulder of a higher mountain with snow on its upper slopes. He sniffed the wind and felt that there was a faint fresh smell of seaweed to it, so maybe the sea lay that way? But were there people there? A village maybe? Or even a house with a telephone?

He racked his brains wondering what to do and which way to go, or maybe he should just to wait until someone came. There were faint tyre marks on the ground beneath the racks of drying fish, but he had no way of telling if they were recent or if they had been there since last year, any more than he could tell if the fish hung to dry had been there for a month or a year. He could tell roughly which way was east by the sunrise, but knowing the direction without having any idea of where he might be was of little use.

‘Early for a Sunday, Gunnhildur?’

‘It is, but there’s stuff to be done,’ she told Ívar Laxdal without turning round. At long last she had taught herself not to let the unexpected sound of his voice take her by surprise.

‘And overtime to be had?’

‘It doesn’t come amiss.’

‘Progress?’

‘This way,’ she said, leading the way to the detectives’ little coffee room and filling him a mug without asking. ‘Yesterday I spent most of my time dealing with a Latvian with a smashed hand. First he said it was an accident, but after I leaned on him, he finally admitted that two thugs had muscled their way into the flat he lives in and smashed up his hand with a hammer.’

‘Any particular reason? This wasn’t some kind of antiforeigner thing, was it?’

‘No. He couldn’t tell me who had done it, and eventually I realized that he simply didn’t know who they were, or why. A little more leaning and it seems they were looking for his flatmate, who he finally admitted had put him in a taxi and told him to say he’d had an accident.’

‘Ah. With friends like that . . .’

‘Exactly. Who needs enemies? So now I’m in search of Alex Snetzler, who also appears to be the owner of the impressive stash of stolen electrical goods that Eiríkur has been going through for serial numbers to see if we can match it up anywhere. From what Maris said, Alex is selling this stuff on, and he gets it from a local character.’

‘No name or description?’

‘No. Maris said he comes to the door and Alex always answers. The guy never comes inside to hand stuff over and sometimes he just leaves it outside.’

‘You have an alert out for this Alex?’ Ívar Laxdal asked, picking up a sugar lump and lodging it behind his teeth to filter a mouthful of coffee through.

‘I do. But first we need to go and pick up the headcases who smashed our Latvian boy’s hand.’

‘I thought you said he didn’t know who they were?’

‘I showed him a lot of mugshots of likely candidates. So this is going to be fun.’

‘You’ll get some uniform backup, won’t you?’ Ívar Laxdal asked with a hint of concern on his heavy face.

Gunna drained her coffee cup and cradled it in her hands, feeling the warmth ebb from the porcelain.

‘I will, once I’ve asked a few questions.’

Orri nursed a mug of coffee that he had no appetite for in the shopping centre, surrounded by women with pushchairs, squabbling toddlers and a few aimless teenagers with expensive phones in their hands.

His coffee was cold and he looked at his watch. As it ticked over to ten thirty, the phone in his pocket buzzed and he looked at it quickly.

Now go to the fuel station opposite the port entrance and wait there in your car. You have five minutes,
he read. He quickly downed the cold remains of his coffee and hurried out to the car park.

The road was a quiet one, leading to industrial units and the harbour gates. Halfway along was a self-service filling station that he could see was deserted as he pulled in. Orri sat and waited, the engine running as he tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs and scanned the deserted road.

His phone buzzed again.

Go 200 metres further along. On the open ground. Park facing the road.

He swore under his breath, telling himself that a filling station equipped with CCTV was never going to be the right place for them to be seen. He drove slowly, looking around him carefully, and drove onto the waste ground, the crushed black lava crunching beneath the van’s wheels as he did so, taking deep breaths and trying to stop his hands from shaking.

A small blue car was already there. Orri took care not to look as he parked parallel to it and sat looking ahead at the superstructures of the line of ships at the quay in the distance, beyond the high fences of the port area.

The van’s passenger door opened and shut quickly. Orri looked incredulously at the man in a heavy overcoat and an old-fashioned hat as he sat next to him.

‘Good afternoon, Orri. We are pleased that you made it,’ the man said in stiff English. His mouth opened and he tried to speak, but found he could say nothing. ‘You have done quite well, Orri. Good work, I think.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’ Orri demanded when he finally found his voice. ‘Why have you been making me do all this stuff?’

‘I thought it would be obvious. Because you love your sister and your girlfriend.’ The man raised an eyebrow as bushy as his clipped moustache.

‘Who are you?’

‘Ah, that’s a question one should never ask. It’s embarrassing to have to decline to answer. But as you don’t normally move in our circles, I’ll make allowances for you. Just don’t ask again and don’t bother trying to find out for yourself. It’s not healthy.’

Orri sat speechless and furious. He toyed with the idea of putting the van into gear and driving away with the man a prisoner next to him, but this old thing had no central locking and he would be able to jump out easily somewhere. ‘So why are we here now?’

The man smiled. ‘Because we are wondering what to do with you. Can we trust you to do what you are asked to do?’

Orri’s eyes bulged as he suppressed his fury. ‘What the hell do you mean? What do you think I am?’ He struggled to stay calm, infuriated by the man’s placid smile.

‘We would pay you, of course,’ the man said, as if dropping a careless remark. ‘Probably quite handsomely by this country’s standards.’

He had been ready to yell at the man but found his anger suddenly gone. ‘How much?’ he asked quickly.

The man smiled and Orri regretted having asked so fast, knowing he had lost a point.