Cold Steal (8 page)

He read, ‘Jewellery received from Halldór Birgisson,’ followed by an identity number and a price that prompted Eiríkur to do a double-take.

‘Is that how much this stuff costs?’ He asked, picking the price tag off the tray the jewellery had been placed in and calculating that Svandís expected to charge roughly double what she had paid for it.

‘It’s old. Nineteenth century. This stuff doesn’t grow on trees.’

‘I need to take this as well,’ Eiríkur said and watched Svandís open her mouth to protest as he pocketed the receipt book. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get it back. I don’t suppose that’s his real name, so what did this guy look like?’

Svandís immediately looked blank. ‘Just average, I suppose.’

‘You don’t have CCTV in here, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Then when was he here?’

‘Look at the receipt. The date’s on it.’

‘Saturday? Two days ago? What time of day was it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Right. So what did he look like? Tall? Short? Hair colour? Facial hair?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Taller than me but shorter than you.’

‘That applies to probably just about everyone in Iceland,’ Eiríkur said, putting a finger to his shoulder. ‘This tall?’ He asked, moving it up. ‘Or up here?’

‘That’s closer.’

‘Just under two metres, then? Hair?’

‘Ordinary. Brownish. Quite short.’

‘Beard? Moustache?’

‘Stubble.’

‘Anything special you noticed about him? Any distinguishing marks?’

‘Like what?’

‘Scars, tattoos. That sort of thing.’

No. Nothing. Just a nice, ordinary young man. He said it was his mother’s and that she’d died a few years ago and now he needed to stop his house being repossessed, so he had to sell it.’

Eiríkur sniffed. ‘I’m sure. What was he wearing?’

‘I’m not sure. I always look at the eyes, you know.’

‘Well, was he wearing a suit?’

‘No. A coat of some kind. I think it was green.’

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Dark green? Light green? A long coat or a short one?’

‘Short. It was one of those ones all the young people wear these days. Like the one you’re wearing, only dark green.’

‘A fleece?’

‘If that’s what they’re called. And it had some yellow letters on it.’

‘I don’t suppose you remember what?’

Svandís put a hand to her forehead. ‘No. It’s gone,’ she said, as if remembering was something painful.

‘So we have a brown-haired man with stubble, roughly one metre eighty tall, wearing a dark green fleece with yellow lettering on it. Age?’

‘I don’t know. Under forty?’

‘All right. How much under forty?’

‘Thirty, maybe,’ she decided with an effort.

‘Thank you. That all helps,’ Eiríkur said, zipping up his own fleece.

‘When will I get that back?’

Gunna rang the bell, then hammered on the door that swung open in front of her to reveal a dark lobby.

‘Who are you?’

She was confronted by a startled woman in a dressing gown that had clearly been hastily pulled on.

‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, city CID. I’m looking for Sunna María Voss or Jóhann Hjálmarsson, or preferably both of them,’ she said, flicking open her wallet.

‘CID? What’s it about?’

‘Are you Sunna María?’

‘I am.’ She crossed her arms and cocked her head on one side. ‘Look, this really isn’t convenient.’

‘Maybe not, but it is urgent.’

‘So urgent it can’t wait until the morning? It’s half-past seven and I’m about to go out.’

‘If it wasn’t urgent, I’d be at home myself by now. Can I come in? This really is important.’

‘Tomorrow, please.’

‘You know Vilhelm Thorleifsson?’ Gunna asked.

‘Villi? Of course. Why?’

‘He’s been murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ Sunna María asked. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m absolutely sure, which is why I’m here on your doorstep at seven thirty in the evening and not at home with my feet up. So are you going to let me in?’

‘Æi, it’s not exactly convenient . . .’ She looked quickly over one shoulder and then back at Gunna.

‘And it’s not exactly convenient to be stood here in the dark,’ Gunna said with determination and took a step inside as Sunna María backed away.

‘Wait here.’

Sunna María disappeared into the darkened house, leaving the door open while Gunna pulled the outside door shut behind her. She could hear whispers and a chuckle from inside the house.

‘This way, please. We’ll go into the kitchen.’

Gunna saw as she followed her along the corridor that Sunna María had brushed her hair and the dressing gown had been swapped for a silk kimono. Every door along the corridor had been shut and a slash of light from the kitchen at the end cut through the darkness.

‘I don’t even have coffee in the house,’ Sunna María apologized. ‘Jóhann drinks coffee in the mornings but I don’t.’

‘That’s all right,’ Gunna said, placing her folder on the table and opening it. ‘You knew Vilhelm Thorleifsson?’

‘Of course. We’ve known him for years.’

‘We?’

‘My husband and I.’

‘I take it that’s not him in the other room? So can I ask where your husband is?’

‘Germany, as far as I know. But he might have gone somewhere sunnier for a while. We lead pretty independent lives these days.’

‘It hasn’t been released to the press yet. Vilhelm Thorleifsson was murdered three nights ago.’

‘That was Villi they were talking about on the news? Shit. I had no idea he was even in Iceland.’

Gunna studied Sunna María’s face as she chewed her lip and fidgeted with her hands. She stood up and walked around the room nervously and sat down again. ‘What happened? Can you tell me?’

‘All I can say right now it that there was nothing accidental about it. You knew him well? I’m looking for anyone who might have held a grudge against him, anyone he may have pissed off enough to want to kill him.’

Sunna María cupped her chin in her hand. ‘There’s no shortage of people he owes money to. I mean,’ she said in a sudden show of confusion. ‘How? Who did this?’

‘We don’t know. It’s under investigation and we don’t have many details yet. You knew him socially or through work?’ Gunna asked, although she already knew the answer.

‘I was at college with him. Villi, me and my husband, we used to own a company together. Several companies, in fact.’

Sunna María’s lips puckered in a worried line.

‘Including Sólfell Investment?’ Gunna asked.

‘That’s one of them. It was wound up a few years ago.’

‘I understand it was bankrupt, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, yes.’ Sunna María shrugged and her mouth curled downwards as she shook her head dismissively.

‘It’s beside the point, anyway. We are looking at the very real possibility that there’s a connection with you and your husband, and you might be in danger.’

‘You think so?’ She said with a theatrical gasp. ‘Here in Iceland? Come on.’

‘I’m completely serious. It’s not something we can rule out. I’d advise you not to stay here alone, and I’d go so far as to advise you not to stay here at all.’

‘Can’t I get police protection if you think I’m in danger?’

Gunna wanted to smile at the suggestion. ‘Right now, no. We simply don’t have the manpower available. It’s something we’ll be discussing tomorrow when we have more details.’

‘Was Villi murdered at that chalet he keeps in the country?’

‘So I understand. You don’t seem surprised?’

‘The dirty devil. He used it as a hideaway so he could entertain his girlfriends. His wife was furious when she found out about it.’

‘I’m not exactly surprised. Had he owned the place for long?’

‘Five or six years. Something like that. He had a share in a web design company. The company bought the chalet for team-building weekends, things like that. When it went out of business, I suppose he must have been able to hang on to it.’

Gunna nodded and shuffled the papers in her folder. ‘Where can I find your husband?’

‘Like I said, Germany. He was at a conference and then he was going somewhere else after that. I’m not sure where. I don’t try and keep track of his travels these days.’

‘You have a phone number?’

Sunna María stood up and opened a drawer. ‘Plenty of them,’ she said, handing Gunna a card and pulling an iPhone from the pocket of her kimono.

Gunna looked at the card and saw Icelandic, Danish and German contact numbers. ‘Can I have that?’

Sunna María took the card and wrote a number she found on her phone on the back.

‘That’s the secret number he thinks I don’t have,’ she said. ‘Call that one if you want to surprise him.’

It was a bright evening and the sun bathed the mountains that Vestureyri sprawled under with a warm glow. There was hardly a breath of wind and the town could be seen reflected in the glassy water of the harbour. Gunna sat on the step at home with the schoolbooks she knew she ought to be reading, but English grammar had always been a trial. Stuffy stories of perfect families shopping and going to restaurants of the kind the little town certainly didn’t boast had little meaning or interest, while the American films that the local cinema showed were another matter entirely. Somehow the English the heroes and shifty-eyed villains on the big screen spoke was a different world to pointless schoolbook English, and the strange and more exotic patter of the travelling Australian boys working in the fish factory was even more beguiling, scattered with abbreviations and crude slang that they would wryly explain if asked. Everyone knew that one of the girls at the factory had become very friendly with one of the travellers and a baby in the spring was being gossiped about already. Gunna wondered if Ríkey would be leaving with her Gary, or if they would stay in Vestureyri, or, more likely, the boy would simply move on and forget about the roots he had put down in this distant fishing village in the far north.

Danish with its back-of-the-throat vowels was even more of a battle and she put down the story of the little black Volkswagen in disgust as an engine roared through a cracked exhaust in the next street and she could hear the squeal of a fan belt that needed tightening. The tyres squealed and she stood up to look over the bushes by the gate to see if she could make out which of the local boys was pushing an old banger beyond its limits when she heard a sickening crash followed by silence. A few moments later there was a babble of angry calls and Gunna ran down the slope and around the corner of Old Togga’s house to see a sleek grey car with steam coming out from under a crumpled bonnet. It had ploughed hard into the driver’s side of a dark green car that she recognized with horrified despair as the one her father had spent long weekends and evenings restoring.

Gunna couldn’t sleep. Yet another dream had woken her long before dawn and she leafed listlessly through yesterday’s newspapers while the shards of the nightmare scene that had left her father crippled played out repeatedly in her mind.

The percolator bubbled and she padded to the bedroom door to close it, knowing that the aroma of coffee would bring Steini out, bleary-eyed and concerned that she had not been able to sleep. Gunna poured herself a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, and set them both on the Sunday paper with its alarming headlines. As she munched, she flipped uninterestedly through the pages, more than half of them to do with the upcoming council elections. Years before when she had taken an interest in local politics, she would have read every word. But now the overblown assertions and what looked suspiciously like downright lies failed to be convincing.

She finished the cereal and drank the remaining milk from the bowl as her phone quietly buzzed a text message.

Hi Mum. Are you around? Today? XXXg

Gunna nodded to herself, frowned her eyebrows into a single dark bar across her forehead and wondered what her errant son might want.

Sunna María was well into a late breakfast at Harbourside Hotel when Gunna walked in and watched her for a moment, delicately spooning up a bowl of chopped fruit. There was no sign of the invisible amorous companion whose presence had been unmistakeable at the house on Kópavogsbakki the night before.

‘Good morning,’ Gunna said, sitting down without being asked and reaching for a cup as a waiter appeared.

‘Are you a guest?’ he asked. ‘Breakfast is for guests only.’

‘No, I’m not, but I could do with a cup of coffee all the same,’ Gunna said, unzipping her coat and hanging it on the back of her chair.

At the sight of her uniform, the waiter decided not to push the matter, disappeared on silent feet and returned with a flask.

‘I spoke to your husband,’ Gunna said. ‘He’s in Munich and flying home today, so I’ll be back to speak to him this evening. ‘

Sunna María slit open a roll as if she were cutting its throat. ‘I’m sure his Fraülein will be disappointed that her sugar daddy is leaving her,’ she said with satisfaction.

‘That’s something I didn’t ask about,’ Gunna said in a sharper tone than she had intended. ‘He wasn’t aware of what had happened to your former business associate.’

This time there was a note of chagrin in Sunna María’s voice. ‘He has other things to think about, I should think.’

‘What I’m looking for is a link to the killer, or killers, and I have to assess whether or not you are in danger yourself,’ Gunna said, looking at her over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘Do you feel you need protection? Have you upset people who might want to go to these extremes, or is there someone out there looking to settle a score? I gather there’s another partner in some of these businesses, Elvar Pálsson?’

‘Elvar ran Sólfell Investment. The rest of us were really just sleeping partners. But between them they must have upset lots of people, so I guess there are plenty to choose from.’ She smiled. ‘Jóhann and I came in as partners later, so maybe we haven’t pissed off quite so many people.’

‘Where is Elvar now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sunna María almost snarled. ‘We’re old friends, but I don’t keep tabs on him.’

‘Who would bear a grudge against Vilhelm Thorleifsson?’