Winterlude (5 page)

‘So you think that Borgar was murdered by one of the brothers?’

Helgi shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Kjartan made very specific threats. He was at sea when Borgar was murdered. It adds up. On the other hand, there are plenty more people who had reason to hold a grudge against Borgar.’

‘You reckon the brothers would go as far as murder? You said Kjartan could kill, didn’t you?’

‘Kjartan, yes,’ Helgi said without hesitation. ‘Kjartan could kill if he needed to or wanted to. But he couldn’t have done it. Össur, I don’t know. I don’t think so. He comes across as a headcase but he doesn’t have that inbuilt mean streak that Kjartan has. Reynir’s anyone’s guess. He’s always been a nutcase, getting into fights he could never win. I’m amazed he hasn’t been sorted out good and proper before now. Although Ingi’s the one I know best, I’m not sure about him. He’s the most normal of the four of them, and he has a family now so he doesn’t live at the farm any more like Össur and Reynir. I’d say that barring Kjartan, Reynir’s the most likely candidate.’

‘Then you’d best go and find out, hadn’t you? Take one of the Daihatsus from the car pool and drive up there.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Helgi asked in surprise.

‘No. Go this afternoon if you can get away. If there’s a problem getting a car, then let me know and I’ll make sure it happens, even if we have to hire you a 4x4 for a few days.’

‘And you?’

‘I’ll look after things here and I’ll see if I can get an extra body to help us out while you’re up north,’ Gunna told him. ‘But now I have to go and see Kjartan’s former wife. That’s going to be fun.’

Gunna left a slightly bemused Helgi at the station on Hverfisgata to organize a car and she could only laugh to herself at his surprise at being sent north to the home town he had long left behind. He had called his wife on the way back into town and the news of his being away for a few days had been greeted with little enthusiasm. Gunna could imagine Halla’s tight-lipped look of disapproval and Helgi made sure to blame Gunna, while Gunna sat and nodded her agreement in the driving seat.

She headed out of town through the sparse afternoon traffic with the sun already low behind her in a gunmetal sky and watched the road as it unfolded ahead of her across the Hellisheidi heath, where bursts of steam erupted at intervals at the sides of the road before it dropped back down to ground level and the lowland towns on the far side.

She left Hveragerdi behind and looked around for signs as she drove into Selfoss, before locating the right road that snaked out of the little town and into the flat lands beyond. The church was the landmark. Gunna eyed its gaunt tower as she approached and took the turnoff before it to a quartet of low-slung wooden houses in a ring, like wagons in a circle, each with a car or two in the drive.

The front door opened before Gunna had left the car and dark eyes followed her as she crunched up the drive, the gravel beneath her feet frozen together and only unwillingly giving way.

‘Katla?’ Gunna asked, knowing the answer and getting a nod in reply.

She looked older than Gunna had expected. The fresh but grief-stricken face she had seen in the news reports following the accident that had killed Aron Kjartansson and put Borgar Jónsson in prison had grown lines in the meantime.

‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir,’ she said, extending a hand to be shaken. ‘I called this morning.’

‘About that man’s death?’ asked Katla, clearly not willing to even speak the name. ‘Come in.’

The living room of the wooden house was a mess of what Gunna thought of as toys for teenagers, with the controllers of a PlayStation snaking from the television across a coffee table piled with debris to a sofa. In contrast, there was not a thing out of place in the spotless kitchen.

‘The boys use the front room most of the time,’ she explained, half apologetically. ‘I use the kitchen. They keep out of here and I leave their crap where it is.’

‘Boys?’

‘My sons,’ Katla said. ‘Elmar and Einar.’

‘I didn’t realize . . .’

‘That I had other children? But after Aron . . .’ She shook her head.

‘You came to live out here?’

‘It all fell apart after . . .’ she said, hesitating, and took a deep breath. ‘Kjartan retreated into himself. I was brought up around here, so I came back.’

‘I’m investigating Borgar Jónsson’s murder.’

Katla laughed briefly and humourlessly. ‘Great. When you find the killer, please let me know. I’ll buy him a drink before you lock him up.’

‘Where were you on Sunday?’

‘Me? I was here in the morning. I had coffee with a friend in Selfoss in the afternoon and called in at work for a couple of hours after that.’

‘Where’s work?’

‘I work for a builder’s merchant in Selfoss. We were stocktaking on Sunday,’ Katla said with disbelief in her voice. ‘What is this? You think I killed that bastard? You are joking?’

‘Right now I don’t think anything. But if you were at work and that can be confirmed, then I can rule you out and that means I can cross you off a list that’s getting steadily longer.’

Mollified, Katla leaned against the kitchen cupboard and rooted through a drawer for a packet of cigarettes. ‘Fair enough. That sounds reasonable.’ She lit up, sent out a long plume of smoke and nodded sagely, then scribbled a number on a piece of paper that she tore from a calendar on the wall. ‘Grétar is the manager. I was there from three until about six. Before that I was at Bakkakaffi in Selfoss.’

She looked up as the door banged, bringing with it a blast of air that swept around their ankles. A lanky young man slouched into the doorway, looked Gunna up and down and departed wordlessly. Gunna raised an eyebrow.

‘That’s Elmar,’ Katla said.

‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty?’

‘And Einar?’

‘Two years older. Why?’

‘I’ll need to know where they were on Sunday as well.’

Tight-lipped, Katla went to the doorway and put her head into the living room. ‘Elmar, come in here, would you?’ Gunna heard a grunt from the next room and Katla snapped back a retort: ‘Because I asked you to, that’s why.’

Elmar towered over his mother. He seemed ill at ease, as if he had yet to grow into those long limbs.

‘This lady is from the police and she has a few questions,’ Katla said nervously, as if she was wondering herself where the boy had been that day.

‘Elmar, my name’s Gunnhildur Gísladóttir and I’m a detective with the serious crime unit. I’m investigating the death of Borgar Jónsson. Can you tell me where you were on Sunday?’

Elmar looked briefly at his mother and then back at Gunna. ‘Er, why?’

‘Because I’m investigating a man’s murder and I need to know the whereabouts of anyone who might have had a grudge against him. What were you doing on Sunday?’

‘I was here, I think.’

‘You think?’ Gunna asked. ‘You’re not sure?’

‘Why? What’s it to you?’ Elmar folded his arms and stuck out his chest. ‘I haven’t been near what’s-his-name. All right?’

‘You mean Borgar?’

‘Yeah. That’s him.’

‘Were you in Reykjavík on Sunday?’

‘I don’t remember.’

The answer was too swift to have any thought behind it and Gunna found herself instantly suspicious. ‘What time did you get up on Sunday?’

‘Why d’you want to know?’

‘Elmar, for crying out loud,’ Katla broke in. ‘Answer the damned questions, will you?’

Gunna looked from son to mother and back, taking in Katla’s look of sudden panic, while also wishing that Helgi had not been dispatched out of town.

‘I’m not sure you realize how serious this is, Elmar,’ Gunna said softly. ‘A man has been murdered. He had a connection with your family and I have to suspect anyone who can’t tell me where they were when it happened.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘For God’s sake, Elmar!’ Katla screeched. ‘Just tell her where you were on Sunday, will you?’

‘I was out and about.’

‘Where were you out and about?’

‘Here and there. Selfoss.’

‘All day?’

‘Yeah. Sort of.’

Gunna stared at Elmar for a long moment until his truculent gaze dropped to the floor. ‘And just what does "sort of" mean? Does that mean you were in Reykjavík on Sunday?’

‘Might do. I went to see a mate. That’s all.’

‘And this friend’s name?’

The arms unfolded and Elmar stuck one hand deep into the pocket of his hoodie while the fingers of the other hand strayed to one ear and nervously fingered the thick tunnel ring.

‘Bjarni,’ he said eventually.

‘Full name?’

‘Bjarni Björgvinsson.’

‘Address? Phone number?’ Gunna asked smartly, making quick notes on her pad.

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.