Winterlude (9 page)

‘You’re sure this is the vehicle?’

‘Well, not a hundred and one per cent, but as sure as I can be. That dirty patch on the side gives it away.’

‘And you got a look at the driver?’

Stefán shrugged. ‘Young fella. Bad haircut,’ he said. ‘I didn’t look twice. Now, if it had been a young lady, I might have taken more notice.’

‘You’d recognize him?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Gunna dug into her folder and pulled out Elmar’s driving licence photograph, blown up to a washed-out A4 size, his pale eyes staring somewhere beyond the camera.

‘How about that?’

Stefán stared at it and shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It looks like him, but I couldn’t swear to it. I only gave him a quick glance.’

As satisfied as she was likely to get, Gunna nodded and made a few notes. ‘OK, thanks. That’ll do nicely.’

‘Happy to help. If I’d have known, I’d have looked a bit more carefully. You reckon this is the guy who, you know . . .’ He paused. ‘Borgar?’

‘I can’t comment on that.’

‘You want me to let you know if I see him again?’

‘I’d be surprised if you do,’ Gunna said, tapping the pictures of the wrecked van. ‘This happened last night and he’s in hospital now with a lot of broken bones.’

She let herself into the NesPlast unit and allowed her eyes to adjust to the gloom before she went upstairs and switched on one light over the canteen table. The place was clean, much cleaner than it should have been after being empty for several years.

She started in the kitchen area and went through all of the drawers, from cutlery at the top to one at the bottom containing old invoices, all dated a decade or more before. Moving on to the cupboards, she found only newly washed and dried glasses and cups, neatly stacked. She sat back down and shook her head in puzzlement. The place had been cleaned thoroughly. There was none of the dust and grime of downstairs. The office, little more than an alcove off the canteen, had also been swept clean, but there was no furniture. Desks and chairs had gone, and only the planner charts on the walls and faded outlines where pictures had been pinned indicated what the place had once been. Only a threadbare sofa occupied one end below the window.

Gunna sat on it and bounced gently, feeling the springs squeal. She stood up and felt under the seat, lifting when she felt it move. Underneath was a duvet and a couple of pillows, still fairly fresh rather than having lain there all the years that Borgar had been in prison. She stared at them and wondered what it all meant. Had Borgar used this place, the last remaining part of his former sprawling businesses, as some kind of bolt-hole, a place to escape to when the gloomy hostel became too much for him?

She lifted the duvet up, shook it and folded it in half, placing it on the floor with the two pillows on top. She searched the box under the sofa, fingers feeling for anything that might give her an idea of what Borgar had been doing there, but eventually stood up, admitting defeat, convinced that Borgar had spent an hour or two every day before his hostel evening curfew clearing up his one-time business.

Straightening up, she saw a couple of books on the windowsill above the sofa, half hidden behind its back. She riffled through the pages of the two cheap thrillers and put them down again, turning back to the office where she scanned the walls, remembering Henning’s question about Borgar’s cubbyhole. There was nothing to be seen. The floor was an unbroken set of boards without a join anywhere, while the walls were blank and provided no clue. The only break in them anywhere was the electrical box, and staring at it she remembered that the team arriving on Monday had found the circuit breakers tripped, but that Sigmar had reset them downstairs.

Gunna snapped her fingers. The circuits for the building were on the floor below. She clattered down the stairs, found the circuit box and took the metal key for opening the latch from its string. Upstairs it fitted the identical door and it swung open to show a single pair of circuit breakers, which she assumed had to be for the lights and power in the kitchen. She stretched and peered into the box, her head almost inside it.

‘Ah, there you are, my little beauty,’ she breathed, sliding her hand sideways behind the cabinet’s framework into a compartment that lay behind the panelling of the wall, and extracted an old Bible that she stared at in surprise, wondering if Borgar had found God during his time at Litla-Hraun.

The Bible felt odd in her hands, as if its covers did not meet properly, and opening it she saw why, as a couple of small, hardback books fell out and landed at her feet. Picking them up, Gunna saw there was a passport with a star and crescent on the cover, and bearing the legend ‘Republic of Turkey’. The picture inside was undoubtedly a younger and plumper Borgar Jónsson than the one whose picture she had seen on the police files, but with a very unfamiliar name, while the two books were clearly savings accounts from banks she had never heard of, containing figures dating back more than six years and running into many thousands.

‘Turkey. Someone planning a new life,’ she said to herself, straightening up and looking out of the window at the gathering gloom outside. ‘So I don’t suppose our Borgar had found God after all,’ she decided, and the sudden harsh ringing of her phone brought her back to reality.

The unmistakeable smell hit Helgi in the face. Somewhere a generator chattered discreetly and a few lights glowed in the gloomy barn where the carcasses of abandoned farm machinery crouched along one side. His shoes crunched on the gravel underfoot and he saw that a strip of light glimmered under a door at the far end.

He knew that this was not a good idea. It went against all the rules of good policing, but that would mean going back to Blönduós and calling in Anna Björg or another of the local station’s few officers to come with him. He glanced at his phone and saw that with no signal, there was no chance of calling anyone to join him.

Taking a deep breath to summon his courage, he listened at the door to the silence on the other side, wrinkling his nose at the smell before pushing the door open. Inside was a single light that illuminated the workshop where a still hissed on top of a gas ring. On the far side of the long room a dozen plastic bins were the source of the smell and Helgi knew exactly what he had stumbled across as he backed away as silently as he was able before turning and making for the door.

‘All right, Helgi?’ a deep voice asked as he emerged into the daylight. ‘What might bring Helgi Svavarsson from the police all the way out to Tunga on a winter morning?’

‘Hello, Össur. I was passing and wondered if Ingi might be about anywhere?’

A pair of dark eyes took stock of Helgi from the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat stained by rain and bleached by sunshine.

‘Our Ingi’s been working over at the Hook these last few weeks, building some new offices for the town council or some such. But since you’re here you’d best come up to the house and have a cup of coffee. I can’t speak for Reynir, but Mother’ll be happy to see you,’ he ordered and strode over to the tractor, leaving Helgi where he stood.

The tractor thundered into life and Össur reversed frighteningly fast in a half-circle towards Helgi and the Daihatsu.

‘That’s your city wagon, is it?’ he shouted over the roar of the engine. ‘I’ll go first so’s I can pull you out when you get it stuck in a puddle.’

Helgi got back into the Daihatsu and took the track back up to the farm slowly, wondering if Össur had seen him go into the barn and if he suspected that the still at the back might have been seen. At any rate, he was sure that even Össur would know that the smell of fermenting raw brew could hardly be missed. Maybe he didn’t expect anything to be done about it and for a blind eye to be turned for old times’ sake? Wondering where Össur’s brother Reynir might be, Helgi had no real choice but to follow the tractor back towards the farmhouse, relieved that as the Daihatsu breasted the rise, his phone pinged back into connection with the rest of the world.

‘Progress, Gunnhildur?’ Ívar Laxdal asked gently as Gunna gulped a glass of water in the deserted canteen.

‘Good grief, what a bastard this man was,’ she said with feeling. ‘He screwed everyone he could, dropped people in the shit without a moment’s hesitation and he’d have mortgaged his grandmother if he could have got away with it. I’m starting to wonder if whoever finished him off wasn’t doing the rest of us a favour.’

‘How’s Helgi getting on?’

‘No idea. I had a quick call to check a vehicle registration, but that’s all so far. I expect he’ll report in when he knows something. But I can’t help wondering if I’ve sent him on a wild-goose chase up there in the north.’

Ívar Laxdal nodded wisely, his meaty hands clasped around a mug. ‘Anything you need?’

‘Other than manpower, obviously?’

‘Of course.’

Gunna felt as helpless as she usually did when faced with this question.

‘Ideally I’d like Eiríkur back off paternity leave and back here running around for me. But that’s too much to hope for. So . . .’

One of the Laxdal eyebrows gradually lifted from its habitual position as Gunna grinned wickedly. She placed the evidence bag containing the Turkish passport and the bankbooks on the table.

‘If you had a spare half hour to drop by the National Security Unit and ask what they make of these, then I’m sure you’d get an answer out of them a lot quicker than I would.’

The dog that had barked from the barn now sniffed around the Daihatsu’s wheels and disdainfully cocked a leg against one of them before trotting to the farmhouse door, proud of its work. Helgi saw a wrinkled face appear at the kitchen window and break into a smile on seeing him.

‘Before we go inside,’ he said, and Össur turned round to face him, ‘you must have an idea why I’m here, surely?’

For the first time Össur’s face showed a change of expression as he scowled. ‘Yup. I’m not Sherlock Holmes like you, but I can join the dots.’

‘Where were you on Sunday?’

‘Right here. I’ve not been south of the heath since the summer.’

‘And Reynir?’ Helgi asked softly.

‘Well,’ Össur said slowly, ‘it’d be easy enough for me to tell you he’d been here, wouldn’t it? And I guess you’d have to believe me.’

‘Not necessarily. Try me.’

‘I reckon you’ll have to speak to Reynir and ask him yourself,’ Össur said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘He’ll be here soon enough.’

The old lady had laid the table with coffee and a plate laden with slices of heavy bread, buttered and laid with strips of cheese and fat meat.

‘Come in, Helgi. It’s good to see you,’ she twittered. ‘You haven’t changed,’ she lied as Helgi stroked the top of his head and smiled back at her. The old clock ticked insistently on its shelf above the door and next to it was a picture of Aron Kjartansson. Helgi looked at it and guessed it must have been taken when the boy was eight or nine years old.

‘My grandson,’ the old lady said, catching Helgi’s eye. ‘He’d be fifteen now. I suppose it’s that man you’re here about,’ she said, then lapsed into silence as she clattered cups and plates.

‘It’s been a while since I was here last. How have you been keeping?’ he asked politely as the old lady finally sat down.

‘Not so bad. Still looking after these boys of mine when they should all have been married by now,’ she grumbled. ‘How about you? How’s Magga?’

‘We split up. About six years ago,’ Helgi told her with a touch of guilt in his voice, as if he were sure the old lady would blame him.

‘There’s a shame. Just like Kjartan and Katla, not that I cared all that much for Katla,’ she said. ‘And it’s not as if your mother’s here any longer to keep an eye on you, is it?’

‘I get by,’ Helgi assured her.

‘Married again, are you?’

‘Yes, and two little ones.’

The old lady’s face lit up. ‘How lovely,’ she crowed. ‘Össur, you should take a leaf out of this man’s book and find yourself a new young lady.’

‘Staying at the hotel in Blönduós, are you?’ Össur asked lazily. ‘Hope they look after you all right,’ he said with a leer and Helgi looked back at him, trying not to show the discomfort he felt.

There was a lull in the conversation, filled with the sound of feet pounding up the steps outside and the door banging open.

‘Reynir, I guess,’ Össur said simply, his face buried in his mug.

‘So who’s the raving ponce who drives a girl’s Daihatsu?’ a grating voice demanded from the hall. ‘It has to be a policeman, I reckon. Either that or there’s a troop of dancing girls stripping off in the kitchen for me.’

The face in the doorway was as creased as Össur’s, but with a wild grin and an even wilder look in the eyes.

‘It had to be the filth,’ he said. ‘The dancing girls would have been too much of a good thing. I was wondering if you were going to turn up, Helgi. Having a good time at the hotel, are you?’

‘Fine, thanks, Reynir. How’re you keeping?’

‘Ach, y’know. I have to keep the cows happy here and then I have to go over to the Hook or Blönduós and keep the cows happy there as well,’ he said as his mother frowned in disapproval.

‘Sit down, Reynir. There’s coffee and there’s buttered bread. And be polite to our guest,’ she scolded.

Reynir poured a mugful of coffee and slid a slice of bread into his mouth in one piece.

‘We’re not shedding any tears here, Helgi,’ Reynir said through a mouthful of bread and cheese, folding a second ready to follow it. ‘Not for that bastard who ran over Kjartan’s boy. Just the opposite. We’d have cracked open the champagne if we’d had any to crack open.’

He slid the second sandwich into his mouth with every sign of satisfaction.

‘Where were you on Sunday afternoon?’

‘Me? I was in Blönduós Saturday night. I was here on Sunday and back in Blönduós on Sunday night.’

‘And will someone confirm that for you?’

Reynir leered and nodded towards his mother, her back to them as she sliced more bread. ‘Tell you afterwards, Helgi,’ he murmured. ‘There are things a man’s mother doesn’t want to hear.’

The woman was clearly terrified and kept glancing at Helgi as if to be sure that he was real as he parked outside the petrol station and walked in, keys swinging from his fingers and a frown on his face. She had flatly refused to meet him at her home and the paper cup of coffee she held in both hands shook.