Part 10 (1/2)

'Right. So where's the managing director?'

'Er . . . she's in London at the moment but should be back after the weekend.'

'Good grief!' Gunna exploded. 'I don't have the time or patience to wait for someone who's on a jaunt overseas, especially as this concerns what could conceivably be a murder investigation at the Gullfoss, which is all part of the same group, isn't it?'

'I'm sorry,' Simon replied, a querulous note in his voice. 'I'm not sure that I have the authority to disclose this kind of information.'

'Fair enough. If you don't want to make a decision, then I'll speak to your managing director and she can make it for you. Whichever way, it looks bad, doesn't it?'

'There have been . . .' Simon paused and Gunna waited expectantly. 'There have been incidents. We obviously want to keep this as quiet as possible, as you can appreciate,' he gulped. 'I don't have details. We don't log this kind of thing. Instructions from higher up. It happens. Whoever is on duty deals with it and we don't encourage staff to tell management about it afterwards.'

'So if something does go wrong, you can say, with a grain of truth, that you didn't know anything about it?'

Simon grimaced again, and while Gunna understood that he was in a difficult position, she found it hard to feel sympathy.

'Look. n.o.body wants to make waves. It's a tough world out there,' he said with a vague jerk of his head towards the window and the street outside. 'Jobs don't grow on trees like they did a few years ago, so we keep quiet and don't make a fuss. And if the MD knew I'd told you that, I'd be joining the dole queue tomorrow morning,' he said bitterly.

'All right. Let's make it easy for all concerned, shall we? Tell me what you can and I didn't hear it from you.'

Simon raised his hands helplessly. 'I've already told you everything I know. The duty managers deal with these incidents. I only hear about them indirectly later. But I can tell you that Magnus dealt with such an incident recently.'

'And he's not here?'

'No. Still off sick, apparently.'

'How convenient.'

'Don't be so idiotic. Who would want to keep tabs on you? Me, I can understand, being the handsome devil I am.' Mar Einarsson grinned, hoping to put Joel Ingi at his ease, but the flinty expression stopped any attempt at humour.

'That f.u.c.king computer is dynamite,' he hissed, flicking a glance around the coffee shop that was at the far end of his morning run. 'Do they know that?'

'I'm not sure what they know. I don't think AEgir knows anything, but he suspects everyone of everything. It's a power game for him. Don't let him grind you down, because he'll jump down your neck if he senses weakness.'

'Yes, yes, I know all that,' Joel Ingi said. 'But you remember the Libyans. There were no memos, no notes, nothing.'

'Of course. And that's only right. No paper trail to follow.'

'Yeah. No paper trail,' Joel Ingi snapped. 'But there's a f.u.c.king electronic trail. It's in that computer if someone can figure out how to hack their way into it.'

Mar stared at Joel Ingi in disbelief. 'You mean you didn't delete everything?'

'I thought I had,' he said miserably. 'I deleted all the incoming mails but not the outgoing ones. I just forgot,' he added bleakly.

'And if that gets into the wrong hands' Mar breathed 'it'll destroy the man, and he'll take everyone he can with him, if I know him right. AEgir, you, me. We're all expendable as far as he's concerned.'

'It's pa.s.sword protected,' Joel Ingi offered.

'Yeah. That's crackable for someone who knows what he's doing. But it's not easy, unless your pa.s.sword's ”pa.s.sword” or ”admin” or something obvious like your wife's name.'

'Oh . . .'

's.h.i.+t, you didn't?' Mar said, watching Joel Ingi's face fall.

The phone rang cheerfully and Svava Gunnarsdottir answered equally cheerfully.

'h.e.l.lo! Svava.'

'Good day,' a gruff man's voice offered. 'I'm looking for Haraldur Samuelsson. Do I have the right number?' he asked politely.

'Yes, you've come to the right place, but I'm afraid he's at work at the moment. Can I take a message or do you want to call his mobile?'

There was a pause.

'It's all right. I'll call back later. It's nothing urgent.'

'Can I tell him who called?' she asked and there was a second pause.

'Could you just tell him that Jon called and it's about his stay at the Harbourside Hotel recently? Thanks,' the voice said, and Svava found herself listening to a dialling tone as the call was terminated.

The sound of air bubbling through water confused her for a moment until Gunna remembered the new text message alert that Laufey had programmed into her phone.

Bingo, Eirikur's message read.

Full house? She thumbed back, walking through the angrily sleeting rain towards the car parked on the street outside the Harbourside Hotel.

Got one for you. Want the juicy details?

OK. Back at H-Gata in 10, she texted back, getting into the car and noticing with dismay the stack of printouts on the pa.s.senger seat that she still hadn't found time to read. She remembered with a stab of discomfort that Hrobjartur Bjarnthorsson's file was there and that as the name had cropped up linked to the hotel case, she should have read it by now.

She fished out her phone and scrolled down to reply to Eirikur's last message.

Make that 20, she thumbed in as a second reply and started the engine, switching on the heater to clear the windscreen and start warming her feet as she skimmed his file.

Hrobjartur Bjarnthorsson, born in Reykjavik in 1972, known as Baddo or Bigfoot, she read. Average height, weight and looks, no distinguis.h.i.+ng marks. She read through a list of misdemeanours from extracting money with menaces to a.s.sault, along with several stretches in prison that included fights with other prisoners and on one occasion an extension of his sentence for knocking a warder's front teeth out.

In 1996 he had been involved with a s.h.i.+pment of ecstasy that had been intercepted on the basis of information received, questioned and then released when there was insufficient evidence to link him to the goods. But some weeks later a man had been badly beaten and Gunna's heavy eyebrows knitted in a frown when she saw the name. According to the file, Baddo had been identified as the attacker, but with no firm evidence, no prosecution had resulted. A few months later, Baddo disappeared from Iceland and the file was empty until a request from police in Lithuania for information had been logged. Baddo, it seemed, had been involved in an operation that s.h.i.+pped cars stolen in Denmark and Sweden through the Baltic States to destinations in the Middle East.

As a footnote, someone had added that Hrobjartur Bjarnthorsson had attended the police college in 199394 and had graduated with good marks, but had never applied for a position with the force, presumably having decided that the other side of law and order was more his style. Gunna noticed that prior to 1994 the man had a clean sheet; she wondered what had sent him down that particular path.

There was just one recent photograph, supplied by police in Lithuania. Gunna found herself looking into the deep, truculent eyes of a man with a bull neck and heavy shoulders, who was clearly having his picture taken against his will. His head was pitched slightly forward, showing an expanse of wide forehead and close-cropped hair, black eyes looking up at her from under heavy brows.

Gunna wondered if the Lithuanian police had methods that were less proscriptive, as a charge was made to stick and Baddo spent eight years in prison before being released and immediately arrested as an undesirable alien and flown home.

'At taxpayer's expense and in club cla.s.s, I expect,' Gunna grumbled to herself guiltily, knowing that the turmoil at home over the last few days had sapped her energy and stopped her from reading the files when she should have.

'I'm really sorry, but I have to take this,' he apologized, s.n.a.t.c.hing up his phone and hurrying out into the street as he saw the number Hinrik used appear on the screen.

'Any progress?' Joel Ingi asked as soon as the door had shut behind him, leaving Mar bemused at the coffee-shop table behind his tall latte.

'Hey, Joel Ingi. How goes it? Not disturbing you, am I?'