Part 10 (2/2)

'It's not exactly convenient, so I'll have to be quick. Any news?'

'Progress, but not enough to tell you much. My guy is definitely getting there, though.'

'And?'

'That's the good news. He's on the trail.'

'And there's some bad news?'

Hinrik chuckled. 'Funds. My guy needs another payment to continue his work.'

'So soon? But you've already had . . .'

'I told you at the start this wouldn't be cheap,' Hinrik told him abruptly. 'You want quality, you have to pay for it. Try someone else if you like, but they'll have the same costs as we do.'

'OK, all right. How much?'

'One will do.'

'One hundred thousand?'

'Don't play games. One million.'

Joel Ingi stifled a groan.

'Still there, are you?' Hinrik asked.

'Yeah. Give me your account details and I'll transfer it across.'

'Come on. You think I pay tax? We deal in cash. Kronur, euros, or dollars. Let me know when it's ready and I'll tell my guy he can keep up the good work.'

'What do we have, young man?' Gunna asked, knowing that Eirikur intensely disliked being addressed as 'young man'.

'Arctic Hotel, and about three weeks ago. The manager didn't like it one bit, but I said the alternative was that there would be a heavy investigation that would mean lots of guests and staff being interviewed, so he caved in and found some scared receptionist who had gone up to a room and untied a fat guy who'd been trussed up like a chicken and blindfolded.'

'Excellent, Eirikur. Good stuff. It's a step up from teenagers stealing mobile phones, isn't it? What's the guy's name?'

'Hermann Finnsson. He lives in Mosfellsbaer and his phone number's here,' he said, pointing as Gunna copied the details. 'Oh, by the way, the transactions on Johannes Karlsson's debit card are here.'

He pa.s.sed Gunna a printout of an online bank statement.

'You got this from his son, right?'

'Yup. Seems he had access to one of his dad's accounts and this one has a transaction on it right around the time the old fellow was found. The son's pretty upset from what I can gather and is trying to s.h.i.+eld his mother from the truth.'

'What? That his dad paid a hooker to tie him up?'

'Exactly. He's trying to get access to the rest of his father's accounts and he said he'd pa.s.s the details on as soon as he has them.'

'Odd shopping habits for a s.h.i.+powner in his sixties, wouldn't you say?' Gunna asked, her finger running down the list of transactions. 'Plenty of cash withdrawn as well, I see. Looks like there's more to this than meets the eye.'

'That's a jeweller,' Eirikur said, looking over her shoulder. 'And that's a clothes shop.'

'Something for you to investigate, Eirikur, first thing tomorrow before they get busy. Now, where's Helgi? Leave Hermann Finnsson to me and you get yourself off home.'

Hekla paused at the end of the pool and rested. Thirty lengths was respectable, she decided and hauled herself out onto the edge, not bothering to swim the few metres to the steps. It was cold and she instantly s.h.i.+vered, drops of cold rain that wanted to be snow landing on her back as she made for the hot tub at a brisk pace.

There was s.p.a.ce alongside two chatting women and a man who appeared to be asleep in the scalding water as Hekla lowered herself gingerly into the tub, gasping at the sheer intensity of the heat after the chill air.

'Young Tommi's being confirmed this year, you know. I don't know where the time's gone,' the larger of the two women said. 'It seems like it was only yesterday he was being christened.'

'You'll be a great-grandmother before you know it, if he takes after his father,' the smaller one laughed.

Hekla relaxed and stretched her neck back to ease the stiffness that had acc.u.mulated across her shoulders over the last few days. It felt odd being in this pool. Normally she would have gone for a swim at the pool nearer home, but that only opened in the afternoons, which meant that she would have had to take at least one of the children with her. She reflected that there was no way she could take one twin and not the other, and with both in tow, there would be no thirty lengths for her. So a visit to the Grafarvogur pool it had to be, combining it with a couple of other errands in town while the children were at a neighbour's house for a few hours.

'We had wondered about the catering. My Muggi wants to use the masonic hall, of course, but I'm wondering about which caterer to use.'

Hekla closed her eyes and let the sound of the two twittering women wash over her as she let the tension seep out of her legs and into the hot, sulphurous water.

'Did he really?' The smaller woman asked mischievously. 'He never told me about that, the little devil.'

'He did, my Muggi said he saw him at it.'

Hekla came to with a sudden jerk, conscious that she had almost been asleep, and looked up to see the pale-blue eyes of the corpulent man with elegant grey hair she had hardly noticed looking into hers with a disturbing intensity. Fl.u.s.tered, she looked away and ran a hand through the short hair above her ears, ma.s.saging her scalp with her fingers while the man looked at her with a mixture of confusion and surprise. He opened his mouth to speak, and quickly shut it again, as if he'd thought better of it.

'What those boys don't get up to. But it's so much better for them than being cooped up inside in front of the television all day, don't you think. Are you going to Florida again this year?' The larger one asked, the pair unconscious of the tension brewing next to them.

'Oh, next month, I think. February's such a miserable time, isn't it?'

Hekla risked a glance back at the man and saw that without the two women chatting next to them, he would have said something to her. She forced a brief smile at him and stood up, hot water cascading from her arms as the chill air bit again, just as the man opened his mouth to speak. Before he could say anything, she had waded past him and was up the steps and trotting to the changing room.

He stared at faces in the street, hoping that eventually he would see the features of that blasted woman who had caused him so much grief. Joel Ingi was furious, mostly with the woman he knew only as Sonja and who was still there on personal.is, where he had stumbled across her and so much else. He wondered what Hinrik had done and why he needed more money so soon. The man had promised results and so far he had the feeling that his cash had been wasted; nevertheless, he'd been left with no option but to dig into his savings.

Angry, he walked faster, as if the expended energy would make him feel better. He knew that he should have gone to the gym to work off a little of the aggression he could feel building up in his biceps. The urge to vent some of the pressure grew inside him and, without realizing it, he found that he was almost running along the street, with pa.s.sers-by giving him quizzical looks.

He fought to control his breathing, which came in gasps, and to calm down he told himself over and over again that there was nothing he could do. He would have to wait. He conjured up a warm, soothing voice in his mind, which he tried to imagine guiding him when he felt this way, the dark brown, earthy female voice that normally rea.s.sured him. He slowed his pace and his heart gradually stopped pounding. The sensation of overwhelming pressure in the centre of his chest began to fade and he took deep breaths, great gulps of clean air, which he released as slowly as he could. Suddenly he felt exhausted; it was time to rest.

Hekla looked over her shoulder as she hurried from the changing room, through the turnstile and into the car park. Behind her a pall of steam continued to rise from the open-air pool; she hoped the man was still in the hot tub where she had left him. She had changed at a speed the bulky man could hardly hope to match, she thought, throwing her towel onto the back seat as she sat behind the Toyota's wheel and groaned as it whined and declined to start.

'No. Not now, you b.i.t.c.h,' she whispered to the car, leaning forward and resting her forehead on the steering wheel while forcing herself to rest the starter for a few seconds. 'Go on. Do it. Do it for me. Start,' she muttered, gasping a sigh of relief as the engine coughed into unwilling life, leaving a cloud of black smoke behind it.

With a glance over her shoulder, she gunned the Toyota's complaining engine and the car slipped sideways as the wheels failed to grip on the frozen ground, finally finding a purchase as she eased the accelerator and the wheels stopped spinning. The car bounced across the car park just as a heavily built man jogged from the pool door, catching a glimpse of Hekla's cropped head behind the wheel of the battered red Toyota as his own four-wheel-drive car started first time.

He sped onto the main road, narrowly avoiding a collision and waving his apologies to the driver of the bus that had managed to stop just in time. Not knowing which way the red car had gone, he hoped it had gone right and sped faster than was wise though the slush. He took the first roundabout at a dangerous pace and prayed that the police weren't out, putting his foot down along the road past Korpulfsstadir and the course where he occasional played a few holes. He ignored the speed b.u.mps and was finally rewarded with the sight of a down-at-heel red car in the distance. Resisting the temptation to put his foot down and close the distance, he kept it carefully in sight, and was able to see well in advance which way it went at the next roundabout.

The red car was making its way along Vesturlandsvegur, the main road that pa.s.sed through the last suburbs of the city outskirts before the stretch to the Hvalfjordur tunnel and the countryside beyond.

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