Part 17 (1/2)

'No chance,' he smiled, counting white tablets into the palm of his hand and was.h.i.+ng them down with coffee. 'Cold out, is it?'

Helgi had bags under his normally cheerful eyes. He was the kind of man who enjoyed practically any kind of work that was varied and interesting, so it was a surprise to Gunna to see him grumpy and answering questions in monosyllables.

'Can you find out about that car, Helgi?'

'Car?'

'The one that burned out at Grandi yesterday.'

'Car? What does that have to do with the Gullfoss Hotel stuff, for crying out loud?'

Gunna's voice hardened. She had never had to pull rank on Helgi in the year they had worked together. 'Look, just do it, will you? It may have nothing to do with anything, but I want it eliminated. All right?'

Eirikur listened to the exchange in confusion, almost as if he had surprised his parents in the middle of an argument.

'And you, Eirikur, first of all, I want you to start with the credit card statements you got from Johannes Karlsson's son start looking up those places where his card was used on the day he died. They're all pricy establishments and hopefully they'll be able to remember something useful.'

Eirikur nodded. 'All right. I'll let you know what I find out,' he said and scuttled from the room without another word.

Helgi sighed. 'And you, chief?' he asked. There was a fatigue in his eyes that hadn't been there the day before.

'Me? I'm off to meet Magnus Sigmarsson's girlfriend to start with, and then probably his next-door neighbour again.'

'If you ask me, the key to all this is somewhere in these hotels,' Helgi said abruptly. 'I'd bet anything there are staff at these places who know just what's been going on. I'm not sure that this Sonja could have operated without someone on the inside to smooth the way for her.'

'More than likely, but none of them are saying a word,' Gunna agreed. 'Are you all right, Helgi?'

'Yeah. Just had a rough night, that's all. I'll see you when I've found out about this car.'

Gustav Freysteinn Boa.s.son was uneasy. There was something about the hard-faced man in the leather jacket that was both disturbing and intriguing, irresistible qualities that he knew he would later regret his interest in.

He turned the beermat over in his fingers, inspecting the hotel's logo on one side and the '250k' that the man had written on the reverse in neat letters, along with the seven digits of a mobile phone number. A quarter of a million kronur wasn't a lot of money, barely enough to cover the bills for a month in the tiny flat he occupied in the eaves of an old wooden house at the top of Reykjavik's Thingholt district. On the other hand, times weren't easy. The company that owned the hotel group had inst.i.tuted a pay freeze, supposedly across the board, but it was rumoured to apply only to junior staff, and 250,000 tax-free kronur would sit happily in the piggy bank for a rainy day.

Gussi wondered idly if it would be worth asking for more, maybe enough for a weekend in London and a little culture: the Tate, the Globe, Drury Lane. He sat back and smiled weakly at his daydreams while his thoughts drifted to poor Hekla. A striking and thoroughly talented girl, he remembered. He had to hand it to her, she had worked a scam that anyone could be proud of. Sadly it was a scheme that couldn't last in a small place like Reykjavik. In London or even in Copenhagen, she would probably have been able to get away with robbing wealthy elderly men indefinitely, so long as she didn't do it too often, and as long as her looks lasted. But Gussi reflected that Reykjavik was a terribly provincial city and eventually she would undoubtedly be caught out.

He stood up and looked out of the narrow window with its view over a slice of the winter city in its shades of dull grey. If he stood with his face close to the window and craned his neck, a partial view of the spire of Hallgrimskirkja could just about be seen. He weighed things up in his mind. It was years since he had last seen the girl, back when she was young and green, before she disappeared from the business. He wasn't even sure if she had recognized him in his cheap polyester company suit behind the check-in desk on the couple of occasions he had noticed her at the hotel. Probably not, he thought. He was greyer and not as trim as he'd once been, and his heavy horn-framed spectacles were as good a disguise as any.

It went against the grain to give the girl away to a hoodlum like the hard-faced man who called himself Jon. Jon, he thought, chuckling. The man was no thespian. Any name but the most commonplace one imaginable would have been more convincing. On the other hand, it wasn't as if he had any obligation to Hekla, apart from the fact that they shared a profession they'd both left, temporarily, he told himself, and the money would come in very useful if he could bargain the man into doubling his offer.

His mind still wasn't made up as he left the house huddled in a coat that had once been stylish. It was his day off. He'd meant to sleep late and give himself a few extra hours under the duvet before the switch from a few days of evening s.h.i.+fts to a week of nights. A coffee in town would settle his stomach, he felt, and he could think while he walked through the crisp frost that he hoped would wake him up properly.

AEgir Larusson was fuming. There was no mistaking it, and Joel Ingi could feel his heart pounding at the same time as he told himself not to be frightened of this ugly man with the bad hair and short legs.

'Explain, will you? How the f.u.c.k did this happen?'

'Well, it was back in 2009.'

'Before my time, you mean?'

'Exactly.'

'Before the minister's time?'

'Of course.'

'So n.o.body thought to mention this, considering I've been sitting here for two long and miserable years surrounded by f.u.c.k-witted daddy's boys in poncy suits?'

'Er . . .' Joel Ingi mumbled, remembering Mar's adage as AEgir's face went even redder. Don't be scared of AEgir too much as long as he's shouting. It's when he goes quiet you should start to worry.

'You mean to tell me that that inquisitive journalist I just laughed at and told to go and screw himself was right on the money after all?' AEgir roared.

Joel Ingi was thankful that the door was closed behind him for a change, although he was sure that every word could be heard in the corridor outside.

'Er, there may be some truth in what he said,' he mumbled. 'But there's nothing he can substantiate, I'm sure.'

'Something about a stolen laptop?' AEgir asked in a silky voice. Joel Ingi's blood ran cold suddenly and his fingers went numb.

'I . . . er, it was misplaced. I have someone working on locating it.'

'The police, or someone else?'

'Someone else. It's a private investigation.'

'Who?'

'I don't know,' Joel Ingi ventured. 'I don't know who he is and he doesn't know me or where I work.'

'Ah. That's the first sensible thing I've ever heard you say. Sometimes it's best not to know things. Such as I haven't the faintest idea that you lost a ministry laptop containing sensitive information that would crucify the government if it were to come out.'

'It's secure; pa.s.sword protected.'

'If it's so secure, how did this kind of c.r.a.p get out? And when I tell the minister it's only hearsay when I speak to him in half an hour, can I be sure it's only a foul rumour put about by the opposition to discredit the government?'

'Yes, I'm sure it could be that.'

'Well, I'm not,' AEgir said, his voice dropping so low that Joel Ingi strained to hear. 'To start with, the former minister, your old boss, is a young guy who needs a job and he expects to be in this politics business for a good few years yet. G.o.d knows, that brain-dead piece of garbage needs to stay in politics because he sure as h.e.l.l can't do anything else.'

AEgir's face cracked into a smile and Joel Ingi felt for a second that the man understood his predicament.

'But, that said, he's a cunning b.a.s.t.a.r.d who knows better than to s.h.i.+t in his own nest. You get my drift? Look, Joel Ingi, you're a smart guy. Did well enough at the bank before you were clever enough to get out while the going was good. The government needs young men with good legal minds like yours,' AEgir said and Joel Ingi's brief warm feeling began to evaporate. 'You're a civil servant and you people don't understand politics, do you? You just sit tight and wait for a new man in the job, don't you? Because that's the way the game is.'

Joel Ingi cleared his throat awkwardly, desperately wondering where this was leading.

'No, don't answer that, because I know you couldn't,' AEgir said without pausing. 'But what happens is this. If something goes wrong, what we do is blame someone else. First we blame the previous government, of course, for landing us in this mess. And if that doesn't work, we blame our officials,' he said, smiling, and slowly pointed a finger at the centre of Joel Ingi's fluttering chest.

'You've been to Ikea often enough, haven't you?' he asked, leaving Joel Ingi mystified.

'Yes, why?'

'You've seen the guy in the paper hat behind the food counter, haven't you?'