The two lifeguards stood inside the glass door and watched as Jóel Ingi got into his car and sped faster than was wise through the slush out of the car park toward the main road, his tires kicking up a spray of grit and water as it passed. The last they saw of him was an upraised finger with a furious face behind it as he passed, and a battered Renault that bumped along in its wake and followed at a discreet distance.
Baddó’s phone buzzed as he walked past Ellingsen’s darkened windows. He looked at the screen and saw only “private number calling.” Hoping that Sonja had decided to call after all, he replied.
“Hello?”
“Hello, whose phone is this?” a woman’s voice asked. It was a strong voice, not deep, but a voice with a mind of its own, Baddó decided.
“This is Jón,” Baddó said. “Is that Sonja?” he asked and immediately kicked himself for asking so quickly. There was a long silence and he wondered if she was still on the line.
“Could be. Why?”
“It’s just that I’m looking for some information and I think you might be able to help me,” Baddó said. “I could put a little business your way,” he added with a cheerful chuckle just as two fire engines with howling sirens passed him on their way-surprisingly promptly, he noted-to the blazing car. He hoped they wouldn’t put it out too fast, although he was sure that any fingerprints would have been scorched off by now.
“What sort of business?”
“Let’s say I think you could operate more effectively as part of a team.”
“What sort of team do you have in mind?”
“So you’re not retired, then?” Baddó asked.
“Let’s say I’m not tiring myself out.”
“Well, if you’re interested, there are opportunities for both of us.” There was another long silence and Baddó again wondered if she was still on the line. “Hæ. Still there?”
“Yeah. Let me think it over.”
“Up to you. No pressure,” Baddó said. “Can you give me your number? I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk more.”
“No. I don’t think so,” the voice said decisively. “Leave it with me. I’ll think things through and get back to you,” she said and Baddó found himself looking at a lost connection.
Gunna bounced her phone in her hand and wondered to whom she had been speaking. Jón was presumably not the man’s real name any more than hers was Sonja. She was relieved that she had called herself; Eiríkur or Helgi would never have been able to carry off that kind of pretense.
She dialed quickly and there was an instant response from the police communications center.
“Hæ, is that Siggi? It’s Gunnhildur here.”
“Hang on, I’ll just get him.”
She pondered whether or not to call “Jón” back. He seemed keen and interested to meet Sonja, as indeed was Gunna, but she wondered how to go about setting up a meeting without being identified as a police officer.
“Gunna, sweetheart, how have you been?” A robust voice boomed in her ear.
“Not so bad. Listen, did you have something going out lights and bells just now? About three minutes ago?”
“Yeah. Two appliances went out in response to a fire down at Grandi. Sounds like some kids set fire to an abandoned car.”
“At Grandi, you said?”
“That’s it, the wasteground at the back of the harbor. It was too close to the oil tanks down there for comfort, so we got the engines down there quick.”
“All right. All out now, is it?”
“Should be.”
“Fair enough. Can you put a trace on a phone for me?”
“I’ll do what I can. Give me the number will you? I’ll get on to the phone company.”
“Thanks. It’s almost certainly an unregistered mobile,” Gunna said, reading out the number of Baddó’s phone. “It would be handy to know where this guy is, if you could do that.”
She leaned forward and switched on the engine, yawning as she did so.
“Been a long day, has it?” Siggi asked, hearing the yawn.
“It has, I’m afraid, and I’ve had enough for today. I’ll check in with you tomorrow about that number.”
The front of the house was dark and Gunna’s heart sank. Increasingly, these days she came home to an empty house, and although she would have welcomed the idea a few years ago when both Gísli and Laufey were still under her feet, now that there was a level of peace and quiet, she wasn’t comfortable with it.
Once inside, a sliver of light and the muttering of a television coming from under Laufey’s bedroom door told her that she wasn’t alone after all. Gunna filled and switched on the coffee machine, started up the laptop Gísli had left behind when he bought himself a new one and wondered whether or not to knock on Laufey’s door.
She decided against it, went to the bathroom to turn on the shower and was soon letting the scalding water untangle some of her knotted muscles as it pummeled her shoulders. When she emerged wrapped in a towel, the coffee maker had filled the kitchen with an aroma that made the place seem like home again, and the mutter from Laufey’s room had become an insistent beat. Dried and dressed in the baggy, comfortable clothes she felt at home in, she poured herself a mug of coffee and sat in front of the laptop, feeling her stomach make its first complaints and wondering if she should suggest a takeaway to Laufey.
Gunna tapped at the laptop and watched as personal.is loaded, a nondescript website she had heard of but never looked at. Jokes about the desperate people looking there and on other similar sites for companionship, or something more basic, had been enough to extinguish any curiosity.
She browsed curiously through the registry of users, startled to see that the site had several thousand with a sidebar listing those online and ready to interact. Blue for men, she guessed, pink for women. She wondered what the purple indicators meant, until she explored a few of their profiles and realized they were couples, mostly looking for adventurous young singles or like-minded couples.
Gunna shook her head in disbelief at the idea that all these people were online on a weekday at dinner time. The registry revealed several Sonjas, and she wondered if TinySonja or Sonja2 were who she was looking for. Frustrated at being told that a direct message could not be sent to either of them unless she set up a profile of her own, Gunna baulked at the idea. She read through both profiles a second time and saw that they had a coded email address within the details; she wrote a short message to each, asking for them to get in touch and including her mobile number.
The sheer variety of requirements and requests on the personal.is pages was bewildering as Gunna read through the profiles and requests for men looking for women and vice versa, men looking for men, women seeking women and couples looking for discreet adventures. She had to resort to a search engine to decode some of the English language terms and unfamiliar acronyms, and in some cases she was still unsure of what they actually meant, although she looked approvingly at some of the tools available and decided that a fully adjustable spreader bar in black lacquered steel might make a useful addition to the police’s armoury for dealing with difficult drunks.
The key clicked in the lock and there was a blast of cold air as the front door opened and quickly shut again. Gunna thankfully closed personal.is and opened her email page instead as the double thump of Steini’s boots landing on the floor in the hall preceded him.
“Hæ,” he said. “Home alone?”
“Don’t think so. There’s a light in Laufey’s room but I don’t know if she’s in.”
“And Drífa?”
“No idea. Her car’s there so she may be in Gísli’s room, or she might be watching the TV with Laufey, or they might have both walked down to Sigrún’s place. I’ve not been home long and I haven’t seen either of them.”