“You’ve been to Ikea often enough, haven’t you?” he asked, leaving Jóel Ingi mystified.
“Yes, why?”
“You’ve seen the guy in the paper hat behind the food counter, haven’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
Ægir smiled his smooth smile again, transforming his ugly face into a visage of sincerity that any man would trust. “Because if you don’t get this fixed quickly and quietly, before I get any more questions from nosy bastard journalists, then that’s the only job that you’ll be able to apply for once you’ve been made redundant. If your personal fuck-up brings down the government and the minister, and results in an international outcry, then I’ll personally make sure that your future lies nowhere more glamorous than deep-frying fucking Swedish meatballs in the Ikea canteen. Clear?” he snarled, his voice rising once again to a menacing growl. He sat back and Jóel Ingi could see Ægir’s thin lips were white, pressed together in fury as a single blow from one clenched fist landed like a hammer on the desk in front of him, sending a picture in an ornate frame flying so that it landed on its back. The pretty, dark-haired woman in the photograph smiled at the ceiling.
“Now get the fuck out, and I don’t expect to see your stupid, smug face anywhere near me again until you come and tell me that information is safe.”
Sara’s mother sat tight-lipped, perched on a corner of the sofa while her daughter sobbed in an armchair, her face bloated. Her father stood behind her with his arms folded and a dour look on his face, as if he blamed Magnús for being stupid enough to get himself murdered.
“I have to say I didn’t think much of the lad,” he said, prompting a further outburst of sobbing from his daughter.
“Sara, I really need you to think back and tell me everything you can,” Gunna said, certain that there was little the distraught girl would be able to say with her parents in the room.
“Not that I’d have wished anything like this on him,” Sara’s father continued. “A pleasant enough lad, but no energy, I thought.”
“When did you last see Magnús Sigmarsson, Óskar?” Gunna asked. “You clearly didn’t have much time for the man, did you? What were your movements the night before last? Were you here?”
“No. I, er … I went out for a couple of hours. I had a class,” he floundered.
“And someone will confirm that, I hope?”
“Well, of course.”
“In that case, I’d appreciate it if you two would leave me and Sara to talk in private.”
Sara’s mother stood up stiffly to leave the room and her father grudgingly followed. Gunna could hear them go into the kitchen and stood up herself to shut the door firmly behind them. Sara sobbed and immediately collected herself.
“I’m sorry. Really sorry. It’s been such a shock,” she gulped.
“I get the impression your parents didn’t approve of Magnús?”
“They thought he wasn’t good enough.”
“So what was the state of your relationship?”
Sara dabbed her eyes and Gunna could hear a silence from the next room that told her the girl’s parents probably had their ears to the door.
“We had finished,” Sara said. “We had a flat in Grafarvogur, but then I lost my job a few months ago and we couldn’t really afford it any more.”
“So you moved back here? And Magnús?”
“Well. We were going to get a cheaper apartment.”
“The place that Magnús was living in, I suppose. Why didn’t you move in there with him?”
Sara twisted her fingers and looked down at them. “I was going to,” she said in a small voice, “but my parents were really against it, and I didn’t have any money, and they talked me into moving back home. So I did.”
“So you split up with Magnús and moved in with Mum and Dad? How did Magnús take it? Did you continue a relationship with him, or did you break it off?”
“Well, we stayed together, sort of …” Sara said and her words tailed off as she looked at the closed kitchen door. “I’d go and stay with him a couple of nights sometimes, but it’s a shitty place in a block full of immigrants, so I didn’t really want to go over there too often. People stare at you.”
“So Magnús came here?”
“Sometimes. My room’s downstairs in the basement and it’s self-contained. So sometimes I used to let him in through the back window and he’d stay until the olds had gone to work. But my parents really didn’t like him. Dad thought he was an idiot with no future.”
Gunna made notes; she was starting to wonder if Magnús Sigmarsson’s death could be related to events at his workplace, or if Sara’s father could be responsible. It was easy enough to pick up on the man’s clearly intense dislike for his daughter’s boyfriend, and she wondered if that dislike could have been enough to result in violence. Instinct whispered to her that Óskar was a normal enough citizen, but common sense also told her that there was an aspect of the case that needed to be checked.
“Sara, when was the last time you saw Magnús?”
“A couple of days ago. He came here in the evening while the old folks were out and we were watching TV when they came in. Dad went nuts and was about to throw him out, but Magnús left right away and we talked on the steps outside.”
“What did you talk about?”
Sara sniffed and a new set of tears rolled down her plump red cheeks. “He wanted me to move in with him again. Or at least come and stay more often.”
“And what was your answer?”
“I told him I’d come and stay if he cleared his flat up and unpacked all the boxes in the hall. He’d been there more than a month and still hadn’t got around to unpacking.”
“How was he? Was he worried about anything? Nervous?”
Sara shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. He was upset because I didn’t move in with him after we left the old flat.”
“But not so angry that he didn’t come around and sneak in the window sometimes?”
“Well, yeah.”
“He didn’t talk to you about his work, did he? Nothing he was concerned about there?”
“No, I don’t think so. He was worried about money because he couldn’t afford the flat on his own and his friend Kolbeinn was thinking of moving in with him.”
“Kolbeinn? Who works at the Gullfoss Hotel?”
“Yeah. That’s him.”
“They worked together?”
“I guess so. That company moves people around all the time.”
“And have you worked there as well?”
Sara nodded, still looking down at her fingers, which were twisted together in her lap. “That’s where we met. I was in the kitchen at the Harbourside for a few months right after it opened.”
“But you didn’t stay long?”
“No, I didn’t like it there.”
“And are you working now?”
“I’m a rep at AquaIce.”
“Which does what?”
“We supply water-cooler refills to offices, mostly. But it’s pretty quiet at the moment, so I’m only working four days a week.”
Gunna scanned her notes and listened to the silence from the kitchen, wondering if Sara realized that their conversation was probably being listened to.
“The last time you saw Magnús, what happened exactly?”
Sara took a deep breath and Gunna could see her collecting her thoughts. “Well,” she began, “he called me and asked if he could come around and I said yes, because Mum and Dad were out. We were in here when they came home and Dad hit the roof, said he didn’t want to see Magnús here again, and then Dad went out.”
“And how long did Magnús stay?”
“Not long. We talked on the steps outside for a while and I said I’d go and stay with him over the weekend. Then he got in his car and drove away.”
“You saw him drive away, did you? Which direction did he go in?”
Sara hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think I saw him get in the car.”
“You didn’t look out of the window?”
“The last thing I said to him was that he ought to leave before Dad came back,” she said, dropping her head and howling.