Helgi looked blank. “Double-loaded?”
“You’ve not heard of that? It’s an ordinary carpet knife, but they put two blades in it instead of one. It’s common enough in other countries, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it here.”
“Why do they do that?”
The doctor sighed, as if losing patience with a child who’s slow on the uptake. “It means there are two cuts side by side. It’s very difficult to stitch and it leaves a much nastier scar.” A thin smile crossed his face. “I don’t suppose you’ll have much of a problem finding him. His face is covered in tape sutures and there’s a cut along his jaw and cheek this long,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger to his face to indicate a four-inch gash.
“But I take it that as this guy wasn’t in quite such a bad way you got a name out of him?”
Jóel Ingi’s neck was stiff. He had been awake for hours, lying on the white sofa underneath an old duvet he had found in a cupboard in the spare room. He could have slept in the single bed in there, but he’d felt that sleeping on the sofa instead would help emphasize his disgruntlement at being excluded from sleeping with his wife under their twin crisp eiderdown duvets.
He lay wrapped in the scratchy old duvet, a relic of happy student days, and stared at the ceiling, wondering how long Agnes would sleep. Eventually he gave up and made for the shower, emerging twenty minutes later fresher and ready to try and repair the damage of the day before.
He gently pushed open the bedroom door and saw Agnes was still hunched in bed in a posture that indicated she had no intention of being disturbed. Jóel Ingi dressed in silence, taking one of the sober suits he kept for the office. He could tell that Agnes was awake: the timbre of her breathing told him she was waiting for him to leave the room before she made a move herself.
He took his time, knowing it would irritate her, before taking a seat at the breakfast bar and putting a spoonful of honey into a mug of weak tea. His head felt heavy, as if the air were crackling with an approaching storm, and he thought back to the previous day.
What if he had been wrong? What if that nosy woman had lied? Maybe she wasn’t being paid by Agnes to keep tabs on him? In that case, who had sent her? The horror of the idea flooded him and he found himself absently stirring his tea long after the honey had dissolved. He left his slices of toast, his appetite gone, reminding himself that the damned laptop still needed to be located before either his work or his marriage could be satisfactory again.
“Good morning.” Her formal greeting was a rebuke in itself.
“Agnes. About yesterday,” he began, and felt sick at his own words. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.”
She shrugged and he could see her porcelain features set in the same suppressed anger as yesterday.
“I’m going away,” she said, dicing an apple with a razor of a kitchen knife. “With Sunna and the children. Just so you know.”
“All right. When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Going for long? Alone?”
Jóel Ingi watched, fascinated by the deft movements of the knife as a banana and slices of pineapple got the same treatment as the apple, before she replied.
“I’m not sure. I need a little space.”
Jóel Ingi knew better than to argue and waited for the sudden screech of the blender to stop before saying anything more. He nodded as Agnes poured the thick pulp into a bowl and added a spoonful of yogurt, stirring slowly.
“Will you text me when you get there? How long will you be staying?”
Agnes shrugged. “A few days, maybe,” she said absently.
“Look, about yesterday …” Jóel Ingi said before Agnes cut him off.
“Shhhh. It’s not important.”
“Hólmgeir,” Gunna read off the report in front of her.
“Yeah?” The sharp-faced little man with greasy hair which fell into his eyes responded.
“You’re Hólmgeir Sigurjónsson and you have a record that stretches back to kindergarten as far as I can see. Your friend Ásmundur Ásuson’s dead and you’re going to tell me just what happened.”
Hólmgeir’s eyes shifted rapidly from side to side and he licked his dry lips. Gunna could sense the wheels turning in his mind as the man quickly considered how much he could get away with keeping back. He’d made no obvious reaction to the news of his friend’s death and he reminded Gunna of rat in a trap.
“Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? You turned up with Ási at casualty in a taxi. How did he get cut like that, and why didn’t he get to casualty earlier?”
“I don’t know what happened. He just appeared at home like that.”
“Where’s ‘at home’?”
“My place. Ási rents-” he stopped and corrected himself. “He rented a room from me.”
“So you don’t know what happened to him? You weren’t with him when this happened?” Gunna asked. “Because I’m damn sure you know just what went on.”
Hólmgeir licked his lips; even without the trembling of his fidgeting hands, his nerves were palpable. “I don’t know anything. Ási turned up with blood all down his leg and I tried to get him to go to hospital but he wouldn’t have it.”
“You could have called an ambulance, couldn’t you?”
“Well, yeah. There was that,” he admitted.
“So why didn’t you?”
“Ási wrapped it all up in a bandage and said he’d be all right. He had a spliff and went to sleep on the couch and I reckoned he knew what he was doing so I went out for a bit.”
“And?”
“And when I came back he wouldn’t wake up properly. He was spaced, woozy. So I got him in the car and took him to casualty.”
“Who slashed Ási’s leg, Hólmgeir? Who did he have a fight with?”
“I don’t know! I wasn’t there,” he said, his voice rising in pitch with anger and excitement. “Look, where’s my lawyer?”
Gunna sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “Why? You’re not under arrest, not yet, at any rate. Why do you reckon you might need a lawyer?”
“I don’t trust you bastards.”
Gunna opened her mouth to speak and stopped as Helgi quietly came in. Hólmgeir’s mouth shut like a door as Helgi leaned over Gunna’s shoulder and murmured in her ear.
Hólmgeir’s eyes swiveled from one to the other. His growing panic could not be mistaken and he struggled to hear the muttered conversation.
“Yeah. No problem,” Gunna said finally and Helgi straightened, picked up Hólmgeir’s file from the desk in front of her and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
“What’s he taken that for?”
“Just an administrative matter,” Gunna said. “Hólmgeir, are you sure there isn’t anything you want to tell me?” She asked, standing up and smiling in a way that she could see set his pulse pounding with nerves. “Don’t go away.”
She hurried across the lobby and reached the lift with only a second to spare.
“Hæ, Jóel Ingi,” Katrín giggled, breathing hard to catch her breath after her headlong run for the lift. She opened her thick coat and fanned herself. “Phew … not used to exercise, I’m afraid,” she said, slowly unwinding her scarf and smiling at him, a rosy glow in her plump cheeks.
“You’re very smart today,” she said, looking sideways at his suit while Jóel Ingi tried to stop himself looking down at her billowing chest, which seemed to be trying to escape from the low-slung blouse imprisoning it.
“Coming out for lunch with the rest of us today?” she asked. “Már was talking about a place by the harbor that does a lunchtime seafood buffet.”
Jóel Ingi scowled and quickly adjusted his features into the best smile he could manage. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I have a few meetings this morning and I might have to miss lunch if they overrun.”
Katrín sighed. “I do like a man who’s dedicated to his work,” she said. “But not too dedicated. Bye!” She grinned, stepping out of the lift as the door hissed open on the third floor and leaving him alone in the steel box, wishing that he could stay there for the rest of the day.