“Thank you, Lína. My colleague who should be bringing us a cup of coffee told me you saw an incident last night. Could you tell me what happened?”
“Well. I came in and there were some men fighting in the entrance. Three of them. Two of them were hurt, I think.”
“And when was this?”
“It was just before seven yesterday evening. I’d been shopping and took a taxi home as it’s too far too walk in this weather.”
“And what happened?” Gunna coaxed.
“I opened the door to go in the entrance, as usual, and I was surprised that it wasn’t locked. But as soon as I opened the inside door I could see what was happening. There was one man on the floor and two others trying to beat him up. He had a cut on his face and there was blood.”
“Did you recognize these men?” Gunna asked, opening a folder and putting a picture of a rather fresher-faced Ásmundur Ásuson in front of her. She stared at it.
“He looks like the young man who ran away,” she said slowly.
“And this one?”
A fatter Hólmgeir Sigurjónsson than the one waiting in a cell glared out of his mugshot.
Lína nodded. “Yes, I saw that man as well. Those are the two who ran out of the door past me.”
The door opened and the uniformed officer appeared with two mugs of coffee and a small carton of milk.
“Thanks,” Gunna said, giving him an approving smile as he sidled out. “Now, Lína. These two, they were attacking a third man?”
“I think so but I’m not really sure,” the old lady said, and Gunna could see her marshalling her thoughts. “The man who was on the floor, the one who’s face had been hurt, was María’s brother. But this young man was injured as well,” she said, pointing at Ásmundur’s deadpan portrait. “There was a puddle of blood all along the floor. I could see him bleeding as they ran past me. He was limping and making a lot of noise.”
“Who is María?”
“She’s the girl on the top floor. When I say girl, she must be your age, but she looks young to me. She said her brother had been overseas for a long time and had come back to Iceland after many years; he’s staying with her while he looks for work.”
“Top floor on the right? Do you know the brother’s name?”
The old lady shook her head. “No. He did tell me, but I’ve forgotten. He was hurt, too. He had his hand over his face. He said he was all right, but I could see it was bleeding.”
The door creaked open again and Gunna looked around to see Eiríkur’s face peering around.
“Chief. Can I have a word?”
“Excuse me a moment.” Gunna pushed her chair back and went outside. “What is it?”
“The number you wanted tracked,” Eiríkur said quietly. “Siggi said it popped up ten minutes ago, made one call that wasn’t answered and another that was, then switched off.”
“To unregistered numbers, I expect?”
“Got it in one.”
“Any location? Háaleitisbraut, maybe?”
Eiríkur looked at Gunna with a new admiration. “How did you know?”
“Looked in my crystal ball before I came to work this morning. I want you to get in a squad car and take three beefy uniformed people with you. Háaleitisbraut Eighty, top floor on the right. But first find out who lives there. It should be a lady called María, but we’re after whoever’s there with her,” Gunna rattled off.
“Okay, chief,” Eiríkur said, keen to get out of the building.
“Eiríkur.”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. By rights we should get the special unit out for this, but I want it done quietly and without any more fuss than is necessary. Don’t go being a hero. This guy might be nasty. Understood?”
“Gotcha.”
“Good. Let me know.”
Back in the interview room Lína sipped her coffee. She looked at the picture on the desk and then at Gunna. “Have you found him?”
“Who?”
“The young man,” she said, pointing to Ásmundur Ásuson gazing blankly from the ten-year-old police mugshot. “And is he all right?”
“We’ll find him and I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Gunna assured her, not wanting to tell Lína that Ásmundur Ásuson’s remains were cooling in the National Hospital’s mortuary.
She sucked the loose tooth and gingerly placed a finger against it. It shifted slightly under pressure. Although it felt awkward, like a foreign body, the tooth felt firmer than when the dentist had pushed it back into position, tutting his disapproval.
The van was cold and there was something living in the back amongst all the boxes of junk with a familiar smell that she had no intention of looking into, but it seemed a better place to sit than in the Renault. She had cleared a tiny patch of snow from the windscreen to get a better view of the house, an old red one clad with sheets of steel that had faded from a cheerful blue to match the color of the winter sky that was starting to appear.
Opening the passenger window, she listened for noise and watched for movement. She pulled off her woollen ski hat and ran fingers through her thick fair hair, stopping gingerly to finger the bruise on the side of her head. The black eye hadn’t turned out to be as bad as she’d expected, just a shadow under one eye instead of the discolored patch she had expected to see and which would have taken weeks to fade.
She admitted to herself that yesterday had been a mistake. Following Jóel Ingi into that bar had been the right thing to do, but asking after him had been a wrong move. As for asking for the toilet and using that as a pretext to scout around the Emperor’s dark inner recesses, well, that had been a real lapse of judgement.
A smile appeared on her face as she watched a light click on in one window of the flat where she knew Hinrik lived. Maybe it hadn’t been a mistake after all? It had been a painful and unpleasant experience, but at least it had prompted the man into making a mistake. It had showed her without a doubt that Hinrik Sørensen and Jóel Ingi Bragason had something in common, and she wondered which of them owed a debt to the other.
It was a while before Jóel Ingi left the apartment, pacing across the car park to the smart Audi that stood out like a sore thumb amongst all the parked wrecks. She shrank back in the van’s passenger seat, hoping he wouldn’t see into the shadows beyond the windscreen’s coat of grime and snow. As he walked along the side of the van and hammered at it with one fist, setting off a dull echo inside, she managed to get a clear look at him in the van’s wing mirror, which had been angled carefully for just that reason. She wasn’t surprised to see a look of furious tension across his otherwise handsome face.
She had no choice but to stay in the van until the Audi had gone. She had parked her own car out of sight and couldn’t risk letting Jóel Ingi see her, even fleetingly in the mirror. She stayed still in the van, the door cracked open to let in some air and dispel the thick smell inside. Ready to step out, she quickly pulled the door closed again as a mud-colored car rattled to a halt, watching the driver get out with a mobile phone to his ear and talk as he walked slowly toward Hinrik’s door. She wondered what had happened to the man’s face to require all those stitches.
Breakfast was over, the twins had been deposited at playgroup and Hekla felt that at last she could relax for a few minutes. She listened to the washing machine whirr and mutter as it finished its cycle and wondered whether or not to open it straight away. The sound of Pétur’s lathe could be heard faintly through the wall.
She thought back to the fat man with the mournful eyes in the swimming pool, the one she was sure she had shaken off before he could follow her. The nagging feeling returned to her that this was something to do with the angry old man at Hotel Gullfoss, the one whose obituary she’d been startled to see in the paper, or maybe one of the others?