Hekla got up from the stool she’d been sitting on while brooding and banged on Sif’s door.
“Are you awake?” she called and was rewarded with noise that wasn’t quite human speech but indicated that the room was occupied.
The door opened and Sif appeared wrapped in a dressing gown and with her long brown hair in disarray over her face. She shambled to the bathroom and Hekla heard the lock snap to. She carefully pushed open the door of Sif’s room and peered into the gloom inside. The curtains were drawn tight and had probably been that way since they’d moved in a year ago. Hekla wrinkled her nose at the musty smell and clicked on the light. The bed was strewn with books and papers, and she could see where Sif had lain in bed surrounded by the collection. On the desk the light on a large flatscreen monitor gleamed, while two laptops were also open on the desk on either side of it.
A flush sounded and a tap could be heard running. Hekla switched off the light and retreated, noticing as she did so the vaguely familiar laptop bag open on the floor behind the door. She closed the door and went back to the kitchen.
“Y’all right?” Sif yawned, her hair not brushed, but gathered untidily behind her head. Her eyes were red behind her round glasses and she yawned again, wider this time, revealing multicolored braces on her teeth.
“Fine, thanks. Sleep well?” Hekla asked, trying not to sound sarcastic and remembering what it was like to be a teenager. “Can you sort your washing out, please? The machine’s finished and I need to do a wash myself.”
Sif rustled through a cupboard and came up with a jar. She carefully spread butter on a slice of bread, followed by jam from the jar, and folded the bread into a makeshift sandwich.
“Yeah,” she said, through a mouthful of bread and jam. “I’ll get dressed first.”
“Make it quick, would you?”
Sif shambled back to her room and Hekla wondered how someone with such outstanding grades at college could be so disorganized. She sighed to herself and hauled the pile of damp clothes from the washing machine before reloading it. She pointedly left the basket of damp clothes where Sif would have to step over it, certain that it would still be in the same place by evening, but hoping to be proved wrong.
It was half an hour before Sif emerged from her room again, dressed in the baggy clothes she preferred, but with her hair still awry. As if performing a vital service to mankind she loaded her damp clothes piece by piece into the dryer.
“Sif,” Hekla called as the dryer started to hum.
“Yeah?”
“Do you have that laptop I was given before Christmas? The one that was in your dad’s workshop?”
“Er, yeah. Why?”
“I’d like it back.”
“But you don’t use it.”
“I know, but I’d still like it back.”
“Why?”
Hekla fought to control her temper and smothered the urge to snap back. “Because it was given to me and I might need it. Is it in your room?”
“Yeah. It’s a piece of crap anyway. Really old and slow.”
“You managed to start it up?” Hekla asked in surprise. “I tried and it was locked. I was going to get the password for it.”
Sif looked at her suspiciously. “Where did you get it from, then?”
“Someone I used to work with. Why?”
Sif laughed. “Unless it was a guy called Jóel Ingi Bragason who gave it to you, then that’s a stolen computer,” she announced, turning to disappear back into her room.
“So how did you get into it?” Hekla asked.
Sif turned back. “Easy. I cracked the password.”
“Okay, fine. Well, I want it back now, thanks.”
“You’re not using it and I don’t know where I put it.”
“It’s on your desk. And the case is on the floor.”
“The case, yeah. But the laptop’s at Hilmar’s house. It’s been there for weeks.”
Hekla called on new reserves of patience. “But it’s in there on your desk.”
“That’s an old one that belongs to college. What’s the problem? It’s not as if you were using it,” Sif retorted. “Or even if you had a password for it.”
Baddó parked the Hyundai out of sight behind a van that had been on blocks for long enough to let a summer’s worth of grime accumulate on it while snow surrounded it in shallow drifts. He preferred to deal with people in comfortable blocks of flats, not in these old houses with cubbyhole apartments and creaky doors that could take a man by surprise.
He switched on his phone and keyed in a number, leaning against the abandoned van, eyes on the house as he listened to the ringing tone.
“Baddó,” Hinrik wheezed, and he could hear the click of his lighter. “Got something for me?”
“Could be,” he said. Hinrik was no early bird and he hadn’t expected him to be awake. “Let’s say we need to do a little negotiation.”
“How come? Negotiate over what? I gave you a job and a good rate. Either you’ve come up with the goods or you haven’t.”
Baddó walked quickly toward the house, looking it over as he spoke. “I had a rough time last night. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“What the fuck? Are you playing games, or what?”
Baddó nodded to himself. Thirty-six hours with practically no sleep meant that he was wide awake on energy alone, but he knew that at some point exhaustion would set in, and quickly. He eased open the back door of the old house and stepped inside, letting the hood of the parka drop back.
“Where the hell are you, Baddó?” Hinrik demanded. “And why are you talking in that stupid voice?”
“Never you mind. It’s not as if I’m fit to be seen at the moment.”
“What’s this crap you’re talking?”
Baddó heard Hinrik yawn as he spoke and stood still, listening to the creak of old floorboards above his head. He smiled as much as the numbness down one side of his face would allow. He put a cautious foot on the bottom step of the narrow stairs and gingerly made his way up, keeping close to the wall to avoid making the steps creak as loudly as the floorboards above his head.
“All right, you mad bastard. What’s this negotiation bullshit you’re talking about?”
Another step, around the corner and the door to Hinrik’s flat was in sight. “Somebody tried to tell me to keep my nose clean last night, and I don’t take kindly to a lesson in manners from deadbeats like those two fuckwits.”
“I’m telling you, man. I don’t now what you’re talking about. I want you to do the job I gave you.”
Baddó heard shuffling feet. Standing at Hinrik’s door, he peered through the single remaining frosted glass panel next to a broken one that had been badly repaired with tape and cardboard.
“I’m not happy, Hinrik,” he growled, his jaw aching now that the painkillers were starting to wear off.
“What the fuck happened to you, man?” Hinrik asked and Baddó could hear him yawn just as he could see an indistinct figure shuffle across the hallway and disappear into another room. Hinrik’s breathing suddenly magnified in his ear, together with the sound of running water. Baddó pushed though the cardboard taped over the broken window pane, thankful that he wasn’t going to have to kick the door down, and eased a hand through it to unclick the catch. He padded down the hall, his phone now in his pocket, and turned to stand behind Hinrik as he urinated carelessly in fits and starts in the flat’s tiny toilet.
“You still there, Baddó?” he heard Hinrik say into the phone jammed under his chin.
“Right here,” Baddó snarled, placing a foot in the small of Hinrik’s back and pushing, sending him staggering forward, the yellow stream spattering his feet as he fell and one hand desperately reaching out to stop his face hitting the cistern, while his phone fell with a clatter and a splash into the toilet bowl.
“What …?” He roared. “Get off me, you mad bastard!”
“I’m mad, right enough,” Baddó hissed, one hand in Hinrik’s lank hair and the other wrenching his arm up high behind his back. “Who were those two dipshits who tried to turn me over last night?”