Gunna had flatly refused to move house from Hvalvík, and the forty-minute drive was proving a challenge in the mornings, but the journey home had become an oasis of valuable thinking time.
“Gunna?” Helgi asked again.
“Æi, sorry. Thinking hard for a moment. If you try and figure out what the lady’s movements were over the last couple of days, I’ll tackle the next of kin.”
“Fine by me. I’m still looking for Long Ommi as a priority as well, you know?”
“Fair enough. Eiríkur should be here in half an hour and you’d better fill him in on all this so he can collect everything that comes in from the knocking on doors. I’m sure the lad will have some kind of theory he read in a book that’ll boil down to ordinary common sense. Pathology will tell us what they can, but I reckon we’ve seen it already. Blunt instrument to the head, single blow aimed to kill.”
“Any ideas?” Helgi asked hopefully.
“I was about to ask you that,” Gunna sighed. “On the surface, it looks straightforward enough. When someone’s killed like this, it’s either a junkie who doesn’t know what he’s doing, or it’s money or anger. Svana Geirs must have pissed someone off, or else she’d ripped someone off.”
“Jealousy?”
“Certainly a possibility. You’d better find out who she was shagging, in that case. I can’t imagine she lived like a nun. It’d be handy to know what she did for a living. I doubt somehow that a flat like this comes cheap.”
“I’ll see what I can dig out by the morning. Be in early, will you?” Helgi asked.
“Nope. Bjössi in Keflavík asked me to stop by the hospital there and look in on someone in the morning, a friend of your chum Long Ommi, as it happens.”
“All right. Give him my regards, will you? Bjössi, that is, not anyone who might be a friend of Long Ommi’s.”
Friday 12th
A NETWORK OF lines fanned out from the corners of the nurse’s eyes. Working too hard, Gunna thought.
“This way, please,” the nurse said quietly, her gaze flickering back and forth.
“How is he?”
“Not great. But he’ll live.”
“Can he speak?”
“Not easily.”
She thrust open heavy double doors, strode along an echoing corridor and gently pushed aside a door that was already ajar. “Óskar? There’s someone to see you.”
The man lay back in bed, a wild tangle of black hair against the white pillow and fury in his eyes.
“Good morning, Óskar,” Gunna said with as much warmth as she could muster at the sight of the man’s lower jaw swathed in bandages. She tried not to imagine the splintered bones underneath, in addition to the split lip, puffed black eyes and the livid bruise colouring one cheekbone.
“Can I leave you to it?” the nurse asked. “We’re shortstaffed today.”
“Of course. Thanks. I’ll come and find you when I’m finished,” Gunna said, looking sideways at the patient as if he were a naughty schoolboy.
The nurse nodded and padded silently away. Gunna sat at the bedside and opened her folder. She took her time to read the notes, while the bed’s occupant looked at her stonily through his bruises.
“Right, then. Óskar Óskarsson, isn’t it? Your mates call you Skari?” she asked without waiting for a reply. “You know who I am?”
“A cop,” he mumbled with difficulty, his voice a hoarse baritone.
“Ah, so you can talk. That’s good. Just so you know, I’m Gunnhildur Gísladóttir. Until a few weeks ago I was the station sergeant at Hvalvík, and now I’m with the Serious Crime Unit. Your file has stopped with us. So, now then. What can you tell me?”
Gunna scanned the notes as Óskar glared truculently at her. “Your legal address is Sundstræti 29, Hvalvík. Full name, Óskar Pétur Óskarsson, married to Erla Smáradóttir. Three children.”
“Five.”
“Five?”
“Erla got two already.”
“From what I’ve been told, you turned up at Casualty in a right old state and declined to explain how you managed to get in this condition. So you’d better tell me what happened, and don’t say you fell down the stairs.”
“Pissed. Argument,” Óskar muttered sourly.
“Argument? Who with?”
“Bloke.”
“Who? Where?”
“Keflavík.”
“Who was this person?”
“Dunno,” Óskar replied slowly. “Big bloke. Polish.”
“Ah, so what were you arguing about?”
“Can’t remember. Pissed.”
Gunna scanned the notes in her file. “It doesn’t mention intoxication when you arrived at Casualty, only hypothermia.”
“Pissed,” Óskar replied firmly.
“No. You weren’t pissed. What was this about? If we’ve got someone on the loose beating people up with this kind of savagery, then we need to find them as soon as possible. Skari, you’re lucky to be alive. You could have been dead of exposure.”
Óskar’s eyes focused on the wall behind her, and Gunna recognized the determination in them. This would be a battle, and the whole story would probably never come out.
“Heard from Long Ommi recently, have you?” she asked, throwing out the question without expecting a reply as there was a tap at the door.
“Are you finished yet?” asked the nurse. “I can’t leave you too long. He’ll tire quickly.”
“It’s all right. I’m finished,” Gunna said, looking at Oskar and noticing the sudden panic in his bruised face. “But I’ll be back. If you’ve a minute, I could do with a word.”
The nurse nodded. “I’ll be at reception.”
“I might as well come with you,” Gunna said, rising to her feet and slotting her notes under one arm. “See you soon, Skari. Look after yourself.”
The injured man looked balefully back but said nothing. He fumbled with his uninjured hand for the remote control and his eyes glazed as the TV blared into life.
By the reception desk, Gunna and the nurse sat on a sofa for waiting relatives behind a coffee table stacked with thumbed gossip magazines in a variety of languages.
“So, what can you tell me about this guy?”
The nurse shrugged. “His jaw’s broken in a couple of places and I don’t suppose he’ll ever be able to eat or speak easily again. The other injuries are broken ribs, broken fingers on one hand, plus some cuts and bruises across his face and shoulders that’ll heal quickly enough. He’s been given a beating, as far as I can see, and a very heavy one. Somebody really wanted to hurt him.”
Gunna scribbled quickly. “He was brought in yesterday?”
“About six.”
“No ideas who may have done this?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Right. I need your name for the notes.”
“Sjöfn Stefánsdóttir.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Been here long?”
“Just a few months. We moved here from Akureyri.”
“I see. Well, welcome to the wonderful Reykjanes Peninsula.”
“Thanks. I’d have preferred to stay in the north, but my husband got a job down here, so here we are.”
“I’m from the Westfjords, and I’ve never really got used to it here. It rains all the bloody time instead of snowing properly.”
“Not looking forward to next winter.”
“At least there’s a whole summer ahead of us yet. But down here winter just means the rain’s a bit colder than in summer. Anyway, I’ll have to leave it there for now. I’ll be back to ask our boy a few more questions.”
Gunna extracted a card from a pocket in her folder. “I’d appreciate it if you could give me a call if anything changes.”
“BEEN BUSY ALREADY?”
“Yup.”