“Right here will do. You still haven’t answered the question I asked you.”
“And I don’t have time to now. Understand, Sergeant?” There was a new harshness in Hallur’s voice.
“Perfectly. If you’re not prepared to co-operate with a serious police investigation, then you don’t leave me too many options.”
“What are you going to do? Arrest me?”
Gunna opened the door and swung herself down to the ground, not sorry to be out of the car.
“Maybe not yet. But I’m already wondering what else a smart young MP might have to be so nervous about. See you soon,” she said, slamming the door before he could reply. She set off towards the lake with a smile on her face, wondering idly why she should be pleased with herself when Hallur’s car sped past.
JÓN LAY ON his back in a widening puddle as his phone began to play the theme tune from Star Wars. It was too far away to reach easily and he decided to let it ring. He patted the floor at his side for the wrench he knew was there and closed his hand around it, the other holding the isolation valve in place under the kitchen sink. With a few swift turns the valve was secured and he hauled himself stiffly to his feet.
There was no number under the missed call message on his phone’s screen. Jón put it back on the kitchen table and rummaged in his toolbox to come up with a set of mixer taps, as good as new, left over from another job.
This time he whistled as he set about fitting them to the kitchen sink, first taking the old leaking taps off and dropping them in the bin that normally occupied the space where he had been lying in the puddle.
“Almost done?”
“Yeah. Not long. Done the hard part,” he said without looking round at the thin, blank-faced young woman who lived in the flat strewn with the debris left by small children with not enough space to play. Not bad-looking, apart from that miserable expression on her face, he thought. How old? No more than twenty-three or twenty-four? And how many sprogs?
“D’you want a coffee?”
“Yeah, please.”
He heard her take the jug from the percolator and fill it in the bathroom. Before long it was spluttering and hissing as the aroma of fresh coffee filled the room. Jón swung himself back under the sink with a tap spanner in one hand and gently tightened the nuts holding the new tap unit in place. As he emerged, he saw her sitting at the table with two mugs in front of her.
“Almost done,” he told her, and she nodded as he delved into his toolbox for a tube of silicone.
“I’ll just put a squirt of this around the back of your sink. If you get water into the worktop, it’ll swell up and rot, and that’s a hell of a job to replace,” he said.
Jón stretched and flexed his shoulders after an hour hunched under the sink, just as his phone began to ring again.
“Yeah?”
“Jón?” a voice asked. “This is Hrannar Antonsson at the bank.”
Jón instantly regretted answering the phone, as “private number calling” on the display generally meant trouble.
“Yeah, what do you want now?” he demanded, dreading the reply and noticing for the first time that the woman sitting at the table had brushed some life into her limp hair and changed from the loose sweatshirt she had been wearing when he arrived into a blouse that hid nothing.
“We’d really like you to come in so we can review your status,” the personal financial adviser gabbled. “Of course we realize that things aren’t easy for any of us right now, but there are a few items that we need to regularize.”
Regularize? Jón thought. Is that really a word?
“All right,” he sighed. “When?”
“Well, no pressure, obviously, but this is getting urgent and we’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of days now …”
“So there is pressure, if you say it’s getting urgent.”
“Well, yes. Er, no. I don’t want to pressure you, but we do need to achieve a settlement that’s agreeable to everyone so that we can normalize your banking status and hopefully reinstate your privileges—”
“This afternoon?” Jón broke in. “I can be there in an hour or so.”
“Er, yeah,” Hrannar said, taken aback. “Could we make it tomorrow, maybe?”
“It’s today or next week,” Jón said, anger rising inside him as he imagined the young man sitting behind his desk at the bank. The woman stared at him with a vacant expression as she listened to the conversation.
“My diary’s already full for today and I just don’t have a slot for any more appointments,” the personal financial adviser protested.
“Look, mate. I’m at work and I don’t have time to mess about. Today, or next week.”
“In that case it’ll have to be Tuesday. How’s about three twenty-five? OK for you?”
“No, it’s not. What time do you open?”
“We’re here at nine thirty.”
“Nine thirty, then. I’m not going to pack up a day’s work somewhere to come into town just to hear more bad news.”
“If that’s the way you feel, I can make you an appointment at nine fifty,” Hrannar shot back, irritation plain in his voice.
“I have to say, I feel you could be more co-operative—”
“I’ll be there when you open,” Jón told him, and ended the call without waiting to hear more, tossing his phone into his open toolbox. “Bastards …”
“Finished?” the woman asked.
“Pretty much. I’ll just give it all a wipe-down,” Jón replied, turning on the new tap and watching the water gush into the sink. He snapped the water off and put the rest of his tools and unused parts back in the toolbox.
“Your coffee’s on the table,” she reminded him softly and with the first smile he had seen from her.
“Thanks,” Jón said, sitting down and taking a mouthful. “Good coffee. Lived here long?”
“Almost a year. It’s too small for us, but it was all I could afford.”
“How many kids?” Jón asked.
“Three. All under five.” She sighed. “How much do I owe you?”
“Call it fifteen thousand for cash. That’s an hour’s work and I’ll only charge you five thousand for the taps as they were off another job. How does that sound?”
“That’s great. But, er …” She looked down at the table and leaned forward, providing a clear view down her blouse. “The thing is, I don’t have fifteen thousand right now. My maintenance hasn’t come through and the kids needed shoes and I’m a bit short.”
Bloody hell, another one. Poor cow, Jón thought, staring at her timid smile and deliberately looking into her face and not at the nipples on display. Hardly even a handful, not like Linda’s.
She glanced down at his hands clasped around the mug.
“Maybe there’s some other way we can settle this?” she said in a silky voice, looking him in the eyes and giving her shoulders a discreet shake that set off tiny tremors across her bosom.
Jón sighed. “Sorry, love. I’d rather have the cash. I’m a bit short as well right now.”
“But I don’t have fifteen thousand.”
“I really don’t want to take those taps off again.”
“God! No! Don’t do that! Five, and I’ll blow you off?” she suggested with a weak smile.
“What’s your name again?”
“Elín Harpa.”
“Are you on your own?”
“Yeah. Guys don’t hang around me for long,” she said with resignation.
“Bloody hell. You shouldn’t have to offer plumbers blow jobs, darling. Tell you what,” Jón said firmly. “Make it five and I’ll pop back next week for the other ten.”
DROPS OF WATER glittered on the man’s beard and spiky iron-grey crewcut hair. He concentrated as he tied a spoon to the end of his line, gave it a quick tug to check the knot and looked at Helgi with one eye closed in a quizzical half-wink.
“What brings you out here, then, Helgi? How’s business at the old firm?” The retired chief inspector cast his line and listened to it spin off the reel with a satisfying hum. It hit the surface of the lake with scarcely a sound, but sent out a widening ring of ripples that died before they came close to the strip of black rock and sand that separated water and deep turf.