“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Mum, why don’t you see Snorri any more?”
“Because we’re not working together now I’m back on the city force.”
“Shame.”
“Why’s that?”
“Snorri’s lush. He’s loads lusher than Steini.”
Gunna sighed.
“He’d be much better for you,” Laufey continued slyly.
“Good grief, young lady,” Gunna exploded. “It’s enough that the whole bloody force seems to be clued up on my private life without you chipping in as well.”
“But why not?”
Gunna shook her head in despair. “One, Snorri is a dozen years younger than I am. Two, he has a girlfriend. Three, I don’t fancy him, even if he is lush. How’s that?”
“I suppose …” Laufey conceded, lapsing into a silence that she did not break until the red-and-white checks of the aluminium factory appeared ahead.
“Mum?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“How do you get to be a paramedic?”
“I THOUGHT WE needed to have another chat, Selma,” Gunna said cheerily.
Selma slouched in the chair and glared back truculently at Gunna, who had become certain that this young woman could be the key to unlocking a few mysteries.
“Had some breakfast, have you?” Gunna asked.
“I don’t do breakfast. It’s bad for you.”
“All right, that’s up to you. Now, can you account for your movements on the eighteenth of last month?”
“Duh. What day was that?”
“The day that you drove up to Rif and collected Ommi.”
“Oh, that day,” Selma said and lapsed back into silence.
“And?” Gunna prompted.
“I went up there to visit him, like I normally do, and …”
“And?”
“Well, he had a day pass so we could go out for a few hours. So we did.”
Selma sat in thought for a moment and Gunna began to wonder if she had fallen asleep.
“Then he just said, ‘I’m not going back inside. You’re taking me south’ So that’s what we did.”
Gunna consulted a page of her notebook. “If you say so. Now, I’ve spoken to the prison authorities, and normally you visit on the second and fourth weekends of each month. So why was this visit in the middle of the week? You’d only been there a few days before, hadn’t you?”
“Yeah, well, Ommi asked me to, didn’t he?” Selma shifted uncomfortably in her chair, lifting herself from a slouch to sit up and perch forward, hands in front of her.
“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”
“Yeah. That’s it. He asked me to come and see him. Said he’d got a day pass and we could go out for a few hours,” she repeated.
“Do you normally do that?”
“Yeah.”
“So where do you go?”
“Just for a drive, look around a bit.”
“Do you have a job, Selma?”
“Not any more. I’m disabled. Nerves.”
“Yet someone with your poor disposition can drive up to the far end of Snæfellsnes, pick up an absconding prisoner, drive him back to Reykjavík and then help him evade the police?”
“Yeah, well. It’s Ommi, isn’t it?”
“What does that mean?” Gunna enquired.
“Ommi’s, well …” She shrugged, as if that were answer enough.
“I’m just wondering if it really was Ommi who asked you to drive up there and collect him.”
Selma looked thunderstruck. “Course it was. Who else?”
“Plenty of people have an interest in him. Could be any one of them. I gather Ommi had some unfinished business to attend to. Tell me about it.”
Selma yawned in spite of herself, puncturing the tough image she had been trying to project. “Y’know, Ommi came back with me, like he asked. I dropped him off near the bus station and he went to do his stuff. I don’t know what.”
“Tell me about Diddi.”
“Who?”
“Don’t play the fool, Selma. You know who Daft Diddi is. Why did Ommi want to see him?”
“Did he?”
“Ommi gave him a beating to start with. Why?”
“Æi, something about some job years ago. I don’t know what.”
“What sort of job?” Gunna asked with a new note of iron in her voice.
“Æi,” Selma repeated and pouted. “It’s Ommi’s business. I don’t know.”
“You bloody well do. Ommi’s already told us all sorts of interesting stuff that doesn’t do you too many favours. Now you’d better start talking some sense for once if you don’t want to wind up doing a stretch yourself for being an accessory,” Gunna grated, eyebrows knitted into a single dark bar of determination across her forehead.
“Diddi used to deliver stuff for Ommi. That time you lot banged him up, Diddi’d been taking some stuff somewhere and hadn’t come back with the cash. So Ommi wanted his money,” Selma gabbled. “Diddi didn’t have it ’cos he’d spent it ages ago, so Ommi told him to get it or else.”
“So that’s why Diddi tried to raid a bank?”
Selma nodded morosely.
“What ‘stuff’ are we talking about here?”
“Es and some coke,” Selma replied. “A bit of everything.”
“And where was this stuff coming from?”
“Dunno. That club, maybe?”
“Which club’s that?”
“The one Ommi used to work at.”
“Blacklights?”
“Yeah.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Gunna said. “D’you want anything, Selma? Coffee perhaps?”
Selma shook her head.
“The fight outside Blacklights. You were there that night. What do you remember?”
“That was years ago!” Selma protested.
“I know. But what did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Ah, but you did. You gave a statement at the time,” Gunna said, lifting typewritten sheets from under her notebook. “According to your statement, the deceased, Steindór Hjálmarsson, threatened Ómar Magnússon during an argument at the bar. Then there was an altercation later during which Steindór received serious injuries. He died in hospital two days later.”
Selma fidgeted in her seat and glared at Gunna with her face puckered in irritation. “I’m not saying anything.”
“Half a dozen people gave statements, you included,” Gunna continued as if Selma had not spoken. “Ómar confessed to having been in a fight with Steindór and to having hit him several times, both while he was on his feet and when he was on the ground.”
“Yeah. And?”
“It all fits far too comfortably. Look, Selma, I’ve been a copper for a long time and I’ve split up any number of fights. If there are five witnesses, you get five different versions. Here we have half a dozen witness statements and they all dovetail just right. Steindór threatened Ommi. Later they meet up outside and there’s a bit of fisticuffs that goes too far. Everyone agrees, Ommi is bang to rights and confesses as sweet as you like. I’d like to know what really happened. Who killed Steindór Hjálmarsson and why? Because I’m damn sure it wasn’t Ommi.”
“I can’t tell you,” Selma said finally in a small voice.
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know who did it.”
“But it wasn’t Ommi?”
“No. He was with me.”
“All right. Why?”
“He got paid for it.”
“What, for doing the time for someone else?”
Selma nodded.
“Are you going to tell me who it was?”
“Don’t know. I never asked. Ommi never told me. He just said we’d be all right after he came out.”
“So what happened then? Why didn’t he just finish his sentence quietly?”
“We were going to leave. Take the cash and go to Spain or somewhere. That was the plan, just disappear somewhere hot and not come back.”
Tears had begun to roll down Selma’s cheeks, taking with them smears of make-up that Gunna guessed had been there for days. She began to cry quietly, her words coming out in fits and starts between sobs.