“I’m not obstructing anything. I don’t know his whereabouts.” Jónas Valur stood defensively in the doorway of the expensive flat that Gunna could see glimpses of behind him.
“Come on. Don’t try and spin me a line. The man’s a co-director of several of your companies. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you don’t know where to find him?”
“I have email addresses. But I don’t have a physical address.” Gunna’s look told Jónas Valur that she knew he was lying blatantly. “What do you want to talk to him about? Maybe I could send him a message and ask him to contact you?” he suggested with the ghost of a smile.
“He was in Iceland last week. He flew to London on Friday. Why did he leave so suddenly?”
“Sindri was here to see his mother, who is seriously ill. I only saw him for an hour before he flew back to Europe. I had no foreknowledge that he was going to be here.”
“So where is he now?”
Jónas Valur spread his palms in answer.
“When do you expect to see him again?”
“I have no idea. Sindri has his own business interests overseas and has steadily had less and less involvement with this company, to the point that he takes practically no active part in the running of Kleifar any more.”
“What about Kleifaberg?”
“What?”
“You heard.”
“Kleifaberg is a company we wound up years ago.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what you know about these things, officer, but Kleifaberg had served its purpose. That particular line of business came to an end, so the company was wound up. It’s as simple as that.”
“What kind of business?”
“Haven’t you done your homework?” Jónas Valur asked. “I’d have thought you’d know already.”
“I’ve asked a few questions and not had many favourable reports of it. So I’d like to hear it from you.”
The return of the urbane persona alarmed Gunna. It told her that Jónas Valur was no longer on the defensive.
“Kleifaberg was a property development operation on a fairly small scale. We bought land and either developed it ourselves or found suitable partners who were capable of taking on projects like that.”
“And this was principally Sindri’s business?”
“It was. He’s a smart boy, my son,” Jónas Valur said, unable to conceal his pride. “He saw the writing on the wall and listened to the analysts. He sold up his interests and shifted overseas to a more stable business environment. He was, I believe, the only one who was pragmatic enough to get out in good time. As it happens, he could have held on for another year or more. But …”
The spread palms finished the sentence.
“What I’d like to know, officer, is why you are taking an interest in a smallish company like Kleifaberg, which no longer exists, which always operated entirely legally, and the activities of which were mostly so long ago that they fall under various statutes of limitations.”
“I think you know I can’t tell you that. But I think you also know as well as I do that your son has some questions to answer.”
“MUM, ARE YOU going to be long?” Laufey asked as Gunna tried to make out what she was saying over the rumble of wheels on tarmac. In spite of the crackle of the poor connection, she instinctively realized that something was not right.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” she asked, eyes on the road, one finger to her ear to push the earpiece a little more firmly into place.
“I don’t know. Sigrún’s really unhappy about something. She’s been crying and all sorts.”
“Fifteen minutes. I’m on the way.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
Gunna put her foot down a little harder. At the turnoff, she coasted the Range Rover down the brand-new slip road to the roundabout underneath it that she was sure would become an impassable snow trap if the south-west were ever to see snow on the scale that she had grown up with in the west of Iceland, and accelerated as the road south opened up before her.
The black lava fields that from a distance appeared devoid of life were starting to sprout the first green lichens of spring, which was bursting out of its winter dormancy now that the temperature was rising. She checked carefully before swinging the heavy car across the road to overtake a slow-moving truck laden with tubs of fish on its way south, and quickly wound down the window to extend a hand and wave to the driver, one of Haddi’s relatives, taking freshly landed fish to a processing plant in Grindav’k. The truck’s lights flashed briefly in acknowledgement before it disappeared behind a bend in the road.
Gunna brought the car to a halt in a flurry of gravel outside Sigrún’s house and pocketed phone and keys before jumping down and striding straight round to the back door.
“Hæ! Anyone live here?” she called out, opening the kitchen door and looking inside. A row of bulging bin liners greeted her.
“Sigrún? You in?” she shouted, slipping off her shoes and padding into the house.
A stifled sob told her where to look. In the bedroom, Sigrún sat on the end of the bed surrounded by piles of clothes.
“Hey, what’s up?” Gunna asked.
“Sod him. I’ve had enough,” Sigrún said through a voice choked with frustration. “Bloody men, nothing but trouble.”
Gunna sat down next to her and surveyed the stacks of shirts, jeans, jackets and socks. “What’s gone wrong?”
“Bloody Jörundur. He went to Norway with that bunch from where he used to work. He’s been there a week. Just a bloody, sodding, bastard week, that’s all. I got a text this afternoon saying he’s not coming home, he’s staying in Norway and would I send his stuff.”
“He’s not on the piss again, is he?”
“If only that was all,” Sigrún said despairingly. “The bastard. I called him half a dozen times but he’s not answering his phone. So I gave up and called his sister, asked what the hell’s happening, and she finally told me. Jörundur’s been seeing a woman over in Keflavík, and she’s gone to Norway with him. His sister finally admitted it. She’s not that bright and it didn’t take long to get the truth out of her.”
“Æi, Rúna. I’m so sorry …” Gunna began.
“Don’t be. I’m best rid of the bastard.”
She sat clear-eyed on the edge of the bed and surveyed the contents of the wardrobes, feet extended in front of her and rocking back and forth.
“You know, I always knew this would happen, always. I always knew deep inside that he’d let me down sooner or later. Eventually I wouldn’t be what he wanted any more and he’d be gone. Why didn’t I admit it to myself? Have I been in denial all these years, or what?”
“What have you done with Jens?” Gunna asked, feeling foolish.
“I asked Laufey to go to the shop for me and she took him as well. Couldn’t face going out right now, especially now that all the old bags down there will have heard the news,” she said bitterly. “Unless they knew it before I did. Did you know, Gunna? Did you?” Sigrún asked, turning to face her.
“No, I didn’t. I had my suspicions that things weren’t right. But no, I didn’t know about his other woman.”
“Sure?” Sigrún asked. “I need to be certain at least one person wasn’t in on it. Jörundur even told his sister, and that’s as good as putting an announcement on the radio.”
“I had no idea,” Gunna assured her. “You know I’ve always had reservations about the man, but I never thought he’d do this.”
“All right then,” Sigrún allowed grudgingly, her shoulders sagging.
“So what are you going to do with all this lot?” Gunna asked, waving a hand at the stacks of clothes.
“I told his sister to come and collect it.”
“Is she on the way, then?”
Sigrún stood up with a tough expression on her face that Gunna had not seen for years. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m going to bag it all up and she can collect it from either the front step or the dump.”
When Laufey returned with Jens crying in his pushchair and shopping bags hung from both handles, she found them enthusiastically stuffing clothes into black bin liners as the heap on the floor diminished and the wardrobes looked increasingly bare.
“That’s a lot of clothes,” Laufey observed doubtfully, holding Jens’s hand as he took faltering steps into the room. Sigrún swept him up in her arms.
“Your daddy’s an unfaithful lying bastard, little man,” she crooned to the little boy, who grinned and gurgled back. “And if he comes back, I’m going to cut his balls off with a blunt kitchen knife and then Auntie Gunna can lock him up in a smelly cellar on stale bread and water for ever and ever.”
“HOW’S YOUR FRIEND?” Steini asked softly, looking up from the book in his hands.
“Ach, she’s all right. Well, she’s not, but she will be in a day or two.”
Steini lifted his feet off the sofa and Gunna shrugged out of her coat and draped it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She hobbled over and dropped herself down next to him. He leaned over for a kiss, sandwiching the book uncomfortably between them.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“Sigrún’s husband, Jörundur, has been out of work since the crash. Then he got an offer through some blokes he’d worked with before, some big construction job in Norway, a tunnel or something. So he went to Norway to check it out and hopefully do a couple of weeks’ work. But what he didn’t tell anybody was that there’s a woman he’s been having it off with on the sly since Christmas, and she went with him.”
“Ah, the perils of middle age,” Steini said with a rueful nod. “Pleased to be past all that.”
“Get away with you. Anyway, he’s decided to stay there with his new woman, and the first Sigrún knew of it was when he texted her asking her to send his stuff to Norway.”
“That’s a considerate, sensitive way to behave. Have a good day, apart from that?”
“Not bad. Lots I can’t tell you. But it’s been non-stop excitement since I left the house this morning. You’d never believe how many really unpleasant, bad people there are out there, even in a quiet little place like Iceland.”
“Really?”
“Really. Keep your doors locked at night.”
Steini leaned forward and tipped the last of a bottle of white wine into a glass, then passed the glass to Gunna. She took a sip and wrinkled her nose at the slightly acidic aroma.
“Where did this come from?”
“Don’t ask.” He grinned.
“Oh, right. I’m starving. Are you hungry?”
Steini stroked the moustache that made him look a decade older than he really was.
“If there’s food on offer, I suppose I could be persuaded,” he said with a slow smile.
Gunna hauled herself to her feet and started to unbutton her blouse.
“Good. There should be some garlic bread in the freezer that you can microwave, some pasta salad left over from yesterday, and a few lamb chops in the fridge. If you put them under the grill now, they’ll be done by the time I’m out of the shower.”