“Have you caught him?” she demanded abruptly.
“Oh, yes. Ómar is firmly back in Litla-Hraun.”
“That’s a blessing, I suppose,” the old lady admitted. “Erla, my girl. The man’s back in prison. Don’t you think it’s high time you two stopped being so stupid and told this lady what’s been going on?”
Erla’s shoulders heaved, but a series of nods could be made out among the tremors.
“Where is Óskar?” Gunna asked softly.
“Up-up-upstairs,” Erla said finally, parting the mane of wild ringlets that spilled over her face. “He’s asleep and you won’t be able to wake him up. He’s taken a few pills to help him sleep.”
Instinct began to ring an alarm bell in Gunna’s mind.
“Show me where he is,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. Fanney stood up while Erla sat looking stupidly ahead of her with an open mouth.
Gunna took the steep stairs two at a time and Fanney followed behind. There was only one room in the house’s attic, and Óskar lay sweating profusely and muttering to himself in a king-sized bed surrounded by the detritus of a family living in not enough space.
“Skari, can you hear me?” Gunna demanded loudly, sitting herself at his side while Fanney stood in the doorway, her habitual angry expression replaced for the first time by something approaching true concern.
The duvet that Óskar had thrown off was drenched with sweat, and Gunna felt for the man’s pulse, finding it racing.
“What’s the address here?” she asked suddenly.
“Sjávarbraut 18,” Fanney replied. “Why?”
Without taking her eyes off the man in the bed, Gunna clicked her communicator. “Control, ninety-five-fifty.”
“Ninety-five-fifty, control,” the instant laconic answer came back. “I’m at Sjávarbraut 18 in Hvalvík. Can you get an ambulance to me? Possible overdose.”
“Will do. Conscious?”
“Semi-conscious,” Gunna replied.
“They’re on their way. Can you find out what he’s taken? I’ve opened the channel so the ambulance team can call you direct. OK?”
“Thanks. Out.”
Fanney looked horror-struck in the doorway at the wreck of her son in the bed. Gunna glanced at her questioningly.
“Fanney, would you tell Erla to come up here? Right now?”
Fanney disappeared, and moments later the clumping of Erla’s heavy footfalls could be heard on the wooden staircase.
“Is he all right?” she asked fearfully.
“He will be. Now, Erla, come over here,” Gunna instructed, placing Óskar’s hand carefully across his chest and patting the bed beside her. “I want you to sit here.”
She stood up and steered Erla into position.
“Right, all I want you to do is hold his hand and talk to him. I don’t care what you say, just keep talking. Tell him what the weather’s like or something. Just so he hears your voice. All right?”
Erla nodded and immediately launched into a patter about how much rain there had been, while Gunna backed down the stairs.
Fanney was standing at the bottom, fear in her face. “Is my boy going to be all right?”
“He’s going to be fine. But he should never have left hospital, and he’s going back there. Where are the kids, Fanney?”
“They’re at Jóna’s house.”
“Jóna?”
“My daughter. The one who lives next door to the old bakery.”
“That’s fine, then. Can they stay there for a while?”
Fanney nodded.
“Good. Right, I’m going back upstairs to make sure Erla’s all right. What I want you to do is stay here by the front door, wait for the ambulance to turn up and then show them where to go. OK?”
The old lady nodded her agreement a second time, and Gunna climbed the stairs again to where Erla was rattling through a childhood story while Óskar’s eyes rolled in his head. She held his hand with an unfaltering iron grip.
“Skari, my sweet. It’s a lot easier that way. Then you don’t have to do it twice like we used to,” Erla rambled. “But if you can get the old car fixed, then it would be so much easier to get to the shops.”
Gunna took in the tiny bedroom with its huge bed, the TV in one corner with DVD cases stacked on top of it, the clothes spilling out of a rickety wardrobe and the pile of unwashed clothes heaped by the door. She quickly swept a collection of pill bottles into a bag and hunted around for more. It was a relief when she heard the wail of the ambulance.
JÓN JÓHANNSSON STRODE through the dusk and the drizzle. He had thought hard about how to do this, and knew that short and sweet would be best. His feet crunched on the gravel of the garden path and he saw with amusement the blackened door of the garage and the smart 4 x 4 parked in front of it.
He stood at the door and rang the bell, hearing it chime sonorously deep inside the house and taking a step back. The door opened and light flooded out. A barefoot Bjartmar Arnarson, dressed in a white shirt and suit trousers, glared back at him.
“Yes?”
“You don’t know me …” Jón began.
“So I don’t know you. What do you want?”
He’s pissed, Jón thought, and stepped forward to put a foot inside the door as Bjartmar took in Jón’s bulk and clear menace and retreated instinctively.
“It’s because of you that I’m fucking bankrupt, you thieving bastard,” Jón snarled, unable to stop himself even though he had vowed that he would say nothing.
“Look, get out of here, will you?” Bjartmar protested angrily. “I’ll have the police here in two minutes.”
“Two minutes is fine with me,” Jón said calmly, drawing the shotgun from inside his coat and watching alarm dart across Bjartmar’s face.
He pointed it downwards and pulled the trigger. The report was louder than he had expected and echoed in the lobby of the house. The lead pellets sprayed Bjartmar’s bare feet and ricocheted off the tiled floor as he howled and collapsed back against the wall.
Screams like a girl, Jón thought, stepping forward. He grabbed a handful of Bjartmar’s shirt and hauled him sideways so that he lay on his back. The floor was already slippery with blood and he remembered to be careful not to lose his footing. He levelled the shotgun and looked into Bjartmar’s eyes a second time.
“Hell is packed with shitbags like you,” he said quietly, and wondered why he had said it as he pulled the trigger and sent the load of pellets into Bjartmar’s chest.
With the numb feeling of a job well done, he stowed the shotgun under his coat and stepped back into the garden. The man was clearly dead, his feet mangled by the first shot and his chest a mess of blood and torn flesh surrounded by ribbons of charred white shirt.
He took care to walk over the damp grass this time. As he crossed the street, he heard doors bang and saw lights appearing in the doorways of neighbouring houses. He walked up the slope, keeping to the gutter, where rainwater flowed steadily downhill, washing his shoes clean of blood. A few hundred metres ahead he ducked along a footpath between the houses that took him back downhill, emerging into another quiet street. A second footpath took him further down the slope to where the van was parked.
The engine grumbled into life and he drove slowly along the residential street to turn into the main road towards town, pulling over on the way to let two police cars with wailing sirens and flashing lights overtake and hurtle past.
Instead of going back to Sammi’s flat, Jón stopped off at the workshop, where he lit the stove with some scraps of paper and threw on handfuls of sawdust and woodchips. When the fire was burning merrily, he took off his trainers and added them to it, wrinkling his nose at the smell of melting rubber. It was only then that the pent-up tension reached him and his hands began to shake uncontrollably. He drew his legs under him in the workshop’s ragged armchair and hugged his arms around them, letting the heat of the stove bring some warmth back to his chilled bones.