He looks like Tintin, he thought.
The numbness in his feet had spread to his fingers and he could barely feel them. He flexed his toes and fingers as much as he could, but still felt ill at ease, not uncomfortable, but not quite right. Suddenly he realized that he had not listened to a word of what Hrannar had been saying and the boy was staring at him with a concerned expression.
“Jón, are you all right?” he asked. “Would you like a glass of water?”
“Yeah,” Jón grunted, tightening his grip on the shotgun and slipping off the safety catch. As Hrannar made to stand up, a young woman with a name badge on a chain around her neck knocked on the glass door and put her head around it.
“Hrannar, there’s a personal call for you,” she whispered, her voice rising on the final syllables. “Urgent, she says.”
Hrannar sat back down and dragged the desk phone towards him with a frown.
“Thanks, Sigga,” he said as the girl made to shut the door behind her. “Could you bring this gentleman a glass of water, please? He’s not feeling well.”
She nodded and departed, while Hrannar peered at Jón, who was sitting wrapped in his coat in spite of the office’s stuffy warmth.
“I hope you don’t mind, I have to take a call quickly,” he said, and saw Jón nod imperceptibly. “Hello, Hrannar Antonsson speaking,” he said smartly into the phone.
Jón’s eyes began to move, boring into Hrannar as he sat flustered behind the desk. The world began to move in slow motion. The cashiers at their desks smiled and tapped at their keyboards as if their world had been turned down a notch.
“Of course,” he heard Hrannar say. “It’s very difficult for me to speak right now. It’s really not a good moment.”
Jón’s eyes lifted to meet Hrannar’s, which filled with fear and he almost dropped the phone.
“Yes, he’s with me right now. W-w-would you like to speak to him?” he said into the mouthpiece, eyes wide as Jón let his coat fall open and he found himself staring into the two gaping barrels that looked as deep and wide as tunnels. He stared at the two circles, scarred and raw where the hacksaw had cut through the metal, ringing the black openings with silver hoops.
The girl with the name tag pushed open the door with one hand and stood frozen for a moment as she took in the shotgun trained on Hrannar’s chest. The glass of water dropped from her hand and shattered on the floor as she screeched and took to her heels. A second later the clatter of hurrying feet could be heard, but Jón sat still with Hrannar petrified in front of him.
“You took everything away from me,” he said steadily. “I had a home, a business and a family. Everything I worked for all those years, taken away. It’s all gone,” he repeated.
“I-I-I’m so sorry,” Hrannar stammered. “I couldn’t do anything. There are rules—”
“Rules?” Jón roared. “What sort of rules say you have to snatch everything away from someone? Everything, not just the cash. There’s the dignity, self-respect, all that stuff. There’s nothing left, just more fucking debts. You’re nothing but lying, thieving bloodsuckers, the lot of you.”
Outside, a siren began to wail.
“The police will be here soon,” Hrannar ventured.
“That’s fine. I’ve all the time in the world now,” Jón said with the merest hint of a smile, the first one for weeks.
GUNNA, EIRÍKUR AND Steingrímur’s Special Unit looked over the bank’s interior. A technician dusted for fingerprints in the glass-walled interview room, wrinkling his nose at the smell.
“And? What’s happening?” Sævaldur Bogason demanded, bursting in through the front door.
“All over, mate,” Steingrímur told him. “Nobody’s hurt and our boy’s cuffed and on his way to Hverfisgata right now in the back of a van.”
“I came as soon as I heard,” Sævaldur said lamely, clearly furious that their man had been located and arrested quickly and with a minimum of fuss. “So what the hell happened?”
Gunna picked up a chair that had been sent flying when the bank staff had evacuated the building, stood it back on its legs and sat herself down on it.
“He was right there, pointing a shotgun at the poor bastard who had sold him a bunch of foreign currency loans. It seems that the lad was the focus of all that anger when he lost his house and his business,” Steingrímur explained. “But I’m sure that’ll all come out at the station. I have to say, I feel sorry for the poor bugger.”
“Sorry for him or not, what’s that fucking awful smell?” Sævaldur demanded.
‘Ah, it seems the lad he was threatening crapped himself with fright, right there in his office chair. He was gibbering when they drove him off to hospital. I reckon he might be off work for a while now,” Steingrímur said with satisfaction.
“And how did you find him so fast?”
“Gunna found him. You just have to look in the right places, I guess,” Steingrímur said with a smile that was guaranteed to provoke Sævaldur to further impotent rage.
“Well done, people,” he said through a forced smile. “Is he definitely the one we’ve been searching for over Bjartmar Arnarson?”
“I’d say so,” Gunna said. “Looks like he was going to give the personal financial adviser the same treatment as he gave Bjartmar, but thought better of it at the last moment.”
“Lucky bastard,” Sævaldur frowned. “Who was the arresting officer?”
Helgi grinned. “Tinna Sigvalds.”
“Her?”
“Yup. Tinna and Big Geiri were the first on the scene when the F1 went up. She walked in, asked him nicely to put the weapon down and come with her, and he did, easy as you like.”
“Hell and damnation. A little girl like that,” Sævaldur fumed, and Gunna felt her own anger boil up inside her.
“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?” she barked.
“Tinna did a fucking magnificent job that takes a bloody sight more guts than most of us have, and all you can do is whine that it was some slip of a girl who took the gun off him! The man’s locked up and nobody’s hurt. If that’s not a result, then I don’t know what is.”
Sævaldur quailed at the virulence of Gunna’s outburst.
“Yes, well …” he blustered.
“You should be bloody ashamed of yourself,” Gunna continued. “The girl deserves a fucking medal.”
“Of course she did a fine job, but we all played our part in it.”
“We didn’t all play our part in it. You spent your bastard time in fucking meetings making sure you got noticed by someone upstairs while the rest of us did the legwork,” Gunna shouted.
Sævaldur paled. “We’ll continue this conversation at Hverfisgata,” he said finally as Gunna headed for the door with Eiríkur at her heels.
EIRÍKUR SAT IN silence while Gunna drove out of the city and towards the east. She was collected and hummed to herself, as if a gathering storm was the thing that brought her inner peace. Eiríkur wondered how long it would be before Sævaldur initiated a disciplinary procedure.
“You’re very quiet, Eiríkur. What’s eating you?”
“Well …”
“Well what?”
“I was just thinking how great it was that you should yell at Sævaldur like that,” Eiríkur blurted out.
“Ah yes,” Gunna sighed. “I’ll probably get a rap over the knuckles for that.” She smiled wanly. “But I’m a big girl and I can take it. It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before.”
“Is Sævaldur after Örlygur’s job?”
“Don’t know, but I’d be amazed if he wasn’t.”