“So what did you do with her phone?”
“Dropped it, maybe. I don’t remember.”
“You closed the door of the flat?”
“Don’t know. Don’t think so.”
“Did you see anyone on your way out of the building?”
“Nah. Don’t think so. Or there could have been the cleaner on the bottom floor. I’m not sure.”
“Did you go anywhere else in the flat, or notice anything out of place? Anything unusual?”
“I don’t think so,” Högni said. “But the rose wasn’t there, neither was the bat,” he added darkly.
“Bat?”
“Yeah. She kept an old baseball bat behind the front door, just in case, she said.”
“What was that about a rose?”
“She had a little porcelain rose on a plate, about so big,” he explained, making a ring of his thumb and finger. “When she didn’t want to be disturbed, the rose was hung on the door.”
“You mean when one of the syndicate was there?”
Högni nodded. “Yeah. I suppose the only ones who knew about that were me and the … men,” he said with hesitation. “But I didn’t know why until the day before we had our argument. I went to see her and rang the bell, but didn’t get an answer. I didn’t have much to do, so I thought I’d wait, and sat outside. Then she came out, hanging on this guy’s arm, an old bastard, way too old for Svana.”
“What do you call old?”
“Shit. As old as my dad, I guess, and he’s past sixty. This guy was a stocky feller, bald and old.”
Jónas Valur, Gunna thought, recognizing instantly the description of the man’s domed forehead.
“Did you know any of Svana’s rich men? Did you ever see any of them?”
“Nah, only that old bastard,” Högni said, and for the first time Gunna heard a note of uncertainty in his voice. “I just knew there were four of them, because she said so, and she said she was going to stop seeing them soon.”
“Do you know if the men themselves were aware that she was planning to bring this arrangement to an end?”
“Dunno. Don’t think so.”
“Do you think she’d tell you or them first?” Gunna probed. “Dunno,” Högni repeated. “But I’d have thought she’d have told me first after we’d had that argument.”
“Right. Thank you, Högni. That will do for the moment. You’re free to go now, but I’ll certainly need to speak to you again tomorrow. Will you go home?”
“Yeah.” Högni looked down at his hands.
“Go and get some rest. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Will I go to jail?” he asked in a small voice.
“WHAT’S THE RUSH this time?” Helgi demanded, stifling his irritation at being bundled out of the building and into a car.
“Nothing like striking while the iron’s hot,” Gunna replied with determination in her voice. “Listen up. According to that greasy pudding, Svana Geirs was about to bring the syndicate to an end and give all her sugar daddies notice to quit.”
“Right?” Helgi said, an eyebrow shooting up. “Win the lottery or something, did she?”
“Nope, not that good,” Gunna told him, slipping the car into the stream of traffic. “It seems she was getting a second chance at TV, so I reckon that between Fit Club and telly, she reckoned she could afford to give up shagging for cash.”
“All right, so where are we going now?”
“You’re going to see Bjarki Steinsson. Push him hard on when he last saw Svana. Ask for all the details you can get, confiscate his laptop if you have to and get in touch with his internet provider if you think that might produce an alibi. Don’t forget that we know now that Högni answered Svana’s phone at thirteen fifty-three and she was already dead then. I’d been working on the premise that she answered her own phone. Miss Cruz said between twelve and three, but now we know it was between twelve and thirteen fifty-three, which shoots down Hallur’s alibi in flames.”
“If I’m going to grill the accountant, where are you off to?”
“I’m going to go and pay Jónas Valur a visit and ask him just the same. Call me when you’re finished with Bjarki Steinsson and we’ll both go and see Hallur Hallbjörnsson. All right?” Gunna asked, pulling up outside the office block where Bjarki Steinsson’s fourth-floor offices overlooked the building sites of Reykjavík’s Shadow District.
A few minutes later Gunna parked outside the modest old building that disguised Jónas Valur’s office.
The grim-face secretary looked her over with undisguised hostility, but gave way and rang through to Jónas Valur.
“He’ll see you now,” she informed Gunna primly.
Sitting in the half-dark behind his antique desk, Jónas Valur exuded gravitas. A desk lamp illuminated the papers in front of him and the light from the screen of a small but sleek laptop in front of him shone on the dome of his forehead.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” he said smoothly as Gunna’s footfalls echoed on the wooden floor towards him.
“Sergeant, actually,” she said, taking a seat.
“For the moment,” Jónas Valur said with a smile, quickly extinguished. “How’s my old friend Chief Inspector Örlygur Sveinsson?” he asked, stressing the Chief Inspector.
“If you know him well, then I suppose you’d know he’s still on sick leave. I’ve no idea how serious his condition is, but we’re hoping he’ll be back soon. How come you know Örlygur? I wouldn’t have thought someone like you would move in the same circles as a lowly copper,” Gunna said, looking down at the desk in front of her and noticing for the first time the red and gold Masonic ring and the man’s surprisingly long and delicate fingers.
A musician’s hands, or a craftsman’s, Gunna thought, suddenly recalling her father’s shovel-like hands that could nonetheless repair the most delicate machinery with a skill and patience that she would have loved to be able to master herself.
“When was your last contact with Svana Geirs?” she asked bluntly.
“I thought we’d already been through this?”
“Maybe we need to go through it again.”
Jónas Valur reached for a diary on the desk in front of him. “The sixth. That was the last time I saw her.”
“Five days before she died?”
“Precisely.”
“How long did you spend together? Did you go anywhere you might have been seen or where someone else could confirm this?”
“Officer, our last meeting consisted of a disappointing DVD of some slushy film that Svana wanted to see, a reasonable takeaway from Ning’s and some rather energetic sex—not necessarily in that order. We spent the night at her apartment and I left in the morning,” Jónas Valur said with the return of his narrow smile.
“So you last saw her on the morning of the seventh? I asked what your last contact with her was. Emails, phone calls, maybe?” Jónas Valur shook his head with a show of regret. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with anything subsequent.”
“I see,” Gunna said. “I was wondering who could be the JVH she called on the ninth and had an eight-minute conversation with?”
A sudden spasm of anger flashed in his eyes and was instantly suppressed.
“I have no idea, officer. There are surely plenty of people in Iceland with those same initials.”
“Actually, you’d be surprised just how few there are, according to the National Registry. It seems a coincidence too striking to ignore that Svana Geirs would know two people with the same initials. It also seems odd that she wouldn’t have your name and number in her phone memory when the rest of the syndicate are all there.”
With one hand in her pocket, she pressed the green button on her phone that her thumb had been hovering over, while looking Jónas Valur in the eyes.