“Serious stuff. Where are we seeing Hallur?”
“We’ll try his office to start with.”
Gunna parked close to the City Hall, flashing her warrant card at a parking attendant who saw them walk away from the car without buying a ticket. Inside the old building they found only a secretary, who seemed pleased to have company.
“He was here this morning and said he’d be back soon, but I haven’t seen him since,” she said plaintively. “His diary’s blank for the afternoon.”
“No idea where he is?”
The girl shook her head. “Haven’t a clue. Maybe you could try his mobile?”
Gunna and Helgi sat outside in the car.
“What d’you reckon, chief?”
“No idea. He’s not in Parliament, he’s not in his cubbyhole, he has no official business, otherwise the secretary would have been aware of it. He’s not shagging Svana and I somehow doubt that he’s at Fit Club. So where’s the least likely place a man like Hallur would be?”
“At home, I reckon.”
“We’d best try there and then give it up as a bad job,” Gunna said, starting the car once more.
It was a ten minute drive to the leafy suburb where Hallur Hallbjörnsson lived in the Vogar district, but it could have been a different world. There was birdsong instead of the incessant grumble of traffic, and Gunna wound down a window to let in a little fresh air as she took the car gently along the deserted street, looking out for twitching curtains in kitchen windows.
“Someone’s going to call the police in a minute, I expect,” she said grimly. “That’s his place, there.”
She pointed and drove slowly past.
“Car’s there,” Helgi said, peering through the sparse hedge as they passed the house, and Gunna reversed into a driveway to turn around and go back. Helgi screwed up his eyes to see better, staring at the antique Mercedes tucked as far along the driveway as it would go.
“Is he in the car?” Gunna asked. “Can you see him, Helgi?”
She stopped where they could see along the length of the driveway to the car half hidden behind some bushes.
“He’s been sitting there a while now.”
Gunna switched off the engine and tapped the wheel with her fingertips as they waited for Hallur to either finish his call and get out of the car, or else drive away. After what seemed an age, her patience snapped.
“The bloody man must know we’re here by now, surely?”
“You’d have thought so,” Helgi said thoughtfully.
“Hell and damnation,” Gunna grated and got out of the car. Helgi rolled down his window and watched, expecting to see Hallur put his foot down and reverse out into the road, but nothing happened as Gunna approached. He watched her suddenly pick up her pace and run to the car door, where she pulled her scarf from inside her coat and turned towards him.
“Helgi! Quick! Ambulance!”
“Control, zero-two-sixty. Request ambulance urgent to Hrìmvogur 44,” he said as calmly as he could into his communicator, watching Gunna wrap her scarf around her face as she opened the car’s door and dragged an unconscious Hallur Hallbjörnsson by his shoulders out of the driving seat to sprawl full-length on the gravel drive.
“Zero-two-sixty, control. On the way. Can you advise?”
“Carbon monoxide poisoning, I’d guess,” Helgi replied, speaking as he jogged across the road.
Gunna had already dragged the unconscious man away from the car and was kneeling over him, one hand gripping his head by the chin and the other under his neck. She swooped down and locked her mouth over Hallur’s, and Helgi could see the effort she was making to force air into the man’s lungs. She lifted her head, looked to one side to see the fall of his chest, then turned to breathe again. Helgi reached for the man’s wrist and felt vainly for a pulse.
“Any heartbeat?” Gunna asked quickly between breaths.
“Not yet. Stop a moment,” he said, feeling for a pulse in Hallur’s neck. “Yeah, faint, but it’s there.”
Gunna resumed, while Helgi felt again for a pulse in the wrist of the limp hand.
“We’ve got company,” he said, as two small boys on bicycles stopped and stared at the end of the driveway.
“Hey!” Helgi called out.
“Me?” one of them shouted back. “What are you doing?”
“He’s injured. There’s an ambulance coming. Can you go to the corner and wait for it? Make sure they come to the right place?”
The two boys hurtled away just as the faint wail of a siren could be heard in the distance.
“Let me know when you want to switch,” Helgi said quietly.
“Doing all right. Turn the engine off, will you?” Gunna said between breaths as the siren whooped and fell silent, its howl replaced by the rumble of tyres as it stopped in the street and two paramedics jumped out and trotted to the scene. One of them clipped a mask around Hallur’s head and placed a clear plastic bladder in Helgi’s hand.
“Here you go, squeeze that, will you, mate? Now, what happened?”
“Turned up to interview this chap and found him spark out in his car.”
“D’you know if he’s been drinking?”
“No idea. And the house is locked up.”
Gunna sat on the tarmac and took deep breaths while the second paramedic linked up an oxygen cylinder to the mask.
“Is he going to be all right?” she asked.
“Couldn’t say. D’you know how long he’d been in the car, or if he’s taken anything?”
“No idea. We just turned up and watched him I suppose for a minute or two before I went and had a look to see what was up.”
“Hard to say, then. We’ll get him off to Casualty. Might be a bit touch and go, though.”
“You reckon?” Gunna said.
“Yeah,” he said without looking up from Hallur’s face. “If it was a new Volkswagen with a catalytic converter, he’d probably be as right as rain in ten minutes, apart from a bastard of a headache. But an old heap like that Merc’s bound to be bloody deadly. Gunnhildur, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought so. If you ring up in an hour or so, they’ll tell you if he’s still with us. Who is he, by the way?”
“HÆ, MUM. BAD day?” Laufey asked brightly.
Gunna hung her coat on the back of a chair and then dropped into it.
“Why? Does it show?”
“Duh. Yeah.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. Since you asked, it has been a pretty crappy day. Where’s Steini?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him. Isn’t he at work or something?” Laufey asked with a trace of irritation in her voice.
Gunna realized as she pulled off her shoes just how tired she was and how draining trying to breathe life into Hallur Hallbjörnsson had been.
“What were you doing, Mum? You look shattered.”
Gunna yawned and started to undo her blouse.
“I shouldn’t tell you things like this, but I’ve had to inform a lady that her husband tried to commit suicide this afternoon and that it’s still too early to tell whether or not he’ll be permanently brain-damaged afterwards,” Gunna said grimly.
Laufey sat wide-eyed. “Wow. Heavy.”
“And when she heard that it was me and Helgi who stopped the idiot from killing himself, she told us we should have let the bastard finish the job and then burst into tears. So right now she’s sedated in the same hospital as he is.”
“Definitely a bad day.”
“That’s what it’s like when you get to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Anyway, it’s been a bloody long day and I need a shower, badly,” Gunna announced, her blouse balled in one hand and wrinkling her nose. “Is that my smelly feet or yours?”
“Yours, Mum, definitely.” Laufey laughed. “What’s for dinner?”
“Dinner? You mean you haven’t cooked something ready for your old mum?”