“Need a lift?” Gunna asked, nodding at the bags the woman held in each hand.
“I don’t need a lift, but if you’re offering I’ll accept one,” Fanney answered, looking about to see who was watching.
She sat silent and stiffly upright, as if a ride in a car was a rare treat to be savoured.
“I suppose you want to come inside now?” she asked with resignation as Gunna pulled up outside the modest house one row up from the harbour.
Gunna sat patiently at the kitchen table while Fanney made coffee and set about emptying her shopping bags. The kitchen of the little house reminded her of a museum, so little had changed in the last thirty years, from the antiquated fridge to the old metal kettle on the stove.
“What was Skari like when he was a lad?” Gunna asked softly.
Fanney pulled the scarf from her head and clattered cups on to the table.
“Nothing but trouble, that boy, from the moment he was born,” she snapped. “I don’t know what he’s been up to now but he’ll be off work for a good few months, I reckon. I don’t know how his Erla puts up with him.”
She poured for both of them and leaned back to reach for a milk carton.
“He’s not a bad boy, you understand,” she went on. “Not bad at all. But he’s easily led, follows the others all the time, always has done. Wants to fit in with the crowd. If it wasn’t for Gulla’s boy, you know, the one in prison, he’d have been fine. But no, my Oskar just had to do everything Omar told him to do. I thought when he took up with Erla he was letting himself in for too much, what with her having a couple of children already and being older than him, but I was wrong there and they seem happy enough.” She sighed again and paused for breath.
“Have you been over to Keflavík to see him?”
“No,” Fanney said bitterly. “Erla’s been to see him, but she hasn’t thought to ask me along to see my own son yet.”
“Well. I have to go over there tomorrow, so I’ll drop you off at the hospital if you like.”
Gunna watched Fanney stifle an internal battle between pride and anger.
“I wouldn’t want to put you out,” the older woman said icily. “As I said, I have to go over there anyway, so it’s no trouble at all.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll pick you up at ten.”
Fanney reached for the coffee jug and filled the cups.
“Now, what can you tell me about Omar Magnússon?” Gunna asked. This time Fanney’s face stiffened.
“That evil boy. Trouble follows him like a ghost with no house to haunt,” she said with a shiver. “He and my Skari were the best of friends as kids and that arsehole of a boy did nothing but thieve, lie and fight. Led my lad a merry dance, he did, what with all the trouble he caused. He set fire to the old fishmeal plant for a bet, and that cost a dozen men their jobs. Then he stole cars and all sorts as soon as he could get behind the wheel, and talk about picking locks and thieving from peoples houses. The things I could tell you…” Fanney’s voice faded away.
“Please do,” Gunna invited.
“You don’t think it’s him as had anything to do with my Skari getting hurt like that?”
“I’ve no idea,” Gunna admitted. “I’m simply trying to put together some picture of these boys. I came to live here about the time they both left Hvalvík, so I don’t have the local knowledge and the background to go with it.”
“You’ve been here so long now that people forget you’re not from round here.” Fanney sniffed, and Gunna almost felt a flush of pride at what was an unintentional compliment. “Omar and my lad knocked about as boys do and I suppose they were more troublesome than most. There was never anything bad about Oskar, just high spirits. But that Omar’s a bad lot. They met up in Reykjavík, and his father and I never did find out what it was they got up to there.”
“Oskar didn’t tell you?”
“And we didn’t ask. If he didn’t want to say, that was his business.” She sniffed again. “But I’ve no doubt that Omar was up to no good. He always was a wicked bastard, even when he was little.”
“AH, DECIDED TO join us, have you, chief?” Helgi asked, glasses on the end of his nose and the phone slung precariously between shoulder and ear.
“Thought I might drop in,” Gunna answered. “Been helping you out, as it happens. Now, where’s Eiríkur? It’s time we put our heads together.”
“Here, chief,” Eiríkur said cheerfully, standing up behind his partition. “Right then, gather round, gentlemen.”
Helgi stayed where he was and Eiríkur brought over a stool to sit next to him while Gunna took off her anorak and opened her briefcase.
“Right. What’s happening with Svana Geirs so far? Eiríkur?”
“I’m going through all the info the door-to-door enquiries came up with. It was a busy afternoon and the flat’s close to the petrol station and the 11-11 shop up the road, so there was plenty of traffic and we have loads of sightings of suspicious-looking persons. Trouble is we have no idea at all if we’re looking for a man, a woman, young, old or what, so we can’t discount any yet.”
“Plenty, then?”
“Too many. Dozens of descriptions, and I’ll bet that most of them were just going to and from the bakery.”
“Any CCTV?” Gunna asked.
“Not directly. There’s a camera outside the lawyers’ chambers round the corner in a blind alley. Been through it and there’s nothing to be seen on it at all. The petrol station and 11-11 both have footage that I’m going through now.”
“Prints from the flat?”
“A good few, they’re still being worked on. Technical are a bit pushed at the moment.”
Gunna drummed the table with her fingernails.
“You might have to push them a bit harder if they don’t get on with it,” she said, and Eiríkur looked dubious.
“I don’t like to. I know they’re doing what they can, and they’re short-staffed.”
“Aren’t we all? Any news of the real chief?”
Örlygur Sveinsson, their superior officer and the man nominally in charge of the unit, while well known to them by reputation, had yet to make an appearance after having been signed off on long-term sick leave.
“Lying on the sofa being waited on hand and foot while watching Police Academy 12,” Helgi cackled. They were all aware that enforced TV would be little short of torture for a man denied access to the golf course.
“Fair enough, it’s all down to us, as usual. I have the guy who fitted the burglar alarm in Svana Geirs’ flat coming over this morning to unlock a few things for me, and we need to start interviewing friends and acquaintances. Do we have a list to start with?”
Helgi laid a sheet of paper on the table, closely packed with names, addresses, phone numbers and indications of what each person’s relationship to the deceased had been.
“We’ll divvy that up between ourselves,” Gunna decided. “Now, Long Ommi. Any sightings of our errant convict, Helgi?”
“Excuse me, chief, do you still need me?” Eiríkur asked.
“Not on this, but you might as well listen in, just in case Helgi decides to go on holiday and you have to take over. Go on, Helgi.”
“Not a bloody thing,” Helgi said morosely. “But a prizewinning idiot called Kristbjörn Hrafnsson, otherwise known as Daft Diddi, was admitted to casualty at the National Hospital on Thursday morning with a fat lip, various bruises, cuts and scrapes. What with Óskar Óskarsson in hospital in Keflavík, that pretty much gives us two definite sightings. The bastard might as well have just written ‘Ommi was here’ on the pavement and have done with it.”