His voice tailed off and he twisted the fingers of one hand frantically in the other as the doctor looked at Gunna and pursed his lips in concern.
“And what happened?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I can’t be sure. But Hallur can have a terrible temper sometimes.” He paused. “I think it was Hallur. I know it was. He lost his temper and I think he hit her without knowing what he was doing.” He lapsed into silence. After a few moments his shoulders began to shake until he finally drew breath and leaned back to stare at the ceiling.
“I think that’s going to have to be enough,” the doctor decided, pressing a button on the wall to summon a nurse.
“GUNNHILDUR. I CAME to see you a couple of times before. Do you remember?”
They were outside in the hospital’s grounds, enjoying some unexpected sunshine that had finally bullied its way through the last of the inkblot clouds. Hallur stared down at his hands, which were fiddling with a tattered magazine. Gunna could see a deep frown furrowing his brow. His face cleared and he shook his head as if trying to dislodge something stuck in his mind.
“I’m not sure, but I think so …”
“I want to ask you about a friend of yours. Her name’s Svana. What can you tell me about her?”
This time Hallur’s face lit up, then rapidly darkened. “Svana …”
“When did you last see Svana?”
“I don’t remember,” he said finally. “Before I came here.”
“Do you recall going to her flat?”
Hallur nodded slowly with a thoughtful look on his face.
“I used to visit her sometimes,” he said, and grinned to himself.
“But you don’t remember having an argument with her?”
He looked blankly back at Gunna. “With Svana? No. I don’t think so.”
“What did you do when you went to visit Svana?”
“We had a lot of fun.”
“What sort of fun?”
“You know,” he replied with a sly smile. “Bedroom fun.”
Gunna took a few paces forward and Hallur followed. “I want you to think back very carefully. Do you remember anything of the day you were injured?”
“I was at home and then I was here.”
“Do you remember what you were doing that day?”
“Stuff at home, I think. Nothing special.”
“Did someone come to the door?”
Hallur sighed in exasperation. “I want to remember but I can’t. It’s not there in my head.”
Gunna turned quickly to face him and found herself looking into confused eyes that suddenly stared innocently back at her. She was certain that she had seen a rapidly concealed spark of cunning.
“All right. That’ll do. I don’t think I need to ask any more questions, at least not right now,” she said, cupping his elbow in her hand to lead him back to the building. “I think Helena Rós is here to take care of you,” she said, looking across at him, and was pleased to see a spark of irritation appear in those captivating brown eyes. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll soon be well enough to go home with her?”
Hallur’s arm tightened suddenly in her hand and immediately relaxed again.
GUNNA’S HEAD WAS throbbing again, and she gulped down two painkillers with a mouthful of water.
“Still rough, chief?” Eiríkur asked.
“Yup. And I’ve had enough for today.”
Helgi opened the door and dropped into his chair. Gunna looked at him expectantly, but he had his face in his hands, kneading his eyes with the heels of each hand.
“Have an interesting time at the hospital, did you?” he asked. “Shit. What a day. Oh, the Laxdal will be here in a moment. Saw him coming up the stairs just now.”
He had just lifted his face from his hands, his eyes red, as Ívar Laxdal appeared silently and swung a chair under himself, sitting down in one smooth movement.
“Just so you know, there’s an international arrest warrant out for Sindri Valsson,” he announced. “That’s the good news.”
“And the bad news?”
“The Portuguese police want to get hold of him as well, so we might not have first crack at him.”
“But we will eventually?”
“Eventually,” Ívar Laxdal said grimly. “I hear congratulations are in order,” he added with the nearest thing to a smile any of them could recall.
“Really?” Gunna asked, stifling a yawn. “Has our lottery ticket come up?”
“No, chief,” Helgi said. “Högni’s weapon was apparently a chair leg that he picked up from a pile of firewood behind his great aunt’s house. Eiríkur’s already been out there and been through the pile, and we have the other three legs. So at least we know what we’re looking for. It would be handy to have the murder weapon, but I reckon we’re watertight enough without it.”
“Excellent. How about Gulli Ólafs?”
“Hard to say,” Eiríkur said. “His lawyer’s whispering all sorts in his ear, so he’s refusing to speak in case he incriminates himself. But we’re going through his work and personal computers to see what Albert can dig out, and there’s a handful of phones from his flat and his office that Albert’s playing with now,”
“We have the number that was used to send SMS demands to Bjarki and Hallur, and Albert’s retrieving what he can from Svana’s phone as well,” Gunna said, eyes half closed as she waited for the painkillers to chisel at the throbbing in her head. “Högni wasn’t after cash—just revenge, plain and simple. But it seems that Jónas Valur and the rest of the syndicate believed that they were being blackmailed by Svana and Högni, when in fact it was Gulli Ólafs and Hallur’s wife who were sending treats and demands to the syndicate and to Svana.”
“So we can pin Jónas Valur’s murder and the assault on Hallur on this man?” Ívar Laxdal demanded.
“That’s it,” Eiríkur answered.
“No connection with the man who murdered Bjartmar Arnarson?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Högni murdered Jónas Valur,” Ívar Laxdal said. “So which of this syndicate murdered Svana Geirs?”
“We’re still working on that,” Eiríkur said.
“It was Hallur,” Gunna broke in. Helgi and Eiríkur swung round to look at her.
“You’re sure?” Ívar Laxdal asked, eyebrows lifted.
“As sure as I can be. Unfortunately he’s not the man he was since Högni’s assault on him. It seems his memory is cut to ribbons and there isn’t a lot of the past few weeks that he remembers. So, conveniently, this whole episode has been erased from his mind. Sorry, guys, I should have told you. I’ve just now come back from the hospital. Bjarki Steinsson says that Hallur was convinced they were being blackmailed by someone with Svana’s complicity. We know now that it was nothing to do with Svana, but it seems that Hallur went to confront her. The result was an argument, with Hallur losing his temper and cracking her over the head, all in time to be back at work after lunch.”
“Evidence?”
“Sorry. That’s as close as I reckon we’re going to get unless something new turns up.”
Ívar Laxdal stood up and swung the chair back under the desk it belonged to as Gunna rose to her feet, looking at her watch.
“I’m going to leave you two gentlemen to clear things up, if that’s all right with you. I assume Högni’s been charged?”
Helgi nodded.
“As Litla-Hraun is full to overflowing, I suppose that Gulli Ólafs may be granted bail on the blackmail charge, but we ought to ask for a travel restriction,” she instructed. “Don’t want him skipping the country like Jónas Valur was about to.”
“Will do,” Eiríkur agreed.
“See you all tomorrow, then,” Gunna said, pulling on her coat as Ívar Laxdal held the door for her.