Gunna considered what Emilija had said. Alex had been alive on Sunday morning. His body had been uncovered on Tuesday night and must have been placed in the trench before the concrete had been poured the day before. He had probably been murdered within a few hours of leaving Emilija’s bed, she decided.
‘Did Alex say anything? Did he mention where he was going?’
‘I thought he was going to work as usual.’
‘Was there anything unusual that morning? Tell me what happened and what he said.’
Emilija flared in resentment. ‘It’s not every day a man stays with me, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘It’s not,’ Gunna snapped. ‘It’s Alex I want to know about. Why did you tell him not to come back?’
Emilija’s anger subsided. She sighed. ‘I suppose I can tell you. He was doing something illegal. I don’t know what. Alex always had money, more than enough money. More money than someone in that kind of shit work should have.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He used to buy presents for the children, really expensive toys, until I said stop. He used to buy me things. Never anything useful, but perfume, that sort of stuff.’ She reddened. ‘Underwear,’ she whispered. ‘Expensive. Designer. But it wasn’t comfortable so I never wore it.’
‘I understand,’ Gunna said. ‘What else?’
‘He didn’t work long hours. Half days mostly. So where did all that cash come from?’
‘You never asked him?’
‘Why?’ Emilija snorted in derision. ‘Why ask a question when you know the answer will be a lie? Sometimes it’s best not to know. So I didn’t ask where his money came from.’
‘Drugs?’
‘I suppose so.’ Emilija shook her head. ‘But what do I know? I’ve been wrong so many times that you shouldn’t take my word for much,’ she added bitterly. ‘I would never have dreamed for a moment that Ingi would stoop as low as he did, unless it was his bitch of a mother pushing him.’
‘Alex was driving the day you last saw him?’
‘Of course. He had his keys in his hand as he left. He had a red Accord. I don’t know the number, quite an old one.’
‘What time did he leave you on Sunday morning?’
‘Around nine thirty. That’s when I left for work as well. I know he should have been at work earlier, but being on time never worried Alex much.’
Jóhann had no idea what had become of his own clothes, but he pulled on the outsized shirt and trousers that had been left folded by the couch he had slept on. With food in his belly, not too much as he knew that overeating would be as bad in his condition as starvation, he hobbled around the chalet on painful feet. It was tiny, one room lined with bunks and bookshelves, and with a small bathroom at one side and a verandah at the front.
He had no desire to go past the door, and simply watched the rain course down the window against the unbroken blackness beyond, revelling in being warm and no longer hungry. He had found his glasses, phone and wallet on the windowsill, but there was no charger to be found that would fit, so his phone remained obstinately dead, refusing to give him more than a second of life before the red warning flagged up on the screen and it died yet again.
In the chalet’s only comfortable chair, he sat hunched with his arms around his legs, reflecting that a week before he would have been frantic at not having checked his email for more than a few hours, but now he was thankful to have simply escaped the ravens; the thought of them made him shudder.
‘You’re awake, then?’
The door banged open and an elderly man and a younger woman came in, kicking off their boots by the door.
‘Don’t stand up, man,’ the woman said, as Jóhann struggled to get to his feet. ‘Helga Dís,’ she said, giving him a hand to shake and then opening the fridge to throw packets onto the table.
‘Jóhann Hjálmarsson.’
‘Bjarni,’ the man said, proffering a calloused hand. ‘You look better now than you did last night, I must say.’
‘I don’t remember. Where was I? Was I still conscious?’
‘You were in the middle of the road, spark out as far as I could see, like a bundle of rags with that old coat wrapped around your head. What the hell happened to you, then? How did you find your way up here?’
‘I’m really not sure. What day is it?’
‘Wednesday today.’
‘Five days,’ Jóhann said, suddenly animated. ‘It’s been five days since I was abducted.’
‘What’s that you say? Kidnapped?’
‘I think so, I don’t remember very well. Where am I?’
‘Geirsmörk.’
‘I’m sorry. Where’s that?’
‘Borgarnes is that way,’ Bjarni said, a hand waving towards the door.
‘I passed a place called Brekka yesterday, I think. Or maybe the day before.’
‘You were a long way up.’
‘I don’t know where I was. I’ve been walking for days. I’m not sure how many.’
‘I know,’ Helga Dís sang out. ‘We gave you a bit of a scrub yesterday and put you to bed. I’ll bet your feet are sore, aren’t they? How far have you walked?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘It must have been a distance if you passed Brekka?’
‘I was at a place with a hill behind it shaped like a loaf of bread, with a lot of fish in drying racks next to it.’
Bjarni cracked his knuckles. ‘Sounds like you must have been at Vatnsendi. It’s not that far from here across country, but the road goes the long way round to get there. How the hell did you get all the way up there? Hardly anybody goes there from one year’s end to the next.’
‘And all that dried fish?’
‘It’s been there a few years now. I think they must have forgotten it’s there. Anyway, if that’s what you were eating, then you really are very fortunate to be alive.’
Jóhann sat in silence for a moment, digesting what he had heard as cups and plates clinked on the table.
‘You don’t have a phone here, do you?’
‘We’re out of range. Even the radio reception isn’t that good up here.’
‘Oh. Is there any chance of being able to get to town?’
‘Not now,’ Bjarni said. ‘It’s dark and you’ll be in no condition to go anywhere until the morning.’
‘Explain, Gunnhildur.’ Ívar Laxdal scowled and shook his head. ‘But sit down, you’re making me nervous pacing up and down like that.’
‘It’s a drugs operation.’
‘What is? And how have you figured this out?’
‘I haven’t figured it all out,’ Gunna said, sitting uncomfortably. ‘Just the outline of it all, Maris cracked when I asked him a few uncomfortable questions and mentioned having him sent to a Latvian prison.’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s a speed factory. Maris was here to make dope. His family got into some serious debt a few years ago and the only way they could pay it off was by him agreeing to work for the same people who were doing the loan sharking. Vison is financed by this character in Latvia, Boris Vadluga, and it’s a pretty clever operation. The speed is made in Iceland, which is what Maris was doing. Alex works at the transport company. .’
‘Green Bay Dispatch,’ Eiríkur put in.
‘Exactly, Green Bay, which was about to go bankrupt a year ago, when Boris Vadluga stepped in and bought two thirds of the company. Alex collects the fish that’s being air freighted to Europe, and he replaces the cold-gel packs in the boxes of fillets with sealed bags the same colour.’
‘But packed with amphetamines?’ Ívar Laxdal suggested.
‘Exactly. Iceland’s the perfect place to smuggle something out of. You’d expect drugs shipments from southern Europe or the Middle East. But Iceland? So the fish boxes hardly get looked at and Maris said they’ve been careful to ship their gear only with every third or fourth consignment — so far as they haven’t been producing big amounts.’
‘But they’re planning to?’ Eiríkur said excitedly. ‘Vison? The fur farm?’
‘That seems clear enough. The place even has a lab of its own for quality control. They were producing this stuff in the basement at Kópavogsbakki fifty, but it was too small and too close to people who would notice the smell sooner or later. So that was packed up, the place was painted from top to bottom, and they moved out, leaving it pristine.’