“Omar Magnússon, I suppose?” Gulli Olafs asked with a sideways look.

  “Well, yes. It’s not hard to put two and two together.”

  “Not when you’re dealing with gossip all day long it isn’t. I knew he had escaped from prison and wondered why. His sentence must be almost up by now.”

  “Well, no. There’s about a third of it left to go, but he would have been up for parole at the end of this year and would probably have been out if he’d kept quiet and behaved himself. He’s not someone you ever had any dealings with?”

  “God, no,” he said with a shudder. “I saw him at the trial and I have to say that he was one of the most evil people I have ever set eyes on. He just radiated arrogance and … How should I put it? There was a ruthlessness about him that was quite unnerving. Absolutely no shred of remorse to be seen.”

  “That about sums up Long Ommi,” Gunna agreed. “I’m particularly interested in Steindór in the weeks before his death. Was there anything about him that was odd, different, maybe?”

  Gulli Ólafs stared out of the window across the wasteland between the café and the empty dock and to the shell of the unfinished opera house on the far side of the harbour.

  “Steindór had graduated the year before and had fallen into a fairly decent job at that import-export company. He wasn’t happy there. He was being given more work than he was able to do comfortably and he was also doing work for other companies within the group, which had a very wide portfolio of business. There was fish, there were cars, scrap metal, electrical goods, all sorts,” he said finally, speaking slowly as if trying to recall every detail.

  “Kleifar? Or Kleifaberg, maybe?”

  “That’s it. But they were getting into property as well. This was before the banks were privatized and property prices hadn’t started to shoot up. If I’d known, I’d have bought a house then,” he added ruefully. “But about a fortnight before the, um, incident, Steindór came to see me. I was in my first real job as well, as a reporter on a daily back then. Steindór said that he was sure there was something going on that he wasn’t comfortable with. Kleifaberg and a couple of others were buying up property at an unprecedented rate, a lot of it owned by the city, at some surprisingly low prices. It was being practically given away. This was land that has housing estates and hypermarkets on it today.”

  “A bit of insider trading going on?”

  “Exactly. Some highly placed people within the city council were allowing potentially very valuable properties to be sold quietly to their friends.”

  “So what did you do? What did Steindór want you to do?”

  “He was giving me a fantastic story, but unfortunately it was a bit too dynamite. It reflected badly on his employers and several municipal authorities. He promised me more information and some documents to back him up.”

  “But then he was killed in a fight?”

  “Precisely.”

  Gulli Ólafs stared out of the window, where a fat black fly buzzed in the corner. He sighed deeply. “I had nothing to go on. No evidence, no documents. I asked some uncomfortable questions but got only fudged answers in response. The guy who was my editor at the time didn’t want me to pursue it and discouraged me from digging into it.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “There wasn’t anything I could do. There were no real avenues open to investigate. Look, I was the new boy in the office. I’d been told in no uncertain terms that if I were to continue digging into this, my career would finish before it had begun. Then I had a warning.”

  Gunna frowned. “What sort of warning?”

  “I remember it like it was yesterday. I left the office late one evening and was surprised when I got to the car and found it wasn’t locked, but just thought I must have forgotten. So I got in and was about to turn the key when there was a hand around my neck.”

  “What? Someone was in the back seat?”

  “Yeah, and a rope. Whoever it was pulled a rope round my throat and round the back of the seat until I was practically choking. He said, very clearly, “Back off. Leave it. You know what.” That was it. A deep voice. That’s all I can say. Didn’t see anything.”

  “You didn’t go to the police?”

  “God, no. I was terrified. Went home, threw up, bolted the door and stayed in for a week. It’s a long time ago now, but I still wake up in the night sometimes. That’s the first time I’ve told anyone about this, ever.”

  “I see. It may be a stupid question, but do you have any idea who it might have been, or who was sending you a message?” Gulli Ólafs shrugged. “I’m as sure as it’s possible to be that it was something to do with Kleifaberg or the people who owned it, and still do.”

  “And that is … ?”

  “He doesn’t do quite so much these days, but I guess Jónas Valur has made his pile and prefers to spend most of his time on a golf course in Portugal, especially now that he’s a highly respectable figure and a well-known party stalwart.”

  JÓNAS VALUR HaJALTASON glowered. The urbane businessman with the convincingly sincere smile Gunna had spoken to before was gone, replaced by a snarling man who radiated suspicion.

  “Where’s your son?” she asked without any kind of preamble, after she had brought him unwillingly to his front door. “He’s overseas.

  He doesn’t live in Iceland these days.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll have to ask him that yourself.”

  “You’re aware that obstructing an investigation is an offence?” Gunna snapped.

  “I’m not obstructing anything. I don’t know his whereabouts.” Jónas Valur stood defensively in the doorway of the expensive flat that Gunna could see glimpses of behind him.

  “Come on. Don’t try and spin me a line. The man’s a co-director of several of your companies. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you don’t know where to find him?”

  “I have email addresses. But I don’t have a physical address.” Gunna’s look told Jónas Valur that she knew he was lying blatantly. “What do you want to talk to him about? Maybe I could send him a message and ask him to contact you?” he suggested with the ghost of a smile.

  “He was in Iceland last week. He flew to London on Friday. Why did he leave so suddenly?”

  “Sindri was here to see his mother, who is seriously ill. I only saw him for an hour before he flew back to Europe. I had no foreknowledge that he was going to be here.”

  “So where is he now?”

  Jónas Valur spread his palms in answer.

  “When do you expect to see him again?”

  “I have no idea. Sindri has his own business interests overseas and has steadily had less and less involvement with this company, to the point that he takes practically no active part in the running of Kleifar any more.”

  “What about Kleifaberg?”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “Kleifaberg is a company we wound up years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know what you know about these things, officer, but Kleifaberg had served its purpose. That particular line of business came to an end, so the company was wound up. It’s as simple as that.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Haven’t you done your homework?” Jónas Valur asked. “I’d have thought you’d know already.”

  “I’ve asked a few questions and not had many favourable reports of it. So I’d like to hear it from you.”

  The return of the urbane persona alarmed Gunna. It told her that Jónas Valur was no longer on the defensive.

  “Kleifaberg was a property development operation on a fairly small scale. We bought land and either developed it ourselves or found suitable partners who were capable of taking on projects like that.”

  “And this was principally Sindri’s business?”

  “It was. He’s a smart boy, my son,” Jónas Valur said, unable to conceal his pride. “He saw the writing on the wall and listened to the analysts. He sold up his interests and shifted overseas to a more stable business environment. He was, I believe, the only one who was pragmatic enough to get out in good time. As it happens, he could have held on for another year or more. But …”

  The spread palms finished the sentence.

  “What I’d like to know, officer, is why you are taking an interest in a smallish company like Kleifaberg, which no longer exists, which always operated entirely legally, and the activities of which were mostly so long ago that they fall under various statutes of limitations.”

  “I think you know I can’t tell you that. But I think you also know as well as I do that your son has some questions to answer.”

  “MUM, ARE YOU going to be long?” Laufey asked as Gunna tried to make out what she was saying over the rumble of wheels on tarmac. In spite of the crackle of the poor connection, she instinctively realized that something was not right.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” she asked, eyes on the road, one finger to her ear to push the earpiece a little more firmly into place.

  “I don’t know. Sigrún’s really unhappy about something. She’s been crying and all sorts.”

  “Fifteen minutes. I’m on the way.”

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  Gunna put her foot down a little harder. At the turnoff, she coasted the Range Rover down the brand-new slip road to the roundabout underneath it that she was sure would become an impassable snow trap if the south-west were ever to see snow on the scale that she had grown up with in the west of Iceland, and accelerated as the road south opened up before her.

  The black lava fields that from a distance appeared devoid of life were starting to sprout the first green lichens of spring, which was bursting out of its winter dormancy now that the temperature was rising. She checked carefully before swinging the heavy car across the road to overtake a slow-moving truck laden with tubs of fish on its way south, and quickly wound down the window to extend a hand and wave to the driver, one of Haddi’s relatives, taking freshly landed fish to a processing plant in Grindav’k. The truck’s lights flashed briefly in acknowledgement before it disappeared behind a bend in the road.

  Gunna brought the car to a halt in a flurry of gravel outside Sigrún’s house and pocketed phone and keys before jumping down and striding straight round to the back door.

  “Hæ! Anyone live here?” she called out, opening the kitchen door and looking inside. A row of bulging bin liners greeted her.

  “Sigrún? You in?” she shouted, slipping off her shoes and padding into the house.

  A stifled sob told her where to look. In the bedroom, Sigrún sat on the end of the bed surrounded by piles of clothes.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Gunna asked.

  “Sod him. I’ve had enough,” Sigrún said through a voice choked with frustration. “Bloody men, nothing but trouble.”

  Gunna sat down next to her and surveyed the stacks of shirts, jeans, jackets and socks. “What’s gone wrong?”

  “Bloody Jörundur. He went to Norway with that bunch from where he used to work. He’s been there a week. Just a bloody, sodding, bastard week, that’s all. I got a text this afternoon saying he’s not coming home, he’s staying in Norway and would I send his stuff.”

  “He’s not on the piss again, is he?”

  “If only that was all,” Sigrún said despairingly. “The bastard. I called him half a dozen times but he’s not answering his phone. So I gave up and called his sister, asked what the hell’s happening, and she finally told me. Jörundur’s been seeing a woman over in Keflavík, and she’s gone to Norway with him. His sister finally admitted it. She’s not that bright and it didn’t take long to get the truth out of her.”

  “Æi, Rúna. I’m so sorry …” Gunna began.

  “Don’t be. I’m best rid of the bastard.”

  She sat clear-eyed on the edge of the bed and surveyed the contents of the wardrobes, feet extended in front of her and rocking back and forth.

  “You know, I always knew this would happen, always. I always knew deep inside that he’d let me down sooner or later. Eventually I wouldn’t be what he wanted any more and he’d be gone. Why didn’t I admit it to myself? Have I been in denial all these years, or what?”

  “What have you done with Jens?” Gunna asked, feeling foolish.

  “I asked Laufey to go to the shop for me and she took him as well. Couldn’t face going out right now, especially now that all the old bags down there will have heard the news,” she said bitterly. “Unless they knew it before I did. Did you know, Gunna? Did you?” Sigrún asked, turning to face her.

  “No, I didn’t. I had my suspicions that things weren’t right. But no, I didn’t know about his other woman.”

  “Sure?” Sigrún asked. “I need to be certain at least one person wasn’t in on it. Jörundur even told his sister, and that’s as good as putting an announcement on the radio.”

  “I had no idea,” Gunna assured her. “You know I’ve always had reservations about the man, but I never thought he’d do this.”

  “All right then,” Sigrún allowed grudgingly, her shoulders sagging.

  “So what are you going to do with all this lot?” Gunna asked, waving a hand at the stacks of clothes.

  “I told his sister to come and collect it.”

  “Is she on the way, then?”

  Sigrún stood up with a tough expression on her face that Gunna had not seen for years. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m going to bag it all up and she can collect it from either the front step or the dump.”

  When Laufey returned with Jens crying in his pushchair and shopping bags hung from both handles, she found them enthusiastically stuffing clothes into black bin liners as the heap on the floor diminished and the wardrobes looked increasingly bare.

  “That’s a lot of clothes,” Laufey observed doubtfully, holding Jens’s hand as he took faltering steps into the room. Sigrún swept him up in her arms.

  “Your daddy’s an unfaithful lying bastard, little man,” she crooned to the little boy, who grinned and gurgled back. “And if he comes back, I’m going to cut his balls off with a blunt kitchen knife and then Auntie Gunna can lock him up in a smelly cellar on stale bread and water for ever and ever.”

  “HOW’S YOUR FRIEND?” Steini asked softly, looking up from the book in his hands.

  “Ach, she’s all right. Well, she’s not, but she will be in a day or two.”

  Steini lifted his feet off the sofa and Gunna shrugged out of her coat and draped it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She hobbled over and dropped herself down next to him. He leaned over for a kiss, sandwiching the book uncomfortably between them.

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  “Sigrún’s husband, Jörundur, has been out of work since the crash. Then he got an offer through some blokes he’d worked with before, some big construction job in Norway, a tunnel or something. So he went to Norway to check it out and hopefully do a couple of weeks’ work. But what he didn’t tell anybody was that there’s a woman he’s been having it off with on the sly since Christmas, and she went with him.”

  “Ah, the perils of middle age,” Steini said with a rueful nod. “Pleased to be past all that.”

  “Get away with you. Anyway, he’s decided to stay there with his new woman, and the first Sigrún knew of it was when he texted her asking her to send his stuff to Norway.”

  “That’s a considerate, sensitive way to behave. Have a good day, apart from that?”

  “Not bad. Lots I can’t tell you. But it’s been non-stop excitement since I left the house this morning. You’d never believe how many really unpleasant, bad people there are out there, even in a quiet little place like Iceland.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Keep your doors locked at night.”

  Steini leaned forward and tipped the last of a bottle of white wine into a glass, then passed the glass to Gunna. She took a sip and wrinkled her nose at the slightly acidic aroma.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “Don’t ask.” He grinned.

  “Oh, right. I’m starving. Are you hungry?”

  Steini stroked the moustache that made him look a decade older than he really was.

  “If there’s food on offer, I suppose I could be persuaded,” he said with a slow smile.

  Gunna hauled herself to her feet and started to unbutton her blouse.

  “Good. There should be some garlic bread in the freezer that you can microwave, some pasta salad left over from yesterday, and a few lamb chops in the fridge. If you put them under the grill now, they’ll be done by the time I’m out of the shower.”

  Sunday 21st

  “JÓN, I DIDN’T expect to see you today,” Ágústa said with eyebrows arched in surprise.

  “Sorry, Mum. Thought I’d told you last week that I’d be over this weekend,” Jón replied. Rain dripped from the brim of his cap and Ragna Gústa quickly let go of his hand and darted behind her grandmother to vanish into the house.

  “You’d better come in, I suppose. Not for long, though. Didda Geirmunds is coming round later and we’re going out,” Ágústa pronounced without troubling to hide her annoyance at having her routine disturbed.

  Jón sat himself down in the kitchen after force of habit had made him open the fridge to check the contents. Ágústa set a cup in front of him and nodded at the elegant steel flask on the table. Everything about his mother and the way she lived was elegant, Jón reflected. The house was spick and span, expensively furnished without a single piece of self-assembly flatpack furniture to be seen.

  “So what brings you out here today?” Ágústa asked sharply. “I’m sure I’d told you. Ragna Gústa’s with me today and I thought you’d like to see her. Linda’s taking her somewhere next weekend, so it’s not as if you’ll see her again for a while.”

  “It’s such a shame,” Ágústa said with pursed lips. “Divorce is so common, but I thought it was something that didn’t happen in our family.”

  It bloody well has now, Jón wanted to yell at his mother. Instead he shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s happened and it’s not something I’m going to discuss,” he said. It’s all right for you, he thought. Buried two husbands and they both left you a packet.