“Look, how long is this going to take?”

  “Not long,” Gunna replied. She had taken an instant and deep dislike to Bjartmar and his indifferent attitude. The man showed no shred of interest in his wife’s state of health and was again fiddling with his iPhone. She tried to glare at him, but Bjartmar appeared not to notice. “If you don’t mind …” she ventured in an acid tone.

  Bjartmar looked up and stared back. “Sorry. Business.”

  “Anyone who might bear a grudge against your wife?”

  Bjartmar shrugged. “Undoubtedly. You don’t become wealthy without making enemies.”

  “All right. Anyone in particular?”

  “Almost anyone who worked for her. Everyone was sacked sooner or later. There were always a few outstanding court cases for wrongful dismissal in the works.”

  “What’s her business?”

  “It’s very smart, so I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. It’s a restaurant called ForEver.”

  Gunna took the jibe in her stride.

  “As it happens, I’ve been there,” she said smoothly. “Who runs the place? I take it your wife doesn’t spend her time waiting on tables?”

  Bjartmar stifled a yawn. “Don’t know. Last I knew there was a manager, but she may well have walked out since last week. The chef’s the guy who keeps everything going and the only one Unnur doesn’t want to upset too often.”

  “When did you last see Unnur?” Gunna asked.

  “The week before last. When I left to go to the States.”

  “Was there anything about her then that struck you as unusual? Anything odd?”

  Bjartmar’s teeth smiled but his eyes remained expressionless. “You mean apart from the carton of yoghurt that she slung at me? No, don’t think so. I heard it hit the door as I shut it behind me and I suppose she left it for the Thai girl to clean up.”

  “You mean you and your wife aren’t on good terms?”

  “My wife and I haven’t been on any kind of terms for the last few months. We have been leading pretty much separate lives, except when we meet, and then that’s generally to argue about something or for her to demand more cash to prop her restaurant up a little longer. Apart from that, everything’s been just wonderful,” he said with the first traces of bitterness in his voice. “Look, officer, I don’t know if you’re married or what. But it has run its course. We’ve been together for almost ten years and it’s got to the point where we just don’t like each other any more. It happens.”

  “It does,” Gunna agreed in a neutral voice, making quick notes on the pad in front of her.

  “And are you?” Bjartmar drawled.

  “What?”

  “Married? Shacked up?”

  “Not any more,” Gunna replied after a pause.

  Bjartmar leaned back and picked up his iPhone again.

  “Like I said, it happens,” he said in triumph. “Walk out, did you? Or did he? Or maybe she?” he leered.

  “He died,” Gunna said sharply. “Now, if you don’t mind, can we continue?”

  HRAFN KRISTJÁNSSON SAID nothing as he drove into town with a silent and fearful Diddi at his side. There was plenty he wanted to say, but he refrained from commenting, certain that he would be unable to contain his fury at the people who had led his son astray.

  Diddi stared out of the window at the street lights flashing past and knew deep inside that from now on nothing would be the same again. The people he had thought were his friends had let him down disastrously. He had both feared and admired people like Long Ómar Magnússon, men who went their own way and did what they liked without bothering too much about tiresome rules and regulations.

  Ommi had just taken the bag of money and grinned at him. There had been no pat on the back, no “Well done, Diddi,” nothing to say he had lived up to expectations. Diddi had just sat in the corner as Ommi and the man who had driven the car split the cash between them and ignored him, not even noticing as he left and went home to find his father sitting there waiting for him, his face like thunder.

  Even at a few minutes to midnight, the place was busy when Hrafn pulled up outside the police station on Hverfisgata and turned to his son as he switched off the engine.

  “Come on then,” was all he could find to say, and Diddi stepped out of the car into the cold evening air.

  The old man took his son’s arm as they went up the steps and into the building, where he opened the door and made sure the boy went inside first.

  The desk officer looked up and smiled.

  “Haven’t seen you for a while, mate,” he began, until he saw the morose figures father and son made.

  He picked up the phone and dialled.

  “Sævaldur? Yes, Sigvaldi on the front desk. You might want to come down here. The lad you’ve been looking for all day has just walked in the door.”

  Tuesday 16th

  GUNNA TYPED BJARTMAR Arnarson’s name into the police computer network, waited for results to show up and drummed her fingers on the desktop when nothing appeared other than the man’s date of birth and records of a few speeding and parking tickets.

  Frustrated, she went to an internet search engine instead and typed in the same name. A second later a list appeared and she set about reading the reports from newspapers, websites and gossip magazines. In ten minutes she had learned that Bjartmar Arnarson had made himself into one of Reykjavík’s lowest-profile millionaires with a fortune amassed from property speculation. It appeared that he had no expensive hobbies apart from a penchant for cars that did not extend to anything flashy, had only occasionally spent time fishing for salmon on exclusive riverbanks, and made a habit of travelling economy on scheduled airlines.

  “Helgi?” Gunna called out, turning around in her chair.

  “Yup?”

  “Bjartmar. What do you know?”

  “Probably about as much as you do.”

  “Not much, then?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any joy with Omar Magnússon?”

  “That bastard,” Helgi grumbled. “As far as I can make out, he’s been busy settling scores. There have been a few sightings, including an off-duty officer who says he saw him in a kiosk in Selfoss last weekend and a woman who’s certain she saw him in one of the petrol station snack bars in Borgarnes on the day he did a runner.”

  “But nothing you can use to track him down?”

  “Ah, you may well ask. I want a word with Daft Diddi as soon as Svaldur’s finished with him.”

  Gunna frowned at the mention of the recently promoted Sævaldur Bogason, an efficient but abrasive character she had always had difficulty getting on with. “He’s dealing with this ridiculous bank job yesterday, is he?”

  “Yup. Pretty much done and dusted. Diddi admits he did it. All three cashiers and the bloke whose hand he sliced have identified him. But we don’t have the knife he used, we don’t have the million or so in cash and we don’t know how he disappeared after leaving the bank.”

  “So, Sævaldur has it all tied up, apart from the bits he doesn’t?” she asked wryly.

  Helgi shrugged. “That’s more or less it. But Diddi turned up in Casualty the other day babbling that it wasn’t Ommi who beat him up. Which is what tells me that it was. So I have an idea that if Diddi doesn’t know where Iceland’s latest Jesse James is hiding, that’s probably where the cash disappeared to.”

  “Seems logical,” Gunna agreed.

  “The woman who saw him in Borgarnes the day he absconded said he was with a young woman, and the description matches our Ommi’s girlfriend, Selma. Better still, I searched around and found that Selma’s mother’s car, which is a flashy 5-series BMW, was caught by the speed camera at Fiskilækur going north and again that afternoon in the Hvalfjördur tunnel going back to Reykjavík. So Selma’s mum gets two speeding fines in one day and the timing fits perfectly.”

  “So Selma needs to answer a few questions?”

  “Doesn’t she just?”

  “And when are you going to ask them?”

  “As soon as I can find the bloody girl. She’s been off work for months, supposedly sick, and she’s not at home with her mum, who says she has no idea where her daughter is.”

  Gunna stood up and looked out of the window of the twoperson office that now contained three desks.

  “Going out for a minute, Helgi. If Johnny Depp shows up, just ask him to get undressed and wait for me, would you?”

  THE ECONOMIC CRIME Unit’s offices were larger than Serious Crime’s, as well as being in a building around the corner on Raudarárstigur instead of in the old Hverfisgata police station. The Economic Crime officers all looked young and fresh, although the young man who took Gunna aside had bags under his eyes. She extended a hand.

  “Gunnhildur. Serious Crime.”

  “Ah. We all know who you are. I’m Björgvin.”

  “Busy?” she asked.

  “And how. If there were another dozen of us, we’d still have more than enough to keep them at work.”

  “All right. I’ll keep it quick. Bjartmar Arnarson. Can you tell me anything about him?”

  Björgvin filled a plastic cup from the water cooler and sipped. “What do you need to know?”

  “I need to know who might want to try to kill his wife, and why.”

  “That fire in the Setberg?”

  “That’s the one. Apart from a few parking tickets, the man has a squeaky-clean record.”

  Björgvin grimaced. “He’s as sharp as a knife, I’ll give him that. He’s been up to his eyeballs in all kinds of dirty tricks but has always kept himself at enough of a distance to avoid too much investigation, let alone any kind of a case to be built against him.”

  “All right. Background?”

  “Unusually for the crimes we investigate here, he’s not a lawyer or a banker. He was a wheeler-dealer of some kind for a few years and the drug squad took an occasional interest in him, but nothing concrete. He owned part of a place called Blacklights at the end of the nineties.”

  “I remember it well,” Gunna said grimly.

  “Bjartmar was doing all right for himself, but things really took off when his dad died. Our boy inherited a boat in the Westmann Islands with a few hundred tonnes of cod quota. He promptly sold the lot and became straight virtually overnight. You remember when the banks were privatized?”

  “Around 2000?”

  “That’s it. Suddenly everything changed. They started lending stupid amounts to homeowners. Bjartmar saw what was happening and put all his fish money into property, bought up land and houses all over the city. Within a year, property prices had gone through the roof. He bought and sold dozens of properties and made an absolute killing. That’s when he became respectable.”

  “And started wearing a suit?”

  “That’s it. Got himself a trophy wife at the same time and started making even more money when he set up a property agency. You must know it, Landex? They advertise all the time, or used to. Business must have taken a hit recently, but I’m sure he has a good bit salted away somewhere. We know he has significant deposits overseas, as Landex had been expanding into Mediterranean property as well. The Spanish operation is called Sandex. Right on the beach.” Björgvin squeezed the empty cup until it crackled and dropped it into a bin by the water cooler.

  “So how respectable is Bjartmar? Is he all legal these days?”

  “It’s hard to tell. I doubt it. But he’s not involved with any of the banks or the financial institutions in a serious way and he’s nowhere near the top of our list of priorities. He can be confident that Economic Crime won’t be knocking on his door for a few years yet, unless it’s linked to laundering cash or avoiding currency controls, in which case we’d jump on him. But he’s too smart for that.”

  “Well, thanks for your time,” Gunna said with a smile. “That certainly helps me out on the man’s background.”

  “You’re welcome. D’you think he might have had any involvement in this fire? He wasn’t always a criminal with a briefcase, and there are stories about extracting cash with menaces from years ago. But of course, nobody’s ever been prepared to point the finger.”

  “At the moment I have no idea, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Björgvin nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me informed. Bjartmar is pretty ruthless. He’s cut out business partners in the past and left them high and dry. It’s amazing when you think about it that he’s not a financial genius, just a dope-dealer who got lucky,” he said with a thin smile. “Unlike the real financial whizzes, who are mostly bankrupt now.”

  HELGI HAD THE radio tuned to a classical station. As a young man he’d preferred prog rock, but as his hair gradually fell out, he felt the call of the old-fashioned music that his father liked to listen to in the cowshed, claiming that it helped the milk yield. Helgi had even toyed with the idea of getting his old accordion out, but the look on Halla’s face on the rare occasions he had mentioned it had been enough to make him think again. Although they got on well, the difference in their ages was a source of occasional discomfort for him.

  When Halla’s forty, I’ll be past fifty, he mused, sitting in the dark and watching the house where Eygló Grímsdóttir, mother of Long Omar Magnússon’s girlfriend Selma, lived with her cherished BMW on display in the drive. The area was one of the better parts of the city’s suburbs, a quiet few rows of newish houses flanked on both sides by empty developments that were likely to stay empty now that the property market had come to a crashing halt. Halla had even taken Helgi to view one of these brand-new terraced houses and they liked both the area and the price. But with as much chance of selling their flat in a faded 1970s block as of a winning lottery ticket, there was little choice but to stay put.

  Helgi reflected that if Eygló were to decide to go for a drive, his Skoda would struggle to keep up. The clock in the dashboard had stopped months ago, so he tapped the keypad of his mobile phone to light the screen and saw that the time was later than he’d thought.

  Ten minutes more, then I’m going home, he decided, peering through the dark at the lights of the long living-room window. He had always been a patient man, something he had learned in his teens waiting on the moors with a shotgun cradled in his arms for migrating geese to pass within range.

  He could see people moving in the living room and guessed that there were at least three present: Eygló, Selma and a third person, a man, he guessed, judging by the silhouettes. He turned down the radio and eased the window open, listening to the night and the music coming from the house. The germ of an idea came to him and he picked up his communicator from the passenger seat.

  “Control, zero-two-sixty. Is there a patrol car at a loose end anywhere near Vesturmóar?”

  “Zero-two-sixty, zero-one-fifty-one. Just coming up to Hamraborg. Need us for something exciting, do you?”

  “Just a quick look at something. Meet me in the bus stop at the top of Vesturmóar. I’m in a green Skoda.”

  “We all know what your old rattletrap looks like, Helgi. See you in a minute.”

  The squad car pulled up behind him and Helgi got out to talk to the officers sitting in it, a burly youngish man and a young woman new to the force. He quickly explained what he wanted them to do and set off on foot down the slope towards the row of houses that backed on to Vesturmóar, cursing the mud at the side of the road where the new streets still had no proper pavements. When he felt he had a good view of the back of Eygló Grímsdóttir’s house, he clicked his communicator.

  “Zero-one-fifty-one, zero-two-sixty. In position.”

  “OK,” came the laconic reply.

  Helgi peered through the clear night air and watched. He could see the lights of Eygló’s kitchen window and guessed where the back door was.

  “Zero-two-sixty, zero-one-fifty-one. Silla’s knocking on the front door now.”

  “Got you.”

  “Door’s opening.”

  As the words crackled into his earpiece, the back door swung open and a figure stepped out of the house and into the night.

  “Zero-one-fifty-one, zero-two-sixty, that’s great. Stick around for ten minutes just in case, then you can wrap up.”

  Helgi jogged along the road, keeping the dark figure in sight as it flitted from the glare of one street light to the next. Suddenly it disappeared, and Helgi set off down the slope, trying not to let his footfalls crunch too much on the rubble underfoot. He caught a glimpse of the bulky figure turning a corner ahead of him and realized that he would hardly be able to keep up without making more noise and risking alerting the man to his presence, when the sound of a door clicking shut stopped him in his tracks. He concentrated on the direction the sound came from and pointed himself towards it, emerging into the next street of empty houses made up of terraces of six. Every one was dark and empty, the first street of a new development.

  Feeling uncomfortably conspicuous, he walked along the street as if he had a perfect right to and was simply taking a short cut. At the far end of the second set of six blank-eyed houses, a narrow ribbon of light glimmered faintly past one edge of a badly fitted garage door.

  So, Ommi. That’s where you’re keeping yourself, he congratulated himself. I think you might be getting a visit in the morning.

  JÓN STUMBLED AND leaned against the wall. His head was swimming. He had always been a thirsty man, but his love of a good drink was something he had easily suppressed during the years when he had worked hard and had a happy home life.

  That had all changed now, and he felt his thirst clawing at him more often, whispering to him that a drink would help and that the day would pass more easily with a sharpener. With no more contract work to be had, he found himself relying on word-of-mouth jobs paid in cash to keep himself in funds. Friends of friends kept his phone number pinned to a board somewhere, just in case the dishwasher developed a leak or something went wrong with the heating.

  He was enjoying it in some ways. For years he had meticulously kept records and rarely did black work other than for friends. Now, with the taxman and the child support people all chasing him, he had found a pleasurable release in ignoring them all. In any case, with no home to go to any more, it would take a while before their letters started reaching him again.