Cold as hell, p.16
Cold As Hell, page 16
He was taken by surprise when the door to the converted garage opened as soon as he knocked; for a moment he was sure that an unfamiliar man had answered it.
‘Welcome to my humble house,’ Lady said, stepping aside to let him in. All Daníel could do was stare.
Instead of nylon tights and a silk dressing gown, today’s outfit was faded jeans and a grey T-shirt, and not a trace of make-up to be seen. Instead, there was the shadow of a day’s growth of stubble.
‘I can see you’re surprised. But while femininity is captivating as a competitive sport, there’s relief to be had in putting it aside for a while.’
‘Wow. You don’t seem like your real self…’
‘Well, I have many different selves, darling. Just the same as you do. Just like everyone else. Most people only let one of these show.’
‘There’s a lot of truth in that,’ Daníel said, taking a seat in one of the chairs by the table, where a sewing machine stood in the middle of a heap of pieces of cloth, reels of cotton and incomplete drawings of dresses. Lady sat in the other chair, reached to open a small fridge, took out a couple of beers and handed one of the cans to Daníel.
‘You don’t seem well, my love. Your aura is in tatters.’
Daníel murmured something unintelligible and drank half a can in one long swallow. He had as much belief in auras as he had in elves. But there was a relief in someone picking up that he wasn’t feeling well, that someone paid him enough attention to figure out his inner pain.
‘There’s a woman on my mind.’
‘It had to be something like that,’ Lady said. ‘There’s nothing like love to screw up an aura.’
‘I haven’t worked out if it’s love. I don’t know what she wants. She doesn’t seem interested, but every time we’re near each other, it’s like the air between us is electrified. Or maybe it’s just my imagination.’
‘And you want to analyse and compartmentalise, like you’re carrying out a police investigation.’
‘I’m not sure about that,’ Daníel said, thinking to himself for a moment. ‘I’d like to know if she feels the same, if she senses the charge as strongly as I do.’
‘You’ll feel better when you realise that, in reality, the fundamentals of existence are totally incomprehensible and chaotic, completely crazy,’ Lady said. ‘And nothing fun or beautiful comes of anything that can be organised.’
‘As usual, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ Daníel said.
‘No, you aren’t the sharpest chisel in the toolbox,’ Lady said, sniffing with disdain, although Daníel saw a friendlier expression than usual on Lady’s face. ‘What I mean is that you need to loosen your grip and go with the flow. Don’t apply pressure or try to influence the way events turn out. Just let things happen.’
76
Áróra’s heart beat fast as she reached her room, and this time it was excitement and not a thumping hangover that was the cause. Hákon had said that he needed to do some work, and they had taken the lift together. She got out on the second floor and ran along the corridor to her own room, hurrying inside to switch on her computer. The imaging software showed the view from the webcam, but she couldn’t immediately get her bearings as the overhead viewpoint was so different. Little by little, though, the image began to tally with her recollection of Hákon’s room. The large black area that occupied half of the picture was the desk, and the dots on it were glasses and other oddments. A large grey circle at the lower end of the image looked like a ball, but had to be the office chair, and some indistinct black shapes beside it had to be clothes on the floor or something that had gone flying when she had tumbled off the table last night. The square that lay at the edge of the deck was the computer; the computer that this was all about.
Her heartbeat gradually returned to normal as she waited for something to happen. She stared at the computer screen, expecting Hákon to appear, so determined not to miss anything that she didn’t even dare stand up and make herself the coffee that she had a real need for. Of course, this was ridiculous; the webcam software would record everything and she could replay it if she needed to. But there was something about watching what was happening in another room in real time; it gave her the feeling of becoming a higher being, larger and greater in some way, like an eagle calmly soaring beneath the clouds, but still able to see every tiny movement on the earth below.
Áróra was startled when Hákon finally appeared on the screen. To begin with he appeared as a blurred shape, and when he sat in the chair she could see clearly in the monochrome image how his head became clear against his white-clad shoulders. He worked much faster at the keyboard than she had expected, and in a few moments he had opened the laptop, clicked on something, tapped at the keyboard, again clicked with the mouse and punched something in. At this speed there was no possibility of making out the keyboard strokes. But now she had a recording and could slow down the replay.
She stood up, set the little coffee machine to make her an espresso, then sat at the desk and did as the lad in the computer shop had instructed. By spooling the recording back and stopping the replay at each keystroke, she was able to write down Hákon’s password. He clearly took security seriously, as his eight-character password included lower- and upper-case letters, as well as a number. Now that she had what she had been looking for, there was one more thing she needed to check before making her move.
She had sat in the lobby with her phone and checked literally every post on Facebook and read both Icelandic and English online news by the time the American couple finally appeared. They had their luggage with them and were dressed for outdoors, the man in a grey overcoat and the woman in a pink anorak.
‘Checkout, please,’ the woman called out as she rang the bell, and a young man shot out of the office behind the desk. Áróra pretended to be absorbed in her phone, but carefully followed everything happening at reception. The young man printed out the bill, and in the hope of being able to see the amount, Áróra stood up just as he slid it across the desk towards the couple. She reached for one of the leaflets displayed in a holder by the desk, but there was no way she could make out the figures on the bill at this distance. It was enough to be able to confirm that the bill was a big one, very big. It was ridiculously high, if the wad of two-hundred-euro notes – Arora noted they weren’t paying in krónur – the woman slapped on the counter was anything to go by.
Áróra sat back down in the chair by the window and smiled to the American couple as they steered their cases out through the hotel door. She scrolled through to Michael’s number. This was the accountant she always went to for help when she needed to get to the bottom of a complex money trail.
‘What are you after?’ Michael grunted in mock irritation as he answered the phone. Áróra knew that this was his own peculiar sense of humour at work, but she still felt a stab of guilt, because Michael was more than a colleague. He was a friend.
‘Michael, I need help,’ she said.
‘I know that,’ he replied. ‘You never call unless you need something, so I can’t help wondering if you’re using me.’
‘Of course I’m using you,’ she said, and laughed.
This was the banter that had been their usual way of communicating for as long as they had known each other, ever since she had first sought Michael’s assistance to figure out a complex business network. Regardless of what she habitually told people, she was no accountant.
‘This one’s entirely off the record, Michael,’ she said. ‘Totally confidential. In a few minutes I’m going to email you some documents and a few notes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d take a look and tell me what conclusion you come to.’
77
The greatest injustice within the Icelandic penal system was that murder usually attracted a sentence of no more than sixteen years. Just sixteen, and normally ten would be served. Ten years passed quickly. This was why he was setting out to do what he had planned.
He wondered whether it had been daring or simply careless on his part to buy the ketamine from Björn. He simply hadn’t been able to resist. Somehow it was too neat, taking the circumstances into consideration. It would serve Björn right. He sold it to anyone who asked, through a Facebook page that he called The Sweetshop. Grímur’s message had barely been sent when a reply dropped in:
No prob. Plenty of Special K. Where do you want to do the handover?
Grímur had suggested the car park outside the kiosk down at Mjódd, and he sat there in his car, watching people going in and out of the shopping centre and wondering why so many of those who shopped there had blue hair. This wasn’t just the elderly biddies with walking sticks or frames, and light-blue hairdos, but youngsters sporting electric-blue hair. He watched them all until he saw a young lad get out of a car and glance around as if he was looking for something. Then he got out of his own car and walked straight to the lad, now standing in front of the kiosk, shoulders hunched and his hood over his face.
Grímur extended a hand, money between his fingers, and the boy snatched the wad of notes with lightning speed, simultaneously handing him a package with his other hand as he set off for his car again, and Grímur did the same. No words had been exchanged, and the lad had hardly looked at him, so he doubted that he would be recognised if they were to meet in the stairwell at home. Björn’s dealers still showed up occasionally, although more rarely since he had been sentenced. He no longer seemed to keep his dope in his flat, and must have found some other base for the boys, while he stayed at home and handled sales via Facebook.
‘Our home is like a bus station,’ Ísafold had said, sighing into her coffee, and Grímur had encouraged her to talk to Björn about it, back when he still felt that Björn was a candidate for some kind of redemption. Ísafold had done just that, and Björn had rewarded her with a beating. Her cries and tears cut him to the bone, and the anger, the barely controllable wave of fury directed at Björn, began to take root in his heart. Grímur had called the police, reporting domestic violence and drug dealing in the building, and that had resulted in Björn’s sentence. That was just one of the times he had tried to save Ísafold, one of many. But more recently Grímur had learned the hard lesson that there was no saving those who didn’t want to be saved.
Grímur waited until he was sitting at the kitchen table at home before opening the package. The phial containing the clear liquid seemed so tiny and harmless, it was hard to believe that this was the key to incapacitating a person. He shook it and held it in the palm of his hand. It would be no problem to hide, up a sleeve or in a pocket, until it was time to spike someone’s drink.
78
Olga had thought through every possible way of telling Omar what the movement’s lawyer had said, and, as so often in the past, she concluded that honesty was the best option.
‘My dear Omar,’ she said gently as he spooned a portion of scrambled egg onto a plate and handed it to her. ‘We need to talk.’
He smiled, and his eyebrows lifted almost to the middle of his forehead.
‘About the chickens?’
She was almost ready to laugh at his innocent expectation, which was in such stark contrast to what they needed to discuss. She thought of the murdered man in Istanbul while he thought of keeping chickens on the balcony. She took the plate and shook her head.
‘It can wait until we’ve eaten,’ she said, switching on the radio. The midday news bulletin was about to begin, and just as the last of the headlines was read out, the toaster popped up and Omar handed her one of the two slices. Ever since he arrived, she had wondered how he could handle the hot slices without burning his fingers, and without being in any apparent hurry. He had told her that he was used to cooking over an open fire, so maybe that was the reason. Perhaps he had burned his fingers so often that they had lost all sensation. She felt a sudden urge to touch his fingers, reached for his hand and drew it to her. She ran her thumb over his fingertips and lifted his hand to her cheek.
‘Mama,’ he whispered gently and smiled. His eyes were so deep, so dark, so gentle, that she felt a sob rise in her throat. She released his hand, returned his smile and forked up some of the scrambled egg as a way to keep the tears from flowing. She wished that she could have had such a moment with her own boy, for Jonni to have looked at her with a sincerity in his eyes, something that might have demonstrated his fondness for her, a little warmth.
They ate in silence during the bulletin, but when Olga had swallowed the last morsel of bread, she cleared her throat and began.
‘My dear Omar, your residence application was refused again,’ she said, and saw the warmth in his eyes give way to a well of despair beyond description. ‘The lawyer said that you came to Iceland using identity papers belonging to a man who was murdered in Istanbul.’
She had expected tears, trembling and a flood of questions. But Omar’s reaction was something very different. He picked up his plate, still with a little scrambled egg on it, and hurled it at the wall with all his strength, so that shards rained down around her. She instinctively cowered down, lifting her shoulders and covering her face with her hands. When she looked up, he was gone.
79
Ebbi came across as a far more agreeable character than his brother Björn. He invited them in and welcomed Violet warmly. She had already told Daníel that Ebbi was a mechanic, and that was borne out by the sight of the oil ingrained in his hands as he poured coffee for them both. Ebbi lived in a small terraced house above Bústaðavegur, and a strip of the Fossvogur valley could be seen from his kitchen window, between the apartment block across the street and a flourishing spruce that had been planted in the open space outside a couple of decades ago, and which nobody had expected would grow as well as it had.
‘I have to be honest with you, I’m very worried,’ Ebbi said, and sighed as he sat at the end of the kitchen table. ‘I’ve spoken to Björn a few times, but he just snarls back at me, so there’s no way to get out of him exactly when Ísafold left, even. It’s the same with him as it was with her. There’s no point trying to talk to people when they’re that screwed up.’
‘What do you mean, screwed up?’ Violet asked sharply, her tone bordering on accusatory.
‘Getting high on their own supply?’ Ebbi said, framing his statement as a question, as if that would somehow soften the effect of his words. It didn’t seem to have the desired effect; Violet’s lips pursed, and she folded her arms over her chest.
‘Are you suggesting that Ísafold took an active part in Björn’s dealing?’ Daníel asked, glancing at Violet, who reacted instantly.
‘Dealing?’ she snapped. ‘I was given to understand that his sentence was for possession, and those pills were for his own use. It wasn’t a sentence for dealing.’
Daníel took a long breath, deep down into his belly and through his open mouth, so it wouldn’t be heard. As was so often the case with relatives, Violet was deeply reluctant to believe anything bad about her own people, standing guard over the reputations of her daughter and her partner, even when the circumstances no longer warranted it.
‘It’s important to listen to what Ebbi has to say,’ he said mildly, laying a gentle hand on Violet’s arm. He glanced at Ebbi, nodding to indicate that he should answer the question.
‘I don’t think she was doing drugs, and I also don’t believe that she took a direct part in dealing. Björn has plenty of young kids who deliver prescription drugs all over town, just like they’re delivering pizzas,’ Ebbi said, shaking his head in disgust. ‘All the while, Björn sits safe at home and manages everything through the internet. But I know he used Ísafold to help him get hold of drugs.’
‘And how do you know this?’ Daníel asked.
‘I talked to Ísafold when I met her at my mum’s place for Sunday dinner a few weeks ago. She was depressed, so I pushed until I found out what was wrong, and she told me she had been sacked from work for stealing, and…’
Ebbi fell silent, as Violet sobbed and buried her face in her hands.
‘And?’ Daníel said, pressing him. He had the feeling that Ebbi was about to say something important.
‘She said that Björn was angry with her because of it. Because she had lost her job. I imagine that Ísafold’s access to the old folks’ prescription medicines had been something of a goldmine for Björn.’
Ebbi stood up, tore a sheet from the kitchen roll on the worktop, and handed it to Violet, who carefully blew her nose.
When Daníel took Violet out to the car, he paused before he closed the passenger door.
‘Sorry, I forgot to ask Ebbi something,’ he said, shutting the door before she could ask what. In two long strides he was at the door. He knocked, and Ebbi, who had only just closed it behind them, opened it immediately. Daníel pushed him back into the hall, closing the front door behind him as he placed his palm on Ebbi’s chest and forced him against the wall.
‘What aren’t you telling us?’ Daníel said, staring hard into Ebbi’s eyes, while he opened and closed his mouth, like a fish on dry land. ‘Spit it out, man,’ he hissed, pushing him harder against the wall until he finally spoke.
‘I thought it would be too much for her mother. The last time I saw Ísafold, when we had dinner at Mum’s place, she had two black eyes. She’d tried to cover it up with make-up, but you couldn’t miss it.’
Daníel withdrew his hand from Ebbi’s chest and took a step back.
‘And?’ he asked, returning to his usual mild tone. ‘The family had nothing to say about her being treated like that?’
Ebbi shook his head, and his lips twisted into a bitter smile. ‘The old lady worships the ground Björn walks on, so she’s brilliant at just not seeing all the shit stuff he does. She’s even furious with Ísafold for walking out on him. Me, I’m just relieved that she finally did it. I told her that day, and I’d told her a few months before, too, that she would have to leave him. It was getting crazy. He made her steal drugs, and then smacked her about,’ he said. His voice cracked and dropped to a whisper. ‘I offered to take her to the refuge, and I told her she could stay with me. I could have kept my brother away from her, but she seemed to have this faith that it wouldn’t be long before everything would be just fine.’
