Quentin Bates - Chilled to the Bone

Helgi was immersed again in the hotel’s CCTV footage, alone this time as he pored over the blurry images fast-forwarding through the hotel’s lobby and corridors.

“We’ve had some unwelcome company,” Gunna said without preamble. “Can you put that thing on to the bar at around six yesterday?”

“Yesterday evening?”

“That’s it. Some smart operator came in here masquerading as a copper and chatted up the bartender. He even took him across the street and bought him a beer.”

Helgi grimaced as he fiddled with the computer to find the footage from the previous evening. “Buying anyone a beer would rule him out as one of us, wouldn’t it? So what do you reckon that was all about?”

“Ach, I don’t know,” Gunna said, failing to hide her irritation. “Some nosy bastard. A journalist, I’d imagine.”

“Are you all right, chief?” Helgi asked, looking around and peering over the reading glasses on the end of his nose.

“Fine, thanks,” Gunna scowled. “What’s on the screen?”

Helgi clicked and the figure of Kolbeinn in his white shirt and black waistcoat could be seen at the bar, polishing a glass. He served a couple of customers in rapid, jerky fast forward as Helgi scrolled through half an hour in a matter of minutes. As the clock rolled over to six precisely, a bearded man in a leather jacket approached the bar and Gunna could see him in conversation with Kolbeinn, their talk continuing over the cup of coffee the barman served him; she could see a wallet being flashed quickly.

“He could have showed that lad a library card at that speed and got away with it,” Helgi grunted as the bearded man left the bar with a spring in his step. “That was pretty quick, wasn’t it?”

“Remarkably so. Let’s have a look at the lobby, shall we? He’s admitted that this guy invited him over the road for a beer, so let’s just see how fast that happened. Then you can get me a still of this deadbeat hack’s face. I’ll see if he can be tracked down and I’ll have a quiet word in his ear.”

“Enough to sow fear in any God-fearing man’s heart,” Helgi intoned.

“Any news?”

Jóel Ingi shook his head. “Tonight, I hope.”

“I hope so. Ægir’s not going to let this go easily.”

“He’s a bastard. A real bastard,” Jóel Ingi announced in a whisper not quite discreet enough for comfort.

“Shhh. Someone could hear you,” Már scolded, stepping back and taking a closer look at Jóel Ingi. “Are you all right?” he asked eventually. “Been overdoing it?”

“Not sleeping all that well, but I’m fine. I can handle this. You wait and see.”

Yngvi was in his office, and as Gunna approached the open door she could hear his querulous protests in the face of a verbal onslaught. Stepping past the door, she was able to see through the narrow gap between it and the frame and catch a momentary glimpse of Yngvi behind his desk, leaning back in his leather office chair as a bulky man leaned with both hands on the desk.

“It’s a damned disgrace and it shouldn’t be allowed for you people to harass staff outside working hours …”

“I assure you …” Yngvi protested uselessly.

“Reprehensible,” the broad-backed man complained. “If you want to carry out your damned investigations into the disgraceful things that happen in this place, then you should do them on the premises. You shouldn’t be doing it in people’s own time and invading their privacy. It’s a damned scandal and I shall be taking this to the union. Have no fear.”

“If I can say something,” Yngvi finally managed to say as the bear of a man paused for breath-Gunna could almost hear Yngvi collecting his thoughts. “If I can say something. Look, Hákon. That’s your name, isn’t it? I’m sorry if your wife has been inconvenienced. She’s an outstanding member of staff.”

“And so damn what?” The big man wheezed. “Why’s she getting this harassment? That’s what it is,” he said in triumph, as if he had been searching for the right word. “Damned harassment.”

“Listen to me, will you? We will be carrying out an internal investigation, but that hasn’t started yet and it probably won’t be conducted until the police investigation is complete.”

“So what are you trying to tell me?” The big man demanded and Gunna stayed out of sight, also interested to hear Yngvi’s explanation.

“I’m telling you that if your wife has been harassed, it wasn’t anything to do with the hotel management. It must have been the police. It wasn’t anything I have authorized and any internal investigation here certainly wouldn’t leave the building.”

Gunna continued along the corridor slowly enough to hear Yngvi’s final comment to the man. “I suggest you speak to the police. There are three officers here right now, and the one in charge is a woman called Gunnhildur. Maybe she’ll be able to put your mind at rest.”

The picture wasn’t clear, but it was clear enough. A broad-faced man with a goatee beard worn distinctively long had been caught on CCTV footage in a screenshot that was blurred but showed him looking almost toward the camera. Shortish hair and a faded dark leather jacket completed the picture. Gunna wondered where she had seen that face before with its determined look beneath heavy brows.

When the man she had overheard in Yngvi’s office hadn’t found her half an hour later, Gunna zipped up her coat as high as it would go and strode out of the hotel’s entrance, the door grinding as it closed automatically behind her. Grit in the mechanism, Gunna guessed, screwing up her face in distaste as the wind swept flakes of stinging snow into her face; she could feel that the slush under her feet had begun to harden again in the thickening frost.

There was no post-Christmas rush to the center of Reykjavík. With earnings having remained static for those fortunate enough to still be employed, while prices had risen since the financial crash that now seemed to have receded practically to the Saga Age, shoppers were hardly spending much-at least not until the new credit card month began, Gunna reflected. A few years earlier she had been seriously considering leaving the police to earn more money in a new environment with private security work, but with the upheaval of the crash vivid in her memory, she had resigned herself to holding on to her state pay check, and the transfer to plain clothes in Reykjavík after her rural beat in Hvalvík had made life more stressful but considerably more interesting.

In the lee of a shop, she extracted her phone and punched in a quick SMS.

At the office?

She had hardly put her phone away when it buzzed in reply.

Slaving away

Coffee?

5 mins?

OK. Around the corner

The cafe was almost empty, and as the man behind the counter chewed his lip every time someone walked past, Gunna assumed he must be the proprietor. He brightened as she pushed the door open and stamped snow from her boots.

“I’m sick of winter already,” she said. “Coffee, please, and one of those things.”

“What coffee you like?”

“Just old-fashioned coffee-style coffee. My mate’ll be here in a minute and he’ll want something fancy with asparagus honey and organic goat’s milk, I expect.”

The man took Gunna’s money and she had taken off her coat and was deep in the previous day’s newspaper when Skúli pushed open the door and followed her route to the counter.

“How goes it at the rockface of contemporary journalism?”

“Chipping away,” Skúli admitted, sitting down with a tall glass of coffee. “Still at Reykjavík Voice -four days a week now. They advertised for someone, couldn’t get anyone they liked, so they offered me an extra two days.”