Quentin Bates - Chilled to the Bone

“That was only a few days ago, pal. This stuff doesn’t happen overnight.”

“I’ve paid you a lot of money. You said you’d be as fast as you could.”

“I work as fast as I can, but I don’t have a magic wand,” the voice replied dismissively. “That kind of stuff costs extra. A lot extra.”

“But this has to be done quickly. You have to find it. You have no idea how important this is.”

“Look, pal,” the voice said, staccato. “You can have cheap, you can have fast, you can have discreet. No way can you have all three. If you want discretion, then it has to take time. You understand?”

“Yeah, I get you,” Jóel Ingi replied resignedly.

“I’ll be in touch,” the voice said shortly and the line went dead.

Gunnastared at the image that Yngvi had printed out for her. The woman’s eyes were shadows under heavy make-up, eyelashes unrealistically long and heavy, but the eyes still had a piercing quality that the camera had captured as she’d glanced directly into its lens. The hair seemed too perfect, elegantly coiffured in a deceptively complex cut that let the hair spread over her shoulders.

The face was long, with a distinctive bony nose that wasn’t quite straight, and Gunna had little doubt that she would recognize the woman if she were to see her in person. She tapped the table as she thought things through. The woman had clearly arrived at the hotel with the intention of meeting Jóhannes Karlsson, and it was just as clear that he had been expecting her, but the handshake indicated that this was a formal meeting of some kind, or else the first time they had met.

“Here, chief,” Helgi called softly, his finger on the mouse as he scrolled back through the digital recording.

“What do you have?”

“Look.”

Gunna and Helgi watched as the woman emerged from the lift on the fourth floor and made her way around the corner toward the room where Jóhannes Karlsson’s body was still spread-eagled on the bed as the forensic team examined every fibre in the place. She looked quickly left and right as she passed the camera, after which the camera recorded twenty seconds of blank corridor before it stopped.

“It’s automatic,” Helgi explained. “On the floors upstairs the cameras are fitted with motion sensors, so they start recording as soon as they sense someone moving.”

“I got the gist of that, thanks, Helgi.”

“So the next thing we see on the tape is this,” he said, eyes still glued to the screen as Jóhannes Karlsson emerged from the lift with a swagger, and looked both ways along the plush corridor just as the young woman had done, before disappearing from view.

“That’s it, is it? We don’t get a view of the door to the room itself?”

“Nope, according to that weird night porter, the cameras record the lift and the door to the stairs, so that they only record who goes to each floor, not who goes to which rooms. It’s a human rights violation, apparently, if they record who strays into someone else’s room.”

“And this is the kind of place lawyers can afford to stay in, so I suppose they have to be careful. Helgi, what’s your take on all this?”

Helgi sat back; the recording was paused with Jóhannes Karlsson’s back freeze-framed in the swing doors leading to the fourth-floor suites. “Simple. He orders a hooker, meets her in the bar downstairs. They go up to the room separately, although I’d bet the staff here knew exactly what was happening. She takes off her bra, his blood pressure goes through the roof when he gets an eyeful of her tits, he has a heart attack and she gets out as quick as she can.”

Gunna held her chin in her hands as she looked at Jóhannes Karlsson’s broad back on the screen, frozen in mid-stride. He had been a big man, and a muscular man in his youth, who walked with all the assurance that money or power can give.

“I reckon you’re probably quite right. I’m sure this isn’t a murder case, but we’re going to have to talk to this woman and get her side of what happened. I doubt we’ll even be able to pin an immoral earnings rap on her as it’s her word against ours that they were anything other than just good friends,” Gunna said thoughtfully. “Not that I expect Jóhannes Karlsson’s wife will be too impressed.”

“Right enough,” Helgi agreed.

Gunna stood up. “But as this guy was a wealthy man, and I’d guess he has a few friends in high places, we’d best cover our backs and do it all by the book, otherwise it’ll come back to haunt us later. I’m going to have a chat with some of the staff again. Go through the rest of the recordings, will you, and see if you can get a glimpse of her leaving the building so we can see when she left?”

María wasn’t home and the flat echoed. Baddó’s head buzzed after three beers and he reflected that a few years ago three beers would have been nothing more than the precursor to something better. Years of enforced abstinence had merely ensured that three beers made him want to spend the rest of the afternoon sleeping on his sister’s sofa.

He made coffee, and made it strong enough to bring him back to reality with a jerk. A sandwich of cheese and cold peas mashed into the thick bread helped settle his stomach and, with a second mug of extra-strong coffee at his elbow, he looked at the envelope on the table in front of him.

Baddó reflected that he could return it to Hinrik the next day, unopened, and tell him that he couldn’t do the job. But he knew that wouldn’t be acceptable to the man in the leather jacket who made barmen jump with a wave of his little finger. He shook his head, disappointed in himself that his curiosity had got the better of him, instead of turning down Hinrik’s job without asking any questions.

There were two photographs in the envelope. Printed on heavy gloss paper, but grainy and not as distinct as he would have liked. Looking at them carefully, Baddó decided that one at least was lifted from CCTV footage and showed a dark-haired woman in a tracksuit top zipped up under her chin and with the straps of a bag over her shoulder. The expression on her face was tight and determined, as if there were an insecurity or a tension about her. The ringlets of black hair fell past her eyebrows and around her head to her shoulders, as if she were hiding behind it.

The second photograph showed another woman. Taken in better light, this one was clearer, showing a woman in a pale dress, caught looking over her shoulder to give a three-quarter view of her face. Baddó admired the long legs that ended in surprisingly low-heeled court shoes.

Tall, he thought. She must be one-eighty, one-ninety if she can get away without heels.

He placed the two pictures side by side and tried to compare the dark-haired woman looking past the camera to the tall blonde smiling at someone or something to one side. He stood up and rooted in a kitchen drawer, eventually returning to the table with a cracked magnifying glass that had lost its handle. Any thought of sleep had gone and it wasn’t because of the extra-strong coffee cooling in a mug at the corner of the kitchen table.

He pored over both pictures, starting with the backgrounds. The blonde was standing in a big room, and Baddó could make out tables and chairs in the distance. A restaurant, he decided. Or maybe it could be a club of some kind, he decided. The dark-haired woman appeared to be in a corridor, with a blank wall over her shoulder and an indistinct sign tacked to the wall behind her, half cut off by the edge of the picture. He stared at it through the glass and finally made out the letters NCY EXIT picked out in large square letters.

“Emergency Exit,” he decided with satisfaction. That means a restaurant, a club, a hotel, a school, an office even. Or some kind of government building, maybe, he mused.