Quentin Bates: Frozen Assets

‘Shit. I forgot to switch it on when I left this morning, and I didn’t even have the radio on in the car,’ he admitted. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know anything.’

‘Anyway, now that you’re here, I suppose you’d better have a story to take back with you.’

‘That would be. . great.’

‘You mean it would save your sorry arse from being fried?’

‘Er, yes, probably.’

‘There’ll be a statement this afternoon, so you can have it half an hour before it comes out officially. I don’t suppose that’ll do any harm.’

‘Thank you. That’s brilliant.’

‘Right. But you’ll owe me a favour there straight away. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘What are you on this paper, then, a junior reporter, or what?’

‘No. I’m the crime editor.’

‘What? There’s a whopping story here and you didn’t even know about it, Mr Crime Editor?’ Gunna asked with a second sly smile.

Skúli shuffled fish about on his plate. ‘Actually I’ve only been the crime editor for a week. And that was because someone put the by-line as a joke on something I wrote about a woman who had been caught shoplifting from the shopping centre at Kringlan. It stayed in by mistake, so I’m the new crime editor.’

‘How long have you been working for Dagurinn ?’

Skúli was starting to resent Gunna’s quickfire questions, reminding himself that he should be the one asking. ‘A couple of months. Dagurinn only started up in January.’

‘What were you doing before that?’

‘I finished my master’s last year and then I was at Jyllands Posten as an intern for a few months until I came home.’

‘Denmark. Where?’

‘In Århus. How long have you been in the police?’ he asked, trying to wrench the conversation around so that he could ask the questions.

‘Far too long. And who are your people?’

‘The Snædal family.’

‘Oh. Top people, I see.’

‘My uncle was in the government years ago.’

‘I know. I might even have voted for him.’

‘That’s nice to know. I’ll tell him.’

‘I’m not quite that old,’ Gunna replied coldly. ‘Now, get that down you and we’ll make a start. I have masses of things to do and if you’re going to tag along you’ll have to keep up and preferably keep quiet. All right?’

‘That’s fine,’ Skúli replied, laying down his knife and fork with a premonition of failure. He realized that, for a reporter, he had asked no questions and found out almost nothing about the person he was supposed to be profiling, while she had found out practically everything about him. ‘We can go, if you want. I don’t really like saltfish,’ he admitted.

‘Then you won’t grow up to have curly hair. Come on then,’ she said with a grin, rising to her feet and pulling a phone from her jacket pocket as it began to chirrup.

‘Hi, sweetheart, just a moment,’ she answered it in a gentle tone.

‘You’d better take your tray back to the counter, and you can take mine while you’re at it. I’ll see you outside in a minute,’ she instructed Skúli, marching towards the door with the phone at her ear. Skúli wondered who she could be addressing as sweetheart.

‘So, what does a crime editor actually do?’

The second-best Volvo bumped off the tarmac and rumbled on to the track leading to the pontoon dock. Skúli sat in the passenger seat, laptop on his knees, getting down as much of the story as Gunna was prepared to give him.

‘Mostly I just check the police websites every morning. Unidentified, you say? A man or a woman?’

‘Male.’

‘Age?’

‘Too early to say.’

‘What else can you tell me?’

‘That’s all for now,’ Gunna replied, bringing the car to a halt with a crunch of gravel behind a white van. Skúli followed her as she picked her way easily between rocks to the foreshore, while he found his feet slipping from under him.

Two people in white overalls crouched on the sand where the falling tide had left the man’s body, while a tall uniformed officer stood and watched as a photographer systematically took pictures of the area. Gunna lifted the Do Not Cross tape and ducked under it.

‘Hi, Snorri, what’s new?’ Gunna asked the man in uniform.

‘Nothing yet. They’ve not long been here.’

‘And Bjössi?’

‘Been and gone for a snoop around. Said he’d see you at the station in a while.’

‘Fair enough. Oh, by the way, that’s Snorri,’ she announced, looking at Skúli and jerking a thumb at the uniformed officer. She used the same thumb to point at Skúli. ‘This is Skúli. He’s my shadow. From the newspapers, so be careful what you tell him.’

Skúli saw her smile again while Snorri looked doubtful.

‘Camera?’ she asked Skúli.

‘What?’

‘Do you have a camera?’

‘No — well, only the one in my phone.’

‘All right. Take any pictures and I’ll lock you up.’

Gunna moved closer to the white-overalled pair crouched around the body and hunched down next to them. Skúli caught a glimpse of a young face, lifeless eyes half-open, and he felt himself engulfed in a sudden deep sadness at the sight.

‘Gunnhildur,’ Gunna introduced herself brusquely.

‘Sigmar. That’s Selma,’ the man replied absently, while the woman did not look up.

‘Anything useful?’

‘Not really. He’s not been here long, I’d say. Nothing to indicate any injuries. More than likely a case of falling in the water followed by hypothermia or drowning.’

‘Any identification?’

‘Nothing so far. Nothing in his pockets. No rings, no jewellery. We’ll know more when we’ve had a proper look at him on the slab. If he’s Icelandic, then we’ll probably have an identity in a day or two, sooner if he has a record of any kind. If he’s a foreigner. .’

He shrugged, scratched at the stubble on his chin and yawned.

‘Makes a change to get out into the country once in a while,’ he observed with a thin smile.

‘Taking him away, are you?’

‘Yup. Almost finished, actually. We’ll probably be off in an hour and we should have a report for you in a day or two. There’s no sign of any violence, so how urgent do you want this to be?’

‘Sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day round here.’

‘All right. We’ll do what we can,’ Sigmar said, pulling a mask back up over his mouth and nose.

‘Are you all right, lad?’ Gunna asked Skúli kindly. ‘Not seen a dead person before?’

Skúli’s face had gone from pale to white. He shook his head.

‘It’s all right. You’ll get used to it. But if you’re going to puke up, please don’t do it over anything that might be used as evidence.’

The young man had departed in an ambulance to the National Hospital’s mortuary in Reykjavík before the inshore boats began to appear in the afternoon and the pontoon dock became a hive of activity. Gunna could see plenty of curious faces and knew that Albert Jónasson must have been chatting over the VHF while he steamed out that morning.

‘Nothing to see, people,’ she muttered to herself as she and Skúli were the last to drive away, leaving the beach to be reclaimed by the rising tide.

‘I’d best be getting back to town,’ Skúli said as Gunna parked in the mayor’s space outside the police station.

‘All right. I hope today was useful, but it’s quite unusual to have a body. In fact, it hasn’t happened for years. So that’s a bit of excitement for you.’

‘Do you know who it is?’

‘No idea. Might be a seaman, could be a foreigner. But whoever he was, my guess is he had a bit too much to drink and fell into the water trying to get on board a boat.’