Quentin Bates - Frozen Assets

‘When do you think you’ll know?’

Gunna shrugged. ‘Anybody’s guess, I’m afraid. Now, you’re not going to write any of this, are you? There’ll be a statement this afternoon with everything in it that we can say before he’s been identified. Things get a bit delicate with relatives and whatnot. You understand?’

‘No, of course not. I mean, yes. I’ll be back later in the week if that’s all right.’

‘Fine by me. It won’t be so interesting, though. Most of what we do here is traffic. There’s bugger all happens in Hvalvík, so I really don’t know why they wanted to send you here.’

Gunna opened the car door and swung her legs out. ‘Give me a call when you want to come over. Shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Haddi!’

‘In here.’

Gunna put her head round her own office door to see Haddi in one chair and the morose figure of Bjössi from CID sitting behind her desk with his feet perched on the window sill.

‘Ah, Bjössi. So that’s where you’ve got to. Make yourself comfortable, will you?’

Bjössi languidly put his hands behind his head. ‘Will do, Gunna. Two sugars for me, if you don’t mind, and a few doughnuts wouldn’t do any harm.’

‘Bugger off. I don’t want your clogged-up arteries on my conscience. But I’m sure Haddi has some coffee on the go somewhere?’

‘All right,’ Haddi grumbled, standing up. Gunna waved Bjössi to Haddi’s vacated seat and planted herself behind her desk.

‘Right then. What have we got?’

Bjössi sighed. ‘Dead bloke. Late twenties to mid-thirties by the look of him. Been in the water a few hours, but not long. Not a thing in his pockets. No rings, no watch, nothing round his neck, no piercings that we could see. No visible injuries.’

He took a deep breath and carried on. ‘Clean-shaven probably yesterday, I’d say. Ginger hair, nails clipped, no shoes, black jeans and a black shirt with long sleeves. That’s it, in a nutshell. He’s probably on the slab at the morgue right now being looked at carefully. With any luck we might get something more tomorrow.’

‘He’s not a local, but he must have gone into the water here. The tide wouldn’t have washed him into the harbour from anywhere else, surely?’

‘Nope. Hasn’t been in the drink long enough for that. If he’d been rolling around in the water for long enough to drift along the coast, he wouldn’t be in such good condition.’

Haddi returned with a thermos and mugs.

‘I suppose you want milk, Bjössi?’ he grumbled.

‘Black’s fine with me.’

‘That’s just as well, because we don’t have any milk anyway. Need me, do you?’

‘No, you’d best knock off now, Haddi,’ Gunna replied. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

Haddi waved as he let the door swing shut behind him and Gunna heard him greet the woman reading the morning’s paper at the post office counter next door as he left the building.

‘Bjössi, how much help with this can I get from CID?’

‘Not a lot, I’m afraid. Looks pretty clear to me. Once he’s identified, inform the relatives and get on with the rest of it. There’ll have to be an inquiry, but I’d be surprised if it came up with anything other than death by misadventure, either drowning or hypothermia.’

‘Seems reasonable enough to me,’ Gunna agreed. ‘No sign of foul play, not yet at any rate. I’ll check the missing persons list before I finish today and get on to pathology in the morning and see what they can tell us.’

She yawned.

‘Been a long day?’ Bjössi asked.

‘It has. And I’d better be off in a minute. How’s Dóra, anyway?’

‘Ach, she’s fine. Moaning, but nothing unusual about that. How about your kids?’

‘Laufey should be back from school soon, so I’d better be there when she gets home. Gísli’s at sea, been on Snæfugl since January and says he likes it, or he likes the money anyway.’

‘He’s got his head screwed on, your boy has.’ Bjössi grinned. ‘Don’t know where he gets that from.’

‘From his mother, of course,’ Gunna said stoutly. ‘There’s no bloody sense in his father’s family.’

‘Ah, I wouldn’t know about that. But I reckon if things keep going the way they are, fishing’s about the best place your lad could be. Interest rates and prices going up all the time. You know, it doesn’t seem right.’ The furrows across Bjössi’s brow deepened.

‘Yup, it stinks. But fishermen and coppers will be fine, just you see,’ Gunna assured him.

Bjössi refilled his mug from the thermos. He wedged a hard lump of sugar between his teeth and sipped his fresh coffee through it.

‘I hope somebody’s going to be fine,’ Bjössi mumbled with the sugar lump still between his teeth. ‘The exchange rate’s up and down. I don’t care what the government tries to tell us, I can see prices of everything going up and Dóra says it’s dearer just to live now. Half of the Poles and whatnot have already left, except the ones running lucrative dope businesses.’

‘You’re probably right, but what’s going to change? Nothing. Anyway, what’s keeping you so busy over at Keflavík that you can’t help an old colleague out for a few hours?’

‘Dope, dope and more dope.’ Bjössi sighed. ‘It’s just never-ending and I’m sick of it. It’s dealing with these bloody low-lifes that I’m fed up with, day in, day out.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t have joined the police in that case.’

‘Probably right,’ Bjössi said, standing up. ‘But I reckon we’re both stuck with it now, Gunna. Come and find me if you’re in Keflavík tomorrow. By the way, who’s the toyboy?’

‘What?’

‘Your young man.’

‘Oh, him. He’s a journalist on Dagurinn , says he’s here to write a profile of a country police station.’

‘Fun for you.’ Bjössi sniggered while Gunna glowered.

‘It was wished on me,’ she said. ‘Shit, that reminds me.’

‘Of what?’

‘I’ve just remembered I had a meeting with Vilhjálmur Traustason this morning.’

‘Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I told our glorious leader that you were a bit busy today.’

Wednesday, 27 August

Gunna’s flat soles slapped on the polished floor of the hospital corridor. Sigmar’s office was at the far end of the passage, marked only with a handwritten sign that indicated the occupant’s name and not his position.

Hearing voices within, she knocked and pushed the door open without waiting for a response. Sigmar swivelled round, the phone at his ear.

‘I’ll have to call you back. Sorry, I have a visitor. Yes, an hour at least.’

He dropped the phone on to its handset and smiled. ‘Good morning, sergeant. You’ve come to my rescue.’

‘Morning. In what way?’

‘One of the administrators,’ he said with distaste, glaring at the phone. ‘More cash-saving incentives needed, although obviously that wouldn’t extend to bureaucrats. But hopefully in an hour when the lady calls back, I’ll be on my way home for lunch,’ he added with satisfaction.

‘A result, then?’

‘Indeed. Now, our young man.’ He shuffled through papers and came up with a handwritten sheet. ‘Of course you’d have the full report tomorrow, but I understand that you’ll need to know as much as possible straight away.’

‘It helps.’

Sigmar consulted the sheet. ‘Actually I can’t tell you much more than I did yesterday at the scene, except to confirm he hadn’t been in the water for more than a few hours. Six, at most.’

‘The body was located at six thirty.’

‘Around midnight, not before. He was also extremely drunk, almost double the drink-driving limit. At any rate it’s not surprising that he may have missed his footing. He’d certainly have had trouble walking in a straight line at that level of intoxication. The cause of death was drowning.’