Quentin Bates: Frozen Assets

Passing Lækjartorg, she reflected that while much had changed, there were undoubtedly more changes to come. The city had altered out of all recognition. What had been a quiet town centre when she moved south and joined the Reykjavík force all those years ago had become a buzzing sprawl of boutiques and bars. Stopped at the lights, she checked what had once been the quiet restaurant with dark wooden tables and solid food where she and Raggi had celebrated their secret wedding. The place had gone entirely, replaced with three storeys of steel-framed opaque glass.

The lights changed and Gunna pulled away along Sæbraut, passing the Ministry buildings at the corner of Skúlagata now dwarfed by the rows of new offices and apartment blocks facing the sea and the shell of the huge Opera House rising where the fish auction had stood. She wondered which of the glass-fronted giants housed the offices she was looking for.

The top of the building wasn’t quite as smart as the ground-floor entrance had indicated, and the back of it, overlooking building sites and car parks, wasn’t as exclusive as the front with its view over Faxa Bay and the brooding presence of Mount Esja in the distance.

Gunna found the office suite and was about to push open the door emblazoned with a Spearpoint sign, its curved logo ending in a sharp point, when a raised voice inside made her pause. She stood still and listened carefully. It was clearly a woman’s voice, in a state of fury she would normally have expected to hear outside a nightclub in the early hours.

The voice ranted with hardly a break, occasionally pausing, possibly for breath, before continuing with its tirade. No answering voice could be heard. Although few distinct words could be made out, Gunna was caught between concern and admiration for a woman who could rant at quite such length and volume.

Eventually, tired of waiting for the tirade to come to an end, she shoved at the door and heard a buzz inside as it swung open. The voice came to an abrupt halt and Gunna found herself in front of a high reception desk where a young woman with a pinched face looked up in surprise to see a police officer in uniform.

‘Morning. I’m looking for Sigurjóna Huldudóttir. I believe I’m expected.’

‘She’s here. A moment,’ she replied in a dazed voice. As Gunna stowed her cap under her arm, she wondered if the receptionist had been on the receiving end of that magnificent rant.

The girl stood up and went to a door behind her, knocked and opened it gingerly, before putting her head inside and muttering a few words of which ‘police’ was the only one Gunna could make out as she stood with her back to the desk and admired the building site next door. A tower crane stood almost level with the office window and Gunna could see the figure of the operator in his tiny cage at the top, concentrating as he deftly lifted and swung steel bars into place in the framework of a new building.

More bloody offices. As if there aren’t enough already, Gunna thought.

‘. . the hell do these bastards get away with this. .?’ a strident voice barked suddenly, cut off in mid-sentence as the office door hissed shut.

The receptionist smiled wanly as Gunna looked around inquiringly.

‘She’ll see you in a few minutes. Could you wait a moment for her to finish her meeting?’ the receptionist asked sweetly. ‘Take a seat if you like.’

Gunna sat on a hard leather couch and flipped through a gossip magazine, wondering why she didn’t recognize the faces of all the country’s top people plastered across the pages.

‘Out of touch,’ she muttered to herself.

‘Excuse me?’ the receptionist asked, and Gunna realized that she had spoken out loud. ‘Nothing. Just thinking out loud,’ she apologized.

‘She’ll see you now,’ the girl said, as the door behind her opened and a beefy young man in a suit, his face burning, made his way out, giving every impression of being on the point of breaking into a run and leaping through a window.

Gunna stopped for a second in the doorway and took in a large corner office, thickly carpeted and with a desk topped in smoked glass dominating the far end, facing away from a window that filled one entire wall. Although the view was better from here, Gunna was pleased to note that the jib of the tower crane still protruded across it.

‘Good morning. Come in, please.’

The voice was warm, and apart from a slight heave of prominently displayed bosom there was no trace of the fury of a few minutes before from the statuesque woman with an unmistakable air of decision about her sharp features. Gunna took in a smartly tailored suit and dark blonde hair cut simply.

She extended a hand which was quickly taken and firmly shaken.

‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, Hvalvík police.’

‘Hvalvík? OK. Well, I’m Sigurjóna. My PA told me that you had called. Is this something to do with the site?’

‘Which site do you mean?’

‘The Hvalvík smelter project, of course.’

‘Are you involved with that?’

‘Our subsidiary company is playing a prominent part in the project development,’ Sigurjóna said smoothly.

‘No, nothing to do with the site. Actually this is an inquiry about one of your former employees and I spoke to one of your people yesterday afternoon. Ósk Líndal?’

‘Ósk handles human resources and stands in for me when I’m away.’

Gunna looked down and flipped through the sheaf of papers, going past the picture of the dead man taken at the morgue by a police photographer and moving on to the driving licence photo from the national archive.

‘Do you recognize this man?’ she asked, handing the picture across.

Sigurjóna took it and looked carefully. Gunna watched for a reaction, but there was none to be seen.

‘Einar,’ Sigurjóna said finally. ‘Einar Eyjólfur Einarsson. He works here, although we haven’t seen him since last week and he hasn’t called in, so I can’t say I’m delighted with him right now.’

‘No explanation?’

‘No, not a word.’

‘Did you make any inquiries?’

‘Of course. He’s a highly valued member of the team here and we can certainly use his skills. He’s one of our best account managers — it’s very difficult to explain to his clients that he just isn’t here. I’ll be very pleased when he comes back, not that I’d tell him so.’

Gunna nodded and scribbled on the notes, more to give herself a second to think than to write anything down ‘And who have you contacted to find Einar?’

‘Well, it’s not easy because I don’t believe he has much in the way of family and he’s from somewhere in the east originally. I’m not sure that his parents are still alive, even. I recall that he mentioned once that he had been an afterthought, the child of elderly parents.’

‘No brothers or sisters? No friends? Girlfriend?’

‘Well, Dísa, the girl on reception, moved in with him for a while, but I believe that didn’t last for long and you’d have to ask her about it. But, no. I assume he has a circle of friends, but not people that I’m aware of.’ Sigurjóna was starting to sound irritated. ‘Look, inspector, just where is this going? What’s he done, if you can tell me?’

‘It’s sergeant, actually. I have reason to believe he’s dead.’

‘Oh my God!’ Sigurjóna gasped, hands flying to her mouth in a gesture that Gunna found a touch too theatrical to be fully convincing. ‘Hvalvík? You mean he’s the dead man they found there? On the news the other night?’ Her voice shook slightly, and one finger tapped furiously on the polished surface of the desk.

Gunna nodded, and looked down at the papers in her lap. She wondered what the reaction would be to the morgue photograph, but decided against showing it.