Quentin Bates - Winterlude

‘Hi. What can I do for you?’ the figure asked, sliding the glasses up with grease-covered hands.

‘Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, CID,’ she announced, flashing her wallet. ‘You have a spare minute?’

‘Is this about Borgar’s place down the road?’

‘It is. Were you about yesterday?’

The man turned his back and as Gunna made her way around the car, she saw he was scrubbing his hands at a sink in the corner. The hand he dried and extended to be shaken was still black.

‘What year?’ she asked, nodding at the rusty Ford Bronco.

‘Seventy-two, or so it says on the registration docs,’ he replied, his face lighting up. ‘You know something about these?’

‘My dad had one years ago. It practically broke his heart when he finally had to scrap it, but there wasn’t a panel left that wasn’t rusted through.’

‘Shame.’

‘You’re Stefán? One of my colleagues spoke to you this morning.’

‘That’s right. The baldie.’

‘I’m sure that’s not how he’d describe himself, but yes, that’s him. I know he asked you about yesterday, which is when we believe Borgar was probably murdered.’

‘That’s right. Didn’t see anything.’

‘You’re here on your own?’

‘Yeah. Most of the time, but I wasn’t here yesterday,’ he said. ‘There’s an old chap comes in two days a week, but I can’t afford to employ anyone at the moment. There’s work to be had tarting up old cars for rich collectors, but not as much as there used to be.’

‘I know you didn’t see anything yesterday, but I’m wondering about the week or two before. Have you noticed any activity in Borgar’s unit? Or anyone new poking around?’

Stefán gingerly inserted a little finger into one ear as he thought, scratching deep inside with a thoughtful look on his face.

‘There have been lights on at Borgar’s place during the last week or two. I reckoned it was his nephew Óli pottering around there. Thought he might be showing someone around, so I didn’t poke my nose in.’

‘Did you see Óli?’

Stefán removed the finger from his ear and looked more relaxed now that the blockage was cleared. ‘No. Now that you mention it, I don’t recall seeing that fancy Freelander of his, either. Mind you, it’s not as if I was keeping an eye on the place.’

‘Any unusual traffic? There can’t be many people coming up here without good reason, surely?’

‘Well, no. This place is a dead end. But I spend most of my time looking at the inside of a car, not staring out of the window in case someone comes down the street.’

‘Fair point. How long do you reckon since you started seeing lights at Borgar’s unit?’

Stefán frowned and thought. ‘It was while we had Jói Jóa’s Cadillac in here,’ he said slowly, and brightened as he went to the workbench and consulted a diary. He ran a finger down a page of entries written in a surprisingly neat hand. ‘It came in two weeks ago yesterday. So it would have been some time that week. That’s about as exact as I can be.’

‘Thanks,’ Gunna said. ‘That’s a big help. Any particular time of day you saw lights on?’

‘Afternoons, mostly, I reckon — as far as I remember. I didn’t pay that much attention.’

‘Thanks,’ Gunna repeated, handing him a card. ‘If anything else springs to mind, I’d appreciate a call.’

Stefán tucked the card in a pocket. ‘Yeah. Will do,’ he agreed. ‘But if you find the bastard who did it, I’d appreciate it if you nailed him to the wall. Borgar had his faults, but he was a decent enough character.’

‘You knew him well?’

‘Not really. He was always busy with whatever new business he was immersed in, but he always had time to stop for a coffee and a few of those dirty jokes he always seemed to pick up. Mind you, I had the sense to always be too busy when he wanted his car serviced.’

Gunna left the workshop and made her way along the street. An hour later she had learned little other than that the long-deserted workshop had seen a little activity recently. Nobody had seen anything unusual. Like Stefán, the carpenter next door to him, the refrigeration engineer and the soft-drinks importer further along the same street had little time to watch for passers-by.

Night had fallen when Gunna unlocked her car and sat behind the wheel. She was writing notes, waiting for the heater to clear the windscreen when there was a tap on the window. She looked up to see Stefán looking in.

‘Any ideas?’ she asked, winding down the window.

‘Not sure,’ he said, his forehead knitted with lines as he scowled. ‘There’s a blue Nissan van I’ve seen a few times in recent weeks and thought nothing of it. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘Any registration number?’

Stefán shook his head. ‘Nah. No such luck. A dark blue van, with a white panel on each side as if someone had peeled off a company name or a logo.’

‘Did you get a look at the driver?’

‘No. Sorry. Wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I couldn’t tell you if it went to Borgar’s unit or somewhere else. I just saw it go past a few times.’

‘Definitely more than once, though? So this wasn’t someone who was just lost?’

‘This street is a dead end. Nobody comes down here more than once without a good reason,’ Stefán said. ‘That’s one reason I like being here. But I reckon I saw the Nissan two, three times, for definite.’

‘Thanks. It all helps,’ Gunna replied, and Stefán smiled diffidently at her before turning and walking back to his open door.

A biting wind swept in from the sea, whipping up whitecaps that spat spray while gulls hovered and swooped gracefully above the black rocks of the shore a hundred yards away across scrub grass. Gunna was sure it would be a delightful spot in summer, but the November cold did little for its charms, even with Esja and the row of distant mountains across Faxa Bay picked out in startlingly bright sunshine.

Kjartan Aronson looked impassively through the glass of his front door and ushered Gunna inside, his expression giving nothing away. The terraced house was a mess. Dust was everywhere and Gunna felt her nose protest.

‘There’s been some work going on here while I’ve been away. I thought they’d be finished by the time I got back, but they haven’t. Sorry,’ he said, not sounding at all apologetic, as he gestured at the sawhorse in the middle of the living room and the new parquet floor that only reached halfway across it. ‘My brother’s been working on it in between other jobs, but I guess he must be busy with paid work these last few weeks. So big brother gets the short end of the stick.’

‘That’s Ingi, is it?’

Kjartan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Could be. What does Ingi have to do with the police?’

‘You came home last night?’ Gunna asked, ignoring the question.

‘Docked at midday yesterday in Dalvík. I flew back from Akureyri.’ Kjartan waved Gunna to an armchair, the only one in the half-finished room, while he sat down on an upturned crate, flexing his shoulders as he did so. Gunna could not fail to notice the muscles that bulged beneath the man’s snug shirt and the biceps that left no doubt that Kjartan was not a stranger to hard work or the gym, or both. ‘Anyway, what do the police want with me? Not that I need to make too many guesses.’

‘You’re aware that Borgar Jónsson is dead, I take it?’

‘I am, and I gather he was helped on his way.’

‘How do you know that?’

Kjartan gave the first hint of a smile. ‘It was on the news last night that a man had been killed in suspicious circumstances. Someone told me that it might have been Borgar. I put two and two together when I saw the pictures of the hostel on the news and wasn’t surprised.’