Quentin Bates - Winterlude

The red of Helgi’s usually healthy complexion had gone, replaced by pallid cheeks.

‘It’s not pretty, Chief,’ he said, sucking cold air into his lungs in deep breaths as occasional snowflakes spun through the air. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this part of the job.’

Gunna steeled herself and stepped past the equally stiff-faced uniformed officer standing guard and stepped through the doorway. One white-suited and masked figure inside was systematically photographing everything, the flash bouncing off walls that had once been white but had turned a shade of nicotine ivory over the years, while the other stooped low over a third figure on the floor. Gunna made out the arms spread wide of a man flat on his ample back. The hands looked huge, pale in the harsh artificial light, flat to the floor as if holding on, with scattered black hairs growing from the knuckles.

‘Anything you can tell me, Sigmar?’

The kneeling figure looked around and shook his head. As he moved, Gunna saw the rest of the body on the floor, a worn leather jacket over a thick chest and a pot-belly. She caught her breath at the sight of the man’s head. There was no face to speak of, its features flattened and broken.

‘Stone dead and it’s a damned mess,’ Sigmar said, his voice muffled by the mask across his mouth. ‘That’s all I can tell you right now, Gunna. Sorry.’

‘There must have been a weapon involved, surely?’

He nodded his head slowly. ‘I’d say so. You don’t get that kind of result with bare hands.’

‘Any identification?’

Sigmar unzipped the man’s coat and felt inside, shook his head and leaned back. ‘Nothing there.’

‘Back pocket?’

He felt along the corpse’s side, then leaned over the body to feel the other, before lifting himself upright holding a worn wallet that he placed into Gunna’s hand. ‘Be my guest,’ he said with mock formality.

‘Thanks. I’ll leave you to it. But the sooner you can tell us anything more, the better,’ Gunna told him. ‘I can see headlines already.’

Helgi shivered as Gunna flipped through the man’s wallet with latex-covered fingers.

‘How long has this place been empty?’

‘A good few years. It went bankrupt right after the crash and it’s been empty since.’

They stood in the entrance of what had once been a boat-builder’s workshop. Voices echoed under the high ceiling and a layer of grey plastic dust coated every surface in the place.

‘Six thousand, five hundred krónur. A video rental card, a debit card that’s ten years out of date,’ she muttered as Helgi leaned over her shoulder. ‘No driving licence. No health insurance card.’

‘What’s the name on the debit card? I can’t see it without my glasses.’

‘Borgar Jónsson. Does that mean anything to you?’

Helgi’s forehead puckered with lines as he thought. ‘It does ring a bell somewhere and I’m sure I’ve heard the name recently as well. I just can’t think where,’ he admitted.

Gunna dropped the wallet into an evidence bag and sealed it before peeling off her gloves.

‘Get yourself back to the shop and see what you can dig up,’ she decided. ‘Sigmar will let us know when it’s all over here and I’ll knock on a few doors around this area. Who found him, then?’

‘A guy who works down the street. He said he’d driven past and seen the door wide open, so he went to close it and decided to have a quick look inside first. Now he wishes he hadn’t, I guess.’

‘Fair enough,’ Gunna said. ‘We can talk to him later.’

‘When he’s managed to get over the shock. I gather the ambulance took him away.’

‘It’s not the kind of sight that’s going to improve your day, is it?’

The screech of steel being cut greeted Gunna as she stepped inside. It lasted only a few seconds and brought to mind some great animal being painfully slaughtered. A shower of flying sparks subsided and the big man lifted his safety glasses and glowered.

‘We’re busy,’ he said, hands on his glasses again. ‘You need to go next door.’

‘Police,’ Gunna said, opening her wallet and displaying her ID.

‘You’re here about. .?’ the man asked with a shrug of one shoulder and a jerk of the head.

‘Right first time.’

He pulled the glasses off, folded them and put them in the pocket of his overall. ‘Then I’ll allow myself a well-deserved unofficial smoking break,’ he decided, heading for the door Gunna had just come in through. Outside the workshop he cupped a hand around a cigarette and lit it with a Zippo, drawing the smoke deep.

‘You are?’

‘Jón Geir Árnason. I sort of run this place, in that my wife runs it from the office upstairs and I do the actual hard work.’

‘The place over there, NesPlast. Know anything about it?’ Gunna asked.

‘It’s been empty for a while, since before we moved in here three years ago. Any idea who owns it? Business isn’t doing badly and we could do with moving to a bigger place.’

‘One of your staff discovered Borgar Jónsson’s body inside. Do you know what he was doing there?’

‘Halldór, that’s right,’ Jón Geir said. ‘He’s a bit of an old woman, even though he tries to come across as a tough guy. He told me the door over there was open and I said if he was worried he should go and have a quick look. I thought of going over there myself to check the place out. Like I said, we’re on the lookout for somewhere bigger and that would be perfect. But anyway, Halldór went over there and came back shaking like a leaf five minutes later. I called the police, and I guess you know the rest,’ he said, crushing out his cigarette under one boot.

‘Have you noticed any activity there? Anyone coming or going?’

Jón Geir shook his head and sniffed. ‘No. There’s a guy who comes once a month or so, but we’re used to seeing him now and again. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen him for quite a while and I was hoping to run into him sooner or later and find out if the place might be up for grabs. If anyone’s seen anything, it’d be Lára upstairs or Halldór. She can see the place from her window and Halldór comes and goes a lot more than I do. He does deliveries, so he’s in and out, while I’m stuck on the tools the whole time.’

‘And Halldór’s off sick?’

‘Yeah. The big pansy. He’ll be back tomorrow, he said.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘Hafnarfjördur. Lára can give you his address,’ Jón Geir said firmly, fiddling with the safety glasses he had taken out of his pocket and clearly anxious to get back to work. ‘Go out of this door and in the next one. The office is upstairs.’

The office upstairs was almost bare and Gunna wished she could keep her own workspace as tidy.

‘Lára?’ Gunna asked of the severe-looking woman who sat straight-backed at the computer. ‘Jón Geir downstairs said you might be able to answer a few questions.’

‘You’re from the police? About. .?’ she asked, nodding towards the window.

‘I am.’

‘You have an address for Halldór? I understand he discovered your neighbour this morning.’

Lára wrote on a scrap of paper and handed it across.

‘Phone number?’ Gunna prompted, handing it back. Lára took it and scribbled a number that she didn’t need to look up.

‘He said he’d be back at work tomorrow, so you can find him here if you need to.’

‘I’m wondering why he left so quickly?’

‘I really couldn’t say. But he’s not the tough character he likes people to think he is, that’s for sure. In fact, Halldór’s a bit of an idiot.’