“Please do. I’d love to know how Óskar Óskarsson wound up in hospital with a broken jaw, missing a few teeth, and with four broken ribs, broken fingers, bruises everywhere. Care to elaborate?”
“Nothing to do with me, but I guess he had it coming.” Ommi grinned.
“Explain, please, Ómar,” Gunna said quietly.
“Well, Skari’s always been a twat. He’s always winding up the wrong people. Sooner or later someone gives him a good smacking. It’s not the first time.”
“And by coincidence, someone looking remarkably like you happened to be there that very day. There are broken bones here and GBH is a serious matter. You could be looking at a good few years on top of what you’ve already got left.”
“Fucking hell, come on, man, call her off, will you?” Ommi appealed to his lawyer, who spoke with a voice as smooth as milk.
“I have to agree with my client. This appears to be an unrelated matter and therefore I would ask that you confine your enquiries to the case in hand.”
“I assure you that this is very relevant to the case,” Gunna replied. “But we can come back to it. Helgi, would you continue?”
Helgi sat back and knitted his fingers together over his paunch. “Tell me about Svanhildur Mjöll Sigurgeirsdóttir.”
“Who?” Ommi asked. “No idea.”
“Svana Geirs.”
“Svana?”
“When did you last see or speak to her?”
Ommi frowned and glared at Helgi. “Years ago, man. Years ago. We had a bit of a thing going back in the nineties. Ancient history.”
“All right. Tell me about your relationship with Svana.”
Ommi whistled. “That’s so long ago. Like I said, we got together for a while, had some fun.”
“All right, where did you meet, and when was this?”
“In some club, I guess. When, hell, I don’t know. Ninetysix, something like that. Before she started to get popular. Anyway, what’s all this about Svana?” he demanded. “What d’you want to know for?”
“How long were you together?” Helgi asked blandly, ignoring Ommi’s question.
“Hell, a few months … listen, this was years ago. We were kids.”
Helgi nodded, as if this were a nugget of information he had been searching for. Gunna suppressed a smile of satisfaction and watched Karl Einar Bjarnason as carefully as she watched Ommi’s reactions to Helgi’s questions.
“So what was the nature of your relationship with Svanhildur Mjöll? Did you live together?”
“No, we never shacked up like that. She had a flat with Elma and the other girl from that band they were in. I was around there a while.”
“Where were you living?”
“Where did I live in 1996? What’s all this? Are you going to let them carry on with this crap?” Ommi demanded of his lawyer, who merely shrugged in reply.
Helgi picked up a sheet of paper from the desk and pretended to consult it.
“According to the National Registry, your legal residence until you went to prison was at Hraungata 19 in Hvalvík. I take it you weren’t actually living there?”
“That’s where my mum lives. I haven’t even been near that dump for years.”
“How long did your relationship with Svanhildur Mjöll last?”
“A few months.”
“Why did it come to an end?”
“I don’t know. I got tired of her.”
“Not because you were abusive and violent? You have a record of violence against women.”
“Don’t drag that up again. That was years ago, and only the once.”
Helgi gazed at Ommi and tried to gauge just how angry he was getting with the line of questioning he did not see the reason for. “Isn’t it true that Svanhildur Mjöll threw you over after you hit her?”
“No! I dropped her. And I never smacked her, even if I wanted to.”
“Why would you want to?” Gunna broke in.
Ommi shook his head. “She was just nuts. She’d drive you mad sometimes, wanting this and that, wanting to go here or there and always right now. Maybe she’s slowed down by now. Felt sorry for that poor bastard she married, twisted him right round her little finger and dropped him the minute he wasn’t going to be a rich footballer.”
“You mean Sigmundur Björnsson?”
“Yeah. What happened to him? He just vanished the second Svana crossed her legs.” Ommi looked up truculently into Helgi’s eyes, as if challenging him. “Why all this stuff about Svana?”
“You were involved with Svana, and so was Óskar Óskarsson,” Helgi guessed. “You guys were the best of friends, so what was going on there?”
“Æi. Me and Skari. We were best mates and we were always trying out each other’s cast-offs. I had Svana first. Then Skari had a go at her for a while. We were mates. We shared these things like mates do.”
“And Skari and you aren’t the best of friends these days,” Helgi said. “Why’s that? Where were you on Thursday last week?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Try. We have CCTV evidence that puts you at the N1 petrol station in Keflavík shortly before Óskar Óskarsson was admitted to hospital.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, Ommi. Now, what happened between you and Skari? You’d been best mates since you were in kindergarten. Grew up on the same street. Went to Reykjavík together when Hvalvík wasn’t big enough any more. You were both involved in all kinds of stuff, pinching cars, flogging dope, collecting debts for Benni Sól-”