“No. Just saw the red car go belting past and then saw them by the side of the road a minute later.”
“Fair enough. I’ll have to get a statement from you later.”
Gusts of wind whipped rain across the road and into their faces.
“Right, that’s us done,” the paramedic announced. “We’ll take matey here away and I’ll leave the clearing-up to you guys,” he said happily, and ushered the young man to a seat in the back of the ambulance, still wearing his grey blanket like a refuge.
“Thanks, mate,” Snorri said to the paramedic and turned to Gunna. “When can I catch up with you, chief?”
“I’ll drop in at your station tomorrow, if you like. Or you can stop by at home this evening. Up to you.”
“OK. I’ll see you tomorrow. I guess you need your peace and quiet of an evening these days,” he said with a wink that bordered on a leer, waving as he got into his own car.
“The jungle drums are working overtime now,” Gunna grumbled, getting back into the Range Rover where Laufey was busily texting.
“All right, sweetheart? You’d have been quicker on the bus today,” she apologized.
“That’s all right, Mum.”
“Who are you texting?”
“Just letting them know I’m a bit late. Mum?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Mum, why don’t you see Snorri any more?”
“Because we’re not working together now I’m back on the city force.”
“Shame.”
“Why’s that?”
“Snorri’s lush. He’s loads lusher than Steini.”
Gunna sighed.
“He’d be much better for you,” Laufey continued slyly.
“Good grief, young lady,” Gunna exploded. “It’s enough that the whole bloody force seems to be clued up on my private life without you chipping in as well.”
“But why not?”
Gunna shook her head in despair. “One, Snorri is a dozen years younger than I am. Two, he has a girlfriend. Three, I don’t fancy him, even if he is lush. How’s that?”
“I suppose …” Laufey conceded, lapsing into a silence that she did not break until the red-and-white checks of the aluminium factory appeared ahead.
“Mum?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“How do you get to be a paramedic?”
“I thought we needed to have another chat, Selma,” Gunna said cheerily.
Selma slouched in the chair and glared back truculently at Gunna, who had become certain that this young woman could be the key to unlocking a few mysteries.
“Had some breakfast, have you?” Gunna asked.
“I don’t do breakfast. It’s bad for you.”
“All right, that’s up to you. Now, can you account for your movements on the eighteenth of last month?”
“Duh. What day was that?”
“The day that you drove up to Rif and collected Ommi.”
“Oh, that day,” Selma said and lapsed back into silence.
“And?” Gunna prompted.
“I went up there to visit him, like I normally do, and …”
“And?”
“Well, he had a day pass so we could go out for a few hours. So we did.”
Selma sat in thought for a moment and Gunna began to wonder if she had fallen asleep.
“Then he just said, ‘I’m not going back inside. You’re taking me south’ So that’s what we did.”
Gunna consulted a page of her notebook. “If you say so. Now, I’ve spoken to the prison authorities, and normally you visit on the second and fourth weekends of each month. So why was this visit in the middle of the week? You’d only been there a few days before, hadn’t you?”
“Yeah, well, Ommi asked me to, didn’t he?” Selma shifted uncomfortably in her chair, lifting herself from a slouch to sit up and perch forward, hands in front of her.
“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”
“Yeah. That’s it. He asked me to come and see him. Said he’d got a day pass and we could go out for a few hours,” she repeated.
“Do you normally do that?”
“Yeah.”
“So where do you go?”
“Just for a drive, look around a bit.”
“Do you have a job, Selma?”
“Not any more. I’m disabled. Nerves.”
“Yet someone with your poor disposition can drive up to the far end of Snæfellsnes, pick up an absconding prisoner, drive him back to Reykjavík and then help him evade the police?”
“Yeah, well. It’s Ommi, isn’t it?”
“What does that mean?” Gunna enquired.
“Ommi’s, well …” She shrugged, as if that were answer enough.
“I’m just wondering if it really was Ommi who asked you to drive up there and collect him.”
Selma looked thunderstruck. “Course it was. Who else?”
“Plenty of people have an interest in him. Could be any one of them. I gather Ommi had some unfinished business to attend to. Tell me about it.”
Selma yawned in spite of herself, puncturing the tough image she had been trying to project. “Y’know, Ommi came back with me, like he asked. I dropped him off near the bus station and he went to do his stuff. I don’t know what.”
“Tell me about Diddi.”
“Who?”
“Don’t play the fool, Selma. You know who Daft Diddi is. Why did Ommi want to see him?”
“Did he?”
“Ommi gave him a beating to start with. Why?”
“Æi, something about some job years ago. I don’t know what.”
“What sort of job?” Gunna asked with a new note of iron in her voice.
“Æi,” Selma repeated and pouted. “It’s Ommi’s business. I don’t know.”