“Now, Óskar Óskarsson and Svanhildur Mjöll Sigurgeirsdóttir were both among the people who gave statements to the effect that Ómar had argued with Steindór on the night he died. Ómar absconds from prison a few months before he would have been up for parole. While he’s on the loose, Óskar is badly beaten and Svana Geirs is murdered. Also Daft Diddi is beaten and then intimidated into committing a violent robbery. With me so far, everyone?”
The three men nodded.
“We have all sorts going on here. Svana Geirs had turned herself into some kind of high-class hooker with an exclusive clientele. We’ve spoken to all of her regular clients, as far as we know, and some of them have sticky fingers. Bjartmar Arnarson and Jónas Valur Hjaltason didn’t seem too concerned that we knew what was going on. In fact, Bjartmar appears to have dropped out of the Svana club. The other two, Hallur Hallbjörnsson and Bjarki Steinsson, are extremely jumpy. Hallur for understandable political reasons, and Bjarki because his wife will rip his balls off when she finds out.”
Gunna paused for breath. “Questions?”
“Get on with it,” Ívar Laxdal growled.
“We also have the problem of Bjartmar’s wife, still in hospital after what looks like an arson attack. Bjartmar himself has a very unsavoury past. He owned the club where the altercation between Steindór and Ómar took place. Ómar and Óskar were both working for Bjartmar, ostensibly as bouncers, but both were certainly involved in Bjartmar’s other illegal business interests.”
“Such as?” Ívar Laxdal asked.
“Dope. Blacklights was a clearing house for all kinds of narcotics, but Bjartmar was very careful never to get his own hands dirty. The man came into some money in the late nineties, and within a year he’d gone legit and was probably making more money legally than he had done illegally.”
“How?”
“Property investments, for the most part. He bought houses and sold them as soon as the value rose by twenty per cent. Prices shot up between 2000 and 2007, so he made a fortune and put a lot of it into a similar business in Spain selling property to elderly people looking to retire somewhere warm. But he was still heavily into property and development here at the same time. One of his companies, Rigel Investment, owns the building just round the corner on Lindargata where Svana Geirs lived.”
“It’s convoluted, isn’t it?” Ívar Laxdal observed with a rare shadow of a smile.
“It’s a step up from speeding tickets,” Gunna admitted. “Everything is linked somehow. Wherever you look, someone else had an interest as well.”
Eiríkur put a hand up. “Er, chief. Actually there’s more. While you were out this morning, I did a bit of digging and spoke to Björgvin over the road. Bjartmar was a director of Kleifaberg as well. Don’t know if you were aware of that,” he said, as if this was something that he should have found out long before.
Gunna circled the company on the whiteboard, which was now covered in arrows, and added another between Bjartmar and Kleifaberg. “Good grief, anything else?”
“Well, yes, there is,” Eiríkur said nervously. “There were a few more shareholders in Kleifaberg, including Bjarki Steinsson and a woman called Helena Rós Pálsdóttir-Hallur Hallbjörnsson’s wife.”
“Ah, so the plot continues to thicken, Gunnhildur,” Ívar Laxdal said approvingly. “But I need to see results for the murder of Svana Geirs. Do you have anyone in the frame?”
“As it is, I don’t believe we are close to an arrest. We have Omar Magnússon in the picture, with evidence that puts him there during the week leading up to her death, but the same is true of half a dozen other people. Bjartmar has a rock-solid alibi, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t get someone else to carry it out on his behalf. We can place Jónas Valur, Bjarki Steinsson and Hallur in her flat during that same week, Bjarki on the same day, but we still have no evidence that any of them may have committed the crime.”
“Motives?”
“Ah, Omar is the obvious one, as she had been a witness over the Steindór Hjálmarsson murder in 2000, and this is what I feel we need to crack more than anything. Who was paying Omar to do the time? What went wrong and why did Omar abscond? If we can find that out, then I’m certain everything else will fall into place. I’m sure Oskar knows, but he’s terrified. I’m sure Jónas Valur knows, but he’s saying nothing, possibly to protect his son.”
“Next step?”
“Oskar. I’ve already pushed him harder than I should have, considering he’s a sick man. But I reckon he’s our way in.”