“You had something particular to discuss?”
“No.” He shrugged. “I enjoyed her company. Svana was a fun person to be around. Even though she was shallow in many ways, she was a lively personality and an antidote to dry meetings that go on too long.”
“It seems she had an appointment. Any idea who with? Another of the syndicate?”
There was a sour look on his face.
“I have no idea. I hoped to see her. She wasn’t there,” he said with rising impatience.
“You’ve no idea who she was expecting to meet?”
“Not the faintest, officer, and if you don’t mind, we have guests for lunch.”
“I’m sure they’ll leave some for you. When did you last see Bjartmar?”
“Before his trip to the US,” Hallur said with a sour expression on his handsome face.
“And the rest of the syndicate?”
“I’ve seen Bjarki once or twice in the last few weeks. His firm looks after the books for my wife’s media business and we’re old friends.”
“He doesn’t have an alibi.”
“Bjarki? Good grief, he’d never hurt a fly, let alone a person. Svana was so fit and healthy, she could have made mincemeat of him.”
“Bjartmar was abroad. You were in Parliament. Jónas Valur doesn’t have much of an alibi and Bjarki doesn’t have one at all. I’m not assuming that one of the syndicate killed Svana Geirs, but you have to admit that you all make a good starting point. You had a motive in that if she were to reveal the arrangement, your political career would be in trouble.”
“You think so?” Hallur asked with a grim laugh. “If the truth were known about the goings-on between political bedrooms in this country, more than half of us would be out of office tomorrow.”
“Did you meet any of Svana’s other acquaintances?”
“What? Her friends? No. I don’t think she had friends like normal people do. She just had people who were useful to her. I’d sometimes run into her with people at Fit Club, normally the sort of fashionable women she used to associate with, sometimes men, but not often. Once I saw her laughing and joking with a troll of a man at Fit Club, who turned out to be her brother. That was a bit strange, because Svana never seemed to have anything like a family, ever.”
“How so?”
“She never mentioned family at all. I knew she was from out of town somewhere, but didn’t know where. I know it sounds funny, but it didn’t fit somehow.”
“How so?” Gunna asked again.
“I don’t know,” Hallur answered. “She’d never had any relations like the rest of us do, never mentioned parents. Finding out there was a family behind her was a bit like discovering a shameful secret that she’d have preferred to keep quiet about.”
Gunna left Hallur’s smart house with his wife’s farewell scowl vivid in her mind and drove back to Hverfisgata thinking over the conversation. She made a mental note to find Björgvin in the financial crime department and ask if he had any knowledge of Bjarki Steinsson’s activities. As an accountant, Bjarki undoubtedly handled affairs for his friends’ companies, and although she knew little would be divulged beyond generalities, she felt that the man’s demeanour would tell her enough.
Some of what Hallur had said triggered a mental note she had made to herself a few days earlier that had become submerged beneath a tide of other matters. She hurried through the rain, grumbling to herself that rain shouldn’t fall from a virtually clear sky. Instead of going to the detectives’ office, she climbed an extra flight of stairs to the cells and could hear someone snoring sonorously inside one of them.
An elderly man padded uncertainly from the toilet back to a cell, followed by a woman prison officer. Hearing her approach, both of them turned.
“Hæ, Gunna, sweet thing,” the grey-haired man croaked.
“Had a night on the tiles, did you, Maggi?”
“Æi, Gunna. You know how it is sometimes. A little drink doesn’t go far these days,” he said, and yawned.
“Come on, Maggi,” the prison officer encouraged. “You can have a few more hours’ sleep and that’s your lot.”
The old man tottered forward, one hand on the wall, and the prison officer locked his door behind him, watching through the peephole as he settled himself back on the mattress inside.
“Gunnhildur, isn’t it?” she asked. “I thought I recognized you.”
“That’s right,” Gunna said, surprised. “You’re Kaya?”
“Saw you in the paper last year.”
“Ah, so you must be one of the half-dozen people who actually read Dagurinn instead of using it to line the litter tray.”
“Sort of.” Kaya grinned. “We don’t have any pets, so I suppose we have to read it. What can I do for you?”
“Chap brought in last week. Thickset, pissed. Tinna Sigvalds and Big Geiri brought him in but they’re both off duty today, otherwise I’d have asked them. Who was he?”
Gunna followed Kaya to the office, where she scrolled through the log on the computer.
“Last Friday? He was brought in about six thirty?”
“That fits.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Not much. Just who he was. The face looked familiar and I wanted to be sure.”