It was a bright day with unbroken sunshine in an azure sky as Matti gunned the taxi up the main road out of town, leaving trucks and old ladies in Skodas standing. Hardy sat and looked as if he were enjoying the scenery as they passed the sprawling grey concrete suburbs of Grafarvogur and Mosfellsbær until they found themselves bowling through open country at the feet of Esja, the hulking mountain that dominates Reykjavík from across the bay.
Matti effortlessly hauled the taxi past tractors and coaches, carefully keeping not too far over the speed limit. Hardy enjoyed the unaccustomed ride through the dusty green countryside, so much harsher than the wooded landscape he was used to.
‘Aren’t there any trees here, Matti?’ he asked lazily.
‘No. No trees here. The Vikings cut them all down for firewood and they never grew back.’
Matti cut his speed as they approached the tunnel at Hvalfjördur and was careful to keep under the limit until they emerged, blinking in the bright lights after the dim tunnel, past the toll booths at the far side.
He forced himself not to be curious. Matti knew that any discussion of Hardy’s work was strictly off limits unless his opinion was invited, which it seldom was.
The road became a switchback of turns and hillocks through the lush farmland north of the tunnel. Hardy wound down the passenger window to let in the breeze that brought with it the rich aroma of cut grass. With every farm along the route making the most of the dry weather for haymaking, Matti kept a cautious eye out for tractors pulling vast trailers of hay along the highway.
Hardy’s phone didn’t ring. It just buzzed discreetly in his top pocket. Matti pretended to hear nothing as Hardy, sitting casually in the passenger seat, took the call.
‘Of course. I’ll call you right back. I’m not alone right now but I’ll return your call when we can speak confidentially,’ Matti heard him say smoothly into the slimline phone. ‘Of course. Yes, a few minutes,’ Hardy continued before snapping the phone shut. He looked over at Matti, who was trying not to catch his eye.
‘Can we stop somewhere? Somewhere there’s a landline phone?’
‘Yeah. I reckon so. We’ll be in Borgarnes soon and you can make a call from the gas station, I guess,’ Matti hazarded, inclined to ask why a mobile wasn’t good enough, but then thinking better of it.
Matti pumped fuel while Hardy went inside to find a payphone. He filled the tank and ambled inside to pay, deciding on the way that this would be as good a time as any to eat. He paid in cash at the desk and looked around for Hardy but failed to see him.
‘Excuse me, darling. Is there a phone here?’ he asked.
‘Over there,’ the cashier replied, jerking a thumb behind her towards the toilets.
He made his way over and shoved open the door of the Gents. On the way out, relieved, he spotted Hardy leaning against a wall, handset to his ear. Matti went over to him and made an eating gesture, raising hands to his mouth. Hardy frowned and looked away. Matti shrugged his shoulders and went towards the cafeteria where Hardy found him ten minutes later.
‘I thought you might be hungry,’ he said through a mouthful of burger, simultaneously skewering half a dozen chips on his fork and dipping them in a tub of bright pink cocktail sauce.
‘I might be,’ Hardy admitted. ‘But I don’t eat shit like this.’
‘You should have said.’
‘I was busy.’
‘And I was hungry.’
‘Big man, sometimes I think that you are a little too hungry for your own good,’ Hardy said with a hint of acid in his voice that passed Matti by.
‘Yup. Always been hungry, me. We was hard up when I was a kid and there wasn’t never enough to go around. Scars you for life, that does.’
Hardy nodded sagely and stood up. Matti was almost finished when Hardy returned with a bottle of water and a sandwich for himself, and mugs of black coffee for each of them. He carefully used Matti’s discarded knife to scrape more than half of the mayonnaise from his prawn sandwich on to the empty plate before taking a bite.
‘So, who are we going to visit this afternoon?’ Matti asked through yet another mouthful of food. Hardy was disgusted by Matti’s table manners, but enforced confinement had taught him not to comment on other people’s behaviour without good reason.
‘The man I have to speak to is a consultant who advises a lot of companies on various things. It’s not important for you to be present. The man speaks English perfectly and I don’t expect I’ll need you to translate.’
‘Going to be long?’
‘I doubt it. Twenty minutes, maybe. Then I have to be back in Reykjavík in good time after that.’
‘Another job?’
‘You could say that. I have to go to Spearpoint, so you can leave me there.’
‘Suits me. Right, I’m going outside for a puff before we go and find this guy. You got an appointment with him?’
‘In a way.’
‘What do you mean — in a way?’
‘He doesn’t know about it yet.’