Cold Comfort

Gunna extricated her fingers from Hallur’s soft but insistent grip. “Thank you. But that would hardly be appropriate as long as you’re a potential material witness, I’m afraid.”

“Maybe when the case is closed, then?”

“Possibly. Thanks for your time.”

Gunna clattered down the narrow wooden staircase from Hallur’s office. Outside, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“The cheeky randy bastard,” she muttered to herself, striding past Hotel Borg and toying with the thought of going inside to use the bathroom and wash the hand that Hallur had shaken.

The air tasted slightly stale and the flat no longer felt as if anyone lived there. The kitchen floor where Svana Geirs had twitched as she died in a widening pool of her own blood was scrubbed clean, as if the flat’s occupant had simply moved out. Gunna went from the kitchen to the living room, frowning as she wondered what she was actually looking for. The place was tidy and Svana Geirs’ belongings were all still where they belonged. Eiríkur and the technical team had taken only a few items that they felt needed to be fingerprinted or checked at the laboratory.

In the blue and pink bedroom the huge down quilt had been carefully folded into a square and placed on a corner of the mattress, while the sheets and duvet cover had been taken away to be checked. She slid back the door of the wardrobe that filled an entire wall and ran a hand over the expensive fabrics of the dresses and coats on hangers, wondering how many of these had ever actually been worn.

She went through the hangers one by one, checking the pockets of all the jackets and coats for anything that might have been left, but finding nothing. At the far end, behind a couple of colourful summer dresses that she doubted would see much use in a short Icelandic summer, and some revealing nightdresses, she found herself looking at two hangers that had been carefully pushed out of sight.

“Good grief,” she muttered, lifting up a hanger that held a skimpy French maid’s outfit consisting of more lace than material. Behind it was a bizarre version of a nurse’s outfit that she realized with distaste was made of some kind of plastic.

She debated with herself whether these ought to be taken for testing as well, but decided that if anything were to be found, the bedclothes or the contents of the washing basket would probably be likelier sources.

She hung the items back in their places respectfully, painfully aware that their owner had only been dead a few days. She wondered who had been the beneficiary of Svana Geirs’ magnificent figure in these bizarre, titillating outfits. She looked at the vast array of shoes at the wardrobe’s floor level, shook her head and shut the double doors.

The place was unnervingly silent. Any traffic noise was shut out entirely by the triple-glazed windows, excluding any sense of the outside world. The flat resembled a cocoon cut off from reality. She sat at the head of the bed and felt herself sink in the dense mattress, resisting the temptation to bounce on it. The two drawers of the bedside table on one side were empty, but the side nearer the window revealed the TV remote, sprays and jars of creams and a party box of condoms in a variety of colours and, as far as Gunna could make out, flavours-she decided that banana probably didn’t refer to size. The lower drawer contained handcuffs, a small vibrator that emitted a rattlesnake buzz at the flick of a switch, and packets of pills from paracetamol to heavyduty prescription painkillers. But no phone or little black book were to be seen. In fact, Gunna reflected, as she paced to the window to look out at the quiet street four floors below, nowhere was there a scrap of paper, a magazine or a book.

Suddenly all her senses sharpened in a single flash of alarm as a groan, muffled but unmistakable, came from the corridor. She turned slowly and listened for it to be repeated, stepping as gently as she could towards the bedroom door. She was wondering if she had definitely closed the flat’s door when the groan came again, longer this time and ending on a higher note that was almost a squeal.

In the passage she stood and listened. She could hear someone’s breath coming in short bursts, and this time she swept towards the kitchen, certain that the sound was coming from there. In the kitchen doorway, she scanned the room. The breaths panted and morphed into a low moan that rose and suddenly stopped, cut off as if by the flick of a switch. The flat was silent again.

Gunna stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and turned in a slow circle, looking in every direction. She smiled to herself, reached into her jacket pocket, took out her phone and thumbed the green button twice.

“Helgi? In the office, are you? You have Svana’s phone number? I’d like you to call it right now from your desk phone, OK? And stay on the line.”