Cold Comfort

The mid-morning traffic was fairly sparse, and as the car pulled up at a set of traffic lights ready to turn into another quiet residential area, the driver looked over at him.

“Knife,” he said.

“What?”

“Knife,” he repeated, winding down his window.

Diddi silently handed it over. As the car moved off and around the corner, the thin-faced man sent the carpet knife spinning away into the thick hedge of someone’s front garden.

Sigrún raised a questioning eyebrow as the newsreader finished the announcement.

“Robbing a bank? Do people really do that?” she asked. “I knew that kiosks and shops get held up sometimes, but not banks, surely?”

“It happens, though not often,” Gunna said thoughtfully, rummaging through the pockets of her fleece for her phone. “I’m just going to call Helgi …”

Sigrún stood up and refilled the percolator jug absently while Gunna listened to the phone ring.

“Hi, Helgi, busy?”

“No more than usual, chief. Plenty to do and not enough time to do it.”

“You want to take a morning off now and again. Does you good,” she replied. “Here, I just heard the news. Who’s the bank robber?”

“Ah. Actually, I was wondering if I should give you a call, and then I thought better of it.”

“Why? Me being off duty has never stopped you before.”

“No, that’s Eiríkur, not me.”

“Sorry. But OK, is there anything to this?”

She heard Helgi chuckle.

“The world’s stupidest bank robber, it seems. Daft Diddi walked into a branch of Kaupthing with a knife in one hand and got away with about a million in cash.”

“A million? That’s not much of a payday, is it?”

“Wouldn’t even get you a decent second-hand car these days.”

“And where’s Diddi?”

“No idea. The uniform boys are doing the rounds and we’re keeping out of it for the moment. The silly bastard only walked into the branch where he has his own account and the girl behind the counter knew exactly who he was. No attempt to hide his face, nothing, but he managed to disappear, so I doubt he was doing this alone. Poor lad, now he’s going to get into some real hot water.”

“He’ll get a suspended sentence, I suppose, when he shows up.”

“No chance. There was a chap there who tried to be a have-a-go hero and got in the way of Diddi’s knife. Slashed the tendons in one arm, so Diddi’s going to be facing GBH.”

Sigrún put mugs and a plate of biscuits on the table, while Gunna shook her head in despair.

“Unbelievable how stupid these people can be, isn’t it? Let me know what happens, will you? We ought to have a word with Diddi when he’s finally brought in and see if we can get him to admit that it was Ommi who beat him up.”

“Way ahead of you, chief. I’ve already warned the uniform boys that Diddi may have been keeping some bad company. I’ll let you know if anything exciting happens.”

“Fair enough. See you this afternoon,” Gunna said, ending the call.

“What was that?” Sigrún asked.

“Ah, the usual stupid, immoral people we have to deal with. A disabled lad walked into a bank with a knife, demanded money and got away with about a million in cash. But he slashed someone’s arm while he was at it, so it’ll probably be an additional case for us once the boys in uniform have brought him in.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of these people?”

“And how. But a morning off helps, and chocolate biscuits don’t do any harm. What’s happening with Norway?”

“Jörundur’s there now for a week, on a strict promise to behave and not touch a drop. If it works out, he’ll go back and I’ll go with him for a couple of days. The job sounds good. A year’s contract, decent earnings plus subsidized accommodation.”

Gunna absently dipped a biscuit a little too long in her coffee and it unexpectedly disintegrated.

“Damn,” she said mildly. “I mean, it’s going to be quiet without you two here. Laufey’s going to miss babysitting Jens and having a second mum to go to when I’m at work.”

Gunna made her way up the stairwell of a pastelcoloured concrete block of flats. The building was indistinguishable from the rest of the row that formed the final border of an out-of-the-way housing estate at the far end of Breidholt. This was where some of the city’s cheapest housing could be found, in cramped apartments that had once been smart and in demand as the first rung on the property ladder. More recently they had started to be seen almost as ghettos, where those down on their luck lived alongside the city’s more recent immigrants, as the spicy aromas in the stairwell bore witness to.

Gunna sensed the sharp smells of garlic and ginger, mingled with the more subtle tinges of spices she did not have names for, as she peered at a door that was bruised and had clearly been repaired more than once. A broken pushchair containing a black plastic sack of rubbish occupied the corner of the landing.

A thickset teenager wearing a black T-shirt and with a baseball cap sideways on his head answered the door with a frown across his face. “Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Justyna,” Gunna said.

“Who wants her?” he demanded truculently.

“Police. Where is she?”